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The Germans’ worn, filthy faces lit up. Till now, they’d been nearly mute, tongue-tied among the Russians (which was also the root meaning of Nemtsi, the old Russian word for Germans-those who could make no intelligible sounds). The ginger-whiskered one grinned and said, “Ich heisse Feldwebel Georg Schultz, Fraulein,” and rattled off his pay number too fast for her to follow.
The older one said, “Ich heisse Heinrich Jager Major” and also gave his number. She ignored it; it wasn’t something she needed to know right now. The kolkhozniks murmured among themselves, either impressed she could speak to the Wehrmacht men in their own tongue or mistrustful of her for the same reason.
She wished she recalled more. She had to ask their unit, by clumsy circumlocution: “From which group of men do you come?”
The sergeant started to answer; the major (his name meant “hunter,” Ludmila thought; he certainly had a hunter’s eyes) cleared his throat, which sufficed to make the younger man shut up. Jager said, “Are we prisoners of war, Russian pilot? You may ask only certain things of prisoners of war.” He spoke slowly, clearly, and simply; perhaps he recognized Ludmila’s hesitancy with his language.
“Nyet,” she answered, and then, “Nein,” in case he hadn’t understood the Russian. He was nodding as she spoke, so evidently he had. She went on, “You are not prisoners of war. We fight the”-she perforce had to say yasheritsi, not knowing the German word for “Lizards”-“first. We fight Germans now only if Germans fight us. Not forget war against Germany, but put it to one side for now.”
“Ah,” the major said. “Yes, that is good. We fight the Lizards first also.” (Eidechsen was what the German said. Ludmila made a mental note of it.) Jager went on, “Since we have this common foe, I will tell you that we are from Sixteenth Panzer. I will also tell you that Schultz and I have together killed a Lizard panzer.”
She stared at him. “This is true?” Radio Moscow made all sorts of claims of Lizard armor destroyed, but she had flown over too many battlefields to take them seriously any more. she’d seen what was left of German panzer units that tried to take on the Lizards, too: not much. Were these tankmen lying to impress her with how masterful the Germans remained?
No, she decided after a moment of watching and listening to them. They described the action in too much vivid detail for her to doubt them: if they hadn’t been through what they were talking about, they belonged on the stage, not in the middle of a collective farm. Most convincing of all was Jager’s mournful summary at the end: “We hurt them, but they wrecked us. All my company’s tanks are gone.”
“What are they saying, Comrade Pilot?” Pavlyuchenko demanded.
She quickly translated. The kolkhozniks gaped at the Germans as if they were indeed the superior beings they claimed to be. Their wide eyes made Ludmila want to kick them. Russians always looked on Germans with a peculiar mixture of envy and fear. Ever since the days of the Vikings, the Russian people had learned from more sophisticated Germanic folk to the west. And ever since the days of the Vikings, the Germanic peoples had looked to seize what they could from their Slavic neighbors. Teutonic Knights, Swedes, Prussians, Germans-the labels changed, but the Germanic push to the east seemed to go on forever. Though latest and worst, Hitler was but one of many.
Still, these particular Germans could be useful. They hadn’t beaten the Lizards, far from it, but they’d evidently made them sit up and take notice. Soviet authorities needed to learn what they knew. Ludmila returned to their language: “I will take you with me when I fly back to my base, and send you on from there. I promise nothing bad will happen to you.”
“What, if we don’t care to go?” asked the major-Jager she reminded herself.
she did her best to put authority in her gaze. “If you do not go, you will at best wander on foot and alone. Maybe you will find Lizards. Maybe you will find Russians who think you are worse than Lizards. Maybe these kolkhozniks are only waiting for you to fall asleep…”
The panzer major was a cool customer. He did not turn to give Kliment Pavlyuchenko a once-over, which meant he’d already formed his judgment of the chief. He did say, “Why should I trust your promises? I’ve seen the bodies of Germans you Russians caught. They ended up with their noses and ears cut off, or worse. How do I know Sergeant Schultz and I won’t wind up the same way?”
The injustice of that almost choked Ludmila. “If you Nazi swine hadn’t invaded our country, we never would have harmed a one of you. I’ve seen with my own eyes what you do to the part of the Soviet Union you took. You should have everything you get.”
She glared at Jager. He glared back. Then Georg Schultz surprised her-and, by his expression, the major as well-by saying, “Krieg ist Scheisse-war is shit.” He surprised her again when he came up with two Russian words, “Voina-gavno,” which meant the same thing.
“Da!” the kolkhozniks roared as one. They crowded round the sergeant slapping his back pressing cigarettes and coarse ma khorka tobacco into his hands and tunic pockets. All at once he was not an enemy to them, but a human being.
Turning back to Jager Ludmila pointed at the kolkhozniks and the gunner. “This is why we have stopped fighting Germans who do not fight us, and why I can say no harm will come to you. Germany and Soviet Union are enemies, da. People and Lizards are worse enemies.”
“You speak well, and as you say, we have little choice.” Jager pointed to her faithful Kukuruznik. “Will that ugly little thing carry three?”
“Not with comfort, but yes,” she answered, stifling her anger at the adjective he’d chosen.
One corner of his mouth tugged upward in an expression she had trouble interpreting: a smile, she supposed, but not like any she’d seen on a Russian face, more like a dry white wine than a simple vodka. He said, “How do you know that, once we get into the air, we will not make you fly us toward German lines?”
“I do not have the petrol to reach the nearest I know of,” she said. “Also, the most you can make me do is fly into the ground and kill us. I will not fly west.”
He studied her for perhaps half a minute, that curious, ironic smile still on his face. Slowly, he nodded. “You are a soldier.”
“Yes,” she said, and found she had to return the compliment. “And you. So you must understand why we need to learn how you killed a Lizard panzer.”
“Wasn’t hard,” Schultz put in. “They have wonderful panzers to ride around in, ja, but they’re even worse tankmen than you Ivans.”
Had he said that in Russian, he would have forfeited the goodwill he’d won from the kolkhoz’s farmers. As it was, Ludmila gave him a dirty look. So did Kliment Pavlyuchenko, who seemed to have a smattering of German.
“He is right,” Jager said, which distressed Ludmila more, for she was convinced the major’s judgment needed to be taken seriously. “You cannot deny our panzer troops have more skills than yours, Pilot”-he gave the word a feminine ending-“or we could never have advanced in our Panzer IIIs against your KVs and T-34s. The Lizards have even less skill than you Russians, but their tanks are so good, they do not need much. If we had comparable equipment, we would slaughter them.”
So here is German arrogance at first hand Ludmila thought. Having admitted the Lizards had smashed his unit to bits, all the panzer major cared to talk about was the foe’s shortcomings. Ludmila said, “Since our equipment is unfortunately not a match for theirs, how do we go about fighting them?”
“Das ist die Frage,” Sergeant Schultz said solemnly, for all the world like a Nazi Hamlet.
Jager’s mouth quirked up once more. This time, he raised an eyebrow, too. Ludmila found herself smiling back, if only to show that she’d noticed the allusion and was no uncultured peasant. The German turned serious: “We must find places and situations where they cannot use to best advantage all they have.”
“As the partisans fight behind your lines?” Ludmila asked, hoping to flick him on a raw spot.
But he only nodded. “Exactly so. We are all partisans now, whe
n set against the forces we aim to oppose.”
Somehow, his refusal to take offense irritated her. Brusquely, she pointed back toward her airplane. “The two of you will have to go into the front cabin side by side. Keep your machine pistols if you like; I do not try to take your arms away. But, Sergeant, I hope you will leave your rifle behind here. It will not”-she had to pantomime the word “fit”-“in a small space, and may help the kolkhozniks against the Lizards.”
Schultz glanced to Jager. Ludmila eased fractionally when she saw the major give an almost invisible nod. Schultz presented the Mauser to Kliment Pavlyuchenko with a flourish. Startled at first, the collective farm chief folded him into a bear hug. When the sergeant broke free, he went through his pockets for every round of rifle ammunition he could find. Then he set a foot in the stirrup and climbed up into the U-2.
Jager followed him a moment later. The space into which they were crammed was so tight that they ended up sitting half facing each other, each with an arm around the other’s back. “Would you care to kiss me, sir?” Schultz asked. Jager snorted.
Ludmila had the back cabin, the one with working controls, to herself. At her shouted direction, a kolkhoznik spun the little biplane’s prop. The sturdy radial engine buzzed to life. The two Germans set their jaws against the noise but otherwise ignored it. She remembered they had their own intimate acquaintance with engine noise.
