Tilting the Balance

“The strategy, yes.” Jager didn’t say that he marveled at an SS man’s having trouble stomaching anything. Word had trickled through the Wehrmacht that the Croat allies, puppets, whatever you wanted to call them, took their fascism-to say nothing of their blood feuds-very seriously indeed. Maybe Skorzeny s admission was proof of that Jager went on, “I still don’t see what it has to do with me, though.”

Skorzeny looked like a fisherman trying out a new lure. “Suppose I were to tell you-and I can, because it’s true-the main Lizard base in Croatia is just outside Split. What would that mean to you?”

“Diocletian’s palace,” Jager answered without a moment’s hesitation. “I even visited there once, on holiday eight or ten years ago. Hell of an impressive building even after better than sixteen hundred years.”

I know you visited, the report you wrote probably went into the operational planning for Operation Strafgericht. Strafgericht indeed; we punished the Yugoslavs properly for ducking out of their alliance with us. But that’s by the way. What counts is that you know the area, and not just from that visit but from study as well. That’s why I say you could be very useful to me.”

“You’re not planning on blowing up the palace, are you?” Jager asked with sudden anxiety Monuments suffered in wartime; that couldn’t be helped. He’d seen enough Russian churches in flames during Barbarossa, but a Russian church didn’t carry the same weight for him as a Roman Emperor’s palace.

“I will if I have to,” Skorzeny said. “I understand what you’re saying, Jager, but if you’re going to let that kind of attitude hold you back, then I’ve made a mistake and you’re the wrong fellow for the job.”

“I may be anyhow. I’ve got a regiment waiting for me south of Belfort, remember.”

“You’re a good panzer man, Jager, but you’re not a genius panzer man,” Skorzeny said. “The regiment will do well enough under someone else. For me, though, your special knowledge would truly come in handy. Do I tempt you, or not?”

Jager rubbed his chin. He had no doubt Skorzeny could cut through the chain of command and get him reassigned: he’d pulled off enough coups for the brass to listen to him. The question was, did he want to go on fighting the same old war himself or try something new?

“Buy me another schnapps,” he said, to Skorzeny.

The SS colonel grinned. “You want me to get you drunk first, so you can say you didn’t know what I was doing when I had my way with you? All right, Jager, I’ll play.” He strode to the bar.

Lieutenant General Kurt Chill turned a sardonic eye on his Soviet opposite numbers-or maybe, George Bagnall thought, it was just the effect the torches that blazed in the Pskov Krom created. But no, the general’s German was sardonic, too: “I trust, gentlemen, we can create a united front for the defense of Pleskau? This would have been desirable before, but cooperation has unfortunately proved limited.”

The two Russian partisan leaders, Nikolai Vasiliev and Aleksandr German, stirred in their seats. Aleksandr German spoke Yiddish as well as Russian, and so followed Chill’s words well enough. He said, “Call our city by its proper name, not the one you Nazis hung on it. Cooperation? Ha! You at least had that much courtesy before.”

Bagnall, whose German was imperfect, frowned as he tried to keep track of the Jewish partisan leader’s Yiddish. Vasiliev had no Yiddish or German; he had to wait until an interpreter finished murmuring in his ear. Then he boomed “Da!” and followed it up with a spate of incomprehensible Russian.

The interpreter performed his office: “Brigadier Vasiliev also rejects the use of the term ‘united front.’ It is properly applied to unions of progressive organizations, not associations with reactionary causes.”

Beside Bagnall, Jerome Jones whistled under his breath. “He shaded that translation. ‘Fascist jackals’ is really what Vasiliev called the Nazis.”

“Why does this not surprise me?” Bagnall whispered back. “If you want to know what I think, that they’ve come back to calling each other names instead of trying to kill each other is progress.”

“Something to that,” Jones said.

He started to add more, but Chill was speaking again: “If we do not join together now, whatever the name of that union may be, what we call this city will matter no more. The Lizards will give it their own name.”

“And how do we stop that?” As usual, German got his comment in a beat ahead of Vasiliev.

The Russian partisan leader amplified what his comrade had said: “Yes, how do we dare put our men on the same firing line as yours without fearing they’ll be shot in the back?”

“The same way I dare put Wehrmacht men into line alongside yours,” Chill said: “by remembering the enemy is worse. As for being shot in the back, how many Red Army units went into action with NKVD men behind them to make sure they were properly heroic?”