The SD and the Gestapo would have said no. Sometimes, you needed not to listen to what certain other people were saying, no matter how loudly they happened to be saying it.
Instead, Hans-Ulrich listened to the distant rumble of artillery. It was so easy to listen to, he wished it were more distant still. Recognizing the German guns was easy. The others … He’d been away from this front too long. “Are those French cannon or English?” he asked.
Albert Dieselhorst cocked his head to one side, considering. “French, sir, I think,” he said at last. “The 75s are, for sure. I don’t know about the 105s. They sound like a new mark to me, so I can’t tell who made them. Any which way, 105s are bad news.”
In the last war, foot soldiers had hung all kinds of nicknames on the shells their guns fired and on the ones the enemy aimed at them. Boys playing at war after the shooting ended naturally used the names they got from their fathers and uncles and older brothers. Hans-Ulrich knew them as well as any Frontschwein in the Kaiser’s army. The kids shooting at one another with toy guns in 1950 would probably need some new names for their imaginary shellbursts.
When Rudel spoke that conceit aloud, he startled a laugh out of Dieselhorst. “I never would have wondered about that in a million years, sir,” the older man said. “Must be a reason you’re an Oberleutnant and I’m just a dumb Feldwebel.”
“I’ll tell you what you are,” Hans-Ulrich said. Sergeant Dieselhorst gave forth with a questioning grunt. Rudel told him: “You’re a sand-bagger, that’s what.”
The sergeant laughed some more. He wagged a still-gloved finger in Hans-Ulrich’s face. “And where did the likes of you learn about card players’ wicked habits … sir?”
Rudel’s ears heated. If there was one thing he hated, it was getting ragged for being a minister’s son. He hated it all the more because he was one. “Playing cards isn’t against my religion,” he said stiffly.
“Then how come you don’t do it more?” Dieselhorst probed.
“Because I’m lousy, and losing money’s against my religion.” Hans-Ulrich jabbed at himself before his crewmate could do it: “And hey, I’m not even a Jew.”
“I bet that’s not what you told your girl in Bialystok.” Sergeant Dieselhorst did his own revising this time: “No, it wouldn’t’ve mattered, would it? Unless you got yourself a clip job I don’t know about, she’d have worked that out-or worked it in-for herself.”
“Give it a rest, why don’t you?” Hans-Ulrich answered, not rising to the lewd suggestion. He missed Sofia more than he’d thought he would when the squadron came back to the West. She wasn’t just an amusement for when he got some leave. She’d lodged in the crevices of his mind the way a piece of gristle could lodge between the teeth. His thoughts worried at her as his tongue would have worried at the gristle. He needed some mental floss to get her out of there, but didn’t know where to find it.
“That’s what she said, right?” Sergeant Dieselhorst’s grin was perfectly filthy. It was also perfectly friendly. If it hadn’t been, Hans-Ulrich might have tried to deck him. He also might have got a rude surprise for his trouble-a thought that had crossed his mind before. He had size and youth and speed on his radioman/rear gunner. When it came to experience …
So it didn’t turn into a fight or anything close to a fight, especially when Dieselhorst’s smile was friendly. Instead, Hans-Ulrich said, as much to himself as to his crewmate, “Maybe I’ll write her a letter. Find out how she’s doing, y’know? Find out if she misses me even a little bit.” If she didn’t, maybe he could stop missing her.
But the sergeant’s grin disappeared. “You sure that’s a good idea, sir?” he asked, in tones that couldn’t mean anything but You out of your expurgated mind, sir?
You could screw a woman who was a Mischling first class. You could have a fine old time doing it, too, as Hans-Ulrich had reason to know. If she was a Polish national, and so not subject to the laws against German Jews and half-breeds, so much the better. But if you showed signs that you’d been rash enough to fall in love with her, well, that would give the SD something to think about, sure as the devil it would. Not even the most loyal, most naive fighting man (and Rudel won top marks on both counts) looked forward to that.
“Mm, well, maybe not,” Hans-Ulrich allowed.
“There you go.” Now Dieselhorst’s features showed nothing but relief. “When you find yourself a Belgian honey, you can forget all about the other one.”
“Sure.” Hans-Ulrich didn’t want to make the older man worry about him. He didn’t argue or quarrel or make a fuss. He just said, “Let’s go get debriefed, ja? We’ve wasted enough time gabbing.”
Off they went, to report on what they’d seen and done over the border in northeastern France. And if Hans-Ulrich wrote a letter in his tent that night, Sergeant Dieselhorst didn’t need to know about it. Chances were Sofia wouldn’t answer anyhow. She hadn’t answered any of the letters he’d sent her from Russia. She knew it wasn’t a good idea. Hans-Ulrich, on the other hand …
Ivan Kuchkov sprawled in the mud, eyeing the woods ahead. “Is that a motherfucking white flag?” he called to Sasha Davidov. “Or do my cocksucking eyes need rifling so they’ll carry farther?”
“It’s a white flag, Comrade Sergeant,” the point man answered.
“Da. It fucking is. Now-next question. Can we trust the khokhol cunts showing it?” Kuchkov generally trusted Ukrainians as far as he could throw them. He trusted Ukrainian nationalist fighters even less. Some of them were out-and-out Nazis. Some of them hated the Red Army a lot worse than the Nazis did. (That they might have good reason to hate it bothered him not a bit. Nobody had good reason to want to kill him, not as far as he was concerned.)
“I can’t answer that one, Comrade Sergeant,” Davidov said. “You’ve got to make up your own mind.”
“Fuck,” Kuchkov muttered. He knew he wasn’t the brightest candle on the altar (not a good Soviet comparison, but a good Russian one).
But his choices here seemed stark. He could get into a bigger fight than he really wanted or he could treat with the guys who used a stupid-looking blue-and-yellow flag and an even dumber-looking trident to show they weren’t Soviets or even Russians. Swearing some more under his breath, he got to his feet and waved a dirty snotrag: the biggest piece of white cloth he had.
“Don’t shoot, you whores!” he yelled toward the woods. “We’ll parley!”
If they had a machine gun in there, they could cut him in half. A drunken rifleman could have blown out his kidneys. Standing here waving that stupid hanky, he knew it much too well. He felt naked, with a bull’s-eye painted on his chest.
“Well, come on,” someone in amongst the trees shouted back. The bastard’s Russian had a Ukrainian accent thick enough to slice, but it was Russian of a sort. Sensibly, the nationalist didn’t show himself. He went on, “We won’t shoot you till after we talk.”
“Hot shit,” Ivan muttered, but not loud enough to let the Ukrainians hear him. As he started for the woods, he told Davidov, “Give me a fucking hour. If those bitches haven’t turned me loose, yell once. After that, get your cocks in gear and clean ’em out. You hear?”
“Da, Comrade Sergeant,” the Jew answered. He had to understand as well as Kuchkov did that that would be unfortunate for the sergeant.
“Put down your piece,” a Ukrainian with a PPD of his own said when Ivan got to the edge of the wood. Kuchkov set the submachine gun on the ground. He still had a pistol in an inside pocket of his padded jacket. He said nothing about it, or about the knife sheathed at the small of his back. He didn’t plan on using either one, but he had them.