Himmler's War-ARC (27 page)

Afterwards, Varner was told many things, including the details of the death train and the fact that his wife and daughter were working on the Rhine Defenses.

He didn’t know which disturbed him more. The fact that the two women—Margarete clearly was no longer a girl—had seen such horrors as that train, or that they were in danger from Allied bombings while working. He made a note to try again to have them totally excused from their current assignments.

Later, after he and Magda had made love, they lay together in their bed. “I hope we didn’t wake anybody,” Ernst said and Magda giggled.

“Don’t worry. Eric and Bertha are at the other end of the house and they sleep like rocks. Margarete is no longer a little girl and I am reasonably confident she knows what goes on behind closed doors.”

Ernst laughed softly. “Did you see the way my pilot looked at her? My God, is this what the next few years are going to be like?”

“I just hope we have a few years in front of us,” Magda said wistfully.

He sighed. “I think I liked things they way they used to be. I still can’t believe that the idiot Detloff boy is nearby. I think I shall hurt his other knee for insulting my daughter.”

“
Our
daughter,” she corrected. “And she’s quite capable of taking care of herself. She can drive cars and small trucks, and Eric has taught her how to shoot his guns. The Ami’s come and we’ll be ready,” she said only half-jokingly.

Varner visualized a line of women and old men defending the Reich against vast numbers of American tanks and planes. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so close to reality.

“So how is the war coming?” she asked with forced casualness. He had tried to hint at the truth in his letters, using code words and phrases, but he couldn’t be too specific. Even though he was an OKW staff officer, the post office had the right to open his mail and turn anything suspicious over to the Gestapo, and candor could be defined as defeatist and suspicious.

“There may actually be a glimmer of light. With Herr Hitler no longer around to guide us with his catastrophic sense of brilliance, Himmler is letting the generals fight the war properly; thus, the Russian and American advances have been slowed dramatically. Winter will soon be upon us, which means that the Soviets will stop and the American will at best be slowed even more. All forecasts by the group of shaman who profess to understand the weather say that the winter will be colder and snowier than normal, and that will help us considerably since it will keep American planes on the ground and turn the roads into muck for their tanks.”

Magda sighed. “Which only means that the war will go on and on. What if it never ends? What if this is only the beginning of a new Hundred Years War?”

“I can’t argue with anything you said. However, I keep hearing rumors of a political and diplomatic solution. Perhaps a negotiated peace is not out of the question if the two sides become exhausted. First, however, we must resolve the Jewish question, although not necessarily in the way Hitler originally planned.”

He laughed harshly. “Perhaps we will ship them all to Palestine and let the British and the Arabs fight over them. At any rate, we have to get them out of the Reich for their own good and for the future of Germany. Hitler originally wanted to ship them to Madagascar. It’s a shame it didn’t occur.”

“Peace,” she sighed, “what a wonderful thought. And what is really happening about the Jews? Please tell me there aren’t trainloads of corpses rotting all over Germany.”

“I’m certain that utter bureaucratic stupidity caused that and other, similar situations. Unfortunately, nobody knew quite what to do with Jews already in transit when word came down to stop shipping them. They couldn’t be returned to their homes or the camps they’d come from, and no trains were supposed to deliver them to their destination camps. Somehow it’s been straightened out by the SS, although I’m certain I don’t want to know the details.”

She decided to change the subject. “When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

Too soon, she thought. But she knew better than to argue with him. She reached down below his belly, found her target, and stroked him. He reacted and hardened immediately. “Then we’d better make sure we don’t waste any more time,” she said, “and no, I don’t give a stinking damn if Margarete hears us or not.”

* * *

Andrey Vlasov had once been considered a rising young general in the Red Army. Then, a series of unfortunate events had resulted in his own forces being left stranded and overwhelmed by the Germans. Requests for support, and then rescue, had gone unheeded. Vlasov’s force had been destroyed and he’d been captured.

Furious, and realizing the callousness and ineptitude of the Soviet high command, he’d turned traitor and had gone over to the Germans. Now the former Soviet lieutenant general led an anti-Soviet force, called the Russian Liberation Army.

Vlasov understood Berlin’s reluctance to use his forces, now at nearly sixty-thousand men, in key areas. Simply put, if they’d changed sides once, what would stop them from doing it again? Time would vindicate them, he told his second in command, Sergei Bunyachenko, as they traded shots of vodka.

However, the actions of the Nazis against Russian civilians had upset him deeply. The Germans could have been welcomed as liberators, not conquerors, and their savagery had horrified him. It was one thing to be brutal to combatants, and he didn’t much give a damn what happened to the Jews, but the manner in which the SS in particular was treating Russian civilians was appalling and he was beginning to wonder if he had indeed made the right decision. Rape and massacre seemed to be the code of the SS, especially the
Totenkopf
divisions who fought with incredible savagery on the Russian front. He wondered why almost all the Reich’s SS divisions were now confronting the Soviets. Why had those divisions in France and elsewhere been moved to the Eastern Front? He felt that the answer was that the SS would fight with incredible savagery against Slavic peoples they didn’t think were human.

He looked across the table. Bunyachenko was nearly asleep. Vlasov was puzzled. Sergei hadn’t had all that much vodka and the man had the capacity of a bear. Perhaps it was because they had just eaten a good heavy meal, were tired, and that the room was warm? Yes, that must be it. They were in Berlin awaiting a meeting with von Rundstedt. The field marshal had said he wanted Vlasov’s army sent to Yugoslavia and Vlasov thought that might be a good idea. They would earn the OKW’s respect by putting down the civil war going on in that godforsaken country by squashing Tito’s partisan armies. He would succeed where the regular German Army had failed, thereby earning the German high command’s respect and gratitude.

Vlasov yawned. Damn, he was getting sleepy too. Bunyachenko’s head came down and rested gently on the table. Vlasov couldn’t keep awake. Dimly, he knew that something had gone terribly wrong, but what he couldn’t say. Nor could he think. Nor could he fight the sleepiness.

His last coherent thought before he lapsed into unconsciousness was the horrible realization that he’d been drugged and that he was looking at the face of Satan.

* * *

Now it was Jack’s turn to go looking for a missing friend. After his narrow scrape with the Panthers, Carter had simply walked away and hadn’t been seen in a couple of hours. His crew, all of whom had almost miraculously survived, saw him walking off with a bottle in his hand.

“And I don’t think it was Coca-Cola, sir,” said Carter’s driver. All but one of the crew would return to duty immediately, or as soon as they got another tank. One man had a broken arm and would be replaced, but the rest only suffered from bumps, bruises, and minor burns. The driver’s eyebrows were singed black, which made him look like he’d been made up to look like a tramp.

Jack and Levin easily picked up Carter’s trail. Other GI’s simply pointed them in the right direction and, soon enough, they found him sitting behind a stone fence, the bottle of cognac, now half empty, cradled in his arms.

“Want to talk?” Jack asked as they plopped down on either side of him. Jeb’s eyes were red and his face was flushed.

“I think I’m through,” Carter said. “How many more tanks can I lose and how many more men can I get killed or maimed? Next time it might be me. I can handle that, but what I can’t deal with is people dying on my behalf or because of my stupid mistakes.”

“What mistakes?” asked Levin.

“We fired too soon. If we’d waited until they were closer, we might have hurt them.”

Jack shook his head. He was hardly an expert on armored warfare, but he’d picked up a goodly amount of knowledge since joining the 74th. “It didn’t matter. They saw you and would have shot just as soon as they could, which, please recall, was only seconds after you opened up. If anything, your firing first might have rattled them.”

“Sure,” Carter snarled. “Of my four tanks, only two were destroyed and one, mine, badly damaged. Four men are dead and five others wounded badly enough to be sent back. Let’s face it. I fucked up.”

Levin took the bottle. “If you’re finished with this, I’ll take a turn.” He swallowed and passed the cognac to Jack who took a healthy snort. Hell, Jack thought, if Jeb wasn’t going to finish drinking it, somebody should.

“Jeb,” said Levin, “the problem is very simple. The Germans have better tanks with better guns and better armor. Someday, the powers that be will realize that and get us weapons that will match up better with the krauts. In the meantime, we do the best we can with what we have. You know as well as I do that we outnumber them in tanks by a huge margin. Ergo, we’ve got to get on Whiteside and Stoddard’s case to keep our Shermans together in large numbers so we can overwhelm the next batch of Panthers that comes down the pike.”

Carter wasn’t listening. His chin was down and his eyes were closed. “Nappy time,” said Levin.

“We better get him inside before he freezes to death,” said Jack. It was mid-October and they’d already seen brief flecks of snow.

They took him under the arms and gently propelled him into a medic’s tent. “That doesn’t look like a combat wound, sir,” the medic, a corporal said stiffly.

“He just lost three tanks and nine men, Corporal,” Jack responded, just a little testily.

The corporal was unfazed but a little more sympathetic. He saw the bottle and smiled. “Self medication often works quite well, Captain. Put him on that cot and we’ll take care of him.”

Jack handed the corporal the bottle. It was still about a quarter full. “For services rendered?”

* * *

Jessica wearily walked up the three flights of stairs to her apartment. Even though she’d worked up a little sweat, she still clutched the thin overcoat tightly. Paris in the spring and summer might be lovely, but Paris in the fall and impending winter was cold, damp, and drab.

She stopped when she saw the door was ajar. She walked slowly, wondering if burglars were inside and she should start running down the stairs, when Monique popped her head out. “Your turn,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “Tell them the truth. Tell them everything you know.” With that, she turned and began walking down the stairs, sobbing loudly and dramatically.

Jessica entered her apartment. Two army majors stood and introduced themselves as members of the OPMG, the Office of the Provost Marshal General. In short, they were cops. The taller introduced himself as Major Harmon and the shorter officer with dark curly hair was Major Pierce. The OPMG had checked her background before letting her join the Red Cross, which she’d thought was a ridiculous waste of time and effort.

Jessica sat down. After all, it was her apartment. “I assume you’re here about Monique’s friend.”

Harmon answered. He appeared to be the leader. “Sergeant Doyle, yes.”

She smiled. “It’s Boyle, major.”

Annoyed, the taller officer corrected something on his notes. “What do you know about Boyle, Miss Granville?”

“Very little. Monique met him when we were all stationed at Rennes. He works in supply and that’s about all I know about him. I did not socialize with him. He is, was, Monique’s friend.”

“Did he ever bring around any presents?” Pierce asked.

She shrugged. “Flowers, food, chocolates, some wine, and some cognac are all I can remember.”

Pierce persisted. “I mean anything truly expensive?”

Jessica laughed. “Look around. Do you see anything remotely expensive?”

Harmon smiled. “Good point. By the way, is Boyle paying for this place?”

“No, I am. I’m also quite sure you’re aware that my father is a lawyer, and that my uncle is on Ike’s staff.”

“Actually, he’s on Beetle Smith’s staff,” Harmon said, “which may be a distinction without a difference, and yes, we do know about your family. Our asking you these questions is just a formality. But we do have to cover all our bases.”

“Gentlemen, what concerns me is the level of interest you’re showing. Boyle told Monique that he was under suspicion of stealing something, but we both thought it was relatively petty. I’m beginning to think we were mistaken.”

Harmon took a deep breath. “Look, just about everyone in supply takes something and it’s generally used to make their lives more comfortable, rather than trying to make a huge profit.”

“Yeah,” Pierce said, “for instance, you’d be shocked, simply shocked, at how many bottles of liquor destined for officers’ clubs go missing, or how many sides of beef run off like they still had hooves, but, you’re right, this is different. Ever hear of penicillin?”

“A little. It’s supposed to be a wonder drug that kills almost all infections. It’s supposed to be saving a lot of lives of wounded soldiers.” Realization dawned. “Oh God.”

“That’s right,” Harmon said. “It’s extremely valuable and extremely expensive. Significant quantities of it have disappeared and Boyle’s involved. And a suitcase full of it could be worth many thousands of dollars, unlike a case of whisky or a side of beef.”

“Even worse,” Pierce added, “every little bit missing means some wounded GI isn’t the getting help he needs to recover from his wounds.”