“Ah.” Herr Hoppe nodded, more to himself than to her. “Then you will not have heard any news this morning.”
“What’s that got to do with anything? Don’t play riddles, if you don’t mind. If you’ve got something to say, come out and say it, already.”
“Very well, Mrs. Druce.” This time, Hoppe got it right. And, this time, he really did click his heels. “I regret that I must be the one to inform you that the Athenia went down in the North Atlantic yesterday, bound for Copenhagen from New York City. Loss of life is reported to be heavy.”
“Went down.” Numbly, Peggy entered the words. They sounded innocuous, almost antiseptic. Little by little, her wits started working. “What do you mean, ‘went down’? Went down how? Did a U-boat torpedo her?” That was the likeliest way she could think of for a ship to go down in the middle of the North Atlantic in wartime. “They can’t do that! She’s a neutral! She’s an American!”
They could do that. They could do anything they damn well pleased. Sometimes, as an American herself, she had trouble remembering that in spite of all the horrors she’d seen. Maybe that made her a fool. Maybe it left her one of the last sane people on this poor, benighted continent.
Konrad Hoppe, dutiful employee of the Sub-bureau for the Supervision of Interned Neutrals, looked pained. “So the BBC claims. But this is one more lie from a nation of liars. The government of the Reich has denied any involvement in the sinking of the Athenia. If it was not an accident, the British torpedoed or bombed it themselves, to stir up hatred against Germany in America.”
“That’s the nuttiest thing I ever heard in my life!” Peggy exclaimed.
“It is not,” Hoppe insisted. “For the British, it would make perfect sense. But why would the Reich sink an American ocean liner? Do you not think we learned our lessons on the folly of this in the last war?”
Peggy opened her mouth. Then she closed it again. She didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t imagine England doing anything so filthy. But she also had trouble believing Hitler wanted to antagonize the USA. Wouldn’t he be cutting his own throat if he did? He might be nuts, but he wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t that stupid, anyhow, or Peggy didn’t think so.
“Maybe your guy just made a mistake,” she said after a few seconds of thought. “Have you ever crossed the Atlantic in January? I have, and it’s rough seas and nasty weather all the way.”
“Our submarine captains do not make such errors,” the Foreign Ministry official said stiffly. “It is impossible. And if you find the Atlantic in January so unappetizing, why did you book passage on the Athenia?”
To get the hell out of your stinking country. But if Peggy said something like that, some guys who wore different uniforms—those of the SS, say—were liable to have some sharp questions for her. Or pointed ones. Or hot ones. “To get away from the war,” she did say, a couple of heartbeats slower than she might have.
“I am afraid this is not possible for you at the moment,” Hoppe said.
“Can’t I go to Denmark anyway?” Peggy yelped. The lights were on in neutral Denmark. Denmark had never heard of rationing, except as something other people suffered. Much more to the point, Denmark was a civilized country. Once upon a time, Peggy would have said the same thing about Germany. No more. No more.
“I am very sorry.” Konrad Hoppe didn’t sound sorry. If anything, he sounded coldly amused. He got to tell foreigners no, and the Foreign Ministry paid him to do it. If that wasn’t heaven for the nasty little man, Peggy would have been amazed. A small, chilly smile on his lips, Hoppe went on, “That also for you is not possible.”
“How come?” She wouldn’t give up without a fight. “I’ve got the train ticket. I’ve got the Danish visa. Why can’t I use ‘em?”
“It is not the policy of the Reich to permit departures unless the return journey to the foreigner’s home may be completed without delay,” Hoppe droned.
“Why the—dickens not?” She wanted to say something hotter than that, but feared it would do her more harm than good.
“I am not obligated to discuss the Reich’s policies with those affected by them. I am obliged only to communicate them to you,” Hoppe said primly.
Fuck you, Charlie. Peggy didn’t say that, either. A few years earlier, she would have. Maybe she was finally growing up. She rolled her eyes. She didn’t think Herb would believe it. That made her roll them again. God only knew when—or if—she’d see her husband again.
She tried a different tack: “Okay, you’re not obligated. Could you do it because you want to, or because it’d be a civilized kind of thing to do?”
Yes, she’d throw that in Hoppe’s face. And his sallow cheeks did turn red. Russians got ticked off if you called them uncultured. Germans were almost as bad. A lot of them had an inferiority complex about France and England. And, oddly, that had got worse since Hitler took over. It was as if the Nazis were uneasily aware of what a bunch of bastards they were, and embarrassed when somebody called them on it.
“I believe…” Hoppe’s voice trailed away. A little muscle under one eye twitched, the only visible sign of what had to be a struggle inside him. Human being against Nazi functionary? Peggy knew which way she would have bet. But she would have lost, because the Foreign Ministry official went on, “I believe it is to keep people from blaming the Reich for disrupted schedules when those are not of our making.”
Who sank the Athenia? Peggy wondered again. But Hoppe would only deny it one more time if she threw it in his face. If Goebbels was saying the British had done it, that was Holy Writ inside the Third Reich. Hoppe probably believed it himself, even if it seemed like obvious horse manure to Peggy.
“Well, suppose I sign a pledge that says I won’t be offended?” Peggy proposed. “If I badmouth you in the papers or anything, you can haul it out and tell people what a liar I am.”
He shook his head. “No. That is not good. You would claim you signed the document under duress. We have experience with others who prove ungrateful after going beyond our borders.”
And why do you suppose that is? Peggy knew goddamn well why it was. Konrad Hoppe seemed not to have the faintest idea. That he didn’t—that so many like him didn’t—was one measure of modern-day Germany’s damnation.
“I really wouldn’t,” Peggy said. Honest! Cross my heart and hope to die! She would have promised anything and done damn near anything to escape the Reich. If he’d propositioned her, she wouldn’t have loosened his teeth for him. She wouldn’t have come across, but still.…
“I am sorry. I have not the discretion to permit this.” Now Hoppe did sound as if he might mean it, anyhow.
“Who does?” Peggy asked. “Ribbentrop?”
“Herr von Ribbentrop may have the authority.” Konrad Hoppe stressed the aristocratic von, which the Nazi Foreign Minister, as Peggy understood it, had bought. “He may, I say.”
“He’s the head of the Foreign Ministry, right?” Peggy said. “If he doesn’t, who does, for crying out loud?”
“Above the Foreign Minister—above everyone—is always the Führer.” Hoppe pointed out the obvious.
“Oh, my aching back!” Peggy burst out. “How am I supposed to get Hitler to pay attention to my case? There’s a war on.”
“I am afraid I can offer on that score no suggestions,” the Nazi bureaucrat answered. “If you will excuse me…” He bowed once more and walked out without waiting to see whether Peggy would excuse him or not.
She thought about getting on the train for Denmark even if the Foreign Ministry said she couldn’t. She not only thought about it, she headed for the station.
She presented her ticket. Then she had to present her passport. The conductor—he wasn’t quite a conductor, but a more prominent kind of official, with a uniform a U.S. major general would have envied—checked her name against a list. As soon as he did that, she knew her goose was cooked. Damn Teutonic thoroughness anyway!
His Toploftiness looked up from the sheet of paper. “I am sorry, but f
or you travel is verboten,” he said.
“It’s not fair! It’s not right!” she squawked.
The railroad official shrugged. “I am sorry. I can about that nothing do. I do not the orders give. I only carry them out.”
“Right,” Peggy said tightly. “What am I supposed to do now?”
“Go back to your hotel,” the man replied. “Wait for German victory. It will soon come. Then, I have no doubt, you will be able where you please to travel. Although, since you are here in the Reich at this world-historical time, why would you anywhere else care to go?”
Peggy could have told him. She came that close—that close—to doing it. In the end, she held her tongue. Yeah, maybe she really and truly was growing up. Or maybe—and more likely—the Gestapo could scare the bejesus out of an immature person, too.
VACLAV JEZEK LOVED HIS NEW antitank rifle. The damn thing was long and heavy. It kicked like a mule. The round it fired was as big as his thumb. Despite that, it wouldn’t penetrate all the armor on a first-rate German panzer. But against side or rear panels, it had a good chance of punching through. Then it would do something nasty to the men inside the metal monster, or maybe to the engine.
He didn’t like the way he’d got his hands on the antitank rifle. The Frenchman who had lugged it around lost the top of his head to a bullet or shell fragment. He wasn’t pretty when Vaclav found him. He’d bled all over the weapon, too. Now, though, you could hardly see the stains.
Somebody moved in the bushes a few hundred meters ahead. Jezek swung the rifle in that direction. It shot nice and flat out to a kilometer and more. What you could see, you could hit, and what you could hit.…Using the antitank rifle against a mere soldier was like killing a flea by dropping a house on it. Vaclav didn’t care. He wanted Germans dead, and he wasn’t fussy about how they got that way.
Czechs and Frenchmen and a few Englishmen were all intermingled here. They shouldn’t have been, but the latest German drive had thrown the defenders in the Ardennes into confusion. Jezek had seen that in Czechoslovakia, to his sorrow. After a panzer thrust pierced the line you were trying to hold, you had to scramble like a madman to piece together a new one farther back. And the Germans were still pushing forward, and shelling you, and bombing you.…
“Anybody have more clips for the antitank rifle?” he called in Czech. He could have said the same thing in German, but it probably would have got him shot. He didn’t speak French or English.
But one of the French noncoms assigned as liaison to the Czechs translated for Vaclav. The man’s Czech was none too good, but he spoke French fine. And a couple of soldiers coughed up the fat clips Vaclav needed.
“Thanks,” he said as he stowed them in a sack on his belt—they were too big for standard ammunition pouches.
“Any time, pal. I bet I’ve hated the Nazis longer than you have,” the sergeant said. He had a slight guttural accent, curly auburn hair, and a formidable plow of a nose.
Another Jew. They’re fucking everywhere, Jezek thought. The guy named David was back of the lines with a bullet through his leg right now. He’d get better. Whether the line would wasn’t so obvious.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Vaclav said aloud. This fellow wouldn’t duck out of the fight the way the damned Slovaks did, anyhow.
German 105s started tearing up the landscape a few hundred meters off to the south. Nobody in Vaclav’s bunch even flinched. That wasn’t close enough to worry about. The noncom said, “Maybe there’ll be some cows down, and we can get ourselves fresh beef.”
“Or pork.” The words came out of Vaclav’s mouth before he thought about them.
He didn’t faze the noncom in French uniform. “I’ve eaten it,” the guy said. “Beats the crap out of going hungry.”
“Yeah, well, what doesn’t?” Jezek replied.
They never got the chance to see if the Germans had done some worthwhile butchery for a change. Stukas screamed down from a treacherously clear sky. “Down!” Several soldiers yelled the same thing at the same time. Vaclav and the Jewish sergeant were two of them. They both fit action to word. Vaclav was already tearing at the muddy ground with his entrenching tool when the first bombs hit nearby.
Blast jumped on him with hobnailed boots. Fragments of bomb casing screeched malevolently through the air. He kept on impersonating a mole. Stukas came in bigger waves than this.
Sure as hell, more of them wailed down on him and his buddies. He’d heard they had sirens mounted on their landing gear to make them sound even scarier than they would have otherwise. As far as he was concerned, that was overdoing it. The damn things were scary enough anyhow.
The sergeant lay on his back, firing up at them with his rifle. That took guts, but it was bound to be a waste of ammo. How could you hit something that was going 500 kilometers an hour?
People were shrieking and wailing in a godawful Babel of languages. Medics ran here and there, slapping on bandages and lugging wounded soldiers away on stretchers. The medics wore Red Cross armbands and smocks. Some of them had painted Red Crosses in white circles on either side of their helmets. Every so often, they got shot anyway. German medics wore the same kind of outfits. Vaclav had never aimed at one of them on purpose. Still, he was sure they stopped bullets, too.
A French officer shouted something. It might as well have been in Japanese for all the sense it made to Vaclav. The redheaded Jew—just like Judas, Jezek thought—translated: “We’ve got to get back over the Semoy. They’re going to blow the bridges pretty soon, he says, to help stop the Germans.”
“They think that will?” Vaclav didn’t believe it for a minute. The Nazis were too good with pontoon bridges and rubber boats and parachutists and what have you.
“That’s what he says.” After a moment, the sergeant added, “Do you want to get stuck here?”
“Well—no,” Vaclav admitted—the only answer that question could have.
A crackle of machine-gun fire made him hit the dirt again. Here came an obsolete but nasty little Panzer I, spitting bullets from both guns in the turret. No French tanks anywhere close by, of course. They were like policemen—never around when you needed them.
But a Panzer I wasn’t so goddamn tough. Vaclav had heard they were originally intended as nothing more than training vehicles. They got thrown into combat when Hitler jumped Czechoslovakia. Even their frontal armor was only thirteen millimeters thick. That kept out small-arms fire. Anything more…
He worked the bolt and chambered a round. He wasn’t shooting at a Stuka; the little German tank made a fine target. The tank commander, who was also the gunner, sat right between the machine guns. As always, the antitank rifle kicked like a son of a bitch. He’d have a nasty bruise on his shoulder. He didn’t care, though, not when the Panzer I’s machine guns suddenly fell silent.
“Good shot!” the Jewish sergeant yelled. The tank drove on, but so what? The driver couldn’t shoot while he was driving.
And the Allied soldiers on this side of the Semoy couldn’t stop the Nazis. Vaclav thanked God no German bombers struck while he was tramping over the bridge. He would have thanked God a lot more had He done worse to the enemy sooner. In a world where you didn’t get many big favors, you needed to be properly grateful for the small ones.
“COME ON! THIS WAY!” THE engineer called in a low, urgent voice. Willi Dernen assumed he was an engineer, anyhow. It was the middle of the night, and as black as the Jew Süss’ heart outside. The man went on, “The pontoon bridge is right here. It has rope rails, so hang on to those. And so help me God, you assholes, we’ll drown the first fucking Dummkopf who lights a cigarette before he’s half a kilometer away from it!”
Who would be that stupid? Willi wondered. But the question answered itself. A Dummkopf would, that was who. Like every other outfit in the world, the Wehrmacht had its share and then some. A jerk who decided he needed a smoke right now would damn well light up, and so what if he gave the game away to some watching Frenchman?
Willi�
��s feet thudded on planks. He reached out and found the rope. It guided him across the Semoy. The bridge swayed under his weight and that of his comrades, almost as if he were on the deck of a boat.
“You heard the man,” Corporal Baatz said loudly. “No smoking!”
The engineer spoke in a deadly whisper: “Whoever you are, big-mouth, shut the fuck up!”
Snickers ran through Baatz’s squad. One of them was Willi’s. He was only an ordinary Landser; he didn’t have the rank to tell Awful Arno where to head in. The engineer sure did—or acted as if he did, which was every bit as good. Baatz didn’t let out another peep, even to protest.
Somebody up ahead said, “Careful. You’re coming to the end of the bridge.” Maybe fifteen seconds later, he said it again, and then again, to let the troops gauge where he was. Willi almost tripped anyhow, when the planking gave way to mud.
“Second platoon, form up on me!” That was Lieutenant Georg Gross, who’d taken Neustadt’s place after the former platoon commander bought his plot. Gross seemed like a pretty good guy, even if he didn’t ride herd on Arno Baatz hard enough to suit Willi. To an officer, Baatz probably looked like a pretty good noncom. That only showed officers weren’t as smart as they thought they were.
Somebody stepped on Willi’s foot. “Ouch!” he said—quietly. “Watch it,” he added.
“Sorry,” the other soldier said, and then, “Willi?”
“Wolfgang?” Willi chuckled. “Well, that’s one way to find each other in the dark.”
“Listen to me, men,” Lieutenant Gross said. “Listen to me, dammit! The objective is Charleville-Mézières, southwest of here.” The way he pronounced the town’s name said he spoke French, as Neustadt had before him. Much good it had done the other platoon leader. Gross went on, “We’ve got about ten kilometers of marching to do before we get there, maybe twelve. We’ll go through the Bois des Hazelles—the Hazelwood—for part of the way. It should give us some cover.”
Hitler's War Page 27
