Two Fronts twtce-5

by Harry Turtledove

  “If you allow this man aboard your ship, I can-I will-have you fired upon as you leave the harbor. I serve the Fuhrer!” Blink.

  “But not Germany?” Lemp suggested.

  The wall lizard’s pale cheeks gained a little color. “I serve the National Socialist Grossdeutsches Reich, the one and only legitimate German government. I have its authority behind me when I tell you you may not use this politically unreliable individual.”

  “But-” Lemp tried once more, but broke off before he was well begun. The Gestapo man was implacable. Lemp gave up: “Have it your way. You will anyhow, won’t you?”

  “Reich security demands it,” the wall lizard said smugly. Lick.

  “Wunderbar.” Lemp turned away in disgust. He did fire a Parthian shot: “If some jerk of an electrician’s mate comes aboard instead of Nehring and we get sunk on account of that, do you think it does Reich security one hell of a lot of good?”

  Blink. “If the Kriegsmarine allows incompetents to fill these important roles, then it is the entity impairing Reich security. In due course, perhaps we shall examine that more closely.”

  Defeated, despising himself for not having the balls to tell the wall lizard where to head in, Lemp stormed away. As the Gestapo man had warned, Nehring was not among the ratings who boarded the U-30. A newcomer was, an inoffensive little man whose name, Lemp saw when he examined the fellow’s papers, turned out to be Martin Priller.

  As soon as Lemp got the chance, he summoned Priller to his tiny cabin. The new electrician’s mate saluted. “Reporting as ordered, Captain!”

  “Oh, belay that spit-and-polish crap,” Lemp said wearily. “Save it for the surface navy-don’t waste my time with it. Did they tell you why you were supposed to report here?”

  “They said your boat needed an electrician’s mate.” Priller visibly suppressed a sir. “I am one, so they sent me.”

  “Did they tell you why we needed one?” Lemp asked.

  “Nein.” Another obvious swallowed sir. “I figured your fellow didn’t come back from leave or came down sick or whatever the hell.”

  “Whatever the hell is about the size of it.” Lemp grilled Martin Priller on what he knew about U-boat batteries. The new man wasn’t a Dummkopf. He also wasn’t afraid to admit he didn’t know something. He wouldn’t be so good as Nehring, not till he had a few patrols under his belt, but with a little luck he wouldn’t be hopeless, either, which was what Lemp had feared most. Grudgingly, the U-boat skipper said, “All right, go on back to the engine room. Do the best you can, and yell if you need help.”

  “I’ll do that.” Bobbing his head in a little nod, Priller pulled aside the cabin’s curtain so he could escape into the corridor. He closed the curtain behind him as he hurried aft.

  “Scheisse.” Lemp said it very softly. He still wished he had Eberhard Nehring there in his familiar slot. No matter what the wall lizard said, Nehring was about as political as a halibut, and if Munster was up in arms about the way things were going, whose fault was that? Nehring’s? Not likely! Wasn’t it the government’s, for screwing up the war and the economy to the point where even uncomplaining Germans started showing they could take only so much?

  Lemp had never cared much for politics. He didn’t think they were fitting for a Kriegsmarine officer. But he wasn’t a blind man. If he wrote anyone a letter with those thoughts in it, would the Gestapo let him take the U-boat out on its next patrol?

  No. They’d sit him in a black room, shine blinding lights in his face, and hurt him till he told them who all his treasonous friends were. If he had no treasonous friends, they’d keep hurting him till he named some names anyhow. Then they’d grab those people and start in on them.

  Was that any way to run a war? Or a country? Even the apolitical Lemp couldn’t make himself believe it. But that was the war and the country and the government he had.

  Peggy Druce waited nervously in the foyer. She stubbed out a cigarette and lit another one. She didn’t chain-smoke very often, but she did now. Behind her, a clock in the living room started to chime six.

  Where the devil was Herb? She blew an angry stream of smoke toward the ceiling. You could always set your watch by him. Or you could have, until …

  He knocked on the front door as the living-room clock bonged for the fifth time. Peggy had all kinds of reasons for being mad at him. Try as she would, she couldn’t fault him for being late.

  She opened the door. There he stood, as solid and familiar as if things between them had never soured. “Hi,” he said, and then, “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah.” Her voice might have come from Greenland. They’d talked on the phone since he’d come back from Nevada, but this was the first time they’d set eyes on each other. She’d made a point of not being home when he came by to retrieve clothes and books and golf clubs and fishing gear and whatever else he’d taken.

  He grimaced. “You don’t have to do this at all, you know.”

  “I am trying to be civilized, just like you,” Peggy answered.

  “Okay.” He didn’t sound as if things were okay. He sounded as if he’d been ordered to charge a German machine-gun nest in France in 1918. With the same kind of bleak courage he might have shown then, he nodded and said, “Well, come on, then.” As he led her out to his car by the curb, he chuckled in faint-or not so faint-embarrassment. “Fine set of wheels, huh?”

  “Catch me!” she said. It was a long, angular Hupmobile from the first years of the Depression. The whole company had gone belly-up not long before the USA got into the war.

  Herb shrugged. “I couldn’t find anything better in a hurry. Lord knows what I’ll do if it breaks down and needs parts. But I won’t be putting a whole bunch of miles on it, so maybe it’ll last a while.”

  He held the passenger door open for her. She slid inside. He went around and got behind the wheel. The car rattled when he started it. It seemed all the noisier because she was used to the silky-smooth Packard. The Hupmobile wheezed and rattled when he drove off.

  Donofrio’s was their favorite Italian place. Herb ordered spaghetti and meatballs. Peggy chose the lasagna. “You have chianti, George?” Herb asked the waiter.

  “Only from California,” George answered regretfully-he was a Greek playing at being a dago. “Can’t hardly get no gen-u-ine Eye-talian stuff.”

  “Well, bring us a bottle just the same,” Herb said. Peggy nodded. Vino might blunt the edge of what she was feeling. She wasn’t the kind of person who’d let out a war whoop and swing the bottle at her now ex-husband’s head if she got loaded. She didn’t think she was, anyhow.

  The guy in the bow tie and the red apron set the bottle on the table. Herb poured for both of them. He raised his glass. “Good luck to you.”

  Peggy couldn’t even not drink to that. The wine was … red. “Thursday vintage,” she guessed.

  “Oh, it’s older than that. Tuesday, I bet,” Herb said. They bantered as if they’d been married for years. And so they had. And so they weren’t. Peggy drained the big glass in a hurry, but no faster than Herb. He filled them both up again.

  They were halfway down their second glasses when the food came. Donofrio’s lasagna was as familiar as … as being married to Herb. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to do that?” Peggy asked. “Jesus, why didn’t you even tell me you wanted to do that?”

  Herb was using fork and tablespoon to twirl a bite of spaghetti. He paused and looked down at the plate for a moment. Then he met Peggy’s eyes again. Sighing, he answered, “On account of I didn’t feel like a screaming row, and that’s what we would’ve had. When I found out Uncle Samuel was sending me to Nevada anyhow, I figured I’d use the time I was stuck there two different ways.”

  That did sound like him; he was nothing if not organized. And it cleared up something she’d wondered about: “So you didn’t make up the story about going to Nevada because the government sent you there?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I didn’t lie to you.”


  “You just kept your mouth shut about what you were up to,” Peggy said. That sounded like Herb, too.

  “It’s not the same thing,” he insisted, a touch of stiffness in his voice. That might have been the lawyer in him talking. Or maybe he really believed it. Who the hell knew? How much did it matter now either way?

  Peggy sharpened her tongue on another question: “Seen anything of Gladys since you got back into town?”

  She had the satisfaction of watching him turn almost as red as the tomato sauce on his plate. But he shook his head again. “Nah,” he answered. “I told you before-that didn’t mean anything.”

  “Yeah. You told me. And I told you. And we were both telling the truth. And here we are.” Peggy looked at the little strip of fishbelly-white skin on the fourth finger of her left hand, where her ring had lived for so long. Was honesty really the best policy? If they’d both just kept quiet, would they still be married? Would they still be happy enough with each other? Again, who the hell knew? She had trouble believing things could have turned out worse, though.

  Herb also finished his sort-of chianti. What was left in the bottle splashed into their glasses without going very far. He waved to the waiter for reinforcements. “Thanks, George,” he said when the fresh bottle came.

  “Prego,” George replied. Hey, it was a job.

  “We’re not far from the house, but will you be able to drive back to your new place if you get crocked?” Peggy asked.

  “I’ll do fine. Not enough traffic to worry about,” Herb said. That was true enough.

  When he finished his spaghetti, he shoved the plate aside and lit a cigarette. Peggy wasn’t quite done, but she looked forward to hers, too. The one after dinner was the best of the day-even better than the one after sex, usually.

  But she hadn’t fired it up when she said, “When I got all those papers, your note said you didn’t love me any more. Have you found somebody else? Not Gladys, but somebody?”

  “Nope.” One more shake of the head. “Maybe I’ll go looking. Or maybe I’ll just decide I’m an old goat who’s only fit for his own company. I haven’t worked that one out yet.”

  “Okay.” Peggy had no idea whether it was or not. She also had no idea what she’d do along those lines herself. She wasn’t sure she wanted a man who wasn’t Herb in her life. Even if she did, she wasn’t sure she could find one. She was … not so young any more. Herb had a couple of years on her, but so what? It was different with guys. A woman in her thirties wouldn’t see anything wrong with a man in his fifties. The other way around? She snorted quietly to herself. Good luck!

  “I wish things didn’t work out the way they did,” Herb said.

  Then why did you go to Reno? But Peggy’s bitter question died unspoken. That wasn’t what he meant. He was talking about the things that led up to his going there. “We got stuck in the goddamn war,” she said. “It killed … us … the same way it killed all those soldiers.”

  “It sure did,” Herb said. “We get to try and pick up the pieces, though. The poor guys they go and bury can’t even do that.”

  Peggy wondered if they were the lucky ones. Everything was over for them, and they didn’t have to worry any more. But that was just self-pity talking. Any one of those poor damned kids would have traded places with her or Herb in a split second. She sighed and made herself nod. “Well,” she said, “you’re right.”

  In his seat on the far side of the radio set from Theo Hossbach, Adi Stoss hit the Panzer IV’s starter button. The weather was warm. The panzer was new. The motor caught right away.

  “I could get used to this!” Adi said. Before Theo could decide whether to chide him for that, he chided himself: “As soon as I do, the beast won’t start up like this any more.” Theo nodded; Adi had that straight.

  “Let me know as soon as we’re warm enough to go, Adi, or even a little before that,” Hermann Witt said from the turret.

  “Will do.” Adi watched the engine temperature and the oil pressure and the rest of the gauges on the instrument panel. All around them, the other panzers in the company were starting up and moving out, too. “We’re just about ready, Sergeant.”

  “Then get rolling,” Witt said. “Sounds like we’re going to earn our pay the next little while.”

  Adi put the Panzer IV in gear. Along with the others, it rolled north and east. The Russians had punched through the German line in front of Gorki, and an armored column was driving on the city. The panzer company was part of the southern jaw of the Wehrmacht’s counterattack. If the Germans could bite off the column, they could chew it up afterwards at their leisure.

  If. From everything Theo heard in his earphones over the radio net, the Ivans had shoved a lot of men and machines through there. They were trying to take their own bites out of the German holdings in the East, and they kept learning more and more about how to do such things.

  The company hadn’t been on the move more than ten minutes before flights of Katyushas rained down on the panzers and on the infantry coming forward with them. Theo thought the screaming rockets’ roar was one of the most horrible things he’d ever heard, even through thick steel armor. Hermann Witt ducked down into the panzer and slammed the cupola lid shut. Blast shook the heavy machine. Fragments clanged off it.

  “Fuck!” Adi Stoss’ mouth silently shaped the word. Theo nodded again. He couldn’t have put it better himself. Adi went on, “God help the poor Frontschweine out there.”

  “Ja.” He got a word out of Theo. Katyushas slaughtered foot soldiers, and often panicked the survivors. A direct hit on the turret from one could brew up a panzer, too. He wished that hadn’t crossed his mind.

  He peered out through his vision slit. They were coming to Indian country-land the Ivans held. If the Katyushas had scattered German infantry, he needed to be extra alert to keep anybody in a khaki uniform from getting close to the panzer.

  Sure enough, the Indians soon came out of the bushes-or rather, fired out of the cover they gave. That big flash had to come from an antipanzer rifle. The damned things were useless against modern armor: the loud clang as the round ricocheted from the Panzer IV’s front plate showed as much. The Russians kept issuing them anyway. They could punch holes in armored cars and halftracks, but anybody who thought he could knock out a real panzer with one was only fooling himself.

  It was the last mistake this Red Army soldier was likely to make. Theo hosed down the bushes with several bursts from the bow machine gun. He thought he saw somebody thrashing in there. He might have shot a nice fellow, a guy who liked dogs and mushrooms and harmless hobbies like woodcarving. Give the nice guy an antipanzer rifle, though, and he turned into someone who was doing his best to make sure Theo didn’t get home to Breslau. Theo wasn’t about to let that happen. No second shot came as the panzer rattled on.

  A much bigger shell burst fifty meters in front of the Panzer IV. Dirt and fragments banged off the German machine. “Panzer halt!” Hermann Witt yelled. Adi halted the beast. An AP round clanged into the breech. The big 75mm gun traversed a little to the right, then roared. The shell casing clattered down onto the steel floor of the fighting compartment.

  Theo didn’t see a T-34 going up in smoke. That meant they’d missed. So did the way Witt shouted for another round. Theo’s balls tried to crawl up into his belly, as if that would do him any good. They were reloading and aiming again inside the Russian panzer, too. If they fired first, if they fired straight …

  But they didn’t. A T-34’s commander also had to aim and fire the gun. The German crew, with a specialist gunner, was faster and more efficient. They got in the second shot, and they made it count. The distant T-34 began to burn. The enemy diesel didn’t explode into flames the way a German gasoline engine would have, but panzers had plenty of things besides fuel to catch fire.

  “Forward!” Witt called.

  Forward they went. The Wehrmacht wasn’t having everything its own way-it hardly ever did in Russia. The Panzer IV rumbled past the blazing carcass of
an assault gun-a cannon mounted in a panzer chassis without a turret. The cannon had only a very limited traverse, so the assault gun had to swing itself toward a target. On the other hand, it boasted a low silhouette that made it hard to spot. And assault guns were cheaper and easier to manufacture than panzers.

  Somebody had sure spotted this one. Theo hoped the guys in the gray coveralls were able to escape when their mount got hit, but he wouldn’t have bet on it. In case they had, he fired some machine-gun rounds more or less at random to make the Russians in the neighborhood keep their heads down.

  A couple of rifle rounds pinging off the panzer near the vision slit told him he hadn’t made all the Ivans duck. Even a sniper wasn’t likely to hit a vision slit on a moving panzer, but anyone who’d been in the field awhile knew unlikely didn’t mean impossible.

  “Panzer halt!” Witt ordered. Adi stamped on the brakes. The main armament thundered. Shouts from the turret told of another hit-and another kill. Yes, this machine could smash T-34s instead of just letting them know it was in the neighborhood.

  But more and more Russian armor seemed to be in this neighborhood. The Ivans were guarding their flanks better than they often did. They must have realized what the Wehrmacht’s counterstroke against their thrust was likely to look like, and made their own plans to keep it from working.

  The Panzer IV rolled past more burnt-out vehicles, some bearing the red star, others the white-edged black German cross. Some of the twisted bodies in the fields and meadows wore khaki; just about as many were in Feldgrau.

  Clang! … Boom! That was a Panzer IV taking a hit and brewing up not far away. Adi’s mouth twisted. “We just lost some guys we know,” he said. Theo nodded once more.

  “Panzer halt!” Hermann Witt shouted again. Again, Kurt Poske slammed an AP round into the 75. Theo braced himself for another boom from the gun.

  But he got a different kind of boom. Something slammed into the panzer. He felt as if he’d been clubbed.

  “Get us out of here, Adi!” Witt said.