Tilting the Balance

“They wouldn’t have picked it if they did,” Jager answered. The plans hadn’t come out of the archives of the German General Staff, but from the Zeitschrift fur sudosteuropaischen Archaologie. Skorzeny found that vastly amusing, and called Jager “Herr Doktor Professor” every chance he got. But even Skorzeny had to admit that the quality of the plans couldn’t have been better had military engineers drafted them.

“I think you’re right,” the SS man said. “To them it’s just the strongest building in town, so naturally it’s where they moved in.”

“Yes.” Jager wondered if the Lizards had a concept of archaeology. Word filtering out of intelligence said they were conservative by nature (which he’d already discovered from fighting against them) and that they’d had their own culture as a going concern since the days when people were barbarians if not downright (and barely upright) savages. That made Jager think they wouldn’t reckon any building a mere millennium and a half old worth studying as a monument of antiquity.

“So, what are you, going to do about getting those cursed creatures out of there?” Marko Petrovic asked in fluent if accented German. The Croatian captain’s khaki uniform contrasted with the field gray the Germans wore. Even though Petrovic wore a uniform, being around him made Jager nervous-he seemed more bandit chief than officer. His thick black beard only added to the effect. It did not, however, completely conceal facial scars that made the one seaming Skorzeny’s cheek a mere scratch by comparison.

Skorzeny turned to the Croat and said, “Patience, my friend. We want to do the job properly, not just quickly.”

Petrovic scowled. His beard and scars made that scowl fearsome, but the look in his eye chilled Jager more. To Petrovic, it wasn’t just a military problem; he took it personally. That would make him a bold fighter, but a heedless one: Jager performed the evaluation as automatically as he breathed.

“What’s the complication?” the Croat demanded. “We’re in easy shelling range of the place now. We move in some artillery, open up, and-”

The idea of shelling a building that had stood since the start of the fourth century sickened Jager, but that wasn’t why he shook his head. “Artillery wouldn’t root them all out, Captain, and it would give them an excuse to expand their perimeter to take in these hills. They’re staying in town; I’d just as soon keep them down there as long as they’re willing to sit quietly.”

“You would not be bleating ‘patience’ if Split were a town in the Reich,” Petrovic said.

He had a point; Hitler waxed apoplectic over German territory lost. Jager was not about to admit that, though. He said, “We have a chance to drive them out, not just annoy them. I aim to make certain we don’t waste it.”

Petrovic glowered-like a lot of the, locals, he had a face that was made for glowering:, long and bony, with heavy eyebrows and deep set eyes-but subsided. Skorzeny swatted him on the back and said, “Don’t you worry. We’ll fix those miserable creatures for you.” He, sounded breezy and altogether confident.

If he convinced Petrovic, the Croat captain did a good job of hiding it. He said, “You Germans think you can do everything. You’d better be right this time, or-” He didn’t say or what, but walked off shaking his head.

Jager was glad he’d gone. “Some of these Croats are scary bastards,” he said in a low voice. Skorzeny nodded, and anyone who worried him enough for him to admit it was a very rugged customer indeed. Jager went on, “We’d better get the Lizards out of there, because if we don’t, Ante Pavelic and the Ustashi will be just as happy in bed with them as with us, as long as the Lizards let them go on killing Serbs and Jews and Bosnians and-”

“-all their other neighbors,” Skorzeny finished for him. He didn’t acknowledge that the Germans had done the same thing on a bigger scale all through the east. He couldn’t have been ignorant of that; he just deliberately didn’t think about it. Jager had seen that with other German officers. He’d been the same way himself, until he saw too much for him to ignore. To him, a lot of his colleagues seemed willfully blind.

Skorzeny pulled a flask off his belt, unstoppered it, took a healthy belt, and passed it to Jager. It. was vodka, made from potatoes that had died happy. Jager drank, too. “Zhiveli,” he said, one of the few words of Serbo-Croatian he’d picked up.

Skorzeny laughed. “That probably means something like ‘here’s hoping your sheep is a virgin,’ ” he said, which made Jager cough and choke. The SS man had another swig, then stowed the flask again. He glanced around with a skilled imitation of casual uninterest to make sure nobody but Jager was in earshot, then murmured, “I picked up something interesting n town yesterday.”

“Ah?” Jager said.