The plane passed over Leningrad on the way to the new base. Patchy clouds there didn’t let Gribkov see as much of the USSR’s second city (Kiev would have thought of it as the third; it thought of itself as the first) as he would have liked, but he did see that its cityscape also had chunks bitten out.
So did his comrades. “The Americans called here, too,” Vladimir Zorin said glumly.
“Did you think that they hadn’t?” Tsederbaum asked.
“No. But I wished they wouldn’t,” Zorin said. “This was a hero city above all hero cities in the last war. The Nazis laid siege to it for three years, but couldn’t take it. Now the Americans killed who knows how many people in the blink of an eye.”
However many the atom bombs had killed, it was probably fewer than had died during the siege. Those people mostly hadn’t died in the blink of an eye, though. Most of them had starved to death, especially in the first winter. The bread ration in Leningrad got down to something like a hundred grams a day, and even that tiny bit was stretched with sawdust or sometimes dirt. People whispered of cannibals—well-fed, rosy-cheeked cannibals—roaming the streets in search of corpses or living men and women they could make into corpses…and meat.
But that wasn’t what bothered Boris Gribkov. “We knew their bombers were coming!” he said. “We knew, dammit. We should have done a better job of stopping them. The way it looks, we couldn’t even slow them down.”
“They couldn’t stop us, either, Comrade Pilot,” Tsederbaum reminded him. “If they’d been able to, we wouldn’t be sitting here now talking about how bad our own air defenses were.”
He was right. Gribkov hadn’t looked at it that way. Now that he had to, he said, “Yes…and no. We were hitting their coast, so they wouldn’t have had much warning—”
“Maybe not for Seattle,” the navigator broke in. “But they should have been waiting for us at every city south of that. They should have been—only they weren’t.”
“They were dickheads,” Boris said. “Just because they were dickheads, should we have been dickheads, too? We had radar! We had jet fighters! To hit places like Moscow and Kiev, the Americans had to fly over our territory for hundreds of kilometers. They got through.”
“They lost planes.” Tsederbaum sounded uncomfortable.
“So did we. Not enough, either way, to keep the cities safe,” Boris said. No one said anything in response to that. His crewmates had to be remembering, as he was, the holes burnt into the hearts of the great Russian cities, and all the people who’d lived in those places and lived no more.
The Li-2 flew under the clouds toward the camouflaged airstrip. Gribkov had spoken of jet fighters. Now two of them streaked past the transport’s windows. He knew a moment of alarm. Leningrad had always been Russia’s window on the West. It might not be impossibly far for American fighters with drop tanks to reach.
But no. Those were MiG-15s, familiar as the back of his own hand. Their tails and fuselages and swept wings were blazoned with the rodina’s red star. Their jet engines weren’t copies of an American design. They were copies of a British design, and far better than the copies of Nazi jet engines the Soviet Union had used before.
Bump! The Li-2 touched down on the dirt runway and taxied to a stop. One of the gunners opened the door on the right side of the passenger compartment. Cool, moist air came in. So did the noise of the props, which were still spinning. The blast of air from them almost knocked Gribkov off his feet when he jumped out. As soon as the whole bomber crew had left the Li-2, the pilot taxied toward the men who waited with maskirovka off to the side of the airstrip.
What looked like a big farmhouse was the only building in sight. Boris and his crewmates walked over to it. When he opened the door, a Red Air Force major greeted them all. Inside, the place looked like an air base. A radioman with earphones and a mike tended to his set. A sergeant flicked beads on an abacus as he did paperwork. A battered samovar sat over a low flame on a table in a corner. Tobacco smoke fogged the air.
“Well, we’re home,” Leonid Tsederbaum said. Gribkov felt the same way.
MORE AND MORE GERMANS flooded into the emergency militia. Konrad Adenauer still wasn’t calling it an army, but it sure looked like one to Gustav Hozzel. He, of course, was on the inside looking out. However much it looked like an army, it didn’t look like the old Wehrmacht. The men wore American olive drab, not Feldgrau. They wore U.S. rank badges on their sleeves, not German ones on shoulder straps. They still wore those U.S. helmets, too. Gustav did miss his old Stahlhelm, but not enough to risk getting caught by the Russians with one on his head. And they used American weapons, with a few British Sten guns and mortars mixed in.
No matter what they looked like, most of them behaved as if the last war had ended week before last—or maybe as if it hadn’t ended at all. Some of the volunteers were kids who’d been too young to take on the Ivans before…although boys of twelve and thirteen had fought in Berlin. A far larger number were old Frontschweine, ready for another go at the Bolsheviks.
The Germans didn’t enjoy the good, hard physical shape they’d had six or eight years before. A stretch of peacetime would do that to you. But they made up for it by knowing every trick in the book. Anybody the Russians hadn’t been able to kill was good at his trade almost by definition.
Some of them fought with a reckless disregard for life and limb that startled even Gustav. “Rolf, what unit were you in the last time around?” he asked a fellow in his company after the man charged a Russian machine-gun nest. He made the Ivans keep their heads down with his Sten, then finished them off with grenades.
Rolf’s cheeks hollowed as he took a drag on a cigarette. After blowing out a stream of smoke, he answered, “LAH. How come?”
“Oh,” Gustav said. The Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler was part of the Waffen-SS, not the Wehrmacht. It had started out as the Führer’s personal bodyguard unit, and ended up as one of the best German panzer divisions. But the Waffen-SS combat style was more aggressive than the one the Wehrmacht favored. (So was the SS taste for atrocities, though the Wehrmacht wasn’t a dewy pink innocent there, either.) After a moment, Gustav did ask, “Have you got a blood-group tattoo?”
“Not any more. Had it cut out years ago. Hurt like a bitch when I did, but the scar hardly shows now,” Rolf said.
“All right.” Gustav left it there. The Russians slaughtered the men with those tattoos they caught, the same way they bumped off soldiers with German helmets. To them, both were marks of Nazism.
Well, if Rolf came out of the LAH, he damn well had been a Nazi, and doubtless still was. He might well have been an officer then, too. The tattoos were required for them, voluntary for other ranks. That he’d made a point of obliterating his argued he’d needed to. Here, he was just another private…who happened to fight like a homicidal maniac.
Gustav let it go. That kind of stuff was ancient history as far as he was concerned, even if the Russians saw things differently.
Rolf held out the pack of cigarettes. “Want one?” he asked. He could be plenty friendly—as long as you were on his side.
“Thanks.” Gustav took one and leaned close to get a light from his comrade’s glowing coal. He drew in smooth, mild smoke—they were American Luckies.
“We are going to lick the Reds,” Rolf said in tones that brooked no contradiction.
“Well, sure.” Gustav wouldn’t have put his one and only, irreplaceable body on the line if he hadn’t thought so.
“We’re going to lick them,” Rolf repeated, as if Gustav hadn’t spoken. “We should have lined up with the Amis to do it at the end of the last war, but better late than never. We’ll lick them, and we’ll clean out all the puppet regimes they set up in Eastern Europe, and we’ll drive them out of all the land they stole. And Germany will take its natural place in the sun again.”
“Aber natürlich,” Gustav said, though he feared Rolf wouldn’t recognize irony when he heard it. And the ex-LAH man had to mean at the top of the heap when he said natural pla
ce in the sun. Gustav added, “The Americans and the Russians have the bomb. We don’t. That’s a problem, you know.”
Rolf looked at him the way a Waffen-SS soldier would have eyed someone accused of defeatism. “We will. Our scientists are plenty smart enough—the best in the world, in fact. All we have to do is clear the foreign soldiers from our soil.”
Some of the foreign soldiers on German soil opened up with a machine gun. Gustav started to reach for his own weapon, then relaxed. The Ivans weren’t close enough to be dangerous—yet. To take Rolf’s mind off dreams of world domination, Gustav said, “I’ve got another question for you.”
“Go ahead—shoot,” Rolf said, amiably enough.
“You were with the Leibstandarte at the end, right? Through the last attack in Hungary after Budapest fell?”
“Operation Spring Awakening? Yeah, I was there for that. We drove them back for a solid week, but in the end they just had too goddamn many tanks and too many men.”
In the end, the Russians had had too many tanks and too many men—to say nothing of too many allies—everywhere. That wasn’t what Gustav wanted to talk about, though. “When the retreat started again, the Führer ordered LAH to take off their cuff titles with his signature, didn’t he?”
“Yes.” Rolf scowled. “He didn’t understand the situation down there.”
By the end of the war, from everything Gustav could gather, Hitler hadn’t understood the situation anywhere. But that wasn’t what he wanted to talk about, either. He said, “I heard that, when you guys heard about that order, what you took off were your medals—and you sent ’em to him in a chamber pot.”
“Oh. That story. I’ve heard it, too.” Rolf nodded. “It isn’t true. It’s cute, but it isn’t true. Sepp Dietrich was commanding the Sixth SS Panzer Army then. The order came through him, and it never got past his headquarters. He figured the Führer was having a bad day, so he didn’t forward it.”
“So you wore the cuff titles to the end?”
“When things fell apart, we all started shedding the SS stuff. You didn’t want to be wearing it if the Bolsheviks caught you.” Rolf drew a finger across his throat. Now Gustav nodded; he knew about that. The SS man continued, “But we didn’t cut off the titles right after Spring Awakening.”
“I get you,” Gustav said. He wondered whether Rolf was telling the truth about the medals in the chamber pot. The LAH man had been on the spot; Gustav hadn’t. But he’d heard the tale from people he had no reason to doubt. Rolf might be sanitizing things for the sake of his unit’s reputation.
Or he might not. Gustav knew he couldn’t be sure himself. He also knew Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler had a reputation worth protecting only among the most pro-Nazi Germans. To the Russians and the Americans, it had just been an uncommonly nasty enemy outfit.
A jeep rolled up. This second-string, hastily equipped unit was more motorized than the fanciest SS panzer division had been. That casual show of American wealth was another reason the Third Reich had lost the war.
Sitting next to the driver was Max Bachman. The back seat was full of ration boxes—more American goodies. Max started tossing them to the resting men. “Eat up! Eat up!” he cried merrily. “Hearty meals for the condemned men!”
“Put a sock in it, Max,” Gustav said, but not before he’d snagged some food for himself.
“You know that loudmouthed clown?” Rolf asked, tearing open his own C-ration package.
“Know him? Back in Fulda, I work for him.” After a moment’s thought, Gustav amended that: “Worked for him, I mean. God only knows what it’s like with the commissars giving the orders there.”
“Not good.” Rolf took the bayonet off his belt and opened a can of stew with it. That was a common use for bayonets these days. Another was candlestick: the socket was just the right size to hold a typical German candle. A bayonet could still be a fighting knife or a spearpoint on the end of a rifle. It could, but hardly ever was.
“Nowhere near good. My wife’s back there. I hope Luisa’s still back there,” Gustav said, and opened his own can of soggy ham and eggs.
Rolf set a surprisingly gentle hand on his shoulder. “Sorry, pal. That’s hard.” They set their cans on a grill over the fire to heat.
—
The cook gave Isztvan Szolovits a chunk of black bread and a chunk of ham. He cut the bread in half with his bayonet and surrounded the ham with it. The sandwich was the neatest way he could think of to eat what he had.
One of the other soldiers said, “I’m gonna tell your rabbi on you!”
“He won’t be able to hear you, Andras,” Szolovits answered, and took a bite. It was pretty good ham.
“What? Why the hell not?” Andras Orban demanded, as Isztvan had hoped he would.
“Because your head’s so far up your ass, no noise can get out.” The Jew gathered himself. If Andras wanted a fight, he’d give him one. He’d had more fights like that than he cared to remember. Knuckling under seemed worse.
Andras’ jaw dropped. If he was looking for a deferential Jew or a cowardly Jew, he was looking in the wrong place. He started to get to his feet, but the snickers from the rest of the Magyar soldiers eating and smoking and resting there made him hesitate.
Then Sergeant Gergely snapped, “Cut the crap, Orban. You ragged him, he ragged you back. I think his crack was funnier than yours, but what the hell? It evens out. Your face is funnier than his.”
That made more soldiers laugh at Andras. He turned a dull red. He wasn’t particularly handsome, though Szolovits wouldn’t have called him funny-looking. Well, you aren’t all that handsome yourself, Isztvan thought. He also wasn’t all that Jewish-looking. He had light brown hair, hazel eyes, and an ordinary nose. Only his mouth and the shape of his chin hinted at what he was.
But Gergely hadn’t finished. “I’m going to keep my eye on you, Orban,” he went on. “You think we don’t have enough trouble fighting the Americans and the Germans? You have to stir something up with your own countryman?”
“Him? My countryman, Comrade Sergeant?” Andras Orban looked astonished. “Isn’t he just a waddayacallem? A rootless cosmopolite, that’s it.”
Rootless cosmopolite was what a good Marxist-Leninist said when he meant kike. It had a fine ideological ring to it, but what lay behind it was old as the hills.
However it sounded, it just made Gergely roll his eyes. “He’s here, you stupid sack of shit. He’s got our uniform on. He carries a rifle just like yours. He points it at the enemies of the Hungarian People’s Republic. From everything I’ve seen, he’s done fine since we came over the border. You haven’t exactly been the world’s biggest hero, so keep your fucking trap shut till you are, right?” Andras didn’t say anything. Sergeant Gergely fixed him with a stare like twin flamethrowers. “Right?”
“Uh, right, Comrade Sergeant.” The soldier looked as if he wished he’d never opened his mouth. He also looked as if he wished the ground would open up and swallow him. There Szolovits sympathized. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t felt the same way himself plenty of times.
The next interesting question was whether Andras Orban would decide that bothering him was more trouble than it was worth, or whether the other soldier would want to get even. Szolovits had never wished harm on anybody from his own unit, but in Andras’ case he might make an exception.
As evening fell, he took his turn in a foxhole a couple of hundred meters west of the main Hungarian position. In case the Americans or the Germans tried a sneak attack, he could give the alarm and start shooting…unless they were too sneaky, and murdered him before he got the chance.
Just to ensure that he’d be able to spot them from a long way away, rain started coming down no more than ten minutes after he went out there. He buttoned up his greatcoat collar tight, to keep out as many drips as he could. The fabric was supposed to be waterproof, but it wasn’t.
He remembered German motorcyclists scooting through Budapest before the city fell to the Russians. They’d worn rub
berized greatcoats that really did shed water. Next to those, his was—and performed like—a cheap imitation.
He thought about lighting a cigarette, but didn’t bother. In the wet, he doubted he could keep it going long enough to get any enjoyment from it. The bottom of the hole turned muddy. Puddles started forming. His boots were supposed to be waterproof, too. From what he’d seen so far, they came closer than the greatcoat did, anyhow.
As long as the Americans stayed farther than ten meters or so from his post, they could hit the Hungarian troops behind him with a whole armored division, and he’d never know it till the shooting started. The way the rain was coming down, even that might not do it. He pushed the helmet farther forward on his head so the drips from the brim wouldn’t hit his nose. But that made the drips from the rear of the helmet dribble down the back of his neck, so he fiddled with it again.
Was that a noise? Would the Americans be daft enough to try something on such a miserable night? Clutching his rifle, he called, “Halt! Who goes? Give the password!” He hoped he didn’t sound too much like a scared kid. If those were Americans or Germans, they wouldn’t understand Magyar, and they would open up on him.
But, like a sign from the heavens, the password did come, followed by a wry chuckle he knew too well. “Just wanted to see if you were on your toes,” Sergeant Gergely said.
“Of course I am,” Szolovits answered, giddy with relief. “If I weren’t, I’d be drowning in here.”
“Cute,” Gergely said, but he chuckled again. After a moment, he went on, “You know, I was gonna bump Nagy up to lance-corporal till he caught one.”
“I’m not surprised,” Isztvan said, though he was surprised the sergeant told him. “Tibor was a good guy.” He hadn’t even thought about how much he missed the fallen soldier. It wasn’t that he hadn’t let himself, only that he’d been too busy trying to stay alive in his own right.
“What I’m thinking now is, maybe you’re the one I ought to tap for that slot,” Gergely said slowly.
What Isztvan Szolovits was thinking now was that, when the sergeant was fighting for Ferenc Szalasi’s Arrow Cross regime, Gergely would have shoved him into a train bound for Auschwitz and then toasted the departure with a glass of Tokay. Life could get very peculiar. So could the way people talked to each other. Szolovits came out with as much as he thought he could: “In spite of everything?”
Bombs Away Page 27
