The War That Came Early: The Big Switch (46 page)

On the other hand, the USSR desperately needed peace on the distant frontier, because it had a much bigger, much more urgent war much closer to home. When it came, the country could pay full attention to the Nazis and everybody else coming out of the west. Stas only hoped that would prove good enough to save the Soviet Union. Frighten all your neighbors and make them hate you, and this was the kind of mess you wound up in.

“President Franklin Roosevelt of the United States has offered to
help mediate the dispute between the Soviet Union and Japan,” the announcer said. “His cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, was President of the USA during the Russo-Japanese War, and helped work out the terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended it. General Secretary Stalin immediately accepted the American proposal. The Japanese, however, refused it, declaring that they doubted America was truly committed to peace. This being so, Japan and the peace-loving Soviet Union will pursue their talks bilaterally.”

Some of Mouradian’s colleagues scratched their heads, trying to work out what was going on there. He sighed inside his own mind; some people really shouldn’t have been allowed to run around loose. Japan thought the USA would sabotage the peace talks, not help them along. That was obvious to Stas, if not to his comrades. As long as Japan was busy fighting the Soviet Union, she wouldn’t also take on the United States—not if her leaders were in their right mind, she wouldn’t.

But she was clearing the decks for the big fight, the important fight, no less than Stalin was. Knock America back on her heels and Japan was master of the Pacific. No one else could challenge her there. England and France were busy far closer to home. Holland, mistress of the resource-rich Dutch East Indies, lay under Nazi occupation. If Japan didn’t have to worry about the USA …

The newsreader spoke of the anticipated harvest and by how much it would exceed the norms established by the agricultural planners. Only the planners had any real idea of how much grain came in across the country. If they cooked the books to make things sound better, who would stop them? Who else would even know? As long as people didn’t start starving, nobody. And if people did start starving, it might be for reasons political rather than agricultural. Anyone who didn’t believe that could ask the surviving Ukrainians.

“Stakhanovite shock brigades continue to increase steel, coal, and aluminum production,” the newsreader said proudly. “Output rises even as factories are knocked down and transported east, out of range of the Hitlerite savages and their terror-bombing campaign.”

“Good. That’s good,” murmured the pilot sitting next to Mouradian. It would indeed be good if it was true. That it could be true struck Stas
as most unlikely. The less you said, sometimes, the better. He said not a word here.

The newsreader blathered on and on. He seemed to speak very candidly: everything was for the best in this best of all possible worlds. Mouradian smiled a little when that occurred to him. Too bad it was a joke he would have to keep to himself. Somehow, he didn’t think the NKVD would find it funny.

When music finally came out of the speaker instead of the newsreader’s perpetual optimism, Lieutenant Colonel Tomashevsky addressed the squadron: “Well, boys, you heard it yourselves. We’re going to make nice with the little slanty-eyed shitheads for a while. One thing at a time, I always say. Once we give the Nazis what they deserve, we’ll go back to the East and pay what we owe there. Oh, yes. You’d best believe we will.”

Speaking of perpetual optimism … Did the squadron commander really believe what he was saying? If he did, Stas wanted some of whatever he’d been drinking. Or maybe not. Whatever it was, it was probably too full of sugar to be palatable for an ordinary man.

Then again, perhaps you needed that kind of spirit—and that kind of spirits—if you were going to keep serving the Soviet Union. They weren’t flying from the airstrip they’d used when they first took their Pe-2s into action against the Germans and Poles. German bombers had worked that one over.

As far as Mouradian could see, the new Russian plane was better than any bomber the
Luftwaffe
used. It had at least as large a bomb load, and it was faster and more maneuverable than the German bombers. But that mattered only so much. Back in the day, the SB-2 really had been able to outrun the biplane fighters it met in Spain. Against the Bf-109, it turned into a death trap. If the Germans had chased the Pe-2 across the sky with Heinkel and Dornier bombers, everything would have been lovely. Sadly, the Messerschmitt fighter remained more than a match for the Petlyakov machine as well.

But the USSR was a big place—bigger, maybe, than the Nazis fully understood. They had only so many 109s: nowhere near enough to cover all of Soviet airspace all the time. The Pe-2s stood a much better chance of getting through and coming back than did the older, slower
SB-2s. Not for the first time, Mouradian hoped Sergei Yaroslavsky and Ivan the Chimp remained among those present.

PLENTY OF TRAIN LINES
in southern France went down toward Spain. Only two actually crossed the border: one near the Atlantic, which led into territory loyal to Marshal Sanjurjo, and this one hard by the Mediterranean, which took the Czech soldiers who had fought for France against Germany into the Republic to fight Fascism now that France wasn’t interested any more.

Vaclav Jezek made a sour face when Benjamin Halévy told him that. “So those French assholes could be shipping shit to Sanjurjo at the same time as they’re giving us to the Republic?” he said.

“That’s about the size of it,” Halévy agreed. He was heading into exile, too.

Because he was, Vaclav saw fit to add, “Nothing personal.”

“Don’t worry about it,” the Jew replied. “I think they’re assholes, too.” He wore a new uniform from the army of the Republic of Czechoslovakia, with a Czech sergeant’s three dots on his shoulder straps replacing the French hash mark on his sleeve. Running a finger between his collar and his neck, he grumbled, “I’m still not used to the way this damn thing fits.”

“If you’re a Czech, you never fit in the way you’re supposed to,” Vaclav said. “You’d better get used to it.”

Halévy raised a gingery, ironic eyebrow. “I think I can just about manage that, you know?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Vaclav felt foolish. The only way Jews would ever feel at home anywhere was to get their own country. Fat chance of that! And even if they did, they’d probably kick Christians and Moslems around just because they could. They were human beings, weren’t they?

Till Vaclav got to know Halévy, he wouldn’t have bet a single Czech koruna that Jews
were
human beings. He’d scorned them, distrusted them, despised them for no better reason than that they had their own funny religion—and, as often as not, they were too goddamn smart for their own good.

Halévy was no dummy. He wouldn’t put Einstein out of business
any time soon, though. And he made a good noncom, even if he’d had his cock clipped. He took war seriously. He wouldn’t be wearing a Czech uniform, he wouldn’t be carrying Czech papers in his pocket, if he didn’t. Even the French weren’t dumb enough to try to make Jews fight on the same side as Nazi Germany. He could have sat out the war in safety. He could have, but he didn’t want to.

On second thought, who said he was no dummy?

Over the border, Vaclav saw the last of the French tricolor. He was glad to see the last of it, even if the colors were the same as those of his conquered homeland. They stood for liberty, equality, and fraternity, and what did any of those have to do with fighting side by side with Adolf Hitler? Damn all, as far as he was concerned.

On the other side of the frontier flew the Spanish Republic’s flag—another tricolor, this one of red, yellow, and purple. It was certainly gaudier than France’s standard, or Czechoslovakia’s. But the Republic hadn’t turned its back on whatever those colors stood for. It wouldn’t still be fighting if it had.

Marshal Sanjurjo’s side had another flag yet. Well, to hell with him. This was the one Vaclav had chosen. It might not be his first or even his second choice, but it seemed better than anything else out there right now.

The train wheezed to a stop. At first, he thought it had broken down again. The French had given the Czechs going off to fight in Spain the worst rolling stock they had. Their good passenger cars and new locomotives were hauling French troops east to fight the Russians. That being so, breakdowns were almost a badge of honor.

But no. This was some kind of customs inspection. Normally, countries frowned on large bands of uniformed men importing weapons. These weren’t normal times, though. Vaclav doubted he would live to see normal times again.

He stared when a Republican officer came into the car. He supposed this was an officer, anyhow—what else would the fellow be? But the man was bareheaded, and wore denim coveralls over a collarless worker’s shirt. He looked more likely to repair a clogged drain than to give orders.

“Revolutionary chic,” Benjamin Halévy whispered to Vaclav. After
that, the fellow’s outfit made more sense. He spoke a sentence in a language that wasn’t French but sounded something like it. Vaclav couldn’t even swear in Spanish. He was surprised, but not very surprised, when Halévy answered in what sounded like the same tongue.

After a bit of back and forth, the Republic officer grinned and nodded and went on to the next car. “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish,” Vaclav told the Jew in admiring tones.

“Not Spanish—Catalan. Kind of halfway between Spanish and French,” Halévy answered. “And I don’t speak it, but I can fake it some.”

“Ah.” Jezek nodded. He could make a stab at Slavic languages not his own. It didn’t always work—he’d been reduced to speaking German with the Polish soldier who interned him. But it was usually worth a try. He hadn’t thought that the Romance languages might work the same way. He found a more relevant question: “So what did the guy want?”

“To make sure we’ve come to fight for the Republic and against the Nationalist shitheads—I think that’s what he called them.”

“Sounds right to me,” Jezek said. “What did you tell him?”

“That we were really here for a picnic, and to meet all the pretty Spanish gals,” Halévy replied without changing expression.

“Ahh, your mother.”

“She was a pretty gal, but not Spanish.” Halévy seemed willing to tell bad jokes all day. Vaclav planted an elbow in his ribs, not hard enough to hurt but to suggest he should quit acting like a jerk. It was a forlorn hope, and Vaclav knew it. Still, you had to make the effort. Vaclav also knew all about making the effort despite forlorn hope. If he hadn’t, would he have come to Spain?

Another officer strode into the car. This one wore khaki, and he had on a cap with a flat crown. If his pink skin, broad face, and pale eyes hadn’t told which army he belonged to, the uniform would have. He greeted the Czechs not in Spanish but in Russian, which he confidently expected them to understand.

Vaclav caught the gist, anyhow. Most of his countrymen probably did. The USSR had helped Czechoslovakia when nobody else would. Now the Czechs were helping Spain, the Soviet Union’s ally, when hardly anyone else would. He thanked them for that.

Had he left it there, everything would have been fine. But he went on
to say something to the effect that now the Czechs would have to follow Stalin’s orders like everybody else. That was what Vaclav thought he said, anyhow. The Russian took no questions. He went on to inflict his greetings on the next car farther back.

“Did he say what I thought he said?” Vaclav asked Halévy.

“I don’t know,” the Jew answered. “But what I thought he said, I didn’t like it for beans.”

“Neither did I,” Vaclav said. “That probably means we both think he said the same stupid thing.”

“What can you do?” Halévy said with a sigh. “He’s a Russian. Without the Russians, the Republic would have lost the war a long time ago. Then France would have had to ship us to Paraguay or something when she switched sides.”

“Is there a war in Paraguay? I hadn’t heard about a new one, and I thought the old one was over,” Vaclav said.

“For all I know, it is,” the Jew replied. “The French government would ship us over there any which way. They’re my people, too, and I know how they work. If nobody’s fighting there now, they’d count on us to start something.”

That had an appalling feel of probability to it. Vaclav said, “Me, I was thinking they’d send us to China if they didn’t have Spain. Everybody hates the Japs, pretty much—even the Russians.”

“You’re right. They do,” Benjamin Halévy agreed. “The Japs may play even less by the rules than Hitler and Stalin do.” He threw his hands in the air in mocking triumph. “And they said it couldn’t be done!”

The train chose that moment to jerk into motion again. On they went, deeper into Spain and a brand-new war.

PETE MCGILL WAS GETTING
to the point where he could move pretty well on crutches. He could even hobble fifty feet or so with just a cane. And he’d made it from his bed to a chair nearby with no artificial aids whatever, for all the world as if he were a normal human being. One of these days, the cast on his arm would come off, and then he could truly start working on getting his strength back.

He couldn’t wait. He wasn’t the only injured serviceman in Manila
who wanted to get back into action as fast as he could, or else a little faster. When he listened to the radio or read a paper, he could add two and two and get four. He might have had trouble in school, but he sure didn’t in the real world.

Russia had patched up a cease-fire with Japan. She was trying to fight Hitler with everything she had. Okay, fine, but that also meant the Japs wouldn’t have any distractions any more. Oh, they were stuck in China, but they could lick the Chinks whenever they set their minds to it. Chiang Kai-shek’s troops wouldn’t parade through Tokyo any time in the next hundred years. And neither would Mao Tse-tung’s, no matter how much Stalin wished they would.

Well, if Japan had gone and started clearing her decks for action, where would the action be? To Corporal Pete McGill,
right about here
looked like the best answer to that question.