Aftershocks (73 page)

In that case, Kanth and a good deal of the surrounding countryside would go up in radioactive fire. The Jews would have a measure of revenge on the
Reich,
and who could guess what would happen next?

He even understood why the Jews holed up in Kanth wanted their revenge. Before the
Gestapo
hauled Kãthe away, he didn’t think he would have. He hadn’t seen Jews as people till then, only as enemies of the
Reich.
But, considering what he felt toward the goddamn blackshirts, why shouldn’t they feel the same way, only more so? Sure as hell, Germany had given them reason enough.

And Mordechai Anielewicz hadn’t been anything but a husband and father trying to find his family, the same as Drucker himself had been doing. Christ, each of them had even named a son after the same man. Yes, Jews were people, no matter what the SS said.

But Drucker hated Anielewicz anyhow, not for himself but because, through the Jew, the Lizards had been able to ensnare him. If they told his superiors what they knew, he wouldn’t be able to protect Käthe any more.

He also hated Gorppet, and hoped the Jews had cut the miserable Lizard’s throat. For all he knew, they might have. Gorppet had gone into that house, but he hadn’t come out, any more than Anielewicz had.

Despite his loathing of the Race, Drucker found himself having to work through and with the Lizards. He couldn’t very well approach that house in Kanth himself, not in his fancy new major general’s uniform. That would be all the Jewish terrorists needed. They’d set off their bomb just for the fun of blowing up a high-ranking Nazi. Hell, in their shoes he would have done the same thing.

Since he couldn’t approach the Jews, he went into the tent where Gorppet’s superior, a male named Hozzanet, was still working. Another Lizard was talking with Hozzanet, one whose style of body paint he recognized. “I greet you, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” he said—talking with that one was bound to be more interesting than talking with the male from Security.

The Lizard to whom he’d spoken swung a startled eye turret in his direction and asked, “How is it that you know what my body paint means?”

“I have also flown in space, as pilot of the upper stage of an A-45,” Drucker answered. “I tried to destroy one of your starships, but I did not quite succeed.” Since he did not think he had met the pilot before, he also gave his name.

To his surprise, the Lizard said, “Oh, I remember you. I was the shuttlecraft pilot who flew you back to Nuremberg after you were released from captivity. I am Nesseref.”

“Are you?” Drucker said, and knew that sounded foolish as soon as it came out of his mouth. “We have a saying in my language: small world, is it not?”

“So it would seem,” Nesseref said. “It is small enough. I am given to understand that we share Mordechai Anielewicz as a friend.”

“As an acquaintance, at any rate,” Drucker said, though he wondered why he bothered splitting hairs. His acquaintanceship with the Jew was close enough to let the Lizards squeeze him because of it. If that didn’t make it friendship, it came close enough. He asked, “And how did you become acquainted with Anielewicz?”

“My home is in Poland,” the Lizard answered. He—no, she, Drucker recalled—went on, “We met quite by chance, but found we liked each other. That is how any friendship between two individuals begins. Is it not a truth?”

“I suppose so,” Drucker said. “The question now is, what can we do to help him stop the terrorists from setting off that bomb?”

“Truth,” Nesseref said, and Hozzanet echoed her.

The male from Security went on, “I know that your government now perceives we were not responsible for allowing the terrorists to enter the
Reich
with this bomb. We did not give it to them. In fact, as you will recall, it is of Deutsch manufacture.”

But Drucker shook his head. Walter Dornberger had given him specific instructions on this point. “The Jews are your puppets. You let them keep the bomb for all those years. If they use it against us, we shall hold you responsible for that act of war against the
Reich.”

“You would fight us again?” Hozzanet demanded. “You truly would, in view of what happened the last time?”

“I can only tell you what my
Führer
tells me,” Drucker answered. “We are an independent not-empire even now, and you may not treat us as if we were of no account.”

“If you fight us again, you shall be of no account,” Hozzanet said. “Can you not see that? Whatever you try to do to us, we shall do to you tenfold.”

Back during the Second World War, before the Lizards came, the Germans had always said they would punish their foes ten times harder than they were hurt. Hearing that phrase aimed at the
Reich
made Drucker wince, especially since he knew the Lizards could so readily carry out their threat. Nevertheless, he spoke as he’d been ordered to speak: “But we will also hurt you again. You know we can. How soon will you be weaker than the Americans and the Russians?”

He knew a good deal about Lizards. He didn’t watch Hozzanet’s face. He watched the tip of the Lizard’s stumpy little tail. Sure enough, it quivered. That meant Hozzanet was upset. The male made a good game effort not to show it, though, saying, “First, the
Reich
does not have the power to do that to us. Second, regardless of any other concerns, none of you Deutsche would be here to learn the answer to that question.”

Dornberger had foretold that he would say something like that. The former engineer and commandant at Peenemünde was shaping as an effective
Führer—
as effective as he could be in a crippled
Reich.
Just as in a well-planned chess opening, Drucker had the next move waiting: “Do you think we are unprepared to sacrifice ourselves now so that Tosevites triumph in the end?”

Hozzanet’s tailstump quivered again. But the Lizard said, “To be perfectly frank, yes. That is exactly what I think. You Big Uglies are very seldom able to think or plan for the long term. Why should this occasion be any different?”

He had a point. Drucker did his best not to acknowledge it, saying, “Precisely because we have so little to lose.”

“Any individual’s life is a lot to lose,” Nesseref put in. “No one can lose anything more important.”

That was sensible. Drucker somehow wasn’t surprised. Anyone who flew into space had to have good sense. Otherwise, you ended up dead before you got the chance to gain much experience.

Hozzanet said, “Let me see if I understand something. The
Reich
is interested in attacking this house in Kanth, to attempt to put the Jewish Tosevites out of action before they can detonate the bomb.”

“That is a truth,” Drucker agreed.

“But if you try this attack and fail, so that the bomb detonates, you will blame the Race,” the Lizard persisted.

“That is also a truth,” Drucker said.

“How can both these things be true at once?” Hozzanet demanded. “How can you blame us if your assault fails?”

“Because we should not even have to consider the possibility of making an assault,” Drucker answered. “Because these Tosevites had no business having a bomb in the first place, let alone smuggling it into the
Reich.
That they had it and that they could smuggle it are both the fault of the Race.”

“Whose fault is it that these Tosevites hate the
Reich
so much?” Hozzanet said. “Whose fault is it that Poland was attacked, which created the chaos that let them move the bomb? Both these things are the fault of the
Reich.”

He was probably right about that. No: he was certainly right about that. But Drucker said, “I have stated the
Führer’s
views on the matter.”

“So you have,” Hozzanet said sourly. “The Race’s view is that they are foolish and irresponsible. The Race’s view is also that, if you will blame us for the failure, you shall not be allowed to make the attempt.”

“I protest, in the name of my government,” Drucker said.

“Protest all you please,” Hozzanet replied. “I tell you, this thing shall
not
be done.” He added an emphatic cough. “I tell you also that, if your government launches combat aircraft, we shall do everything in our power to shoot them down before they can attack Kanth.”

“What you are saying, then, is that the
Reich
is depending on a male of the Race and a Jew to save it from this explosive-metal bomb,” Drucker said. Before either Lizard could speak, he held up a hand to show he hadn’t finished. “I have seen that not everything my government has said about the Jews is true. But Anielewicz has reason to hate us, not to wish us well.”

“When Gorppet called him, Anielewicz could have let these other Jewish Tosevites detonate their bomb and punish the
Reich,”
Hozzanet said. “He did not. He came here to try to stop them. You should remember that.”

By the nature of things, Hozzanet couldn’t know about the parable that spoke of the Pharisee who passed on the other side of the road and the good Samaritan who stopped to help a man in need. Even without knowing it, though, he got the message across.

And, just in case he hadn’t, Nesseref drove it home: “These other Jews, the ones with the bomb, hate the
Reich
more than Mordechai Anielewicz does. If that were not true, he would not have come here at all.”

Drucker suspected Anielewicz worried more about further damage to Poland than about damage to the
Reich.
In Anielewicz’s place, he suspected he would have felt the same way. But that didn’t make the Lizards wrong. With a stiff nod, Drucker said, “I shall report your words to the
Führer.”

He went back to the German encampment alongside that of the Race and telephoned Walter Dornberger. After he’d given his old commander the meat of the conversation with the two Lizards, Dornberger let out a long sigh. “What you’re telling me, Hans,” the
Führer
said, “is that we have to rely on this Jew? There’s more irony in that than I really want to stomach.”

“I understand, sir. I feel the same way, pretty much,” Drucker replied. “But I don’t think Anielewicz will leave Kanth alive without getting those terrorists to give up their bomb. The Lizards seem sure he’ll do everything he can.” He didn’t want to let Dornberger know he knew the Jew well enough to have his own opinion.

“But will it be enough?” Dornberger demanded.

“Right now, sir, we can only hope,” Drucker said. He also suspected he hoped even more urgently than the
Führer
did. Walter Dornberger, after all, was back in Flensburg. He wouldn’t turn to radioactive dust if something went wrong here in Kanth.
But I will,
Drucker thought.
Dammit, I will.

There were, Mordechai Anielewicz thought, nine Jews holed up with the explosive-metal bomb. That was enough to let them have plenty of guards for him, for any other captives they might have, and for the bomb itself. In the end, though, the probably nine boiled down to only one: the Jews’ leader, a fellow named Benjamin Rubin. Mordechai knew that, if he could reach Rubin, everything else would follow.

But could he reach him? For a long time, Rubin hadn’t even wanted to talk to him. Nobody’d wanted to talk to him. He counted himself lucky that the Jews hadn’t just shot him and tossed his body out on the porch as a warning to anyone else rash enough to think about talking to them.

At first, he’d thought they were going to do exactly that. Nobody called him anything but “traitor” till he’d been there for several days. Finally, that made him lose his temper. “I fought the Nazis before most of you
mamzrim
were born,” he snapped at one of the trigger-happy young Jews who reluctantly came in pairs to bring him food. “I killed Otto Skorzeny and kept him from blowing up Lodz with the bomb you’re sitting on now. And you call me a traitor?
Geh kak afen yam.”

That could have got him shot, too. Instead, it got him what he’d hoped it might: a chance to talk with Benjamin Rubin. He didn’t know Rubin well; the fellow hadn’t been any kind of bigwig till he hijacked the bomb. But he was now. One of the toughs who followed him led Mordechai into his presence as if into that of a rabbi renowned for his holiness.

Rubin didn’t look like a rabbi. He looked like a doctor. He was thin and pale and precise, about as far removed as possible from the ruffians he led. “So you want to convince me I’m wrong, do you?” he said, and folded his arms across his chest. “Go ahead. I’m waiting.”

“I don’t think I need to convince you,” Anielewicz said. “I think you see it, too. The way it looks to me, you just don’t want to admit it to yourself.”

Benjamin Rubin scowled. “You’d better come to the point in a hurry, or I’ll decide you haven’t got one.”

“Fair enough.” Mordechai hoped he sounded more cheerful than he felt. He was doing his best. “Suppose you blow up Kanth. What have you got? A few thousand Germans at the outside. I wouldn’t bet on even that many, though—they’re sneaking away every chance they get. Hardly seems worthwhile, for an explosive-metal bomb.”

“We were heading for Dresden,” Rubin said petulantly. “The truck kept breaking down. That’s how we ended up here.”

“Too bad.” Now Anielewicz did his best to simulate sympathy. “But you could do things in—and to—Dresden you can’t even think about here.”

“Maybe. But we’ve still got the bomb, and we can still do plenty with it, even if it’s not so much as we hoped.” Rubin nodded, as if reassuring himself. “I can die happy, knowing what I’ve done to the damned Nazis.”

“And what will the damned Nazis do once you’re dead?” Mordechai asked. “They’ll hit back with whatever they’ve got left, that’s what. How many Jews in Poland are going to die on account of your stupidity?”

“None,” replied the Jewish leader who’d stolen the bomb. “Not a single one. The Germans know what will happen to them if they try anything like that again.”

Anielewicz laughed in his face. Rubin looked astounded. None of his henchmen would have done anything so rude. Maybe, having henchmen, he’d forgotten there were people who didn’t think so well of him. Mordechai said, “You’re here. You’re willing to die to take revenge on the Nazis. You think there won’t be plenty of Nazis willing to die to take revenge on a pack of kikes?”