Harry Turtledove - The Man with the Iron Heart

Also on the platform stood General Lucius D. Clay. Lou had figured the only way he’d get to meet the commander of American forces in Germany was by monumentally screwing up. He’d never dreamt he could do something right enough to draw a four-star general’s notice. Life was full of surprises.

Clay stepped over to the microphone. More flashbulbs went off. Reporters got out notebooks and poised themselves to report. A movie camera recorded the event for posterity-and for the newsreel before next week’s two-reeler, or maybe week after next’s.

Looking straight into the camera, General Clay said, “These four brave men with me today are most responsible for ridding the world of Reinhard Heydrich, would-be Fuhrer of the Nazi diehards and war criminal beyond compare. The U.S. Army and the government of the United States take pride in honoring them and rewarding them for their courage.”

Lou translated Clay’s remarks into low-voiced Yiddish for Shmuel Birnbaum. Then Clay called the DP’s name. Lou stepped up to the mike with him to go on interpreting. Clay said, “We offered a million dollars for help leading to Heydrich’s capture or death. Mr. Birnbaum, who was forced to help excavate the Nazi leader’s headquarters and who later narrowly escaped the murder that would have silenced him forever, gave information that led us to him. His share of the reward will be $250,000.”

Reporters and soldiers gave Birnbaum a hand. Shyly, his head bobbed up and down as he acknowledged the applause. “What will you do with the money?” somebody called. Lou translated the question.

“I want to go to Palestine,” the DP answered without hesitation. “Everybody else has a homeland. Jews should have one, too.” After Lou also translated that, the mostly American crowd nodded. Englishmen wouldn’t have; the UK wasn’t having much fun trying to keep its old League of Nations mandate from exploding into civil war. An ordinary Jewish DP would have had a devil of a time even getting British permission to enter Palestine. For the man who’d fingered Reinhard Heydrich, though-and for a man with a quarter of a million smackers in his pocket-many more things were possible.

Birnbaum and Lou stepped back. “Lieutenant Mark Davenport!” Lucius Clay said.

Davenport strode forward and delivered a parade-ground salute. “Sir!” he said. He was skinny and blond, and looked about seventeen.

“For your cool head, for your gallantry on the mountainside, and for your vital role in ensuring that Heydrich could not escape after coming out of his shelter, I am pleased to promote you to first lieutenant, to present you with a Silver Star in recognition of your courage, and to reward you with $250,000. Congratulations!”

“Thank you very much, sir!” Davenport sounded as if he couldn’t believe what was happening to him. Well, if he didn’t, who could blame him? As if to compound the surreal atmosphere, Clay personally pinned the Silver Star on his chest.

“Private Bernard Cobb!” Before Cobb could even salute him, General Clay corrected himself: “ Sergeant Bernard Cobb!”

“Thanks, sir.” Bernie Cobb did salute then. Lou had got to know him a little the past few hectic days. Cobb had had as much of the Army as he wanted, and then some. Three stripes on his sleeve wouldn’t impress him. Neither would a Silver Star, even if Lucius Clay presented it with his own hands. A quarter of a million dollars were bound to be a different story.

“What will you do next?” a reporter asked.

“Soon as I get out of the Army, I’m going back to New Mexico,” Cobb answered. “I’ll buy me a house, buy a car, maybe go to school, find a girl, find a job, settle down. No offense to anybody, but I’ve worn a uniform as long as I want to.”

“The Army needs men like you, but I have to admit I understand-and I sympathize,” General Clay said. Then he turned to Lou. “Captain-no, Major-Louis Weissberg!”

“Sir!” Lou blinked-he hadn’t expected the promotion. Down in the crowd, Howard Frank grinned and waved and gave him a thumbs-up.

Lou wasn’t sure he deserved a Silver Star, either. Unlike Bernie Cobb or Lieutenant Davenport, he’d spent a hell of a lot more time in Heydrich’s valley getting shot at than shooting. Then Lucius Clay said, “You earned your share of the reward for ending Reinhard Heydrich’s career not just in the valley last week but also in your relentless pursuit of him and of other war criminals since V-E Day. As I told Sergeant Cobb, the Army needs more men like you. Well done!”

“Thank you, sir!” Lou’s salute was as snappy as he could make it. He felt about ready to bust his buttons with pride. If America wasn’t the greatest country in the world…No, it damn well was, and that was all there was to it. His folks had come through Ellis Island with nothing but the clothes on their backs. He wished they could see him now, college-educated and exchanging salutes with a four-star general. If something like this wasn’t the dream of every hard-working immigrant’s son, what would be?

“Hey, Captain-uh, Major!” a reporter called. “You’re in the Counter-Intelligence Corps, right?”

“Well, yeah,” Lou said uncomfortably. The one thing wrong with getting your name in the paper was that you weren’t so useful to the CIC after you did. A well-known spy was your basic contradiction in terms.

The reporter didn’t care-or, more likely, didn’t even think about it. “Those Nazi so-and-so’s gonna dry up and blow away now that Heydrich’s dead and gone?” he asked, poising pencil above notebook to wait for Lou’s reply. A good story…That, he cared about.

Lucius Clay leaned toward Lou, too, anxious to hear his answer. It wasn’t an enormous, showy lean: only an inch or so, two at the most. But any lean at all from the straight-spined general seemed remarkable. With Clay leaning, Lou picked his words with even more care than he would have otherwise. “Nobody knows what’s coming up-I figure that’s how come everybody spends so much time guessing and hoping about it,” he said. “So the most I can give you now is a guess and a hope. My guess is, we’ve got a decent chance that they’ll quit. And you can bet I hope like anything I’m right.”

What was a decent chance ? Thirty percent? Eighty percent? Lou didn’t say, because he had no idea. The reporter didn’t notice, and wrote down what he did say. General Clay, on the other hand, recognized bullshit when he heard it. He made a point of straightening up again: Lou showed he didn’t have any better notion than Clay did himself. Lou wished he could have sounded surer. Hell, he wished he could have been surer. Too bad life didn’t work that way.

Bernie Cobb was drunk. He was drunk As a Lord,in fact-or he thought so, even if no lords were around for comparison. He couldn’t remember ever buying drinks for so many other guys before, either. Of course, he’d also never had a quarter of a million bucks burning a hole in his pocket before.

He didn’t exactly have a quarter of a million bucks now. In spite of the fancy ceremony with General Clay, the money was going into a Stateside bank account for him. The idea was to keep him from blowing the wad before the Army shipped him home. Whoever’d decided on that knew what he was doing-and knew Bernie much too well.

So what he was spending was back pay and poker winnings and whatever other cash he could scrape together. You had to throw some kind of bash when $250,000 came your way, didn’t you? Bernie thought so. And the Silver Star didn’t hurt.

“So when do they turn you loose and send you back?” asked one of his many new-found close friends.

That set Bernie laughing. Right now, almost anything would, but this was really funny. “Y’know the medal they pinned on me? Even with the way they’re bumping up points, that gave me enough for my Ruptured Duck. So as soon as they find me a ship or a plane, I am fucking gone!”