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Skorzeny flipped the activating switch and pressed the red button on the new transmitter. Again the bomb in Lodz failed to explode. “Shit,” Skorzeny said wearily, as if even creative obscenity were more trouble than it was worth. He started to smash the second transmitter, but checked himself. Shaking his head, he said, “Something’s fucked up somewhere. Go and broadcastEGGPLANT on the general-distribution frequencies.”
“EGGPLANT?” The other SS man looked like a dog watching a juicy bone being taken away. “Must we?”
“Bet your arse we must, Maxi,” Skorzeny answered. “If the bomb doesn’t go off, we don’t move. The bomb hasn’t gone off. Now we have to send out the signal to let the troops know the attack’s on hold. We’ll sendKNIFE as soon as it goes up. Now move, damn you! If some overeager idiot opens up because he didn’t get thehalt signal, Himmler’ll wear your guts for garters.”
Jager had never imagined an SS officer named Maxi. He’d never imagined anybody, no matter what his name was, could move so fast. “What now?” he asked Skorzeny.
He’d seldom seen the big, bluff Austrian indecisive, but that was the only word that fit “Damned if I know,” Skorzeny answered. “Maybe some sexton or whatever the kikes call them spotted the aerial hooked up to the grave marker and tore it loose. If that’s all it is, a simple reconnection would get things going again without much trouble. If it’s anything more than that, if the Jews have their hands on the bomb…” He shook his head. “That could be downright ugly. For some reason or other, they don’t exactly love us.” Even his laugh, usually a great fierce chortle, rang hollow now.
For some reason or other.That was as close as Skorzeny would come to acknowledging what theReich had done to the Jews. It was closer than a lot of German officers came, but it was not close enough, not as far as Jager was concerned. He said, “What are you going to do about it?”
Skorzeny looked at him as if he were the idiot. “What do you think I’m going to do? I’m going to shag ass down to Lodz and make that fucker work, one way or the other. Like I say, I hope the problem’s just with the aerial. But if it’s not, if the Jews really did get wind of this some kind of way, I’ll manage just fine, thank you very much.”
“You can’t be thinking of going by yourself,” Jager exclaimed. “If the Jews do have it”-he didn’t know himself, not for sure-“they’ll turn you into ablutwurst quick as boiled asparagus.” The classics sometimes came in handy in the oddest ways.
Skorzeny shook his head again. “You’re wrong, Jager. It’ll be a-what do the RAF bastards call it? — a piece of cake, that’s what. There’s a cease-fire on, remember? Even if the kikes have stolen the bomb, they won’t be guarding it real hard. Why should they? They won’t know we know they’ve got it, because they can’t figure we’d try and set it off in the middle of a truce.” His leer had most of its old force back. “Of course not. We’re good little boys and girls, right? Except for one thing: I’m not a good little boy.”
“Mm, I’d noticed that,” Jager said dryly. Now Skorzeny’s laugh was full of his wicked vinegar-he recovered fast. He was also damned good at thinking on his feet; every word he said sounded reasonable. “When are you leaving?”
“Soon as I change clothes, get some rations, and take care of a couple of things here,” the SS man answered. “If the bomb goes up, it’ll give those scaly sons of bitches a kick in the teeth they’ll remember for a long time.” In absurdly coquettish fashion, he fluttered his fingers at Jager and tramped away.
From the cupola of the Panther, Jager stared after him. With his unit on full battle alert, how the devil was he supposed to get away and get word to Mieczyslaw so he could pass it on to Anielewicz by whatever roundabout route he used? The answer was simple, and stared Jager in the face: he couldn’t. But if he didn’t, he worried not just about thousands of Jews going up in a toadstool-shaped cloud of dust, but also about Germany. Whatwould the Lizards visit on theVaterland for touching off an atomic bomb during a truce? Jager didn’t know. He didn’t want to find out, either.
From down in the turret of the Panther, Gunther Grillparzer said, “No show today after all, Colonel?”
“Doesn’t look that way,” Jager answered, and then took a chance by adding, “Can’t say I’m sorry, either.”
To his surprise, Grillparzer said, “Amen!” The gunner seemed to think some kind of explanation was needed there, for he went on, “I hold no brief for kikes, mind you, sir, but it ain’t like they’re our number-one worry right now, you know what I mean? It’s the Lizards I really want to boot in the arse, not them. They’re all going to hell anyway, so I don’t hardly have to worry about ’em.”
“Corporal, as far as I’m concerned, they can sew red stripes on your trousers and put you on the General Staff,” Jager told him. “I think you’ve got better strategic sense than most of our top planners, and that’s a fact.”
“If I do, then God help Germany,” Grillparzer said, and laughed.
“God help Germany,” Jager agreed, and didn’t.
The rest of the day passed in lethargic anticlimax. Jager and his crew climbed out of their Panther with nothing but relief: you rolled the dice every time you went up against the Lizards, and sooner or later snake eyes stared back at you. Sometime during the afternoon, Otto Skorzeny disappeared. Jager pictured him slouching toward Lodz, a pack on his back, and very likely makeup over the famous scar. Could he hide that devilish gleam in his eye with makeup, too? Jager had his doubts.
Johannes Drucker disappeared for a while, too, but he came back in triumph, with enough kielbasa for everybody’s supper that night. “Give that man a Knight’s Cross!” Gunther Grillparzer exclaimed. Turning to Jager, he said with a grin, “If you’re going to put me on the General Staff, sir, I might as well enjoy myself,nicht wahr?”
“Warum denn nicht?”Jager said. “Why not?”
As twilight deepened, they got a fire going and stuck a pot over it to boil the sausage. The savory steam rising from the pot made Jager’s mouth water. When he heard approaching footsteps, he expected them to come from the crew of another panzer, drawn by the smell and hoping to get their share of meat.
But the men coming up to the cookfire weren’t in panzer black, they were in SS black.So Maxi and his friends aren’t above scrounging, Jager thought, amused. Then Maxi drew a Walther from his holster and pointed it at Jager’s midsection. The SS men with him also took out their pistols, covering the rest of the startled panzer crewmen.
“You will come with me immediately, Colonel, or I will shoot you down on the spot,” Maxi said. “You are under arrest for treason against theReich.”
“Exalted Fleetlord,” Moishe Russie said. He was getting used to these sessions with Atvar. He was even coming to look forward to them. The more useful Atvar thought him now, the less likely he and his family were to have to pay for his earlier strokes against the Lizards. And guessing with the diplomats of the great powers was a game that made chess look puerile. He was, apparently, a better guesser than most of the Lizards. That kept the questions coming, and let him find out how the negotiations fared, which had a fascination of its own: he was privy to knowledge only a handful of humans possessed.
Atvar spoke in his own language. Zolraag turned these words into the usual mix of German
and Polish: “You are of course familiar with the Tosevite not-emperor Hitler, and hold no good opinion of him-I take it this remains correct?”
“Yes, Exalted Fleetlord.” Moishe added an emphatic cough.
“Good,” Atvar said. “I judge you more likely, then, to give me an honest opinion of his actions than you would those of, say, Churchill: solidarity with your fellow Big Uglies will be less of an issue in Hitler’s case. Is this also correct?”
“Yes, Exalted Fleetlord,” Moishe repeated. Thinking of Hitler as his fellow human being did not fill him with delight. Whatever you had to say against them, the Lizards had shown themselves to be far better people than Adolf Hitler.
“Very well,” Atvar said through Zolraag. “Here is my question: how do you judge the conduct of Hitler and von Ribbentrop when the latter summoned me to announce the detonation of an atomic bomb and the resumption of warfare by Deutschland against the Race, when in fact no such detonation and no such warfare-barring a few more cease-fire violations than usual-in fact took place?”
Moishe stared. “This really happened, Exalted Fleetlord?”
“Truth,” Atvar said, a word Russie understood in the Lizards’ language.
He scratched his head as he thought. For all he knew, that might have made him uncouth in Atvar’s eyes. But then, he was a Big Ugly, so was he not uncouth in Atvar’s eyes by assumption? Slowly, he said, “I have trouble believing von Ribbentrop would make such a claim knowing it to be untrue and knowing you could easily learn it was untrue.”
“That is perceptive of you,” the fleetlord said. “When the spokesmale for Hitler did make the claim, I immediately investigated it and, finding it false, returned to inform him of the fact. The unanimous opinion of our psychologists is that my statement took him by surprise. Here: observe him for yourself.”
