Harry Turtledove - Tilting the Balance

“Let’s look at the situation map,” Bagnall said.

“We’ve had to fall back here and here,” Aleksandr German said, pointing. “If they force a crossing of this stream, we’re in trouble, because they can nip in toward the center and start rolling up the line. We’re holding there for now, but God knows how long we can keep doing it without some help-which Herr General Chill won’t give us.”

Chill pointed at the map, too. “You have Russian units here you can draw on for reinforcements.”

“I have bodies, God knows,” Aleksandr German said, and then was seized by a coughing fit as he realized he’d twice invoked a deity he wasn’t supposed to believe in. He wiped his mouth on a sleeve and went on, “Bodies won’t do the job by themselves, though. I need to break up the Lizards’ concentrations back of their lines.”

“It’s a wasteful use of antitank troops,” Chill said.

“I’ve been wasting Russians-why should your pampered pets be any different?” Aleksandr German retorted.

“They are specialists, and irreplaceable,” the Wehrmacht man replied. “If we expend them here, they will not be available when and where their unique training and equipment are truly essential.”

Aleksandr German slammed a fist against the map. “They are essential now, in the place where I requested them,” he shouted. “If we don’t use them there, we won’t have a later for you to trot them out with all your fancy talk about right timing and right equipment. Look at the mess my men are in.”

Chill looked, then shook his head with a disdainful expression on his face.

“Maybe you should reconsider,” Bagnall told him.

The German general fixed him with a baleful stare. “I knew this piece of dumbheadedness was doomed to fail the moment it was suggested,” he said. “It is nothing more than a smokescreen to get good German troops thrown into the fire to save the Anglo-Russian alliance.”

“Oh, balls,” Bagnall said in English. Chill understood him; his face got even chillier. Aleksandr German didn’t, but he got the tone. The RAF man went on, in German again, “Not half an hour ago, I sent a Russian off confirming your-or some German’s, anyhow-order to fall back. I’m trying to do the best job I can, given my look at the map.”

“Perhaps you left your spectacles behind when you left London,” Chill suggested acidly.

“Maybe I. did, but I don’t think so.” Bagnall turned to Aleksandr German. “Brigadier, I know there aren’t many tanks on your section of the front; if the Lizards had a lot of tanks, they’d be here by now, and we’d all be dead, not bickering. But are they using those troop carriers with the turret-mounted guns?”

“Yes, we have seen a good many of them,” the partisan leader answered at once.

“There!” Bagnall said to Kurt Chill. “Are those troop carriers a good enough target for your antitank lads? You’d have to be lucky to take out a Lizard tank with an 88, but you can do all sorts of lovely things to a troop carrier with one.”

“This is so.” Chill rounded on Aleksandr German. “Why did you not say light armor was part of the threat you were facing? Had I known, I would have released units from the battalion at once.”

“Who can tell what will make up a fascist’s mind?” Aleksandr German answered. “If you’re going to send men, you’d, better go and do it.” They left the map room together, arguing now about how many men and guns and where they needed to go rather than whether to send any at all.

Bagnall indulged in the luxury of a long, heartfelt “Whew!” Jerome Jones walked over and patted him on the back.

“Nicely done,” Ken Embry said. “We are earning our keep here after all, seems to me.” He got himself a glass of hot, brownish muck from the samovar, then let one eyelid droop in unmistakable wink. “D’you suppose Comrade Brigadier German has really seen a whole fleet of armored troop carriers, or even so many as one?”

Jones gaped; his head swung from Embry to Bagnall and back again. Bagnall said, “I haven’t the foggiest notion, truth to tell. But he picked up his cue in a hurry, didn’t he? If armor rumbles into the neighborhood, even a literal-minded Jerry can hardly quarrel with rolling out the antitank guns, now can he?”

“Doesn’t look as though he can, at any rate,” Embry said. “I would have to say that hand goes to the heroic partisan.” He raised his glass in salute.

“Comrade German is one very sharp chap,” Bagnall said. “How good he is as a soldier or a leader of men I’m still not certain, but he misses very little.”

“You threw out that line sure it was a lie and expecting him to snap at it anyhow,” Jones said, almost in accusation.

“Haven’t you ever done the like, with a barmaid for instance?” Bagnall asked, and was amused to watch the radar-man turn red. “My notion was that if he said no, we’d be no worse off than we were already: Chill was going to balk, and we have nothing save whatever he uses as a sense of honor to get him to keep the promise he made to accept our decision. Giving him a reason he could swallow for doing what we wanted looked to be a good idea.”

“And next time, with luck, he’ll be likelier to go along,” Embry said. “Unless, of course, his men get wiped out and the position overrun, which is a risk in this business.”

“If that happens, it will announce itself,” Bagnall said, “most likely by artillery shells starting to land on Pskov.” He pointed to the map. “We can’t lose much more ground without coming into range of their guns.”

“Nothing to do now but wait,” Jones said. “Feels like being back at Dover, waiting for the Jerries to fly over arid show up on the radar screen: it’s a cricket match with the other side at bat, and you have to respond to what their batsman does.”

Hours passed. A babushka brought in bowls of borscht, thick beet soup with a dollop of sour cream floating on top. Bagnall mechanically spooned it up till the bowl was empty. He’d never fancied either beets or sour cream, but he fancied going hungry even less. Fuel, he told himself. Nasty-tasting fuel, but you need to top off your tanks.

Evening came late to Pskov these days: the town didn’t have the white nights of Leningrad to the north and east, but twilight lingered long. The western sky was still a bright salmon pink when Tatiana came into the map room. Just the sight of her roused all the Englishmen, who were fighting yawns: even in the shapeless blouse and baggy trousers of a Red Army soldier, she seemed much too decorative to have a rifle with a telescopic sight slung over her back.

Jerome Jones greeted her in Russian. She nodded to him, but astonished Bagnall by walking up to him and kissing him to a point just short of asphyxiation. Her clothes might have concealed her shape, but she felt all woman in his arms.

“My God!” he exclaimed in delighted amazement. “What’s that in aid of?”

“I’ll ask,” Jones said, much less enthusiastically. He started speaking Russian again; Tatiana replied volubly. He translated. “She says she’s thanking you for getting the Nazi mother-molester-her words-to move his guns forward. They hit a munitions store when they shelled the rear area, and took out several troop carriers at the front lines.”

“They really were there,” Embry broke in.

Tatiana went on right through him. After a moment, Jones fallowed her: “She says she had a good day sniping, too, thanks to the confusion the guns sowed among them, and she thanks you for that, too.”

“Looks as though we’ve held, at least for the time being,” Embry said.

Bagnall nodded, but he kept glancing over at Tatiana. She was watching him, too, as if through that rifle sight. Her gaze was smoky as the fires Pskov used for heating and cooking. It warmed Bagnall and chilled him at the same time. He could tell she wanted to sleep with him, but the only reason he could see for it was that he’d helped her do a better job of killing. The old saw about the female of the species being more deadly than the male floated through his mind. He’d heard it dozen times over the years, but never expected to run across its exemplification. He didn’t meet Tatiana’s gaze again. No matter how pretty she was, as far as he was concerned, Jerome Jones was welcome to her.