“Odds aren’t good,” Halévy admitted.
“Too fucking right, they’re not,” Vaclav said. “And I don’t want to live in Böhmen und Mahren, anyway.” He freighted the German names for Bohemia and Moravia with as much disgust as they would carry, and then some more besides. “I want Czechoslovakia back, dammit!”
“Complete with Slovaks? Complete with Sudeten Germans?”
“Rrr.” Vaclav didn’t like thinking that his former homeland made a proper country only if everyone who lived in it agreed that it should. The Germans mostly lived in the mountainous fringes of Bohemia and Moravia, the regions that made what had been Czechoslovakia defensible. The Slovaks filled most of the eastern third. And that didn’t even worry about the Ruthenians or the Magyars or …
“I know it isn’t right. I know it isn’t fair.” Now that Halévy had made his point, he did his best to sound sympathetic, even sorry. “But making peace now is like trying to unscramble eggs after you’ve dropped about two dozen of them into the pan over a hot fire.”
“The Germans will pull out of Belgium and Holland. They’ll pull out of Russia. They’ll pull out of the countries up north. They won’t pull out of Czechoslovakia. They’ll just keep fucking us over and over. What am I supposed to do? Find a little war in South America or somewhere that needs a sniper with an antitank rifle? Killing people’s almost the only thing I know how to do any more.”
He wondered if he could get into Poland with his Spanish passport, with or without the antitank rifle. If he could, he might be able to sneak over the border into his native land. The Sudeten Germans hadn’t wanted to be part of Czechoslovakia, and look how miserable they’d made life for the government. The Czechs wouldn’t want to be part of Germany, so they’d probably try to make life miserable for their overlords, too.
He might be able to help. He might even have some fun helping. Soldiering taught you all kinds of evil tricks. Odds were the Germans would catch up with him sooner or later. He knew that, but he hardly cared. Why should he? He’d been living on borrowed time for years.
“Moscow speaking.” The voice that came out of the radio sounded important and self-satisfied, as if the person doing the talking had just had a good dinner served to him by pretty girls not wearing much. It wasn’t always the same newsreader, but it was always the same tone. Anastas Mouradian didn’t care for it. He never had.
He’d never let on, either. Whom could you trust with an opinion like that? No one, not if you had any sense. The Mouradians had their flaws, but stupidity wasn’t one of them.
“General Secretary Stalin has announced the incorporation of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, and the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic into our glorious Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, bringing the number of constituent republics to fifteen,” the announcer said. “The General Secretary has also announced that Polish Marshal Smigly-Ridz has agreed to cede the city of Vilno and the surrounding territory to the USSR. As Lithuanians are the largest element in the territory population, our magnificent General Secretary and the Politburo have determined that it should be added to the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic.”
The Politburo, Stas noted, wasn’t magnificent. Well, how surprising was that? The Politburo might possibly have the authority to sneeze without Stalin’s permission. It couldn’t wipe the snot off its upper lip, though, unless the General Secretary countersigned the order.
“Thus the Soviet Union brings the war against reactionary imperialist and Fascist aggression to a triumphant conclusion,” the newsreader declared. Stas wondered how many times he’d had to practice reading that so he could bring it out without bursting into wild giggles.
He glanced over at Isa Mogamedov, who also listened to the news in the officers’ tent. Nothing on the Azeri’s swarthy face showed he wasn’t giving the report the grave attention it deserved. If he was sneering inside, he’d learned to do it so it didn’t show.
Well, so have I, Stas thought. Not a raised eyebrow or a flared nostril betrayed what was going on inside his head. He didn’t let out his own wild giggles and roll around on the bench clutching his sides, either. Sure enough, he was a disciplined fighting man.
He had to be. A triumphant conclusion? For the sake of a third-rate city that had been Polish, and for the sake of three new Soviet Republics whose people undoubtedly wanted nothing to do with the USSR, that nation had seen Byelorussia, much of the Ukraine, and the RSFSR almost to Smolensk devastated by years of attacks and counterattacks. They would be more years getting back on their feet, if they ever did. Millions had died, probably as many as in the last war. Millions more were maimed. Millions more still had lost their homes, their livestock, their livelihoods …
The most you could say was that what they had was better than defeat, that Hitler’s panzers might have rolled through Smolensk and even through Moscow, and that nothing would be left of the Soviet Union if that had happened. That was absolutely the most you could say, and if the newsreader had dared to say it the NKVD would have dragged him away-or perhaps shot him right on the air-before he could have finished getting the words out of his mouth.
As the newsreader had to do if he wanted to go back to his wife and children (and as his pompous voice suggested he wanted to do anyhow), he stuck to the script his minders had handed him: “Now that the war in the west has concluded, the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union can begin to reconsider some of the harsher and more unjust terms in the armistice imposed on us by the Empire of Japan.”
That made heads come up all over the officers’ tent. Everybody stared at the radio. So General Secretary Stalin wasn’t going to let Japan get away with swiping Vladivostok, eh? That earlier war hadn’t had anything like a triumphal conclusion.
Stas didn’t know how smart Stalin really was; he’d never been in a position to find out. He did figure the Georgian was no dope. Stalin wouldn’t have lived to rise to the top in the dog-eat-dog world of the Party after the Revolution had he been stupid.
Stalin also had sense enough not to choose more than one foreign foe at a time. He’d taken his lumps and liquidated his war with Japan when the fight against Germany heated up. Now that he wasn’t battling the Fritzes for survival any more, he could start thinking about the Russian Far East again. Yes, he was shrewd.
He’d run things more shrewdly than Hitler had-no two ways about that. Go to war with France and England? Fine! Go to war with France and England and the USSR? Fine! Declare war on the USA while you were at war with France and England and the USSR? Fine!
Except it wasn’t fine. Even Hitler’s generals had finally figured that out … which was why the Salvation Committee ran Germany right now and the Führer lay unhappily in some nameless grave. If you took on the two biggest industrial powers in the world, the pair of them with four times your population, your story wouldn’t have a happy ending even with England and France on your side. With them against you, too, you were …
Kaputt. A useful German word.
“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America were allies at the end of the fight against Hitlerite Germany. In fact, that alliance is not the smallest reason the Germans overthrew their bloodthirsty tyrant,” the newsreader said. Since Stas had just been thinking the same thing, he couldn’t even disagree with the man. What was the world coming to? The broadcaster continued, “Now the USSR and the USA both find themselves with grievances against Japan. Working cooperatively, they will be able to stretch the Japanese to the breaking point-and beyond.”