Last Orders: The War That Came Early (56 page)

“Scheisse,”
Saul muttered—that was much too good a question. The
Wehrmacht
didn’t officially know he was a Jew, of course. But what it officially knew and what it knew were two different things. No
Mischling
or Jew could become even an
Unteroffizier
. They all topped out at the highest grade of senior private. Or they did now. Saul said, “I hope the rules will change now that the Nazis aren’t making them any more.”

“Well, there is that,” Kurt allowed. “They went overboard, no two ways about it. What could you do, though, when they’d kill you or toss you into Dachau if you complained?”

If everybody had complained, right from the start … If everyone’s clothes had sported yellow stars when Jews were ordered to wear them … But how often did human nature work that way? Most of the time, people were just glad to watch somebody else get it in the neck. That meant
they
weren’t. You thought of yourself first, then of your kin, and then of other folks like yourself.

You had to have an elastic soul to stretch it wider than that and think of people not much like you as your fellow human beings. Most folks’ tolerance didn’t go so wide. The Nazis weren’t dopes. They’d understood that, all right.

So Kurt wasn’t a hero and he wasn’t a martyr. Hardly anybody was. You admired those few brave people, but who wanted to imitate them? “You couldn’t do anything,” Saul said. “You always played square with me, and that was plenty.”

“Thanks, Adi.” Kurt Poske eyed him again. “That’s not even your real name, is it?”

“No, but so what?” Saul said. “By now I’m more used to it than the one I was born with.” He meant that. He’d been Adi Stoss all through
the war. Trying to go back would just confuse him. Like the rest of the world, he already felt confused enough.

If they changed the rules, if they turned Jews into citizens again, they might let him become a noncom. He thought he would make a pretty fair sergeant and panzer commander one of these days. Nobody would try to push him around, that was for sure. And when he wondered what he needed to do and how to go about doing it, he could model himself on Hermann Witt.

That was funny, wasn’t it? The son of a professor of classics and ancient history hoping to become a
Feldwebel
and go on telling a panzer crew what to do? It would have been hysterical, not just funny, if he hadn’t thought his father would be proud of him rather than horrified.

You wanted to defend your country if it needed you. Of course, you also wanted your country to defend you if you needed it. Hitler’s
Reich
hadn’t done so well on that score, not if you were a Jew. The Salvation Committee was bound to do better there. It couldn’t very well do worse.

If they ever figured out that Adalbert Stoss and Saul Goldman were the same person, more than his religion might stand between him and sergeant’s rank. There was the small matter of a murder charge. Or there might be. His panzer had helped smash the
Rathaus
in Münster to charred rubble. If his file there hadn’t gone up in smoke, water from fire hoses might have turned it to unreadable pulp. He could hope so.

Here came a kid in black coveralls with a Schmeisser in his hands and a worried look on his face. Seeing Saul and Kurt sitting on the grass by their Panzer IV, he said, “Excuse me, but is this the machine that needs a new driver?”

“That’s right,” Saul answered. “It was my slot till our commander got shot. I didn’t know if they’d send us another sergeant or a new driver.”

“Looks like they’re gonna put you in the turret to stay, Adi,” Kurt said. “Congratulations, man.”

“Thanks,” Saul said. He turned back to the kid. “If you’re going to drive, I guess I am in charge of this traveling madhouse for a while. I’m
Adi Stoss, and this other lazy bum here is Kurt Poske. Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Claus Valentiner.” The new man presented his
Soldbuch
. The pay book showed that he was indeed a trained panzer driver, that he’d seen a little action with a unit in Belgium, that he’d come back to the
Vaterland
to recover from a leg wound, and such less relevant details as his gas-mask size (1—small) and blood group (B).

“Welcome to the zoo, Claus.” Adi wasn’t sure how welcome Valentiner would be. One more new guy to find out about him. He reminded himself that Judaism probably wasn’t a capital crime any more. He reminded himself, yes, but he still had a hard time believing it.

“Doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot of fighting left,” Poske said. “If they were going to send us down to help take Munich, they would have done it by now.”

“Too bad. I’d like to go after the blackshirts,” the kid said. “My uncle went into Mauthausen. He died in there. Heart failure, the telegram said. Right! You kill somebody, sure his heart stops.”

He’d back the Salvation Committee, then. He would if he was telling the truth, anyhow. Having told a pile of his own lies, Saul always wondered about that. Well, nobody would say anything important in front of this new guy till he showed what he was. Theo wouldn’t say anything in front of him any which way.

Saul waved at the panzer. “Want to take a look at your new home? If I’m really going to command a full crew, I’ll clear my junk away from the driver’s seat.”

“Sure. Thanks,” Valentiner said. They walked around to the left front of the machine. Saul opened the hatch. The kid climbed inside.

London. But it was a London Alistair Walsh barely remembered, a London that might as well have been at peace with the whole world. London wasn’t quite. The UK remained at war with Japan. But Japanese planes weren’t going to drop bombs on London Bridge and the British Museum. The blackout was over. Rationing remained, but if you had money to spend you could have yourself a hell of a spree.

On a staff sergeant’s pay, Walsh couldn’t buy himself that kind of
spree here, the way he might have in India or Alexandria. In India or Alexandria, though, he would have celebrated along with other long-serving noncoms. When you were part of the Army’s backbone, naturally you made friends with your fellow vertebrae.

In London, to his lasting wonderment, he had Friends in High Places. That came from his unplanned meeting with Rudolf Hess, too. Winston Churchill did his best to keep Chamberlain’s appeasement-minded government from throwing in with the Fritzes. Winnie was glad to discover Walsh felt the same way. Walsh still marveled that a great man should have wanted to know what he thought, much less cared.

Then a drunk in a Bentley ran Churchill down. They said he was a drunk, at any rate. Walsh never believed it. It was too convenient. The Nazis and the Reds arranged “accidents” like that. They weren’t supposed to happen in civilized countries like England.

Only this one had. Because it had, younger MPs who couldn’t stand the German alliance, men like Ronald Cartland and Bobbity Cranford, noticed Alistair Walsh. He’d resigned from the Army in disgust, but he still had military connections that they used to help overthrow Chamberlain’s successor, the even more pro-German Lord Halifax.
Coups d’état
weren’t supposed to happen in civilized countries like England, either. So much for that.

And now Walsh sat in the warm, smoky comfort of the Lion and Gryphon, the pub near the Houses of Parliament where big chunks of the coup had been plotted. With him sat Cranford, Cartland, and several of the others who’d helped hatch the plot. Walsh had a pint of best bitter in front of him. Most of the rest preferred whiskey, but they made sure his mug stayed full.

Once in a while, they even let him buy a round—they knew he didn’t care to be carried all the time. Never mind that they could have bought and sold him as they pleased.
A man’s a man for a’ that
, he thought—a Scot’s sentiment, but one a Welshman understood, too.

He went off to the jakes. When he came back, he found his pint magically refilled. “Obliged, gentlemen,” he said.

“My pleasure.” Ronald Cartland had fought in France, too, as a captain. That made Walsh take him even more seriously than the others.
They spoke the same language, as it were. Cartland went on, “It’s good to see you back, and back in one piece.”

“Thank you, sir,” Walsh said. “Have we got a peace here, or is this just a rest before we all start thrashing about on the floor again?”

The Tories looked at one another. “A peace or not a peace—that is the question,” Bobbity Cranford misquoted. Walsh had no idea where his nickname came from, but everybody used it. He clowned more than the others, perhaps to live down to his silly handle.

“If 1919 taught us anything, it taught us not to hope for too much,” Cartland said. “The War to End War … didn’t. Chances are this one won’t, either. When we go back—ay, there’s the rub.”

“Not until the Yanks and the Russians finish with the Japanese. That gives poor, battered Europe a little breathing spell, anyhow,” Cranford said. The other Tories nodded.

So did Walsh: it made sense to him. But he asked, “What about us and the Japanese?”

“With Singapore and Malaya and Burma gone, I fear we’re riding the Yanks’ coattails in that war,” Ronald Cartland said. “The logistics are impossibly bad for us to go it alone that far away. We may get back what we’ve lost—I don’t see how Japan can hope to stand up against enemies like that. How long we can keep it once we do get it back is another question, though.”

“How do you mean?” Walsh asked. England had ruled the lands that made up her empire longer than he’d been alive. As far as he was concerned, that meant she could and would keep on ruling them throughout his lifetime and beyond. That came as close to forever as made no difference.

Not to his way of thinking, at any rate. But Bobbity Cranford replied in mournful tones: “With Japan spurring them on, the Burmese have declared their independence.”

“The same way Slovakia did when Hitler told it to.” Walsh’s lip curled. That cut no ice with him.

“It looks as though Slovakian independence will stand,” Cranford said. “If enough of the people in those parts don’t fancy being ruled from Prague, trying to drag them back into the fold would start a new
little war. And if enough of the Burmese can’t stomach rule from London, the same applies there.” He picked up his whiskey glass, tossed back what was left in it, and waved for reinforcements. Then, his tone more mournful yet, he went on, “The same applies to India, of course.”

“India!” Walsh exclaimed. India was far and away the most important part of the empire on which the sun never set. Without it … Without India, it would feel as if the sun were setting on the British Isles.

But all the young Tories gave back somber nods. “Gandhi and Nehru and the Hindus want us gone. So do Muhammad Ali Jinna and the Muslims. Heaven only knows what they’ll do to one another if we should leave, but they all want us to pack up and go.”

“They’ll likely slaughter one another by the carload lot,” Bobbity Cranford said. “They want us to pack up and go all the same. You rule an empire because the people you’re ruling don’t think they’ve got any better choices of their own, and so they let you choose for them. It’s not like that any more. We’ve spread nationalism across the whole world, and now—”

“It’s coming home to roost,” Walsh finished for him.

“That’s about the size of it,” Cranford said.

The barmaid came by to fill up the politicos’ whiskey glasses and Walsh’s pint mug. She was a cute young thing. Walsh wouldn’t have minded a go with her, but she had eyes only for Ronald Cartland. He’d always been like catnip for those of the female persuasion.

After a pull at his fresh pint, Walsh said, “That’s about the size of it unless you’re a Czech or a Lithuanian or some poor bugger like that.”

“I can tell you the difference,” Cartland said—he didn’t seem interested in the barmaid, even if she was interested in him. “The difference is, the Germans and the Russians don’t care how many people they kill to keep the rest quiet. We haven’t the stomach for a policy like that these days.”

“Is that our blessing or our curse?” Walsh asked.

“Probably.” Bobbity Cranford could sound cheerful and foolish about anything. Walsh had taken a while to realize that just because he sounded that way didn’t mean that was how he felt.

“We went to war to keep Hitler from killing swarms of Czechs and other folks he didn’t care for,” Walsh said. “So much for that.”

“So much for that,” Ronald Cartland agreed. “But then again, Hitler went to war to conquer all of Europe—the whole world, for all I know. So much for that, too. And so much for Hitler with it. When you try to put the pieces back together again, you shouldn’t be amazed if no one comes away with everything he might have wanted.”

“Mm.” Walsh stared down into his mug of bitter. He hadn’t looked at things from that angle. “You’ve got a point, sir. But it seems like a devil of a cost to leave everybody unhappy walking out of the play.”

“You’re right. It does,” Cartland said. “Of course, I’ve also heard diplomacy called the art of leaving everyone dissatisfied.” Walsh hadn’t heard that. He wasn’t sure he liked it, either. Like it or not, though, it seemed to be what the world had.

These days, Sarah Bruck was never sure what she’d get when she turned on the radio. The Salvation Committee didn’t run things nearly so smoothly as Dr. Goebbels had. Goebbels, these days, was holed up in the Italian embassy in Berlin. Sarah wondered how long that would last. Mussolini was having trouble of his own hanging on to the reins. If he got shot down like Hitler or had to run for his life, the new government might well throw Goebbels to the wolves.

News certainly sounded different now. Broadcasters quoted foreign reports, sometimes even when they said unkind things about Germany. There were also stories about the crimes and cruelty of the SS and the SD. Of course, it was in the Salvation Committee’s interest to let people know how foully the Nazis had behaved while they held power. Then the people would be less likely to want the bastards back.

The civil war was almost over. A day or two could go by without Sarah’s hearing gunfire. Diehards still held out in the Bavarian mountains and in a few places in Austria, but even they were starting to see it was a losing fight.