Steiner stood up and clicked his heels. “To the Führer.”
They tossed back the vodka and Wolff felt it burn its way down his throat and drop like molten lead in his stomach. He poured himself a glass of wine to dilute it and thought: “I’ll probably get drunk but what the hell.”
In Poland he had drunk in moderation and had slept with a couple of girls, one of whom he had loved a little. But he had never abandoned his keep-fit regime, exercising when the hole in his belly had barely healed.
Steiner refilled the glasses while the girls, black-haired and gypsy-faced, hovered in the background.
“But don’t get taken in by them,” Wenck said gesturing at the girls with his glass. “When the Ivans get here they’ll have our balls just like that,” brandishing a carving knife.
Wolff said: “You seem very certain that the Russians will break through.”
“Will break through? Will?” The broken-nosed officer laughed theatrically. “They’re going through us like shit through a goose.” He stood up. “Anyway, my idealistic young friend, another toast. To the Leibstandarte, the elite within the elite.”
Wolff could hardly refuse the toast.
“What about you?” Steiner asked. “Do you have a toast?”
The vodka was slipping down easily now. Wolff stood up and raised his replenished glass. “To victory.”
“Jesus Christ,” murmured Wenck.
They drank.
Wenck snapped his fingers at the two girls. They opened the tins and placed the squares of meat, glistening with jelly, in front of the three officers.
At the same time Steiner slipped his hand up the skirt of one of them and said: “That’s my girl. No pants. Always at the ready like a good soldier.”
They ate hungrily, drinking more vodka washed down with the red wine. “Does Dietrich feed you like this?” Steiner asked, stuffing black bread into his mouth.
“He gets the best there is,” Wolff replied.
“But of course,” Wenck said. “Reichsführer Himmler sees to that.”
“On the contrary,” Wolff replied. “The Führer sees to it.”
“But of course I forgot. The Leibstandarte are very special. They get cake and we get black bread.”
“At least we’re soldiers,” Steiner said, eyeing Wolff speculatively. “Not policemen in fancy dress.”
But Wolff, accustomed like all SS to the jealousy of the Wehrmacht, refused to be drawn. “Odd, isn’t it,” he said equably, “that the policemen are always in action where the fighting is the toughest.”
Steiner and Wenck now appeared to be very drunk and Wolff was far from sober. Frosted air breathed through the gap in the roof but none of them felt it.
Wenck said: “And now for some brandy,” clapping his hands.
One of the girls produced a bottle of straw-coloured-liquor and poured coffee that tasted of cardboard.
Steiner drank some of the brandy, grimaced and leaned across the table. “Have you been to Berlin lately, Kurt?”
Wolff shook his head.
“Karl was there three weeks ago, weren’t you, Karl,” to Wenck.
“I was. A strange city these days.” His voice was slurred. “Full of rumours. And Plots …” He stood up and walked to the fire where he stood warming his back; Steiner and Wolff sat in two easy chairs, holed by cigarette burns, on either side. “Full of plots,” Wenck repeated.
“What sort of plots?” Wolff asked.
Wenck said to Steiner: “Should I tell him?”
“Why not?” Carelessly as though alcohol had dissipated all caution.
“I don’t know …”
“Out with it for God’s sake, man,” Wolff snapped. “We’re not schoolboys.”
“But an SS officer …”
Steiner interruped. “Wenck is talking of plots against the Führer.”
“I don’t believe it,” Wolff said immediately.
Wenck shrugged and drank some more brandy, “Some of the generals are not happy.”
“They never have been,” Wolff said.
“There has already been one attempt,” Steiner remarked.
“Attempt at what?”
“Attempt to finish off the Führer. At Borisov in 1941. There will be others.”
“And they will fail,” Wolff said, standing up and stretching. The girl with the thick legs looked at him expectantly. “I think I’ll turn in. I’ve heard enough idiot talk for one day.”
Wenck said: “It’s not only Wehrmacht officers who are involved.”
“If you’re implying that the SS is involved …” A cold hatred was beginning to replace Wolff’s indulgence. These two men were nothing more than traitors. “I think,” he said to Wenck, “that you’d better take that back.”
Wenck belched. “Not everyone is blind like you, Hauptsturmführer.” He turned and threw his glass into the flames. “I’ll wager that if you knew the end was near you’d change your tune. If you finally realised that a madman was sending men to their deaths when all was lost then you’d throw in your lot with the generals.”
Wolff drove his knee into Wenck’s crotch. And, as he bent forward with a thick cry of pain, raised the blade of his hand for the killer rabbit punch at the base of the neck.
Steiner intercepted the blow. “For Christ’s sake, Wolff, he’s drunk.”
Wolff turned and hit the taller man in the solar plexus, but his fist encountered hard muscle. In the background the two girls twittered anxiously.
While Wolff and Steiner struggled, Wenck painfully straightened up. “All right,” he shouted, “I apologise.”
Wolff relaxed, disengaged himself from Steiner. Then he took his pistol from its holster, pointed it at Wenck who was retching into the fire and said: “I want more than an apology.”
Steiner said: “For Christ’s sake put that thing away.”
Wolff turned the gun on Steiner. “Shut your filthy mouth.” And to Wenck: “Stand up straight or you’ll choke on your own vomit.”
Steiner said: “You’ll be court-martialled for this.”
“A dead man can’t give evidence.”
“But I will.”
“You’ll be dead as well.”
Wenck, his face white, sweat beading his forehead said: “What do you want?”
“I would like,” Wolff said, “to hear you repeat the Leibstandarte oath of allegiance to Hitler,” and turning to Steiner: “You too.”
Steiner shrugged. “Very well if it pleases you.”
“It does,” Wolff said. “Very much.”
Together the two officers intoned the oath after Wolff.
Wolff raised his arm in the Nazi salute. “Heil Hitler.”
“Heil