Sooner or later, Parliament would start working again. The provisional government kept promising elections soon, and also kept pushing back the day. People were starting to grumble. Walsh worried lest creeping Chamberlainism reassert itself when the votes were finally cast. If that happened, then what? Another coup d’etat? He wouldn’t have been a bit surprised.
Cartland asked, “Did you catch Musso’s speech on the shortwave last night?”
“Afraid I didn’t,” Walsh admitted. “Wouldn’t have done me much good if I had, either. When I go to one of those restaurants with the red-and-white checked tablecloths, I can tell the dago with the pencil behind his ear I want a plate of spaghetti and meatballs. My Italian starts and stops right there.”
“Ah,” Cartland said politely. “I should have thought of that. Can’t say I ever studied it myself, not in any formal way. But I speak French and I did endless Latin, so I can muddle along after a fashion.”
I’ll bet you can, Walsh thought, without either rancor or envy. The MP would have picked up his education at some posh public school, and then at Cambridge or Oxford. Walsh often thought he’d got his own, such as it was, at a jumble sale. Considering how easily he might have spent his whole life grubbing coal out of a seam, he hadn’t done too badly for himself.
And… “So what did the bugger with the big chin say, then?”
“Called us traitors to the cause of Europe, if you can imagine the cheek.” As any aristocrat might have, Cartland seemed more affronted than anything else. “He said that, since Hitler was busy giving Stalin what-for and didn’t have time for puppies like us-”
“Puppies?” Walsh broke in. “Musso has the gall to call us puppies?” He wanted to laugh and to haul off and punch somebody, both at once. He would have felt that way if a waiter in one of those checked-tablecloth eateries had called him the same thing, too.
“He did indeed,” the MP replied, sipping from his fresh drink. “He said he’d have to go on and let us have a proper hiding himself, since Adolf was busy.”
“And then you wake up!” Alistair Walsh exclaimed. “The Fritzes, now, they’re proper soldiers, say what you will about the bleeding Fuhrer. But the Italians?” It came out of his mouth as Eye-talians, which only made his pique plainer.
“Quite.” Cartland spoke with the same frozen disgust a society matron might have used in carrying a dead rat from the drawing room by the tail.
In his mind’s eye, Walsh studied a map. The clearer the mental picture got, the more it enraged him. “He’s mad as a balloon, he is,” the Welshman said, with the air of a judge sentencing a bungling burglar. “Barking mad! How does he propose hiding us when we hardly even touch?”
“He could cause trouble for Egypt from Libya, I suppose, and for Malta from Sicily. He might even use Abyssinia and Italian Somaliland to go after British Somaliland-assuming he’s balmy enough to want British Somaliland, I should say.” Ronald Cartland, plainly, had been eyeing mental maps longer than Walsh and spreading them wider.
Walsh had never been stationed in British Somaliland. He knew several regulars who had, though. From everything he’d heard, Cartland was spot-on. Chances were not even the Somalis wanted to drive their sheep and camels through land so miserable-not that Italian Somaliland was any improvement.
He wasted no more time worrying about the Horn of Africa. Even if Mussolini’s legions there carried all before them, all they would have was the goddamn Horn of Africa. Egypt, on the other hand… “Wouldn’t be so good if the bloody Italians”-he pronounced it the same way he had before-“paraded through Alexandria or took the canal away.”
“No. It wouldn’t.” If Cartland’s laconic agreement wasn’t British understatement at its best, Walsh didn’t know what would be.
The veteran noncommissioned officer did some more considering. Ronald Cartland was better suited to the General Staff than he would be himself if he lived to be a hundred, which didn’t mean he couldn’t cope at need. His calculations were quick and, he thought, accurate. “Musso’d need more than luck to bring it off. He’d need a miracle, or as near as makes no difference.”
“I’ve heard that before from others,” Cartland said. “I like it better from you. I respect your judgment.”
“Thank you very much, sir.” Walsh suspected pleasure was making his ears turn pink. He was happier-prouder, anyhow-than he would have been had the pretty young barmaid whispered a suggestion that they go find a room together. He didn’t despise animal pleasure-far from it. But the opinion of a man he admired was a weightier business altogether.
“For what? For telling the truth?” Cartland waved his gratitude away as unnecessary.
“For thinking it is the truth.” Walsh wasn’t about to let the aristo get away with that. He was going to be grateful, dammit, and that was all there was to that.
“Have it your way, Sergeant.” Now the MP spoke in a way Walsh understood completely, like a junior officer addressing a senior noncom. Officers had rank and class on their side. Sergeants had experience and the knowledge that came with it. More often than not, that left the advantage with them. Senior officers knew what their juniors often didn’t: sergeants were more important to the army than subalterns.
“If I had my way, sir, I’d go to Egypt right now. That’s the kind of thing Mussolini would try, and I’d love to be there to help give him what he deserves,” Walsh said.
“Is that truly what you want? If it is, I daresay I can arrange it.”
Walsh felt like whooping and turning handsprings. All he did was give back a small, dignified nod. He didn’t even smile, not where Ronald Cartland could see him do it. But what was the point to having well-connected friends if you didn’t make the most of it once in a while?
“Egypt…” Cartland said in musing tones. “Have you been there before?”
“I spent a year-well, not quite-in Cairo in the Twenties.” Walsh remembered the amazing heat and the crowding and the smells, which made your nose sit up and take notice even after you’d been on a battlefield. “Not much like good old Blighty, but we need to hang on to it even so.”
“That we do. Lord knows how we’d manage without the Suez Canal,” Cartland said. “My sister and I visited once. I’ll never forget the Pyramids. That was in the Twenties, too: well before the Depression. Perhaps we were there at the same time.”
“Yes, sir. Perhaps we were.” Long odds, Walsh thought, but so what? Keeping your officers happy and interested in you was yet another skill sergeants needed to cultivate. And getting back into action would be good, even if he was only going up against the dagos.
Theo Hossbach still had trouble getting used to the radioman’s position in a Panzer III. For two and a half years, he’d stayed hidden away from the war. The radio set in a Panzer II lent itself to that. Now, all of a sudden, he could see out. He not only could, he had to. Along with the radio, he had an MG-34 to take care of.
How many Ivans had he done for by now? He’d lost track. In a way, that embarrassed him. When your occupation was something as serious as killing people, shouldn’t you remember how many you were responsible for? But to do that properly, he should have started counting as soon as the original Panzer II rolled across the frontier separating Germany and Czechoslovakia. He’d been part of a killing team since 1 October 1938, after all. The score from the obsolescent machine’s little cannon and machine gun went partly to his credit-or to his blame, depending on how you looked at things.
The only trouble was, any kind of count along those lines was impossible. Because he hadn’t been able to see out, he didn’t even know where to begin. He couldn’t very well ask Ludwig Rothe or Fritz Bittenfeld, either. They were both dead, as was Heinz Naumann.
Adi Stoss might be able to give him an approximate score for the second Panzer II, and for this newer, larger machine. Theo didn’t plan to ask him about it. If they ever did talk seriously, they had other things to hash out first. Besides, might be able to wasn’t the same as could. Theo didn’t know-he’d never asked-whether Adi was running his own tab.