The War That Came Early: West and East (60 page)

He trudged on. For all he could tell, the Germans were shelling them
right now. The wind and snow cocooned him tightly. If the bastards didn’t score a direct hit, he’d never know it. And if they did, he figured he’d end up in a warmer place than this. At the moment, eternal flame didn’t seem half bad.

“Do you think they’ll be able to pull us out, sir?” he asked.

“Maybe. If the bad weather holds and lets our ships into Namsos,” the captain answered. He studied Walsh. The veteran noncom wondered why; neither of them showed more than his eyes. “What about you, Sergeant? I daresay you have more experience in these matters than I do.”

Walsh only shrugged. “I may be older than you are, sir, but I’ve never been in anything like this.”

“Last bugger who was in anything like this was Scott, and look what happened to him.” The captain laughed harshly. “No, there was bloody Amundsen, too, and he was a Norwegian himself. He must have felt right at home at the South Pole, eh?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me one bit.” Walsh turned away from the wailing wind, cupped his hands, and lit a cigarette. Some people could strike a match in any weather, no matter how dreadful. The harsh smoke—he’d taken a packet of Gitanes off a dead Frenchman—gave him something to think about besides the blizzard.

“If only the German generals had given Hitler the boot,” the captain said.

“If ifs and buts were candied nuts, we’d all have a bloody good Christmas,” Walsh answered. “D’you really suppose they would have stopped the war? They’re Fritzes, too, remember. I’ve never known those sons of bitches to pack it in while they can still fight.”

“Something to that, I shouldn’t wonder,” the captain said. He brought up a mittened hand to the brim of his helmet. “Some sort of checkpoint up ahead.”

“Maybe they’ll tell us which way Namsos is.” Walsh wasn’t a hundred percent sure he’d been going north. He’d been steering more by the wind than by anything else: that and flocking with his friends. If they were wrong, so was he. Sheep liked to flock together.

“Maybe they will,” the captain said as he and Walsh neared the crossroads.
A squad’s worth of men stood there—vague shapes through the flying snow. The officer let out a formidable bellow: “I say! Which way to Namsos?”

They didn’t answer (or if they did, Walsh couldn’t hear them, which was at least as likely). The staff sergeant clumped on. He and the captain were almost close enough to spit on the waiting soldiers when the other man shouted his question once more.

They heard him this time. One of them answered, “For you it does not matter.”

“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?” the captain said indignantly.

“Sir—” Walsh grabbed his arm. “Sir, he’s got a Schmeisser!” One German submachine gun wouldn’t have meant much—he carried a Schmeisser himself. But … “They’ve
all
got Schmeissers!”

“You are our prisoners, gentlemen,” the German said in excellent English. “Drop your weapons and raise your hands. Try nothing foolish. It would be the last mistake you ever made—you may be sure of that.”

Some of the men with them started laying their rifles on the snowy ground. Walsh didn’t know what made him take off and run. Stupidity, odds were. But there were a few soldiers between him and the
Boches
, and the sheepskin coat was a dirty white that might camouflage him in the swirling snow. Maybe they wouldn’t even notice he was missing.

The captain ran with him. Misery loving company? Whatever it was, it queered the deal. The Fritzes shouted. Shouting was bad enough. Then they started shooting, and that was a lot worse. But sure as hell, they couldn’t exactly see what they were shooting at. Some of the flying bullets came pretty close to Walsh, but he’d had plenty of nearer misses. And Schmeissers, wonderful as they were in close-in combat, weren’t the least bit accurate out past a couple of hundred yards.

They could run after him. He risked a look back over his shoulder. They were running after him, as a matter of fact. It wasn’t as if he didn’t leave a big, juicy trail in the snow. But if he could get to the pine woods a bit more than a quarter of a mile away before he got shot or tackled, they’d have a lot more trouble catching up to him.

That captain—Walsh wasn’t even sure of his name—was running on a different line. If the Germans wanted to grab both of them, they’d have to
split up. They might not like that. Maybe the Allied soldiers were leading them into an ambush.

Maybe there weren’t any more Allied soldiers for miles and miles. That was what Walsh feared most. In that case, he was running for nothing. He might end up freezing to death for nothing, too. Was England worth it? His feet must have thought so, or they never would have taken off.

As he panted toward the pines, he damned all his years and damned all his cigarettes—except he wanted another Gitane. Well, that would have to wait. Couldn’t those young, fit Nazi privates outrun an old reprobate like him? Evidently not, because he got into the woods ahead of them.

It was like being in among all the Christmas trees in the world—little ones, big ones, enormous ones. Even the smell was right. He yanked his Schmeisser off his shoulder and put a couple of Mills bombs in the sheepskin coat’s right-hand pocket. Now he could fight if he had to. He wasn’t just a target the Germans hadn’t been able to knock down.

Which way was north? He hadn’t been sure before, and now he’d got all turned around. It would be a hell of a note if he blundered straight back to the Fritzes, wouldn’t it? They didn’t seem eager to come into the woods after him. Nor could he blame them. A man might get hurt trying something like that. Capturing troops who didn’t even realize you were on the other side was a hell of a lot easier.

“Fuck ’em all,” he muttered, and his breath smoked around him even though he hadn’t pulled that next Gitane out of its packet. He thought north was
that
way. If he turned out to be wrong, well, he’d given it his best shot. The Germans might be taking Norway, but they hadn’t taken him. Yet.

CHAIM WEINBERG HAD A NEW SACRED TEXT
from which to preach. “Thieves fall out,” he told the Nationalist prisoners in the park in Madrid. “The Germans are fighting among themselves. Some of them can see that Hitler is only leading them into disaster. And if that is true for Germany, isn’t it even more true for Spain?”

He got somber looks from the POWs. German efficiency was a watchword
in Spain, especially among the Nationalists. If the gangsters who lined up behind Hitler could go for each other’s throats, what about the goons who said they were for Sanjurjo? What would they do if they saw a better deal in going out on their own? It was something for everybody to think about, not just a bunch of hapless prisoners. It seemed that way to Chaim, anyhow.

Because it seemed that way to him, he said so to anyone who would listen. He had discovered his inner missionary while haranguing the POWs. What he hadn’t discovered was how to make his inner missionary shut up.

He got into arguments in line for meals. He got into arguments in
cantinas
, and on street corners. He got into fights, too. He won more often than he lost. Few people who hadn’t been to the front wasted less time fighting clean than he did. After he left a couple of loudmouthed Spaniards groaning on
cantina
floors—and after he discouraged their friends with a foot-long bayonet held in an underhand grip that warned he knew just what to do with it (which he did)—the arguments stayed verbal. He got a name for himself:
eso narigón loco
—that crazy kike. He wore it with pride.

Of course, by running his mouth he also set himself up for Party discipline. He’d faced Party discipline in the States. They told you to quit doing whatever you were doing that they didn’t like. Either you did or you dropped out of the Party.

Party discipline in Spain was a different business. They told you to quit doing whatever you were doing that they didn’t like. Either you did or they threw your sorry ass into a Spanish jail or a punishment company or they said to hell with it and shot you.

Chaim wasn’t altogether surprised when a scared-looking runner summoned him to appear before a Party organizer and explain himself. He wasn’t altogether thrilled, either, which was putting it mildly. But what choice did he have? He could try going over to the Nationalists, assuming they or the Republicans didn’t shoot him while he was trying to desert. But that would have gagged a vulture. He certainly couldn’t stomach it himself.

And so he reported to the organizer. She had her office in a beat-up
building (the most common kind in embattled Madrid) that had housed government bureaucrats before the Spanish civil war got going. That she was a she he’d inferred from the
nom de guerre
the runner gave him:
La Martellita
, the Little Hammer (with feminine article and ending). That was a good name—Molotov meant
son of a hammer
, too.

Sure as the devil, she wasn’t very big. He’d expected that. He hadn’t expected her to be drop-dead gorgeous, but she was: blue-black hair, flashing dark eyes, cheekbones, a Spanish blade of a nose, and the most kissable mouth he’d ever seen. That she looked at him as if he were a donkey turd in the gutter somehow only made her more beautiful. He had no idea how come, but it did.

“Well, Comrade, why are you throwing around such bad ideology?” she snapped, her voice cold as the North Pole.

“I did it so I could meet you,” Chaim answered. Not for the first time in his life, his mouth ran several lengths ahead of his brain. “People said you were very pretty, and they were right.”

“If you think you can flatter me, you had better think again,” La Martellita said, in tones not a tenth of a degree warmer than they were before. “You will only end up digging a deeper hole for yourself—maybe one deep enough to bury you in.” She sounded as if she looked forward to shoveling dirt over him. Odds were she did.

“I have a question for you,” Chaim said.

“Yes?” she asked ominously.

“What’s your real name?”

“None of your business.”

“That’s a funny name,” he said. Her nostrils flared, and not with pleasure. He sighed. “Okay. Um,
bueno
. I have another question for you.”

“If you keep wasting my time, you’ll regret it.”

“I believe you,” he said … regretfully. “Why is it such a sin to say the Fascists have contradictions of their own, and that we ought to do everything we can to take advantage of them?”

“Because you are only a soldier,” she answered. “Higher-level policy is none of your business—none, do you hear me? For all you know, for all I know, for all anyone knows, we
are
trying to exploit those contradictions. But soldiers have no business proposing policy.”

“I’m not just a soldier,” he said. “I’m a propagandist, too, trying to bring Nationalist soldiers over to the Republic. If I can’t talk politics with them, I can’t do my job.”

“Did you get your views approved before you presented them?” La Martellita asked.

“Uh—no,” Chaim admitted. He was a Communist, a loyal Communist. But he was also an American. He was used to doing things on his own hook and worrying about consequences later. Well, here it was, later, and here were the consequences. If this stunner in shapeless denim coveralls—a crime, that!—wanted him shot, shot he damn well would be.

She looked through him. “And why not?”

“It didn’t seem necessary,” he answered feebly.

“That was very stupid,” La Martellita said.

“I thought every man was free to be anything he wanted, even stupid, under the Republic.” Chaim threw out the line like a chess player offering a poisoned pawn.

And she took it: “Every man may be stupid under the Republic, Comrade, but you abuse the privilege.”

“Didn’t Trotsky say something like that?” Chaim knew perfectly well Trotsky had. His voice was pure innocence all the same. If you accused somebody of quoting the Red Antichrist, you needed to sound innocent.

La Martellita’s eyes flashed again, terribly. She looked as if she hated him. No doubt she did. But now he had a hold on her. Even if they were dragging him off to the nearest wall, he had a chance of getting her stood up against it right after him. She took out a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and smoked in quick, furious puffs. She didn’t offer it to him.

She stubbed hers out while it was only half done—a rare thing in Spain these days. When she spoke again, she came straight to the point: “What do you want from me?” She knew what she’d done. Oh, yes.

“A little understanding would be nice,” Chaim said.

“What do you mean, ‘understanding’? If you think I’ll be your mattress or suck your stupid cock, I’d sooner cut my throat.” She sure as hell did come straight to the point.

“No, no, no,” Chaim said, thinking
Yes, yes, yes!
He went on, “I was talking
about politics. I didn’t mean any harm when I said what I said, any more than you did just now. I don’t think I should get in trouble for it.”

“Oh. Politics.” The way La Martellita said the word, it sounded more obscene than cocksucking. She drummed her fingers on the rickety little table she used for a desk. “Can you try not to talk about your own so loudly when you’re not reeducating the Nationalists?”

It was like getting sent out of the confessional with a penance of three Our Fathers and five Hail Marys. “I’ll try,” Chaim said. He didn’t even have to promise to do it.

“All right. Get the fuck out of here.” La Martellita wanted to pretend she’d never had anything to do with him.

“Tell me your name first.”

He would sooner have faced Nationalist artillery than her glare. “Magdalena,” she spat.
“Now
get the fuck out of here.”

“See you again, I hope,” Chaim said.

“That makes one of us,” she said, and for once he quit while he was ahead and got out.

PETE MCGILL STOOD SENTRY OUTSIDE
the American consulate in Shanghai. Because he wore two stripes on his left sleeve, he commanded the two-man detachment out there. He could have done without the honor. Shanghai was a good bit south of Peking. You couldn’t have proved it by him, not this freezing early December morning.