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But how could you tell him that? The answer was simple: you couldn’t. Before Bagnall even started to figure out what to say, Schultz spoke first: “You have your warning. Do with it what you will.Guten Tag.” He did a smart about-turn and clumped away. Now that spring was truly here, he wore German infantry boots in place of the Russian felt ones everyone, regardless of politics, used during the winter.
Bagnall shut the door, then turned to his fellow Englishmen. “Well, what the devil are we supposed to do aboutthat?”
“I think the first thing we do, no matter what Schultz said, is to go pay a visit to Aleksandr German,” Jerome Jones said. “Knowing the Germans don’t love you is rather different from knowing they aim to kick you in the ballocks one day soon.”
“Yes, but after that?” Embry said. “I don’t much care to scuttle out of here, but I’m damned if I’ll fight for the Nazis and I’m not dead keen on laying my life on the line for the Bolshies, either.”
That summed up Bagnall’s feelings so well, he nodded instead of adding a comment of his own along those lines. What he did say was, “Jones is right. We’d best learn what German”-he put the hardG in there-“knows about what the Germans”-softG- “are up to.”
He got a rifle of his own before going out on the streets of Pskov. Embry and Jones carried their weapons. So did most of the men and a lot of the women in town: Nazis and Red Russians put him in mind of cowboys and Red Indians. This game, though, was liable to be bloodier.
They went through the marketplace to the east of the ruins of theKrom. Bagnall didn’t like what he saw there. Only a handful ofbabushkas sat behind the tables, not the joking, gossiping throngs that had filled the square even through the winter. The goods the old women set out for sale were shabby, too, as if they didn’t want to show anything too fine for fear of having it stolen.
Aleksandr German made his headquarters across the street from the church of Sts. Peter and Paul at the Buoy, on Ulitsa Vorovskogo north of theKrom. The Red Army soldiers who guarded the building gave the Englishmen suspicious looks, but let them through to see the commander.
The fierce red mustache German wore had given him the appearance of a pirate. Now, with his face thin and pale and drawn, the mustache seemed pasted on, like misplaced theatrical makeup. An enormous bandage still padded his crushed hand. Bagnall was amazed the surgeons hadn’t simply amputated it; he couldn’t imagine the ruined member ever giving the partisan brigadier as much use as he could have got from a hook.
He and Jerome Jones took turns telling German of Georg Schultz’s warning. When they were through, the Soviet partisan officer held up his good hand. “Yes, I do know about this,” he said in the Yiddish that came more naturally to him than did Russian. “The Nazi is probably right-the fascists and we will be fighting again before long.”
“Which does no one but the Lizards any good,” Bagnall observed.
Aleksandr German shrugged. “It doesn’t even do them much good,” he said. “They aren’t going to come north and take Pskov, not now they’re not. They’ve pulled most of their forces off this front to fight the Germans in Poland. We were fighting the fascists before the Lizards came, and we’ll be fighting them after the Lizards go. No reason we shouldn’t fight them while the Lizards are here, too.”
“I don’t think you’ll win,” Bagnall said.
German shrugged again. “Then we fade back into the woods and become the Forest Republic once more. We may not hold the town, but the Nazis will not hold the countryside.” He sounded very sure of himself.
“Doesn’t seem to leave much place for us,” Jerome Jones said in Russian. Thanks to his university studies, he preferred that language to German; with Bagnall, it was the other way around.
“It does not leave much place for you,” Aleksandr German agreed. He sighed. “I had thought to try to get you out of here. Now I shall not have the chance. But I urge you to leave before we and the Nazis start fighting among ourselves again. You did all you could to keep that from happening up until now, but Colonel Schindler is a less reasonable man than his late predecessor-and, as I say, the threat from the Lizards is less now, so we have not got that to distract us from each other. Make for the Baltic while you still can.”
“Will you write us a safe-conduct?” Ken Embry asked him.
“Yes, certainly,” the partisan brigadier said at once. “You should get one from Schindler, too.” His face twisted. “You are Englishmen, after all, and so deserve fair treatment under the laws of war. If you were Russians-” He shook his head. “The other thing you need to remember is how little good a safe-conduct, ours or Schindler’s, may do for you. If someone shoots at you from five hundred meters, you will not be able to present it to him.”
Though that was true, it was not a topic on which Bagnall cared to dwell. Aleksandr German found a scrap of paper, dipped a pen into a bottle that smelled more of berry juice than of ink, and scribbled rapidly. He handed the document to Bagnall, who still read Cyrillic script only haltingly. Bagnall passed it to Jerome Jones. Jones skimmed through it and nodded.
“Good luck,” Aleksandr German said. “I wish I had something more than that to offer you, but even it is in short supply here these days.”
The three Englishmen were somber when they left the partisan brigadier. “Do you think we ought to get alaissez-passer from Schindler?” Embry asked.
“My guess is that we needn’t bother,” Bagnall answered. “The Germans around here are all soldiers, and all know who we are. That isn’t true of the Russians, not by a long chalk. Our piece of paper may keep some peasants from slitting our throats one night while we’re asleep in their haystack”
“Or, of course, it may not,” Embry said, not wanting his reputation for cynicism to suffer. “Still, I suppose we’re better off with it.”
“Pity we didn’t bring all our food and ammunition along,” Bagnall said. “We could have started off straightaway instead of having to go back to the house.”
“It’s not that far back,” Jones said. “And after we recover the gear, I suggest we stay not upon the honor of our going. When both sides tell you you’d better hop it, you’re a fool if you don’t listen. And, except where the fair Tatiana is concerned”-he grinned ruefully-“Mrs. Jones raised no fools.”
“You’ll be free of her at last,” Bagnall reminded him.
“So will I,” he said, and then, “dammit.”
A captain with a set of decorations as impressive as Basil Roundbush’s rapped on the door frame of David Goldfarb’s laboratory at Dover College. “Hullo,” he said. “I have a present for you chaps.” He turned and let out some grunts and hisses that sounded rather as if he were doing his best to choke to death. More funny noises came back at him. Then a Lizard walked into the room, its turreted eyes going every which way.
Goldfarb’s first reaction was to grab for a pistol. Unfortunately, he wasn’t wearing one. Roundbush was, and had it out with commendable speed. “No need for that,” the much-decorated captain said. “Mzepps is quite tame, and so am I: Donald Mather, at your service.”
After his first instant of surprise, Basil Roundbush had taken a good look at Mather’s uniform. The pistol went back into its holster. “He’s SAS, David,” he said. “I expect he can protect us from a Lizard or two… dozen.” He sounded more serious than he normally would have while making such a crack.
Goldfarb took a second look at Mather and concluded Roundbushwas serious. The captain was a handsome chap in a blond, chisel-featured way, and seemed affable enough, but something about his eyes warned that getting on his wrong side would be a mistake-quite likely a fatal mistake. And he hadn’t won those medals for keeping the barracks clean and tidy, either.
“Sir, what will we do with-Mzepps, did you say?” he asked.
“Mzepps, yes,” Mather answered, pronouncing eachp separately. “I expect he might be useful to you: he’s a radar technician, you see. I’ll stay around to interpret till the two of you understand each other well
enough, then I’ll be on my merry way. He does speak a little English now, but he’s far from fluent.”
“A radar technician?” Basil Roundbush said softly. “Oh, David, you are a lucky sod. You know that, don’t you? That peach of a girl, now a Lizard of your very own to play with.” He rounded on Mather. “You don’t happen to have a jet-engine specialist concealed anywhere about your person, do you? We have this lovely video platter here on how to service their bloody engines, and knowing what the words mean would help us understand the pictures.”
