The Mist Before Our Eyes (The Love and War Series) | Paperback

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PROLOGUE
Russia, October 1942

It is autumn, the day bright, but tinged with a cold breeze sweeping across a huge field of burnt wheat and furrows of stubble, some hundred kilometres southeast of Smolensk. The field is dotted with landmines, planted by Russian partisans. A Waffen SS Sergeant and a number of privates point their rifles at Felix Stoltenberg and his doomed companions.
The sergeant makes it clear to them that they have no choice but to walk across this field, from this side to the other, some six hundred metres. They fan out, thirty men, thirty traitors of the Reich. They could simply skirt around it and advance through the adjoining forest. But no, this is a test for those, like Felix Stoltenberg, whose lives are worth nothing; men who, through their foul and traitorous deeds, have forfeited their right to life.
Dark plumes of smoke rise into the air on the horizon, a burning village, its inhabitants killed, every last one of them. A murder of crows flies by, heading for the trees, their raucous cawing mocking the condemned men beneath them. And so they start, these traitors. The walk of death. One fearful foot in front of the other.
To Felix’s left is a boy called Walter, a blond, handsome young lad of about twenty, with a dusting of a moustache, cadaverous cheeks. Perfect Aryan material until he’d done something so awful, so bad, that this, this walk of death, is the result. His face is filthy, streaked with dirt, his eyes rimmed red with fear and tears. The boy, like the others, can’t stop shaking. Death is but a step away; it has reached out its hand for them.
A man with a bandage around his skull to Felix’s far right has already found a mine. He is on one knee, hands shaking, gently removing the soil, muttering to himself – or is he praying? Felix walks on, one careful step after another. Why bother praying, he wonders. God forsook them a long time ago. He has never prayed; he will not start now. The field stretches ahead, skeletal trees on the horizon blurred in the mist, the far end light years away.
Why had he rescued her? Was it love? Was it pity for her daughter? Or atonement for the humiliation he’d heaped on the girl that day in the classroom? He could still visualise her, standing before him, looking straight ahead, trying so hard to be brave. It took him a long time to appreciate just how brave. So many years ago. Had he stopped and thought about it, considered the consequences, he may not have been so hasty. For now, he is to die a traitor’s death. But he tries not to think, it’s best not to; best to keep his memories sequestered in a dark corner of his mind.
A sharp explosion shatters the peace behind him, to his right. The earth shudders. He doesn’t look back. He knows it’s the man with the bandage. The sergeant and his men, watching from the sidelines, laugh and cheer, enjoying the diabolical spectacle.
Walter stops, his whole frame shaking. He has wet himself. The sergeant yells at him, tells him to move on.
Felix thinks of his father, arrested and ‘shot while trying to escape,’ another traitor’s death. His father had been right after all. The difference was, his father had known from the start, had known the folly of dancing to Hitler’s tune. Felix had been ashamed of him, ashamed of having a traitor as a father. He wants to apologise to him. He should have listened. He feels an arm around his shoulder, a gentle, reassuring touch. There is a warmth to it. But no one is there. It is his imagination.
Walter, to his left, stops short again. ‘Fuck,’ he says. ‘Felix, help me.’ His voice is shot through with terror. He is as still as a statue, his left foot clamped on the dry earth. Tears run down his face forming rivulets through the grime on his boyish cheeks. ‘Help me, Felix.’
Felix shakes his head, mute with fear.
‘Felix, no, please don’t leave me,’ he says, his voice splintered, his hand outstretched as if wanting Felix to take it.
Felix steps forward, knows he has to get some distance between them, knowing the next step could be his last, knowing there is nothing he can do for Walter. The boy cries, calls out for his mother, a pathetic sound. He knows death has come for him.
Felix glances back.
Walter is skewered with terror, his left leg shaking, his face in his hands, his filthy hands.
Felix turns around again, concentrates on what’s in front of him, on the misty horizon far ahead. The explosion rips through the air. Felix feels the blast of air on his back.
The far side of the field is a blur; it seems to be receding further and further back. He moves on, step by fearful step, knowing full well he could be next.

PART ONE

Chapter 1
A month earlier: Berlin, September 1942

They’d locked Felix in a cell.
He tries to keep fit. Touches his toes, stretches left, right, up and down. He runs on the spot and imagines he’s running through a woodland on a bright summery day, the sun slanting through the trees, the sound of birdsong filling the air, the smell of the leaves and forest flowers. Or he’s running on a beach, or through the city park, anywhere but here, this tiny cell with its bench, a bunk bed with a threadbare blanket, a bucket in the corner stinking with excrement, and the cold that leaks from these thick, thick walls.
He’s been here just a day or two but already he is losing weight. He can feel his ribcage now. Have they forgotten about him? If it wasn’t for the daily ration of grub, he might think so. Strange, how a person’s perception of food can change. When first confined to this tiny cell, he thought the food awful. And it was and it still is. Now, he is so accustomed to it, he almost enjoys it. He still doesn’t know what it is, has no idea what he is putting in his stomach, but that doesn’t keep him from enjoying it.
Footsteps sound in the corridor outside his cell. Not the usual shuffling steps of an orderly bringing him his food, but the sharper, purposeful steps of three, perhaps four men. Is this it? Have they come for him? He stands up from his bed, stiffens, breathes in and throws his head back, ready to face whatever and whoever is coming to see him.
The cell door swings open. A man stumbles in, pushed from behind. The door immediately closes. The man straightens. He stretches his neck as if trying to regain his sense of decency. He looks at Felix fiercely. But the darkness in his eyes quickly dissipates and instead he offers his hand, saying, ‘How do you do?’ Such an incongruous gesture in a place like this. ‘The name’s Karstadt. You can call me Rudolph, if you like.’
He smiles and looks Felix kindly in the eye; such simple gestures but they tug at Felix’s insides. No one has smiled at him for such a long time; no one has greeted him as a man, a human being. He catches his breath and swallows the emotion down; wouldn’t do to get all tearful now.
‘I’m Felix Stoltenberg. I used to be a lieutenant until…’ He leaves the sentence hanging.
A ghost of a smile passes over Rudolph’s thin, bloodless lips. He’s not young, in his forties perhaps, dark hair, sharp cheekbones, a beard flecked with a dusky red. He shivers and looks around, as if trying to find where the cold is coming from. The man’s tunic is filthy, unbuttoned, revealing his shirt, once white, now heavily stained. ‘Do you mind if I lie down for a minute?’ He stretches himself out across the bench, his gangly legs hanging off the side.
He closes his eyes. Felix covers him with the blanket. Poor man. Felix notices the deep lines on either side of his mouth, the mesh of crow’s feet framing his eyes. They’ve removed the insignia from his tunic’s collar and shoulders but the faint lines of stitching remain. Rudolph Karstadt had been a captain. Felix wonders what catastrophe has befallen him, what dreadful sin he committed against the Reich to have him stripped of rank and thrown into this dungeon.
After a while, Rudolph opens his eyes. ‘Christ, I wish I had a fag,’ he says, swinging his feet off the bench. ‘And something to eat.’ He stands and stretches. ‘Do you think we’ll ever get out of here? Alive, I mean.’
Doubtful, thinks Felix. But he says nothing; instead, shrugs his shoulders. It’s best not to think of the future.
Rudolph starts pacing the cell, head down, hands in pockets.
‘What brings you here?’ asks Felix.
Rudolph hesitates. Felix knows what he’s thinking, can he trust this man he’s only just met? Perhaps he thinks Felix is a stooge.
‘You don’t have to tell me.’
‘What does it matter? I’m as good as dead anyway.’ He sits again. ‘They found out about me. About…’ He pauses. He fidgets with a thread hanging from his shirt cuff. ‘You can judge me if you want, I’m past caring. I’m a man who made the mistake of… liking…’
‘Yes?’
He looks down at his feet. ‘Another man.’
Felix glances away; he can’t look at the man. He pulls at his collar. ‘That’s enough to condemn you,’ he says.
‘Don’t I know it. I’d rather not talk about it. I can’t.’
‘Fine.’ Good, he thinks, he’d rather not know.
‘And you? What about you?’
‘Me?’ Felix leans forward, scratches at the dirt beneath his fingernails. ‘It’s a long story.’
‘Isn’t it always? You can tell me if you want to; it’s up to you. Some people find it helps to talk. I wanted to be a priest once.’ He stops for a moment; his eyes gaze up at the ceiling. ‘Instead, I became a soldier. Not your usual progression, I grant you. I was good at listening; people told me things. We all have a story though, don’t we? A story that starts somewhere, that has a beginning. It’s just that we don’t always know the end yet. So, tell me, what sort of house did you live in? No, don’t tell me; a boy like you, you look like you come from a solid, middle-class background.’ He laughs. ‘One of those fine three-storeyed townhouses on a wide street with flower pots on the front steps, that sort of thing? Am I right?’
‘Maybe.’ He’s unerringly right, damn him.
‘And you were an only child.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘So, former Lieutenant Stoltenberg, tell me all about yourself. I’m interested. Anyway, might as well kill some time.’
Felix thinks back. He doesn’t want to, tries to resist. But there’s something about this man with his pretensions to the priesthood that is strangely reassuring. He tries to remember a beginning. And there was a beginning, an exact moment. His beginning lay in his brittle loneliness, a childhood plagued by uncertainties. He didn’t see it as evil, didn’t recognise the evil that seeped through their door and into their home so many years back. But, like a cancer beginning its destructive journey, there was a precise moment when it appeared and the only person to recognise it was his father. His poor father.
‘I guess you were in the Hitler Youth,’ says Rudolph. ‘All boys were, I suppose. It was mandatory.’
‘Not at first, it wasn’t. I wanted to join. I knew if I could I wouldn’t…’
‘Go on. You can tell me. I’m hardly going to be telling anyone.’
‘I was desperate to join but…’
Rudolph tilts his head to one side. ‘Don’t tell me. Your father.’
Felix smiles despite himself. ‘Yes, my father.’
Rudolph brushes the surface dirt off his trouser leg as if it would make any difference. ‘You don’t have to tell me any more. I’d understand.’
Felix realises that his boast is not an idle one – he is a good listener.
‘In the end, even he wasn’t able to stop me. And that, I suppose, was the beginning.’
‘The beginning?’
Felix sighs. Why not tell him, he thinks. He has nothing else to do, and he knows he wants to now, to lay out the sequence of events, to chart the spread of the cancer that brought him here, to this cell, to this moment. ‘It was a long time ago,’ he says. ‘But I can pinpoint it to the hour, the minute almost.’
‘And that minute?’
‘It was the moment that Klaus Beck knocked on the door.’
‘Klaus Beck?’ Rudolph leans forward. ‘You serious? That bastard? The Klaus Beck?’
‘Yes, the very same. The Klaus Beck.’