All it did was earn him a Purple Heart. Just what I fucking need, he thought, doing his best not to breathe deeply.
After a moment, he realized the improvised bomb had done something else. It had turned Rocky, who wanted to get the hell out of Germany, into a statistic that argued for doing just that. He would be the whatever and sixth GI killed in Germany since what the papers were calling the so-called surrender. And Lou had just made the statistics himself. He would be the whatever and twenty-ninth American soldier wounded since V-E Day.
“Hot damn,” he muttered, and then “Shit” one more time.
Vladimir Bokov remembered last year’s new year’s eve much too well. Influenza and benzedrine made a lousy combination. They went even worse with wood-alcohol poisoning. Damn the Heydrichites anyway! They’d taken out far too many first-rate Soviet officers with that stunt. Some of the men who replaced those casualties couldn’t tie their own boots without reading the manual first. Others didn’t have the brains to read the manual.
“Things could be worse,” Colonel Shteinberg said when Bokov complained out loud.
“How’s that, sir?” Bokov asked.
“Well, the Heydrichites could be holding their own victory banquet right now,” the senior NKVD officer replied.
“You’re right,” Bokov admitted. “It isn’t that bad. But it isn’t good, either. For instance, Comrade Colonel-how many times have you been in a jeep that cut a garroting wire stretched across the road?”
“A few. More than a few, in fact. That was a clever gadget our technicians came up with,” Shteinberg said. “Why?”
Vladimir Bokov happened to know an American noncom had invented the wire cutters that sat on the hoods of most jeeps in Germany these days. He also knew Shteinberg wouldn’t listen if he said anything like that out loud. It was beside the point, anyway. “Be careful if you cut another wire, that’s all,” was what he did say.
“Oh? How come?” Moisei Shteinberg asked.
“Because Heydrich’s bandits have started hooking those wires to 105mm and 155mm shells buried by the side of the road,” Bokov answered. “The wire gets stretched, the wire gets broken, and bam!”
Colonel Shteinberg understood what that meant, all right. “Gevalt!” he exclaimed. Captain Bokov blinked. His superior spouted Yiddish about as often as he spouted mat. Shteinberg had to be truly provoked to come out with either. By the way he hastily lit a cigarette, he wanted to pretend he hadn’t done it here. He blew out smoke and sighed. “One more way for the Heydrichites to get in our hair.”
“I’m afraid so,” Bokov said. “Damned if we do and damned if we don’t, if you know what I mean. We’ve already had some casualties on account of this. So have the Americans, I gather.”
“Nice to know the Fascist hyenas aren’t saving all their cute tricks for us alone,” Shteinberg said. “I suppose this report’s on my desk, too. It just hasn’t surfaced yet.”
“Believe me, Comrade Colonel, I understand that.” Bokov spoke with great sincerity. Even though he swam easily through the sea of Soviet bureaucracy, he said, “What else does more than paperwork to keep us from accomplishing anything really important?”
Shteinberg sent a meditative plume of smoke up toward the ceiling. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I ought to send you to a camp for saying such a thing. Maybe you’re right and I ought to send you to a camp for saying such a thing.”
Captain Bokov laughed. He didn’t think Shteinberg was serious. On the other hand, the only way you knew for sure when someone was serious about a crack like that was when the burly Chekists knocked on your door in the wee small hours. Bokov had made it through the frightful nights of 1937 and 1938. He hoped times like those would never come again.
“Besides,” Shteinberg continued, as if what he’d just said meant nothing at all (exactly what Bokov hoped it meant), “unless something goes wrong somewhere else, I’m not getting into a jeep tonight, not for anything. I’m not going to drink tonight, either, not unless I have some German taste the booze first.”
“Makes sense,” Bokov said, remembering last year’s madness once more and wishing he could forget it. Perhaps rashly, he asked, “So what will you do, then?”
“Me? I’m playing chess with Marshal Stalin, what else?” Shteinberg said.
Bokov shut up. Whatever his superior would be doing, it had None of your damned business written all over it. Bokov didn’t know what he’d be doing as 1946 turned into 1947, either. Like Shteinberg, and for all the same reasons, he was leery of drinking on New Year’s Eve. True, the Heydrichites probably wouldn’t try the same stunt two New Year’s Eves in a row. But they might decide the Soviets would figure they wouldn’t try the same stunt twice running, and try it anyhow to see what happened. Why take chances?
Red Army soldiers-and, no doubt, their French and Anglo-American counterparts-started shooting rifles and pistols in the air about half past eleven. That gave Bokov one more reason for thinking staying quietly indoors was a good idea. If you went outside without a helmet, a falling bullet could punch your ticket for you just fine.
And how many murders were getting committed under cover of that small-arms fire? By Heydrichites? By ordinary robbers? By husbands sick of wives and wives sick of husbands? Most of them wouldn’t be the NKVD’s worry, for which Bokov thanked…No, not God, he decided. I thank my good luck.
Front-line soldiers had no trouble sleeping through worse gunfire than this. So they insisted, especially after they took aboard a good cargo of vodka. Vladimir Bokov hadn’t seen the kind of action that would have inured him to such a racket. He kept waking up whenever a new set of drunks squeezed off yet another annoying volley.
Bokov also kept going back to sleep. No noncom came to shake him out of bed with word of some horrid atrocity from the Fascist bandits. That might not mean a lot of progress, but it meant some. And it meant a halfway decent night’s sleep, if not a great one. You took what you could get. If it wasn’t too great, you thanked whatever you thanked that it wasn’t too bad.
Bokov finally gave up and got out of bed about half past six. It was still dark; the sun wouldn’t be up for a while yet. Berlin was only three or four degrees of latitude south of Moscow. It had long summer days and long winter nights. Bokov rubbed his chin. Whiskers rasped under his fingers. His beard wasn’t especially heavy, but he’d have to shave this morning.
A jeep started up outside. Bokov went to the window to see what was going on. It might have been raiders taking off after planting a bomb. It might have been, but it wasn’t. It was Colonel Shteinberg taking off with an extraordinarily pretty brunette. Sunrise might be more than an hour and a half away, but Bokov had no trouble seeing that. The Soviet barracks blazed with light, to help hold the Heydrichites at bay.
“Well, well,” Bokov said softly, and then again: “Well, well.” Plenty of Soviet officers were screwing German women: that general he’d visited in Dresden sprang to mind. It wasn’t encouraged (though raping German women had been, at least unofficially, as the Red Army stormed into the Reich), but the Soviets didn’t try to declare it off-limits the way the U.S. Army did. The women were there. They were in no position to say no. Of course men would screw them.
Moisei Shteinberg, though…For one thing, he was NKVD, which meant he had more to keep quiet about than most Red Army men. For another, he was a Jew. Was he avenging himself every time he stuck it in there? Or was he just a man who got horny like any other man, even if he’d had his cock clipped?
“Interesting,” Bokov murmured. And it might give him a hold on Shteinberg. It also might not, but finding out could be interesting, too.
A new face up there on the rostrum. Sam Rayburn was just another Congressman again. Well, not just another Congressman-Rayburn remained House Minority Leader. But after you’d been Speaker, House Minority Leader wasn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss, as John Nance Garner had famously said (and been famously misquoted) about another Washington office.
Jerry Duncan grinned li
ke a fool. Well, pride could do that to a man. Instead of Rayburn’s combative, bald, round-faced visage (which made him sound like Churchill, whom he resembled not at all), there was the aristocratic New England countenance of Joseph W. Martin. Joe had represented his Massachusetts district since just after the Indians got chased out of it. He finally had his reward. The GOP finally had its reward. Joe Martin was Speaker of the House.
It was a cold day outside, cold enough to snow. Some of the Democrats staring up toward Joe Martin were bound to be thinking, A cold day in hell. Well, maybe Satan was juggling snowballs, because the Republicans had their majority back.
What Jerry was thinking was that traffic would go to hell. Coming from central Indiana, he took snow for granted. Washington didn’t. The town didn’t get it often enough. People didn’t know how to drive in it. The street authority, or whatever they called it here, didn’t know how to keep the main highways cleared. It would be a mess till it melted.
Joe Martin raised the gavel and brought it down again. “The Eightieth Congress is now in session,” he declared. There. It was official. The Speaker went on, “We have a lot of things to try to set right. The American people expect it of us. No-they demand it of us.”
Along with most of the other Republicans, Jerry nodded. He had all he could do not to clap his hands. The Democrats, by contrast, all looked as if they’d been issued lemons and ordered to suck on them. From Pearl Harbor through V-J Day, Congress had shown a bipartisan spirit unusual in its raucous history. That wouldn’t go on any more.
It’s Truman’s fault, not ours, Jerry thought with the smug righteousness a majority could bring. If he didn’t want to keep on occupying Germany when any idiot can see that’s a losing proposition, we could get along with him just fine. But let’s see him occupy Germany if we don’t give him any money to do it.
The Speaker of the House said the same thing, only more politely: “It’s time to take a long, hard look at our foreign policy. It’s also time to get our fiscal house in order. I think we’ll see that the two of those go hand in hand.”
More solemn nods from the Republicans-and from the Democrats who didn’t think they’d make it to the Eighty-first Congress if Truman went on pouring men and money down the German rathole. More scowls from the President’s loyalists-and from the Republicans who feared Hitler’s ghost or Stalin’s reality more than they feared the endless bloody bog through which Truman insisted on wading.
Behind Jerry, somebody called, “And we’ll bring our boys home from overseas!” The voice wasn’t one Jerry recognized, but that didn’t prove anything, not on this Friday, January 3, 1947. Too many new voices, too many new faces. He’d get to know the new kids on the block pretty soon, but he hadn’t yet.
All the rage on both sides that had sizzled just below the surface exploded. Congressmen shouted. Congressmen swore. Some Congressmen clapped their hands. Others shook their fists. Things must have felt like this just before the country tore itself to pieces when Lincoln was elected.
“Order! Order! There will be order!” Joe Martin shouted, plying his gavel with might and main. But there was no order. Bang! Bang! He tried again: “The Sergeant at Arms will enforce order!”
The Sergeant at Arms looked at him as if he’d lost his marbles. Jerry Duncan wasn’t so sure the poor, unhappy functionary was wrong. One man couldn’t enforce order on 435 (well, 434, because Joe Martin up on the rostrum wasn’t being disorderly) unless they wanted it enforced. And, right this minute, they didn’t. All they wanted to do was yell at one another.
“We haven’t got the money to pay for even half the things we really need!” another new Republican Congressman bawled. He had a bigger, rougher voice than the fellow who’d first ignited the uproar, and he used it like a top sergeant roaring his men forward through an artillery bombardment: “We’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for us to send to Germany to get their heads blown off for the President’s amusement!”
Jerry’d only thought things were bad before. A skunk at a picnic, a photographer at a no-tell hotel, couldn’t have raised a tenth the ruckus that furious shout did. Not so many Republicans clapped this time. The Democrats, though…
“Shame!” some of them cried. “Shame!” And they were the polite ones. What the others yelled would have made a dock worker blush. What it did to the handful of Congresswomen…Well, they all seemed to be shouting their heads off, too.
“Order! Order!” Speaker Martin said again, this time in something not far from desperation. He used his gavel so fiercely, Jerry Duncan was surprised the handle didn’t break off in his hand. And he got…something not far from order, anyhow. Maybe everyone was shocked at how fast things had gone down the drain. Jerry knew he was.
“Censure!” Sam Rayburn shouted, shaking his fist at the new Congressman who’d said what he really thought. “I demand a vote of censure! That gentleman”-he spat the word-“is a disgrace to the House!”
“Now, Mr. Rayburn,” Joe Martin said, “if we censure everyone who loses his temper and says something unfortunate-”
“Unfortunate! I don’t know whether he should be more embarrassed for spouting claptrap or we for listening to it,” Rayburn thundered. “I move that we censure…whatever the devil the stupid puppy’s name is.”
“Second!” That cry rang out from all over the Democratic side of the aisle.
By the look on Joe Martin’s face, he was wondering why he’d wanted to be Speaker in the first place. He called for the vote. The motion failed, 196 to 173. Quite a few Congressmen sat on their hands. Jerry voted against the motion, though he didn’t think the new Representative had done himself or his side of the argument any good. At least half a dozen Republicans voted in favor of censuring him.
And that was the first day, the day that was supposed to be ceremonial and nothing but ceremonial. The Eightieth Congress got livelier from there.
They issued Lou Weissberg a corset and a stick when they let him out of the military hospital. They’d already given him his Purple Heart. He could have done without it, but the brass gave it to him anyway.
When he came back on duty, Major Frank greeted him with, “Well, well. Look what the cat drug in.”
“Your mother…sir,” Lou answered sweetly. “I found out how to fly without an airplane. If it weren’t for the honor of the thing, I’d’ve rather walked.” You could do worse than steal your jokes from Abraham Lincoln. You could, and Lou figured he probably would.
“Good to have you back any which way, and more or less in one piece,” Howard Frank told him.
“Goddamn good to be back,” Lou said. “One piece-with a few cracks and chips and shit like that. They’d put me on the discount table at Woolworth’s, you betcha.”
“Well, the problem hasn’t gone away while you were on the bench, that’s for sure,” Frank said. “Matter of fact, you found one of the ways it’s getting worse. Care to guess how many 155mm shells, and 105s, and 88s, are lying around Germany waiting to get turned into bombs?”
“Too fucking many-that’s all I can tell you,” Lou replied. “Government didn’t issue me a slide rule, or maybe I’d do better.”
“‘Too fucking many’ is good enough. Bad enough, I mean,” Major Frank said. “One of the fanatics’ bright boys must’ve had a brainstorm, ’cause they’re starting to play all kinds of cute games with shells lately. Those goddamn trip wires-”
“I found out about those, all right. I found out more than I ever wanted to know,” Lou said.
“Yeah, I bet you did. But that’s not the only thing they’re doing.” If Lou was back, Major Frank would bring him up to date come hell or high water. That kind of persistence made Frank annoying, but it also made him a good officer. He went on, “They’ve got some of them wired so a guy watching half a mile off can blow ’em up when he sees they’ll do him the most good-hurt us worst, I should say.”
“Figured that out, thanks,” Lou said dryly.
> “Did you?” Frank gave him a wry grin. “The guy with the detonator’s long gone, natch, by the time we trace the wire back to where he was hiding, but the wire does let us do some tracing. So the assholes have one more stunt. Some of these shells, they’ve got ’em hooked up so they can touch ’em off by radio.”
“Fuck!” Lou spoke with great sincerity.
“You said a mouthful,” Howard Frank agreed. “Try tracing a radio wave. I know, I know-we can do some of that. We can do more than the Jerries ever thought we could. But a signal that lasts this long?” He snapped his fingers, then mournfully shook his head. “Fanatic’s gone, transmitter’s gone-it’s a major-league snafu, is what it is.”
“Sure sounds like one,” Lou said. “Does it matter to a kraut if Heydrich pins a Knight’s Cross on him instead of Hitler?”
“You don’t get a Knight’s Cross pinned on. You wear it around your neck,” Frank said.
He was right, too. Lou had interrogated several German supermen who’d won the award-it was more or less the equivalent of the Distinguished Service Cross. All the same, Lou made a face now. “They shoulda sent you to law school,” he said.
“Nah. I got good at picking nits the times I was lousy,” Captain Frank said. Lou winced; he’d had lice more than once himself. If you spent much time in the field, chances were you would. Frank added, “Thank God for DDT, is all I’ve got to tell you. That shit really works.”
“Yeah!” Lou nodded enthusiastically. He’d seen the same thing himself. From what retreads said, nothing they’d tried in the First World War stopped the cooties. But DDT did the trick, sure as hell. It knocked mosquitoes over the head, too. And it didn’t poison people. How could you not like something that slick?
“Well, anyway, like I said, it’s goddamn good to have you back,” Frank told him. “I did want to get you up to speed as fast as I could-and I wanted to let you know you aren’t the only guy the fanatics did for with their new trick.”
The Man with the Iron Heart Page 39