West and East

Chapter 25

No one had ever claimed Wales was a place where you went to enjoy the weather. There were good and cogent reasons why no one had ever said such a damnfool thing. Alistair Walsh had seen plenty of bad weather there, and even more in his army service. All the same, he'd never imagined anything like winter in central Norway.

The wind howled like a wolf. Snow blew as near horizontal as made no difference. He had a wool balaclava under his tin hat and a sheepskin coat a herder had pressed on him that was far warmer than his British-issue greatcoat. He wore greatcoat and sheepskin one on top of the other, and two pairs of mittens on his hands. He was cold anyway.

A British captain who was stumbling north with him said something. Whatever it was, that vicious wind blew it away. "Sorry, sir?" Walsh shouted back.

"I said"-the captain put his mouth as close to Walsh's ear as a lover might-"I said, without the bloody Gulf Stream, this country wouldn't be habitable at all."

Walsh considered that. "Who says it is, sir?"

"Ha!" The officer nodded. "Makes you understand why the Vikings went pirating so often, what?"

"Damned if it doesn't," Walsh agreed. "Even Scotland looks good next to this, and by God I never thought I'd say that in this life." The country up in the north there was bleak as could be, but this outdid it.

After nodding again, the captain said, "No fucking Germans in Scotland, either."

"Right." Walsh wished there were no Germans in Norway, either. Unfortunately, wishing didn't make them go away. They weren't nearly far enough behind the retreating Allies. German mountain troops had snowshoes and skis, and moved much faster than poor ordinary buggers stumbling up these indifferent roads.

Oh, the Norwegians had ski troops, too, and a few French chasseurs alpins were also equipped for winter warfare. But most of the allied expeditionary force was plain old infantry. And the plain old infantry was in trouble.

"One good thing," the captain bawled into Walsh's none too shell-like ear.

"What's that, sir?" Walsh answered. "It's one more than I've come up with."

"With the weather so beastly, the Luftwaffe can't get off the ground."

"Mm. There is that," Walsh said. "We can get shot and shelled, but the blighters won't bomb us for a while."

"Of course, our own planes are also grounded."

"Yes, sir," Walsh replied, and said not another word. The Luftwaffe ruled the skies in Norway and above the seas west of it. The RAF, along with a few French planes and what little was left of the Norwegian air force, did what it could against the Germans, but it wasn't enough. Stukas swooped, sirens screaming. Messerschmitts strafed almost as they pleased. The Fritzes' artillery spotting planes, the ones that could take off and land in next to nothing and hover in a headwind like a kestrel, flew here, there, and everywhere, showing the Nazis what to strike next. Clear weather favored the enemy. Well, there hadn't been much of it lately.

He trudged on. For all he could tell, the Germans were shelling them right now. The wind and snow cocooned him tightly. If the bastards didn't score a direct hit, he'd never know it. And if they did, he figured he'd end up in a warmer place than this. At the moment, eternal flame didn't seem half bad.

"Do you think they'll be able to pull us out, sir?" he asked.

"Maybe. If the bad weather holds and lets our ships into Namsos," the captain answered. He studied Walsh. The veteran noncom wondered why; neither of them showed more than his eyes. "What about you, Sergeant? I daresay you have more experience in these matters than I do."

Walsh only shrugged. "I may be older than you are, sir, but I've never been in anything like this."

"Last bugger who was in anything like this was Scott, and look what happened to him." The captain laughed harshly. "No, there was bloody Amundsen, too, and he was a Norwegian himself. He must have felt right at home at the South Pole, eh?"

"Wouldn't surprise me one bit." Walsh turned away from the wailing wind, cupped his hands, and lit a cigarette. Some people could strike a match in any weather, no matter how dreadful. The harsh smoke-he'd taken a packet of Gitanes off a dead Frenchman-gave him something to think about besides the blizzard.

"If only the German generals had given Hitler the boot," the captain said.

"If ifs and buts were candied nuts, we'd all have a bloody good Christmas," Walsh answered. "D'you really suppose they would have stopped the war? They're Fritzes, too, remember. I've never known those sons of bitches to pack it in while they can still fight."

"Something to that, I shouldn't wonder," the captain said. He brought up a mittened hand to the brim of his helmet. "Some sort of checkpoint up ahead."

"Maybe they'll tell us which way Namsos is." Walsh wasn't a hundred percent sure he'd been going north. He'd been steering more by the wind than by anything else: that and flocking with his friends. If they were wrong, so was he. Sheep liked to flock together.

"Maybe they will," the captain said as he and Walsh neared the crossroads. A squad's worth of men stood there-vague shapes through the flying snow. The officer let out a formidable bellow: "I say! Which way to Namsos?"

They didn't answer (or if they did, Walsh couldn't hear them, which was at least as likely). The staff sergeant clumped on. He and the captain were almost close enough to spit on the waiting soldiers when the other man shouted his question once more.

They heard him this time. One of them answered, "For you it does not matter."

"What do you mean, it doesn't matter?" the captain said indignantly.

"Sir-" Walsh grabbed his arm. "Sir, he's got a Schmeisser!" One German submachine gun wouldn't have meant much-he carried a Schmeisser himself. But… "They've all got Schmeissers!"

"You are our prisoners, gentlemen," the German said in excellent English. "Drop your weapons and raise your hands. Try nothing foolish. It would be the last mistake you ever made-you may be sure of that."

Some of the men with them started laying their rifles on the snowy ground. Walsh didn't know what made him take off and run. Stupidity, odds were. But there were a few soldiers between him and the Boches, and the sheepskin coat was a dirty white that might camouflage him in the swirling snow. Maybe they wouldn't even notice he was missing.

The captain ran with him. Misery loving company? Whatever it was, it queered the deal. The Fritzes shouted. Shouting was bad enough. Then they started shooting, and that was a lot worse. But sure as hell, they couldn't exactly see what they were shooting at. Some of the flying bullets came pretty close to Walsh, but he'd had plenty of nearer misses. And Schmeissers, wonderful as they were in close-in combat, weren't the least bit accurate out past a couple of hundred yards.

They could run after him. He risked a look back over his shoulder. They were running after him, as a matter of fact. It wasn't as if he didn't leave a big, juicy trail in the snow. But if he could get to the pine woods a bit more than a quarter of a mile away before he got shot or tackled, they'd have a lot more trouble catching up to him.

That captain-Walsh wasn't even sure of his name-was running on a different line. If the Germans wanted to grab both of them, they'd have to split up. They might not like that. Maybe the Allied soldiers were leading them into an ambush.

Maybe there weren't any more Allied soldiers for miles and miles. That was what Walsh feared most. In that case, he was running for nothing. He might end up freezing to death for nothing, too. Was England worth it? His feet must have thought so, or they never would have taken off.

As he panted toward the pines, he damned all his years and damned all his cigarettes-except he wanted another Gitane. Well, that would have to wait. Couldn't those young, fit Nazi privates outrun an old reprobate like him? Evidently not, because he got into the woods ahead of them.

It was like being in among all the Christmas trees in the world-little ones, big ones, enormous ones. Even the smell was right. He yanked his Schmeisser off his shoulder and put a couple of Mills bombs in the sheepskin coat's right-hand pocket. Now he could fight if he had to. He wasn't just a target the Germans hadn't been able to knock down.

Which way was north? He hadn't been sure before, and now he'd got all turned around. It would be a hell of a note if he blundered straight back to the Fritzes, wouldn't it? They didn't seem eager to come into the woods after him. Nor could he blame them. A man might get hurt trying something like that. Capturing troops who didn't even realize you were on the other side was a hell of a lot easier.

"Fuck 'em all," he muttered, and his breath smoked around him even though he hadn't pulled that next Gitane out of its packet. He thought north was that way. If he turned out to be wrong, well, he'd given it his best shot. The Germans might be taking Norway, but they hadn't taken him. Yet. CHAIM WEINBERG HAD A NEW SACRED TEXT from which to preach. "Thieves fall out," he told the Nationalist prisoners in the park in Madrid. "The Germans are fighting among themselves. Some of them can see that Hitler is only leading them into disaster. And if that is true for Germany, isn't it even more true for Spain?"

He got somber looks from the POWs. German efficiency was a watchword in Spain, especially among the Nationalists. If the gangsters who lined up behind Hitler could go for each other's throats, what about the goons who said they were for Sanjurjo? What would they do if they saw a better deal in going out on their own? It was something for everybody to think about, not just a bunch of hapless prisoners. It seemed that way to Chaim, anyhow.

Because it seemed that way to him, he said so to anyone who would listen. He had discovered his inner missionary while haranguing the POWs. What he hadn't discovered was how to make his inner missionary shut up.

He got into arguments in line for meals. He got into arguments in cantinas, and on street corners. He got into fights, too. He won more often than he lost. Few people who hadn't been to the front wasted less time fighting clean than he did. After he left a couple of loudmouthed Spaniards groaning on cantina floors-and after he discouraged their friends with a foot-long bayonet held in an underhand grip that warned he knew just what to do with it (which he did)-the arguments stayed verbal. He got a name for himself: eso narigon loco-that crazy kike. He wore it with pride.

Of course, by running his mouth he also set himself up for Party discipline. He'd faced Party discipline in the States. They told you to quit doing whatever you were doing that they didn't like. Either you did or you dropped out of the Party.

Party discipline in Spain was a different business. They told you to quit doing whatever you were doing that they didn't like. Either you did or they threw your sorry ass into a Spanish jail or a punishment company or they said to hell with it and shot you.

Chaim wasn't altogether surprised when a scared-looking runner summoned him to appear before a Party organizer and explain himself. He wasn't altogether thrilled, either, which was putting it mildly. But what choice did he have? He could try going over to the Nationalists, assuming they or the Republicans didn't shoot him while he was trying to desert. But that would have gagged a vulture. He certainly couldn't stomach it himself.

And so he reported to the organizer. She had her office in a beat-up building (the most common kind in embattled Madrid) that had housed government bureaucrats before the Spanish civil war got going. That she was a she he'd inferred from the nom de guerre the runner gave him: La Martellita, the Little Hammer (with feminine article and ending). That was a good name-Molotov meant son of a hammer, too.

Sure as the devil, she wasn't very big. He'd expected that. He hadn't expected her to be drop-dead gorgeous, but she was: blue-black hair, flashing dark eyes, cheekbones, a Spanish blade of a nose, and the most kissable mouth he'd ever seen. That she looked at him as if he were a donkey turd in the gutter somehow only made her more beautiful. He had no idea how come, but it did.

"Well, Comrade, why are you throwing around such bad ideology?" she snapped, her voice cold as the North Pole.

"I did it so I could meet you," Chaim answered. Not for the first time in his life, his mouth ran several lengths ahead of his brain. "People said you were very pretty, and they were right."

"If you think you can flatter me, you had better think again," La Martellita said, in tones not a tenth of a degree warmer than they were before. "You will only end up digging a deeper hole for yourself-maybe one deep enough to bury you in." She sounded as if she looked forward to shoveling dirt over him. Odds were she did.

"I have a question for you," Chaim said.

"Yes?" she asked ominously.

"What's your real name?"

"None of your business."

"That's a funny name," he said. Her nostrils flared, and not with pleasure. He sighed. "Okay. Um, bueno. I have another question for you."

"If you keep wasting my time, you'll regret it."

"I believe you," he said… regretfully. "Why is it such a sin to say the Fascists have contradictions of their own, and that we ought to do everything we can to take advantage of them?"

"Because you are only a soldier," she answered. "Higher-level policy is none of your business-none, do you hear me? For all you know, for all I know, for all anyone knows, we are trying to exploit those contradictions. But soldiers have no business proposing policy."

"I'm not just a soldier," he said. "I'm a propagandist, too, trying to bring Nationalist soldiers over to the Republic. If I can't talk politics with them, I can't do my job."

"Did you get your views approved before you presented them?" La Martellita asked.

"Uh-no," Chaim admitted. He was a Communist, a loyal Communist. But he was also an American. He was used to doing things on his own hook and worrying about consequences later. Well, here it was, later, and here were the consequences. If this stunner in shapeless denim coveralls-a crime, that!-wanted him shot, shot he damn well would be.

She looked through him. "And why not?"

"It didn't seem necessary," he answered feebly.

"That was very stupid," La Martellita said.

"I thought every man was free to be anything he wanted, even stupid, under the Republic." Chaim threw out the line like a chess player offering a poisoned pawn.

And she took it: "Every man may be stupid under the Republic, Comrade, but you abuse the privilege."

"Didn't Trotsky say something like that?" Chaim knew perfectly well Trotsky had. His voice was pure innocence all the same. If you accused somebody of quoting the Red Antichrist, you needed to sound innocent.

La Martellita's eyes flashed again, terribly. She looked as if she hated him. No doubt she did. But now he had a hold on her. Even if they were dragging him off to the nearest wall, he had a chance of getting her stood up against it right after him. She took out a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and smoked in quick, furious puffs. She didn't offer it to him.

She stubbed hers out while it was only half done-a rare thing in Spain these days. When she spoke again, she came straight to the point: "What do you want from me?" She knew what she'd done. Oh, yes.

"A little understanding would be nice," Chaim said.

"What do you mean, 'understanding'? If you think I'll be your mattress or suck your stupid cock, I'd sooner cut my throat." She sure as hell did come straight to the point.

"No, no, no," Chaim said, thinking Yes, yes, yes! He went on, "I was talking about politics. I didn't mean any harm when I said what I said, any more than you did just now. I don't think I should get in trouble for it."

"Oh. Politics." The way La Martellita said the word, it sounded more obscene than cocksucking. She drummed her fingers on the rickety little table she used for a desk. "Can you try not to talk about your own so loudly when you're not reeducating the Nationalists?"

It was like getting sent out of the confessional with a penance of three Our Fathers and five Hail Marys. "I'll try," Chaim said. He didn't even have to promise to do it.

"All right. Get the fuck out of here." La Martellita wanted to pretend she'd never had anything to do with him.

"Tell me your name first."

He would sooner have faced Nationalist artillery than her glare. "Magdalena," she spat. "Now get the fuck out of here."

"See you again, I hope," Chaim said.

"That makes one of us," she said, and for once he quit while he was ahead and got out. PETE MCGILL STOOD SENTRY OUTSIDE the American consulate in Shanghai. Because he wore two stripes on his left sleeve, he commanded the two-man detachment out there. He could have done without the honor. Shanghai was a good bit south of Peking. You couldn't have proved it by him, not this freezing early December morning.

"Fuck, it's cold," he muttered.

"Bet your ass," Max Weinstein agreed. They both spoke with barely moving lips. No one more than a few feet away would have had any idea they were talking. They were there to look impressive, and they did that. Like convicts, they managed to go back and forth without letting the outside world notice.

There wasn't much outside world to notice. Shanghai wasn't used to this kind of godawful weather. Hardly anybody was on the streets. The people who had to go out bundled up in all the clothes they owned. A lot of them seemed to be wearing two or three people's worth, and to be freezing even so. Inside his thick wool coat and tunic and trousers, Pete felt himself slowly turning into a block of ice.

"Liable to be fires in the Chinese part of town," he said. That was something over ninety percent of Shanghai, but he didn't think of it that way. "They'll throw anything that burns onto the brazier."

"Sure they will. And they live in those crappy little houses that go up like billy-be-damned, too," Max answered. "They're the exploited ones."

Sighing out fog, Pete said, "Don't get all Red on me, man. I was just saying it was something we need to be on the lookout for."

"Yeah, yeah. I was saying why we needed to be on the lookout for it. Don't you think why counts?" Weinstein said.

"What I think is, a Commie Marine's as crazy as a fish with fur or a general with sense," Pete said. "You take orders from guys like me, not from Stalin."

"Yeah, yeah," Max said again. "Don't remind me."

"Somebody better." Talking out of the side of his mouth, Pete felt like a movie gangster. But if a sergeant or an officer came out to check on the sentries, he wouldn't be seen moving his lips. "Why'd you join the Corps if you're a fuckin' Red?"

"On account of I like banging heads, an' they'd jug me if I did it back in the States," Max answered. "I thought about going to Spain instead. Sometimes it still looks like I shoulda done that. Wonder how many Fascists I woulda shot by now."

"They shoot back," Pete said dryly. "Besides, you're liable to get your chance against the Japs."

"Ain't like they don't deserve it, too. But I'd rather shoot Nazis any day," Max said.

"Gee, how come?" Pete asked.

Weinstein gave him a sidelong dirty look. "Two guesses, asshole, and the first one don't count."

"That's Corporal Asshole to you." Pete had given Max grief first. If the other Marine came back with something snappy, he couldn't very well resent it. Oh, he could, but then he'd really be an asshole.

"Funny guy. Funny like a truss," Max said.

Before McGill could answer, something blew up a couple of blocks away. Pete was on the ground before he knew how he'd got there: not knocked over by the blast but automatically hitting the deck. He'd brought his Springfield to his shoulder and had a round in the chamber and his finger on the trigger, ready for… well, for anything. Marine training and drill were wondrous things.

Weinstein sprawled a few feet away, as ready as Pete was. "The fuck?" he said.

"Yeah, I-" Pete got interrupted again. Another blast went off, and then another and another. "Son of a bitch!" he said. "I think they're trying to blow Shanghai up."

"Who's 'they'?" Max asked through several more booms, some almost as close as the first, others much farther off.

It was a good question. As far as Pete could see, it had only one possible answer: "Gotta be the Chinks. If this doesn't drive the Japs squirrely, what's going to?" More bombs went off as he spoke. No airplanes buzzed overhead; guerrillas inside the city must have planted the explosives. They'd get better results from bombs aimed right at the occupiers than they would have if the ordnance fell thousands of feet from a speeding plane.

They got the results they wanted, all right. Pete and Max had hardly climbed to their feet before Shanghai started bubbling like a pot with the lid on too tight. Chinese and Westerners came running out to see what the hell was going on. The American consul, a pink, double-chinned Rotarian named Bradley Worthington III, a worthy whom Pete had seen only two or three times before, came out for a look around. "Wow! That was something, wasn't it?" he said in Midwestern accents.

"Yes, sir," Pete said. He noticed Max's trousers were out at the knee from his dive to the pavement. If the consul said anything about it, Pete would have to gig the other sentry. Then Max would find ways to make him sorry, even if the Red Jew was only a private.

But Worthington wasn't going to get excited about pants with holes. He had bigger things to worry about. "The Japanese will turn this place inside out and upside down to catch the terrorists who just did that," he predicted.

"Yes, sir," McGill repeated, in a different tone of voice. He'd always assumed anyone plump, prosperous, and Midwestern was unlikely to have two brain cells to rub together. But Bradley Worthington III had just come up with the same conclusion he had himself. If that didn't make the consul a clever fellow, what would?

Shooting broke out a couple of minutes later. Max cocked his head to one side, listening. He was supposed to hold his stiff brace, but the times were irregular. "Arisakas-most of 'em, anyway," he said.

"Yeah. They are," Pete agreed.

"Not wasting any time, are they?" the consul said.

"No, sir," Pete answered. Suddenly, painfully, he hoped Vera was okay. The Chinese shouldn't have had much reason to target the joint where she danced and slept, but he knew he was going to worry any which way till he heard from her. How long till his relief came? He figured he'd go check on her as soon as he could.

Then a fire engine tore past, red lights blinking and bells clanging. More noise said ambulances were hauling casualties to hospitals. Please, God, went through Pete's mind. Don't let anything bad happen to her. Please.

A platoon of Japanese soldiers went by at a quick march. The lieutenant in charge of them shot the American consulate a look full of vitriol. Because it hadn't been bombed? That was how it seemed to Pete. One of the ordinary Japs started to aim his rifle at Worthington. A noncom yelled at him, and he didn't follow through. The platoon rounded the corner and disappeared.

Pete decided going to check on Vera might not be such a hot idea after all. If the Japs could think about firing at the consul on the steps of his own building, what would they do to a Marine they caught running around by his lonesome? Nothing good-Pete was sure of that.

Rifle fire crackled, almost close enough to make him dive for cover. Bradley Worthington III started to do the same thing, and checked himself at about the same time. That was interesting. Had the consul gone Over There in 1918? Pete wouldn't have been surprised.

"This could get very bad," Worthington said. As if to underscore the words, a machine gun went off in the distance: a long, somber stutter of death. McGill wondered whom the Japs were shooting at. He wondered if they knew-or if they cared.

"Bad? This could be another Nanking," Max said.

"Christ! I hope not!" Pete said, and the U.S. consul nodded. When the Japs took Nanking, they went blue-goose loony. Most of the stories that came back from there were too outrageous to seem possible. Which proved exactly nothing, because some of the worst stories had photos to back them up. You wouldn't think people could do such things to other people, let alone have fun while they were doing it, but that was what the photos seemed to show.

Another machine gun started up, this one closer. The gunner was an old pro, squeezing out one murderous burp after another. Pete could hear screams, too. Again, who were the targets? Some of the Chinese who'd planted bombs, or poor luckless devils who happened to have wound up in front of the gun?

A pause. Another short burst, and then one more. Pete didn't know who the gunner's targets were, but he knew too well what he guessed. THEY GAVE JOAQUIN DELGADILLO his very own set of denim coveralls. His old uniform was so torn and tattered, it was almost falling off of him. Several Nationalist prisoners were already wearing the unofficial uniform of the Republic. He was glad of that; he wouldn't have wanted to be the first one.

He got razzed even so. "Gone over to the other side, have you?" said a middle-aged POW still in the Nationalists' yellowish khaki.

"I'm the same as I was yesterday," Joaquin answered. "Only the clothes are different."

"The same as you were yesterday?" the older man returned. "Well, how were you then, by God?"

"Why, the same as I am today, claro," Delgadillo said. The other POW laughed and let him alone.

He was glad of that. He didn't know himself how he'd been yesterday, not in the way the older man meant. Everything spun round and round inside his head, making him wonder which way was up-or if any way was. He had all the things he'd believed since he was a kid. And he had Chaim Weinberg; the Jew threw grenades at those old certainties every time he opened his mouth.

If what Weinberg said was true, the Republic had been right all along. If what he said was true, the future lay in its hands. Things would be richer, freer, better than anything Marshal Sanjurjo could deliver.

If. But it was a big if. Joaquin had been fighting the Republic for a long time before he got captured. He'd been in the Republican trenches. He'd taken prisoners before he became one. The bastards on the other side-on this side-were at least as skinny, at least as sorry, as the fellows he'd fought alongside. They could claim to be the wave of the future, but their present looked pretty sorry.

Of course, so did what he'd been fighting for. What did landlords do? Why, they took. Factory owners? The same thing, no doubt about it. Priests? Them, too. Them more than any of the others, because what did they give back? Nothing you could eat, nothing you could wear, nothing you could use.

They give you heaven, or a chance for it. Everything that got pounded into him while he was growing up was still there. It hadn't gone away, even if the Jew-the Jew!-had done his best to exorcise it. But now it had company inside his head. New ideas and old warred in there like Republicans and Nationalists.

Yes, just like that, he thought unhappily.

Plainly, the Republic wasn't the tool of Satan he'd thought it was before the trench raid that went south. As plainly, more things were wrong with the Nationalist regime than he'd imagined. But did that make the Republic the new earthly paradise? If it did, how come he was still lousy?

"Free love!" called another Nationalist still in decrepit khaki, pointing to his overalls.

"Oh, piss off," Joaquin said, and his fellow prisoner chuckled. It was an article of faith among the Nationalists that all the women who favored the Republic would lie down for you if you snapped your fingers. Joaquin didn't know of anybody who'd had the chance to find out whether that was true, but he did know everybody on his old side believed it.

Which meant… what? Weinberg went on and on about how stupid it was to take anything on faith. Unless you had a reason to think this, that, or the other thing, why do it? He would ask that over and over, and nobody had a good answer for him.

Joaquin had had a question that gave the Jew pause, though: "Why do you think Stalin is so wonderful? Have you met him? Have you gone to Russia?"

"No," Weinberg said slowly. "But I have seen the bad things Hitler and Mussolini are doing. There's a saying in English. It goes, The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Hitler and Mussolini are the enemies of the workers and peasants. Stalin has to be their friend, then."

"We think Stalin is Spain's enemy," Joaquin said. "Where is Spain's gold? In Moscow, that's where. Stalin stole it."

"No, he didn't." Weinberg shook his head. "The Republic bought weapons from Russia. Nobody else would sell to us, but Stalin did."

Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn't. Joaquin realized he shouldn't argue. He believed some of what the guy who'd captured him came out with. If he tried to convince Weinberg and the other Reds on the far side of the barbed wire that he believed all of it, maybe they'd turn him loose. Once he was on the far side of the wire himself…

Well, what then? Would they hand him a rifle and send him to a trench somewhere to fight against the men for whom he'd formerly fought? If they did that, he might be better off staying right where he was. Some people did switch sides. About half of them fought harder for the side they chose themselves than for the one where they'd started. The rest were spies or worthless for some other reason. Sorting out who was who got… interesting.

Then again, it was also possible that a distant trench was a better place than a POW camp in the middle of Madrid. Nationalist bombers still visited the capital. Joaquin had cheered them on when they flew over the lines. He'd wanted the Republicans to get what was coming to them. Now there was a chance that some of what was coming to them would land on him instead.

Before, they'd unloaded on Madrid in broad daylight. They mostly came at night these days. The more modern fighters the Republic had got from France and England made day bombing too costly to try very often any more. Even coming by day, the bombers weren't very accurate; the craters pocking the park proved as much. Flying by night did nothing to improve their aim.

Pounding guns and wailing sirens woke Joaquin from a fitful sleep. It was cold. It had been bitterly cold lately-this was going to be a winter to remember, and in no fond way. The drone of engines overhead penetrated the rest of the din.

"Fuck 'em all," somebody in the big tent said, and promptly started snoring again.

Joaquin envied him without being able to imitate him. Too much racket, and too much in the way of nerves, too. Swearing under his breath, Joaquin went outside to watch the show.

The sky was black as a sergeant's heart. The stars seemed even farther off than usual-grudging little flecks of light. The blue ones might have been cut from ice; the red ones didn't feel warm, either.

Searchlights darted and probed. Antiaircraft tracers and bursts were beautiful, but they didn't make Joaquin think of celebrations, the way they usually did. He knew too well that this was war, and all the bright lights intended nothing but death.

A searchlight speared a three-engined bomber-an Italian plane-in its glare. Antiaircraft fire from half a dozen guns converged on the machine the gunners could see. The bomber twisted and jinked, writhing like a stepped-on bug. The searchlight hung on to it. Others also found the bomber. Fire licked along its right wing. It tumbled toward the ground.

Bombs whistled down. Not all the sirens that screamed belonged to the warning system. Some came from ambulances and fire engines. Joaquin wondered if he should jump into a trench. The POWs had dug them to try to stay alive through air raids. But the show in the sky held a horrid fascination. He didn't want to miss any of it.

He could have been smarter. He could have done a better job of gauging the screams of falling bombs. One went off close enough to knock him ass over teakettle. Fragments shouted and screamed past him. Once bitten, twice shy-he stayed flat as a run-over toad.

He did, anyhow, till he saw prisoners joyously running out through a big hole blasted in the wire. Then he scrambled to his feet and ran with them. No guards shouted warnings or opened fire. Had they been blown to hell? Or were they just cowering in their own foxholes, the way any men with a gram of sense would? Joaquin didn't care. As soon as he got out into Madrid in these overalls, he'd look like anybody else. And, thanks to Chaim Weinberg, he knew how to sound like a Republican, too. They'd never catch him once he got loose. Then he could…

What? he wondered. What could he do? Something. Anything! As long as he was doing it for himself, who cared? If somebody needed him to haul sacks of shit, he'd do that. He'd like it, too. He'd never been afraid of work. Nobody who grew up on a Spanish farm could possibly be afraid of work.

Another bomb whistled down. Joaquin flattened out again. This one was going to be even closer. Maybe he should have waited before he