The Big Switch

Chapter 14

Summer in Munster. A lot of the time, it seemed a contradiction in terms. It could be cool or rainy or foggy in July as easily as not. It could be, but it wasn’t always. Not today, for instance. The sun shone down from a blue, blue sky. It was about twenty-five degrees: warm but not hot. You couldn’t ask for more.

A blackbird hopping through the long-unmown park grass fluttered away from Sarah Goldman as she and Isidor Bruck came toward it. He carried a picnic basket. Even when times were hard for everybody and harder for Jews, a baker’s son could come up with enough rolls and such for a Sunday-afternoon lunch.

Other picnicking couples and families dotted the grass. It was so tall, you could hardly see some of them. “If we don’t sit too close to anybody, they won’t notice our stars,” Sarah said.

“How about over there?” Isidor pointed. “It’s by the trees, so we can go into the shade if we start to toast.”

“Do you have to talk about your work all the time?” Sarah teased. They both laughed. She hurried toward the spot he’d suggested. It was a good one, so good she was surprised nobody else had taken it. She spread out a couple of towels and sat down on one. The grass rustled. It got mowed less often than it had before the war, because most of the gardeners wore Feldgrau these days. Something small and green and many-legged jumped onto her knee. She yipped and brushed it away.

Isidor sat down beside her. He opened the basket and took out rolls and ripe plums-where had he come up with those?-and a real treasure: a tin of sardines. Sarah’s eyes widened. Her stomach rumbled. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen any, let alone tasted them. A couple of bottles of beer to wash things down, and…

“I’ll explode!” she said. “Did you rob a bank?”

“Two of them,” Isidor answered. She giggled. Every moment where you could forget the big things and enjoy the little ones was a moment won. A hundred meters away, a little blond boy ran beside a yapping dog. He didn’t even know about the big things yet. The little ones were all he had. Sarah envied him.

Even now, the big things intruded. The plane buzzing overhead was a Bf-109. Sarah didn’t need to think to recognize the shape and the engine note. By the way Isidor raised one dark eyebrow, he knew what it was right away, too. Who in Germany wouldn’t, these days? Sarah took another swig and emptied her bottle. She didn’t have to think about it, or about anything else that wasn’t right here.

“Is there any more of that beer?” she asked.

“There sure is.” Better than a stage wizard pulling a rabbit out of a hat, Isidor pulled another bottle out of the basket for her. She drank eagerly. Beer helped blur the big things. Isidor produced a fresh bottle for himself, too. By the way he drained it, he didn’t care to see them clearly, either.

They both tensed when a policeman wandered through the park. Sarah didn’t look especially Jewish, but Isidor did. But the man in the black uniform with the swastika armband didn’t even notice them. He ambled away.

Along with the afternoon heat, seeing him prodded them to move over under the shade of the trees. They’d be less noticeable in the shadows-and the grass was even longer there. Most of the picnickers went on basking in the sunshine; they knew it might not last. If their hides were red and tender tomorrow, well, so what?

Isidor put his arm around her. She snuggled against him. The two of them against the world? Not quite-but, although the big things blurred, they didn’t go away. When he kissed her, she responded with a fervor that probably astonished both of them. If the beer couldn’t do it, maybe this would let her forget everything that wasn’t right here, at least for a little while.

They lay back on the blankets, and the world did seem to disappear-in green. Anyone could come up and see them. Anyone could, but no one did. Isidor reached under her skirt. He’d tried that before, but she’d always slapped his hand away. Now… Now she discovered she didn’t want to. Before long, he got where he was going, and gently began to rub.

And, amazingly soon, Sarah got where she was going, too. He was still kissing her when she did, which muffled the noises she made. As she came back to herself, she stared at the boughs swaying in the breeze above her head. It was like what she sometimes did in the dark-like, but altogether different.

“You’re crazy,” she whispered.

“Crazy for you,” Isidor answered, also in a low voice. “This crazy.” He took her hand.

The bulge he set it on was like nothing in her nighttime aloneness. “What do you want me to-?” she asked.

He undid his fly. There it was, in the open between them. If anybody came by now, they wouldn’t get in trouble just for being Jews-although whoever came by would know he was. “Take it and-” he said. Awkwardly, she did. He gasped, but after a minute or two he told her, “It helps if you spit in your hand.” So she did. She didn’t know if it helped her, but it sure seemed to help him. He gasped again, on a different note, and grunted. None of the mess he made got on her clothes, for which she was duly grateful.

She wiped her hand as clean as she could on the grass. She didn’t want to use even an old towel for that. Isidor quickly set himself to rights. She sat up and looked around. No one was rushing toward them-or running off to bring the policeman back. They’d got away with it.

All the same, she said, “I think we’d better go home.”

“Whatever you want,” Isidor said. If she’d told him he was on fire, he would have agreed as readily. He beamed at her. “You’re wonderful-do you know that?”

He thought so because she’d made him happy. She still had a little sticky stuff on her fingers to prove it. Well, he’d made her happy the same way. She hadn’t known ahead of time she would let him do that, but it was way too late to worry about those little details now, wasn’t it? “I think you’re pretty wonderful yourself,” she replied, and while she said it it was true.

As they were walking out of the park, she saw a bench with a sign: NO JEWS HERE. Isidor saw it, too. “Who needs a dumb old bench, anyway?” he said. Sarah squeaked. Could everybody see her ears were on fire? But she laughed at the same time, because it wasn’t just scandalous; it was scandalously funny.

The park was closer to the bakery and the flat over it than to her house, but he walked her all the way back anyhow. The picnic basket was lighter now, which helped. He kissed her decorously on the cheek outside her front door. Did his feet touch the ground at all as he went out to the sidewalk?

“Have a good time?” Father asked when she came in. Samuel Goldman was reading a volume of Dio Cassius in the original Greek. She didn’t think anything a Roman historian had written almost two thousand years ago accounted for the grim look on his face. Had Isidor been so obvious that Father guessed what had happened?

“It was very nice,” Sarah said. “But what’s wrong?” If it was going to come out, better to have it come out now than let it fester.

Father’s mind was a million kilometers from what had gone on in the park, and from Dio Cassius as well. “Winston Churchill is dead,” he said heavily. “I heard it on the radio less than an hour ago. He was crossing a street in London, and a Bentley ran him down. The driver is supposed to have been intoxicated.” By the way he said it, he didn’t believe that for a minute.

Sarah had to shift mental gears. “That’s… bad, isn’t it?” she managed.

“It’s about as much worse than bad as you can get,” Father said. “Churchill was the main fellow fighting the alliance against Russia. And to die like that-!” He shook his head. “That’s how Hitler or Mussolini-or Stalin-gets rid of people. They don’t play politics like that in England. Or they didn’t… till now.” He stared down at the open pages of Dio Cassius. “Except for the Bentley, Septimius Severus might have handled it the same way.”

“Maybe it really was an accident,” Sarah said.

“Oh, yes. Maybe it was.” But Samuel Goldman laughed harshly. “And maybe Herr van der Lubbe set the Reichstag fire all by himself, too.”

That heated Sarah’s ears again, and not in such a nice way as Isidor had. No one with a pfennig of sense believed the half-witted Dutch Red had torched the German Parliament without plenty of help from the Nazis. But he was the one who’d lost his head for it. And the fire gave the Nazis whatever excuse they needed to go after the Communists inside the Reich for all they were worth.

“What do you think will happen in England now?” she asked in a small voice.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you, because what I think and what I hope are so different,” Father answered. After that, there didn’t seem to be much point to saying anything more. Besides, she still needed to wash her hands.

“Waffenstillstand!” the French officer shouted across the lines. Willi Dernen supposed that was what he was shouting, anyhow. He had a horrendous accent. But the word for truce wasn’t easy to mistake for any other.

And the poilus around here seemed to think the war was over. The Germans had been shouting at them not to shoot, and they mostly hadn’t. Till now, though, they’d kept out of sight so the Germans couldn’t shoot at them. Willi understood that. He hadn’t shown himself, either. Trust a Frenchman? Not likely!

But it looked as if France and England really were going to join the German crusade against Russia. Willi was just glad he’d stayed on this front instead of getting sent east. Army rumor said the Reds might not be very skillful, but they were goddamn mean.

“Friends!” the French officer yelled. He did a little better with Freunde! Pointing east, he added, “To hell with the Communists!”

“Dip me in shit,” Corporal Baatz said reverently. “The Fuhrer ’s gone and done it again.”

Willi would have been happy to do just what Awful Arno suggested. He wasn’t so sure about the other part of what Baatz had to say. “I wonder what kind of deal we cut to make the enemy go for it,” he remarked.

“Know what I hear?” the corporal said.

“No, but you’re gonna tell me, aren’t you?” If Willi sounded resigned, it was only because he was.

The corporal nodded, not noticing the resignation. Awful Arno failed to notice all kinds of things. Doing his best to sound important, he said, “I heard Rudolf Hess flew to England all by himself to set up the deal, like.”

“Everybody’s heard that.” Willi rolled his eyes in disgust. “It’s been on the news, for crying out loud.”

“Ja, ja.” Awful Arno nodded again. “But I also heard he put the Englishmen up to finally giving Churchill what he deserved.”

“All right. That’s new, I guess.” Willi hated to admit it, but didn’t see that he had much choice.

“And now he’ll come back a hero, and the Fuhrer will pin the fanciest medal in the world on him. The Knight’s Cross with oak leaves, swords, and diamonds.” Baatz sighed. “Can you imagine it? What could be better?”

“I’m not sure he was doing us a favor, you know,” Willi said.

“Huh? What d’you mean?” No, Awful Arno didn’t get it. Willi wasn’t much surprised. Baatz had a great head-for a cabbage.

“The Tommies and the froggies aren’t shooting at us any more, right?” Willi said, trying to see how long the corporal would need to work it out.

“You can see they aren’t,” Baatz answered. “They’re going to join with us against the goddamn Ivans instead.”

Willi made small, soundless clapping motions. “Very good. Very good.”

“You can’t talk to me that way, you pigdog.” Awful Arno turned dull red.

He was already pretty dull, all right, as far as Willi was concerned. “Well, then, take a hint,” Willi said. “They’re going to help us fight the Ivans-you just told me so yourself. That means we’ve got to go fight the fucking Ivans ourselves. Is that what you really want to do?”

“Oh,” Baatz said, his mouth a black circle of dismay. He tried to rally: “They can’t be worse than what we’ve been facing.”

“Oh, no? Since when?” Willi retorted. “You get in trouble here, maybe the Frenchies won’t plug you when you give up. What about the Russians? You want them to get their mitts on your carcass? They’d eat you up, I bet.”

Awful Arno was chunkier than most German soldiers. He was sensitive about the extra kilos he carried, too. His complexion went from dull red to fiery. “They don’t do things like that,” he said, but his voice lacked all conviction.

“They don’t fight fair. They’re Russians. They’re Bolsheviks. I don’t want ’em capturing me, by God,” Willi said.

Instead of arguing any more, Baatz changed the subject. That should have meant Willi had won. He supposed it did, but he still wasn’t happy about it, because Awful Arno said, “If we’re on the same side now, England and France’ll have to give back the German prisoners they took. If your asshole buddy Storch did run over there after all, he can tell the Gestapo all about it.” Now he sounded sure, all right, and full of gloating anticipation.

“Oh, give it a rest. I think that French bombardment blew him right off the map,” Willi said. As a matter of fact, he knew damn well Storch had gone to surrender to the French. The blackshirts would have grabbed him if he hadn’t. So would they get a second crack at him now? That seemed horribly unfair. Fair and unfair, though, had precious little to do with the price of beer.

Another poilu came up out of the French trenches. “Who wants to buy tobacco? Who wants to buy booze?” he shouted. Wherever he’d learned his German, he didn’t speak badly at all.

And he knew what the Landsers wanted, all right. Before long, field-gray and khaki mingled between the lines. Because of the favorable rate of exchange the occupation set, many Germans had more francs in their pockets than French soldiers did. Everybody went away from the deals happy.

Everybody, that is, except people like Arno Baatz. “It’s fraternizing with the enemy,” he fumed. “There are regulations against things like that.”

“There’s a truce,” Willi said. “If they’re going to fight the Russians with us, they aren’t really the enemy any more, are they?”

“Don’t play barracks lawyer with me, Dernen,” Awful Arno snapped. “I’ll have that chickenshit pip off your sleeve so fast, you won’t know which way to look for it.”

“Zu befehl!” Willi said.

“That’s more like it,” Baatz growled. Fortunately for Willi, he completely missed the irony in that At your orders!

After a few days, the cease-fire began to seem more natural. Soldiers from both sides met and tried to talk with one another. They shared smokes and drinks. As best they could in each other’s languages, they swore at the officers who’d set them shooting at one another.

Willi had never particularly hated, or even disliked, France and England. His father came home from the last war with high respect for the poilus he’d fought. Even now, France seemed more… in the way than anything else. And the Tommies were as tough as anybody.

“Be funny, us fighting on same side,” said a French soldier who could muddle along in German. “Take orders from your generals. Funny, ja.” And he stumped around as he imagined a German general would walk.

To Willi, he looked like a self-important rooster. That wasn’t Willi’s take on his own generals, but it was funny. His French was much worse, so he stuck to German: “We’ll all clean out the Russians together.”

“Well…” A long pause from the poilu. “Maybe,” he said at last.

“What’s the matter?” Willi asked. “What else are we going to do? Why did you guys join up with us if that isn’t what you’ve got in mind?”

The poilu looked at him. “You don’t know me. You never find out who I am, ja?” He seemed to be talking more to himself than to Willi.

“Sure, buddy.” Willi nodded anyway.

“You Germans, you do for your Communists.” The French soldier slashed a hand across his throat to show what he meant. Willi nodded again. The fellow in grimy khaki went on, “Us, we still have ’em. Not want to go fight against Russia.” He eyed Willi from under shaggy eyebrows. “Not want to fight for Hitler, neither. Fuck Hitler, they say.”

Had he been talking to Awful Arno, Baatz would have tried to deck him, and maybe started the war up again. Willi only shrugged. “What can you do about it?” he asked, wondering if he’d hear something his officers needed to know about.

But the poilu shrugged, too, a gesture more expressive, less impassive, than Willi’s. “We all find out, ja?” he said.

Cross the Soviet Union to fight Japan. Cross the country again, going the other way this time, to fight Poland and Germany and England and France and, for all Anastas Mouradian knew, Uruguay as well. He’d predicted that it would happen. Being right didn’t make him especially happy. On the contrary-it told him the people running the country had no more idea of what they ought to be doing than he did. The fate of the USSR didn’t pivot on his ideas. On theirs? That was a different story.

As far as he could tell, the Soviet government’s main business these days was bellowing defiance against the world. Whenever the Trans-Siberian Railway train (the almost Trans-Siberian Railway train, one wag put it) stopped to let passengers get out and stretch their legs, loudspeakers blared out promises of death and destruction to the Fascists and their reactionary capitalist running dogs. Posters, strident in red and black, showed angry clenched fists and determined workers in cloth caps carrying rifles.

It would have been impressive, had people paid more attention to the patriotic foofaraw. But the Soviet authorities had been yelling at the workers and peasants at the top of their lungs for the past generation. Who got excited about one more propaganda campaign?

The authorities seemed uneasily aware that they might have a problem. Mouradian’s train had almost reached the Urals when he saw new posters on walls and telegraph poles: REPORT COUNTERREVOLUTIONARY ACTIVITY! and BEWARE WRECKERS! Stalin and his henchmen suddenly seemed to realize some people might see the invaders from the West as liberators, not conquerors.

There was another Armenian on the train, a pilot named Hagop Balian. The two of them had enjoyed speaking their own language with each other. Mouradian was fluent in Russian, but that didn’t mean he liked using it. Russian, for him, was like a car that wouldn’t engage its top gear. He could get around with it, but something was missing. Balian felt the same way.

No matter how they felt, they both went back to Russian as soon as they saw those security posters. Stas didn’t want ethnic Russians staring at him while he used a language they couldn’t understand. They might decide he was plotting against the Soviet Union, or even that he was speaking German. That would be good for a trip to the gulag archipelago, all right! And some ethnic Russians were more ignorant-and prouder of being ignorant-than anyone had any business being.

The propaganda campaign only got louder and more strident as the train neared Moscow. Some of the men on the platform at every stop belonged to the NKVD. They so obviously belonged to the security apparatus, they would have been funny if they couldn’t have ruined a man’s life with a single gesture. The arrogant stare, the aggressive, forward-thrusting posture… They should have come out of a bad movie, but here they were in real life.

“Your papers!” one of them barked at Mouradian when he got out to buy food.

“Here you are, Comrade.” He showed the man his military ID card and the orders that sent him to Moscow.

The Chekist looked them over, then grudgingly handed them back. “Well, be on your way,” he said, his voice gruff.

“Thank you, Comrade,” Mouradian said as he stashed away the precious documents. A soft answer turned away wrath… except, of course, when it didn’t. He bought a fatty sausage in a roll and got back on the train.

“All right?” Balian asked-again, in Russian.

“Well, sure,” Mouradian replied in the same tongue. They didn’t need to look at each other. There was a certain tone to which Russians seemed deaf. People from the Caucasus and Jews and other semitrusted associates of the largest clan in the USSR could use it to say what they wanted right under their masters’ noses.

Of course, the NKVD was full of people from the Caucasus and Jews. The masters needed to have men who could hear that note around them, even if (no, especially since) they couldn’t do it themselves.

When they got to Moscow, they reported to a Red Air Force office in the shadow of the Kremlin. A bored lieutenant shuffled through papers till he found Mouradian’s dossier. “You served in the SB-2 in Czechoslovakia, in Poland, and against the Japanese,” he said.

Stas nodded. “That’s right.”

“And you were a pilot when you served in the Far East?”

“Yes, I was.”

“What do you think of the SB-2?”

There was a question Mouradian hadn’t expected. Cautiously, he answered with the exact truth: “It’s getting old for frontline action against modern fighters, but it can still do the job.”

The lieutenant grunted, which might have meant anything or nothing. He made a check mark on a form. Mouradian couldn’t read it upside down, so he worried. Had he come all this way to get purged because of an honest response? The man on the other side of the table looked up at him with eyes so pale, the irises were hardly darker than the whites-Russian eyes, eyes he never would have seen among his own people, dangerous eyes. “So,” the other fellow said, “you would prefer an aircraft with higher performance?”

If he said yes, was it off to the gulag for insulting what the Soviet Union already had? Dammit, he did want a plane like that, though. Still picking his words as carefully as he could, he said, “If such an aircraft is available, yes.” There were rumors that new bombers were in the works, but, so far as he knew, rumors didn’t yet translate into airframes.

Or did they? The other lieutenant checked a different box on that maddeningly upside-down form. “Very well,” he said. “You are assigned to pilot training on the new Pe-2 medium bomber. Go out the door you came in. Turn right. Go past two doors and into the third room on the left. They’ll take care of you there.”

“I serve the Soviet Union!” Stas said dazedly.

He went out. He walked down the hall. He went into the room to which the pale-eyed lieutenant had sent him. Several other Red Air Force officers sat in there. Most of them were smoking papirosi. A couple sipped from glasses of tea. Stas went over to the samovar in the corner and got one for himself. It gave him something to do.

Another man walked in a couple of minutes later. “The Pe-2?” the new arrival said, as if he had trouble believing it. Only when the officers already in there nodded did he-and Mouradian-start to relax.

Hagop Balian came in, too. He looked as anxious as Anastas must have before. “It’s all right,” Stas said, and hoped he meant it. Even now, the NKVD could be lulling a room full of suspects.

Then a short, squat lieutenant colonel strode into the room. “You are men who have been chosen to fly the new Petlyakov bomber,” he declared. “Be proud, for you serve the Soviet Union in a new way. This machine makes the SB-2 look like it just got its dick knocked off.”

He was a Russian. Mat came naturally to him. Most of the pilots in the room were Russians, too. The sudden crudity only made them grin. Stas followed mat but hardly ever used it himself. You had to be a Russian to do it right.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” the lieutenant colonel said. “Come along with me, and you’ll see what’s what.”

They went. Trucks waited behind the building. Again, Stas wondered if they would head to a camp instead of an airstrip. He got into one anyhow. The only other choice was running, and he couldn’t do that… could he?

The trucks rattled out of town. His rear end knew when dirt replaced paving. He couldn’t see out except through the back. Most of what he saw was the snout of another truck right behind his.

After an hour and a half or so, the truck stopped. The senior officer had ridden up front with the driver, on a more comfortable seat. He jumped down and yelled, “Everybody out!”

Out Stas came. He smiled happily-it was an airstrip. The NKVD hadn’t nabbed him yet. Only after that thought was out of the way did he notice the planes there. They had to be Pe-2s-they sure weren’t anything he’d ever seen before. And… they made the SB-2 look like it just got its dick knocked off.

They were lean and long-nosed. They looked more like German Bf-110s than any other plane Stas could think of off the top of his head, and they weren’t much bigger. They’d be fast, the way the SB-2 had seemed fast when it was new. And they’d pack a punch, too. All of a sudden, Stas wished he could do that pale-eyed lieutenant a favor, because the fellow had sure done one for him.

Even though Shanghai lay under Japanese occupation, Hollywood movies still reached the theaters. Not right away, of course: The Wizard of Oz must have been out in the States for a year before it crossed the Pacific and the Sea of Japan. But here it was at last.

By himself or with his buddies from the Corps, Pete McGill would have chosen a Western or a gangster movie, or maybe a French flick with a bunch of chorus girls high-kicking in their scanties. Holding hands with Vera like a lovestruck teenager… the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion seemed a better bet.

He knew the story; he’d read the Oz books, and had them read to him, when he was a kid. Most Americans had. Vera hadn’t, so she didn’t. And she gasped when Kansas black-and-white turned to the Technicolor Land of Oz. Well, Pete almost gasped, too. That and the trick photography and the song-and-dance numbers were pretty amazing, even if it wasn’t a movie he would have chosen for himself.

“This Wizard in the Emerald City, he will help them?” Vera whispered in Pete’s ear. She’d got into the spirit of it, all right.

He cared more about the feel of her warm, moist breath than about all the wizards in the world put together. Smiling, he whispered “You’ll find out” back at her.

Down the Yellow Brick Road capered Dorothy, with Toto and their unlikely companions from Oz. In the distance lay the Emerald City. Its palaces gleamed against the painted sky. If you couldn’t find what you were looking for in a place like that, you probably couldn’t find it anywhere. And they were on their way.

The bomb in the theater went off just before they got there.

One second, Pete was listening to swelling, cheerful music and watching colors brighter than any he’d see in real life. The next, there was a roar and a crash. The theater went dark in the same split second as two walls and part of the ceiling fell in.

As soon as Pete heard the explosion, he tried to throw himself flat and to sweep Vera down with him. He reacted at a level far below conscious thought-he was a trained Marine. He was halfway to the grimy, threadbare carpet when something clipped him behind the ear and darkness deeper than the one inside the movie house engulfed him.

Some while later-he never knew how long-he came back to himself without fully realizing he’d been knocked for a loop. He kept trying to yank Vera down to the deck. Only then did he notice she wasn’t in the circle of his left arm any more. And only after that did he notice that every square inch of himself, with the possible exception of the soles of his feet, hurt like hell. He couldn’t account for why, not at first. Had a bunch of Japs decided to stomp him? This felt even worse than he thought that should have.

Then memory, as opposed to reflex, came back. He’d been watching the movie. There’d been warnings the Chinese underground was getting frisky. One of the things they shouted at you over and over while you were a boot was Anything that can happen can happen to you! Be ready for it! He hadn’t been ready enough.

Or had he? He was still here, anyhow, wherever here was. “Vera?” he said-or tried to say. Only a croak emerged. His mouth was full of blood and what he guessed was plaster dust.

When he spat, a chunk of tooth came out with all the glop. That, at the moment, was the least of his worries. “Vera?” he said again. This time, he could more or less understand himself.

A face appeared above him. One second, it wasn’t there; the next, it was. So it seemed to him, anyhow. He was still drifting in and out of consciousness. The face wasn’t Vera’s. It belonged to a skinny, middle-aged Chinese man. Next thing Pete knew, the fellow’s hand was in his pocket, grabbing for his wallet. He tried to knock it away, but his right arm didn’t want to do what he told it to. The Chinese man disappeared. So did Pete’s cash.

Then another Chinese looked him over. This guy spoke to him in bad French. “Don’t get it,” Pete managed.

“Ah,” the Chinese man said, and tried again in English: “You hurt? Where hurt?”

“Fucking everywhere!” Pete said. He tried to use his right arm to point. The pain almost drove him under. “Arm especially,” he gasped.

To his surprise, the Chinese man produced a syringe from a small leather case and gave him a shot. He felt better right away. If that wasn’t morphine, he didn’t know what it would be. As he drifted toward sleep on a warm cloud of contentment, the Chinese man started bandaging him. A doc, was Pete’s last clear thought. How about that?

When he really came back to himself, he was inside the American consulate. The shot was wearing off. Every nerve screamed. The Navy doc who took care of the Marines didn’t want to give him more dope. “You aim to end up a junkie?” the white man asked.

“Right now, buddy, I don’t give a fuck,” Pete said fervently. Muttering, the Navy doctor stuck him. This time, Pete didn’t go away as the pain receded. “Where’s Vera? How’s she doing?” he asked as soon as he could think of anything outside his own torment.

“The woman you were with unfortunately did not survive the explosion,” the doctor answered, his voice disapproving. “I was told she must have died very quickly and did not suffer.”

Pete wailed. Even drugged, even with his own hurts still tormenting him, he yipped like a puppy taken from its mother. Tears poured down his face. He wanted to kill the doctor for telling him something like that. He wanted to call the man a liar, too. He wanted that more than anything, but he knew he couldn’t have it.

“She can’t be dead,” he said. “I loved her.”

“I’m sorry, son.” The Navy doctor didn’t sound one bit sorry. “You ask me, the Chinese aren’t doing themselves any good with these terror bombs. The Western powers will just decide Japan can do whatever she wants to put down maniacs like that. I bet the Chinks are a bunch of Reds, trying to give Stalin a helping hand.”

Pete hardly heard him. He’d just betrayed his own hopes. I loved her. Morphine didn’t keep him from noting the dreadful finality of that past tense. He believed Vera was gone. How could he live without her? He had no idea. He didn’t much want to try. He wailed again.

That made the doctor give him another shot. This one wasn’t morphine. It knocked him for a loop, whatever it was. When he woke up, it was the following afternoon. He didn’t want to believe that, but the strips of sunlight coming in through windows he knew faced west gave him no choice.

He looked around the sick bay. He was the only guy in it. If any other Marines had been watching The Wizard of Oz, they’d either got off scot-free or they’d bought the whole farm.

The doctor walked over to him when he saw him awake. “How are you doing?” the man asked.

“Awful,” Pete said honestly.

“I believe it. Fractures, abrasions, contusions… You’re lucky to be here.”

“Some luck.” Pete wanted to wail again, not for himself but for his lost love.

“I am going to recommend that we evacuate you to Manila,” the doctor said as he stuck Pete once more. Now he wasn’t going on about addicting him. He’d had a better chance to see how badly hurt Pete was. And maybe he hoped the morphine would help dull the pain in Pete’s soul along with the one filling his battered carcass.

That was a forlorn hope. “What’s wrong with the hospitals here?” Pete asked. “I want to be near-” He couldn’t go on. He choked up instead.

“You can’t do anything for her here,” the doc said. “You’ve got to know that. It isn’t like you two were married or anything. And besides, any excuse that lets us get our personnel out of here, we take. Hospitals here are still here, and we can’t protect you if you’re in one of them.”

Protect him from whom? More Chinese bombers? The Japs? Himself? No, they couldn’t protect him from any of those, and he couldn’t protect himself, either.