Fritz Bittenfeld found a new question: "Should we go tell the major he's got hounds sniffing on his trail?"
"If we see him in the field, sure," Ludwig said. "But those fucking goons've got to be keeping an eye on him. If we go blab, what happens to us? We stick our dicks in the sausage grinder, that's what?"
"Oh, that smarts!" Theo said in shrill falsetto. Ludwig and Fritz both laughed. Better to laugh than to grab at yourself, which was what Ludwig's figure of speech made him want to do. Assuming it was a figure of speech, of course. With the SS, you could never be sure. And if they did it for real…Ludwig wanted to grab at himself again.
Bitterly, Fritz said, "It's a hell of a note when you find out combat's not the worst thing that can happen to you."
"Yeah, it's a hell of a note, all right," Ludwig said. "You going to tell me it isn't true? I can deal with the Czechs and the French and the English. I can even deal with the Russians if I have to. My old man fought in the East the last time around. Yeah, I can cope with that-bet your ass I can. But heaven help me if I've got to try and handle the cocksuckers who think they're on my side."
He kept his voice down. No one but his buddies could possibly have heard him. Only after the words were out of his mouth did he wonder if he could trust Fritz and Theo. They all trusted one another with their lives on the battlefield. But political matters were different-and, as Fritz had said, worse.
If he and the driver and the radioman couldn't trust one another…Ludwig swore under his breath. This was the nastiest thing the SS did, right here. If you weren't sure you could count on people who'd already saved your bacon more times than you could remember, then what?
You were screwed, that was what.
"We're as bad as the Russians, you know?" Theo said, which was too close for comfort to what Ludwig was thinking. The radio operator went on, "Pretty soon I'm going to start praying for cloudy weather."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Ludwig demanded.
"Well, if my shadow isn't there, I don't have to worry that it'll betray me to the Gestapo when I'm not looking," Theo answered. That either made no sense at all or altogether too much.
"Maybe it isn't there because it's off betraying you to the Gestapo." Later, Ludwig wondered about himself. At the time, what he said seemed logical enough-to him, anyhow.
It didn't faze Theo, either. "Nothing would surprise me any more," he said. "Shadows aren't to be trusted. No matter how much you feed 'em, they never get any fatter than you do. And have you ever seen one that wasn't as dark as a nigger, even when it was walking on a snowbank?"
Fritz looked from one of his crewmates to the other. "I think you've both gone round the bend," he declared.
"Zu befehl," Theo said-at your service. He clicked his heels, as if he were a Prussian grandee or an Austrian gentleman with more noble blood than he knew what to do with.
A battery of French 75s near Meaux started shelling the panzer park at extreme long range. Only a few shells came close enough to drive the Germans into the holes they'd dug. They had dug holes, of course; whenever they stopped for more than a few minutes, they dug. Anyone would have thought Wehrmacht men-and their French and English counterparts-descended from moles rather than monkeys.
"Wonder if the SS shithead has enough sense to take cover," Fritz remarked.
"Nobody'll miss him if he doesn't," Ludwig said. "With a little luck, even the Frenchmen won't miss him." Fritz and Theo both groaned. Neither tried to tell him he was wrong.
After a while, when the French guns didn't blow up any ammunition dumps or show other tangible evidence of success, they eased off. The panzer crews came up above ground. And there was the blackshirt, a pistol in hand, leading Major Koral to a waiting auto with a swastika flag flying above its right fender. Face pale and set, the major got in. The car sped away, back toward Germany.
"What is this world coming to?" Ludwig wondered out loud.
"Nothing good," Fritz answered. "Dammit, we've still got a war to fight."
"So does Major Koral," Theo added. Koral would likely lose his. And who would get the blame if the Wehrmacht also lost its?
Paris in wartime. Alistair Walsh had seen the City of Light in 1918, too. Then, though, it had been pretty clear that the Kaiser's troops wouldn't make it this far. Bombers were only nuisances in those fondly remembered days.
Things were different now, not quite twenty-one years later. Maybe 1914 had felt like this: the sense of the field-gray Juggernaut's car bearing down on the city, with all the people in it wondering whether to run away or to grab what amusement they could before everything disappeared.
British money went a long way in France. Walsh remembered that from the last time around, and it still seemed true. He'd got buzzed at a bar where the fellow serving drinks-a man no more than a couple of years older than he was-had a patch over his left eye and walked with a limp. "You here before, Tommy?" the Frenchman asked in fair English.
"Oh, yes." Alistair brushed his wounded leg with one hand. "I caught a packet, too-not so bad as yours, but that's just bloody luck one way or the other."
"Yes. We could both be dead," the bartender agreed, handing him his whiskey and soda. "And you-you have another chance."
"Right." Walsh didn't like thinking about that, however true it was. "So do you, pal, come to that. Damned Germans bomb Paris every chance they get."
The Frenchman called his eastern neighbors several things unlikely to appear in dictionaries. Walsh hadn't learned a lot of French in his two stays on the Continent, but what he had learned was of that sort. "You bet," he said, and slid a shilling across the zinc-topped bar. "Here. Buy yourself one, too."
"Merci." The barman made the silver coin vanish.
"Damn shame about the Eiffel Tower, too," Walsh added awkwardly.
"When the top part falls off-fell off-it should fall on the government's head," the French veteran said. "Then maybe it do some good. After we beat the Boches, we build it again."
"There you go." Alistair started to suggest that the Germans could pay for it, but he swallowed that. Reparations had been nothing but a farce after the last war. Why expect anything better this time around?
"Drink up, mon ami," the Frenchman said. "You will look for other sport, eh? Night still comes too soon, especially with blackout."
"Too right it does." Walsh realized the barman really liked him. Otherwise, the fellow would have tried to keep him in there forever. But the man must have realized he'd do all right from his other customers. Soldiers wearing several different uniforms packed the place. As long as none of them was in German kit…
Walsh had to push through double blackout curtains to get out onto the street. A little light leaked out despite the curtains. A flic blew his whistle and shouted something irate. Since Alistair didn't understand it, he didn't have to answer. That was how he felt, anyhow. And it was already dark enough to let him fade into the crowd before the copper could get a good look at him.
He knew where he was going, or thought he did. The house was supposed to be around the corner and a couple of streets up. He figured it would be easy to find even in the dark: places like that always had queues-or, given French carelessness about such things, crowds-of horny soldiers outside waiting their turn for a go with one of the girls.
But he missed it. Maybe he walked past the corner in the gloom, or maybe the place wasn't where he thought it was. He wandered around, bumping into people and having others bump into him. "Excuse me," he said, and, "Pardon." It wasn't curfew time yet, and Paris kept going regardless of such tiresome regulations.