Grunting, Jager got to his feet “All the same to you, Skorzeny, I like ‘Get your scrawny arse over here’ better.”
The SSStandartenfuhrer chuckled. “Figured you would. Come on. Let’s go for a walk.”
That meant Skorzeny had news he didn’t feel like letting anyone else hear. And that, presumably, meant all hell was going to break loose somewhere, most likely somewhere right around here. Almost plaintively, Jager said, “I was enjoying the cease-fire.”
“Life’s tough,” Skorzeny said, “and it’s our job to make it tougher-for the Lizards. Your regiment’s still the thin end of the wedge, right? How soon can you be ready to hit our scaly chums a good one right in the snout?”
“We’ve got about half our Panthers back at corps repair center for retrofitting,” Jager answered. “Fuel lines, new cupolas for the turrets, fuel pump gaskets made the right way, that kind of thing. We took advantage of the cease-fire to do one lot of them, and now that it’s holding, we’re doing the other. Nobody told me-nobody told anybody-it was breaking down.”
“I’m telling you,” the SS man said. “How long till you’re up to strength again? You need those Panthers, don’t you?”
“Just a bit, yes,” Jager said with what he thought was commendable understatement. “They should all be back here in ten days-a week. If somebody with clout goes and leans on the corps repair crews.”
Skorzeny bit his lip.“Donnerwetter! If I lean on them hard, you think they’d have your panzers up here at the front inside five days? That’s my outer limit, and I haven’t got any discretion about it. If they aren’t here by then, old chum, you just have to go without ’em.”
“Go where?” Jager demanded. “Why are you giving me orders? And not my division commander, I mean?”
“Because I getmy orders from theFuhrer and theReichsfuhrer-SS, not from some tinpot major general commanding a measly corps,” Skorzeny answered smugly. “Here’s what’s going to happen as soon as you’re ready to motor and the artillery boys are set to do their part, too: I blow Lodz to kingdom come, and you-and everybody else-gets to hit the Lizards while they’re still trying to figure out what’s going on. The war is back, in other words.”
Jager wondered if his message to the Jews of Lodz had got through. If it had, he wondered if they’d been able to find the bomb the SS man had hidden there somewhere. And those were the least of his worries: “What will the Lizards do to us if we blow up Lodz? They took out one of our cities for every bomb we used during the war. How many will they slag if we use one of those bombs to break a cease-fire?”
“Don’t know,” Skorzeny said. “I do know nobody asked me to worry about it, so I bloody well won’t. I have orders to blast Lodz in the next five days, so a whole raft of big-nosed kikes are going to get themselves fitted for halos along with the Lizards. We have to teach the Lizards and the people who suck up to ’em that we’re too nasty to mess with-and we will.”
“Blowing up the Jews will teach the Lizards something?” Jager scratched his head. “Why should the Lizards give a damn what happens to the Jews? And with whom are we at war, the Jews or the Lizards?”
“We’re sure as hell at war with the Lizards,” Skorzeny answered, “and we’ve always been at war with the Jews, now haven’t we? You know that. You’ve pissed and moaned about it enough. So we’ll blow up a bunch of kikesand a bunch of Lizards, and theFuhrer will be so happy he’ll dance a little jig, the way he did when the frog-eaters gave up in 1940. So-five days maximum. You’ll be ready to roll by then?”
“If I have my panzers back from the workshops, yes,” Jager said. “Like I said, though, somebody will have to lean on the mechanics.”
“I’lltake care of that,” the SS man promised with a large, evil grin. “You think they won’t hustle with me holding their toes to the fire?” Jager wouldn’t have bet against his meaning that literally. “Other thing is, I’ll make it real plain that if they don’t make me happy, they’ll tell Himmler why. Would you rather deal with me or with the little schoolmaster in his spectacles?”
“Good question,” Jager said. Taken as a man, Skorzeny was a lot more frightening than Himmler. But Skorzeny was just Skorzeny. Himmler personified the organization he led, and that organization invested him with a frightfulness of a different sort.
“The answer is, if you had your choice, you wouldn’t want to get either one of us mad at you, let alone both, right?” Skorzeny said, and Jager had to nod. The SSStandartenfuhrer went on, “As soon as the bomb goes off, you roll east. Who knows? The Lizards are liable to be so surprised, you may end up visiting your Russian girlfriend instead of the other way round. How’d you like that?” He rocked his hips forward and back, deliberately obscene.
“I’ve heard ideas I liked less,” Jager answered, his voice dry.
Skorzeny boomed laughter. “Oh, I bet you have. I just bet you have.” Out of the blue, he found a brand-new question: “She a Jew, that Russian of yours?”
He asked very casually, as a sergeant of police might have asked a burglary suspect where he was at eleven o’clock one night “Ludmila?” Jager said, relieved he was able to come back with the truth: “No.”
“Good,” the SS man said. “I didn’t think so, but I wanted to make sure. She won’t be mad at you when Lodz goes up, then, right?”
“No reason she should be,” Jager said.
“That’s fine,” Skorzeny said. “Yes, that’s fine. You be good, then. Five days, remember. You’ll have your panzers, too, or somebody will be sorry he was ever born.” He headed back toward camp, whistling as he went.
Jager followed more slowly, doing his best not to show how thoughtful he was. The SS had taken that Polish farmer apart, knowing he was involved in passing news on to the Jews in Lodz. And now Skorzeny was asking whether Ludmila was Jewish. Skorzeny couldn’t know anything, not really, or Jager wouldn’t still be at the head of his regiment. But suspicions were raising their heads, like plants pushing up through dead leaves.
Jager wondered if he could get word into Lodz by way of Mieczyslaw. He decided he didn’t dare take the chance, not now. He hoped the Jews already had the news, and that they’d found the bomb. That hope sprang partly from shame at what theReich had already done to them and partly from fear of what the Lizards would do to Germany if an atomic bomb went off in territory they held while truce talks were going on. To say he didn’t think they’d be pleased was putting it mildly.
From the moment Jager first met Mordechai Anielewicz, he’d seen the Jews had themselves a fine leader in him. If he knew Skorzeny had secreted the bomb in Lodz, he’d have moved heaven and earth to come up with it. Jager had done his damnedest to make sure the Jew knew.
Five days from now, Skorzeny would press his button or whatever it was he did. Maybe a new sun would seem to rise, as it had outside Breslau. And maybe nothing at all would happen.
What would Skorzeny do then?
Walking around out in the open with Lizards in plain sight felt unnatural. Mutt Daniels found himself automatically looking around for the nearest shell hole or pile of rubble so he’d have somewhere to take cover when firing broke out again.
But firing didn’t break out. One of the Lizards raised a scaly hand and waved at him. He waved back. He’d never been in a cease-fire quite like this one. Back in 1918, the shooting had stopped because theBoches threw in the sponge. Neither side had given up here. He knew fighting could pick up again any old time. But it hadn’t yet, and maybe it wouldn’t. He hoped it wouldn’t. By now, he’d had enough fighting to last any three men a couple of lifetimes each.