“Well, that’s that,” Auerbach said, bending to pick up Larssen’s Springfield-no point in leaving a good weapon out to rust. “Now we can get on with the important stuff, like fighting the war.”
TheNaxos chugged on toward Rome. It flew a large red-white-and-blue tricolor Captain Mavrogordato had hauled out of the flag locker. “I want the Lizards’ airplanes to think we are French,” he explained to Moishe. “We have friends on the ground in Rome who know we are bringing them good things, but the pilots-who can say what they know? Since the Lizards hold southern France, this will help them believe we are perfectly safe.”
“What happens when we leave Rome and head for Athens and Tarsus and Haifa?” Moishe asked. “Those places, they won’t be so happy to see a ship that might have come out of Lizard-held country.”
Mavrogordato shrugged. “We have plenty of flags in the locker. When the time comes, we will pick another one that better suits our business there.”
“All right,” Russie said. “Why not?” He’d never known such a blithe swashbuckler before. Mavrogordato was smuggling things to the Lizards, undoubtedly smuggling things away from them, and was smuggling him and his family right past their scaly snouts. For all the Greek captain worried about it-airplanes aside-he might have had the whole Mediterranean to himself.
“But what if something goes wrong?” Moishe had asked him, some hundreds of kilometers back toward the west. He himself was a chronic worrier, and was also of the opinion that, considering everything that had happened to him over the past few years, he’d earned the right.
But Mavrogordato had shrugged then, too. “If something goes wrong, I’ll deal with it,” he’d answered, and that was all he would say. Moishe reluctantly concluded he didn’t say any more because he didn’t know any more. Moishe would have had plans upon plans upon plans, each one ready in case the trouble that matched it arrived.
Whether the plans would have worked was another question. Given his track record, it wasn’t obvious. But he would have had them.
“How far from Rome are we now?” he asked as the Italian countryside crawled past beyond the starboard rail.
“Thirty-five kilometers, maybe a bit less,” Mavrogordato answered. “We’ll be there in a couple of hours-in time for lunch.” He laughed.
Moishe’s stomach rumbled in anticipation. Neither the British freighter that had brought him down near Spain nor theSeanymph had had a galley that could compare to theNaxos’. Mavrogordato’s crew might have been short on shaves and clean clothes and other evidence of spit and polish, but they lived better than British seamen imagined. Russie wondered if the English had some sort of requirement denying them as much pleasure as possible. Or maybe they were just a nation of bad cooks.
“I hate to say it, but I wish the Germans were in Italy instead of the Lizards,” Moishe said. “It gives them too good a base for pushing north or east.”
“They tried pushing east into Croatia last year, and got their snouts bloodied for them,” Mavrogordato said. “But you’re right. Anybody who looks at a map can tell you as much. Hold Italy down and you’re halfway toward holding down the whole Mediterranean.”
“Mussolini didn’t have much luck with the whole Mediterranean,” Moishe said, “but we can’t count on the Lizards’ being as incompetent as he was.”
Captain Mavrogordato slapped him on the back, hard enough to stagger him. He spoke a couple of sentences in Greek before he remembered Russie didn’t know what he was talking about and shifted back to German: “We kicked the Italians right out of our country when they invaded us. The Nazis beat us, yes, but not those clowns.”
The difference between the Italians and the Germans was that between inept tyrants and effective ones. Inept tyrants roused only contempt. No one was contemptuous of the Germans, the Russians, or the Lizards. You could hate them, but you had to fear them, too.
Moishe said, “Ginger is the worst weakness the Lizards have, I think. A Lizard who gets a taste for ginger will-”
He broke off, a flash of light from the north distracting him. He wondered what it could be-it was as bright as the sun. And no, it wasn’t just a flash-it went from white to orange to red, a fireball swelling fantastically with each moment he stood there watching.
“Meter theou!”Panagiotis Mavrogordato exclaimed, and crossed himself. The gesture didn’t bother Russie; he wished he had one to match it. The captain of theNaxos went on, “Did they hit an oil tanker between us and Rome? You’d think we would have heard the airplanes, or something.”
They did hear something just then, a roar that rocked Moishe harder than Mavrogordato’s slap on the back had a few minutes earlier. A great column of smoke, shot through with crimson flames, rose into the air. Moishe craned his neck to watch it climb.
Slowly, softly, he said, “I don’t think that was anything between us and Rome, Captain. I think thatwas Rome.”
For a moment, the Greek stared at him, blank incomprehension on his face. Then Mavrogordato crossed himself again, more violently than he had before. “Is it one of those terrible bombs?” he demanded in a hoarse whisper.
“I don’t know,” Moishe said. “I’ve never seen one before. But I don’t know what else it could be, either. Only the one blast and-that.” He nodded toward the glowing, growing cloud of dust and fire. “If God is kind, I’ll never see such a thing again.”
Captain Mavrogordato pointed out over the water. A large wave was approaching theNaxos at unnatural speed, as if flying through the air rather than being part of the sea. The freighter’s bow rose sharply, then plunged into the trough behind. The wave sped past them, out toward Corsica and Sardinia and Sicily. Moishe wondered if it would wash up against distant Gibraltar.
Mavrogordato shouted orders in Greek. TheNaxos’ engine began to work harder, the deck thrummed under Moishe’s feet and thick clouds of black smoke rose from the stack. Those clouds, though, were misshapen dwarfs when set alongside the one still swelling above Rome. Moishe could not tear his eyes away from that terrible beauty. He wondered how many people-and how many Lizards-had perished in the blast.
“There goes the Pope,” Mavrogordato said, one step ahead of him. “I’m no Catholic, but that’s a hell of a thing to do to him.”
How the Poles would wail when the news reached them! And, if they could find a way, they’d blame it on the Jews. This time, though, the Lizards and the Nazis looked to be much more likely candidates. Now, too, the Jews had guns (Moishe wondered briefly bow Mordechai Anielewicz fared these days). If the Poles started trouble, they’d get trouble back.
The bow of theNaxos began swinging away from what had been its destination. Russie glanced toward Mavrogordato, a question in his eyes. The merchant captain said, “Nobody’s going to take delivery of what we were bringing, not here, not now. I want to get as far away as I can, as fast as I can. If the Lizards were hunting ships before, what will they do after this?”
“Gevalt!”Moishe said; he hadn’t thought of that.
Maybe the Greek had heard that bit of Yiddish before, or maybe tone and context let him figure out what it meant. He said, “It’ll be better once we get away from Italy; Lizard planes don’t range quite so widely in the eastern half of the Mediterranean as they do here. Only trouble is, I’m going to have to coal once before we make Athens. I would have done it at Rome, but now-”
“Will they let you go into an Italian port after this?” Moishe asked.
“Only one way to find out,” Mavrogordato answered, “and that’s to try it. I know some people-and some Lizards-in Naples. I could unload the ginger there,theou thelontos, and take on the fuel I need to get you to where you’re going. All we have to worry about is getting sunk before we make it that far. Well, friend, did you want life to be dull?”