Last Orders: The War That Came Early (51 page)

“If somebody called me a shitheeled bumpkin, I don’t know that I’d want to stay in the same country with him,” Halévy observed.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Like most other Czechs, Vaclav knew in his bones that his Slovak cousins damn well
were
hayseeds straight off the farm. Anyone who listened to their back-country accent for longer than five seconds would say the same thing. Anyone who knew how the Hungarians sat on them for generations and didn’t let them even
learn to count further than they could on their toes would, too. Benjamin Halévy didn’t know any of that, as Vaclav pointed out: “You grew up in Paris.”

“Why don’t you say ‘You damned Jew’ and hand me my yellow star, too?” Halévy asked, a sardonic glint in his eye.

“That’s not what I was talking about. I know what you’re worth. I’ve seen it.” Vaclav turned his head, hawked, and spat. “I know what Father Tiso’s worth, too—not even that much.”

“All right.” Halévy stopped. He shook his head. “No. It’s not all right. I’m sorry, Vaclav, but it’s not. I know what you’re worth, too. You’re a hell of a good man. But when you start telling me that anybody—anybody at all—is this, that, or the other thing because he’s a Slovak or a Jew or a German or a Chinaman or a Mexican or, or anything, you know what you’re doing? You’re doing Hitler’s work for him, that’s what.”

Vaclav chewed on that for a few seconds. He found he didn’t much care for the taste. He tried to spread it around by sharing it: “Tell me you never made fun of the Spaniards that way.”

“Oh, I’m as bad as the next
con
,” Halévy said. “We all are. People need other people to make fun of. I try not to be too much worse than the next
con
, though. I can shoot for that much.”

Vaclav did some more chewing. Once he’d swallowed his next cud of thought, he said, “I guess it’s like trying to live a Christian life but not trying to be just like Jesus. That’s too much to ask of anybody.”

“I expect it would be something like that.” The Jew grinned crookedly. “Not that I’d know personally, you understand.”

“Sure,” Jezek said. They both chuckled. Vaclav lit a Gauloise. After a thoughtful puff, he went on, “You know what? Next to what they smoke in Spain, these fuckers are mild. Who would have imagined that?”

“Let me have one,” Halévy said. After Vaclav did, he made his own comparison. “Damned if you’re not right. I always used to think Gauloises were two parts phosgene and one part mustard gas. Now they don’t seem so bad.” He stuck out his tongue and tried to stare down at it. The effort made his eyes cross. “I must have had all my taste buds shot off.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised.” But the jokes went only so far. After Vaclav had tossed away the butt, he said, “I’m still going to end up a man without a country. All of us here in the line are. You can see that coming, sure as shit. We’ve been fighting the goddamn Germans since 1938. Even if we promise to be nice boys, you think any German government’ll let us back in?”

“Odds aren’t good,” Halévy admitted.

“Too fucking right, they’re not,” Vaclav said. “And I don’t want to live in Böhmen und Mahren, anyway.” He freighted the German names for Bohemia and Moravia with as much disgust as they would carry, and then some more besides. “I want Czechoslovakia back, dammit!”

“Complete with Slovaks? Complete with Sudeten Germans?”

“Rrr.” Vaclav didn’t like thinking that his former homeland made a proper country only if everyone who lived in it agreed that it should. The Germans mostly lived in the mountainous fringes of Bohemia and Moravia, the regions that made what had been Czechoslovakia defensible. The Slovaks filled most of the eastern third. And that didn’t even worry about the Ruthenians or the Magyars or …

“I know it isn’t right. I know it isn’t fair.” Now that Halévy had made his point, he did his best to sound sympathetic, even sorry. “But making peace now is like trying to unscramble eggs after you’ve dropped about two dozen of them into the pan over a hot fire.”

“The Germans will pull out of Belgium and Holland. They’ll pull out of Russia. They’ll pull out of the countries up north. They won’t pull out of Czechoslovakia. They’ll just keep fucking us over and over. What am I supposed to do? Find a little war in South America or somewhere that needs a sniper with an antitank rifle? Killing people’s almost the only thing I know how to do any more.”

He wondered if he could get into Poland with his Spanish passport, with or without the antitank rifle. If he could, he might be able to sneak over the border into his native land. The Sudeten Germans hadn’t wanted to be part of Czechoslovakia, and look how miserable they’d made life for the government. The Czechs wouldn’t want to be part of Germany, so they’d probably try to make life miserable for their overlords, too.

He might be able to help. He might even have some fun helping. Soldiering taught you all kinds of evil tricks. Odds were the Germans would catch up with him sooner or later. He knew that, but he hardly cared. Why should he? He’d been living on borrowed time for years.

“Moscow speaking.” The voice that came out of the radio sounded important and self-satisfied, as if the person doing the talking had just had a good dinner served to him by pretty girls not wearing much. It wasn’t always the same newsreader, but it was always the same tone. Anastas Mouradian didn’t care for it. He never had.

He’d never let on, either. Whom could you trust with an opinion like that? No one, not if you had any sense. The Mouradians had their flaws, but stupidity wasn’t one of them.

“General Secretary Stalin has announced the incorporation of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, and the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic into our glorious Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, bringing the number of constituent republics to fifteen,” the announcer said. “The General Secretary has also announced that Polish Marshal Smigly-Ridz has agreed to cede the city of Vilno and the surrounding territory to the USSR. As Lithuanians are the largest element in the territory population, our magnificent General Secretary and the Politburo have determined that it should be added to the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic.”

The Politburo, Stas noted, wasn’t magnificent. Well, how surprising was that? The Politburo might possibly have the authority to sneeze without Stalin’s permission. It couldn’t wipe the snot off its upper lip, though, unless the General Secretary countersigned the order.

“Thus the Soviet Union brings the war against reactionary imperialist and Fascist aggression to a triumphant conclusion,” the newsreader declared. Stas wondered how many times he’d had to practice reading that so he could bring it out without bursting into wild giggles.

He glanced over at Isa Mogamedov, who also listened to the news in the officers’ tent. Nothing on the Azeri’s swarthy face showed he wasn’t giving the report the grave attention it deserved. If he was sneering inside, he’d learned to do it so it didn’t show.

Well, so have I
, Stas thought. Not a raised eyebrow or a flared nostril betrayed what was going on inside his head. He didn’t let out his own wild giggles and roll around on the bench clutching his sides, either. Sure enough, he was a disciplined fighting man.

He had to be. A triumphant conclusion? For the sake of a third-rate city that had been Polish, and for the sake of three new Soviet Republics whose people undoubtedly wanted nothing to do with the USSR, that nation had seen Byelorussia, much of the Ukraine, and the RSFSR almost to Smolensk devastated by years of attacks and counterattacks. They would be more years getting back on their feet, if they ever did. Millions had died, probably as many as in the last war. Millions more were maimed. Millions more still had lost their homes, their livestock, their livelihoods …

The most you could say was that what they had was better than defeat, that Hitler’s panzers might have rolled through Smolensk and even through Moscow, and that nothing would be left of the Soviet Union if that had happened. That was absolutely the most you could say, and if the newsreader had dared to say it the NKVD would have dragged him away—or perhaps shot him right on the air—before he could have finished getting the words out of his mouth.

As the newsreader had to do if he wanted to go back to his wife and children (and as his pompous voice suggested he wanted to do anyhow), he stuck to the script his minders had handed him: “Now that the war in the west has concluded, the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union can begin to reconsider some of the harsher and more unjust terms in the armistice imposed on us by the Empire of Japan.”

That made heads come up all over the officers’ tent. Everybody stared at the radio. So General Secretary Stalin wasn’t going to let Japan get away with swiping Vladivostok, eh? That earlier war hadn’t had anything like a triumphal conclusion.

Stas didn’t know how smart Stalin really was; he’d never been in a position to find out. He did figure the Georgian was no dope. Stalin wouldn’t have lived to rise to the top in the dog-eat-dog world of the Party after the Revolution had he been stupid.

Stalin also had sense enough not to choose more than one foreign foe at a time. He’d taken his lumps and liquidated his war with Japan
when the fight against Germany heated up. Now that he wasn’t battling the Fritzes for survival any more, he could start thinking about the Russian Far East again. Yes, he was shrewd.

He’d run things more shrewdly than Hitler had—no two ways about that. Go to war with France and England? Fine! Go to war with France and England and the USSR? Fine! Declare war on the USA while you were at war with France and England and the USSR? Fine!

Except it wasn’t fine. Even Hitler’s generals had finally figured that out … which was why the Salvation Committee ran Germany right now and the
Führer
lay unhappily in some nameless grave. If you took on the two biggest industrial powers in the world, the pair of them with four times your population, your story wouldn’t have a happy ending even with England and France on your side. With them against you, too, you were …

Kaputt
. A useful German word.

“The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America were allies at the end of the fight against Hitlerite Germany. In fact, that alliance is not the smallest reason the Germans overthrew their bloodthirsty tyrant,” the newsreader said. Since Stas had just been thinking the same thing, he couldn’t even disagree with the man. What was the world coming to? The broadcaster continued, “Now the USSR and the USA both find themselves with grievances against Japan. Working cooperatively, they will be able to stretch the Japanese to the breaking point—and beyond.”

That might even be true, too. What was wrong with the newsreader, anyway? From what Stas was able to gather, the Americans’ naval war against Japan in the Pacific hadn’t always gone their way. Now, though, they’d taken back that island, Halfway or whatever it was called. They could build ships the way Russia built tanks.

And if they kept Japan busy at sea, and if China kept swarms of Japanese ground troops tied down, the Hammer and Sickle might yet fly over Vladivostok again. General Secretary Stalin might be able to have his newsreaders boast about bringing another war to a triumphal conclusion without blushing too much while they did it.

“I flew against the Japanese in the Far East for a while,” Mouradian remarked to Isa Mogamedov.

The Azeri nodded. “Yes, you’ve said so before. What was it like?”

“Well, there was the time when I was walking over to see some planes and the officer who’d been in those parts longer warned me to keep an eye open for tigers,” Stas said. That made Mogamedov sit up and take notice, all right. Stas went on, “And it was cold.” He shivered, remembering. “Cold enough to make the worst winter day this side of the Urals seem like springtime.” He did his best to impersonate a Russian: “Cold enough to freeze the Devil’s asshole shut.”

Mogamedov’s off-key chuckle told him his best wasn’t good enough. “Not eager to go back there, you’re telling me?”

Stas shrugged. “I serve the Soviet Union! But if the Soviet Union wants me to serve it somewhere warmer, I won’t apply for a transfer to Khabarovsk. Like I said, still tigers in the woods over there, too.”

“And Japs,” Mogamedov added.

“Yes. And Japs,” Stas agreed. “But if the Japs kill me, they won’t eat me—or I don’t think they will.” He knew a lot of what he thought he knew about Japan was Soviet propaganda. He wasn’t so sure where, if anywhere, that stopped and something resembling truth started.

The newsreader began bragging about Stakhanovite shock workers shattering aluminum-production norms. A vodka bottle came by. Stas swigged from it. No, he didn’t usually drink like a Russian, but when you listened to hot air like that, what else were you going to do?

Poker. Craps. Acey-deucy. Poker. Baseball. Craps. Poker. Chow. Sleep. Poker. Life on Midway.

Oh, and there was the radio. Some of the Marines there clung to it as a lifeline to the wider world they were no longer allowed to touch for themselves. Most of the time, Pete McGill steered clear of it. As far as he was concerned, it hurt more than it helped.

So he was one of the last to hear that the USA and Russia had agreed to an alliance against the Japs. When he did hear, he had trouble getting excited about it. “What good does that do us? We’re still
fucking stuck here on this shitty sandbox,” he told the poker buddy who gave him the news. After a moment, he tossed a sawbuck into the pot. “Call.”

The other Marine laid down three eights. Grinning, Pete showed him three tens. The other guy said something about his mother. At another time, in a different place, Pete would have tried to knock his block off, or maybe to murder him. On Midway, nobody had anything to spend money on, so it didn’t seem to be worth much. Insults were devalued the same way. They’d used the ordinary ones so often, everybody ignored them. Ranking someone’s mother over a medium-sized poker hand was like blowing a C-note on a cup of coffee. The Marines did it all the time, and didn’t worry about it.

After collecting his money, Pete said, “I don’t wanna end up here for the duration. I want to go out and kill Japs, goddammit.”