Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

The Germans followed the two Russian officers down the long, high-ceilinged halls of the Kremlin. Other Russian soldiers sometimes paused in their own duties to stare at Skorzeny’s SS uniform, but no one said anything: they seemed to accept that the world had grown stranger these past few months.

The office Jager and Schultz entered was not the one Kraminov used. Like Kraminov’s, though, it was surprisingly light and airy, with a large window that gave a view of thegrounds of the Kremlin compound. Jager had looked for nothing but dank gloom at the heart of Soviet Russia, but a moment’s reflection after finding the opposite told him that was silly. Even Communists needed light by which to work. And the Kremlin was far older than either Communism or electricity; when it was raised, the only light worth having came from the sun. So, large windows.

Lieutenant Colonel Lidov pointed to a samovar. “Tea, tovarishchii ?” he asked. Jager frowned; Kraminov didn’t call Schultz and him “comrades,” as if they were Reds themselves. But then, Kraminov was a tankman, a warrior, not NKVD. At home, Jager drank coffee thick with cream. But he hadn’t been at home for a long time. He nodded.

Lidov poured for all of them. At home, Jager didn’t drink tea from a glass, either. He had done that before, though, with captured samovar sets in steppe towns and collective farms overrun by the Wehrmacht . Lidov brewed better tea than he’d had there.

The NKVD man set down his glass. “To business,” he said. Jager leaned forward and looked attentive. Georg Schultz just sat where he was. Skorzeny slouched down in his chair and looked bored. If that disconcerted Lidov, he didn’t let it show.

“To business,” he repeated. “As the Hauptsturmfuhrer has suggested, the proposed action will take place in an area where the, fascist invaders had established themselves prior to the arrival of the alien imperialist aggressors commonly known as Lizards.”

Jager wondered if Lidov talked that way all the time. Skorzeny yawned. “By fascist invaders, I presume you mean us Germans.” He sounded as bored as he looked.

“You and your lackeys and running dogs, yes.” Maybe Lidov did talk that way all the time. However he talked, he didn’t retreat a centimeter, though Skorzeny could have broken him over his knee like a stick. “To resume, then: along with bands of gallant Soviet partisans, German remnant groups remain in the area under discussion. Thus the apparent expedience of a joint Soviet-German operation.”

“Where is the area in question?” Jager asked.

“Ah,” Lidov said. “Attend the map here, if you please.” He stood up, pointed to one of the charts tacked onto the wall. The lettering, of course, was Cyrillic, but Jager recognized the Ukraine anyhow. Red pins showed Soviet positions, blue ones surviving German units, and yellow the Lizards. The map had more yellow measles than Jager liked.

Lidov went on, “We are particularly concerned with this area north and west of Kiev, near the town of Komarin. There, early in the struggle against the Lizards, you Germans succeeded in wrecking with heavy artillery two major ships of the common enemy.”

That made Georg Schultz sit up straighter. So did Jager-it was news to him, too. Skorzeny said, “And so? This is no doubt excellent, but how does it concern us here?”

“In and around the wreckage of one of these ships, the Lizards appear to be making no more than an ordinary effort at salvage. This is emphatically not the case at the other.”

“Tell us about the second one, then,” Jager urged.

“Yes, that is what I was getting to, Major,” the NKVD man said. “We have reports from witnesses that the Lizards are operating as if in an area of poison gas, although no gas seems to be present. Not only do they wear masks, in fact, but also bulky full-body protective suits. You see the significance of this, I trust?”

“Ja,” Jager said absently. Except for helmets and sometimes body armor, Lizards didn’t wear clothes, if they felt they needed to be protected from something, whatever it was had to be pretty fierce. As for gas-he shivered a little as he remembered his own days in the trenches back in the first war. A gas mask was torment, made worth wearing only because it warded against worse.

“It is not gas, you say?” Skorzeny put in.

“No, definitely not,” Lidov answered. “There has been no problem due to wind or anything of that sort. The Lizards appear to be engaged in recovering certain chunks of metal strewn about over a wide area when their ship exploded. These are loaded into lorries which seem to be very heavy for their size, judging by the tracks they leave in dirt.”

“Armor-plated?” Jager asked.

“Possibly,” Lidov said. “Or possibly lead.”

Jager thought about that. Lead was good for plumbing, but for shielding? The only time he’d ever seen anyone use lead for shielding was when the fellow who’d X-rayed him after he was wounded put on a lead waistcoat before he took his pictures. He made a sudden connection-he’d heard inside these very Kremlin walls that the weapon which destroyed Berlin had had some sort of effect (not being a physicist, he didn’t know quite what) related to X rays.

He said, “Is this salvage related to these dreadful bombs the Lizards have?”

Skorzeny’s dark eyes widened. Lidov’s rather narrow ones, already constricted by a Tatar fold at their inner corners, now thinned further. In a voice silky with danger, he said, “Were you one of ours, Major Jager, I doubt you would long survive. You speak your thoughts too openly.”

Georg Schultz surged halfway out of his chair “You watch your mouth, you damned Red!”

Jager set a hand on the gunner’s shoulder, pushed him back into the seat. “Do remember where we are, Sergeant,” he said dryly.

“That is an excellent suggestion, Sergeant Schultz,” the NKVD man agreed. “Your loyalty does you credit, but it is foolish here.” He turned back to Jager. “You, Major, may be too clever for your own good.”

“Not necessarily.” Otto Skorzeny spoke up for the panzer officer. “That we are here, Lieutenant Colonel Lidov, that you have said even so much on this sensitive matter, argues that you need German assistance for whatever you have in mind. You shall not get it unless Major Jager here remains unharmed. You do need us, do you not?” In other circumstances, his smile would have been sweet. Now it mocked.

Lidov glared at him. Lieutenant Colonel Kraminov, who had let the other man do the talking till now, said, “You are right, worse luck, Herr Hauptsturmfuhrer. This area has only Russian partisans, no regular Red Army forces, as you Germans drove these out last fall. While brave enough, the partisans lack the heavy armament required to attack a Lizard lorry convoy. There are, however, also fragmentary Wehrmacht units in the area-”

“In regard to the Lizards, these are hardly more than partisan forces themselves,” Lidov interrupted. “But they do retain more arms than our own glorious and heroic partisans, that is true.” By his expression, the truth tasted bad in his mouth.

“Thus we suggest a joint undertaking,” Kraminov said. “You three will serve as our liaison with whatever German units remain north of Kiev. In the event we succeed in despoiling the convoy, our two governments will share equally in what we capture. Is it agreed?”

“How do we know you won’t keep everything for yourselves?” Schultz asked.

“You fascist aggressors were the ones who brutally violated the nonaggression pact the great Stalin generously granted to Hitler,” Lidov snapped. “We are the ones who tremble at the thought of trusting you.”