Cauldron of Blood Read Online Free PDF

the gleaming immensity of the Russian night sky as if he could see something up there known only to him. ‘Loyalty must therefore work both ways — up and down .’ He turned and looked Kuno von Dodenburg straight in the face, his gaze solemn. ‘I’ll go in there, Kuno, and carve them out for you. But give me an excuse, that’s all I ask of you. Give me an excuse to do so — and give me it soon.’
    And with that he turned and strode back to the noise of the Kameradschaftsabend , leaving Kuno von Dodenburg to stare at his proud narrow back in open-mouthed surprise....
    *
    Seven hours later, von Dodenburg found the excuse. His face pale, bags under his lacklustre eyes, his head throbbing painfully, it winged its way into the little Russian peasant cottage, which served as his HQ, as if handed to him on a silver platter. And it was the Vulture himself who unwittingly presented him with it.
    ‘ Do you know anything about the man?’ he barked, bursting into the hut, slapping his riding cane angrily against the side of his oversized cavalry boots. ‘What the devil was he doing up here in the first place? The front is not the place for civvies, especially civvies of that kind.’
    Hastily von Dodenburg scrambled to his feet, his temples doing an agonizing jig as he did so. ‘What man, sir... What front?’
    The Vulture pulled a crumpled copy of the Schwarze Korps out of the pocket of his enormous, baggy cavalry breeches. ‘This particular brown current-crapper.’
    Von Dodenburg stared at the picture of a fat SA man in brown uniform, with the triangular badge of the Blood Order on his chest, the rare Party decoration granted only to those few who had shed their blood for the National Socialist cause prior to 1933. ‘Why,’ he exclaimed, ‘it’s Munich-Kirn!’
    ‘ Exactly. One-time a baker’s journeyman, now thanks to the generosity of the Greatest Captain of All Times,’ he sneered at the grandiose title bestowed on Hitler by Propaganda Minister Goebbels, ‘Gauleiter of Baden.’
    Everyone knew the story of how when during the Munich Putsch, Hitler and the Party leaders had been fired on by the police, the brave baker’s journeyman Kirn had sheltered Hitler from the police bullets with his own body, as the Fuhrer had lain injured on the cobbles. Munich-Kirn, as he had always been called since that day in November 1923, was part and parcel of the National Socialist legend. There was not a schoolboy throughout the Reich who did not possess a photograph of the ‘man who had saved the Fuhrer’.
    ‘ And what is supposed to have happened to him, sir?’ von Dodenburg asked.
    ‘ The fool was visiting troops from Baden. You know how these golden pheasants are. They get drunk with the rear echelon stallions kilometres behind the line, get their photograph taken distributing cigars to the troops and fly home again back to mother, believing they’ve done their bit to make final victory possible.’ The Vulture’s ugly face contorted with disgust. ‘Well, unfortunately for Munich-Kirn, he got caught in the Kessel with his flannel knickers pulled down. Now the Fuhrer HQ is screaming blue murder. The Fuhrer personally wants a report. So every unit that managed to escape from the Kessel is being asked by higher headquarters if they saw anything of the fat fool.’ He looked enquiringly at von Dodenburg.
    Von Dodenburg shrugged, his brain racing now as a plan began to form in his brain, ‘No, Colonel, I never saw anything of him.’
    ‘ Natürlich ,’ the Vulture rasped derisively. ‘Only those idiots or rear echelon stallions would be foolish enough to think that a man like that could survive within a Kessel. If the weather didn’t finish him off, the Ivans would. That brown uniform of the golden pheasant would do it. They hate those Party officials with a passion.’ He crumpled up the newspaper and threw it neatly through the open door of the cannon-stove. ‘Munich-Kirn is undoubtedly dead, passed on to that