The War That Came Early: The Big Switch (22 page)

Herb parked the car in front of the place. Was he grayer than he had been the last time she saw him? And was he wondering the same thing about her? A year and a half! Lord!

“You don’t know how good it is to have you back,” he said.

“You don’t know how good it is to be back!” Peggy said. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “You have no idea. And count yourself lucky you don’t.”

“Maybe I do, a little,” Herb answered, and left it right there.

Peggy started to tell him he was talking through his hat. She didn’t do it, though. Maybe making it to middle age meant she thought before opening her big trap. Sometimes, anyhow. Herb had gone Over There in 1918. He’d seen combat; Peggy knew that much. Even after all these years, she knew very little more. Whatever he’d seen and done in France, he’d never talked about it once he came back to the States. This was almost the first time he’d suggested he might have run into an unpleasantness or three while working for Uncle Sam.

And so, instead of laughing at him, Peggy said, “I could use a drink—and if you want to spell that with a U, I don’t mind.”

“Motion seconded and passed by acclamation.” Herb got out of the Packard, came around, and opened the passenger door for her. The suitcase stayed on the back seat. Peggy didn’t need anything in it right away, and nobody would steal it, not in this eminently respectable neighborhood.

Herb opened the front door. He took half a step to one side so Peggy could walk into the foyer ahead of him. When she did, she was greeted by shouts of “Surprise!” and “Welcome home!” and enough cheers for a Sunday doubleheader at Shibe Park. Everybody she’d ever met seemed to be crowding the house.

She rounded on her husband. “
You
did this!” she said—half accusation, half delight.

“Darn right I did,” he answered. “You don’t come back from a war every day.”

“I’m going to have that drink, or maybe that drunk, any which way,” Peggy declared.

“Good. I’ll help,” Herb said briskly. She did, and so did he.

VACLAV JEZEK PUT
a helmet on a stick and cautiously raised it up above the level of the trench in which he crouched. That was probably the oldest sniper’s trick in the world, which didn’t mean it didn’t work. The German lines were most of a kilometer away, separated from his position by mines and barbed wire. All the same, a rifle shot rang out over there.

The helmet rang, too, like a bell. He jerked it down. It was a French model. Now it had a bullet hole a centimeter or two above the French crest soldered onto the front.

Sergeant Benjamin Halévy eyed that precisely placed hole. “Well, you were right,” he said. “Fucking Nazis have a sniper of their own running around loose.”

“Happy day,” Vaclav said morosely. “I’ve done this before. I don’t want to do it again, goddammit.” When a sniper annoyed the enemy enough, he did his best to get rid of the annoyance. Vaclav had already won a couple of duels with a German sharpshooter. Now the
Landsers
were back for another try.

“They must have noticed when you murdered that mortar guy and the armored cars,” Halévy said.

“Happy day,” the Czech repeated, even more gloomily than before. The pile of dirt and ore and whatnot where the mortar crew had set up was behind the line now, not in front of it. Clearing all the Germans away from it had cost more lives than it was worth. And the boys in field-gray still had plenty more of those industrial hillocks to use as firing positions.

“Maybe a shell from a 105 will blow that son of a bitch right out of his marching boots,” Halévy said.

“And then you wake up,” Vaclav said, fumbling in his tunic for a pack of Gitanes. He was wearing a French one; the Czech tunic he’d had for so long had finally gone the way of all fabric. The pockets weren’t in the right places—they weren’t where his fingers automatically went, anyhow. Once he had the cigarette going, he added, “You can afford to be cheerful. The bastard isn’t trying to put one in your earhole.”

“He wouldn’t turn me down if I did something stupid,” Halévy said.

“No, but you’d just be part of his job. When two snipers tangle, it’s personal,” Vaclav said. That made it worse, as far as he was concerned. When you shot whoever you saw in the enemy’s uniform, it was war. When you tried to kill one guy in particular, it was something different, something even older and more primitive.

Halévy hit that nail on the head when he said, “Fine. Once you plug this Nazi, cut his liver out and cook it. It’ll probably be fat, like a force-fed goose’s.”

“Heh,” Vaclav said nervously. The way the French got their nice fatty livers for paté made his stomach want to turn over. The idea of eating a German liver, on the other hand, disgusted him less than he thought it should. Still … “He’s probably some lousy
Feldwebel
left over from the last war, and tougher than shoe leather.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised,” Halévy said. “Long pig isn’t any more kosher than regular pig, either. Too bad.”

“It wouldn’t stop you, not the way you gobble down all the ham you can find,” Jezek jabbed.

The Jewish underofficer shrugged. “Food is food. When you get some, you eat it. You can be sorry afterwards. I’m always sorry afterwards. I’m usually sorry there wasn’t more.”

Vaclav snorted. Before he could give Halévy a hard time, a young French officer came up to them and started jabbering away in his own language. Vaclav spread his hands. He really didn’t speak much French. And feigning even more incomprehension kept him from having to do what eager young officers had in mind. A couple of times, that might have kept him from getting killed.

Halévy could interpret, of course—if he felt like admitting he understood French. Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn’t. Sergeants often mistrusted officers’ schemes … and often had good reason.

But this fellow wouldn’t be put off so easily. “Wait,” he said in nasal German. “I was told you followed the
Boche’s
tongue.”

However much Jezek wanted to deny it, he didn’t see how he could, not without landing himself in more trouble.
“Ja,”
he said resignedly.
“Was wollen Sie, mein Herr?”

“I will tell you what I want,” the Frenchman said. “We have found the spot from which the German colonel in charge of the regiment opposite us is in the habit of making reconnaissance. He is a capable officer. If you eliminate him, very likely his replacement will be less so.”

“Foie gras,”
Halévy remarked. The French officer gave him a look that mingled annoyance and curiosity. The Jew did not explain.

In his boots, Vaclav wouldn’t have explained, either. “I must see the place, sir, and find a spot from which to shoot,” he told the officer. His own German was rusty, but it served.

“Aber natürlich,”
the Frenchman said. “Come with me.” He started to straighten.

Vaclav grabbed him before he could. “Be careful, for God’s sake,” he said. “The Nazis have their own sniper over there.”

“Oh, really? Is that so?” Maybe the young officer was being ostentatiously brave. Then again, maybe he was being ostentatiously stupid. Vaclav took no needless chances. He wanted to live to get old and fat and lazy. If he settled down here and married a Frenchwoman, that wouldn’t be so bad, even if it meant he’d finally have to buckle down and learn the lousy language.

Antitank rifle clunking against his back at every step, he followed the officer down the trench. He made sure he didn’t show himself. If the German marksman was watching through field glasses or a telescope, he could recognize the rifle’s long, thick barrel. Better—much better—not to let him do anything about it.

“Here is our lookout position,” the officer said after most of a kilometer. Vaclav lowered the rifle and kept walking. The Frenchman spluttered. “You are insubordinate!” he declared, a word only an officer would bother learning
auf Deutsch
.

“No, sir,” Vaclav said stolidly as the Frenchman trailed after him. “Think the Fritzes don’t know where you look from? Maybe a sniper
can’t put one through your loophole there, but I don’t want to find out the hard way.”

The officer grunted. Speaking German, Vaclav sounded as authoritative as he did. Speaking German, anybody could sound authoritative. That was one of the few things the language was good for. With any luck at all, the Nazi with the scope-sighted Mauser would figure he’d stopped at the observation post. Two or three hundred meters farther on, he raised his helmet above the level of the parapet. When no gunshot came his way, he slowly lowered the helmet, put it on again, and peered across toward the German position.

“Now,” he said, “tell me where the German colonel looks from. Don’t point or anything. Just tell me.”

“You know your business,” the officer said, coming up beside him to look east. He sounded surprised, and more respectful than he had before.

“I’m still breathing,” Vaclav answered, which covered everything that needed saying on that score.

“Do you see the burnt-out automobile, a little to the right of the broken brick fence?” the Frenchman asked. His right arm twitched, but he didn’t point. “That is where the
cochon
does his reconnaissance.”

Vaclav did see it. It was a long shot from here. He wasn’t sure of a kill, but he had a chance.
“Sehr gut,”
he said. “I will come back before sunup, so I can get ready without the Germans seeing me do it.”

“You will know what you require,” the French officer said stiffly. He gave Vaclav a jerky little nod, then hopped off the firing step and down into the trench again.

The Czech
did
know what he required. By the time the eastern sky started getting light, he’d placed his rifle and covered most of the barrel with branches he tore from bushes. His helmet was covered with leafy branches, too, held in place by a rubber strip he’d cut from an old inner tube. He’d seen Germans use that trick, and he liked it well enough to steal.

Once he was set, he had nothing to do but wait. Wait he did, and wait, and wait some more. He wanted a cigarette, but he didn’t smoke. He didn’t know if the enemy was watching this spot, and he didn’t want to do anything to draw his notice. A couple of
poilus
near the lookout
post shot at the German line. They drew answering rifle and machine-gun fire. Vaclav smiled. If the Germans got all hot and bothered by those fellows over there, they weren’t worrying about him.

Halfway through the morning, he was bored. He needed to take a leak. He
really
wanted a cigarette. He waited. That was half the battle, or more than half, for snipers.

And he got his reward. Here came a fellow in a
Feldgrau
greatcoat, with an officer’s peaked cap on his head. He stationed himself near that dead motorcar and began a leisurely examination of the Allied position.

It seemed to Vaclav that the German was looking straight at him when he pulled the trigger. Did the fellow see the muzzle flash? Did he just have time to realize what it was before the bullet hit him? Because it did hit him—he went down like a marionette when the puppeteer drops the strings.

As soon as Vaclav saw that, he ducked and scurried away. The German sniper on the other side of the line would know he’d scored again. The bastard would want to meet him … in a manner of speaking. So many other things could kill or maim him, too. But he was still alive. He might stay that way a while longer.

ANOTHER MISERABLE SUPPER
.
Sarah Goldman’s mother was a good cook. When you had so little to work with, though, what could you do? Pharaoh had ordered the Children of Israel to make bricks without straw. Hanna Goldman faced the same problem, thanks to the orders of Germany’s latter-day Pharaoh. When root vegetables and turnip greens were all you could make, when salt was your only flavoring, you were licked.

After supper, Father turned on the radio. He didn’t usually bother any more. “What’s up?” Sarah asked.

“I want to hear the news,” he answered.

“Good God—why?” Sarah exclaimed. “Same old rubbish.”

“Probably.” Samuel Goldman rolled a cigarette from newspaper and tobacco scrounged from dog ends. It wasn’t a professorial skill, but he had it. Maybe he’d picked it up in the trenches in the last war. More likely, he’d acquired it since exchanging his university post for one in a
labor gang. Jews got no tobacco ration of their own any more. After he lit the nasty cigarette, he went on, “I heard something interesting from somebody who said he heard it from someone you can trust. I want to see if the regular broadcast covers it.”

Sarah had no trouble translating her father’s opaque phrases. He’d been talking with someone who listened to the BBC, or possibly to Radio Paris. That was, of course, against the law, and the Germans jammed enemy stations as hard as they could. People tuned in to them anyhow. The Goldmans would have, even if it was doubly risky for Jews. But, with Saul still on the run from what the Nazis called justice, it was ten times doubly risky for them. If they got caught, they’d go straight to a concentration camp, and so they abstained.

Treacly music came out of the radio set once it warmed up. It was still ten minutes in front of the hour. Father shrugged and made a wry face. “I wish it were a classical program,” he said. “Bach, Beethoven …”

“Wagner?” Sarah suggested.

His mouth twisted even tighter. “Well, maybe not.”

Mother came out of the kitchen to listen, too. They endured the music, and the advertisements for things they weren’t allowed to buy (most of which Aryan Germans couldn’t really get their hands on these days, either), and the exhortations to turn in scrap metal and purchase war bonds.

At last, the announcer said, “And now, the news.” He paused importantly, as if certain everyone was hanging on the sound of his voice. He might not have been so far wrong, either. “In the east, the
Wehrmacht
and the
Reich
’s Polish allies continue to punish the Jew-Bolshevik Red Army. The Asiatic hordes who follow the Soviet red star cannot hope to stand against our brave, well-disciplined troops.”

“He’ll have us in Moscow in a couple of weeks,” Father said dryly.