The Undaunted (Book 2 of The Undesirables)

Chapter 26: The Correspondent

Jillian didn't dare travel through Stalingrad during the day. The German advance had been relentless, and she couldn't be sure which streets, buildings and neighborhoods were occupied by the enemy. Her press papers that identified her as a party-sanctioned journalist protected her somewhat from Russian patrols, but she had no such defense from the Germans.

So, she spent the next day thinking about and preparing her essentials. Her "essentials" included her Tokarev pistol, to be used in self-defense or for suicide in case of capture. She also brought a full canteen of water and a bread bag she'd stripped off a Russian corpse. The bread bag had enough Red Army rations for her to survive a few days in case she had to lay low behind enemy lines.

She brought matches and an emergency flair, but no flashlight. She didn't want the temptation of using electric light – it would immediately give her away.

This time she left her codebook at "home" in the chemist's shop, carefully buried in a pile of rubble. She had disassembled and hidden her radio, too. Then she waited until nightfall and headed out into the streets.

Stalingrad was now oddly peaceful. The German 6th Army had finally taken the Rail Station and other strategic targets; only Mamayav Hill and the factory district to the north still boomed and flashed with combat. Elsewhere the city was silent. Germans and Russians alike tried not to make noise, because noise attracted sniper bullets. Cooking fires were shielded from view so that their glow wouldn't provide a target for artillery spotters.

The fires from the bombings had all finally burned out. There was probably nothing flammable in Stalingrad left to burn. The smoke had cleared, too, revealing a sky carpeted with stars. With no light pollution to dim them, they dazzled overhead like the crystals of a thousand chandeliers.

Jillian had discovered she was blessed with extraordinary night vision. So long as she avoided looking at anything bright the ambient starlight provided more than enough illumination to allow her to pick her way safely through the rubble-strewn streets.

Which wasn't to say that she made quick progress. Her target, Gorky Theater, was only a couple miles southwest of her hiding place at the chemist's shop. But it took her hours to reach it. The weather had turned, and the destruction of the streets forced her to grab handholds in order to clamber over and around piles of rubble. Those handholds were cold and dangerous. She could slice open a numb finger on an exposed splinter of metal or concrete and lose a lot of blood before she even felt it. She could slip and twist an ankle, or stumble into a trench flooded with icy water, causing her to die of hypothermia before she found somewhere safe to light a fire. Stalingrad hid countless dangers other than enemy soldiers. So, Jillian knew that slow and steady was the secret to winning this race.

It wasn't quite midnight when Jillian reached Red Square, the cultural center of town. It was dominated by the circular face of the Univermag Department Store. Its huge pillars held a crescent balcony aloft over its front door, and square wings rose like towers on either side of the grand façade. The department store was so imposing that it looked more like one of the West's cathedrals to capitalism than something produced by a communist centralized economy. It was a tribute to the booming economy enjoyed by Stalingrad before the firebombing.

Now the balcony and columns were pitted with shell and bullet holes, the doors and glass windows were shattered, but the building remained otherwise intact.

Huge banners hung from the roof all the way down to just above the balcony. They were limp in the still air which, combined with the darkness, made it difficult for Jillian to read them. The department store's balcony provided a commanding view of Red Square, all the way across to the ruins of Gorky Theater on the opposite corner. But who controlled that commanding view? Were the unfurled banners Soviet or Nazi flags? In the daylight she might be able to tell by their color. But the dim starlight cast everything in shades of gray, like a black and white movie.