Coup d'Etat

Chapter 15

This was the biggest damn fleet Pete McGill had ever seen. If it wasn’t the biggest damn fleet in the history of the world, that sure wasn’t from lack of effort on the U.S. Navy’s part.

It stretched from horizon to horizon. Pete was sure it stretched over the horizon. The destroyers and cruisers and battlewagons and carriers stayed well separated from one another to make sure the Japs couldn’t do too much in any one spot.

That didn’t worry Pete. “If I was that cocksucker Tojo, I’d be shaking in my boots right now,” he declared.

“Got that right, Ace,” Joe Orsatti agreed. The gun chief waved expansively. “All the firepower we’re bringing to the dance, we won’t just lick the fucking Jap navy. We’ll sink their lousy islands, too.”

“There you go!” Pete liked the sound of that.

Planes from the combat air patrol droned overhead. The American fleet hadn’t come far from Oahu yet, but the brass already knew the Japs liked playing with naval air power. The fighters up there were F-4 Wildcats. The Japanese Zero was supposed to be hot shit. It was hot shit; Pete had seen as much in the Philippines. But he had confidence in good old American know-how. If the Wildcat couldn’t mop the floor with the Jap fighter, something was badly wrong somewhere.

And if the American fleet couldn’t mop the floor with the Japanese navy, something was badly wrong somewhere, too. Pete didn’t know the details of the attack plan. Such things were not for Marine sergeants to worry about. Like most of the tens of thousands of other men in the fleet, he did grasp the basic idea. They’d steam west till they ran into the slant-eyed sons of bitches steaming east. Then they’d knock the living snot out of them and clear their garrisons off all the Pacific islands they infested. What could be simpler?

A pair of albatrosses scudded past the Boise. Their wingspan didn’t seem much smaller than a Wildcat’s. Pointing to them, Orsatti asked, “Ever shoot the shit with a guy who was stationed on Midway?”

“I don’t think so,” Pete answered. “How come?”

“That’s where the gooney birds lay their eggs, like. When it’s mating season or whatever the hell they call it, there’s thousands of ’em.”

“Must be something. They’re amazing in the air.”

Orsatti grinned. “You sure as hell never talked with no Midway Marine. Yeah, the gooneys are great while they’re flying. But you know what? Their landing gear’s shot to shit. They come gliding in, they put down their feet-and they crash land every fuckin’ time. Ass over teakettle like you wouldn’t believe. They’re just lucky they don’t carry avgas, on account of they’d burn like mad bastards if they did.”

“This isn’t BS?” Pete was wary of getting his leg pulled.

“Honest to God truth.” The gun chief held up his right hand. “So help me Hannah, it is. Like something out of a Disney cartoon, only it’s the genuine article.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing that for myself.” Pete paused, considering. “Well, if seeing it didn’t mean going to Midway. Holy Christ, man-talk about the ass end of nowhere.”

“There is that,” Orsatti said. “But it’s probably why the gooney birds go ooh-la-la there. I mean, who’s gonna bother ’em? Till we got there, there wasn’t anything to bother ’em.”

“I guess.” Till that moment, Pete hadn’t worried about where albatrosses went to make whoopee. For all he knew, they checked into hotels like everybody else. But thinking about Midway made him think about other islands, too. “I wish like hell the Japs hadn’t grabbed Wake and Guam.”

“Guam was gonna catch it. That was in the cards. Look at a map-it’s the meat in a Jap-island sandwich,” Orsatti said. “Wake… Yeah, Wake’s a bitch. They hit it when we were still jumping up and down from the raid on Pearl. So now it’s their forward outpost instead of ours.”

“Uh-huh. That’s what worries me. You gotta figure the slopes’re flying planes outa there now,” Pete said. “So what happens when they spot us? They let the rest of the Buddhaheads know, right?”

“Listen to your Uncle Joe,” Orsatti said seriously. “First thing is, the Wildcats aren’t just flying over us. They’re out ahead of us, too. So they may knock down the Jap snoops before any word gets back. But even if they don’t, so what? We want to do for the Japanese navy, right?”

“Well, sure, when you put it that way,” McGill replied. “Only I don’t like it when they know what we’re up to while we go in blind.”

“Won’t matter when the shooting starts.” Orsatti spoke with serene confidence.

If Admiral Kimmel, the man in charge of the American fleet, shared that confidence, he didn’t let it go to his head. Men on the Boise got called to battle stations at all hours of the day and night, and it was bound to be the same on every other ship. Pete’s heart pounded whenever he ran to the gun. Would this be the time it wasn’t a drill? Or this? Or…?

News crackled out of the intercom: “It is reported that an enemy reconnaissance seaplane has been attacked and shot down. It is not known whether the personnel were able to signal that American aircraft were in the vicinity.”

If the Japs hadn’t been able to radio a warning… The Pacific was a big place, the biggest place in the whole world. An airplane alone on the ocean was far smaller by comparison than a single mosquito buzzing around an elephant. So many things could go wrong. A plane that didn’t come back wouldn’t necessarily be blamed on enemy action.

Necessarily. That was an interesting word, wasn’t it?

Then a Japanese sub fired a torpedo at one of the destroyers out ahead of the fleet. The torpedo missed. The destroyer did its damnedest to sink the submarine. It also failed. But the cat was out of the bag.

Were American submarines prowling way the hell off to the west? If they spotted the oncoming Japanese fleet, would they send back a warning? Would they try to thin out the herd, so to speak? The answer to the first question was obviously yes. To the second… The fewer warships flying the Rising Sun Pete had to worry about, the happier he’d be.

First things first, though. The first thing the fleet had to worry about was reclaiming Wake Island. Admiral Kimmel approached the flyspeck on the map by night. His ships ringed it when the sun came up. As soon as the Japs in the garrison spotted them, they opened up with field artillery.

Big guns answered them. So did dive-bombers flying off the carriers. In spite of all the hell coming down on their heads, the Japanese managed to get a few planes of their own into the air. As Pete had seen in Manila, their dive-bombers looked old-fashioned. Like German Stukas, they had fixed landing gear.

Also like Stukas, they could be deadly if they got a chance-or even half a chance. One of them swooped down on a heavy cruiser that was in the same task force as the Boise. Curtains of antiaircraft fire rose above the big ship. As far as the enemy pilot was concerned, they might as well not have been there. If something got him, it would get him. He didn’t seem to care one way or the other. And he dropped his bomb from no more than fifty feet above the cruiser’s stacks.

Something did get him as he roared away just above the waves. His plane cartwheeled into the Pacific. He wouldn’t have had anywhere to land on Wake, anyhow. But he made the Americans pay an enormous price for shooting him down. That bomb must have reached one of the cruiser’s magazines, because the ship’s whole bow blew off. What was left sank hideously fast.

The Boise hurried over to help pick survivors from the water. There weren’t many. Most of them were hurt. All seemed stunned. “I’m handing Dave a shell, an’ next thing I know he ain’t there no more an’ I’m in the drink,” one guy said, which seemed to sum it up for everybody.

Clumsy landing barges waddled toward Wake. Jap shells fell among them. One scored a direct hit. Bodies flew through the air as the barge sank. Most of the men were bound to be Marines like Pete. All the same, he wished he were riding in one of those barges. Landing on enemy-held beaches was what leathernecks were for. A sailor could do the job he had now. He could imagine nothing worse to say about it.

“Hey, Harcourt! Yeah, I’m talking to you. Get your sorry ass over here.”

That rasp always made Luc wonder what he’d done wrong now-no, what he’d got caught doing wrong now. It always made him feel he was a private just out of basic, and Sergeant Demange had nabbed him with his hand in the cookie jar. No matter that he was a sergeant himself now, and Demange an officer. The old feeling didn’t go away. Luc didn’t suppose it ever would.

“What do you need, sir?” Luc almost called Demange Sergeant. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Habit died hard.

“C’mere, I said, dammit.” The cigarette in the corner of Demange’s mouth twitched as he talked. Luc wondered if he kept that Gitane there even when he got laid. It wouldn’t have surprised the younger man one bit. Demange gestured peremptorily. “Walk with me.”

“Whatever you want, sweetheart,” Luc said. Demange didn’t rise to the bait. He just stomped away from the French encampment. Luc’s legs were longer, but he had to hustle to keep up. The air smelled of dust. No human habitations lay anywhere near. Luc had never dreamt how vast Russia was. The last Frenchmen who’d got this deep into the country marched with Napoleon. He hoped he’d come out better than they did.

He still carried his rifle. Demange had one, too, along with an officer’s sidearm. You didn’t want to let the Ivans catch you, no matter how enticing their safe-conducts seemed to jerks. The front was supposed to lie a few kilometers off to the northeast, but one thing you could always count on was Russian infiltrators.

“What’s up?” Luc asked after a little while.

“Keep walking,” Demange answered. “I don’t want any of those cons to hear this.” He spat out the latest Gitane’s mortal remains, ground them under his bootheel, and lit a fresh one.

“Am I in trouble?”

“No more than any of the rest of us.” Lieutenant Demange paused to blow out a stream of smoke, then hurried on. “Some crazy shit is going on, that’s all, and I want to talk to somebody about it. You’ve got your head on pretty straight, and you don’t run your mouth when you aren’t supposed to.”

“Gee, thanks.” Luc’s sardonic tone couldn’t hide how pleased he was. He would rather have got that kind of praise from Demange than to have won a medal and brushed cheeks with General Weygand. To Weygand, he would be just another poilu. Demange knew him well enough for his judgment to mean something.

“Any time, kid.” Demange paused and looked back. No, none of the other French soldiers would overhear them now.

Off in the distance, artillery rumbled. German guns, Luc thought, recognizing the reports. He was glad those 105s would come down on the Ivans’ heads, not on his. Of course, the Red Army had plenty of artillery of its own, but getting shelled by the Boches still struck him as the definitive experience.

“So what’s the crazy shit?” He tried to keep his voice as casual as he could.

“It’s political, that’s what.” Demange couldn’t have sounded more disgusted if he were talking about syphilis. “You’re not one of those crazy Reds, or I wouldn’t say boo to you. But you don’t wish you were wearing a German helmet, either.”

“I should hope not! Those fuckers are heavy.” Luc had handled them plenty of times, dealing with dead or captured Fritzes. He preferred the lighter Adrian helmet he had on right this minute. But that was beside the point. “What do you mean, political?”

“If you had your druthers, who would you rather fight, Hitler or Stalin?”

“If I had my druthers?” Luc echoed. Demange nodded. Luc spoke without the least hesitation: “If I had my druthers, sir, I’d take off this uniform and burn it. Then I’d go home and try and forget everything that’s happened to me the past going on three years.”

“ Salaud! You don’t get that many druthers. The Nazi or the Communist? Who’s in your sights first?”

He was serious. Seeing him serious made Luc think it over harder than he’d expected to. At last, he said, “The Germans live right next door. That makes them trouble no matter who’s in charge in Berlin. When it’s a cochon like Hitler… I mean, Stalin’s no bargain, either, but he’s way the hell over here. The Boches are the ones who can really do us in.”

“There you go! I knew you weren’t as dumb as you look,” Lieutenant Demange said-praising with faint damn, certainly, but praising even so. “That’s how it looks to me, too.”

“But so what, Lieutenant? Here we are in the middle of Russia. If we don’t go after the Ivans, they’ll sure kill us.”

Demange got rid of another dead Gitane. This time, he gave Luc one after lighting up himself-another sign he was pleased. “Suppose a little bird told you they’re quietly working on stretching the Maginot Line from the Belgian border all the way to the Channel?”

“Where’d you hear that?” Luc asked. If Demange met a little bird, he’d clean it and pluck it and roast it, preferably stuffed with mushrooms.

“Never mind where. What you don’t know, nobody can squeeze out of you.” Demange might have been talking about interrogation by the enemy, not by his own side. He went on, “What you do need to know is, this isn’t somebody who talks out his asshole. Or I don’t think so, anyway.”

“Huh,” Luc said, and then, “What do the Germans say about that?” One of the big reasons the Nazis had invaded France by way of the Low Countries was that they hadn’t wanted to bang their heads against the works of the Maginot Line. France had figured Holland and Belgium and Luxembourg would make shield enough. Now that France knew better…

“If the Germans know what we’re up to, they haven’t said anything about it,” the veteran replied. “That’s what I hear.”

“Huh,” Luc said again, more thoughtfully this time. “Why aren’t they screaming their fool heads off? Quiet Nazis? It sounds unnatural.”

Demange rewarded him with a twisted grin. “It does, doesn’t it? Here’s the best answer I can give you: I don’t know why. If I was Hitler, me, I’d be having kittens.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Luc agreed. If somebody who showed he’d gone over to your side by sending several divisions to help you fight your other enemies suddenly started strengthening his border against you, you had to have something wrong with you if you didn’t wonder why. Didn’t you?

Luc looked around. Yes, he was glad none of the other soldiers could overhear them. “So what happens now? Do we cross over to the Russians’ side of the line the way the Tommies did? Or do we wait till somebody counts three and then turn our guns on the Boches? I mean, I wouldn’t mind, but…”

“What happens now? We keep on doing what we’ve been doing till somebody with clout tells us to do something else. Then we fucking well do that instead.” Demange paused, considering. “And you never heard word one about this crap from me, understand? Try and say anything different and you won’t live to enjoy it.”

“I’m no rat,” Luc said, genuinely affronted.

“Yeah, yeah. I know that. I wouldn’t’ve said anything at all if I thought you were,” Lieutenant Demange replied. “But this is dynamite. You’ve got to remember it’s dynamite. Otherwise you’ll get your hands blown off, and you’ll be standing there bleeding and wondering what the hell happened to you.”

A Russian machine gun opened up, not close enough to worry about. A few seconds later, a French machine gun answered. Maybe the diplomats were doing mysterious things behind the scenes. The men who fought and died were still fighting and dying.

Demange listened to the dueling murder mills with his head cocked to one side and that wry grin still on his face. “It’s all merde, you know,” he said. “Every goddamn bit of it.”

“Uh-huh.” Luc nodded. All he wanted was to keep from getting ground between the gears. He’d managed so far. Another Russian machine gun started firing. Pretty soon, the artillery would join in. How long could he stay lucky?

Be careful what you ask for. You may get it. Hideki Fujita must have heard that before he requested a transfer away from Pingfan. Sadly, though, it hadn’t stuck. And Captain Ikejiri had wasted no time in ridding the bacteriological-warfare unit of someone who’d screwed up.

When Fujita heard he was being transferred to Yunnan province, he’d assumed he would travel down through China to wherever the devil Yunnan was. As things turned out, the province lay in the far, far south, on the border with Burma. He couldn’t simply hop on a train and go there, because Japanese control in China stopped well north of the area.

No, things weren’t that simple. The train took him from Harbin to Shanghai. From there, he took a ship to Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, newly seized from the British, he had to wait two days for a plane to Hanoi, newly taken from the French. After another flight, he landed at the airport in Mandalay: Burma, too, had belonged to England till the war got rolling. Then he took the train up to Myitkyina, near the Chinese border.

The train trip was an adventure all by itself. Even before the fighting started, the line must have been an afterthought of empire. During combat, English soldiers had sabotaged it here and there. And the Japanese broom of conquest hadn’t come close to sweeping clean. Englishmen with rifles and mortars still roamed the countryside. So did Burmese bandits. Fujita fired out the window several times. He wasn’t always sure at whom he was shooting. He didn’t much care, either. Nobody who was shooting at him was likely to be friendly.

Myitkyina lay in the middle of steaming jungle. Snow-capped mountains corrugated the horizon to the east and north. Signs at the train station were written in characters he couldn’t read. He grabbed the first Japanese soldier he saw and asked-almost begged-to be taken to the local army headquarters.

Since the soldier he grabbed was only a private, the fellow couldn’t tell him to get lost. He didn’t look happy, though. “Well, come on, then,” he said gruffly. Four other Japanese soldiers who’d got off the train with Fujita eagerly followed. They seemed just as lost and confused as he was.

Not surprisingly, the functionaries who made Southern Army go had claimed the best hotel in town. It was a fourth-rate copy of a third-rate hotel in a second-rate city in some happier English colonial possession. Getting shelled in the conquest did nothing to improve it. The clerks there rapidly dealt with the other newly arrived Japanese soldiers. Each of those men had a slot, and they fit him into it. No one seemed to have any idea what to do with Fujita.

“From the Kwangtung Army? From Manchukuo? To here?” A senior sergeant shook his head in disbelief. “ Eee! Someone’s played a dirty trick on you, Corporal, or maybe on us.”

“You don’t have any records that show where I’m supposed to go?” Fujita asked.

“You might as well have fallen from the moon. For all I know, you did.” The sergeant seemed to think he was a funny fellow.

“But that’s crazy.” If Fujita sounded desperate, it was only because he was. They not only didn’t have a slot for him, they didn’t even have a board with slots to find out where he fit. And here he was, lucky not to have got killed before he made it to this miserable place. He’d thought Captain Ikejiri was doing him a favor. Ikejiri must have hated his guts.

“Well, let’s try a different angle,” the sergeant said. “What did you do when you were in Manchukuo?”

Before Fujita could answer, several more soldiers from the train found their way to the hotel. The military bureaucrat dealt with them and seemed to forget about Fujita. The other soldiers were easy. He wasn’t. And he had to be careful about what he said. “Well, before I got here I served in Colonel Ishii’s unit,” he replied when the senior sergeant had time for him once more.

“Zakennayo!” that worthy exclaimed. “Who in blazes is Colonel Ishii? What does his damned unit do-besides sending people all over the Co-Prosperity Sphere, I mean?”

Fujita wondered how he should answer that. He feared he shouldn’t answer it at all. He also feared he would end up in trouble if he didn’t. But when the senior sergeant shouted Colonel Ishii’s name, a skinny little superior private with glasses pricked up his ears. “Please excuse me, Sergeant- san…” he said, and drew the noncom off to one side. They talked together in low voices for a couple of minutes.

“Oh,” the senior sergeant said loudly. “He’s with those people?” He turned back to Fujita. “Why didn’t you say you were with those people?”

Again, Fujita didn’t have to answer because the bespectacled senior private did some more urgent murmuring. The senior sergeant threw his hands in the air. He made as if to clout the younger man, who flinched.

Frightening someone seemed to make the sergeant feel better. Fujita knew that feeling. “Security!” the sergeant said, as if it were the filthiest word he knew. Maybe it was. He glowered at Fujita. “If you don’t tell us what you’re good for, how can we send you where you need to go?”

“If I do tell you, I violate the orders I got to keep that work secret,” Fujita answered unhappily.

“Bah!” The senior sergeant sounded disgusted. “Go to Yanai, then.” He pointed at the senior private. “He’ll write you orders to get you out there.”

Out where? Fujita wondered. Well, he’d find out.

And so he did. Superior Private Yanai wrote out the orders, saying, “This will take you out to Unit 113, in the 56th Infantry Division. There’s a shed next to the train station. You get your transport there.”

“A shed? Next to the train station?” Fujita knew he sounded dismayed-or maybe furious. A kilometer back to where he’d just come from, in this heat and humidity? He wasn’t looking forward to that.

“ Shigata ga nai, Corporal. I’m sorry.” Yanai spread his hands in what looked like real sympathy. Whether it was or not, he was right: it couldn’t be helped. Wearily, Fujita slung his rifle over his shoulder and trudged away from the hotel. Unfamiliar gaudy birds chirped in the bushes.

The shed smelled like a barn. Both soldiers on duty there were drunk. Fujita had to shout at them to discover what they called transport: a creaking ox cart. They were in charge of a dozen or so carts, with the oxen to haul them hither and yon. The oxen no doubt explained the smell. The first driver the men in charge of the shed hunted up had no idea where Unit 113 was stationed. They swore at him, but he insisted he’d never been there.

Things had been ragged out on Manchukuo’s border with Soviet-backed Mongolia. Here, they would have had to shape up to seem ragged. This was the raw edge of conquest. That Japanese soldiers ruled here near Burma’s Chinese frontier should have been inspiring. That the soldiers actually at the frontier were less than the shining lights of the Japanese Army shouldn’t have been surprising. Fujita had traveled too far too fast to stay tolerant. He screamed at the stablemen. One of them was a corporal, too. He didn’t care. If the other fellow felt like fighting, he intended to maim him for life.

He was almost disappointed when the other corporal quailed instead. Even a drunk could tell he had murder in his eyes. And the next driver the stablemen hunted up did know about Unit 113. “I’ve been there before,” he said. “I can find it again.” He eyed Fujita. “Keep your piece handy while we go, though. You might want to fix your bayonet, too. Things can get pretty hairy around here.”

“I found out about that on the way up.” Fujita unsheathed the bayonet and snapped it into place under his Arisaka’s muzzle.

He could have walked to Unit 113 as fast as the ox cart brought him there. He would have had to work harder, though. The trail they followed wasn’t much wider than the cart. Anything or anyone might have burst out of the jungle before Fujita or the driver could do anything about it. The oxen took their own sweet time splashing across streams.

It was almost sunset when they reached the clearing that held Unit 113. No fancy compound here-nothing but tents. No officer of rank higher than captain, either. And nobody, from that captain down to the almost toothless old Burmese woman who cooked for the unit, had the slightest idea that Fujita was coming or what to do with him now that he was here.

“Demons take it,” the captain said at last. “You’re really from Unit 731?” He might have been a skinny little would-be wrestler talking about someone from a famous sumo dojo.

“Yes, sir. I really am,” Fujita said.

“How about that? I’m sure you’ll do a lot of good here, then, with all the things you’re bound to know. For now, get some rice, pour some of the old gal’s stew over it, and find somewhere to unroll your blanket or sling your hammock. We’ve got a lot going on here. I’m sure you’ll fit right in.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Fujita knew better than to argue with an officer. He also knew better than to ask the Burmese woman what all went into the stew. It didn’t taste half bad, even if it was spicier than he fancied. Better not to wonder where the meat came from. He’d had stews like that before. As long as it filled him up, he wouldn’t complain.

La Martellita looked daggers at Chaim Weinberg. If this was the kind of love wives were supposed to show husbands, he sure didn’t want to see how she’d act when she was pissed off at him. (As a matter of fact, he had seen that, and more often than he wanted.)

Her hands cupped her bulging belly. “You did this to me!” she screeched, more or less accurately.

They were walking along a street in Madrid. La Martellita didn’t care. She let him have it any which way. Other people within earshot turned to listen. Street theater was the best, and cheapest, entertainment in town. It was a hell of a lot more interesting than the crap either the Republicans or the Nationalists put on the radio.

Chaim knew about street theater. Growing up in New York City’s Lower East Side, he couldn’t very well not know about it. But he enjoyed watching and listening to other people more than being watched and listened to.

“Take it easy, Magdalena,” he said, trying to soothe his inamorata till they got to some place where she could scream at him in something resembling privacy.

“And don’t call me by that name!” she told him, still at top volume. “Don’t you dare call me by that name! You’ve got no business knowing that name! I’m the Little Hammer! Do you hear me?”

“ Si, Magdalena,” Chaim answered easily. If she was going to work like a Stakhanovite to piss him off, the least he could do was return the disfavor.

She said something so incandescent that a little old woman with a face like a Roman bust that was starting to crumble crossed herself. In the aggressively anticlerical Spanish Republic, that was shock indeed. Someone might denounce you for showing you believed.

As for Chaim, he understood most of what his very pregnant sweetheart called him. He would have murdered any man who said a quarter of that to him, and not a jury in the world would have convicted him, either. Plenty of Spaniards would have decked a woman who talked to them like that. (Some would have got a shiv in the ribs after decking them, too. Spain was a lively country.)

He’d already proved he was a soft American-and no one who tried belting La Martellita would have had joy of it afterwards. So, instead of making a fist and playing the goon, he gave her his blandest, stupidest smile. “?Que?” he said sweetly.

She started to explode. Then she saw he was waiting for that. She sent him a glare acid enough to etch glass. Instead of shrieking, she asked, “Are you playing games with me?” in a deadly quiet voice.

“You’re the one who’s been playing all the games,” Chaim answered. “Yes, you’re going to have a baby. I didn’t rape you. I did marry you. What else do you want from me?”

Unfortunately, he knew what else she wanted. She wanted him not to be so short and stumpy. She wanted him to have a handsomer face. He wouldn’t have minded a handsomer face himself, but he was stuck with the mug he’d been issued. His looks weren’t the real problem, though. Even his being Jewish wasn’t the real problem, though in a way it came closer. The real problem was, he wasn’t a good enough Communist to suit her.

Maybe that had something to do with his being Jewish. It sure as hell had something to do with his being American. He was so used to thinking for himself, he did it without thinking, so to speak. La Martellita was made for knocking unorthodoxy flat. She would have been great in the Inquisition-she had the full measure of Spanish zeal. If he’d really wanted to hurt her, he would have told her so.

“You didn’t rape me,” she agreed, and well she might-any man who tried to have his way with her without her consent would leave his cojones behind. “But I wasn’t sober when you did me, either.”

“Neither was I, the first time,” Chaim said, which was at least partly true. “But we both were the next morning.”

“There wouldn’t have been a next morning if there hadn’t been a first night.”

Chaim sighed. That was also true, dammit. He spread his hands. “All we can do now is try and make the best of it. Yelling at me all the time doesn’t help. It just gives me a headache.”

“I don’t yell at you all the time,” La Martellita said. “When you’re up at the front, I can’t.”

“No, all they can do up there is kill me,” Chaim said. She looked at him in incomprehension. It wasn’t his Spanish, either; he’d said what he meant. But she didn’t get it.

She was beautiful. She was dangerous. The combination was irresistible to Chaim, much as a tiger’s terrible beauty had to be to a beast-tamer. One split second of inattention, one tiny mistake with the chair, and you’d be lying on the ground in the middle of the center ring bleeding your life out, and all the marks in the bleachers would go Oooh! Life with La Martellita was a lot like that.

Too much like that? For what had to be the first time, Chaim wondered. Yes, she was beautiful. Yes, she was dangerous. Yes, the combination was intoxicating. But, when you got right down to it, how bright was she really?

Intoxicated, Chaim had never stopped to worry about it. He’d never stopped to think it might matter. Not thinking was most unusual for him, and telling testimony to just how head over heels he was about her. Most of the time, he thought convulsively, propulsively, continuously. If he hadn’t turned Red, he would have made a yeshiva-bukher to be remembered for generations. If he thought about La Martellita instead of remembering what touching her felt like…

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.

“Like what?” Chaim feared he knew like what, but he didn’t want to acknowledge it, even-especially-to himself. For a while, you imagine that something broken will put itself back together by magic. But magic is in desperately short supply in the material world.

“Like the way you’re looking at me, that’s like what.” It was obvious to La Martellita. “Like I just died or something.”

“No, not you,” Chaim said sadly. He’d never imagined himself a prophet, but he could see the future all too clearly now. It was a future where he didn’t see the son or daughter swelling in La Martellita’s belly. It was a future where he didn’t see her, either, and probably one where she told the child nothing but bad things about its father. He’d just watched his love die, and he had no idea what he could do about it.

“What, then?” she demanded. It wasn’t obvious to her. He could see why not, too. She’d never been in love with him. If he’d thought she was, it was only because he’d made her reflect what he most wanted to see.

He could tell her. What difference would it make? Not much, which was part of the problem. But, like a wounded soldier who won’t look to see how badly he’s hit, Chaim didn’t want to bring out the fatal words. He said “Never mind” instead, hoping against hope the wound wasn’t mortal after all.