Blood of Vipers (10 page)

“
Now
have you seen enough?” Osimov
asked.

Cal’s throat felt tight. “Yes.”

“There were places for sorting, places for
holding, for
dispossessing, for punishing, for killing. Think of it. A entire
factory
compound. Like your abattoirs in Chicago, only the American
slaughterhouses
process pork, the German ones process human flesh. Look. This
building is for
gassing prisoners, and this one for cremating them. How many
thousands has this
factory devoured? How many hundreds of thousands?”

Cal didn’t answer.

“It is industry, that is what the Germans
have done, they
have industrialized evil. What is the punishment fitting this
crime?” Osimov
was breathing heavily now. “I’ll tell you what must be done.
Germany has shown
itself incapable of sitting with civilized nations, and so it
must be removed
from the table. Divided among occupying powers, its industry
stripped away, its
cities burned to the ground, its people removed to the
countryside, to villages
and farms.”

Cal pushed the photographs away. “And this is
why you want
my prisoners? You are going to punish them for what you saw at
this death
camp?”

“The girl is named Greta Voss.”

He tried not to show his alarm. “What’s
that?”

“Your girlfriend. One of the other prisoners
gave us her
name, and she readily confessed.”

“You mean the blond girl with the buns? She’s
not my
girlfriend.”

“Oh?”

“She speaks English. I used her to translate
with the
others. Useful, too, when my mates went for help and that SS
bastard tried to
kill me.”

“Ah, your mates. Tell me about them. What did
you say? A
co-pilot and an engineer?”

“Gunner and navigator.”

“What are their names?”

“Clyde and Simpson.”

He gave the first names he could think of,
two fellows he’d
met on leave last fall in New York before his deployment to
France. On his
first day in the city, he’d explored Central Park, where he
stopped to listen
to a Navy band play “The Stars and Stripes Forever” in a
bandstand next to an
improbably placed Egyptian obelisk. It was here that he bumped
into a pair of
Navy Seabees named Clyde and Simpson from his home state of
Utah. Clyde was a
tall, serious man, already married with children, and Simpson
young and
garrulous, but like Cal, they had no use for the usual nonsense
of soldiers and
sailors on leave—the go-go bars, tattoo parlors, and brothels at
Times Square,
or the illicit gambling dens in Hell’s Kitchen. They had
differed from Cal in
that they were Mormons from highly religious families, but they
welcomed him
into their company, and the three men visited the Statue of
Liberty and the
Bronx Zoo and rode the Cyclone at Coney Island.

“Clyde and Simpson,” Osimov said. “Tell me
about them.”

He described their characters exactly, but
put himself in
the fictional pilot’s seat of a B-27, and described the
harrowing final flight
of their imaginary airplane. Osimov listened with his face
unreadable. Was he
buying it?

“Hmm,” Osimov said after Cal finished weaving
his tale.
“Back to this young
Fräulein
. When did she become your
lover?”

“That’s baloney, and I already told you that.
Maybe she got
some ideas, I don’t know. You saw, she’s just a kid. Anyway,
I’ve got a girl
back home.”

“Then you won’t mind if we send her off with
the other
pretty women.”

“What is the point of that? Revenge?”

“It will give comfort to the front-line
troops.”

“You’re from New York, right?” Cal said.
“You’re Russian,
but you’re American, too. Is that what they taught you in the
U.S.? To behave
like a pig? Or did you learn that when you threw in with
Stalin?”

If the insults ruffled Osimov, he didn’t show
it. “You must
understand, these soldiers are not officers, men of
sophistication, like you
and I. They are villagers and nomads. They cling to
superstitions and hold to
traditional values, such as ‘an eye for an eye,’ or whatever it
says in the
Koran for the Mohammedans. They are prone to excess.”

“Yes, I’ve heard the Germans talk about them.
Frontschweine.
Combat swine.”

“Do they?” Osimov raised his eyebrows. “I
suppose that’s an
appropriate nickname. They are not refined, I’ll grant you that.
But these men
have suffered in defense of Mother Russia. Their families fell
to the butchery
of Nazi
Einsatzgruppen.
Who am I to tell them no? Who
are you?”

“Not with my prisoners they don’t.”

“You may keep the girl. And her mother.”

“I’m not keeping anything. As soon as we
reach American
lines, I’ll turn them over—all of them—to the MPs and be done
with it.”

“We’ll load you in the car with these two
women and drive
you to the American base outside Leipzig. I will personally
guarantee your
safety.”

“And if I say no?”
Osimov’s expression hardened. “Then it goes badly.”

Cal turned it over. What were these prisoners
to him? Two
days ago he’d been flying over the North German Plain, shooting
and killing.
The Germans were his enemies, and his hatred of the Nazi regime
had grown year
by year. Nothing in the past two days had lessened that
loathing. On the
contrary.

But it was one thing to hate Germany as an
enemy, and
another to consider individual Germans. Greta and her hopeful,
earnest
expressions. Her mother, Helgard, and Hans-Peter, who had
shouldered his
panzerfaust
and marched grimly to his death. The baby girl Cal scooped up
from the field,
and the nursing mother without a child who took the girl in to
feed and
comfort. The Wehrmacht soldiers. The woman reunited with her son
in the cellar.
The minister trying to save the Bible and the silver cross from
his church. And
poor Karl, who watched his parents, his sisters, his
grandparents—his entire
extended family—
jump
into the firestorm.

Osimov offered him an out. His own safety.
The lives of two
women. But all those other people...

“I’m sorry,” Cal said. “They’re my prisoners
and my responsibility.
I can’t let you have them.”

“You can and you will.”

“We’re done here.” Cal rose to his feet.
“Find me the
American liaison.”

“Sit down!”

“Go to hell.”

The soldiers came at him. A rifle butt
smashed into the
small of his back. He doubled over in pain. The two men shoved
him back into
the chair.

“Now you listen to me,” Osimov said. He rose
and leaned over
the table, eyes flashing. “Nobody knows you’re alive except your
hypothetical
gunner and navigator. They may have been killed in the battle.
They may not
exist. And even if they tell, what then? Who knows that you are
in my hands?
Nobody. Do you hear that? Nobody. The Americans will make an
official inquiry,
we will profess ignorance, and you will join the vast ranks of
people who disappeared
into the mouth of this war.”

“I won’t let you kill those people.”

“This is a command post of the Soviet Union.
I have absolute
power here.”

“So long as you keep your pigs fed.
Otherwise, they eat
you.”

Osimov sat back down and gave orders. One of
the soldiers
left. He came back moments later with two other soldiers, who
dragged Little
Hitler between them. At least Cal assumed it was the SS officer
because of the
uniform, with the lightning bolts on the collar. Otherwise, his
face was
unrecognizable, with one eye swollen shut, teeth missing, lower
jaw a ruin. A
deep, shuddering sob came up from the man’s chest.

Osimov had his men throw the prisoner to his
knees. He
walked up to the SS officer, drew his sidearm, and placed the
barrel against
the back of the man’s head. The gun roared. Blood and brains
came out the front
of his skull and the German fell face down, motionless.

Cal lifted his gaze from the shocking
violence to see Osimov
watching him, nostrils flaring, a vein pulsing on the side of
his head. All but
one of the other soldiers retreated from the room. Osimov stared
at Cal.

After a long moment, Cal said, “You’ve had
your revenge. I
will be responsible for the others. Take me to American lines
and you can wash
your hands of the whole mess.”

Osimov said nothing. He glanced toward the
kitchen door as
his men returned with two more prisoners. They were the
Wehrmacht soldiers who
had surrendered to Cal in the cellar of the ruined farmhouse.
Their hands were
bound behind their backs. The Russians shoved the men face down
on the plank
floor.

One of the men stayed above the Germans with
his rifle
pointed at their backs, while the other two left, and returned a
moment later
with the German pastor and the woman and her son who had
reunited in the cellar.
They pushed these to the ground as well, and then fetched the
woman who had
taken—and still held—the baby Cal rescued from the field. The
woman cradled the
girl beneath her as she went down. Finally, they came back with
Helgard and
Greta.

Osimov looked down at the prisoners, who now
covered most of
the kitchen floor, shoulder to shoulder in the midst of the pool
of blood still
spreading from the dead SS officer’s head. “You force me to do
this.”

“Don’t, please.”

“I’ll shoot the soldiers first. The old man
dies next. If
you continue to resist, the woman with the baby dies. It would
be cruel to
leave the infant without her mother, so I’ll kill her, too.”

You already killed her mother. Don’t you
see that?

“After that,” Osimov continued, “the older
child and his
mother will die.”

The German soldier who had resisted Little
Hitler gave Cal a
side glance from where he lay with his face pressed into the
ground. Cal met
his gaze and then looked away.

“But not these two,” Osimov said with a nod
at Greta and
Helgard. “They are here to watch, like you. So they’ll remember
your cowardice
when I send them off with the others. So they’ll think about you
when my
frontline troops take their pleasures. Unless....”

“It’s not enough,” Cal said. “You have to
give me more.”

“That’s a more reasonable tone. Yes, I’ll
drive you to the
American headquarters myself. In fact, if you’ll agree now, I’ll
tell you what.
You can take these others, too. The woman with the baby and the
woman with the
boy.”

“There’s a boy named Karl. His family died in
the bombing of
Dresden. Will you give him to me, too?”

“Very well. The boy, too.”

“And what will you do with the men?”

“These two are prisoners of war of the Soviet
Union. This
old man is a member of the Nazi party, and likely a war
criminal.”

“I doubt it. But okay, say you keep those
three. You’ll give
me the rest of them, too? The women and children?”

Osimov shook his head. “I’m afraid not. These
four women and
three children, no more. The rest must be fed to the war pigs.”

Cal stared at the men on the floor. He
couldn’t do it. Maybe,
just maybe, he could surrender these men to whatever fate the
Soviets intended
for their prisoners of war—probably slave labor as revenge for
what the Germans
had done on the Eastern Front. But the other women and children?

He never wanted to be responsible for these
people in the
first place. Hell, he never wanted to take care of Greta and her
family, for
that matter. Hard enough to keep himself alive. Taking these
seven would be a
compromise, the best he could manage under the circumstances.

Cal looked up to see Osimov watching him with
a hard
expression. “Well?” the man demanded. “What will it be? More
pointless deaths?”

Why doesn’t he force me?

That was the question. Instead of marching
Cal off without
his so-called prisoners—and both men knew they weren’t prisoners
at all, but
under the American pilot’s protection—Osimov demanded his
cooperation. Was that
simply the Soviet way, that you must break, must not only
comply, but negotiate
your own capitulation? Must be complicit in the crimes?

Or perhaps the man wasn’t ruthless enough to
do the obvious
and disappear Cal along with the rest. And he was somehow
worried that news of
the abuse of an American pilot would come back to cause him
trouble.

Cal met Greta’s eyes. With her English, she
would understand
this exchange and know what was at stake, but to his surprise he
didn’t see any
pleading, only quiet determination. A firm jaw and a slight nod.

Don’t surrender,
that look said.
You
must try to
save them all.

“No,” Cal said as he turned back to Osimov.
“You killed the
SS officer. Your choice—I turned him over to Soviet custody. But
I did not turn
these men over. Or the women, or the children. They are mine and
I will bring
them back to American lines. All of them.”

Osimov squatted in front of Cal’s chair and
leaned in close.
“That is your answer?”

“That is my answer.”

“You will regret that.”

He stepped over prostrate bodies until he
straddled the
older of the two German soldiers. He pointed his gun down at the
man.

“Don’t do it, Osimov.”

The Russian didn’t turn. “Then you agree with
the plan?”

“Never.”

“You condemn them to death.” He drew back the
hammer.

The German shut his eyes. Cal braced himself.
Greta let out
a low moan.

But then Osimov straightened and lowered the
hammer on the
gun. He put it back into his holster and said something to the
guards. They
dragged the prisoners to their feet and marched them from the
room. Osimov
followed them out without a backward glance. A few minutes
later, more soldiers
came to drag away the dead SS officer.