Also in German, she answered, “Yes, I am a pilot You are a guerrilla commander?”
“I’m afraid so,” he said. “There hasn’t been much call for piano teachers the past few years.”
Ludmila stared again, this time for a different reason. This had been a member of the petty bourgeoisie? He’d certainly managed to shed his class trappings; from poorly shaved jowls to twin bandoliers worn crisscross on his chest to battered boots, he looked like a man who’d been a bandit all his life and sprang from a long line of bandits. She had trouble imagining him going through Chopin études with bored young students.
Beside her, Avram looked down at his scarred hands. Wladeslaw looked up to the top of the linden tree under which they stood. Neither of the partisans who’d accompanied her from near Lublin said anything. They’d done their job by getting her here. Now it was up to her.
“You have here an airplane?” she asked, deciding not to hold Ignacy’s looks, name, or class against him. Business was business.
If the Great Stalin could make a pact with the fascist Hitler, she could do her best to deal with a Schmeisser-toting piano teacher.
“We have an airplane,” he agreed. Maybe he was trying to overcome distrust of her as a socialist and a Russian, for he went on with a detailed explanation: “It landed here in this area when the Lizards were booting out the Germans. We don’t think anything was wrong with it except that it was out of fuel. We have fuel now, and we have a new battery which holds a charge. We have also drained the oil and the hydraulic fluid, and have replaced both.”
“This all sounds good,” Ludmila said. “What sort of airplane is it?” Her guess would have been an Me-109. She’d never before flown a hot fighter—or what had been a hot fighter till the Lizards came. She suspected it would be a merry life but a short one. The Lizards had hacked Messerschmitts and their opposite numbers from the Red Air Force out of the sky with hideous ease in the early days of their invasion.
But Ignacy answered, “It’s a Fieseler 156.” He saw that didn’t mean anything to Ludmila, so he added, “They call it a Storch—a Stork.”
The nickname didn’t help. Ludmila said, “I think it would be better if you let me see the aircraft than if you talk about it.”
“Yes,” he said, and put his hands out in front of him, as if on an imaginary keyboard. He had been a piano teacher, sure enough. “Come with me.”
The aircraft was about three kilometers from Ignacy’s encampment. Those three kilometers of rough trail, like most of the landscape hereabouts, showed how heavy the local fighting had been. The ground was cratered; chunks of metal and burned-out hulks lay everywhere; and she passed a good many hastily dug graves, most marked with crosses, some with Stars of David, and some just left alone. She pointed at one of those. “Who lies under there? A Lizard?”
“Yes,” Ignacy said again. “The priests, so far as I know, have not yet decided whether Lizards have souls.”
Ludmila didn’t know how to answer that, so she kept quiet. She didn’t think she had a soul, not in the sense Ignacy meant. The things people too ignorant to grasp the truths of dialectical materialism could find over which to worry themselves!
She wondered where the alleged Fieseler 156 was hiding. They’d passed only a couple of buildings, and those had been too battered to conceal a motorcar, let alone an airplane. Ignacy led her up a small rise. He said, “We’re right on top of it now.” His voice showed considerable pride.
“Right on top of what?” Ludmila asked as he led her down the other side of the rise. He took her around to a third side—and then realization sank in. “Bozhemoi! You built a platform with the aircraft under it.” That was maskirovka even the Soviets would have viewed with respect.
Ignacy heard the admiration in her voice. “So we did,” he said. “It seemed the best way of concealing it we had available.” To that she could only nod. They’d done as much work as the Red Air Force had outside Pskov, and they couldn’t even fly the airplane they were hiding. The partisan leader pulled a candle out of one of the pockets of the Wehrmacht tunic he was wearing. “It will be dark in there with the earth and the timer and the nets blocking away the light.”
She sent Ignacy a suspicious look. She’d had trouble from men when they got her alone in a dark place. She touched the butt of her Tokarev. “Don’t try anything foolish,” she advised him.
“If I tried nothing foolish, would I be a partisan?” he asked. Ludmila frowned but held her peace. Stooping, Ignacy held up an edge of the camouflage netting. Ludmila crawled under it. She in turn held it up so the Polish guerrilla could follow her.
The space under the camouflaged platform was too large for a single candle to do much to illuminate it. Ignacy walked over to the aircraft hidden there. Ludmila followed him. When the faint glow showed her what the aircraft was, her eyes got wide. “Oh, one of these,” she breathed.
“You know it?” Ignacy asked. “You can fly it?”
“I know of it,” she answered. “I don’t know yet whether I can fly it. I hope I can, I will tell you so much.”
The Fieseler Storch was a high-wing monoplane, not much bigger than one of her beloved Kukuruzniks, and not much faster, either. But if a Kukuruznik was a cart horse, a Storch was a trained Lipizzan. It could take off and land in next to no room at all; flying into a light breeze, it could hover in one place, almost like a Lizard helicopter. Ludmila took the candle from Ignacy and walked around the plane, fascinatedly studying the huge flaps, elevators, and ailerons that let it do its tricks.
From what she’d heard, not every Storch was armed, but this one carried two machine guns, one under the body, one in back of the pilot for an observer to fire. She set her foot in the mounting stirrup, opened the pilot-side door, and climbed up into the cockpit.
So much of it was glass that, although it was enclosed, she had a much better all-around view than she did in the open cabin of a Kukuruznik. She wondered how she’d like flying without the slipstream blasting her in the face. Then she brought the candle up to the instrument panel and studied it in amazement. So many dials, so many gauges . . . how were you supposed to do any flying if you tried to keep track of all of them at once?
Everything was finished to a much higher standard than she was used to. She’d seen that before with German equipment; the Nazis made their machines as if they were fine watches. The Soviet approach, contrariwise, was to turn out as many tanks and planes and guns as possible. If they were crude, so what? They were going to get destroyed anyhow.
“You can fly it?” Ignacy repeated as Ludmila, rather reluctantly, descended from the cabin.
“Yes, I really think I can,” Ludmila answered. The candle was burning low. She and Ignacy started back out toward the netting under which they would leave. She glanced back at the Storch, hoping to be a rider worthy of her steed.
Soviet artillery boomed south of Moscow, flinging shells toward Lizard positions. Distantly, the reports reverberated even in the Kremlin. Listening to them, Iosef Stalin made a sour face. “The Lizards grow bolder, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich,” he said.
Vyacheslav Molotov did not care for the implication behind the words. It’s your fault, Stalin seemed to be saying. “As soon as we can produce another explosive-metal bomb, Iosef Vissarionovich, we shall remind them we deserve respect,” he answered.
“Yes, but when will that be?” Stalin demanded. “These so called scientists have been telling me lies all along. And if they don’t move faster, they will regret it—and so will you.”
“So will the entire Soviet Union, Comrade General Secretary,” Molotov said. Stalin always thought everyone lied to him. A lot of the time, people did, simply because they were too afraid to tell him the truth. Molotov had tried to tell him that, after using the bomb made from the Lizards’ explosive metal, the USSR would not be able to make anymore for a long time to come. He hadn’t wanted to listen. He seldom wanted to listen. Molotov went on, “It seems, however, that we shall soon have more of these w
eapons.”
“I have heard this promise before,” Stalin said. “I grow weary of it. When exactly will the new bombs appear in our arsenal?”
“The first by summer,” Molotov answered. That made Stalin sit up and take notice, as he’d thought it would. He continued, “Work at the kolkhoz has made remarkable progress lately, I’m happy to report.”
“Yes, Lavrenti Pavlovich tells me the same. I am glad to hear it,” Stalin said, his expression hooded. “I will be gladder to hear it if it turns out to be true.”
“It will,” Molotov said. It had better. But now he began to believe that it would—and so, evidently, did Beria. Getting that American to Kolkhoz 118 had proved a master stroke. His presence and his ideas proved, sometimes painfully, just how far behind that of the capitalist West the Soviet nuclear research program had been. He took for granted both theory and engineering practice toward which Kurchatov, Flerov, and their colleagues were only beginning to grope. But, with his knowledge, the Soviet program was finally advancing at a decent pace.
“I am glad to hear we shall have these weapons,” Stalin repeated, “glad for your sake, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich.”
“I serve the Soviet Union!” Molotov said. He picked up the glass of vodka in front of him, knocked it back, and filled it again from the bottle that stood beside it. He knew what Stalin meant. If the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union did not soon have an explosive-metal bomb, they would soon have a new foreign commissar. He would get the blame for the failure, not Stalin’s Georgian crony, Beria. Stalin was not allergic to scribbling the initials VMN on the case files of those marked for liquidation, any more than Molotov had been.
“When we have our second bomb, Comrade General Secretary,” Molotov said, resolutely not thinking about what would happen—to the USSR and to him—if they didn’t have it, “I recommend that we use it at once.”
Stalin puffed on his pipe, sending up unreadable smoke signals. “With the first bomb, you advised against using it. Why now the change of mind?”
“Because when we used the first, we had no second with which to back it, and I feared that would become obvious,” Molotov answered. “Now, though, by using the new bomb, we not only prove we do have it, but also give the promise of producing many more after it.”
More nasty smoke rose. “There is method in this,” Stalin said with a slow nod. “Not only does it serve warning on the Lizards, it also warns the Hitlerites we are not to be trifled with. And it sends the same signal to the Americans. Not bad, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich.”
“First priority, as you say, is the Lizards.” Molotov stuck strictly to the business at hand. He had not let Stalin see his fear at the threat he’d received, though the General Secretary surely knew it was there. He did not show his relief, either. Again, sham or not, Stalin could hardly be ignorant of it. He played his subordinates’ emotions as if they were violin strings, and set one man against another like an orchestra conductor developing and exploiting opposing themes.
Now Stalin said, “In remembering the first priority, we must also remember it is not the only one. After the Lizards make peace with the rodina—” He stopped and puffed meditatively on the pipe.
Molotov was used to listening for subtle nuances in the General Secretary’s speech. “After the Lizards make peace, Iosef Vissarionovich? Not, after the Lizards are defeated or exterminated or driven from this world?”
“Comrade Foreign Commissar, for your ears only, I do not think this within our power,” Stalin said. “We shall use the bomb—if the scientists deign to give it to us. We shall destroy whatever concentration of Lizards we can with it. They, in turn, will destroy one of our cities: this is the exchange they make. We cannot win at this rate. Our goal now must be to convince the aliens they cannot win, either, but face only ruin if the war goes on.”
“Under these circumstances, what terms do you intend to seek?” Molotov asked. How long do you intend to honor them? also came to mind, but he did not have the nerve to put that question to Stalin. The General Secretary was ruthlessly pragmatic; he’d wrung every bit of advantage he could from his pact with Hitler. The one thing he hadn’t expected there was Hitler’s outdoing him in ruthlessness and striking first. Any peace with the Lizards was liable to be similarly temporary.
“I want them out of the USSR,” Stalin said, “beyond the frontiers of 22 June 1941. Past that, everything is negotiable. Let the fascists and capitalists dicker for their own countries. If they fail, I shall not lift a finger to help them. They would not help me, as you know.”
Molotov nodded, first in agreement to that and then in slow consideration of the General Secretary’s reasoning. It fit with what Stalin had done in the past. Rather than trying to foment world revolution, as the Trotskyites urged, Stalin had concentrated on building socialism in one country. Now he would take the same approach toward building independent human power.
“The Lizards are imperialists,” Molotov said. “Can they be made to accept something less than their full, planned scope of conquest? This is my principal concern, Iosef Vissarionovich.”
“We can make the Soviet Union not worth their having.” By Stalin’s tone, he was prepared to do exactly what he said. Molotov did not think the General Secretary was bluffing. He had the will to do such a thing if he was given the ability. The physicists were giving him that ability. Could the Lizard fleetlord match the General Secretary’s driving will? The only humans Molotov had met who came up to that standard were Lenin, Churchill, and Hitler. Could Atvar come up to it? Stalin was betting the fate of his country that the alien could not.
Molotov would have been more confident had Stalin not so disastrously misjudged Hitler. He—and the USSR—had come close to perishing from that mistake. If he made a similar one against a foe with explosive-metal bombs, neither he, the Soviet Union, nor Marxism-Leninism would survive.
How to tell Stalin of his misgivings? Molotov drained the second glass of vodka. He could find no way.
XI
Out to the front again. If it hadn’t been for the honor of the thing, Brigadier General Leslie Groves would have greatly preferred to stay back at the University of Denver and tend to his knitting: which is to say, making sure atomic bombs got made and the Lizards weren’t any the wiser.
But when the general commanding the front ordered you to get your fanny out there, that was what you did. Omar Bradley, in a new-style pot helmet with three gold stars painted on it, pointed from his observation post out toward the fighting line and said, “General, we’re hurting them, there’s no two ways about that. They’re paying for every inch of ground they take—paying more than they can afford. If our Intelligence estimates are even close to being right. We’re hurting them, as I said, but they keep taking inches, and we can’t afford that at all. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, sir,” Groves answered. “We are going to have to use a nuclear device to stop them.”
“Or two, or three, or as many as we have, or as many as it takes,” Bradley said. “They must not break into Denver. That, right now, is our sine qua non.”
“Yes, sir,” Groves repeated. At the moment, he had one, count it, one atomic bomb ready for use. He would not have any more for several weeks. Bradley was supposed to know as much. In case he didn’t, Groves proceeded to spell it out in large red letters.
Bradley nodded. “I do understand that, General. I just don’t like it. Well, the first one will have to rock them back on their heels enough to buy us time to get the next built, that’s all there is to it.”
A flight of American planes, long hoarded against desperate need, roared by at treetop height. The P-40 Kittyhawks had ferocious shark mouths painted on their radiator cowlings. Wing machine guns blazing, they shot up the Lizards’ front-line positions. One of them took out an enemy helicopter, which crashed in flames.
Briefed against heroics that would get them killed, the pilots quickly turned for the run home. Two exploded in midair in quick succession
, the second with a blast louder than the other racket on the battlefield. The rest made it back into American-held territory.
“Nice to see the Lizards on the receiving end for a change instead of dishing it out,” Groves said.
Bradley nodded. “I hope those pilots can get down, get out of their planes, and get under cover before any Lizard rockets follow them home.” He had a reputation for being a soldiers’ general, for thinking of his men first. Groves felt a vague twinge of conscience that he hadn’t done the same.
As if to show how the job should be done, a Lizard fighter dove on the American lines like a swooping eagle. Instead of talons, it used two pods full of rockets to rend its foes. Men—and a few women—with red crosses in white circles on helmets and arm-bands ran forward to take the wounded back to aid stations.
“The Lizards don’t shoot at medics on purpose, do they?” Groves said. “They’re better at playing by the rules than the Japs were.”
“You can’t say things like that any more. Japan is on our side now.” A dry tone and a raised eyebrow warned that Bradley did not intend to be taken altogether seriously.
Another Lizard fighter pounded the American positions, this one close enough to Groves and Bradley that both men dove into a dugout to escape bomb fragments and cannon fire. Groves spat out mud. That wasn’t the taste of war he got in his usual theater of operations. He wasn’t used to looking down at himself and seeing a filthy uniform, either.
Bradley took it all in stride, although he wasn’t used to real live combat himself. As calmly as if he were still standing upright, he said, “We’ll want to site the bomb in an area where the Lizards are concentrating troops and matériel. In fact, we’ll do our best to create such an area. The tricky part will be doing it so the Lizards don’t notice what we’re up to till too late.”
Worldwar: Striking the Balance Page 36