And why do you suppose that is? Peggy knew goddamn well why it was. Konrad Hoppe seemed not to have the faintest idea. That he didn't-that so many like him didn't-was one measure of modern-day Germany's damnation.
"I really wouldn't," Peggy said. Honest! Cross my heart and hope to die! She would have promised anything and done damn near anything to escape the Reich. If he'd propositioned her, she wouldn't have loosened his teeth for him. She wouldn't have come across, but still…
"I am sorry. I have not the discretion to permit this." Now Hoppe did sound as if he might mean it, anyhow.
"Who does?" Peggy asked. "Ribbentrop?"
"Herr von Ribbentrop may have the authority." Konrad Hoppe stressed the aristocratic von, which the Nazi Foreign Minister, as Peggy understood it, had bought. "He may, I say."
"He's the head of the Foreign Ministry, right?" Peggy said. "If he doesn't, who does, for crying out loud?"
"Above the Foreign Minister-above everyone-is always the Fuhrer." Hoppe pointed out the obvious.
"Oh, my aching back!" Peggy burst out. "How am I supposed to get Hitler to pay attention to my case? There's a war on."
"I am afraid I can offer on that score no suggestions," the Nazi bureaucrat answered. "If you will excuse me…" He bowed once more and walked out without waiting to see whether Peggy would excuse him or not.
She thought about getting on the train for Denmark even if the Foreign Ministry said she couldn't. She not only thought about it, she headed for the station.
She presented her ticket. Then she had to present her passport. The conductor-he wasn't quite a conductor, but a more prominent kind of official, with a uniform a U.S. major general would have envied-checked her name against a list. As soon as he did that, she knew her goose was cooked. Damn Teutonic thoroughness anyway!
His Toploftiness looked up from the sheet of paper. "I am sorry, but for you travel is verboten," he said.
"It's not fair! It's not right!" she squawked.
The railroad official shrugged. "I am sorry. I can about that nothing do. I do not the orders give. I only carry them out."
"Right," Peggy said tightly. "What am I supposed to do now?"
"Go back to your hotel," the man replied. "Wait for German victory. It will soon come. Then, I have no doubt, you will be able where you please to travel. Although, since you are here in the Reich at this world-historical time, why would you anywhere else care to go?"
Peggy could have told him. She came that close-that close-to doing it. In the end, she held her tongue. Yeah, maybe she really and truly was growing up. Or maybe-and more likely-the Gestapo could scare the bejesus out of an immature person, too. VACLAV JEZEK LOVED HIS NEW antitank rifle. The damn thing was long and heavy. It kicked like a mule. The round it fired was as big as his thumb. Despite that, it wouldn't penetrate all the armor on a first-rate German panzer. But against side or rear panels, it had a good chance of punching through. Then it would do something nasty to the men inside the metal monster, or maybe to the engine.
He didn't like the way he'd got his hands on the antitank rifle. The Frenchman who had lugged it around lost the top of his head to a bullet or shell fragment. He wasn't pretty when Vaclav found him. He'd bled all over the weapon, too. Now, though, you could hardly see the stains.
Somebody moved in the bushes a few hundred meters ahead. Jezek swung the rifle in that direction. It shot nice and flat out to a kilometer and more. What you could see, you could hit, and what you could hit…Using the antitank rifle against a mere soldier was like killing a flea by dropping a house on it. Vaclav didn't care. He wanted Germans dead, and he wasn't fussy about how they got that way.
Czechs and Frenchmen and a few Englishmen were all intermingled here. They shouldn't have been, but the latest German drive had thrown the defenders in the Ardennes into confusion. Jezek had seen that in Czechoslovakia, to his sorrow. After a panzer thrust pierced the line you were trying to hold, you had to scramble like a madman to piece together a new one farther back. And the Germans were still pushing forward, and shelling you, and bombing you…
"Anybody have more clips for the antitank rifle?" he called in Czech. He could have said the same thing in German, but it probably would have got him shot. He didn't speak French or English.
But one of the French noncoms assigned as liaison to the Czechs translated for Vaclav. The man's Czech was none too good, but he spoke French fine. And a couple of soldiers coughed up the fat clips Vaclav needed.
"Thanks," he said as he stowed them in a sack on his belt-they were too big for standard ammunition pouches.
"Any time, pal. I bet I've hated the Nazis longer than you have," the sergeant said. He had a slight guttural accent, curly auburn hair, and a formidable plow of a nose.
Another Jew. They're fucking everywhere, Jezek thought. The guy named David was back of the lines with a bullet through his leg right now. He'd get better. Whether the line would wasn't so obvious.
"I wouldn't be surprised," Vaclav said aloud. This fellow wouldn't duck out of the fight the way the damned Slovaks did, anyhow.
German 105s started tearing up the landscape a few hundred meters off to the south. Nobody in Vaclav's bunch even flinched. That wasn't close enough to worry about. The noncom said, "Maybe there'll be some cows down, and we can get ourselves fresh beef."
"Or pork." The words came out of Vaclav's mouth before he thought about them.
He didn't faze the noncom in French uniform. "I've eaten it," the guy said. "Beats the crap out of going hungry."
"Yeah, well, what doesn't?" Jezek replied.
They never got the chance to see if the Germans had done some worthwhile butchery for a change. Stukas screamed down from a treacherously clear sky. "Down!" Several soldiers yelled the same thing at the same time. Vaclav and the Jewish sergeant were two of them. They both fit action to word. Vaclav was already tearing at the muddy ground with his entrenching tool when the first bombs hit nearby.
Blast jumped on him with hobnailed boots. Fragments of bomb casing screeched malevolently through the air. He kept on impersonating a mole. Stukas came in bigger waves than this.
Sure as hell, more of them wailed down on him and his buddies. He'd heard they had sirens mounted on their landing gear to make them sound even scarier than they would have otherwise. As far as he was concerned, that was overdoing it. The damn things were scary enough anyhow.
The sergeant lay on his back, firing up at them with his rifle. That took guts, but it was bound to be a waste of ammo. How could you hit something that was going 500 kilometers an hour?
People were shrieking and wailing in a godawful Babel of languages. Medics ran here and there, slapping on bandages and lugging wounded soldiers away on stretchers. The medics wore Red Cross armbands and smocks. Some of them had painted Red Crosses in white circles on either side of their helmets. Every so often, they got shot anyway. German medics wore the same kind of outfits. Vaclav had never aimed at one of them on purpose. Still, he was sure they stopped bullets, too.
A French officer shouted something. It might as well have been in Japanese for all the sense it made to Vaclav. The redheaded Jew-just like Judas, Jezek thought-translated: "We've got to get back over the Semoy. They're going to blow the bridges pretty soon, he says, to help stop the Germans."
"They think that will?" Vaclav didn't believe it for a minute. The Nazis were too good with pontoon bridges and rubber boats and parachutists and what have you.
"That's what he says." After a moment, the sergeant added, "Do you want to get stuck here?"
"Well-no," Vaclav admitted-the only answer that question could have.
A crackle of machine-gun fire made him hit the dirt again. Here came an obsolete but nasty little Panzer I, spitting bullets from both guns in the turret. No French tanks anywhere close by, of course. They were like policemen-never around when you needed them.