The War That Came Early: Coup d'Etat

by Harry Turtledove

  “If you had your druthers, who would you rather fight, Hitler or Stalin?”

  “If I had my druthers?” Luc echoed. Demange nodded. Luc spoke without the least hesitation: “If I had my druthers, sir, I’d take off this uniform and burn it. Then I’d go home and try and forget everything that’s happened to me the past going on three years.”

  “Salaud! You don’t get that many druthers. The Nazi or the Communist? Who’s in your sights first?”

  He was serious. Seeing him serious made Luc think it over harder than he’d expected to. At last, he said, “The Germans live right next door. That makes them trouble no matter who’s in charge in Berlin. When it’s a cochon like Hitler … I mean, Stalin’s no bargain, either, but he’s way the hell over here. The Boches are the ones who can really do us in.”

  “There you go! I knew you weren’t as dumb as you look,” Lieutenant Demange said—praising with faint damn, certainly, but praising even so. “That’s how it looks to me, too.”

  “But so what, Lieutenant? Here we are in the middle of Russia. If we don’t go after the Ivans, they’ll sure kill us.”

  Demange got rid of another dead Gitane. This time, he gave Luc one after lighting up himself—another sign he was pleased. “Suppose a little bird told you they’re quietly working on stretching the Maginot Line from the Belgian border all the way to the Channel?”

  “Where’d you hear that?” Luc asked. If Demange met a little bird, he’d clean it and pluck it and roast it, preferably stuffed with mushrooms.

  “Never mind where. What you don’t know, nobody can squeeze out of you.” Demange might have been talking about interrogation by the enemy, not by his own side. He went on, “What you do need to know is, this isn’t somebody who talks out his asshole. Or I don’t think so, anyway.”

  “Huh,” Luc said, and then, “What do the Germans say about that?” One of the big reasons the Nazis had invaded France by way of the Low Countries was that they hadn’t wanted to bang their heads against the works of the Maginot Line. France had figured Holland and Belgium and Luxembourg would make shield enough. Now that France knew better …

  “If the Germans know what we’re up to, they haven’t said anything about it,” the veteran replied. “That’s what I hear.”

  “Huh,” Luc said again, more thoughtfully this time. “Why aren’t they screaming their fool heads off? Quiet Nazis? It sounds unnatural.”

  Demange rewarded him with a twisted grin. “It does, doesn’t it? Here’s the best answer I can give you: I don’t know why. If I was Hitler, me, I’d be having kittens.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” Luc agreed. If somebody who showed he’d gone over to your side by sending several divisions to help you fight your other enemies suddenly started strengthening his border against you, you had to have something wrong with you if you didn’t wonder why. Didn’t you?

  Luc looked around. Yes, he was glad none of the other soldiers could overhear them. “So what happens now? Do we cross over to the Russians’ side of the line the way the Tommies did? Or do we wait till somebody counts three and then turn our guns on the Boches? I mean, I wouldn’t mind, but.…”

  “What happens now? We keep on doing what we’ve been doing till somebody with clout tells us to do something else. Then we fucking well do that instead.” Demange paused, considering. “And you never heard word one about this crap from me, understand? Try and say anything different and you won’t live to enjoy it.”

  “I’m no rat,” Luc said, genuinely affronted.

  “Yeah, yeah. I know that. I wouldn’t’ve said anything at all if I thought you were,” Lieutenant Demange replied. “But this is dynamite. You’ve got to remember it’s dynamite. Otherwise you’ll get your hands blown off, and you’ll be standing there bleeding and wondering what the hell happened to you.”

  A Russian machine gun opened up, not close enough to worry about. A few seconds later, a French machine gun answered. Maybe the diplomats were doing mysterious things behind the scenes. The men who fought and died were still fighting and dying.

  Demange listened to the dueling murder mills with his head cocked to one side and that wry grin still on his face. “It’s all merde, you know,” he said. “Every goddamn bit of it.”

  “Uh-huh.” Luc nodded. All he wanted was to keep from getting ground between the gears. He’d managed so far. Another Russian machine gun started firing. Pretty soon, the artillery would join in. How long could he stay lucky?

  BE CAREFUL what you ask for. You may get it. Hideki Fujita must have heard that before he requested a transfer away from Pingfan. Sadly, though, it hadn’t stuck. And Captain Ikejiri had wasted no time in ridding the bacteriological-warfare unit of someone who’d screwed up.

  When Fujita heard he was being transferred to Yunnan province, he’d assumed he would travel down through China to wherever the devil Yunnan was. As things turned out, the province lay in the far, far south, on the border with Burma. He couldn’t simply hop on a train and go there, because Japanese control in China stopped well north of the area.

  No, things weren’t that simple. The train took him from Harbin to Shanghai. From there, he took a ship to Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, newly seized from the British, he had to wait two days for a plane to Hanoi, newly taken from the French. After another flight, he landed at the airport in Mandalay: Burma, too, had belonged to England till the war got rolling. Then he took the train up to Myitkyina, near the Chinese border.

  The train trip was an adventure all by itself. Even before the fighting started, the line must have been an afterthought of empire. During combat, English soldiers had sabotaged it here and there. And the Japanese broom of conquest hadn’t come close to sweeping clean. Englishmen with rifles and mortars still roamed the countryside. So did Burmese bandits. Fujita fired out the window several times. He wasn’t always sure at whom he was shooting. He didn’t much care, either. Nobody who was shooting at him was likely to be friendly.

  Myitkyina lay in the middle of steaming jungle. Snow-capped mountains corrugated the horizon to the east and north. Signs at the train station were written in characters he couldn’t read. He grabbed the first Japanese soldier he saw and asked—almost begged—to be taken to the local army headquarters.

  Since the soldier he grabbed was only a private, the fellow couldn’t tell him to get lost. He didn’t look happy, though. “Well, come on, then,” he said gruffly. Four other Japanese soldiers who’d got off the train with Fujita eagerly followed. They seemed just as lost and confused as he was.

  Not surprisingly, the functionaries who made Southern Army go had claimed the best hotel in town. It was a fourth-rate copy of a third-rate hotel in a second-rate city in some happier English colonial possession. Getting shelled in the conquest did nothing to improve it. The clerks there rapidly dealt with the other newly arrived Japanese soldiers. Each of those men had a slot, and they fit him into it. No one seemed to have any idea what to do with Fujita.

  “From the Kwangtung Army? From Manchukuo? To here?” A senior sergeant shook his head in disbelief. “Eee! Someone’s played a dirty trick on you, Corporal, or maybe on us.”

  “You don’t have any records that show where I’m supposed to go?” Fujita asked.

  “You might as well have fallen from the moon. For all I know, you did.” The sergeant seemed to think he was a funny fellow.

  “But that’s crazy.” If Fujita sounded desperate, it was only because he was. They not only didn’t have a slot for him, they didn’t even have a board with slots to find out where he fit. And here he was, lucky not to have got killed before he made it to this miserable place. He’d thought Captain Ikejiri was doing him a favor. Ikejiri must have hated his guts.

  “Well, let’s try a different angle,” the sergeant said. “What did you do when you were in Manchukuo?”

  Before Fujita could answer, several more soldiers from the train found their way to the hotel. The military bureaucrat dealt with them and seemed to forget about Fujita. The other sol
diers were easy. He wasn’t. And he had to be careful about what he said. “Well, before I got here I served in Colonel Ishii’s unit,” he replied when the senior sergeant had time for him once more.

  “Zakennayo!” that worthy exclaimed. “Who in blazes is Colonel Ishii? What does his damned unit do—besides sending people all over the Co-Prosperity Sphere, I mean?”

  Fujita wondered how he should answer that. He feared he shouldn’t answer it at all. He also feared he would end up in trouble if he didn’t. But when the senior sergeant shouted Colonel Ishii’s name, a skinny little superior private with glasses pricked up his ears. “Please excuse me, Sergeant-san …” he said, and drew the noncom off to one side. They talked together in low voices for a couple of minutes.

  “Oh,” the senior sergeant said loudly. “He’s with those people?” He turned back to Fujita. “Why didn’t you say you were with those people?”

  Again, Fujita didn’t have to answer because the bespectacled senior private did some more urgent murmuring. The senior sergeant threw his hands in the air. He made as if to clout the younger man, who flinched.

  Frightening someone seemed to make the sergeant feel better. Fujita knew that feeling. “Security!” the sergeant said, as if it were the filthiest word he knew. Maybe it was. He glowered at Fujita. “If you don’t tell us what you’re good for, how can we send you where you need to go?”

  “If I do tell you, I violate the orders I got to keep that work secret,” Fujita answered unhappily.

  “Bah!” The senior sergeant sounded disgusted. “Go to Yanai, then.” He pointed at the senior private. “He’ll write you orders to get you out there.”

  Out where? Fujita wondered. Well, he’d find out.

  And so he did. Superior Private Yanai wrote out the orders, saying, “This will take you out to Unit 113, in the 56th Infantry Division. There’s a shed next to the train station. You get your transport there.”

  “A shed? Next to the train station?” Fujita knew he sounded dismayed—or maybe furious. A kilometer back to where he’d just come from, in this heat and humidity? He wasn’t looking forward to that.

  “Shigata ga nai, Corporal. I’m sorry.” Yanai spread his hands in what looked like real sympathy. Whether it was or not, he was right: it couldn’t be helped. Wearily, Fujita slung his rifle over his shoulder and trudged away from the hotel. Unfamiliar gaudy birds chirped in the bushes.

  The shed smelled like a barn. Both soldiers on duty there were drunk. Fujita had to shout at them to discover what they called transport: a creaking ox cart. They were in charge of a dozen or so carts, with the oxen to haul them hither and yon. The oxen no doubt explained the smell. The first driver the men in charge of the shed hunted up had no idea where Unit 113 was stationed. They swore at him, but he insisted he’d never been there.

  Things had been ragged out on Manchukuo’s border with Soviet-backed Mongolia. Here, they would have had to shape up to seem ragged. This was the raw edge of conquest. That Japanese soldiers ruled here near Burma’s Chinese frontier should have been inspiring. That the soldiers actually at the frontier were less than the shining lights of the Japanese Army shouldn’t have been surprising. Fujita had traveled too far too fast to stay tolerant. He screamed at the stablemen. One of them was a corporal, too. He didn’t care. If the other fellow felt like fighting, he intended to maim him for life.

  He was almost disappointed when the other corporal quailed instead. Even a drunk could tell he had murder in his eyes. And the next driver the stablemen hunted up did know about Unit 113. “I’ve been there before,” he said. “I can find it again.” He eyed Fujita. “Keep your piece handy while we go, though. You might want to fix your bayonet, too. Things can get pretty hairy around here.”

  “I found out about that on the way up.” Fujita unsheathed the bayonet and snapped it into place under his Arisaka’s muzzle.

  He could have walked to Unit 113 as fast as the ox cart brought him there. He would have had to work harder, though. The trail they followed wasn’t much wider than the cart. Anything or anyone might have burst out of the jungle before Fujita or the driver could do anything about it. The oxen took their own sweet time splashing across streams.

  It was almost sunset when they reached the clearing that held Unit 113. No fancy compound here—nothing but tents. No officer of rank higher than captain, either. And nobody, from that captain down to the almost toothless old Burmese woman who cooked for the unit, had the slightest idea that Fujita was coming or what to do with him now that he was here.

  “Demons take it,” the captain said at last. “You’re really from Unit 731?” He might have been a skinny little would-be wrestler talking about someone from a famous sumo dojo.

  “Yes, sir. I really am,” Fujita said.

  “How about that? I’m sure you’ll do a lot of good here, then, with all the things you’re bound to know. For now, get some rice, pour some of the old gal’s stew over it, and find somewhere to unroll your blanket or sling your hammock. We’ve got a lot going on here. I’m sure you’ll fit right in.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Fujita knew better than to argue with an officer. He also knew better than to ask the Burmese woman what all went into the stew. It didn’t taste half bad, even if it was spicier than he fancied. Better not to wonder where the meat came from. He’d had stews like that before. As long as it filled him up, he wouldn’t complain.

  LA MARTELLITA LOOKED daggers at Chaim Weinberg. If this was the kind of love wives were supposed to show husbands, he sure didn’t want to see how she’d act when she was pissed off at him. (As a matter of fact, he had seen that, and more often than he wanted.)

  Her hands cupped her bulging belly. “You did this to me!” she screeched, more or less accurately.

  They were walking along a street in Madrid. La Martellita didn’t care. She let him have it any which way. Other people within earshot turned to listen. Street theater was the best, and cheapest, entertainment in town. It was a hell of a lot more interesting than the crap either the Republicans or the Nationalists put on the radio.

  Chaim knew about street theater. Growing up in New York City’s Lower East Side, he couldn’t very well not know about it. But he enjoyed watching and listening to other people more than being watched and listened to.

  “Take it easy, Magdalena,” he said, trying to soothe his inamorata till they got to some place where she could scream at him in something resembling privacy.

  “And don’t call me by that name!” she told him, still at top volume. “Don’t you dare call me by that name! You’ve got no business knowing that name! I’m the Little Hammer! Do you hear me?”

  “Sí, Magdalena,” Chaim answered easily. If she was going to work like a Stakhanovite to piss him off, the least he could do was return the disfavor.

  She said something so incandescent that a little old woman with a face like a Roman bust that was starting to crumble crossed herself. In the aggressively anticlerical Spanish Republic, that was shock indeed. Someone might denounce you for showing you believed.

  As for Chaim, he understood most of what his very pregnant sweetheart called him. He would have murdered any man who said a quarter of that to him, and not a jury in the world would have convicted him, either. Plenty of Spaniards would have decked a woman who talked to them like that. (Some would have got a shiv in the ribs after decking them, too. Spain was a lively country.)

  He’d already proved he was a soft American—and no one who tried belting La Martellita would have had joy of it afterwards. So, instead of making a fist and playing the goon, he gave her his blandest, stupidest smile. “¿Qué?” he said sweetly.

  She started to explode. Then she saw he was waiting for that. She sent him a glare acid enough to etch glass. Instead of shrieking, she asked, “Are you playing games with me?” in a deadly quiet voice.

  “You’re the one who’s been playing all the games,” Chaim answered. “Yes, you’re going to have a baby. I didn’t rape you. I did marry
you. What else do you want from me?”

  Unfortunately, he knew what else she wanted. She wanted him not to be so short and stumpy. She wanted him to have a handsomer face. He wouldn’t have minded a handsomer face himself, but he was stuck with the mug he’d been issued. His looks weren’t the real problem, though. Even his being Jewish wasn’t the real problem, though in a way it came closer. The real problem was, he wasn’t a good enough Communist to suit her.

  Maybe that had something to do with his being Jewish. It sure as hell had something to do with his being American. He was so used to thinking for himself, he did it without thinking, so to speak. La Martellita was made for knocking unorthodoxy flat. She would have been great in the Inquisition—she had the full measure of Spanish zeal. If he’d really wanted to hurt her, he would have told her so.

  “You didn’t rape me,” she agreed, and well she might—any man who tried to have his way with her without her consent would leave his cojones behind. “But I wasn’t sober when you did me, either.”

  “Neither was I, the first time,” Chaim said, which was at least partly true. “But we both were the next morning.”

  “There wouldn’t have been a next morning if there hadn’t been a first night.”

  Chaim sighed. That was also true, dammit. He spread his hands. “All we can do now is try and make the best of it. Yelling at me all the time doesn’t help. It just gives me a headache.”

  “I don’t yell at you all the time,” La Martellita said. “When you’re up at the front, I can’t.”

  “No, all they can do up there is kill me,” Chaim said. She looked at him in incomprehension. It wasn’t his Spanish, either; he’d said what he meant. But she didn’t get it.

  She was beautiful. She was dangerous. The combination was irresistible to Chaim, much as a tiger’s terrible beauty had to be to a beast-tamer. One split second of inattention, one tiny mistake with the chair, and you’d be lying on the ground in the middle of the center ring bleeding your life out, and all the marks in the bleachers would go Oooh! Life with La Martellita was a lot like that.