Last Orders

by Harry Turtledove

“Back to the panzer!” Sergeant Witt shouted. “My crew, back to the panzer!”

  Theo couldn’t remember the last order he’d liked better. Inside the Panzer IV, they’d be safe from the slings and arrows of outraged National Socialists. And they could do some slinging and arrowing of their own if they had to.

  On which side would they do it, though? Theo was sure of where he and Adi stood. He was pretty sure about Hermann Witt, too. Eckhardt and Poske, though … They’d never shown any sign of wanting to give Adi grief. That argued their hearts were in the right place.

  Someone got in front of Adi and fell down quite suddenly. Whoever he was, he didn’t get up again. They scrambled into their panzer, slammed the hatches shut, and dogged them.

  “Fire it up, Adi,” Witt said. “I won’t shoot first, but this is liable to be a big mess. We’ll take cover and figure things out later.”

  “I’ll do it, Sergeant,” Stoss said. “That sounds like a terrific plan.” The engine rumbled to life.

  Theo put on his radio earphones just in time to hear somebody say, “Our regiment stands behind the Committee for the Salvation of the German Nation. We will obey orders coming from the Committee.”

  Schmeissers started barking, almost surely inside the encampment. As Adi put the Panzer IV in gear, another panzer’s main armament bellowed. Not all the regiment seemed ready to stand behind the Salvation Committee. Theo had wondered whether the coup would touch off a civil war. He wasn’t wondering any more.

  Julius Lemp had always admired Colonel General Guderian. From everything he could see, the man got as much out of his panzers as anybody was likely to get. With every country’s hand—and factories—raised against the Reich—what could be more important?

  He’d wondered about that for a long time. Now he had an answer. The Committee for the Salvation of the German Nation could be. Or the forces fighting the Committee could be, depending on who won.

  They were going at it hammer and tongs. Kiel sounded as if it were in the middle of the world’s biggest fireworks display. If you looked out the window, you might think it was. Tracers and shell bursts lit up the night sky, now here, now there, now suddenly all over the place.

  Of course, if you looked out the window you were also liable to get killed. Plenty of bullets that weren’t tracers were flying around. Rifles, submachine guns, and MG-34s and MG-42s added to the hideous cacophony. And a barracks hall across the courtyard from the one where Lemp was staying had taken a direct hit from a 105 round—or maybe it was a 155. Whatever it was, it had knocked down half the building and set the wreckage on fire. Sailors were hosing down the burning rubble and pawing through it, looking for people who might still be alive.

  The really scary thing was, Lemp had no idea which side had shelled that barracks, or why. If something had come down over there, something could come down on this hall, too. He could die without having any idea why, or even who’d killed him.

  He hadn’t signed up for that. (He’d signed up so he could surprise people on the other side and send them to the bottom, but he didn’t dwell on such things right this minute.)

  Most of the Kriegsmarine, he judged, would go along with the Salvation Committee. Naval officers tended to be conservative professionals who had no great love for the Nazis.

  Naval officers, yes. Ratings? Ratings might be another story. Or they might not. With a small start, Lemp realized he knew less than he should about what kind of politics ratings had. Some of them liked Hitler—he knew that. The ones who didn’t … The ones who didn’t commonly had sense enough to keep their mouths shut about it.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  The knock on the door in the middle of the night. Everyone’s worst nightmare, in the Reich no less than in the USSR. In ordinary times, at least you knew what to say when they came for you. Chances were a thousand to one it wouldn’t do you any good, but you tried. How could you even try, though, when you weren’t sure which faction the goons out there belonged to?

  Lemp thought about pretending not to be there. But if they broke down the door (or just opened it—it wasn’t locked), things would go worse for him afterwards. The Committee or the Party? The lady or the tiger? He’d know in a second.

  He opened the door.

  Two petty officers with Mausers and a lieutenant with a Schmeisser scowled at him from the hallway. “Which side are you on?” one of the petty officers growled.

  They didn’t tell him which side they were on. He’d either be right or he’d be dead. “The Committee,” he said. If not for the Gestapo man with the lizardy blinks and tongue licks who’d plucked Nehring from his boat for no visible reason, he might well have answered the other way. He hated the idea of going against duly constituted authority. But when duly constituted authority was a pack of hooligans, he hated giving in to it even more.

  Had he answered the other way, he would have been lying in a pool of his own blood a few seconds later. As things were, the armed men grinned like fierce baboons. “There you go, sir!” the petty officer said. Now he gave Lemp his title of respect. Now I’ve earned it, Lemp thought dizzily.

  “Have you got a weapon?” the lieutenant asked.

  “No. It’s back in my cabin on the U-boat,” Lemp answered. “I didn’t think I’d need to go shooting things up.”

  “Here. Use this, then.” The lieutenant pulled a Walther pistol from his belt. Gingerly, Lemp took it. The lieutenant went on, “Come with us. We’re cleaning out the Nazi turds.”

  “They’re trying to clean us out, too,” Lemp remarked as stuttering machine guns dueled outside.

  “That’s why I gave you the Walther, sir,” the lieutenant said patiently.

  Lemp had no idea how he’d do, shooting it out with the other side through doors and around corners. This wasn’t the kind of warfare he’d trained for. Regardless of whether he’d trained for it, it was the kind of warfare he had.

  They’d started down the hall toward the next room when a tremendous blast of noise staggered them all. “Good God!” Lemp exclaimed. “What the devil just blew up?”

  “Nothing,” the lieutenant answered. Lemp could barely hear him; his ears were stunned. The younger man went on, “That was Gneisenau’s broadside. She’s with us.”

  “Good God!” Lemp said again. He’d known the battle cruiser was in port, but it hadn’t meant anything special to him. Why should it have? He’d had nothing to do with battle cruisers—not till civil war broke out, anyhow. But the Gneisenau mounted nine 280mm guns. They could throw their enormous shells at least thirty kilometers. Nothing on land could stand up to that kind of bombardment. Nothing anywhere could, except for the thickest armor on a few battleships. “What are they shooting at?”

  “Beats me,” the lieutenant said cheerfully. “Whatever it was, it isn’t there any more.”

  He was bound to be right about that. Bombs from a Stuka might do for the warship. Lemp couldn’t think of anything else that would. The Gneisenau ruled as far as its great guns would reach.

  They knocked on the next door. A captain opened it. “Which side are you on?” the petty officer demanded.

  The captain’s answer was proud and prompt: “I am loyal to the legitimate government of the Grossdeutsches Reich.” In case anyone doubted what that was, his right arm shout up and out. “Heil Hitler!”

  His answer was proud and prompt—and wrong. Both petty officers shot him, one in the chest, the other in the face. He shrieked and crumpled. Lemp’s stomach tried to turn over. No, this wasn’t the kind of killing he was used to.

  Gunfire inside the barracks made a couple of officers stick their heads out into the hallway to find out what was going on. One of them hastily ducked back into his room and slammed the door behind him. The other man fired at Lemp and his comrades with a service pistol.

  He was only ten or twelve meters away, but he missed. He missed three times in quick succession, as a matter of fact. He probably hadn’t won a marksman’s badge when he qualified with the pistol b
ack in the day, and chances were he hadn’t fired it more than two or three times in all the years since.

  Combat was the hardest school around. The officer never got a chance for his fourth shot. The lieutenant loosed three quick, professional bursts from his Schmeisser. You didn’t really need to aim the machine pistol. You just had to point it, which was much simpler. Down went the pro-Nazi officer.

  He wasn’t down for the count, though. He groped for the pistol, which he’d dropped when he fell. One of the petty officers shot him through the head. He kept thrashing even after that, but to no purpose, not with his brains splashed on the linoleum and the white-painted wall.

  “Come on,” the lieutenant said. “We’ll clean up this floor and go on to the next.” Lemp numbly followed. He hadn’t fired a Walther for quite a while himself. Have to get my hands on a Schmeisser, he thought.

  Ivan Kuchkov had seen a lot in his days fighting the Hitlerites. One of the things he’d seldom seen, though, was a German coming forward under a large flag of truce. Oh, every once in a while one side or the other would ask for a cease-fire to pick up the wounded. But that was just a little pause in the business of killing one another. This felt different.

  The approaching German here wasn’t a sergeant, or even a captain. He was a colonel with a gray mustache. And he spoke Russian, something not many Fritzes did.

  “I would like to be taken back to your high command!” he called as he strode forward. “I am here to ask for a truce along a broad stretch of front. Perhaps we can have peace.”

  Beside Kuchkov, Sasha Davidov looked as if his eyes were about to bug right out of his head. “I never heard a German talk that way before,” the Zhid whispered. “I never knew Germans could talk that way.”

  “Me, neither,” Ivan said. “ ’Course, chances are it’s all moonshine and horseshit.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” his point man answered. “What’ll you do, though?”

  “I’ll fucking well take him back to Lieutenant Obolensky, that’s what,” Ivan said. “Let him figure it all out. That’s what officers are for.”

  He stood up, showing himself amidst the tall grass and bushes. The German colonel turned to come straight toward him. “Good day, Sergeant,” he said in that accented schoolboy Russian.

  “Yob tvoyu mat’,” Ivan answered with a nasty grin. The Fritz turned red, so he understood it. Well, tough luck. Ivan gestured with his PPD. “Come along with me, bitch.”

  He didn’t have far to go to find Lieutenant Obolensky. The young company commander was only a couple of hundred meters to the rear. He slid out from behind some bushes and said, “Well, Comrade Sergeant, what have you got here?”

  “Prick’s a Nazi colonel, Comrade Lieutenant,” Ivan said, which was obvious anyhow. “Wants to fucking parley with our brass.”

  “Does he always talk like that?” the German asked plaintively.

  “Da,” Lieutenant Obolensky said. That made the Fritz blink. Obolensky went on, “Tell me who you are and what you want.”

  “I have the honor to be Karl-Friedrich von Holtzendorf. I am a staff officer attached to Army Group Ukraine,” the German said. “As you may have heard, there has been a change of government and a change of policy in the Reich.”

  “Hitler screwed the pooch, so you got rid of him,” Ivan said. Obolensky held out his hand with the palm flat to the ground, trying to shush him. Ivan made a disgusted face. He didn’t want to waste politeness on a bastard who wore Feldgrau.

  To his surprise, Colonel von Holtzendorf nodded. “That is about the size of it, Sergeant, yes. We are trying to find reasonable terms to end these unfortunate conflicts.”

  “One man’s reasonable is another man’s outrageous,” Obolensky observed. Kuchkov would have said the same thing, but he would have put more oomph into it.

  “I understand that,” von Holtzendorf said. “I have come to find out what terms your military and your government believe to be reasonable. Can you please radio your army-group—no, you say your front—headquarters and let them know I am coming?”

  “I’ll send you back to regimental HQ,” Obolensky said. “They should have a radio, if it’s working. If it’s not, they’ll take you back farther. Sooner or later, you’ll get where you want to go.”

  Karl-Friedrich von Holtzendorf’s left eyebrow jumped toward the bill of his high-crowned cap. If he’d been wearing a monocle in that eye like a Nazi officer in a movie, it would have fallen out. Ivan understood why the Fritz looked so scandalized. He was sure every company—maybe every section—in the Wehrmacht had a radio set. He was also sure almost all of them worked almost all the time. The Germans were great for using lots and lots of fancy equipment.

  It helped them only so much. The Red Army was great for using lots and lots of Russians—and every other folk in the Soviet Union. Had it had the Hitlerites’ fancy gear, it might not have had to spend so many men. Fungible, Ivan thought once more. But you did what you could with what you had. The Red Army had soldiers, and used them … and used them up.

  “Comrade Sergeant, tell off three men. You and they will take Colonel von Holtzendorf”—Obolensky pronounced it Goltzendorf, since Russian had no h sound—“to regimental headquarters. About four kilometers that way.” He pointed northeast.

  “I serve the Soviet Union!” Ivan said. He nodded to the German. “Don’t get your pussy lost, sweetheart. I’ll be back fast as a fart.”

  He grabbed two tough guys and Sasha Davidov. “I don’t want to have anything to do with that goddamn Nazi shithead,” the Jew said.

  “Not even to tell him how many knots you feel like tying in his dick?” Ivan asked slyly.

  “Well, when you put it that way …” Davidov came along with no more backtalk. Ivan chuckled to himself. If you knew what made somebody tick, you could get him to do anything you wanted.

  Grubby Red Army Jew and aristocratic Wehrmacht officer eyed each other with undisguised suspicion and loathing. Kuchkov had Colonel von Holtzendorf keep carrying the white flag. “Wouldn’t want one of our fuckers shooting you by mistake. That’d be such a cocksucking shame,” he said.

  “I think so,” the German agreed. “I would not want that, either.”

  “No—way better they should shoot you on purpose,” Sasha said.

  “I am trying to stop the fighting,” von Holtzendorf said. “I don’t know if I can, but I am trying.”

  “And how much did you try the last few years?” the Jew returned. “They don’t give medals like that to peacemakers.” The colonel wore the German Cross in Gold and the Iron Cross First Class on his chest, as well as the ribbon for the Iron Cross Second Class and two wound badges. No, he hadn’t always been a peacemaker. Germans usually wore their medals in the field, even if it gave their foes a better shot at them. Pride came in all shapes.

  Von Holtzendorf shrugged. “I fought in the last war, too. I have two sons in the Wehrmacht, one north of here and the other in Belgium. They would be about your age. If I succeed in this, maybe none of my grandsons will have to find out what sleeping in a trench is like.”

  “Alevai,” Davidov said. That wasn’t Russian or, evidently, German either. He didn’t explain it. Instead, he went on, “Did you people really get rid of Hitler?” Unlike Lieutenant Obolensky, he could say h.

  “We did. We had to,” the colonel answered. “He went too far.”

  “He got you into this cunt of a war, and you didn’t fucking win it,” Ivan translated.

  “Among other things,” von Holtzendorf said. “Finally, among too many other things.”

  “Is Himmler dead, too?” Sasha asked.

  “I … think so. There are conflicting reports,” Colonel von Holtzendorf replied. “It is certain, though, that the SS still resists the Salvation Committee.”

  Ivan laughed, but only to himself. If the Germans had bought themselves a civil war, how were they going to fight the foreign enemies they’d made for themselves? He chuckled again. If he could see that, he was sure people
like Stalin and Molotov could, too.

  They got to the tents housing regimental headquarters in less than an hour. The sight of a Fascist colonel made the place bubble like a forgotten kettle of shchi. Ivan wasn’t thrilled about turning von Holtzendorf loose, but he did. And what would come of it … well, who the hell could say?

  Saul Goldman snuggled the Panzer IV into a corner so it was shielded by a house on one side and a stone wall in front. He wasn’t just worried about the pro-Hitler panzer crews from his regiment. Some of the Waffen-SS men who’d failed to protect their precious Führer drove Tigers. It would have taken a lot more stone than was in that wall to shield the Panzer IV from one of their rounds.

  His family lived only a few kilometers away. He hoped they were all right. Hope was all he could do right now; he hadn’t yet dared go see them. The Salvation Committee hadn’t done anything about the Nazis’ anti-Semitic laws, but no one on that side went around screaming The Jews are our misfortune! Still, he wasn’t just a Jew. He was a Jew with a murder charge hanging over his head.

  But, no matter what else he was, he was also a German soldier fighting for the people trying to overthrow the Nazis. No matter what he did with the rest of his life, the way it looked to him was that he could live a long time on the credit he was piling up in these few hectic days.

  If he could live at all. Hermann Witt spoke a warning to the crew: “Keep an eye peeled for ordinary infantrymen, too. A lot of the clowns they’ve got around here still think they ought to be going Sieg heil!”

  “That goes double for you, Sergeant,” Saul said. “You’re the one who’s got to keep sticking his head up out of the cupola to find out what’s going on.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Witt told him. “You tend to your job, and I’ll tend to mine.”

  “Yes, Mommy,” Saul said sweetly. Everybody in the panzer laughed. Everybody knew he was kidding on the square just the same.

  “I only wish the two sides had different colors,” Kurt Poske said. “I hate the idea of shooting at somebody who’s with us by mistake.”