“Thank you so much, Comrade Political Officer,” Obolensky replied dryly. Kuchkov’s head went up as if he were a wolf taking a scent. Sarcasm was what educated people used instead of mat. No wonder Kuchkov had an inborn sensitivity to it. The politruk never noticed. No surprise there: he was so full of himself, such things flew right over his head.
Off to the west, German artillery growled itself awake. Kuchkov’s head came up again. Artillery was serious business-it could slaughter you without giving you a chance at the bare-chested cunts serving the big guns. But this barrage would come down on some other sorry bastards’ heads. Kuchkov relaxed.
He wondered whether the Nazis were saddled with politruks. He would have bet against it. If they had those fuckers looking over their commanders’ shoulders, too, how could they have pushed this far into the Rodina?
In spite of the politruk’s bold words, the whole regiment fell back the next day. There were rumors the Germans had tanks in the neighborhood. Kuchkov knew damn well the Red Army didn’t. The Red Army was so worried about Smolensk-and about Moscow, which Smolensk shielded-that that part of the front had first call on men and materiel.
When rumors failed to turn into slab-sided German panzers painted dark gray, the retreat stopped. The men dug in amongst the brush and scrubby trees on the east bank of a stream that might slow down an arthritic goat but that wouldn’t keep anyone serious from crossing.
Lieutenant Obolensky came up to Kuchkov. “You’ve been around the block a time or two, eh, Comrade Sergeant?”
“Oh, fuck, yeah.” Kuchkov remembered formality at the last instant: “Uh, sir.”
One corner of the lieutenant’s mouth twisted upward. “What do you think of our dispositions?”
That was a word Kuchkov had learned in the military. It still sounded faggy to him, but he got what it meant. Shrugging, he answered, “We’ve got some cover. We’ve got fucking mortars. We’ve got our machine guns. If the cocksuckers in Feldgrau’re dumb enough to stick their dicks into the sausage grinder, we can chop ’em up pretty good-for a while, anyways.”
“Yes. For a while.” This time, Obolensky’s smile lifted both sides of his mouth, but it never touched his eyes. He peered west, as if expecting to see a whole Wehrmacht division bearing down on the company. He did see the same thing Ivan saw: nothing. With a sigh, he said, “Well, all we can do is all we can do.” Was he trying to reassure Kuchkov or himself?
The Germans showed up late in the afternoon, when the sun setting behind them made them harder to spot. It might have been chance. It might have been, but Kuchkov didn’t figure it was. The Nazis still in business in Russia were pros, damn them. The dumb ones were mostly dead by now.
Scouts in Nazi gray filtered forward across the fields. The Red Army men in khaki sat tight, waiting for bigger, tastier targets. With the sun going down, they probably wouldn’t get them till morning. They’d have some then, though. The Germans had got better at concealing themselves, but they still weren’t up to Soviet standards.
And it all turned out not to matter. The Hitlerites slipped across the stream a few kilometers south of the company. They didn’t have tanks, but they did have armored cars and armored personnel carriers, which were almost as deadly. The Red Army fell back again.
Falling back meant watching out for Ukrainian nationalist bandits as well as the Nazis. By now, Ivan was used to it. He also watched out for vodka to liberate over and above the daily hundred grams, and for peasant girls who didn’t bother with bourgeois affectations like morals. Even when he didn’t find those, he watched out for his men. They’d be fighting the Hitlerites again, and probably soon.
When the U-30 put in at Wilhelmshaven, technicians swarmed over the boat the way they always did. But something about the way they went about it put Julius Lemp’s wind up. He went back to the engine room to talk with a diesel technician he’d known for a long time.
“What’s cooking, Gustav?” he asked quietly. “Something’s going on, sure as hell.”
Gustav was checking a valve’s clearance with a butterfly gauge. After a satisfied grunt, he went on to the next one. “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied, his voice elaborately casual. To judge by his broad Bavarian dialect, he might never have set eyes on the sea. It only proved you never could tell.
Lemp’s snort filled his nostrils with the heavy stink of diesel oil. It was even stronger back here than it was in the rest of the boat. That really said something-nothing good, but something all the same. “Quatsch!” Lemp said, more quietly than he was in the habit of using the word.
If Gustav would understand one word from how Berliners talked-so different from his own way of speech that it might almost have been a different language-it would be their pungent slang for rubbish. He chuckled. Then he looked around to see if any of the other men working on the engines were paying him any special attention. So did Lemp. Nobody seemed to be. What was more natural than a U-boat skipper hashing things out with somebody from the maintenance crew?
“Nothing for someone who spends most of his time at sea to worry his head about,” Gustav answered after due consideration. “Politics starting to bubble again, that’s all.”
Lemp wanted to clap a hand to his forehead. That was the stuff of bad movies most of the time, not a U-boat’s crowded confines. Every so often, though, life wanted to imitate art, even bad art. “Politics is never ‘that’s all,’ ” Lemp said with great conviction that he hoped would replace the extravagant gesture. “Who’s gone and pissed in the stewpot now?”
“Huh.” Gustav said nothing more for a little while: not till after he’d made sure the next valve was still working as designed. He checked his comrades again, as carefully as he’d checked the valve. Then, not quite whispering, he continued, “Well, you won’t be too surprised to hear some folks aren’t jumping up and down now that we’ve got our two-front war back.”
“Ach, so,” Lemp said, and pointed at the valve Gustav had just examined. The mechanic’s thin smile said he appreciated the artistic touch. While eyeing the valve, the U-boat skipper went on, “Haven’t we gone through that nonsense already?” He knew too well they had; machine-gun fire that confined the crew to barracks during the last failed Putsch wasn’t how he’d wanted to spend precious time ashore.
“As long as things are going good, politics looks like nonsense, ja,” Gustav said. “When they aren’t …” He didn’t go on, or need to.
Now Julius Lemp felt like banging his head against one of the engine’s sharp, greasy projections. “The more we squabble amongst ourselves, the more the Ivans and the Tommies and the froggies laugh.”
“Well, there you are,” Gustav replied, which might have meant anything or nothing. “But folks are as jumpy as a pail of toads.”
He wouldn’t say anything more than that. He’d told Lemp what the U-boat skipper absolutely had to know. Who was doing what to whom … Lemp would have to piece that together for himself.
The officers’ club would have been a good place to check, if only anyone were saying anything. But it was uncommonly quiet there. People drank with a grim intensity Lemp had seen before. Even when they’d taken on enough torpedo fuel to sink them deeper than the Titanic, though, they didn’t open up. They just put head on hands and fell asleep.
All the schnapps was rotgut. Lemp drank anyway. If you couldn’t talk about the monster under the bed, at least you could blur its outlines. He didn’t seem to be the only one with that attitude. Oh, no. Nowhere close.