Last Orders: The War That Came Early (33 page)

No matter what he said, chances were he wished the Devil would stick his pitchfork in the Republic’s ass. But he had sense enough to know saying that
would
get him killed. In Spain, you had to be for or against. Lukewarm was right out. With great dignity, the man wiped his face on his sleeve. He grimaced at the bloodstains.

“Go on. Get lost,” Chaim told the Republican soldiers. “You’ve done your good deed for the day.” He gestured with the rifle to put some oomph in the order.

He didn’t think he would have plugged them had they said no. But they weren’t so sure about that. They also weren’t sure, however, that they’d been doing what they were supposed to when they started stomping the farmer. So they did take off, leaving only black looks and an obscene gesture to remember them by.

“Muchas gracias, Señor,”
the farmer said. “You have saved my life, for whatever it may be worth to you.” He put a hand on his ribcage and winced. If he didn’t have a busted slat or two, Chaim would have been amazed. The kids hadn’t been playing when they punted him—not even close. His life might not be worth much even to him for the next little while.

“De nada,”
Chaim answered. “I wanted you to know that not everybody from the Republic is a son of a whore.”

“
Bueno
. That is worth knowing,” the farmer said gravely. “Now it appears the Republic will be in charge here.”

“It does look that way,” Chaim agreed.

“I am going to drink wine to restore myself,” the farmer said. “You will allow me to give you some?”

“Try and stop me from allowing you.” Chaim grinned.

When the farmer had worked that through, he allowed himself the ghost of a smile. He led Chaim into the farmhouse. By his limp, they’d kicked him in the thigh, too, probably going for his
cojones
but missing. The farmhouse didn’t look as if he lived there alone. It was too neat, but not with a stern bachelor neatness.

“My wife is with my daughter, a few kilometers from here,” the farmer explained as he poured red wine into two mugs. “My daughter is having a baby. I am glad Luisa did not see this. She would have tried to stop them, and she had no rifle.” He raised his mug.
“¡Salud!”

“¡Salud!”
Chaim drank. It was strong and rough. The farmer might have made it himself or traded a couple of chickens to a neighbor for a jug’s worth. You wouldn’t want to pay much for it. For drinking a toast, it was fine.

Cautiously, the farmer held out his hand. “I am called Diego Lopez,” he said.

“Con mucho gusto, Don Diego,”
Chaim replied, and gave his own name.

Lopez gamely tried to pronounce it. Having heard before what Spaniards did to
Chaim Weinberg
, the Abe Lincoln hid a smile. The farmer said, “You told those others you were a foreigner. Your name shows it, and your Spanish. You speak very well, but you are no native.”

Along with being compulsively brave, Spaniards were compulsively polite. They would inquire after your health while they carved up your liver. Laughing, Chaim said, “My Spanish is crappy. I try, and I can make people understand me, but it’s crappy all the same. I know that.”

“I have not seen many foreigners before. Please excuse me for a moment.” Lopez poured water from an earthenware crock onto a rag. He used it to clean more blood from his head. Eyeing the stains on the rag, he sighed. “Is this what we have to look forward to under the Republic?”

“I hope not,” Chaim answered. “There are
putos
in every army in the world, though,
¿verdad?
”

“Yes, that is true,” Diego Lopez said. “Some of them fought for Marshal Sanjurjo, too—it is not to be doubted.”

“Every army, every side,” Chaim said. “They think it’s fun to beat up on people who can’t fight back. And it’s much safer than going after the enemy’s soldiers.”

“I believe that.” Lopez held out the jar of wine. “Would you like me to fill that again for you,
Señor
?”

“Muchas gracias,”
Chaim replied. The farmer also poured more for himself. They wished each other good health before they drank. No, it wasn’t great wine, but any wine was better than no wine at all.

“Ahh,” Lopez said. “Yes, that does take some of the pain away. I have not seen any Nationalist soldiers here lately, not since just after Marshal Sanjurjo, ah, passed away.”

Got his head blown off
, Chaim edited. But saying that to his host would have been rude. Lopez might have fed the Spanish Fascists because he had no choice. He might also have sympathized with them. A depressing number of people did, or the fight never could have dragged on so long. That was the sort of thing Chaim didn’t want to know officially. If he didn’t know, he didn’t have to do anything about it.

He said, “The Nationalists seem to be fighting among themselves more than they’re fighting the Republic now.”

“Marshal Sanjurjo was a strong man.” Lopez seemed to pick his words with care. “No one left on the Nationalist side has the power of character to bring everyone else with him.” He didn’t say he approved of the cause under which he’d lived. That would have given Chaim a handle on him. You had to be careful with someone you hadn’t known for a long time, even if that someone had just saved your life.

“You should make friends with the Internationals—bring ’em food or something,” Chaim said. “They’ll keep ordinary tough guys from giving you trouble.”

“I had heard that no one has to do things like that in the Republic,” Lopez said.

“People hear all kinds of things, don’t they?” Chaim replied, his voice bland. “Wherever there are people, it’s a good idea to make friends.”

“So it is things as they are, and not things as the ones in charge wish they were?” the farmer asked shrewdly.

Chaim came to Spain on the strength of his idealism. He still had some: enough to think the Republic was better than the reactionaries who fought against it. He nodded anyhow. “It’s things as they are, all right.”

“Here.” Hermann Witt held out a paper and a pencil. “One more thing for you to sign.”

The form assured
Wehrmacht
headquarters that everyone in the crew of this particular Panzer IV had been vaccinated against smallpox. Almost of its own accord, the pencil scrawled
Adalbert Stoss
on the line at which Sergeant Witt pointed.

“Thanks,” Witt said, and went off to bother the couple of men who hadn’t yet done their bit for the
Reich
’s paperwork.

Saul Goldman looked down at his right hand as if it belonged to someone else. As a matter of fact, it did, or it seemed to more often than not. That hand was convinced he was Adi Stoss, and would scribble Adi’s illegible signature wherever anyone said it needed to go.

He answered to
Adi
, of course. He had no idea what he’d do if somebody were to call him Saul. That name was gone, forgotten by everyone except his family (if they still lived—he had no idea) and the various Nazi security services.
They
still lived, and to them he was not just a wanted man but that even more dangerous creature, a wanted Jew.

Saul had done his best to think of himself as Adi so he wouldn’t hang himself by slipping up. In Poland and Russia, days or even weeks could go by without his being reminded of who and what he really was. That he made such a good soldier only showed what rubbish the
Führer
’s rules against letting Jews into the military were.

But these days the regiment was stationed just outside of Münster. He hadn’t expected to see his hometown again till after the war ended and the Nazis no longer ruled Germany—assuming that happened and assuming he lived to see it, which didn’t seem likely.

Here he was, though. Münster had had a bellyful of National Socialism. And National Socialism had also had a bellyful of Münster. If the SS couldn’t keep the town obedient to the
Reich
, Hitler was ready to use the
Wehrmacht
to take care of that.

For now, the panzer regiment remained on the outskirts of town. No self-important officer or politico had ordered in the machines. Maybe the Party
Bonzen
hoped the threat of armor would keep Münster in line. Or maybe some worried colonel feared that street fighters would chuck a Molotov cocktail through an open hatch from some upper-story window and then get away unpunished.

Staying out of town didn’t break Saul’s heart, not even a little bit. He was glad that, if and when the panzers were ordered into Münster, he’d sit in the driver’s seat, looking out at the world through his vision slits and armor-glass vision blocks. He was even gladder the locals would be looking in on him the same way.

That was what you got for making yourself a reputation on the football pitch. Not just his neighbors would recognize him if he stuck his head out the hatch the way drivers sometimes did when things seemed safe. No. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people would.

When you were wanted for murder, that wasn’t the ideal situation. His large, callused hands folded into fists. He remembered swinging his shovel at the labor-gang boss who kept yelling that he was a rotten kike and hitting and kicking him every time he got the chance. He remembered the thrill that ran up the shaft when the flat of the blade caved in the bastard’s skull. And he remembered running farther and faster than he ever had on the pitch to get away from all the sons of bitches who were chasing him.

One of his footballing friends passed him the identity papers with his new name on them—and without anything to show he was a Jew. In the Nazis’
Reich
, greater friendship than that no man had. The photo didn’t look a whole lot like him, but who worried about such things? Besides, the documents he’d got since joining the
Wehrmacht
bore his authentic mug shot.

By now, at least half the people in the regiment knew he was a Jew. The National Socialist Loyalty Officer wasn’t one of them. Of course,
there were a great many things Major Stähler didn’t know. To Saul, at least, that was one of the more important ones, though.

“Hey, Sergeant!” he called.

“What’s cooking, Adi?” Witt came back.

“Got a question for you,” Saul said.

“I’m all ears.”

“Suppose we get an order to start shooting canister at the civilians in Münster. What do we do then?”

Panzers carried only a few rounds of canister. You didn’t use it very often. It was like an overgrown shotgun shell full of shrapnel balls. If the Russians charged arm in arm, the way they sometimes did, a canister round could get rid of a couple of dozen of them at once. It could smash a crowd of civilians into red ruin in nothing flat, too.

Hermann Witt made a horrible face. “Don’t ask me shit like that, all right? If they’re trying to set fire to the panzer or something, I’m entitled to try to stay alive myself. If they’re not … 
Der Herr Gott im Himmel
, who would give an order like that if they’re not?”

Saul scratched his head. Actually, he scratched his service cap. It bore the regime’s embroidered eagle clutching a swastika in its talons. Not quite by accident, his forefinger brushed the fylfot several times. If Witt got it, fine. If not, Saul hadn’t said anything that could land him in hot water.

Witt got it—Saul had thought he would. The panzer commander sighed and rolled his eyes. “I hope they don’t, that’s all,” he said.

“But what happens if they do?” Saul asked.

He’d pushed it too far. He saw as much right away. “We won’t worry about that till the time comes—
if
it comes, and I hope like hell it doesn’t,” Witt said sharply. “Till then, we’re
not
going to worry about it. We won’t bang our gums about it till then, either, all right?”

“All right, Sergeant,” Saul answered. Had he been an Aryan, he might have kept pushing. Since he wasn’t, since he had his own secrets to guard, he needed to walk soft.

Lothar Eckhardt felt no such limits. “Know what I heard?” he said after a trip to the spare-parts depot to pick up a new and allegedly improved reticle for the gunsight.

“Something juicy, by the way your tongue’s hanging out,” Saul said. “You look like a hound in front of a butcher’s shop.”

“Do I? Wouldn’t be surprised,” the gunner said. “They’re saying the generals have started plotting against the
Führer
again.”

“They’ve been saying that since the war started,” Saul reminded him. “And whenever it looked like it might come true, the
Führer
went out and shot himself some generals.”

“Yes, but—” Eckhardt protested.

Saul cut him off. “But, nothing. When the
Führer
needs the
Wehrmacht
inside of Germany, of course they’re going to start saying that kind of stuff again. Saying it doesn’t make it so.”

“But—” Eckhardt tried again.

“No buts, dammit.” Saul stopped him again, too. “Don’t you think the SS and the SD are listening to hear exactly who’s spouting that shit? Use your head for something better than a hat rack, Lothar. You’re no dope. Don’t you figure the SS and the SD are starting rumors like that so they can find out who likes them? You go running your mouth, you’re just handing them the excuse to get their hooks into you.”

“Oh,” the gunner said in a small voice. “Thanks, Adi. No, that hadn’t crossed my mind.”

“Well, it should have. Don’t take chances, man.” Saul knew all about not taking chances. Maybe Lothar’s rumors were even true. He could hope so. The generals would have to be better than the Party
Bonzen
 … wouldn’t they? But whether the rumors were true or not, he had no intention of passing them along.

Arno Baatz knew how to handle troublemakers in territory the
Reich
had occupied. If they gave you any lip, you smashed them in the head with your rifle butt. If they still showed fight after that, you shot them or hanged them. If you hanged somebody, you put a placard around his neck so his friends and relations would get the message. It was all simple.

Now he and the men he led were back in Münster, though. He still wanted to clobber anyone who squawked, and to kill anyone who
squawked twice.
He
was loyal to the
Führer
, even if the people here weren’t.