West and East

Chapter 12

Photographs and posters made Marshal Sanjurjo look tall and stern and heroic. He always wore splendid uniforms. Joaquin Delgadillo liked that. If you were somebody, you should look as if you were.

In the flesh, Sanjurjo was less imposing. He had a lot of flesh-were those three chins or four? He was shorter and wider than the posters made him out to be. He was also at least fifteen years older. He looked like a village druggist just on the point of retiring.

He still wore a fancy uniform. And, whether he was a hero or not, he had cojones enough to come up to the front on the northwestern outskirts of Madrid. If some traitor-and there were always traitors-had let the Republicans know he was coming, they could smash up these trenches with mortar bombs and cut off the Nationalist state's head. Or a lucky sniper could take care of it. The enemy's trenches lay almost a kilometer off, but even so…

Sanjurjo eyed Sergeant Carrasquel, who stood at stiff attention. A slow smile spread across the marshal's face. He set a hand on Carrasquel's shoulder. He knew what kind of creature he had before him. "So tell me, Sergeant, how are things here? Tell me the truth," he said. Digame la verdad. He made the last three words a caressing invitation.

"It's fucked up, sir. But it's always fucked up, so what can you do?" the sergeant answered. "The Republicans are as stubborn as we are, and the Internationals over yonder, they're damn good troops. We need more of everything if we're gonna shift 'em."

"You get what we have," Sanjurjo said, no anger in his voice.

"Yes, sir. But we don't have enough," the sergeant said. "Just so you know, the rations suck, too." The look in his eye said he'd noticed Sanjurjo wasn't missing any meals. Not even Carrasquel seemed ready to come out with that, though.

"You said it-things are fucked up." The crude phrase sounded much more elegant in Marshal Sanjurjo's mouth. The marshal turned to Delgadillo. "Is this a good man, Sergeant?"

"I've got plenty worse, sir," Carrasquel replied.

That was the kindest thing he'd ever said about Joaquin. Sanjurjo's pouchy eyes were clever, also like a village druggist's. "How is it with you, soldier?" he asked. "Speak freely. I didn't come here to listen to polite bullshit." He used the English word with a certain sour relish. Delgadillo had heard it from the Republicans often enough to know what it meant.

"It's war, sir," he said. "How is it supposed to be?"

"That's a fair question, son," Sanjurjo said. "It's supposed to be a lot like this. Sometimes it's worse, eh, Sergeant?"

"It can always get worse." Carrasquel spoke with deep conviction. "I was in Morocco, fighting against the Rifs. If it gets much worse than that, I don't want to know about it, by God!"

"That was bad," Sanjurjo agreed. "Maybe the Western Front in the last war was worse. So much slaughter, and for nothing. But maybe it wasn't worse, too. When you fought the Rifs, you knew they really meant it."

Sergeant Carrasquel nodded. "Oh, are you ever right there, sir!"

All Delgadillo knew about the Rifs was that they were savages and the Spanish army had beaten them. He'd been a little kid when that fight ended. So Carrasquel had been in Morocco, then, had he? He didn't look old enough. Maybe vipers aged slower than ordinary human beings.

"I hoped our friends would go on supplying us after the European war started, but"-Sanjurjo spread his plump palms-"asi es la vida. The Republicans have the same worries. We can still beat them. We will still beat them, eh?"

"Absolutamente, your Excellency!" Delgadillo said quickly. Was he going to tell the marshal the Nationalists would lose? Not likely! Sergeant Carrasquel might be convinced he was a dope, but he wasn't that big a dope.

"Bueno," Sanjurjo said, and stumped down the trench. A gaggle of aides in almost equally gaudy uniforms followed him. They ignored Joaquin but edged away from Sergeant Carrasquel. They knew a dangerous man when they saw one.

"Well, kid, you can tell your grandchildren you talked with a big shot once upon a time," Carrasquel said gruffly.

"Yeah. How about that?" Joaquin said. "The Caudillo." It wasn't quite so strong a title as Fuhrer or Duce, but it was plenty strong enough.

Carrasquel glanced after Sanjurjo's henchmen. When he decided they'd got out of earshot, he went on, "You know what else you can tell your grandkids?"

"What, Sergeant?" Delgadillo asked, as he was obviously meant to do.

"Tell 'em Sanjurjo's shit stinks just like yours," the older man growled.

Joaquin blinked. He'd expected something different. He looked around, too, to make sure no one could overhear. Satisfied, he spoke in a low voice: "If you feel that way, how come your aren't fighting for the Republic?"

"Chinga the Republic." Carrasquel spat. "Those assholes think workers' shit doesn't stink, just on account of they're workers. Everybody's shit stinks, God damn it to hell. Everybody's. You get down to the bottom of it, it's all shit."

If he'd been on the other side of the line when the fighting started, would he be cussing out the Nationalists now? Delgadillo couldn't ask; he'd said too much already. But he wouldn't have been surprised. Carrasquel needed to fight somebody. Who probably didn't matter much.

And, after some of the things Joaquin had seen, he had a devil of a time thinking the sergeant was wrong. Shit and rotten meat and maggots: things did end up like that, all right. What you did before then mattered, though… didn't it? If it does, what am I doing here?

What was Joaquin doing here? They'd drafted him. They'd made sure he couldn't run away, and they'd beaten the stuffing out of a couple of luckless lugs who tried. They'd shoot him if he deserted at the front, and they wouldn't even waste a cigarette on him before they did. In spite of everything, they'd made a soldier out of him. Turning into a soldier gave him the best chance to live.

A Republic machine gun growled to malign life. One of Marshal Sanjurjo's aides, a tall, gangly man whose head must have stuck up above the rim of the trench, let out a choking moan and crumpled, clutching at himself. Medics rushed over to him. Delgadillo wondered how long he would have had to lie there if he'd got hit. A hell of a lot longer than that, he was sourly sure. The medics carried the groaning officer past him on a stretcher.

"How bad?" Carrasquel asked in tones of professional interest.

"Scalp wound. He's bleeding like a pig, but he ought to make it," a medic answered. "A few centimeters lower, and…" He shook his head.

"Madonna, it hurts!" the officer said.

"I gave you morphine, Senor," the medic told him. "It'll make you easier soon." He and his comrades lugged the man away.

"It could have been the Caudillo," Joaquin said.

"Not unless he really was as big as his pictures make him out to be," Carrasquel said, so Delgadillo wasn't the only one who'd had that thought.

The rest of Sanjurjo's aides plainly thought they'd seen as much of the front as they wanted to, and more besides. Sanjurjo himself took the wounding, and the firing that went on afterwards, in stride. His attitude declared he'd known worse. He had nerve-that much of what they said about him to make him look good was true, anyhow.

Major Uribe's shrill voice rang out: "Come on, my dears! We have to let them know they can't get away with being so rude!"

Joaquin fired a few shots toward the Republican lines. He saw no good targets, but fired anyway. A bullet might do something. The one that creased the aide's head sure had. Beside him, Sergeant Carrasquel was doing the same thing. So were Nationalist soldiers all along the line. One of their machine guns opened up, and then another. Another Republican murder mill responded. It was getting dangerous out, whichever side you were on.

As Joaquin Delgadillo put a fresh clip on his rifle, he glanced toward Sanjurjo. What did the marshal make of his maricon battalion commander? By his smile, he already knew about Bernardo Uribe. If you were a good enough soldier, you could get away with almost anything that didn't hurt the way you fought. Uribe was, and then some.

How many times had Joaquin yelled "?Maricon!" at the Republicans? And now he had a fairy giving him orders! War was a crazy business, all right. He shouldered the reloaded piece and squeezed off another shot at the enemy. "MOSCOW SPEAKING." The newsreader's familiar voice came out of the radio at the Byelorussian airstrip. Sergei Yaroslavsky drank from a glass of strong, sweet tea as he listened to the morning report. Another pilot walked over to the battered samovar bubbling in a corner of the tent and poured a glass for himself. He already had a papiros sticking up at a jaunty angle from the corner of his mouth, as if he were Franklin D. Roosevelt. Tobacco and tea-how could you run a war without them?

On vodka, that's how, Sergei thought. The Russians had run on vodka long before they'd ever heard of tea or cigarettes, and on beer and mead and wine before they knew about vodka. That was all very well for a foot soldier. He thought about flying his SB-2 smashed out of his skull. He grimaced. No, not a pretty picture.

"Comrade Stalin reports heavy fighting on the frontier between the peace-loving Soviet Union and the regime of Hitler's jackal, Marshal Smigly-Ridz," the newsreader said. That was code of sorts, if you knew how to read between the lines. Fierce fighting and stubborn fighting weren't so bad. When they started talking about heavy fighting, the Devil's grandmother had spilled the pisspot into the borscht.

Well, that was nothing he didn't already know. If things were going well, would he have had to get out of Poland while German shells cratered the runway from which he'd been flying?

Across the table from him, Anastas Mouradian raised one dark eyebrow a few millimeters. The Armenian had no trouble understanding news reports, either. Sergei sometimes thought Armenians and Jews and people like that were born reading between the lines. He wondered why Russians weren't. Some Russians didn't even seem to know there were lines to read between.

"Despite the Red Army's displays of heroism, the campaign in the area illegally occupied by the Polish junta has not necessarily gone to the Soviet Union's advantage in all respects, due to the Nazis' treacherous intervention in a fight where they had no true interest." The radio newsreader paused portentously. "Accordingly, Comrade Stalin finds that the situation has changed."

He paused again, making sure he had everyone's attention. He did-all the officers waking up in the tent stared toward the radio. Curls of smoke rose from papirosi being smoked or held between index and middle fingers. Changed. In the middle of a war, there were few more ominous words. Changed how?

The newsreader had the answer, straight from the General Secretary's lips: "Up till this time, our dispute with the vile Polish clique has concerned only the border region they unjustly occupied. But, now that the jackals have invited the deadly German viper into their filthy burrow, they make it only too clear that they are a danger to all lovers of peace. This being so, we are no longer concerned with the border region alone. We shall punish the Smigly-Ridz regime as it deserves. Its very existence is a product of our unfortunate weakness during the civil wars following the glorious Soviet revolution. We shall make Poland-all of Poland-pay for its brazen effrontery."

He went on to talk about the war in the Far East. He also described the fighting there as heavy, which wasn't good news. But Sergei listened with only half an ear. He and Stas Mouradian weren't the only men who exchanged glances of what looked much too much like consternation. No one said anything; people naive or stupid enough to do that had been weeded out by a process of brutal Darwinian selection. Even expressions could endanger, though. Somebody in here was bound to report to the NKVD.

Then again, maybe the local Chekist, whoever he was, also wore a look of consternation. Who wouldn't? If what the newsreader said meant what it sounded like, the USSR intended to attack, or more likely was attacking, Poland up and down their long frontier. The Red Army was much bigger than its Polish opposite number. If it was much better, it hadn't shown it yet.

And that was only half the problem-the smaller half, at that. So far, Hitler had been fighting a limited war against the Soviet Union. If Stalin widened that war, wouldn't the Fuhrer do the same? The Red Army was bigger than the Wehrmacht, too. Better? Anybody who said so… probably spewed out propaganda for the radio and the newspapers.

Widening the war would have been adventurous enough without the fight in the Far East. With it? Sergei was reminded of a dinosaur like Brontosaurus. If it was looking forward when something bit it at the end of the tail, how long would it take to notice the trouble back there?

He shook his head as he lit a papiros of his own and stuck the end of the paper holder into his mouth. He had to watch himself. The USSR was a progressive state-the most progressive state in the world, as a matter of fact. You'd better not think of it as a dinosaur. If you did, you were liable to say something like that out loud. And if you did open your big mouth, it would be a camp or a bullet in the back of the head for you. Darwinian selection, all right!

The news ended. Music as syrupy-sweet as Crimean champagne poured out of the radio. No one turned it off even so. If you didn't want to listen to what the state wanted you to hear, weren't you subtly anti-Soviet? Somebody was liable to think you were, anyhow, and that would be all it took.

But you didn't have to pay attention to the music, the way you did with the news. "Well, well," someone ventured.

"How about that?" someone else added.

"We can whip the Poles," Sergei said. That was only a kopek out of his ruble of thought, but it was the kopek he could spend in public.

"Sure we can!" Three or four men said the same thing at the same time. They all sounded relieved to be able to come out with something safe. Well, Sergei was relieved to come out with something safe himself.

"I wish Hitler didn't have panzers in Poland," Anastas Mouradian remarked.

No one responded to that, not for a little while. Stas liked to sail close to the wind, and everybody knew it. Who in the tent didn't wish there were no Germans in Poland? The Poles were easier to beat. Mouradian hadn't criticized anyone. Still, even mentioning those panzers seemed faintly indecent.

"Well, maybe it won't be so bad," Sergei said. You couldn't get in trouble for optimism (though he did wish he could have that maybe back).

"Maybe the Nazis will see we're serious about this Polish business and clear out," another flyer put in. "They've got their own troubles on their other frontier."

"We don't, of course," Mouradian said dryly. He was no Brontosaurus; he could contemplate wounded head and wounded tail at the same time. "Not like theirs," the other flyer insisted.

He wasn't wrong. How much did being right matter, though? "They only fought for four years on two fronts last time," Mouradian said. This wasn't the first time he'd brought up that inconvenient truth.

"They lost," Sergei said. His crewmate sent him an Et tu, Brute? look.

Before Mouradian could say anything, the other pilot ran to the conversational ball and booted it far down the pitch: "That's right! And they'll lose this time, too! The historical dialectic makes it inevitable."

The dialectic! Heavy artillery! You could blow anybody out of the water when you trotted out the dialectic. But Anastas Mouradian didn't stay there to be blown to rhetorical smithereens. He nodded politely. "No doubt, Comrade. But how far will the cause of Socialism be set back by the conflict? How many farms and cities and little children will go up in smoke?"

"A fine question for the fellow who aims the bombs to ask," the pilot sneered.

"I serve the Soviet Union," Mouradian said. "I do try to serve the Soviet Union intelligently."

There was another one nobody wanted to touch. Sergei was far from sure serving the Soviet Union intelligently was what the apparatchiks who ran the country wanted. You got a command. You carried it out. You had no business wondering about it. That wasn't your responsibility.

But were you a man or were you a sheep? Which way were you more valuable to the state? If you were a man, weren't you safer pretending to grow wool? Sergei knew damn well you were. How much baaing had he already done? How much more would he have to do? THE POWER TO BIND. The power to loose. St. Peter had it, if you took Jesus seriously. Whether you took Jesus seriously or not, Adolf Hitler had it-inside the borders of the Third Reich, anyhow. Peggy Druce found that out in a hurry.

Once the Fuhrer said she could leave Germany, the mountains that had stood in her way for so long all at once turned into molehills. Konrad Hoppe came to her hotel room and affixed an exit visa to her passport as exactingly as if he were working with gold leaf. The scrawny Foreign Ministry official had met with her once before, to explain why she couldn't get out. Because we don't want you to, that's why, was what it boiled down to.

Peggy couldn't resist saying, "Nice of you to change your mind."

Hoppe didn't notice the sarcasm-or, if he did, he was armored against it like a battleship. "My superiors have given me my orders, Frau Druce. I follow them."

They'd given him different orders not so long before. He'd followed those, too. What did Jerome K. Jerome call the German attitude toward civic responsibility? Peggy smiled, remembering. Blind obedience to everything in buttons-that was it. And the Englishman, writing at the very end of the nineteenth century, had gone on to say Hitherto, the German has had the blessed fortune to be exceptionally well governed; if this continues, it will go well with him. When his troubles will begin will be when by any chance something goes wrong with the governing machine.

Had Jerome K. Jerome had a crystal ball, or maybe one of H.G. Wells' time machines, to look into the future and see just what would happen next? If he could see it, why couldn't everybody else? Hell, why couldn't anybody else? Why couldn't the Germans see it themselves?

Blind obedience to everything in buttons, dammit.

She realized she'd missed some pearl of wisdom falling from Herr Hoppe's lips. "I'm sorry?"

"I said"-he rolled his eyes at Anglo-Saxon lightmindedness-"the train to Copenhagen departs each afternoon at half past three. Shall I secure you a Pullman berth on today's train?"

Now they couldn't get rid of her fast enough. "Yes, please," she said, and even unbent enough to add, "Thank you very much." Then she decided to press her luck a little: "Can you send me a cab, so I can bring my suitcase along easier?" She would have gone without it-Lord, she would have gone naked if she had to!-but why not see what she could get away with?

Konrad Hoppe didn't even blink. "Aber naturlich. The cab will be here at half past two, precisely." Taxis in wartime, fuel-starved Berlin were almost as scarce as Nazi big shots with Jewish wives, but the Fuhrer had ordered the machinery to give Peggy what she wanted, and Hoppe was one of those smoothly turning gears. He did say, "Please remember to be punctual."

"Jawohl!" Peggy said. Mussolini boasted that he made the trains in Italy run on time, but he lied. Everything in Germany ran on time. As far as Peggy could see, nobody had to make it do that; it just did. Half past two wouldn't mean 2:29 or 2:31. It would be 2:30 on the dot. And she would be in the lobby waiting.

"Very well, then." Hoppe clicked his heels. "If you will excuse me, dear lady…" With a nod that was almost a bow, he made his getaway.

I'll make mine, too, Peggy thought, almost delirious with glee. But she had to attend to one more thing, no matter how little she wanted to. She picked up the telephone in her room. When the hotel operator asked whom she wanted to call, she sighed and said, "The American embassy, please."

"One moment," the German woman said primly. It took more than a moment, but Peggy had known it would. Like every other part of civilian life, the telephone system was neglected these days. Well, all except one part of it: somebody from the Gestapo or the SD would be listening to her conversation. She was as sure of that as she was of her own name. What could you do, though?

The embassy operator came on the line. The hotel operator put Peggy through. She gave her name and asked to speak to Constantine Jenkins. "One moment," the embassy operator said, only in English, not German. "He may be in a meeting."

If he was, Peggy could get out of Berlin with a clear conscience. She laughed a sour internal laugh. Would she ever have a clear conscience again? It seemed painfully improbable, but she would have done her best here. No, it wasn't the same thing, goddammit.

The operator came back on the line. "I can connect you to him."

"Thank you," Peggy said, not without wincing. She'd been connected to the undersecretary, all right! Hadn't she just?

"Hello, Mrs. Druce." Jenkins sounded properly formal. No doubt he also knew the Nazis would be tapping the telephone lines.

"Hi. I just wanted to let you know they've got a place for me on the train to Copenhagen this afternoon," Peggy said. "And I wanted to thank you for all your help."

"It was my pleasure, believe me," Jenkins answered. Did he sound all male and knowing there for a moment, or was that only Peggy reading between the lines? She couldn't very well ask him.

"If you hadn't suggested that I write to the Fuhrer with my problem, I don't know if it ever would have got fixed," Peggy said. Not only was that true, but it reminded the lurking listeners Hitler was on her side. Can't hurt, she thought.

"Nothing else was working. I figured you should go straight to the top and try your luck there," he said. Peggy found herself nodding. Blind obedience to everything in buttons, sure as hell. Jenkins spoke again, on a different note this time: "And I hope everything else is all right?"

"Oh, yes!" Peggy said quickly. She'd got her period-and what the Germans used for pads these days was a shame and a disgrace. Wouldn't that have been fun? She couldn't have brought a visible sign of her shame home to Herb. But how she could have found a discreet German doctor without opening herself up to Gestapo blackmail forever was beyond her. One thing she didn't need to worry about, anyhow. Those things made a dismayingly short list these days.

"Well, that's good," Jenkins said. "Believe me, we like to do everything we can for Americans in Germany. Too often, it's less than we'd want. I hope everything goes very well for you, and I hope to see you again one day after everything settles down, if it ever does."

"Thanks again," Peggy said. "So long." She hung up. I hope to see you again? If that didn't mean I hope to lay you again, what did it mean? She was damned if she'd ever get drunk with a diplomat again.

She lugged her suitcase down the hall to the elevator at ten after two. It was heavy and clumsy. Why didn't it have wheels and a handle with more reach? But that was a side issue. She wouldn't be late here, not for nothin'.

The elevator operator was a woman. A gray-haired man had had the job, but something-war work? conscription? trouble with the Gestapo?-had pulled him away from it. The war was biting more and more people these days.

Peggy checked out and settled down to wait. She watched traffic go by on the street outside. There wasn't much to watch: buses, military vehicles, a doctor's car (a placard taped to the door proclaimed what that one was).

Right at 2:30, a taxi pulled up in front of the hotel. Peggy hauled her suitcase out onto the sidewalk. "Let me take that for you," the driver said. His left hand was artificial, but his right arm was plenty strong. Into the trunk the suitcase went. "The train station, yes?"

"Yes!" Peggy said. He opened the door for her, then got in himself. He used his right hand to clamp the thumb and fingers of the left onto the wheel. That left the good hand free to shift gears, and to help the other as needed.

Maybe he saw Peggy's eye on him, for he said, "It's clumsy, but it works. And I've had plenty of practice since the last war. Only one accident in all that time, and it wasn't my fault. The police court said so."

"Good for you," Peggy said. She gave him a big tip when they got to the station. He took her suitcase out of the trunk as easily as he'd put it in, but she didn't let him carry it to the ticket counter. Enough was enough. She could manage, and she did.

Her ticket was waiting. She'd had paranoid fantasies that it wouldn't be, that the Nazis were still playing cat-and-mouse games with her. But no. Here it was, in her hands. The conductor gravely examined it when she walked up to the train. "I am required to ask you to show me an exit visa," he said.

"Here you go." Peggy was proud to show it off.

"Sehr gut. Danke schon," he said, touching the brim of his cap. "All is in order. You may board."

You may board! If those weren't the three most beautiful words in the German language, Peggy didn't know what could top them. She found her berth. It had to be the best one on the train. The Germans were laying it on thick, all right. About time, too! Peggy settled in with a sigh of pleasure.

At 3:30-not 3:29, not 3:31-the train jerked into motion. "Yippee!" Peggy said. No one heard her. It wouldn't have mattered if someone had. You couldn't translate Yippee! into German. But she was on her way home at last. HANS-ULRICH RUDEL ALWAYS WONDERED what would happen when Colonel Steinbrenner summoned him to the tent that did duty as squadron HQ. Showing you were worried was only likely to make things worse, though. "Reporting as ordered, sir," he said, drawing himself up to stiff attention.

"At ease," Steinbrenner said. "You're not in trouble this time, Oberleutnant Rudel."

"Oberleutnant?" Hans-Ulrich squeaked in surprised. He'd just got promoted. "Thank you very much, sir!"

"You're welcome. You earned it." Steinbrenner opened a box that sat on the card table serving as a desk. "You earned this, too." He took out a large Iron Cross on a red-white-and-black ribbon.

"A Ritterkreuz!" Rudel said, all breath and no voice-he was beyond even squeaking now.

"That's right. You've got the first Knight's Cross in the squadron. Not the last, I hope, but the first. Congratulations!" Medal in hand, Colonel Steinbrenner stood up. He came up and handed it to Hans-Ulrich. "You wear it around your neck."

"Yes, sir. I know," Hans-Ulrich said dazedly. Too much was happening too fast. He managed to put it on without dropping it. If you had to have a shield for your Adam's apple, where could you find a better one?

"I've got the gold pips for your shoulder straps and the new collar patches with two chickens on them, too," Steinbrenner said. "I figured you'd rather put the Ritterkreuz on first, though."

"Uh, yes, sir," Rudel managed.

Something besides the medal sat in the box, too: a piece of paper. Unfolding it, Steinbrenner read, "'In recognition of Lieutenant Rudel's cleverness in suggesting the installation of antipanzer cannon on the Ju-87, and in recognition of his gallantry in personally testing the new weapons system against the enemy.' That's not a bad citation. No, not half bad." He stuck out his hand.

Hans-Ulrich shook it. "I never expected any of this," he muttered.

"Well, you've got it. Enjoy it." Steinbrenner's eyes twinkled. "And you get to buy everybody drinks twice-once for the promotion, and once for the Knight's Cross."

"Oh, joy." Now Hans-Ulrich's voice sounded distinctly hollow. That was an honor he could have done without. He'd be the only sober guy at a party-no, two parties-full of rowdy drunks. They'd get rowdy on his Reichsmarks, too, and it wasn't as if he were rolling in them.

"You could even unbend a little yourself," the squadron commander said. "It's not as if you haven't got a good excuse."

"I don't care to do that, sir, thank you." Rudel stayed within military discipline. He also stayed stubborn.

"Well, have it your way. You've earned the right this time." Colonel Steinbrenner, for once, didn't feel like arguing or teasing.

Hans-Ulrich could be stubborn about several things at the same time: a Renaissance man, of sorts. "You need to give Albert something, too," he said. "If we'd got hit, he'd be roast meat just like me."

Steinbrenner tapped another box on the table with the nail of his index finger. "Iron Cross, First Class. Does that suit you, your Excellency?"

Sarcasm went over Rudel's head as often as not. This time, his ears burned. "Yes, sir," he mumbled.

"Well, good. Now get out of here so I can pin it on him. He's due in"-Steinbrenner glanced at his watch-"six minutes."

Thus encouraged, Hans-Ulrich got. Sergeant Dieselhorst wasn't coming yet, which was good. If he saw the Knight's Cross, he'd figure he was in line for a medal, too. This way, it would be a surprise-and the nice kind of surprise, at that.

Several groundcrew men walked out of a revetment where they'd been working on a damaged Stuka. As usual, their chatter was two parts technical jargon, one part filth. One of them waved to Hans-Ulrich: not much spit and polish on a working air base. The wave came to a jerky stop when he saw the new medal at Rudel's throat. "Heilige Scheisse!" he said. "That's a Ritterkreuz!"

The noncoms in greasy coveralls swarmed over Hans-Ulrich, pumping his hand and pounding him on the back. Then, before he could do more than squawk, they hoisted him onto their shoulder and carried him back to the airstrip. "Look!" one of them yelled. "He's flying!" The others thought that was so funny, they almost dropped him.

Pilots came out of their tents to see what the fuss was about. They started yelling and beating on Hans-Ulrich, too. "You've got balls, you little squirt," one of them said-he was twenty-five, a whole two years older than Rudel. "Now if you only had some brains."

"Hey, he thought up those antipanzer guns," another flyer said. "Maybe he's not as dumb as he looks."

"Maybe he's not as homely as he looks, either, but I wouldn't bet on it," the first man said. They all laughed like lunatics. Hans-Ulrich didn't think he was particularly homely, but nobody cared what he thought. The first flyer went on, "We ought to find out what the French girls think."

Everybody cheered-everybody but Rudel. Several of the local girls could be friendly… for a price. Being friendly with them came with a price, too. Several flyers had come down with drippy faucets. The medics had some brand-new pills that could actually cure the clap, but Colonel Steinbrenner wasn't amused any which way.

As for Hans-Ulrich, he said, "Spare me, please." The other Germans laughed, some of them not so good-naturedly now. What kind of pilot was he if he didn't want to drink or to screw? It wasn't that he didn't have animal urges of his own, either. He did-did he ever! But he didn't feel like wasting them on French popsies who probably smelled like garlic.

"We weren't asking what you thought of the girls, Rudel," the twenty-five-year-old said. "We want to know what they'll think of you."

"I don't care." Hans-Ulrich started to kick in earnest. "And put me down, for heaven's sake!"

They did, none too gently. He was just working his way through the Luftwaffe pack when Sergeant Dieselhorst came back from Steinbrenner's headquarters tent, his new decoration prominent on the left breast of his tunic. That took some of the heat off Hans-Ulrich, because people had to congratulate-and to thump-Dieselhorst, too.

Eventually, the two men from the Stuka crew managed to shake hands with each other. "Well, sir, here's another fine mess you got me into," Dieselhorst said, sounding like a Laurel and Hardy film.

"As long as we keep getting out of them," Rudel answered.

"I'll drink to that," Dieselhorst said, and everybody cheered-not least because everybody knew Hans-Ulrich wouldn't. The sergeant went on, "The old man told me you got promoted, too. You can watch us get plowed on your cash-twice."

That put the focus back on Rudel. Thanks a lot, Albert, he thought. The flyers and groundcrew men bayed like wolves, anticipating their sprees. They teased Hans-Ulrich about not joining in. "If you're wasted, too, you won't give a rat's ass about what it costs," someone said. Half a dozen men roared agreement.

"Not then," Rudel said.

"Why worry about afterwards?" another pilot asked. "Afterwards, the enemy's liable to smoke us. Don't you want something fun to remember while you're going down in flames?" Rudel didn't answer, and a lot of the good cheer drained out of the gathering. Some questions cut too close to the bone.