Harry Turtledove - Tilting the Balance

Jager also took a healthy nip. “It is, isn’t it?” But warmth did spread out from his belly. “It’s got the old antifreeze in it, though, no doubt about that.” He leaned forward. “Before you jump on me, I’m going to pick your brain: what sort of goodies are they fishing out of that tank you stole? I want to pretend I’m still a panzer man, you see, not a physicist or a bandit like you.”

Skorzeny chuckled. “Flattery gets you nowhere. But I’ll talk-why the hell not? Half of it I don’t understand. Half of it nobody understands, which is part of the problem: the Lizards build machines that are smarter than the people we have trying to figure out what they do. But there’ll be new ammunition coming down the line by and by, and new armor, too-layers of steel and ceramic bonded together the devil’s uncle only knows how.”

“You served on the Russian front, all right,” Jager said. “New ammunition, new armor-that’s not bad. One day I may even get to use them. Probably not one day soon, though, eh?” Skorzeny did not deny it. Jager sighed, finished his shot, went back to the bar for another round, and returned to the table Skorzeny pounced on the fresh drink like a tiger. Jager sat down, then asked, “So what is this scheme you have that involves me?”

“Ah, that. You were going to be an archaeologist before the first war sucked you into the Army, right?”

“You’ve been poking through my records,” Jager said without much malice. He drank more schnapps. It didn’t seem so bad now-maybe the first shot had stunned his taste buds. “What the devil does archaeology have to do with the price of potatoes?”

“You know the Lizards have Italy,” Skorzeny said. “They’re not as happy there as they used to be, and the Italians aren’t so happy with them, either. I had a little something to do with that, getting Mussolini out of the old castle where they’d tucked him away for safekeeping.” He looked smug. He’d earned the right, too.

“You’re planning to go down there again, and you want me along?” the panzer colonel asked. “I’d stick out like a sore thumb-not just my looks, mind you, but I don’t speak much Italian.”

But Skorzeny shook his massive head. “Not Italy. The Lizards are messing about on the eastern shore of the Adriatic, over in Croatia. I have trouble stomaching Ante Pavelic, but he’s an ally, and we don’t want the Lizards getting a toehold over there. You follow so far?”

“The strategy, yes.” Jager didn’t say that he marveled at an SS man’s having trouble stomaching anything. Word had trickled through the Wehrmacht that the Croat allies, puppets, whatever you wanted to call them, took their fascism-to say nothing of their blood feuds-very seriously indeed. Maybe Skorzeny s admission was proof of that Jager went on, “I still don’t see what it has to do with me, though.”

Skorzeny looked like a fisherman trying out a new lure. “Suppose I were to tell you-and I can, because it’s true-the main Lizard base in Croatia is just outside Split. What would that mean to you?”

“Diocletian’s palace,” Jager answered without a moment’s hesitation. “I even visited there once, on holiday eight or ten years ago. Hell of an impressive building even after better than sixteen hundred years.”

I know you visited, the report you wrote probably went into the operational planning for Operation Strafgericht. Strafgericht indeed; we punished the Yugoslavs properly for ducking out of their alliance with us. But that’s by the way. What counts is that you know the area, and not just from that visit but from study as well. That’s why I say you could be very useful to me.”

“You’re not planning on blowing up the palace, are you?” Jager asked with sudden anxiety Monuments suffered in wartime; that couldn’t be helped. He’d seen enough Russian churches in flames during Barbarossa, but a Russian church didn’t carry the same weight for him as a Roman Emperor’s palace.

“I will if I have to,” Skorzeny said. “I understand what you’re saying, Jager, but if you’re going to let that kind of attitude hold you back, then I’ve made a mistake and you’re the wrong fellow for the job.”

“I may be anyhow. I’ve got a regiment waiting for me south of Belfort, remember.”

“You’re a good panzer man, Jager, but you’re not a genius panzer man,” Skorzeny said. “The regiment will do well enough under someone else. For me, though, your special knowledge would truly come in handy. Do I tempt you, or not?”

Jager rubbed his chin. He had no doubt Skorzeny could cut through the chain of command and get him reassigned: he’d pulled off enough coups for the brass to listen to him. The question was, did he want to go on fighting the same old war himself or try something new?

“Buy me another schnapps,” he said, to Skorzeny.

The SS colonel grinned. “You want me to get you drunk first, so you can say you didn’t know what I was doing when I had my way with you? All right, Jager, I’ll play.” He strode to the bar.

Lieutenant General Kurt Chill turned a sardonic eye on his Soviet opposite numbers-or maybe, George Bagnall thought, it was just the effect the torches that blazed in the Pskov Krom created. But no, the general’s German was sardonic, too: “I trust, gentlemen, we can create a united front for the defense of Pleskau? This would have been desirable before, but cooperation has unfortunately proved limited.”

The two Russian partisan leaders, Nikolai Vasiliev and Aleksandr German, stirred in their seats. Aleksandr German spoke Yiddish as well as Russian, and so followed Chill’s words well enough. He said, “Call our city by its proper name, not the one you Nazis hung on it. Cooperation? Ha! You at least had that much courtesy before.”

Bagnall, whose German was imperfect, frowned as he tried to keep track of the Jewish partisan leader’s Yiddish. Vasiliev had no Yiddish or German; he had to wait until an interpreter finished murmuring in his ear. Then he boomed “Da!” and followed it up with a spate of incomprehensible Russian.

The interpreter performed his office: “Brigadier Vasiliev also rejects the use of the term ‘united front.’ It is properly applied to unions of progressive organizations, not associations with reactionary causes.”

Beside Bagnall, Jerome Jones whistled under his breath. “He shaded that translation. ‘Fascist jackals’ is really what Vasiliev called the Nazis.”

“Why does this not surprise me?” Bagnall whispered back. “If you want to know what I think, that they’ve come back to calling each other names instead of trying to kill each other is progress.”

“Something to that,” Jones said.

He started to add more, but Chill was speaking again: “If we do not join together now, whatever the name of that union may be, what we call this city will matter no more. The Lizards will give it their own name.”

“And how do we stop that?” As usual, German got his comment in a beat ahead of Vasiliev.

The Russian partisan leader amplified what his comrade had said: “Yes, how do we dare put our men on the same firing line as yours without fearing they’ll be shot in the back?”

“The same way I dare put Wehrmacht men into line alongside yours,” Chill said: “by remembering the enemy is worse. As for being shot in the back, how many Red Army units went into action with NKVD men behind them to make sure they were properly heroic?”

“Not our partisans” German said. Then he fell silent, and Vasiliev had nothing to add, from which Bagnall inferred General Chill had scored a point.

Chill folded his arms across his chest. “Does either of you gentlemen propose to take overall command of the defenses of Pleskau-excuse me, Pskov?”