The Party’s counterpropaganda wouldn’t hurt there, either.
Nieh smiled. With any luck at all, the little scaly devils had wounded themselves in a way the Party couldn’t have managed. And, he vowed, he’d give luck a hand.
VII
“All right, God damn it, where the hell is he?” That booming bad-tone, that look-out-world-here-I-am arrogance, could only have belonged to one man of Heinrich Jager’s acquaintance. He had not expected to hear from that one man while campaigning against the Lizards in western Poland.
He got to his feet, careful not to overturn the little aluminum stove on which his supper simmered. “Skorzeny!” he called. “What the devil are you doing here?”
“The devil’s work, my lad; the devil’s work,” SSStandartenfuhrer Otto Skorzeny answered, folding Jager into a rib-crunching bearhug. Skorzeny towered over Jager by fifteen centimeters, but dominated most men not because of his size but by sheer physical presence. When you fell under his spell, you wanted to charge out to do whatever he told you to, no matter how impossible the rational part of your brain knew it was.
Jager had been on several missions with Skorzeny: in Russia, in Croatia, in France. He marveled that he remained in one piece after them. He marveled even more that Skorzeny did. He also set himself to resist whatever blandishments Skorzeny hurled his way. If you stood up to the SS man, you got respect. If you didn’t, you got run over.
Skorzeny thumped his belly. The scar that furrowed his left cheek pulled up the corner of his mouth as he asked, “Got any food around these parts, or do you aim to starve me to death?”
“You’re not wasting away,” Jager said, looking him over with a critical eye. “We have some stew-pork and turnips-and some ersatz coffee. Will they suit your majesty?”
“No truffled pheasant, eh? Well, stew will do. But fuck ersatz coffee and the dying horse that pissed it out.” Skorzeny pulled a canteen off his belt, undid the stopper, and passed the canteen to Jager. “Have a snort.”
Jager drank warily. With Skorzeny’s sense of humor, you had to be wary. “Jesus,” he whispered. “Where did you come by this?”
“Not a bad cognac, eh?” Skorzeny answered smugly. “Courvoisier VSOP five-star, smoother than the inside of a virgin’s twat.”
Jager took another sip, this one with appropriate reverence, then handed the felt-covered aluminum flask back to Skorzeny. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to know where you found it. If you tell me, I’ll desert and go there myself. Wherever it is, it’s a nicer place than this.”
“Which isn’t saying one hell of a lot, when you get down to it,” Skorzeny said. “Now, where’s that stew?” When he’d filled the metal bowl from his own mess kit, he gulped the stuff down, then sent a shot of cognac after it. “Shame to chase anything so vile, but the hooch doesn’t do me any good if I don’t drink it, eh?” He gave Jager a shot in the ribs with his elbow.
“Whatever you say,” Jager answered. If you let the SS man sweep you away, you were in trouble-he kept reminding himself of that. Of course, since Skorzeny was here, he was going to find himself in trouble anyway; Skorzeny brought it with him, along with heavenly cognac. What sort of trouble, now, that varied from mission to mission. Jager got up and stretched as lazily as he could, then said, “Let’s go for a little walk, shall we?”
“Oh, you just want to get me alone,” Skorzeny said in a shrill, arch falsetto. The panzer crewmen still eating their suppers guffawed in delight. Gunther Grillparzer swallowed wrong and started to choke; somebody had to pound him on the back before he could breathe straight again.
“If I were that desperate, you big ugly lunk, I think I’d shoot myself first,” Jager retorted. The troopers laughed again. So did Skorzeny. He dished it out, but he could take it, too.
He and Jager strode away from the encampment: not far enough to get lost, but out of earshot of the soldiers. Their boots squelched in mud. The spring thaw had done as much as the Lizards to slow the German advance. Off in a pond not far away, one of the first frogs of the new year let out a loud, mournful croak.
“He’ll be sorry,” Skorzeny said. “An owl will get him, or a heron.” He sounded as if he thought the frog had it coming.
Jager didn’t care about frogs one way or the other. “The devil’s work, you said. What sort of deviltry have you got in mind, and where do I fit into it?”
“Don’t even know if you do or not,” Skorzeny answered. “Have to see how things go. But as long as I was in the neighborhood, I thought I’d drop by and say hello.” He bowed from the waist. “Hello.”
“You’re impossible,” Jager said with a snort. By the way Skorzeny beamed, he took that for a compliment. Holding onto his patience with both hands, Jager went on, “Let’s try it again. Why are you in the neighborhood?”
“I’m going to deliver a present, as soon as I figure out the best way to do it,” the SS man said.
“Knowing the kind of presents you deliver, I’m sure the Lizards will be delighted to have this one,” Jager told him. “Anything I can do to tie a bow on the package, you know you have only to ask.” There. He’d gone and said it. One way or another, odds were it would get him killed.
He waited for the SSStandartenfuhrer to go into extravagant, probably obscene detail about the latest plan for making the Lizards’ lives miserable. Skorzeny took a childish delight in his murderous schemes (Jager got a sudden mental image of him as a child of six inLederhosen, opening a package of tin soldiers; somehow the child Skorzeny in his mind had a scarred face, too). Now, though, he sent Jager a
hooded look before answering, “It’s not for the Lizards.”
“No?” Jager raised an eyebrow. “Well. If it’s for me, what are you doing giving me fair warning?” He suddenly sobered; officers who displeased the High Command had been known to disappear from the face of the earth as if they had never been. What had he done to displease anyone save the foe? “If you’re carrying a pistol with one bullet in it, you’d better tell me why.”
“Isthat what you’re thinking?Gott im Himmel, no!” Skorzeny held up his right hand as if taking an oath. “Nothing like that, I swear. Not you, not anybody you command or who commands you-no Germans at all, as a matter of fact.”
“Well, all right, then,” Jager said in considerable relief. “So what are you getting all coy with me for? The enemies of theReich are the enemies of theReich. We’ll smash them and go on.”
Skorzeny’s face grew unreadable again. “You say that now, but it’s not the song you’ve always sung. Jews are enemies of theReich, nicht wahr?”
“If they weren’t beforehand, we’ve certainly done enough to make them so,” Jager said. “Even so, we’ve had good cooperation from the ones in Lodz, keeping the Lizards from using the city as a staging point against us. When you get down to it, they’re human beings,ja?”
“We’ve had cooperation from them?” Skorzeny said, not answering Jager’s question. “I’ll tell you who’s had cooperation from them: the Lizards, that’s who. If the Jews hadn’t stabbed us in the back, we’d hold a lot more of Poland than we do.”
Jager made a tired gesture. “Why do we need to get into all of that? You know what we were doing to the Jews in Poland and Russia. Is it any wonder they don’t love us for the good Christians we are?”
“No, it’s probably no wonder,” Skorzeny said without any rancor Jager could hear. “But if they want to play that game with us, they’re going to have to pay the price. Now-do you want me to go on with what I have to say, or would you sooner not listen so you don’t have to know a thing?”