The War That Came Early: West and East (19 page)

These fellows might have been movie actors overplaying their roles. They stomped up to the bar, barely favoring Chaim and Mike with a glance. “You give us whiskey,” one of them told the bartender, as if ordering him to assault Nationalist trenches.

“And something to eat,” the other one added. Spanish with a Russian accent sounded as weird as German with a Spanish accent, which Chaim had also heard.

He eyed the Soviets. One was an obvious Russian. The other … Chaim would have bet they had more than accented Spanish in common.
“Nu
, friend, you understand me when I talk like this?” he asked in Yiddish.

“Nu
, why shouldn’t I?” the Soviet said. Like a lot of Jews Chaim knew, he looked clever—maybe too clever for his own good. “Where are you from?”

“New York. You?”

“Minsk.”

“One of my grandmothers came from there. Maybe we’re cousins.”

“Maybe.” The Soviet officer didn’t seem impressed. Blood might be thicker than water, but ideology was thicker than blood. Jew or not, the officer knew what mattered to him: “How long have you been here? Where have you fought?”

Mike Carroll, the barman, and the Russian were all watching the two
Yehudim
. Chances were none of them could follow the Yiddish. Hell, they were liable to think it was German. Well, too goddamn bad if they did. “Almost two years,” Chaim said, not without pride. “I’ve been on the Ebro front, and lately down here.” He looked a challenge to the Soviet officer. “How about you?”

“Since 1936,” the other Jew answered. That trumped Chaim’s claim. It also meant the fellow had been here through the purges back home. Maybe that had saved him. Then again, who could say? Some of the Russians had gone back to almost certain arrest—but they’d gone. Soviet discipline, in its own way, was as formidable as the Prussian variety. The Jew went on, “I have fought here, and in the south, and on the Ebro, and now here again.”

“And what do you think of it all?” Chaim asked.

“We are still fighting,” the other man replied. He raised his glass. “Let us keep fighting!” He said it in Yiddish, and then in his strange Spanish. Everybody drank.

ONE OF THE SS MEN
who’d come to grab Wolfgang Storch had taken an ugly leg wound. He was in a military hospital somewhere well behind the line. When he got out, he’d be able to wear a wound badge that would make him the envy of his deskbound friends. Willi Dernen wondered how much he’d care. Sometimes you paid more for things than they were really worth.

The one who was left was named Waldemar Zober. He thought Willi had something to do with Wolfgang’s disappearance. He thought so, yes, but he couldn’t prove a goddamn thing as long as Willi played dumb.

And Willi did. His old man had called him a goddamn dummy plenty of times. Back in the day, that had pissed Willi off. Now, for the first time, in came in handy. “No, I don’t know what happened to him,” he told Zober. “For all I know, he took a direct hit, and there wasn’t enough of him left to bury. The Frenchies got kind of busy that day, you know.”

Zober had the grace to look away. He knew how busy the French had been, all right. But he still suspected Willi. “You went running off to the
trenches. Storch was already up there.” It made perfect sense to the SS man. Well it might have, too. He only had to connect the dots.

But he didn’t know for sure he had connected them. Willi had no intention of telling him. “I ran to the trenches to shoot at the enemy in case he followed up the shelling with an attack. That’s what I get paid for, you know—and I don’t get paid real well, either.”

Waldemar Zober not only had rank—he had those SS runes on his collar tab. They made him Heinrich Himmler’s fair-haired boy. They also meant he got more money than a
Wehrmacht
soldier of equivalent rank would have. And, most of the time, he never came unpleasantly close to shells or bullets. Life wasn’t fair—not even close.

His lips were uncommonly red. He pushed out the lower one now, like a four-year-old about to throw a tantrum. You could spank a spoiled little brat. Nobody could wallop an SS man, no matter how much he deserved it.

“Interfering with an SS investigation is a crime with severe punishment attached,” he growled.

“Der Herr Jesus!”
Willi burst out. “I’ve been at the front ever since the fight in the West started. The Frenchies could blow my foot off any old time, same as they did with your buddy. They could blow my
balls
off, for Christ’s sake! And you’re going on about severe punishment? Give it a rest, why don’t you?”

Zober’s eyes might have been cut from blue and white glass, like the ones on an expensive mannequin. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, and absolute assurance filled his voice. “You don’t have the faintest idea. A week in our hands, and you’d beg to fight at the front, even in a punishment company.”

Willi licked his lips. He knew about those. Officers and men who’d disgraced themselves by running away or otherwise fucking up got handed rifles and thrown in where the fighting was hottest. If they tried to run again, they got shot from behind. If they lived, they redeemed themselves … or maybe they just won the chance to put out another fire by smothering it with their bodies.

You’re a tough guy when you’re working over poor bastards who can’t hit back
, Willi thought.
How long would you last up here, though? Not long, I
bet. If the bad guys didn’t get you, somebody on your own side would arrange an “accident.”
No one talked about that kind of thing, which didn’t mean it didn’t happen every once in a while.

You couldn’t show thoughts like that, not unless you wanted to find out what camps were like from the inside out. Even if his father had called him a dummy, Willi wasn’t that stupid. Wearily, he said, “Look, give it a rest, why don’t you? I don’t know what happened to Wolfgang, and I wish I did. We were friends. I miss him.”

By the glint in Zober’s glassy orbs, that was almost a ticket to Dachau all by itself. “He was a criminal. He was an enemy of the
Reich
, and of the
Führer.”

“He fucking
shot
enemies of the
Reich,”
Willi answered. “He was a damn good soldier, and one of the best scroungers I’ve ever known. I’m still here answering your questions on account of him. The only good thing I can say about what happened to him is, he never knew what got him. I should be so lucky.”

“If he did not desert to the enemy,” Zober said implacably.

Willi stood up. “I know you’re in the SS, sir. But if you say that to the soldiers who know Wolfgang, somebody’s gonna punch you in the snoot.” He walked out without waiting for leave from the blackshirt.

The funny thing was, he was dead right. Yes, Wolfgang
had
deserted. As far as Willi knew, though, he was the only guy on this side of the line who knew it. Anybody who didn’t know wouldn’t believe it. And anybody who heard it from a prick like Waldemar Zober
would
want to flatten his nose for him.

Only one thing was wrong with walking out on Zober: it didn’t get Willi away from his problem. Arno Baatz was also convinced he had something to do with Wolfgang’s going missing. Willi couldn’t make Awful Arno feel inferior for not being a
Landser
. Baatz was one—maybe not a good soldier, but a soldier even so.

“You two clowns were asshole buddies,” the corporal said. “Don’t waste my time telling me you weren’t, ’cause I know better. When the SS men told you they were looking for him, what would you do but squeal like a little pink piggy?”

“I didn’t do anything like that, goddammit.” Willi had told the same lie
so many times by now, he was starting to believe it himself. He could feel himself getting angry, which was pretty funny when you thought about it. The anger might be ersatz, but it felt the same as the real thing. “All I did was go to the front line when the shelling started.” He looked Awful Arno up and down. “I didn’t see you there.”

“Well, I was,” Baatz said, which might have been true and might have been as big a whopper as any of the ones Willi had come out with. The noncom went on, “And sooner or later you’ll tell me one I believe.”

“Let’s go talk to Captain Lammers,” Willi said. “Either he’ll jug me or he’ll tell you to leave me the fuck alone. Either way, I’ll be better off than I am listening to your bullshit all the time.”

Baatz blinked.
His
eyes were dark, and reminded Willi of a mean dog’s. Sometimes you could make a mean dog turn tail if you yelled at it and moved towards it instead of running. Sometimes you’d get bitten, though. Willi waited to see what would happen here. “You … want to talk to the captain?” Awful Arno said slowly.

“Bet your ass I do. If it’d get you and that blackshirt out of my hair, I’d talk to the general commanding the division.” Willi wondered if he really meant that. Officers with fancy shoulder straps needed to listen to privates’ troubles the way they needed getting their headquarters bombed.

But Arno Baatz was also imagining coming face-to-face with a general. By the look plastered across his ugly mug, he wasn’t liking it much. He tried to hide that by jeering: “You think the division CO has time for piss-ants like you? Don’t make me laugh!”

“The captain will,” Willi said. “Let’s go find him.”

And Captain Lammers would. Awful Arno knew that as well as Willi did. He said something about Willi’s mother. Had Willi popped him, they would have visited the captain on the corporal’s terms. Willi just stood there. Baatz glowered as fearsomely as he knew how. Willi didn’t blink “I’ve got my eye on you, Dernen,” Awful Arno snarled, and he stomped away.

Five minutes later, Willi heard him screaming at some other private for having a dirty rifle. Willi smiled. If you beat up a little kid, he’d turn
around and pound on some kid who was smaller yet to make himself feel better. Arno Baatz worked the same way.

Waldemar Zober summoned him one more time. “You’d better watch yourself, Dernen,” the blackshirt said. If he’d worn a mustache, he would have twirled it like a villain in an old-time melodrama. “We’ve got our eye on you.”

“Yes, sir,” Willi said, in lieu of
We? You and your tapeworm?
But right after that, Zober went off to inflict himself on some other
Wehrmacht
men who were just doing their damnedest to win the war for their country.

Arno Baatz kept assigning Willi latrine duty and the other nastiest fatigues he could find. Then the gods of army luck reached down and tapped Willi on the shoulder. A promotion came through. All of a sudden, he found himself a
Gefreiter
, the lowest of the several grades between private and corporal. He got to wear a pip on his sleeve—not on his shoulder straps, but even so … And, as the rank’s name implied, he was freed from the fatigue duties ordinary privates got stuck with. Baatz fumed, but he couldn’t do anything about it.

One of these days, you son of a bitch, I’ll rank you
, Willi thought—a new idea, but a mighty tasty one.
See how you like it then. Yeah—just see
.

SERGEANT DEMANGE LOOKED DETERMINED
and disgusted at the same time. “We are going to drive the Germans back,” he declared. “That’s what the officers say, and so that’s what we’re going to do.” He spat out the microscopic butt of his latest Gitane, ground it into the grass under his bootheel, and lit another one.

The soldiers in his section listened: some eagerly, some impassively, some apprehensively. Luc Harcourt counted himself in the last group. He’d seen too much of the
Boches
, in defense and in attack. He was anything but thrilled about giving the blond boys in field-gray another chance to ventilate him. He knew Sergeant Demange felt exactly the same way. He also knew that did both of them exactly no good.

“What if the Germans are winding up to take a punch at us?” a soldier asked. The question was very much on Luc’s mind, too, but he didn’t
come out of it. You couldn’t ask such things so easily when you were a corporal. Luc didn’t much like the responsibility that came with his small rank, but he accepted it.

Sergeant Demange folded both hands into fists and smacked them into each other.
“That’s
what happens then, Louis,” he answered. “But the brass doesn’t think it’ll go like that. They say the Germans have been shipping tanks and shit out of here. They aren’t loading up for a punch of their own.”

Louis had seen enough to realize the brass didn’t know everything there was to know. “What if they’re wrong, Sergeant?”

“Well, in that case, we get our nuts crunched. What else?” Demange said. “It happened often enough the last time around. A breakthrough? Of course the next offensive would give us one. Of fucking course. They haven’t got a whole hell of a lot smarter since, have they?”

“What can we do, then?” Louis asked—a damn good question.

“When they tell us to go, we go. That’s what we can do,” Demange answered flatly. “Do anything else and your own side will scrag you. Matter of fact, for you I’ll take care of it personally.” He paused, his ferret face even fiercer than usual. “Any other stupid questions?”

No one said anything. Louis’d asked the one thing that really needed asking. Only as the knot of soldiers broke up did Luc say, “How hard are we gonna get fucked, Sergeant?”

Demange looked at him. “They won’t kiss us—I’ll tell you that. If they really have shipped out their tanks … Well, shit, what if they have? They’ll know which way we’re coming, and they’ll have an antitank gun with every one of our tanks’ names on it. But what can you do?”

Once you put on a uniform—once they drafted you and put a uniform on you—you couldn’t do a goddamn thing except what they told you. You figured that out in a hurry. If you had trouble, if you were slow or stubborn, they rubbed your nose in it. Luc understood what was what, all right. “Ah, shit,” he said.

“See? You’re not so fucking dumb.” Demange reached up and thumped him on the shoulder. Luc had to hold himself tight to keep from jumping. Even such rough affection from Demange was far, far out of the ordinary.