Chad Thumann - The Undesirables

“What does this have to do with Russia?” Bobby asked.

“You know who also had a powerful navy?”

“Who, sir?”

“France.”

“England’s strongest ally.”

“Until they were conquered in 1940.”

Bobby was starting to see the point of all this. “By Germany.”

Major Bovington nodded. “And what do you think would have happened if the Germans had added the French navy to their own?”

“They could have invaded England?”

Major Bovington shrugged. “Perhaps.”

“So why didn’t they?”

“The English didn’t let them.”

“How so?”

“By destroying them. Operation Catapult, in French Algeria. England attacked the French navy in port and killed over twelve hundred French sailors. French sailors who had been, until only a few months earlier, among England’s most trusted and powerful allies. French soldiers who claimed that they would never capitulate to Germany.”

“But they had capitulated.”

“Their government had. Their leaders had. And for that, they paid with their lives.”

“Sounds like the English are as ruthless as the Germans.”

“England survives because she was ruthless when she had to be.”

Bobby thought of Karen’s letter, of her distinction between the “real world” of war and the “dream world” of peace. “And now we’re going to do the same thing to Russia.”

Major Bovington leaned back in his chair and smiled. “I didn’t say that.”

“It’s what you’re implying, isn’t it?”

“The Germans have conquered the Ukraine and Belarus. They’ve surrounded Leningrad. They’re a summer campaign away from capturing Moscow. They’ve advanced over more ground and conquered more territory than any army in history. We’ve barely even fought. Our army is still a bunch of raw recruits. But we have something Germany doesn’t have. Steel. Fuel. Factories.”

“Industry.”

“Germany can’t keep up. But do you know what Russia has?”

“Steel. Fuel. Factories.”

“Even more than us.”

Major Bovington paused a moment, letting that reality sink in. “They’ve survived by moving their factories and their workers east. Most of their industry is now here”—the major pulled a map out from under the scattered papers on his desk and put his finger on a spot in the middle of Siberia—“at Chelyabinsk. But everyone’s already calling it Tankograd. Because that’s where the Russians now build their tanks.”

“It’s a long way from Moscow.”

“It’s a long way from anywhere. So far away the Germans can’t bomb it. But they might not need to bomb it. If Russia capitulates, the way France did, the Germans would capture it. All those factories would start making German tanks.”

“Unless we stop them.”

“Like the English did to the French.”

Bobby stared at the map, fascinated. He traced a line with his finger. “We could do it, too, flying B-17s in from the other side. Coming in from Alaska.”

“I guess you’re not so stupid, after all.”

Alaska. That was the place Karen had mentioned in her letter. She was wrong, though—Alaska was far away, thousands of miles from Leningrad. But in a more important sense, she was right. Alaska was not so far from Siberia, from Russia itself. And thousands of miles through the Siberian wilderness seemed somehow less daunting than thousands of miles through German-occupied Europe.

If she was somehow making her way to Alaska, Bobby had to be there to find her.

“I’d like to be part of it,” he blurted. “I’d like to transfer to Alaska.”

“First, Russia has to lose.”

“They will,” Bobby said.

Judging from the way Major Bovington eyed him now, Bobby knew this must have been why he wanted to talk to him in the first place.

“You’re sure?” the major asked.

“They’re desperate,” Bobby said. “They’re starving. Every military campaign against the Germans has been a disaster for them. They can’t possibly win.”

“Is that what your girlfriend says in her letters?”

“In the parts that aren’t redacted by Soviet State censors, yes.”

Major Bovington stared down at the map of Alaska. Then he looked up at Bobby, deep in thought.

Krause marched with a sense of foreboding. He hated being this close to the front, and he knew that every crunching step through the snow took him closer to that dreadful location.

There was little chance he’d run into Red Army forces. The Soviet winter offensive on the Leningrad front had been an utter disaster for the Russians. The Second Shock Army had been obliterated. But a few Russian soldiers had survived, and they now formed isolated pockets of Red Army resistance—cut off, well armed, and desperate, hiding in the woods and slowly starving to death.

The Wehrmacht advised its soldiers never to travel alone lest they be jumped by the stray Red Army gangs, who could be as dangerous as cornered tigers. And yet here Krause was, completely alone, because Unteroffizier Oster had no runners left he could afford to send.

Krause’s objective was to link up with the second squad, which was currently engaged in a forward combat patrol, probing the front line near Tikhvin. He was instructed to inform Corporal Greifer, the Second Squad’s leader, about the escaped prisoner and the death of the platoon’s Leutnant and Feldwebel. Oster wanted the second squad to cancel its patrol and return at once to help defend the village’s strategic bridge over the Neva.

Krause hated rivers, and he hated bridges. He hated them because he knew generals treasured them. Rivers halted an army’s advance, and bridges bottlenecked supply lines, so generals always prioritized taking and holding bridges. They willingly threw lives away by the thousands to secure river crossings.

Krause was a professional soldier, but he wasn’t a willing one. He hated soldiering. He would have preferred staying unemployed, like in the old days, before Hitler’s rise. Despite being unemployed, Krause had never wanted for money. His various admirers always took care of him. Every morning Krause would wax his signature moustache and beard into a new, outlandish design. And every evening he would take a new admirer into Berlin’s “Garden of the Beasts,” the Tiergarten park. It was a wild, wonderful time, and for Krause, the happiest of his life.

Most of the men he knew back then were now dead. The Nazis were intolerant of homosexuals, whom they considered even more undesirable than Slavs and Jews. Krause had been smart enough to read the writing on the wall. He had shaved his head and beard and volunteered for military duty. For a time he flourished even there. He was provided for, given three meals a day, and expected to do little more than train and march in parades.

Krause wasn’t the only homosexual soldier. There were thousands of them, many even high-ranking officers. So long as he kept his romantic interests discreet, he found almost as many admirers in the Wehrmacht barracks as he had in Berlin’s cabarets.

But then Hitler decided to invade Germany’s neighbors, and the real fighting began. Now Krause’s friends and lovers were either dead or in convalescent hospitals. Krause was bounced from unit to unit until he landed here, in a platoon of straight men and under the command of a squad leader who evidently hated him. Krause wasn’t just romantically frustrated, and he wasn’t just scared—he was also bored. He fought that boredom by playing mental games of survival.

Unteroffizier Oster clearly judged Krause to be an unfit soldier. He would prefer Krause dead, because that would open a spot in the squad for a more competent replacement. But Krause wanted to survive. So he played a mental game with the Unteroffizier, a game of subterfuge. It was a delicate game, and one in which Krause couldn’t be too obvious. The Unteroffizier would force Krause into a dangerous situation, and Krause would figure out some way of avoiding the duty.

Take his current mission, by way of example. The Second Squad and Corporal Greifer were probing troop strength near the front. It would stand to reason that wherever they were, Red Army refugees would be nearby. But such refugees were far more dangerous to a single runner like Krause than to a full rifle squad. It certainly didn’t behoove Krause to expose himself to such a danger by getting anywhere near the Second Squad.

For that reason, Krause had no intention of actually finding the corporal. To do so would have been an unnecessary risk. Instead, Krause planned to stomp through the snow for a few hours, turn around, and report back to Oster that he was unable to locate the Second Squad. No one knew exactly where the squad was, after all. It didn’t have a radio. All anyone knew was the path it was supposed to patrol.

Krause’s plan wasn’t without risk. When the Second Squad returned, and Greifer gave his report, Oster would know that the squad had followed its mission path and that Krause was lying. But he would never be able to prove it. Krause would claim he must have gotten disoriented in the mud, or perhaps it was Greifer and the Second Squad who’d gotten disoriented—perhaps they hadn’t followed the route they thought they had.

These were the games Krause played and the thoughts occupying his mind as he sloshed forward. He was testing a dozen scenarios and coming up with a dozen excuses. It was how he passed the time. Then, suddenly, all those thoughts fled from his brain.

Curled up on the edge of the woods before him, not twenty-five yards away, lay a dog, staring at him. And not just any dog, but the very dog that had caused so much trouble.