Shrewdly, Lemp said, “But now that the fighting’s over and we won, going along with us will look like a good idea to some people.”
“That has happened-a little,” Bohme admitted. “Most of the squareheads would still sooner spit on us, though.”
“As long as we can get on with the war, what difference does it make?” Lemp said.
“With England back in it, who knows?” Captain Bohme seemed determined to look at the cloud, not the silver lining. “Now the Norwegians won’t have to be Reds to have somebody who’ll help give us trouble.”
“I’m sure you’ll manage, sir,” Lemp said, by which he meant I’m damn glad it’s your worry and none of mine. The wry quirk of one of Bohme’s bushy gray eyebrows meant he understood that all too well.
Narvik, north of the Arctic Circle, was a smaller, even more battered base than Namsos. Because it was so inaccessible except by sea, it had stayed in Allied hands longer than the country farther south. Without the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, the place would have been uninhabitable. And without the last gasps of the current from the far southwest, Murmansk and Arkhangelsk would have stayed frozen up the year around, and Lemp’s mission would have had no point.
But up toward the Barents Sea the U-30 went. It wasn’t summer yet, but daylight stretched and stretched in these latitudes. Lemp had heard about the white nights of St. Petersburg-Leningrad, these days. He was ten degrees of latitude north of St. Petersburg now. The sun set in the far, far northwest and soon rose again in the far, far northeast. While it ducked below the horizon, twilight never got dark enough to show any but the brightest stars.
That meant the U-30’s crew had to stay alert around the clock. A rating might spot a troopship at any hour of the day or suppositious night. On the other hand, an English plane, or a Russian one, might come across the U-boat at any time.
Or nothing might happen. No matter how long it stayed light, the ocean was vast. Troopships full of Tommies might slip past unseen. For all Lemp knew, there were no troopships full of Tommies. The Kriegsmarine brass had plenty of bright ideas that didn’t pan out.
A whale spouted a couple of hundred meters to port. The great beast wasn’t that much smaller than the U-boat. Lemp watched it with awe from the conning tower. It paid the U-30 no heed. That suited Lemp fine. A collision with a whale would be like a truck hitting an elephant on the Autobahn — except the truck wouldn’t sink afterwards.
He cruised his assigned area, awaiting new orders from Berlin-or even from Namsos. In due course, new orders came. Once decoded, they read, Continue current assignment. Lemp was anything but thrilled-as if his superiors cared. Continue he did.
Luc Harcourt had just got a fire going on the floor of a half-wrecked peasant hut when a private stuck his head through a hole in the wall and said, “Excuse me, Sergeant, but could I please talk to you for a little while?”
Sighing, Luc asked, “What d’you want, Charles?” Whatever it was, it would be trouble. Whenever a private asked that question in that tone of voice, it had to be trouble. Maybe Charles’ father was desperately ill, and he wanted compassionate leave. Right now, of course. Maybe his girlfriend was two-timing him, and he needed a shoulder to cry on or permission to go back to France and whale the stuffing out of the loose, stupid bitch. Or maybe…
“What are we doing here, Sergeant?” Charles couldn’t have been more than nineteen. His voice still cracked sometimes. He was trying to grow a mustache, but only looked as if he had dirt on his upper lip.
After hacking the top off a ration tin with his bayonet, Luc heated monkey meat over the flames. “What do you mean, what are we doing here? Do I look like a priest, to answer a question like that?”
He sounded even more like Sergeant-now Lieutenant-Demange than he realized. Almost everything he knew about soldiering, and about dealing with inferiors in the army, he’d learned from the veteran. Demange’s sarcasm had rubbed off on him, too.
Charles flushed. “I don’t mean it like that, Sergeant. I mean, what are we doing here in Russia? The Englishmen packed it in. Why can’t we?”
As far as Luc was concerned, that was a damn good question. He gave the only reply he could: “When Daladier wants us to quit, we will. Till then, you’d better fight. You think the Ivans won’t cut your dick off, you’d better think again.”
“It isn’t fair,” Charles whined.
“Since when is life fair?” Yes, Luc sounded like Demange.
“You can joke all you want,” Charles said, which, since Luc was a sergeant, was true enough. “But we’re liable to get killed for no reason at all, and that isn’t funny.” His nostrils twitched as if he were an angry rabbit.
As a matter of fact, he was wrong. Luc had seen both enemies and friends die in ways idiotically ridiculous enough to make him laugh like a jackass. Anyone who’d been up at the front for a while could say the same thing. Most of the laughter sprang from relief that you were still alive to giggle.
But that wasn’t the point. The savory aroma-if you got hungry enough-of sizzling bully beef distracted Luc, but he answered, “I don’t know what you want me to do about it. If you think I’m going to cross over to the Russians’ lines, you’re even crazier than I give you credit for.”
“They put out all those safe-conducts.” Charles displayed one. Sure as hell, it promised that the bearer would be treated well if he deserted.
“It’s written in good French-better than the ones the Boches used to throw around,” Luc said. “But so what?”
“See? You call them Boches, too! And now they’re on our side-I mean, we’re on theirs-even though we still hate them and even though we almost started shooting at them on account of what they did to those Jews.” Charles’ nostrils quivered some more. “Wouldn’t you rather fight against them than for them? Five gets you ten they’re still doing that horrible shit to Jews, only in places where we can’t catch ’em at it.”
He was no Jew himself; Luc was sure of that. And Luc hadn’t thought he was a Red, either. As a matter of fact, Luc still didn’t think so. But the question was a lot harder to deal with when Charles put it that way. Slowly, Luc said, “The Russians aren’t nice people, either. Don’t forget that for a minute. So many Russians and Ukrainians and whatnot wouldn’t fall all over themselves to help the fucking Nazis if they liked Stalin. Right?”
Most reluctantly, Charles nodded. “I guess so.”
“Other thing to remember is, the Russians never signed the Geneva Convention. Even the Germans did that,” Luc went on. “So who gives a rat’s ass what that safe-conduct says? Once the Reds have you, they can do whatever they damn well please. Nobody’s gonna stop ’em. The Red Cross never gets a look inside their POW camps-if they bother keeping POWs alive long enough to put ’em in camps. You understand what I’m saying?”
“You’re saying you like Hitler better than Stalin.” Charles might have been accusing him of picking his nose and eating the boogers.
“No! No, God damn it to hell! I’m saying I can’t stand either one of those shitheads, and you can’t trust either one of them.” Luc paused to take the tin off the fire. The monkey meat was as ready as it ever would be. His stomach growled gratefully when he stuffed a mouthful into his chowlock. After a gulp an anaconda might have used to engulf a half-grown tapir, he resumed: “It’s like I told you before. I don’t set our foreign policy, and neither do you. We go where they tell us and we do what they tell us to do there. And if we don’t, our own side’ll make it rougher on us than the Nazis and Reds put together.”
Artillery rumbled, not far enough away. Charles gestured in that direction, asking, “How?”
“They can jail you. They can shoot you, too. And they can make life hell on earth for your kinfolk. If your brother keeps getting fired; if your son, when you have a son, ends up in a crappy school and blames you for it… They remember. It’s how they stay on top-remembering. And paying back.”