Johann Krause was in love, and he owed it all to the dog.
Krause had spent years in the Wehrmacht. He had joined up shortly after Hitler had ascended to power and had participated in the conquest of France. But Krause was no Nazi. He hated the Nazis. He didn't join the army because he was driven by ideology; he had joined it because he was driven by fear.
Many of Krause' friends had begun to disappear. He had discovered they were being sent to concentration camps. They were sentenced to death, without trial, for the crime of being gay.
Krause was smart enough to realize that soon he would be, too.
But in the army Krause could hide his homosexuality. In the army he could find anonymous safety.
Until the invasions began.
He was almost killed in France. That had been a horrible, bloody war. The French people had put up a terrible and stiff resistance until the panzers finally rolled into Paris. Even a people as proud and courageous as the French couldn't bear to see their beautiful capital burn. Thank goodness that had caused them to finally surrender.
The first months of the invasion of Russia had been easy by comparison. But then winter came, and hunger. Krause had been part of a squad defending a conquered village on the Leningrad Front. He hated that winter, not the least of which was because he hated the men he had been forced to serve beside.
They were all Nazi true believers.
Krause feared he would be forced to endure their company for the entire war.
But then the dog appeared. It was an Alsatian Wolf-Dog, a German shepherd, and therefore everyone assumed it was a German dog; a weapon of the Reich somehow escaped and gone feral. Bored, hungry and cold, it became his squad's obsession to hunt down and capture the hound.
Most of Krause' platoon-mates eventually paid for that obsession with their lives.
Krause soon stopped believing that the dog was a mortal creature. He began to imagine that it must be some sort of spirit guide. The ancient Germans all had spirit guides; it's why a love of animals was such an integral part of German culture. Even the Gods had animal helpers; Odin had his raven. Maybe the dog was really the spirit of Fenrir the Wolf.
Krause never voiced his suspicion to his squad-mates. They would have thought him insane. Worse, it would have revealed him as a traitor. After all, even if the dog was Fenrir, Fenrir was a German God. Everyone believed that German Gods would be on the side of the Nazis.
Krause believed the opposite. He believed Nazism was an anathema to German culture, a disease infecting his people. He believed that if their ancient Gods and ancient ancestors could see what they were doing they would be angry, perhaps even vengeful.
And he had begun to believe that the dog was a spiritual incarnation of that vengeance.
When they hunted the dog, Nazis died.
Later, Krause finally captured the hound. He, alone among all the soldiers, had finally succeeded in securing the creature. His success led him to believe even more strongly that the animal was not of earthly origin. Why else would he have captured it? It must have been like those medieval questing beasts, the fey stags hunted by chivalrous knights. It was never the most powerful knight that captured it, not the best tracker or greatest fighter. It was always the knight who was most spiritually pure.
Among his platoon-mates, that would be Krause. They were all Nazis; he was not.
It was the only explanation Krause could come up with to describe why they had failed, and he had succeeded.
The only rational explanation was a completely irrational one.
That's why Krause had decided to let the animal go. He couldn't bear to turn it over to the men he hated so much.
The dog wasn't the only mysterious creature to appear that winter. There was also the girl.
She was captured in the same woods they were hunting for the dog. They thought she was a partisan, but it turned out she was American. She confessed to being a spy.
That confession had been beaten out of her. Krause witnessed her beatings. He made a point of attending every single interrogation. That impressed his superiors. It made him look like he was as sadistic as they were.
But he didn't watch the beatings because he enjoyed it. To the contrary, the violence against this young, starving, scrawny girl disgusted him.
He attended the beatings to prevent her from being raped.
He couldn't stop the violence. He couldn't prevent her eventual execution. But he knew that if he was there, as a witness, no one would ever dare rape her. Not in public view.
The girl, it turned out, hadn't been executed, after all. She had been rescued, thanks to the dog and unidentified assailants. Instead, the men who had beaten her were executed: Leutnant Schaefer and Feldwebel Krieger.
And that's how Krause fell in love. His platoon's Lieutenant was dead. So they were assigned a new officer, a new Lieutenant. Unlike his predecessor, Leutnant Polik was no Nazi. He was beautiful.
And, like Krause, he was gay.
He was also a tactical genius. With the limited resources of only eighteen men, Leutnant Polik succeeded in re-supplying and consolidating their control of the village and its tactically critical bridge. He did the former by treating the villagers like human beings, instead of vermin, and offering amnesty to the starving partisans hiding in the woods. He did the former by raiding Red Army outposts and stealing their fuel and heating oil.
Leutnant Polik's successes had been noticed by high command. They transferred him from the stabilized Leningrad front to the critical southern front, where his skills were more needed. He'd been promoted to Hauptmann and given command of a company in the 6th Army.
He'd brought Krause with him.
6th Army was well supplied. There were, of course, times when they outran their supply train. That's what happened during their advance to Stalingrad. The Russians hadn't fought; they'd retreated before 6th Army arrived. Every village was abandoned. So the Germans gobbled up territory at lightning speed. Eventually they were forced to halt outside the city on the Volga, lacking the petrol required to attack the metropolis.
Paulus, 6th Army's Field Marshall, expected a tough fight in Stalingrad. He wanted to make sure his men had enough ammunition, and his tanks had enough fuel. It was mostly the panzers – they required an enormous amount of petrol – that forced the delay.
Because the other assault, the simultaneous attack on the Bakugan oil fields, had failed. Those oil fields were supposed to provide Paulus more petrol than he could ever possibly require. But the Russians had torched the oil fields before the Germans could conquer them. The Russians had burned their own national treasure. When the panzers arrived, all they conquered was gouts of flame stretching hundreds of feet in the air.
So Paulus had no petrol and 6th Army was delayed. They waited for weeks until the petrol and ammunition could be sent all the way from Germany.
But now the attack had resumed. They had already pushed the Russians back, clearing out the suburbs. German infantry was thrusting deep into the city. There were pockets of stiff resistance: the grain elevator, the factories, the train stations, and Mamayev Hill. But each of those strongholds had already been surrounded, and already German troops had almost even reached the Volga. Despite the delay, it seemed as if Stalingrad would be taken more quickly and easily than General Paulus had anticipated.
Even more importantly, 6th Army was well-supplied and well-fed. Hauptmann Polik, being an officer, was even better supplied than most, and he was happy to share those luxuries with his new paramour. Krause had cigars, he had cognac, and he even had wax for the moustache he had begun to re-grow. It still wasn't like Berlin during the glory days of the Cabarets, but it was better than he ever had hoped to imagine.
And he wanted to share his good fortune with the Russians.
He knew they were Russian, even though it wasn't obvious. Their uniforms were too filthy to be discernable, they wore German helmets, and they sang German songs. But Krause knew that all of that was an act. He knew it because he recognized the girl.
She was the same girl his squad had captured on the Leningrad Front, the girl his squad had beaten and almost executed.
If it wasn't for the girl, Krause' fortunes would never have changed. He felt obliged to thank her. It was a strange obligation. Everyone he knew would have considered her the enemy. But Krause didn't feel that way. The Russians weren't his enemy. He'd been forced to kill them in battle, that's true, but only because he was a soldier.
And he wouldn't have been a soldier if it wasn't for Hitler and the Nazis. They were the real enemy.
So Krause led the Russians into Hauptmann Polik's headquarters, which had once been a shop in a bombed out department store. He wanted to move them away from the rest of the German troops before their true identities were discovered.
And he offered the big bearded one, the one who had been singing, a cigar.
"Thank you," he replied in accented German, and then he said something to his compatriots.
The young blond soldier and the girl nodded, but they didn't smile.
Krause handed out two more cigars and a box of matches.
The man with the beard lit his gift right away. But the young soldier and the girl struggled. It appeared they had never smoked before. It took some time before their tobacco was lit.
Krause was relieved when it was. The cigar smoke helped mask their terrible stench.
"Why were you in the sewers?" he asked.
"Trying to escape," the bearded man admitted.
Krause nodded. It made sense. Pockets of Russian resistance were being surrounded and methodically destroyed throughout the city.
"You will need to head back toward the Volga," Krause told him. "East."
Krause rifled through the Hauptmann's drawers and found what he was looking for: a compass. He handed it not to the big man, but to the girl.
The girl hesitated.
Krause shook it. "Don't worry. It won't bite."
The bearded man said something Russian and the girl gingerly took the device. Then she said something in Russian.
The bearded man took a long draw on his cigar and then translated: "She asked why you are helping us."
"I recognize her," Krause replied simply. "I owe her."
The bearded man translated and the girl spoke again. "Recognize her from where?" the bearded man asked.
"My squad captured her outside of Leningrad," Krause reported. "We beat her and we were going to execute her. But the dog...somehow the dog saved her. And our Lieutenant was killed. I owe her because I hated that man; I hated all those men."
The bearded man translated Krause' words into Russian and Krause watched as the girl's eyes suddenly glittered with recognition. She said something with an angry tone.
"She says you're the sadistic one. The one who watched."
"Yes," Krause admitted, not bothering to correct her. "I'm the one who watched."
The girl threw down the cigar and angrily stamped it out. She said something and the blonde soldier nodded and did the same.
"I'm sorry," the bearded man told Krause. "She says if she sees you again, she will kill you."
Krause just nodded. He wasn't concerned. The Russians were finished. If they met again, it would be the girl who was killed, not him.
The girl said something else. "It appears we are leaving," translated the bearded soldier.
"Go straight to the sewer. If anyone tries to stop you I'll tell them you're working for me. That you're collaborators."
"Thank you," said the bearded men, and he turned to leave.
"Wait!" Krause stopped them. "What happened to the dog?"
"The dog?" asked the bearded man, confused.
"Yes. Ask her what happened to the dog."
The bearded man translated but the girl didn't respond; the blonde soldier did.
"He says the dog is alive. It is safe."
Krause smiled. "Thank you."
The young soldier spoke once more.
"He says the dog's name is Duck."
"Duck." Krause said the word, feeling it on his tongue. "Funny name."
And then the Russians left.