Читать книгу Hoodwinked - the spy who didn't die - Lowell Ph.D. Green - Страница 17

“YOU WILL HELP US KILL the Generalkommissar!” Realizing I don’t understand, Labonak impatiently adds, “Kube, Wilhelm Kube, you’re going to help us kill him!”

I am stunned! Labonak gets up from behind a small table covered with maps. He’s a short but powerfully built middle-aged man; thick thighs bulging through the ill-fitting Red Army uniform he’s wearing. Still unable to fully understand what’s happening here, my mind is thinking, “Pear! The man is built like a pear!”

He circles the table and stands in front of me. “Stand up,” he orders. “Look me in the eyes.”

I don’t hesitate.

“Yes,” he gleefully shouts to several nearby aides, “they are a beautiful blue; perfect. Take off your hat.” This time he almost does a little dance. “Yes, look at that, almost blond!” He walks slowly around me, peering intently at my head as though to check that my hair is the same light colour on all sides. “Yes, yes, yes, wonderful, wonderful. Say something to me in German.”

“What?” I ask.

“Come, come—say something in German, let me hear your German; they tell me it is very good.”

I rattle off a couple of words.

“No, no. Give me some sentences, tell me what a wonderful fellow I am or something like that,” and he chuckles.

So, standing there in the stifling heat of a sod hut, bathed in sweat and confusion, I break into German and tell one of the most powerful men in all of the Soviet Union that I really do think he is a wonderful fellow and so is everyone else in the entire partisan movement. This mighty little pear of a man breaks into a toothy smile, claps his hands in approval and dismissal and my fate is forever sealed! It seems my German is good enough to qualify me for what I fear will be a suicide mission.