by neetha Napew
Skorzeny grunted and put a hand over the right side of his belly. Ja'ger thought the SS man's reaction similar to his own until he realized Skorzeny's face held real pain. "What's wrong?" he asked.
"My fucking gall bladder," the
Hauptsturmfuhrer answered. "It had me in the
hospital for a while earlier this year. But the
doctors say it isn't going to kill me, and lying
around on my backside is a bloody bore, so
here I am up and doing again. A good thing,
too."
"You were here on the Eastern Front before, sir?" Georg Schultz asked.
"Yes, with Das Reich,"Skorzeny said.
Schultz nodded and said nothing more. Ja'ger could guess what he was thinking. A lot of people who saw action on the Eastern Front
would fall down on their knees and thank God for an illness that got them sent back to Germany and safety. Skorzeny, by the way he talked, would sooner have stayed and fought He didn't sound as though he were bluffing, either. Jager's respect for him went up a notch.
In spite of the Lizards' air raids, the Kremlin still swarmed with life. Occasional holes merely showed Ja'ger the soldiers and bureaucrats bustling about within, in the same way as he could have seen the humming life inside an anthill with its top kicked off.
He was not surprised to find Skorzeny heading for the same doorway as he and Ja'ger used: naturally, the SS man would also be meeting with officers from the Defense Commissariat. The doorway into the Kremlin itself, like the one into the compound around it, was guarded. The lieutenant who headed this detachment put out his hand without a
word. Without a word, Ja'ger and Schultz gave him their documents. Without a word, he studied and returned them.
Then he turned to Skorzeny, his hand still outstretched. An impish grin lit the big man's face. He seized the Russian lieutenant's hand, vigorously pumped it up and down. The guards stared in disbelief. The lieutenant managed to return a sickly smile. A couple of his men had raised their submachine guns. When he smiled, they lowered them again.
"Talk about balls, one of these days he's going to get his blown off, playing games like that," Schultz said out of the side of his mouth.
"Maybe, maybe not," Ja'ger answered. He'd known a few people who simply bulled their way through life, charging at the world with such headlong aggression that it gave way before them. Skorzeny seemed to be of that stripe. On a larger scale, so did Adolf Hitler...
and Stalin.
It was easier to think of the Soviet leader than of Hitler as Ja'ger let the immensity of the Kremlin swallow him and Schultz. Skorzeny followed. Just inside the doorway stood a pair of Russian lieutenant colonels: no Germans would go wandering unescorted through the Red Army's holy of holies.
One of the Russian officers wore a tankman's black collar patches. "Good morning, Major Ja'ger, Sergeant Schultz," he said in excellent German.
"Lieutenant Colonel Kraminov," Ja'ger said, nodding back politely. Viktor Kraminov had been assigned to Schultz and him since they came to Moscow. They might have traded shots with each other the year before, for Kraminov had been part of Marshal Budenny's southern Soviet army before being transferred to staff duty in Moscow. He had an old man's
wise eyes set in a face of childlike innocence, and knew more about handling panzers than J a'ger would have expected from the Russians' battle performance.
The other lieutenant colonel, a fellow Ja'ger had not seen before, wore green collar patches. Georg Schultz frowned. "What's green stand for?" he whispered.
Ja'ger needed a minute to think. Russian infantry patches were maroon; tanks, artillery, and engineers black; cavalry dark blue; air force light blue. But what Soviet service wore green as its Waffenfarbe? Ja'ger stiffened. "He's NKVD," he whispered back.
Schultz flinched. Ja'ger didn't blame him. Just as no Russian soldier would want to run across the Gestapo, so the Germans naturally grew nervous at the sight of an officer of the People's Commissariat for the Interior, if he'd come across the NKVD man a year ago, he
would have shot him at once; German orders were to take no secret policemen or political commissars alive, regardless of the laws of war.
After one brief glance, the NKVD lieutenant colonel ignored the two Germans in civilian clothes; he'd been waiting for Otto Skorzeny. "A very good day to you, Herr Hauptsturmfuhrer,"[e said. His German was even better than Kraminov's. He sounded fussily precise, like about half of Jager's old Gymnasium teachers.
"Hello, Boris, you skinny old prune-faced bastard," Skorzeny boomed back. Ja'ger waited for the heavens to fall. The NKVD man, who really was a skinny old prune-faced bastard, just gave a tight little nod, from which Ja'ger inferred he'd been working with Skorzeny for a while and had decided he'd better make allowances.
The NKVD man— Boris— turned toward Lieutenant Colonel Kraminov. "Perhaps all five of us will work together today," he said. "In chatting before you gentlemen arrived, Viktor Danielovich and I discovered that we all may be able to contribute to an operation which will benefit both our nations."
"It is as Lieutenant Colonel Lidov says," Kraminov agreed. "Cooperation here will aid both the Soviet Union and the Reich against the Lizards."
"You mean you want German help for something you don't think you can do on your own," Skorzeny said. "Why do you need us for an operation which I presume will be on Soviet soil?" His gaze came to a sudden, sharp focus. "Wait! It's on territory we took from you last year, isn't it?"
"That may be," Lidov said. The noncommittal reply convinced Ja'ger that Skorzeny was
right. He made a mental note: the SS man might bluster, but he was anything but stupid. Lieutenant Colonel Kraminov evidently saw dissimulation was useless, too. He sighed, perhaps regretting it "Come, all of you."
The Germans followed the two Russian officers down the long, high-ceilinged halls of the Kremlin. Other Russian soldiers sometimes paused in their own duties to stare at Skorzeny's SS uniform, but no one said anything: they seemed to accept that the world had grown stranger these past few months.
The office Ja'ger and Schultz entered was not the one Kraminov used. Like Kraminov's, though, it was surprisingly light and airy, with a large window that gave a view of thegrounds of the Kremlin compound. Ja'ger had looked for nothing but dank gloom at the heart of Soviet Russia, but a moment's reflection after finding the opposite told him that was silly.
Even Communists needed light by which to work. And the Kremlin was far older than either Communism or electricity; when it was raised, the only light worth having came from the sun. So, large windows.
Lieutenant Colonel Lidov pointed to a samovar. "Tea, tovarishchii?" he asked. Ja'ger frowned; Kraminov didn't call Schultz and him "comrades," as if they were Reds themselves. But then, Kraminov was a tankman, a warrior, not NKVD. At home, Ja'ger drank coffee thick with cream. But he hadn't been at home for a long time. He nodded.
Lidov poured for all of them. At home, Ja'ger didn't drink tea from a glass, either. He had done that before, though, with captured samovar sets in steppe towns and collective farms overrun by the Wehrmacht. Lidov brewed better tea than he'd had there.
The NKVD man set down his glass. "To
business," he said. Ja'ger leaned forward and looked attentive. Georg Schultz just sat where he was. Skorzeny slouched down in his chair and looked bored. If that disconcerted Lidov, he didn't let it show.
"To business," he repeated. "As the HauptsWrmfiihrerhas suggested, the proposed action will take place in an area where the, fascist invaders had established themselves prior to the arrival of the alien imperialist aggressors commonly known as Lizards."
Ja'ger wondered if Lidov talked that way all the time. Skorzeny yawned. "By fascist invaders, I presume you mean us Germans." He sounded as bored as he looked.
"You and your lackeys and running dogs, yes." Maybe Lidov did talk that way all the time. However he talked, he didn't retreat a centimeter, though Skorzeny could have
broken him over his knee like a stick. "To resume, then: along with bands of gallant Soviet partisans, German remnant groups remain in the area under discussion. Thus the apparent expedience of a joint Soviet-German operation."
"Where is the area in question?" Ja'ger asked.
"Ah," Lidov said. "Attend the map here, if you please." He stood up, pointed to one of the charts tacked onto the wall. The lettering, of course, was Cyrillic, but Ja'ger recognized the Ukraine anyhow. Red pins showed Soviet positions, blue ones surviving German units, and yellow the Lizards. The map had more yellow measles than Ja'ger liked.
Lidov went on, "We are particularly concerned with this area north and west of Kiev, near the town of Komarin. There, early in the struggle against the Lizards, you Germans succeeded in wrecking with heavy artillery two major
ships of the common enemy."
That made Georg Schultz sit up straighter. So did Ja'ger— it was news to him, too. Skorzeny said, "And so? This is no doubt excellent, but how does it concern us here?"
"In and around the wreckage of one of these ships, the Lizards appear to be making no more than an ordinary effort at salvage. This is emphatically not the case at the other."
"Tell us about the second one, then," Ja'ger urged.
"Yes, that is what I was getting to, Major," the NKVD man said. "We have reports from witnesses that the Lizards are operating as if in an area of poison gas, although no gas seems to be present. Not only do they wear masks, in fact, but also bulky full-body protective suits. You see the significance of this, I trust?"
"Ja," Jager said absently. Except for helmets and sometimes body armor, Lizards didn't wear clothes, if they felt they needed to be protected from something, whatever it was had to be pretty fierce. As for gas— he shivered a little as he remembered his own days in the trenches back in the first war. A gas mask was torment, made worth wearing only because it warded against worse.
"It is not gas, you say?" Skorzeny put in.
"No, definitely not," Lidov answered. "There has been no problem due to wind or anything of that sort. The Lizards appear to be engaged in recovering certain chunks of metal strewn about over a wide area when their ship exploded. These are loaded into lorries which seem to be very heavy for their size, judging by the tracks they leave in dirt."
"Armor-plated?" Jager asked.
"Possibly," Lidov said. "Or possibly lead."
Ja'ger thought about that. Lead was good for plumbing, but for shielding? The only time he'd ever seen anyone use lead for shielding was when the fellow who'd X-rayed him after he was wounded put on a lead waistcoat before he took his pictures. He made a sudden connection— he'd heard inside these very Kremlin walls that the weapon which destroyed Berlin had had some sort of effect (not being a physicist, he didn't know quite what) related to X rays.
He said, "Is this salvage related to these dreadful bombs the Lizards have?"
Skorzeny's dark eyes widened. Lidov's rather narrow ones, already constricted by a Tatar fold at their inner corners, now thinned further. In a voice silky with danger, he said, "Were you one of ours, Major Ja'ger, I doubt you would long survive. You speak your thoughts
too openly."
Georg Schultz surged halfway out of his chair "You watch your mouth, you damned Red!"
Ja'ger set a hand on the gunner's shoulder, pushed him back into the seat. "Do remember where we are, Sergeant," he said dryly.
"That is an excellent suggestion, Sergeant Schultz," the NKVD man agreed. "Your loyalty does you credit, but it is foolish here." He turned back to Ja'ger. "You, Major, may be too clever for your own good."
"Not necessarily." Otto Skorzeny spoke up for the panzer officer. "That we are here, Lieutenant Colonel Lidov, that you have said even so much on this sensitive matter, argues that you need German assistance for whatever you have in mind. You shall not get it unless Major Ja'ger here remains unharmed. You do need us, do you not?" In other
circumstances, his smile would have been sweet. Now it mocked.
Lidov glared at him. Lieutenant Colonel Kraminov, who had let the other man do the talking till now, said, "You are right, worse luck, Herr Hauptsturmfuhrer. This area has only Russian partisans, no regular Red Army forces, as you Germans drove these out last fall. While brave enough, the partisans lack the heavy armament required to attack a Lizard lorry convoy. There are, however, also fragmentary Wehrmacht units in the area—"
"In regard to the Lizards, these are hardly more than partisan forces themselves," Lidov interrupted. "But they do retain more arms than our own glorious and heroic partisans, that is true." By his expression, the truth tasted bad in his mouth.
"Thus we suggest a joint undertaking," Kraminov said. "You three will serve as our
liaison with whatever German units remain north of Kiev. In the event we succeed in despoiling the convoy, our two governments will share equally in what we capture. Is it agreed?"
"How do we know you won't keep everything for yourselves?" Schultz asked.
"You fascist aggressors were the ones who brutally violated the nonaggression pact the great Stalin generously granted to Hitler," Lidov snapped. "We are the ones who tremble at the thought of trusting you."
"You would've jumped us if we hadn't," Schultz said angrily. "Comrades," Lieutenant Colonel Kraminov said— in German, which gave the word a different feel from the harsh Russian Lidov had used. "Please, comrades. If we are to be comrades, we shall need to work together. If we go at each other's throats, only the Lizards will benefit"
"He's right, Georg," Ja'ger said. "If we start arguing, we'll never get anything done." He hadn't forgotten his own dislike and contempt for nearly everything he'd seen in the Soviet Union, but could not deny the Russians fought hard— nor that they were masters of partisan warfare. "For now, let ideology wait."
"Can you get me a telegraph line to Germany?" Otto Skorzeny asked. "I must have authorization before proceeding with this scheme."
"Provided the latest Lizard advances have not cut it, yes," Lidov said. "I can also let you transmit on the frequency arranged with your government You must talk around what you truly wish to say there, however, to keep the Lizards from following if they intercept the signal, as they very likely will."
"The telegraph first, then," Skorzeny said. "That failing, the radio. The mission strikes
me as worth accomplishing. Other concerns can wait" He studied the NKVD lieutenant colonel as if through the eyepiece of a panzer cannon sight Lidov scowled right back at him. Without words, both men said that, while other concerns could wait, they were not forgotten.
* * *
Liu Han sat naked on the shiny mat in her room in the giant airplane that somehow never fell down from the sky. She made herself into the smallest bundle she could, legs drawn up tight, hands clasped on her shins, head pressed down till it touched her knees. With her eyes closed, she could imagine the entire universe around her had disappeared.
Her world view did not include the concept experimental animal, but that was what she had become. The little scaly devils who held
her here wanted to discover certain things about the way people functioned, and were using her to help them learn. They cared not at all what she thought of the process.
The door to the chamber slid open. Before she could will herself to stillness, she looked up. Two Lizards marched in, with a man— a foreign devil, not even decently Chinese— between them. The man wore no more clothes than she did. "Another one here," one of the scaly devils said in his hissing Chinese.
She lowered her head again, refused to answer. Another one, she thought. When would they be satisfied that she could indeed fit the prongs of however many men they brought her? This was— the fifth? The sixth? She couldn't remember. Maybe, after a while, it ceased to matter. How could her defilement grow any greater?
She tried to recapture the feeling of power,
the feeling of being her own person, she'd known for that little while when Yi Min was helpless and afraid. Then her ow
n will had mattered, if only for a short time. Before then, she'd been held in her place by the customs of her village, and her people, afterward by the terrifying might of the Lizards. Just for a moment, though, she'd almost been free.
"You two show what you do, you eat. You not, no food for you," the devil said. Liu Han knew he meant it. After the first couple of men in this grim series, she'd tried to starve herself to death, but her body refused to obey her. Her belly cried louder than her spirit. Eventually, she did what she had to do to eat.
The other Lizard spoke to the foreign devil in a language that was neither Chinese nor the Lizards' own speech— Liu Han still tried to pick up words of that whenever she could. Then the scaly devils went out of the chamber. They were probably (no, certainly)