The Man with the Iron Heart

XI

Sometimes you stepped on a dog turd and came out smelling like a rose. Sometimes the bread landed butter side up. Sometimes, even in the newspaper game, you had to go easy on the cliches and just write.

When the Army booted Tom Schmidt out of Germany, he’d been afraid he would have to quit reporting and find a real job. If he didn’t have to go that far, he’d figured he would end up on a weekly in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that never got word of his fall from journalistic grace.

He’d been doing what he thought was right when he passed on the fanatics’ film of luckless Private Cunningham. He’d had the nasty feeling that would make him a villain to almost everyone outside the news business. To his surprise, he turned out to be wrong. A startling-and growing, which was even more startling-number of people back in the USA were loudly calling for President Truman to bring all the GIs home from Germany. They weren’t always people he was comfortable with, but he was in no position to be choosy.

He was, for instance, a staunch New Dealer. The Chicago Tribune had gone after FDR from the minute he got nominated to run against Hoover. The Tribune showed no signs of letting up on Democrats just because a new fanny sat in the Oval Office swivel chair, either. But when it offered him a slot in Washington at twice the money he’d been making before he had to come home, how could he say no?

He couldn’t. He didn’t even try. He had no trouble snagging an apartment in Washington. Now that the war was over, or mostly over, or whatever it was, more people flowed out of the capital than came in. His landlord was almost pathetically eager to have him.

He didn’t have much trouble finding a replacement for Ilse, either. An awful lot of people left in Babylon by the Potomac were secretaries and clerk-typists. Making connections wasn’t hard. Myrtle was more expensive than Ilse; she wouldn’t put out for K-rations. What the hell? You couldn’t have everything.

When Tom applied for a White House press credential, he wondered if the flunkies there would tell him to fold it till it was all corners and then stuff it. But, after one of them made a phone call to a higher-up, everything went snicker-snack.

“Thanks,” he said, wondering how his vorpal blade managed to slice through red tape.

“It ain’t your pretty face, buddy,” the press secretary’s subordinate replied. “If we turned you down, how much crap would you crank out about how we were stifling free expression? So we won’t stifle it. You want to ask the President questions, go ahead. Five gets you ten he spits in your eye.”

Roosevelt had been a gentleman right down to his paralyzed toes. From what Tom heard, Harry Truman was anything but. If he thought you were a son of a bitch, he’d call you one. Well, it made for good copy. “I’ll take my chances,” Tom said.

“You sure will.” The other man sounded as if he looked forward to it.

If Truman cussed him out…Tom had been cussed out by experts. You couldn’t quote a President cussing-there were unwritten rules about such things, as there were about reporting on, say, a Senator’s lady friends-but you could probably get the idea across one way or another.

Tom’s chance came on a blustery day in the middle of January. He presented his pass at the front gate of the White House, wondering if the guards would turn him away at the last minute. But they didn’t. One of them said, “Lucky stiff-you get to go inside. Goddamn cold out here.”

They wouldn’t have had anything to complain about in the White House press room. Tom figured he’d come out as a ham: thoroughly cooked, and just as thoroughly smoked. His own Old Gold added only a little to the tobacco haze. Truman’s press secretary came in and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.” Charlie Ross was a longtime Missouri newspaper man. He was an even longer-time friend of Truman’s; they’d gone to high school together. Rawboned, with a lock of gray hair that flopped down onto his forehead, he stood several inches taller than the President.

But Truman ran the show. He bustled in and started sassing several correspondents he knew well. They returned fire. Truman wasn’t Stalin-giving him a hard time wouldn’t cost you your head. He looked out over the crowd of reporters. When his eyes met Tom’s, he said, “Haven’t seen you here before. You new?”

“Yes, sir. Tom Schmidt, from the Chicago Tribune.”

“Oh. You’re him.” Truman looked as if somebody’d just farted. “Charlie wanted to give you the bum’s rush, but I said no. You don’t have to go sneaking around any more, Mr. Schmidt. If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face. Believe me, I can take the heat.”

“Thanks, Mr. President,” Tom said. “I wouldn’t’ve had to sneak if your people in Germany weren’t hiding how badly things are going there.”

“They’re still fighting in Germany, Mr. Schmidt, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Truman said tartly. “We don’t want to spread information that can help the fanatics.” He might be tart, but he was also smart: he didn’t use the word war. The war, after all, was over.

Sure it is, Tom thought. “Well, yes, sir,” he replied. “But since the Nazis were the ones who kidnapped that poor GI and then filmed him, don’t you think they already knew what was going on?”

Truman glowered at him over the tops of his metal-rimmed glasses. Tom felt as if he were getting grilled by his principal after some high-school scrape. No doubt the President wanted him to feel just that way. “During the War Between the States, Abe Lincoln asked why he had to order a young deserter shot but let the clever so-and-so who conned him into deserting go free,” Truman said. “All these years later, it’s still a damn good question. Or don’t you think morale matters?” He skated around war again.

“Of course I do, Mr. President,” Tom said. “But I think truth matters, too. Or what are we fighting for? Hitler was the one who went in for the big lie.”

Truman’s nostrils flared as he snorted angrily. “I suppose you think we should have pointed a big arrow with neon lights at the Normandy beaches and run up a billboard that said ‘We’re going to invade here.’ Some things need to be kept secret, that’s all. Go ahead-tell me I’m wrong.”

“Not me.” Tom shook his head. “But you can hide anything you want behind that kind of smoke screen. Like I said, we weren’t keeping this from the Nazis. We were keeping it from our own people. I don’t think that’s right.”

“Heydrich’s so-and-so’s didn’t snatch Private Cunningham because they figured we’d yield to those demands they made him mouth,” Truman snapped. “They released that movie because they wanted to confuse decent Americans and to scare them. Schrechlichkeit, they call it. Frightfulness. We tried to suppress it to keep that from happening-at my order, in case you’re wondering. But you played straight into their murderous hands. Thank you one hell of a lot, Mr. Schmidt. I hope you’re proud.”

Tom had thought the President would say his commanders in Germany had made the decision and he backed them because they were the experts and they were on the spot. Something like that, anyhow. But Harry Truman didn’t seem to work that way. He’d done what he’d done, and he was ready to argue about it. Right or wrong, he had the courage of his convictions.

“And now I’ve wasted enough time on you,” he continued. “Too much time, to tell you the truth. Let’s get back to business. Who else has got a question for me?” Hands shot into the air. Truman pointed at a heavyset bald man. “Drew?”

“How long can we keep troops in Germany if the American people decide they don’t want to any more?” Drew Pearson asked.

If the look the President sent him didn’t scream Et tu, Brute? Tom had never seen one that did. “Since I don’t believe the American people are going to decide any such thing, that isn’t worth answering,” Truman said.

“Diana McGraw will tell you you’re wrong, sir,” Pearson responded.

“I respect Diana McGraw. I sympathize with her, too, and with all the good people who’ve lost loved ones because of Heydrich’s fanatics. Hitler called Heydrich the man with the iron heart, and for once Adolf wasn’t lying.” Truman deigned to shoot Tom another glare. Then he went on, “I talked with her when she came to picket the White House last month. I’m convinced she’s sincere. I’m also convinced she’s wrong. If we run away from Germany without finishing the job we set out to do there, we’ll be worse off in the long run than if we stay. And not in the very long run, either.”

“More and more people seem to agree with what she’s saying,” Drew Pearson observed.

“Well, so what? That doesn’t make them right.” Yes, Truman could be as stubborn as a Missouri mule. “And just because there are more of them than there were, that doesn’t mean there are very many of them. Most Americans can see farther than the end of their nose-and a good thing, too.” He nodded to another correspondent. “What’s on your mind, Walter?”

Walter Lippmann asked him a question about farm legislation. Truman answered it with every sign of relief. Most of the time, foreign-policy issues weren’t what swayed elections. In the aftermath of the biggest war in the history of the world-no, not in the aftermath, dammit, because it wasn’t over yet, no matter who’d signed which surrender documents-the usual rules might not apply. But they would if Truman had anything to do with it.

Tom Schmidt remembered the line from The Wizard of Oz. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” the Wizard had said desperately. That was only a movie, but the President was trying to pull the same stunt for real. Could he make Germany disappear from voters’ minds? To Tom, that would be a bigger trick than any the Wizard managed.

He wasn’t the only one with such thoughts on his mind. When Truman pointed to another reporter, the man said, “Seems like the Republicans want to use Germany as a club to hit you over the head with in the upcoming elections. What will you do if you have to deal with a Republican Congress next year?”

“Ha! That’ll be the day!” Truman was a dumpy little guy, but he had an actor’s control of his expressions and attitudes. His whole body radiated contempt.

“Work with me, Mr. President,” the newspaperman urged. “Suppose they do win the election. Then they’ll be holding the purse strings. What can you do if they decide not to appropriate any money for the occupation?”

FDR would have set his granite chin and looked indomitable. Harry Truman didn’t have that kind of chin. He didn’t look indomitable, either-he looked pissed off. “They wouldn’t dare,” he snapped. Before the reporter could even try to follow up, Truman shook his head. “I know what you’re gonna say, Bernard. Suppose they do, right? Okay, I’m supposing. And this is what I suppose. No matter what kind of stupid stunts the Republicans try and pull with the budget, this country still only has one commander-in-chief, and you’re looking at him. The United States of American isn’t a box turtle, no matter what some people think. It can’t pull its head and its legs inside its shell and pretend the rest of the world isn’t out there. That got us in trouble before the war. It’d be a lot worse now.”

Yet another reporter said, “If you were to try to do something after Congress said you couldn’t…That’s how Andrew Johnson got impeached.”

“Congress has no business telling me how to run the country’s foreign policy,” Truman retorted. “And this is all moonshine, anyhow. I’m just indulging Bernie there. Everything in Germany will be fine. The Republicans won’t win in November. And even if they do, they aren’t asinine enough to play games with the public purse.”

“You hope,” the reporter said.

“No, I hope they do try it. They’d give me all the platform I need to bang on ’em like a drum in 1948,” Truman replied. “But they’re just not that stupid…. Well, a few of them are, but not many.”

“What if they run Eisenhower against you?” Walter Lippmann asked.

“Nobody knows whether Ike’s a Republican or a Democrat. I’m not sure he knows himself,” the President answered. He got a laugh; even Tom chuckled. Truman went on, “But I am sure of one thing: Eisenhower likes the idea of pulling out of Germany even less than I do. And they said it couldn’t be done! For the isolationists to line up behind him would be as foolish as for the antiwar Democrats to line up behind General McClellan against Lincoln in 1864.”

“But the Democrats did do that,” Lippmann pointed out. Tom thought he remembered the same thing, but hadn’t taken American history in a hell of a long time.

“Damn straight they did-and they got their heads handed to them that November,” Truman said. “If the Republicans want to try what didn’t work for my party in 1948, good luck to ’em.”

He didn’t lack for confidence. Tom had known that before. Seeing it face to face was more than a little daunting, though. He had to remind himself that being confident and having good reasons for confidence were two different critters. Would Harry Truman remind himself of the same thing? Off this morning’s performance, Tom didn’t think so.

“God Damn the Russians to Hell and gone!” Reinhard Heydrich ground out.

Hans Klein made sympathetic noises. “No one ever hit them a lick like the one we gave them New Year’s Eve,” he said. “Not even Stalin purged their officers the way we did.”

“Wunderbar,” Heydrich said sourly. “Just killing them didn’t matter. Killing them and accomplishing something does.”

“The new men in those slots won’t be as sharp as the ones we got rid of,” Klein said. “That’s bound to help us later on.”

“Wunderbar.” Heydrich sounded even more morose this time. He didn’t know what the hell to do about the Russians. In the western occupation zones, the resistance was going as well as he’d hoped, maybe better. Lots of Americans and Englishmen and even some Frenchmen were yelling that holding Germany down was more expensive than it was worth.

They hadn’t taken a blow even close to the one poisoned liquor gave the Red Army. But the Russians didn’t miss a beat. They hanged Germans and shot them and deported them and hunted Heydrich’s underground more ferociously than ever. Nothing seemed to faze them. The Reichsprotektor couldn’t understand it.

Well, Hitler hadn’t understood it, either. He’d said one good kick would bring the whole rotten structure of the Soviet Union crashing down. And he’d proceeded to deliver the good kick with 3,000,000 men, 3,000 panzers, and 2,000 planes. And the USSR staggered and lurched and reeled…and then, like one of those toys weighted at the bottom, bobbed upright again in spite of everything. And it started kicking back, and didn’t stop kicking till the Reich lay prostrate under its boot.

The same thing was happening now. Knock out that many top French or British or American officers-hell, knock out that many top German officers-and the army you’d just sucker-punched would do its best imitation of a chicken right after it met the hatchet.

(Which reminded Heydrich: what would happen to the resistance if he went down? Jochen Peiper, his number two, was a pup-he’d just turned thirty. He was a damned capable pup, though. He ought to be able to carry on. Heydrich had to hope so.)

As for the Red Army, the Germans had seen too often, to their dismay and discomfiture, that it had an almost unlimited supply of human spare parts. Take out a bunch of people and Stalin would simply bolt on replacements and carry on as before. Maybe the military engine ran rough for a while. But it kept running. Since it hadn’t had much luck rooting out Heydrich’s fighters, it avenged itself on the German people as a whole.

When Heydrich growled about that, Johannes Klein said, “It’s bad for even more reasons than you’re talking about, sir.”

“Oh? What am I missing?” Heydrich was always ready to acquire fresh fuel for his righteous indignation.

“They aren’t just killing Germans for the fun of killing Germans. Maybe they’re raping for the fun of it, but not killing,” the veteran noncom answered. Heydrich snorted. Oberscharfuhrer Klein went on, “They’re being horrible to try and detach the Volk from us. If people start thinking helping us-or even keeping quiet about us-means they’ll get strung up, they’ll blab. You bet they will. They’ll blab like you wouldn’t believe.”

Heydrich thought that over, but not for long. “Scheisse,” he said crisply. “Well, when you’re right, you’re right, dammit. Now what do we do about it?”

“Beats me, sir,” Klein said, which made the Reichsprotektor want to clout him in the ear. Oblivious to that, or at least affecting to be, Klein continued, “As long as we look strong, we’ve still got a decent chance. The Russian partisans weren’t that much trouble till they saw we wouldn’t take Moscow, and our Frenchies stayed in bed with us till the Anglo-Americans landed. Hell, some of ’em stayed longer than that.”

A mocking smile stretched Heydrich’s thin lips. Some of the French collaborators had indeed clung to the Reich till the bitter end. What called itself Radio Paris went on broadcasting from Sigmaringen in southwestern Germany long after the real Paris fell. And some of Berlin’s last defenders were troops from the SS Charlemagne division (so-called; it never really got above regimental strength): Frenchmen with a few German officers and noncoms.

But things were different here. Now Heydrich’s followers needed the goodwill-or at least the silence-of the people among whom they moved. They tried not to compromise the wider populace…but how could you fight back at all without endangering them, especially when you faced a ruthless foe like the Russians?

You couldn’t. And, as Hans Klein reminded him, that carried risks of its own. Thinking out loud, Heydrich said, “I don’t want to have to pull out of cities in the Russian zone and in the parts of the Reich the Poles and Czechs are stealing from us. Harder to strike at the enemy if we stick to fields and forests.”

“Yes, sir.” Klein nodded. “Chances are it wouldn’t do us any good anyway. Just ’cause we move out of Breslau, say, nothing to keep the Russians from reaching in and hanging a hundred people there, or a thousand, on account of we blew up a panzer somewhere else.”

“Himmeldonnerwetter,” Heydrich muttered. The Oberscharfuhrer was right again, however much Heydrich wished he weren’t. All the Germans in the land lost to the Soviet Union were hostages. The NKVD wouldn’t need long to figure that out, if it hadn’t already. And it would be as vicious as Stalin decided it needed to be…and if Stalin’s viciousness had a limit, the world hadn’t seen it yet.

Although Hitler was almost eight months dead, even thinking that someone else might be harder than he was made Heydrich want to look over his shoulder and make sure no Gestapo or Sicherheitsdienst man was standing there and writing him up for disloyalty.

Heydrich knew that was ridiculous. If anyone qualified as Fuhrer these days, he did. But, like the men he led, old habits died hard. And knowing in your head was different from knowing in your belly. As far as Heydrich’s belly was concerned, Hitler still ruled the Reich from Berlin.

I will rebuild it, mein Fuhrer. I promise I will, the Reichsprotektor thought. I’ll make it as much the way you would have as I can.

“Herr Reichsprotektor, I’ve got another question for you, if you don’t mind too much,” Klein said.

You would, flashed through Heydrich’s mind. But he forced himself to patience; as he’d seen, the noncom sometimes thought of things he’d missed himself. And so his voice held no snap-or he hoped it didn’t, anyhow-when he asked, “What is it?”

“Suppose the Amis do decide to pack up and go home. Then suppose they don’t like what we’re doing once we come out of the caves and mines and bunkers and start running things. Will they drop one of those goddamn atom bombs on us?”

“I don’t know if they will, but they can. I’m sure of that-how could we stop them?” Heydrich said. “That’s why we’ve got to get one for ourselves as soon as we can. Till we do, you’re right-we live on their sufferance. So do the Russians, but Russia’s a lot bigger than Germany.”

“We found that out the hard way,” Klein remarked.

“Didn’t we just! I was thinking the same thing a little while ago. And that reminds me of something else…. Where the devil did I see it?” Heydrich pawed through papers. He didn’t like being an administrator; he craved action. But unless he knew what was going on, he wouldn’t know what to act on. His desk wasn’t especially neat, but after a few seconds he found what he was looking for. “They grabbed as many of our nuclear physicists as they could catch and took them over to England right after the surrender.”

“Did they? I hadn’t heard that, but it doesn’t surprise me.” Klein nodded to himself. “Nope, doesn’t surprise me one goddamn bit. The British’d want to grill ’em, and they wouldn’t want the Russians to grab any of them.”

“Right on both counts,” Heydrich agreed. “Same kind of race with them as there was with the engineers who built our rockets. You can bet the Ivans got their hands on some of both groups, too, damn them. But that’s not the point.”

“Well, what is the point, then, sir?” Klein asked reasonably.

“The point is that ten of these fellows with the high foreheads came back to Germany on the…” Heydrich paused to check the sheet of paper he’d uncovered. “On the third of January, that’s when it was. Just a couple of weeks ago. They landed at Lubeck, in the British zone. Now they’re staying at a tricked-out clothing store in Alswede, not far away.”

“Lubeck? Alswede?” Dismay filled Klein’s voice. “That’s up by the Baltic-and no more than a long spit from the edge of the Russian zone. The Tommies’d better hope the NKVD doesn’t try a snatch-and-grab.”

“They do have some security,” Heydrich admitted reluctantly. “And they make sure the physicists can’t just go wandering off on their own. They have an evening curfew. The brains can’t leave the British zone, and their families are hostages to make sure they behave. The Tommies don’t say that’s how things are, but it’s what they amount to.”

“Better than nothing, I suppose. Still not good,” Klein said.

Now Heydrich nodded; he felt the same way. But he turned the talk in a different direction: “I’ve made inquiries up there. The British are going to really start letting people go any day now. Harteck and Diebner plan to go the Hamburg. Heisenberg and Hahn aim to start up their old institute in Gottingen. Von Weizsacker and Bagge and some of the others are thinking about joining up with them there. They all know more than they did during the war. If nothing else, they’ve learned a lot from the enemy. And that means…” He let his voice trail away and waited.

People talked about watching a light come on on somebody’s face. Heydrich watched it happen with Johannes Klein. “Sweet suffering Jesus!” the Oberscharfuhrer exclaimed. “We can grab ’em ourselves, put ’em to work making bombs for us!”

“We can sure grab them. I aim to try,” Heydrich agreed. “That way, we deny them to the British-and to the Russians. I don’t know how much they can actually do for us. We won’t have a lot of the equipment they’d need, and we may not be able to take it-steal it-without giving away too much. Still, all we can do is try.”

“Yes, sir!” Klein’s eyes glowed. “When we’ve got a bomb like that for ourselves, nobody will be able to kick us around any more, not ever again.”

“That’s right, Hans. As a matter of fact, we’ll be able to do some kicking ourselves.” Reinhard Heydrich’s predatory smile said he looked forward to it. But then the smile faded like an old photograph left too long in the sun. He started shuffling through the papers on his desk again.

“What’s up, sir?” Klein inquired.

“Some other business that needs taking care of,” Heydrich said: an answer that wasn’t. “All this stuff happens at the same time, and you can’t let any of it get away from you or you’re screwed. It’s a miracle the Fuhrer handled so much so well for so long.”

“And then after a while he didn’t,” Klein said. Heydrich gave him a look. The noncom stuck out his chin. “Oh, c’mon, sir. you know it’s true. He screwed up the Russian war like nobody’s business. And when we still weren’t doing real bad, you know, nobody’d make terms with us, ’cause the Anglo-Americans and Stalin only figured the Fuhrer would use the time to rebuild and then jump ’em again. And he would have, too. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Heydrich couldn’t. Every word was gospel. All the same…Klein must not have had that internalized Fuhrer looking over his shoulder. “Will you say the same thing about me?” Heydrich asked dryly.

“Sure hope not, sir,” the Oberscharfuhrer answered. “But wouldn’t you rather have somebody tell you to your face you’re going wrong instead of being too scared to open his mouth till after everything’s down the shitter?”

If you told Hitler he was wrong to his face, you’d pay for it. If you were lucky like some of his generals, you’d retire whether you wanted to or not. If you weren’t…well, that was one of the things concentration camps were for.

“A point, Hans,” Heydrich admitted. “Still, even if you do tell me I’m going wrong, I reserve the right to think you’re full of crap.”

“Oh, sure,” Klein said. “Officers always do. Every once in a while, they’re even right.” He sketched a salute and ambled out into the rocky corridor. Heydrich stared after him. Noncoms who’d been around for a long time always thought they deserved the last word. Every so often, you had to remind them why you were in command. Every so often-but maybe not today.

Lou Weissberg held up a copy of the International Herald-Tribune . It had a front-page story about a demonstration in California against the continued American occupation of Germany. The story called the demonstration “the largest and loudest yet.”

Captain Howard Frank grimaced when he saw the paper. “I already read it,” he said. “Hot damn.”

“Yup.” Lou nodded. “Story didn’t make the Stars and Stripes. Funny how that works, huh?”

“Funny, yeah. Funny like a truss.” Captain Frank made a small production out of lighting a cigarette. He held out the pack to Lou. “Want one?”

“Thanks.” Lou flicked a Zippo to get his started. After a couple of puffs, he said, “Y’know, we can lick our enemies. We knocked these Nazi assholes flat. If Stalin fucks with us, we’ll wallop him into the middle of next week. He’s gotta know it, too. But how the devil are we supposed to beat the people who say they’re on our side?”

“Good question. If you’ve got a good answer, go tell Eisenhower. Hell, write it up and tell Truman,” Frank said.

“Thanks a bunch-sir.”

Howard Frank held up his hand. “Hey, I’m not kidding-not even a little bit. We can’t stay here if the folks back home decide we ought to pack up and leave. If your Congressman tries to buck ’em, they’ll throw him out on his ass this November. If Truman tries, they’ll throw him out in ’48. And where will we be then?”

“Up shit creek, that’s where. And they’ll be ‘Sieg heil!’ing from what used to be the American zone twenty minutes after the last C-47 takes off,” Lou said.

Frank stubbed out the cigarette and lit another one. “Maybe not,” he said. “Maybe we can hang around long enough to teach the Germans how to stand on their own two feet. You said that Adenauer guy over in Cologne impressed you. Gotta be more where he came from.”

“I’m sure there are.” But that wasn’t agreement, because Lou went on, “But if we leave the way that McGraw broad and her pals want us to, those guys won’t have the chance to stand up for themselves. The Nazis’ll bump ’em off, first chance they get. And then we start worrying about World War III, all in one lifetime.”

“Maybe not,” Frank said. Lou made a rude noise. In a more rules-conscious army, it might have landed him in the stockade. Captain Frank just laughed. “You said Stalin’s scared of us. Well, yeah, but he’s fucking terrified of the Germans. If we do pull out, he’s liable to head for the Rhine to make sure we don’t get round two of the Third Reich.”

“We can’t let him do that. France shits its pants if he does-same with Italy,” Lou said gloomily. “So we go to war against him on account of the fucking krauts? God, that’d be a kick in the nuts, wouldn’t it? And it sounds a hell of a lot like World War III, too.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” Captain Frank eyed the glowing coal of his cigarette. “You’d think that when everybody says a war is over, it’d really be over.”

“Yeah. You would.” Lou put out his cigarette, too. The ashtray was soldier-made from the base of a 105mm shell. “I figured I’d be home by now. I figured my wife’d be expecting another baby by now.”

“Okay. I understand what you mean. Morrie’d probably be getting a little brother or sister if they’d given me a Ruptured Duck when I thought they would,” Frank said. “But things after the surrender didn’t work out the way anybody hoped. You know that. And what we’re doing here is worth doing. You know that, too. Hell, everybody knows that.”

“Not Diana McGraw and her crowd. And it seems like her crowd gets bigger every day.” Lou tapped the Herald-Trib with his index finger. “That guy who smuggled out the Cunningham film is with these people, too. Tom Shit, whatever the hell his name was.”

“Schmidt,” Captain Frank corrected primly. Then he shot Lou a dirty look. “Funny guy. You and Danny Kaye and Groucho Marx. You ought to have your own radio show. You’d sell tons of toothpaste and shaving soap.”

“All Yehudim. If Hitler had his way, he would’ve made us into shaving soap.” Lou hesitated, then went on, “Some of the Jewish guys over here, they don’t hardly seem to give a damn. Sure doesn’t stop ’em from laying German broads.”

“Nope. Me, I’d sooner jack off. If I fucked one of those bitches, I’d break every mirror I own,” Frank said. Lou nodded; he felt the same way. But, a moment later, his superior went on, “Other people see it different, that’s all. I heard one guy say he was getting his revenge nine inches at a time.”

Lou snorted. “A fucking braggart. Or maybe a braggart fucking-who knows?” Captain Frank sent him another severe look. He ignored it; he was used to them. “More fun than going up against the Wehrmacht or the Waffen-SS, I will say that.”

“Or than going up against the fanatics,” Frank said. “Know what I heard?”

“’Fraid I don’t. But you’re gonna tell me, aren’t you?” Lou said.

“Sure am. The MPs here grabbed a couple of German broads with VD who say people told ’em not to get cured. They wanted these gals to make as many of our guys come down venereal as they could.”

“Makes a twisted kind of sense,” Lou said. “Or it did, anyway, before sulfa and penicillin. A guy with a drippy faucet’s just as much a casualty as a guy who got shot in the leg. He was, anyway, till you could cure him with a needle in the ass or a handful of pills.”

Captain Frank suddenly looked alert. He pulled a fountain pen from his left breast pocket and scribbled a note. “Something to remember: Heydrich and the other bastards down in the salt mines or wherever the hell they are don’t know everything we can do. They’ve got old German intelligence reports-”

“And new newspapers,” Lou broke in.

“Mm-hmm. And those.” Howard Frank nodded. “And which bunch has more crap mixed in with the good stuff is anybody’s guess.”

“Well, you’ve got that right, sir. If Hitler’s intelligence on us were any good, he never would’ve taken us on. Christ, if his intelligence on Russia were any good, he would’ve let Stalin alone, too,” Lou said.

“Back toward the end of ’41, the Germans had already wiped out as many divisions as they thought the Red Army had,” Frank said. “At the start, they didn’t know the Russians had the T-34, either. You kinda lose points with your bosses when you miss stuff like the best tank in the war, y’know?”

“Oh, maybe a few,” Lou said, which wrung a dry chuckle out of the captain. Then Lou asked, “What are we missing that we ought to see?”

For a moment, Captain Frank looked almost comically astonished. He was in the intelligence racket, too. Did he really imagine he saw everything there was to see? Didn’t imagining something like that take colossal-almost Germanic-arrogance? Captain Frank started to say something, then closed his mouth. What he did say was probably quite different from what had almost come out: “You’re a disruptive son of a bitch, you know that?”

“Thank you, sir,” Lou said, which earned him another pointed glance. “But I’m serious. God knows the Nazis have their blind spots, but so do we. If we try to shrink ’em, maybe we can.”

“Japs sure blindsided us when they hit Pearl Harbor. We never dreamt they’d be dumb enough to jump on us like that, so they caught us flat-footed,” Frank said. “They were tougher all kinds of ways than we expected. We didn’t know any more about the Zero than the Germans knew about the T-34. And kamikazes…” His voice faded.

“Before the Japs finally quit, we played down how much trouble an enemy who didn’t care if he lived could be,” Lou said. “I guess we were smart-the Japs would’ve done more of that shit if they knew how bad it hurt us. But it seems to me we believed our own propaganda. We didn’t think the krauts could give us much trouble if they pulled stunts like that. Shows what we knew, huh?”

“Other thing we didn’t think was that they would pull shit like that,” Lou said. “Before the surrender, they didn’t hardly. The Master Race must’ve learned something from the Japs. Who woulda believed it?”

“Not me.” Captain Frank held up a sheet of paper. “Word is that that Adenauer guy you brought from Cologne is gonna speak at Erlangen. You really think he’s the straight goods?”

“He’s no Nazi, if that’s what you mean,” Lou replied. “If you mean, is he the Answer with a capital A, hell, I don’t know. But I sure hope like hell somebody can make the Germans run their own government and not automatically go after all their neighbors. If nobody can-”

“Then we’ve got to do it ourselves,” Frank finished for him. Unhappily, Lou nodded. That was what he’d been thinking, all right. His superior went on, “And God only knows how long we’ll stay here.”

“We need to,” Lou said.

“No shit. But what we need to do and what we’re gonna do, they’re two different beasts, and the jerks back home sure aren’t helping. Time may come when we have to go home, prop up whatever half-assed German government we’ve patched together in the meanwhile, and hope like hell Heydrich and the Nazis don’t knock it over as soon as we’re gone.”

“It won’t happen right away.” Lou took what comfort he could from that. “Not till after the fall elections, anyhow.”

Captain Frank lit another cigarette. He blew out smoke and shook his head. “You’re such a goddamn American, Lou.”

Whatever Lou had expected from the other CIC man, that wasn’t it. “I sure hope so, sir.” He hesitated, then asked, “What exactly d’you mean? I’m damn glad I’m an American, but you don’t make it sound like a compliment.”

Frank sighed. “I don’t mean it for an insult, either. But the Europeans play a deeper game than we do, ’cause they know how to wait and we don’t. Heydrich figures if he can put the Nazis back on top ten years from now, or maybe twenty, he’s won. And he’s right, too, God damn him to hell. But us? We get bored, or we find something new to worry about, or we get sick of spending lives a few here, a few there, when it’s got no obvious point. And so you’re right-we won’t do anything much till after the elections. But that’s only this fall, remember. If the Republicans take Congress-and if they take Congress because they’re yelling, ‘What are we doing in Germany now that the war’s over?’-what can Truman do about it? Not much, not if he wants to get elected in ’48.”

Lou thought about that. He shivered, though a coal stove kept Captain Frank’s office toasty. Then he covered his face. “We’re screwed. We are so screwed.”

“That’s how it looks to me, too,” Captain Frank said. “I hoped like anything you’d tell me I was wrong.”