Last Orders: The War That Came Early (46 page)

It helped them only so much. The Red Army was great for using lots and lots of Russians—and every other folk in the Soviet Union. Had it had the Hitlerites’ fancy gear, it might not have had to spend so many men.
Fungible
, Ivan thought once more. But you did what you could with what you had. The Red Army had soldiers, and used them … and used them up.

“Comrade Sergeant, tell off three men. You and they will take Colonel von Holtzendorf”—Obolensky pronounced it
Goltzendorf
, since Russian had no
h
sound—“to regimental headquarters. About four kilometers that way.” He pointed northeast.

“I serve the Soviet Union!” Ivan said. He nodded to the German. “Don’t get your pussy lost, sweetheart. I’ll be back fast as a fart.”

He grabbed two tough guys and Sasha Davidov. “I don’t want to have anything to do with that goddamn Nazi shithead,” the Jew said.

“Not even to tell him how many knots you feel like tying in his dick?” Ivan asked slyly.

“Well, when you put it that way …” Davidov came along with no more backtalk. Ivan chuckled to himself. If you knew what made somebody tick, you could get him to do anything you wanted.

Grubby Red Army Jew and aristocratic
Wehrmacht
officer eyed each other with undisguised suspicion and loathing. Kuchkov had Colonel von Holtzendorf keep carrying the white flag. “Wouldn’t want one of our fuckers shooting you by mistake. That’d be such a cocksucking shame,” he said.

“I think so,” the German agreed. “I would not want that, either.”

“No—way better they should shoot you on purpose,” Sasha said.

“I am trying to stop the fighting,” von Holtzendorf said. “I don’t know if I can, but I am trying.”

“And how much did you try the last few years?” the Jew returned.
“They don’t give medals like that to peacemakers.” The colonel wore the German Cross in Gold and the Iron Cross First Class on his chest, as well as the ribbon for the Iron Cross Second Class and two wound badges. No, he hadn’t always been a peacemaker. Germans usually wore their medals in the field, even if it gave their foes a better shot at them. Pride came in all shapes.

Von Holtzendorf shrugged. “I fought in the last war, too. I have two sons in the
Wehrmacht
, one north of here and the other in Belgium. They would be about your age. If I succeed in this, maybe none of my grandsons will have to find out what sleeping in a trench is like.”

“Alevai,”
Davidov said. That wasn’t Russian or, evidently, German either. He didn’t explain it. Instead, he went on, “Did you people really get rid of Hitler?” Unlike Lieutenant Obolensky, he could say h.

“We did. We had to,” the colonel answered. “He went too far.”

“He got you into this cunt of a war, and you didn’t fucking win it,” Ivan translated.

“Among other things,” von Holtzendorf said. “Finally, among too many other things.”

“Is Himmler dead, too?” Sasha asked.

“I … think so. There are conflicting reports,” Colonel von Holtzendorf replied. “It is certain, though, that the SS still resists the Salvation Committee.”

Ivan laughed, but only to himself. If the Germans had bought themselves a civil war, how were they going to fight the foreign enemies they’d made for themselves? He chuckled again. If he could see that, he was sure people like Stalin and Molotov could, too.

They got to the tents housing regimental headquarters in less than an hour. The sight of a Fascist colonel made the place bubble like a forgotten kettle of shchi. Ivan wasn’t thrilled about turning von Holtzendorf loose, but he did. And what would come of it … well, who the hell could say?

Saul Goldman snuggled the Panzer IV into a corner so it was shielded by a house on one side and a stone wall in front. He wasn’t just worried about the pro-Hitler panzer crews from his regiment. Some of the
Waffen
-SS men who’d failed to protect their precious
Führer
drove Tigers. It would have taken a lot more stone than was in that wall to shield the Panzer IV from one of their rounds.

His family lived only a few kilometers away. He hoped they were all right. Hope was all he could do right now; he hadn’t yet dared go see them. The Salvation Committee hadn’t done anything about the Nazis’ anti-Semitic laws, but no one on that side went around screaming
The Jews are our misfortune!
Still, he wasn’t just a Jew. He was a Jew with a murder charge hanging over his head.

But, no matter what else he was, he was also a German soldier fighting for the people trying to overthrow the Nazis. No matter what he did with the rest of his life, the way it looked to him was that he could live a long time on the credit he was piling up in these few hectic days.

If he could live at all. Hermann Witt spoke a warning to the crew:
“Keep an eye peeled for ordinary infantrymen, too. A lot of the clowns they’ve got around here still think they ought to be going
Sieg heil!
”

“That goes double for you, Sergeant,” Saul said. “You’re the one who’s got to keep sticking his head up out of the cupola to find out what’s going on.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Witt told him. “You tend to your job, and I’ll tend to mine.”

“Yes, Mommy,” Saul said sweetly. Everybody in the panzer laughed. Everybody knew he was kidding on the square just the same.

“I only wish the two sides had different colors,” Kurt Poske said. “I hate the idea of shooting at somebody who’s with us by mistake.”

All the panzer crewmen agreed with that. Even Theo nodded. But Sergeant Witt said, “What can you do?” and no one had a good answer for him. The Salvation Committee’s colors were black, white, and red, just like the Nazis’. The Nazis, of course, slapped swastikas all over everything. The Salvation Committee had gone back to the flag of the German Empire, a horizontal tricolor.

Saul did think the Salvation Committee was smart to steer clear of the Weimar Republic’s black, gold, and red. Few Germans had happy memories of the Republic. If more had been happy with it, Hitler wouldn’t have found it so easy to overthrow.

And, of course, if more people had been happy with the present regime, Hitler would still be running things. But the German generals, faced with the idea of a two-front war against two industrial powers that each outclassed and outmanned the
Reich
(plus England and France, which between themselves and their colonies also outproduced and outmanned Germany), decided that they had to find a peace even if—especially if—Hitler didn’t want to.

Out of nowhere, Theo spoke up: “You know what’s really crazy?”

“You mean, besides you?” Saul said. He couldn’t let something so unusual pass unremarked.

Theo ignored him. “What’s really crazy is, so many stupid fools want what’s left of the Nazis to keep running things.”

Weeks went by when Theo didn’t say so much of his own accord. He’d hit on something important here, though, or Saul thought he
had. Everything Hitler had done since the war started had pushed Germany straight toward the cliff. The
Wehrmacht
hadn’t taken Paris. France fought on. So did England. Joining Poland’s war against Russia hadn’t knocked out the Bolsheviks. Now the
Reich
was falling back or being driven back on all fronts. Why would anybody with a working set of marbles want to see more of that kind of performance?

“Hello!” Witt said suddenly. “We’ve got what looks like a couple of companies of foot soldiers moving across our front. Now—which side are they on?” Saul couldn’t see them from the driver’s seat; the stone wall blocked his view. After a moment probably spent raising binoculars to his face, the panzer commander grunted. “Ha! They’ve got swastika armbands! Kurt! Canister!”

“Canister!” Poske echoed. After a couple of seconds, the round clanged into the breech. The loader had to reach down and out to grab it, then bring it back and slam it home. The panzer carried only a handful of canister rounds. The crew didn’t need them very often, and naturally stowed them in the most out-of-the-way ammunition racks.

When you did fire one, though, it could do horrible things. The panzer’s canister rounds were basically 75mm shotgun shells. They were full of lead balls, and at short range they could ruin a crowd like nothing else on God’s green earth.

The turret traversed a little. The gun came down to shoot just over the wall. “Fire, Lothar!” Witt yelled. “They know we’re here. The motion must’ve tipped them.”

“On the way!” Lothar Eckhardt said, and the gun boomed. Then the gunner muttered, “Oh, dear Lord!” Saul couldn’t see what the round had done to the pro-Nazi foot soldiers, but that told him everything he needed to know.

Almost everything—a second later, a rifle round rang off the turret. It hadn’t a hope in hell of punching through, but it showed the canister shell hadn’t killed or maimed all the
Landsers
out there or broken their spirits.

“Another round of the same, Kurt,” Witt said, and then, “Lothar, while he’s loading it hose ’em down with the turret machine gun.”

“Another round of canister,” Poske said at the same time as Eckhardt was replying, “I’m doing it, Sergeant.”

As the MG-34 mounted alongside the panzer’s big gun spat death, Saul wondered how many times they’d chewed up Russians like that. Quite a few, even if he couldn’t put an exact number to it. No matter how often it was, he’d never imagined they would be using the machine gun the same way against rebellious German soldiers.

No, that isn’t right
, he thought as the cannon roared again.
We’re the rebellious German soldiers
. He grinned ferociously, liking the idea.

Then Sergeant Witt spoke to him: “Back us out of here, Adi. I don’t want them coming through the house and jumping us with grenades or Molotov cocktails. Let’s get out into the open, where we can see trouble coming.”

“Backing us out, Sergeant.” Saul put the panzer into reverse. Ivans who drove T-34s often carried a mallet to whack the shift lever and make the transmission do what they told it to. German engineering was of a higher order … even if the USSR kept turning out ungodly swarms of crude but deadly panzers.

After Saul had backed away, Witt sent the panzer out around the end of the wall. That showed Saul what the two rounds of canister had done to his countrymen. Even if they were committed Nazis, the sight made him gulp. The only difference between Russians and Germans after they got blasted to pieces and strings was the color of the bits of unbloodstained cloth covering corpses and bits of corpses.

More bullets rattled off the panzer, these probably from a submachine gun. Theo fired a quick burst from the bow machine gun. He raised the thumb on his left hand, which told Saul they wouldn’t need to worry about that fellow till the Judgment Day.

“Good job,” Witt said. “I don’t think this mob will give us any more trouble, anyhow. Any orders on the radio, Theo?”

“Nope,” Hossbach answered laconically.

“On my own. I wonder if I can stand that much freedom.” The panzer commander paused thoughtfully. “I wonder if Germany can stand that much freedom.” It was one of the better questions Saul Goldman had heard lately. He wished he didn’t have to worry about the answer, too.

.  .  .

Over on the far side of the barbed wire, the Germans were going out of their minds. To Alistair Walsh, that meant they were going further out of their minds than they already were. When soldiers wearing the same uniform but different armbands started shooting at one another, something was rotten in the state of
Deutschland
.

Only one thing could make all the Fritzes shoot in the same direction these days. When the English or French tried to push a little deeper into Belgium, the Germans turned from distracted lunatics in the middle of a civil war back into, well, Germans.

That was the last thing any of their foes wanted. Distracted lunatics were exciting, even entertaining, to watch. Germans were dangerous. All the
Reich
’s neighbors had two wars’ worth of experience—France had three—about just how dangerous Germans were.

So Walsh and his men sat tight. They didn’t shoot at the Fritzes. The Fritzes mostly didn’t shoot at them even if they showed themselves, as long as they didn’t look as if they were about to attack. It was a funny kind of war. Any kind of war that turned ordinary soldiers into would-be striped-pants diplomats struck Walsh as pretty funny.

But that was what this war was doing. Jack Scholes came up to Walsh and demanded, “ ’Ere, Staff, wot kind of peace d’you reckon the Germans’ll figure is cricket?”

“Haven’t the foggiest,” Walsh answered; he wasn’t ashamed to admit he had no notion of what would happen next. “Hell’s bells, Jack, we don’t even know whether the generals can beat the Nazis, or whether somebody like Himmler—no, they say Himmler’s dead: somebody like Heydrich, then—turns into the next
Führer
. If that happens, the fighting’ll be on again for real soon enough.”

“Say the generals win.” Yes, Scholes was like a terrier; he didn’t want to let go of what he grabbed on to.

“It would have to be something close to the
status quo ante bellum
, I expect,” Walsh said, sucked into the argument in spite of himself.