The War That Came Early: West and East (18 page)

A Czech fighting for his government-in-exile after the Nazis jumped on his country with both feet. A Jew fighting the regime that had been giving his people hell ever since it came to power. Who hated harder? They could argue about it. They did. They both despised the enemy enough for all ordinary purposes and then some.

Which didn’t mean they didn’t respect the soldiers in
Feldgrau
. Fierce
in attack, the Germans were also stubborn in defense. They would have been less frightening if they weren’t so good at what they did.

Vaclav popped up again. This time, he laid his antitank rifle on the dirt thrown up in front of the entrenchment. He didn’t see any panzers, but the monster rifle made mincemeat—sometimes literally—of foot soldiers, too. “What’s up?” Halévy asked him.

“Goddamn German crawling this way,” Jezek answered. “I’m gonna ventilate the asshole.” He took another quick look, then swore. The enemy soldier had disappeared behind a burnt-out armored car. No, here he came again. Vaclav swung the heavy rifle a hair to the right.

“Is it a real attack, or only the one guy?” the Jewish sergeant inquired. He raised his head, too. “I only see the one.”

“Where you see one, there’s usually a dozen you don’t,” Vaclav said. But he didn’t pull the trigger. “This fucker isn’t doing his best to hide, is he?”

“Nope. Maybe he’s had enough of the war,” Halévy said.

“I know I have. But he’s a damn German,” Vaclav said. Easier to think of the
Landsers
as mechanical men. You could break them, yes, but imagining them with mere human weaknesses came much harder.

It did for Vaclav, anyhow. But Halévy said, “Oh, they’re people. They wouldn’t be so scary if they weren’t.” The Czech wasn’t sure of that: not even close. No matter whether he was or not, the Jew stuck his head above the trench lip again and yelled in German (which Vaclav hadn’t known he spoke), “Throw away your rifle and get your sorry ass over here! You’re vultures’ meat if you don’t!”

When Vaclav looked out, too, he saw that the
Landser
had tossed aside his Mauser. The fellow got to his feet and trotted toward the French trenches, his hands high and a shamed, kicked-dog grin on his face.
“Ja, komm! Mach schnell!”
Vaclav shouted. Talking to an enemy soldier the way he would to a waiter in a beer garden—or to a child or an animal—felt good.

The German made it snappy, all right. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” he said, as if he feared a bullet in the back. Maybe he did—and maybe he needed to. He let out what might have been a stifled sob as he jumped down into the trench. To make sure he didn’t do anything stupid, Vaclav
pointed the antitank rifle at his midsection. “Jesus!” the
Landser
yipped. “You shoot me with that thing, you can bury me in a coffee can afterwards.”

“That’s the idea,” Halévy said from behind him. The Jew relieved him of the bayonet and potato-masher grenades on his belt, then added, “If you’ve got a holdout knife, hand it over. We find it on you, you’ll never known what Red Cross food packages taste like.” Slowly and carefully, the guy in field-gray pulled a slim blade from his left boot. Halévy took it. “That’s all?”

“
Ja
,” the German said. “My name is Wolfgang Storch. I’m a private.” He rattled off his pay number. “That’s as much as I’ve got to say to you, right?”

“If you know anything that matters, pal, you’ll spill it.” Vaclav made the rifle twitch. It would have started twitching soon anyhow; the damn thing was heavy. “The French don’t like you bastards much better than I do.”

Storch seemed to notice the smooth lines of his domed helmet for the first time. “Oh. A Czech,” he said. Then he took a longer look at Benjamin Halévy. He didn’t need long to work out what Halévy was, either. “And—” He stopped, gulping.

“Yeah. And,” Halévy agreed grimly. “Why don’t you start by telling us what the hell you’re doing here?”

“Damn blackshirts were going to grab me, that’s what,” the German answered. “A buddy of mine tipped me off. We figured maybe you guys wouldn’t shoot me.” He licked his lips. He still wasn’t sure about that.

“Why would the SS want you?” Vaclav asked.

Storch shrugged. “I talk too much. Everybody says so. I must’ve said something dumb where some cocksucker heard me and squealed. There’s this one corporal who’s the biggest asshole in the world. Chances are it was him.” His hands—dirty, scarred, broken-nailed, callused, just like Vaclav’s—folded into fists.

“What d’you think?” Jezek asked Halévy in Czech.

“It could be,” the Jew answered in the same tongue. Storch’s eyes said he didn’t follow it. Halévy went on, “Not our worry either way. We just
have to deliver him and let the fellows behind the line put the pieces together.”

“Fair enough.” Vaclav went back to German: “All right, Storch—we’ll take you back. First things first, though. Cough up your cash, and your watch if you’ve got one.”

“I do. Here.” The
Landser
was fumblingly eager to hand it over. Vaclav had seen that before. New prisoners figured they’d get killed if they didn’t let themselves be robbed. They were usually right, too. Storch also emptied out his wallet. He thrust bills at the Czech. “This is all the money I’ve got.”

Most of it was in Reichsmarks, which were too scratchy even to make good asswipes. But he also had some francs. Then Halévy patted him down and took another wad of bills from a tunic pocket. “Nice try,” the Jew said dryly.

“I—I’m sorry,” Storch stammered.

“Tell me another one,” Halévy answered. If he’d plugged the German for holding out, Vaclav wouldn’t have said boo. But he only gestured with his rifle. “Get it in gear. If your little friends don’t shell us on the way back, you’re a POW.”

Vaclav slung the antitank rifle as they headed away from the front. That was easier than lugging it in his arms—not easy, but easier. The gun could do all kinds of things an ordinary rifle couldn’t, but it weighed a tonne.

A couple of
poilus
eyed the procession as they zigzagged along a communications trench. One of them called a question in French. Halévy answered in the same language. The
poilu
snorted. Halévy switched to German: “He asked where we got you, Storch. I said we won you in a poker game.”

“Wouldn’t you rather have got fifty pfennigs?” the
Landser
asked. He took Vaclav completely by surprise. The Czech broke up. Damned if a human being
didn’t
lurk under the beetling brow of the German
Stahlhelm
.

They eventually found a couple of military policemen who were happy enough to take charge of Wolfgang Storch. They’d be less happy when
they found out Vaclav and Halévy had already picked the German clean, but that was their hard luck—and maybe Storch’s as well.

“Now—we just have to do that another million times, and we’ve won the fucking war,” the Jew said as he and Vaclav started up toward the front-line trenches again.

“Should be easy,” Jezek answered. He was damned if he’d let anybody outtry him.

Chapter 8

A
irplane engines droned overhead. Chaim Weinberg looked up warily, ready to dive for cover if bombs started falling. The Condor Legion, the Italians, and Marshal Sanjurjo’s Spanish pilots had already given Madrid a big dose of what Paris was catching now, and what Hitler no doubt wanted to visit on London as well.

But these were Republican planes: obsolescent bombers the French could pass on for use on a less challenging front. Chaim recognized the Fascists’ Junkers and Capronis at a glance. The French planes were even uglier. He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but there you were.

The Spaniards on the streets knew the bombers belonged to the Republic, too. They waved and blew kisses up toward the sky, though the pilots were too high up to see them. “Kill the traitors!” someone called, and several people clapped their hands.

Mike Carroll’s smile had a sour twist. “Hell of a thing to say, isn’t it?” he remarked in English. “In a civil war, everybody’s a traitor to somebody.”

Chaim hadn’t thought of it like that. He nodded, but he said, “We
aren’t traitors. We’re just lousy mercenaries—if you believe the Nationalists.”

Mike mimed scratching his head and his armpits and the seams of his trousers. “I’m not lousy right now. Don’t think I am, anyway.”

“Yeah, me neither,” Chaim said. Fighting in and around a big city had its advantages. When you weren’t actually up there trying to murder the other bastards and to keep them from murdering you, you could come back and clean up and get your clothes baked and sprayed so you wouldn’t be verminous … for a while.

Bomb blasts thudded off to the northwest. Chaim and the Madrileños on the street grinned at one another. Knowing the other guys were catching it for a change felt mighty good.
Do unto others as they’ve been doing unto you, only more so
. That might not make it into the Bible any time soon, but it was the Golden Rule of war.

“I’m gonna buy me a beer and celebrate,” Mike declared, as if he thought Chaim would try to stop him.

If he did, he was out of his tree. “Sounds good,” Chaim said. They didn’t have to go more than half a block before they found a bar. About one business in three in Madrid seemed to sell something to help people forget their troubles. Well, people around here had a lot of troubles that needed forgetting.

No one in the dark little dive even blinked when two foreigners in ragged uniforms with rifles on their backs walked in. The skinny little guy behind the bar looked like a wall lizard with a Salvador Dali mustache. He raised one eyebrow a couple of millimeters by way of inquiring what the new patrons wanted.

“Cerveza,”
Carroll said, doing his damnedest to give it a proper Castilian lisp: ther-VAY-tha.

“Dos,”
Chaim added. His Spanish was bad, but not so bad that he couldn’t get himself a beer with it.

Then the bartender said, “Okay, boys,” in clear, American-accented English. As he poured, he went on, “I worked in Chicago for five years. I came back when the war started.”

Chaim set coins on the bar. Mike nodded thanks. Chaim bought more often than not. The last thing he wanted was a reputation for being a
cheap Jew. When the bartender started to make change, Chaim waved for him not to bother. Earlier in the war, the fellow probably would have given him his money, and a lecture to go with it. Tipping was seen as a leftover of class differences, and beneath a proper proletarian’s dignity. That stern puritanism—always stronger in Barcelona than Madrid—had eased off now. The bartender nodded his thanks. He gave them the beers.

The glasses were none too clean. That would have bothered Chaim back in New York City. Not any more. Considering what all he’d eaten and drunk in the field, this was the least of his worries. He did note they were etched with the name of a German lager. That wasn’t what they held now: nobody wanted to buy, or could buy, Fascist beer inside Republican territory. Fascists or not, the Germans brewed better than locals dreamt of doing. This tasted like horse piss.

But it was beer. Chaim raised his eye to the barman.
“¡Salud!”

“Mud in your eye,” the Spaniard said gravely. “If I didn’t have to eat, I’d give ’em to you on the house. You’re doing my job for me now.”

Something in the way he said the last word made Chaim look at him in a different way. “Spent some time at the front, did you?”

“Uh-huh. I’d still be there, only I’m standing on a peg.” The bartender shrugged microscopically. “I should count my blessings. I’m still here. Plenty of guys who caught ones that didn’t look so bad, they’re pushing daisies now.”

Mike Carroll put down a couple of pesetas. “Buy yourself one, buddy.”

“Thanks.” The bartender could smile, most cynically. “I’d be on my ass if I poured down all the ones people buy me. I will this time, though.” He poured his own beer.
“¡Viva la República!”

“¡Viva!”
Chaim and Carroll echoed. Chaim drained his glass. He dug in his pocket for more coins. “Let me have another one.”

“Me, too,” Mike said. He grabbed Chaim’s money before the bartender could and gave it back to him. “I’ll buy this time.”

“Thanks.” Chaim nodded. Fair was fair.

Along with the beers, the barman set out olives and crackers and pork sausage the color of a new copper penny. Chaim eyed the sausage warily. He liked the stuff: what wasn’t pork was garlic and peppers. But it didn’t
like him. Every time he ate it, it gave him the runs. He stuck to the crackers and olives.

Mike started in on the sausage as if he thought they’d outlaw it tomorrow. Maybe his guts were made of stronger stuff than Chaim’s. Or maybe he’d spend the next week being sorry. You never could tell.

Two more men walked into the bar. It got quieter than it had when the Americans came in. That made Chaim look around. They weren’t Spaniards or even fellow Internationals—they were a pair of genuine Soviet officers, squat and hard-faced. You didn’t see them very often any more. The Russian mission in the Republic was smaller than it had been before the bigger European war broke out. Some of the men had gone home to the motherland, while hardly anyone came out to replace them. Maybe getting from Russia to Spain was harder than getting back to Russia from Spain. Or, more likely, the Soviet government just had things to worry about in its own back yard.