* * *
“You! Dernen! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Arno Baatz shouted.
“Just working on my foxhole, Corporal,” Willi replied. Maybe a soft answer would turn away wrath. If Awful Arno was on the rag-and he sure sounded that way-the odds were against it, though.
Sure as hell, he thought one lousy pip on each shoulder strap made him a little tin god. “Well, cut that crap out and do something useful instead,” he snarled. “Go chop up some firewood.”
Willi didn’t think fixing up his hole so he was less likely to get killed-and so he could sleep without getting all muddy-was crap. Saying as much would only piss Corporal Baatz off worse than ever, if such a thing was possible. They did need firewood; Willi happened to know that. He didn’t know how he’d drawn the short straw for chopping it, but that was just Baatz moving in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.
“Right, Corporal,” Willi said resignedly, and scrambled out of the foxhole. He had some wood in there, shoring up what would be his sleeping compartment. He kept his mouth shut about it, for fear Awful Arno would tell him to rip it out.
The Frenchies had left a lot of lumber behind when most of them cleared out of this village. Willi didn’t particularly blame them for bailing. If his own small home town had got shelled and bombed first by one side and then by the other, he would have wanted to get the hell out of there, too.
They’d also left behind a really lovely axe: light, well balanced, sharp. It almost made chopping wood seem more sport than work. Almost. Imagining that fine steel edge coming down on Baatz’s neck instead of blond oak livened up the job, too.
Awful Arno came by after a while to check on how Willi was doing. He eyed the pile of firewood, grunted, and went away again. From him, that was the equivalent of awarding the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds. If Baatz couldn’t find anything to piss and moan about, there was nothing to find.
Quitting now, though, would only bring him back and give him the excuse he wanted to come down on Willi. Willi knew as much. He kept chopping for another twenty minutes. By then, the squad had enough wood for the next six months. It did if you listened to him tell it afterwards, anyhow.
He marveled that his palms weren’t blistered when he did set down the axe. Part of that was the smooth, fine helve. And part of it was the thick calluses he’d acquired. Sure as the devil, soldiering toughened you up.
It also turned you into an accomplished thief. As soon as he got done, he started going through the houses in the village. Yeah, they’d already been picked over, but you never could tell what you’d find if you poked around a little. Some canned salmon, a little flask of what smelled like applejack, 250 francs somebody’d forgotten when he got out of town… A good scrounger could come up with all kinds of things other people had missed.
He’d share the salmon and the firewater. You didn’t want to get greedy with stuff like that. Your buddies wouldn’t stay buddies if you did. The French money went into a tunic pocket. You never could tell when that might come in handy. He came out into the late-afternoon sunshine, more than a little pleased with himself.
He came out into that sunshine at the exact moment a black Mercedes about as long as a light cruiser rumbled into the village. Two enormous men in black uniforms jumped out. Willi had been thinking soldiering toughened you. He might be tough, but he wouldn’t have wanted to mess with either one of these SS behemoths. Something in the planes and angles of their faces said they not only knew all the dirty tricks but got off on them.
“You!” one of them rumbled, raising a hand roughly the size of a ham and pointing at him. “Come here!”
“What do you want?” Willi didn’t move.
“To ask you some questions,” the SS man said. “If you’re lucky, we won’t ask about your name or your pay number. Now get over here!”
Goddamn asphalt soldiers, Willi thought. The SS looked marvelous on parade. In the field… That was the Wehrmacht’ s place. But the bastards with the runes on their collars were Hitler’s fair-haired boys. Willi ambled over to this pair. If he didn’t, they could make him disappear, and nobody would ever know where he’d gone. “Well, what is it?” he said. “You boys better watch yourselves around here, you know? French guns can reach this far, easy.”
The big goons traded glances. But nobody was shooting at them right this minute. They could seem brave, even to themselves. One pulled out a notebook and flipped it open. “Do you know a certain, ah, Wolfgang Storch?” he asked, and rattled off Storch’s pay number.
“Name sounds kind of familiar.” Willi stopped right there. He’d see the SS men in hell before he ratted on a friend. Wolfgang and he had saved each other’s bacon more times than he could count. They’d shared cigarettes and socks. They’d sworn at Awful Arno together. Would these clowns understand any of that? Not a chance in church. Willi eyed them. “How come you want to know?”
“We don’t have to tell you that,” said the goon with the notebook.
The other one tried to be subtle. He wasn’t very good at it: “Have you ever heard this Storch make comments that reflect unfavorably on our beloved Fuhrer or the National Socialist German Workers’ Party?”
“Nope,” Willi said at once. Everybody in the field always swore at the idiot politicians who’d put them in danger of getting their heads blown off. Would the SS men get that? Again, not a chance. Nope was safer.
Or so Willi thought, till the blackshirt with the notebook said, “If we can show that you are lying, the two of you will be judged guilty of conspiring against the Reich.”
No talk of trials or anything like that. Just You will be judged guilty. And what would happen afterwards? Nothing good. Willi didn’t need a road map or a compass to figure that out.
“You said it yourselves-everybody loves the Fuhrer,” Willi said. “Nobody has anything bad to say about him.” Nobody did where somebody who might blab could hear, anyway. But if the SS men really believed all the Party bullshit, they might think Willi meant it.
By the way their faces hardened, he’d laid it on too thick. The one with the notebook said, “We have reliable reports that this Storch has delivered disloyal utterances on repeated occasions.” He could talk that way without even realizing what a jackass he sounded like.
“Well, I never heard him do it,” Willi said.
They didn’t believe him. He could see it in their pale, merciless eyes. That meant his goose was cooked, too. Then he caught a break. French artillery really did open up on the village. Willi’d never dreamt he could be glad to get shelled, but he was now.
“Hit the dirt!” he yelled, and flattened out himself.
Because the SS men were greenhorns, they stayed on their feet longer than they should have. When shells started bursting and fragments screeched past, they got the message. “Hail, Mary, full of grace!” one of them gabbled as he got down. Whoever’d said there were no atheists in foxholes had a pretty good idea of what he was talking about.
Willi didn’t like getting up in the middle of a barrage, but he didn’t like getting hauled off to Dachau, either. He hurried toward the last place where he’d seen Wolfgang: a trench fifty meters or so south of where the houses petered out. Behind him, a 105 round turned the blackshirts’ Mercedes into burning scrap metal. He laughed out loud.
“Where are you going?” one of the SS men called after him.
“To fight. You wouldn’t know about that, would you?” he answered. And he even meant it. The froggies were liable to follow up the shelling with an attack. But he also had other things on his mind.
To his vast relief, he found Wolfgang right away and jumped into the trench beside him. “You trying to get yourself killed?” Storch asked.
“No. I’m trying not to get you killed. The SS wants your ass,” Willi said. “I always told you you talked too goddamn much.”
“Who squealed?” Wolfgang got right down to brass tacks.
“They didn’t say, but my money’s
on Baatz. Doesn’t matter now. Get the fuck out of here. Go across the line and surrender to the Frenchies. You can sit out the rest of the war in a POW camp.”
“They’re liable to shoot me if I do,” Wolfgang said. Surrendering was always tricky. If the guys on the other side didn’t like your looks or couldn’t be bothered with you, you were dead meat.
“You’ve got a chance that way,” Willi answered. “What kind of chance do you have with the blackshirts?”
Storch’s unhappy expression told exactly what kind of chance he had. He pumped Willi’s hand. “You’re a good guy. Wish me luck.” He scrambled out of the trench and crawled toward the enemy positions a few hundred meters away.
“Luck,” Willi whispered. Most of the French shells were long. If Wolfgang really got lucky, they’d blow up the SS goons. Even as the thought crossed Willi’s mind, he feared it was too much to hope for.
* * *
Vaclav Jezek cautiously lifted his head. There was less to see than he’d hoped: the dust and smoke the bombardment had already kicked up obscured his view of later shell hits on the Nazi-held village. He ducked down again. “They’re knocking the shit out of that place,” he remarked.
“And so?” Benjamin Halevy didn’t sound impressed. “Not like the German mamzrim don’t have it coming.”
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?” Halevy 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,” Halevy 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 Halevy 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,” Halevy 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. Halevy 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 Halevy. He didn’t need long to work out what Halevy was, either. “And-” He stopped, gulping.
“Yeah. And,” Halevy 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 Halevy in Czech.
“It could be,” the Jew answered in the same tongue. Storch’s eyes said he didn’t follow it. Halevy 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 Halevy 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,” Halevy 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. Halevy answered in the same language. The poilu snorted. Halevy 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 Halevy 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
Airplane 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 Madrilenos 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.
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