"They're liable to shoot me if I do," Wolfgang said. Surrendering was always tricky. If the guys on the other side didn't like your looks or couldn't be bothered with you, you were dead meat.
"You've got a chance that way," Willi answered. "What kind of chance do you have with the blackshirts?"
Storch's unhappy expression told exactly what kind of chance he had. He pumped Willi's hand. "You're a good guy. Wish me luck." He scrambled out of the trench and crawled toward the enemy positions a few hundred meters away.
"Luck," Willi whispered. Most of the French shells were long. If Wolfgang really got lucky, they'd blow up the SS goons. Even as the thought crossed Willi's mind, he feared it was too much to hope for. VACLAV JEZEK CAUTIOUSLY LIFTED his head. There was less to see than he'd hoped: the dust and smoke the bombardment had already kicked up obscured his view of later shell hits on the Nazi-held village. He ducked down again. "They're knocking the shit out of that place," he remarked.
"And so?" Benjamin Halevy didn't sound impressed. "Not like the German mamzrim don't have it coming."
A Czech fighting for his government-in-exile after the Nazis jumped on his country with both feet. A Jew fighting the regime that had been giving his people hell ever since it came to power. Who hated harder? They could argue about it. They did. They both despised the enemy enough for all ordinary purposes and then some.
Which didn't mean they didn't respect the soldiers in Feldgrau. Fierce in attack, the Germans were also stubborn in defense. They would have been less frightening if they weren't so good at what they did.
Vaclav popped up again. This time, he laid his antitank rifle on the dirt thrown up in front of the entrenchment. He didn't see any panzers, but the monster rifle made mincemeat-sometimes literally-of foot soldiers, too. "What's up?" Halevy asked him.
"Goddamn German crawling this way," Jezek answered. "I'm gonna ventilate the asshole." He took another quick look, then swore. The enemy soldier had disappeared behind a burnt-out armored car. No, here he came again. Vaclav swung the heavy rifle a hair to the right.
"Is it a real attack, or only the one guy?" the Jewish sergeant inquired. He raised his head, too. "I only see the one."
"Where you see one, there's usually a dozen you don't," Vaclav said. But he didn't pull the trigger. "This fucker isn't doing his best to hide, is he?"
"Nope. Maybe he's had enough of the war," Halevy said.
"I know I have. But he's a damn German," Vaclav said. Easier to think of the Landsers as mechanical men. You could break them, yes, but imagining them with mere human weaknesses came much harder.
It did for Vaclav, anyhow. But Halevy said, "Oh, they're people. They wouldn't be so scary if they weren't." The Czech wasn't sure of that: not even close. No matter whether he was or not, the Jew stuck his head above the trench lip again and yelled in German (which Vaclav hadn't known he spoke), "Throw away your rifle and get your sorry ass over here! You're vultures' meat if you don't!"
When Vaclav looked out, too, he saw that the Landser had tossed aside his Mauser. The fellow got to his feet and trotted toward the French trenches, his hands high and a shamed, kicked-dog grin on his face. "Ja, komm! Mach schnell!" Vaclav shouted. Talking to an enemy soldier the way he would to a waiter in a beer garden-or to a child or an animal-felt good.
The German made it snappy, all right. "I'm coming, I'm coming!" he said, as if he feared a bullet in the back. Maybe he did-and maybe he needed to. He let out what might have been a stifled sob as he jumped down into the trench. To make sure he didn't do anything stupid, Vaclav pointed the antitank rifle at his midsection. "Jesus!" the Landser yipped. "You shoot me with that thing, you can bury me in a coffee can afterwards."
"That's the idea," Halevy said from behind him. The Jew relieved him of the bayonet and potato-masher grenades on his belt, then added, "If you've got a holdout knife, hand it over. We find it on you, you'll never known what Red Cross food packages taste like." Slowly and carefully, the guy in field-gray pulled a slim blade from his left boot. Halevy took it. "That's all?"
"Ja," the German said. "My name is Wolfgang Storch. I'm a private." He rattled off his pay number. "That's as much as I've got to say to you, right?"
"If you know anything that matters, pal, you'll spill it." Vaclav made the rifle twitch. It would have started twitching soon anyhow; the damn thing was heavy. "The French don't like you bastards much better than I do."
Storch seemed to notice the smooth lines of his domed helmet for the first time. "Oh. A Czech," he said. Then he took a longer look at Benjamin Halevy. He didn't need long to work out what Halevy was, either. "And-" He stopped, gulping.
"Yeah. And," Halevy agreed grimly. "Why don't you start by telling us what the hell you're doing here?"
"Damn blackshirts were going to grab me, that's what," the German answered. "A buddy of mine tipped me off. We figured maybe you guys wouldn't shoot me." He licked his lips. He still wasn't sure about that.
"Why would the SS want you?" Vaclav asked.
Storch shrugged. "I talk too much. Everybody says so. I must've said something dumb where some cocksucker heard me and squealed. There's this one corporal who's the biggest asshole in the world. Chances are it was him." His hands-dirty, scarred, broken-nailed, callused, just like Vaclav's-folded into fists.
"What d'you think?" Jezek asked Halevy in Czech.
"It could be," the Jew answered in the same tongue. Storch's eyes said he didn't follow it. Halevy went on, "Not our worry either way. We just have to deliver him and let the fellows behind the line put the pieces together."
"Fair enough." Vaclav went back to German: "All right, Storch-we'll take you back. First things first, though. Cough up your cash, and your watch if you've got one."
"I do. Here." The Landser was fumblingly eager to hand it over. Vaclav had seen that before. New prisoners figured they'd get killed if they didn't let themselves be robbed. They were usually right, too. Storch also emptied out his wallet. He thrust bills at the Czech. "This is all the money I've got."
Most of it was in Reichsmarks, which were too scratchy even to make good asswipes. But he also had some francs. Then Halevy patted him down and took another wad of bills from a tunic pocket. "Nice try," the Jew said dryly.
"I-I'm sorry," Storch stammered.
"Tell me another one," Halevy answered. If he'd plugged the German for holding out, Vaclav wouldn't have said boo. But he only gestured with his rifle. "Get it in gear. If your little friends don't shell us on the way back, you're a POW."
Vaclav slung the antitank rifle as they headed away from the front. That was easier than lugging it in his arms-not easy, but easier. The gun could do all kinds of things an ordinary rifle couldn't, but it weighed a tonne.
A couple of poilus eyed the procession as they zigzagged along a communications trench. One of them called a question in French. Halevy answered in the same language. The poilu snorted. Halevy switched to German: "He asked where we got you, Storch. I said we won you in a poker game."
"Wouldn't you rather have got fifty pfennigs?" the Landser asked. He took Vaclav completely by surprise. The Czech broke up. Damned if a human being didn't lurk under the beetling brow of the German Stahlhelm.
They eventually found a couple of military policemen who were happy enough to take charge of Wolfgang Storch. They'd be less happy when they found out Vaclav and Halevy had already picked the German clean, but that was their hard luck-and maybe Storch's as well.
"Now-we just have to do that another million times, and we've won the fucking war," the Jew said as he and Vaclav started up toward the front-line trenches again.
"Should be easy," Jezek answered. He was damned if he'd let anybody outtry him.