Mausefalle

I hated to lose the warmth, but this felt important to me, and to him. It was a symbol of something, for somebody, someday. We pulled our clothes on and hung our weapons from our shoulders to show that we were together of our own will. He hung his ID tag around my neck insisting that they could not ignore that. We lay back down, listening to the distant sounds of battle.

Just as I felt the last sleep begin to take hold, the sky tore open and rock and rubble tumbled and flowed like a deluge of water.

An artillery round, whether Russian or German, I'd never know, must have hit just right, thrown that slab away. In the sudden dust filled twilight I could see his boots sticking out and I began to scrabble at the rock, as quickly as I could. My right hand wasn't working right, and I knew not to look at it. I could see the smears of dark blood on the rock as I uncovered him, expecting the worst.

It wasn't as bad as I feared; he was alive, but a section of steel bar had pierced his right arm and pinned it to his chest through the lung. He was gasping wide-eyed, trying to pull free.

I started to try to free him and he caught my left hand with his. "Natalya, run. Now, run to your lines!"

German voices were approaching, a squad of infantry assaulting forward.

"They'll pull me out, but you..."

He didn't have to finish, I knew what would happen to me. I still would have stayed with him, but my Kurt pushed me away. "Mausi. Run for me. Please."

West Germany. Somewhere in the Schwarzwald: 3 May 1953

Late in the evening, our daughter suddenly announced she was tired and needed to go to bed, although the look she gave me made it very clear that she wasn't tired at all.

Kurt pulled a bottle of Kirschwasser out of a cabinet and poured two small glasses. He sat next to me on the settee and smiled. "Ten years. It feels as if it just happened."

I took the bottle from the table and looked at it. "I knew, once I saw the label. I knew you were waiting."

"I was hoping that you were alive and that somehow, someday, you would see it."

I smiled at him. "My friend Tania saw it and brought me the label last year. The Kirschwasser was in a store in Rome. She's the only one I ever told what happened, aside from Roza. Tania is the only one that ever asked why my daughter would be so tall and blonde and have such blue eyes."

"She looked for it?"

"Tania found it on accident, but once she did, she knew you were alive and she looked until she found out everything she could about you. She found out that you were evacuated before the last airfield was overrun." I paused, taking a slight breath. "She found out that you were alone. She's terribly romantic and sentimental, and she wanted to pay me back for helping her when she needed it a long time ago."

"I only talked to her for a little while, when she brought Roza to me and explained your plan, but I could see how important this was to her."

"We have a lot of time to make up, but we have the rest of our lives to do it." I knew it would work, I'd known it from the first time I'd seen the label.

It was beautiful, gold leaf with the stylized figures of a fox and a mouse dancing together beneath the blossoming branches of a cherry tree.

Epilogue

The struggle for control of the Soviet Union continued. Initially, Beria had the support of Molotov and Malenkov, but in a stunning development, on 26 June 1953, Beria was denounced by Khrushchev in a meeting of the Presidium and arrested by Deputy Defense Minister Marshal Georgy Zhukov himself, with no opposition from Molotov or Malenkov. Marshal Zhukov's participation was a clear warning to the State Security forces and it was heeded. Beria was on his own.

During his trial in December of that year, he insisted that many of the treasonous and terrorist acts he was accused of were ordered by Molotov and Malenkov, but no evidence of those orders was ever found.

Also, during the trial, he was accused of multiple counts of kidnapping, rape, and murder of young women, charges that were similar to charges levied in other show trials.

Western Historians tended to discount those charges as typical spurious charges used to dehumanize the defendant. Beria was often praised for attempting Western style reforms of the Soviet system. In the mid-1990s, workers on the grounds of the Tunisian Embassy in Moscow, formerly the residence of Lavrentiy Beria, turned up the remains of several young women and teenage girls.

On 23 December 1953, Lavrentiy Beria died with no dignity, on his knees, pleading for his life. A rag had to be stuffed in his mouth to stop his begging.

Militsiya Major Natalya Oksana Kornilov was posthumously awarded the Order of Lenin for her bravery in fighting the criminal organizations that eventually killed her and her daughter. The ceremony was overseen by Nikita Khrushchev himself. This added another honor to her previous awards: Hero of the Soviet Union, Orders of Glory first and Second Class, Medal for Courage, Order of the Red Banner, Order of the Patriotic War (1^st class), Defense of Stalingrad.

While the brave police detective and Hero of Stalingrad was quickly forgotten by most, she would always be remembered in one manor-house, in a remote part of the Black Forest.

Stalingrad

Stalingrad is believed to be the largest single battle in all of human history, lasting nearly 200 days with a combined casualty count of over 2 million military and civilians. It demonstrated an unbelievable level of sheer tenacity and will for both the Red Army and the Wehrmacht under absolutely brutal conditions.

Over 75,000 women took part in the battle as combatants or military direct support personnel: scouts, snipers, anti-aircraft gunners, and machine gunners as well as tank commanders and drivers. Three Soviet Regiments were entirely female.

The Armory

Nagant M1895 - Very hardy revolver, one of few revolvers that can actually be used with a silencer. Soviet Union.

PPSh-41 Submachine gun aka "Papashar" aka "Daddy." 800-1000 RPM. Soviet Union.

M1939 - 37mm anti-aircraft gun. Soviet Union.

Mosin-Nagant -- Main battle rifle and sniper rifle. Soviet Union.

MP-40 Submachine gun. 500-550 RPM. Wehrmacht.

RPG-40 anti-tank grenade. Not a rocket propelled grenade despite the nomenclature. Soviet Union.

Tokerov TT-33 -- Automatic pistol. The replacement for the Nagant and the service sidearm for the Militsya. Soviet Union.

TM-35 Anti-tank mine (square, 4 KG of explosive just under 12 pounds total weight) Soviet Union.

Post Production Notes:

The historical portion of this is as accurate as I could make it: the 1077^th fought hard but was overrun in the end; the 6^th Army was encircled and destroyed, only about 6,000 men out of 90,000 captured making it back from brutal imprisonment in Russia. The conditions of combat in Stalingrad were unspeakable by any standard.

The daughter, Roza, is named after Roza Shanina, a Russian Sniper who died Prussia in 1945. A former kindergarten teacher, Roza volunteered for service after the death of her brother; she had 59 confirmed kills.

The nickname "Maus" is a respectful nod to Nancy Wake, New Zealand-born French Resistance fighter and SOE agent. The Gestapo's code name for her was "The White Mouse."

The cheap Kirschwasser brands widely available in the U.S. are, frankly, awful. The flavor profile is lighter fluid and cherry lifesavers. Aged in wooden barrels for a few years and allowed to breath, it is a completely different drink.

Special Thanks:

Special thanks to blackrandi for top-of-the-mark line and content editing on this story; to sbrooks103x for amazing line editing and beta reading, and to BeBop3 for beta reading. Stev2244's assistance was absolutely priceless on language, culture and some critical plot points. There are others who contributed ideas and discussion: Thank you to all of you. Any errors are entirely mine - probably added after their assistance.

As always, I need to mention my wife. I've wanted to do a piece with Stalingrad as a backdrop for a while and, happily, The Missus was able to come up with a magnificent plot to work with. Any failures of execution are obviously mine.