He breathed a sigh of relief as the panzer raced toward the cover of the woods. He hadn't wanted to go into the first belt, but he'd discovered being out in the open was dangerous, too. It was a war, for Christ's sake. Everything was dangerous. He just hoped it would be more dangerous for the Czechs. • • • BOMBS STARTED FALLING ON MARIANSKE LAZNE-Marienbad, if you liked the old German name better-at six o'clock in the morning. Peggy Druce hadn't gone to bed till three. Just because you were here to take the waters (which smelled like rotten eggs, tasted almost as bad, and kept you on the pot like you wouldn't believe) didn't mean you couldn't do other things, too. Peggy'd been playing fiery bridge with an English couple and a young man who might have come from almost anywhere.
Everyone thought she was crazy for coming over from Philadelphia with the war clouds thickening by the day. Even after Henlein got shot, she'd pooh-poohed the idea that things would actually go boom. "We already had one war this century," she'd said. She remembered very precisely, because she was squeezing every trick from a small slam in diamonds. "Wasn't that enough to teach the whole world we don't need another one?"
Well…no.
The first explosions might almost have been mistaken for thunder. The couple right after that burst much too close to the Balmoral-Osborne Hotel de Luxe to leave any doubt about what they were. They knocked Peggy out of bed and onto the floor with a bump and a squawk. She said something most unladylike when she scrambled up again, because she'd cut both feet on shards of glass that hadn't been there a moment before.
People were yelling and screaming and-probably-jumping up and down. Peggy threw a robe over her silk peignoir. She made as if to rush for the door, then caught herself. Her feet would be raw meat and gore if she tried. The only shoes she could grab in a hurry were last night's heels. They'd have to do.
Out she went-but not without her handbag, which held passport and cash and traveler's checks. Everybody else in the hall was in the same state of dishabille. People dashed for the elevator: the lift, everyone called it here, in the English fashion. Peggy was almost there when the lights went out.
Shrieks filled the air as darkness descended. She turned around and went the other way, against the confused tide. If the lights weren't working, the goddamn elevator wouldn't, either. The stairs were…that way.
Peggy liked to think she looked ten years younger than her forty-five. She hadn't put on weight, and peroxide kept her hair about the same color it had always been. But, in spite of her misplaced optimism the night before, she had a coldly practical streak. When she was Peggy Eubank, growing up a devil of a long way from the Main Line, her mother told her, "Kid, you're eleven going on twenty-one." If Mom had been half as smart as she thought she was, she would've been twice as smart as she really was. But she'd hit that nail right on the head.
And so-the stairs. Peggy found the door as much by Braille as any other way. The stairwell wasn't very light, either. Somebody bumped into her and said, "Excusez-moi."
"Don't worry about it," Peggy said, and then, "C'est la guerre." And wasn't that the sad and sorry truth?
Gray early-morning light spilled out of the door that led to the lobby. Three flights of stairs had made Peggy's feet start to hurt, but more broken glass crunched under her soles. She would hurt worse if she took off the heels.
The lobby looked like hell, and smelled pretty bad, too. It reminded her of a butcher's shop with a whole bunch of fresh meat. Some of this meat came in trousers and dresses and nightclothes, though. Stewards and bellhops-they had different titles here, but basically the same jobs-were doing what they could to help the wounded. One of them was noisily sick on the floor, which only made the stink worse.
And, in what looked at first like a scene from a Three Stooges tworeeler, a couple of men near the front desk were punching and kicking each other and poking each other in the eye. Even with more bombs going off not terribly far away, they went at it hammer and tongs. But one of them swore in Czech, the other in guttural German. The big war had started, and so had their own little private one.
"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed a man standing next to Peggy. His voice said he was the fellow who'd bumped her on the stairs. "C'est-" He broke off, at a loss for words.
"It's hell on wheels," Peggy said. "You understand? Comprenez?"
"Yes. But what am I to do?" He spoke good British English. "I was for two years a prisoner in the last war. If the Boches come here, they will intern me again, as an enemy alien. I do not wish this at all."
If the Germans came to Marianske Lazne? No, when they came. The border wasn't more than a long spit to the west. Peggy had her passport. The United States was neutral. The Nazis would treat her better than that poor Frenchman…if they or the Czechs didn't blow her to the moon while they were bashing each other over the head. Right this minute, that looked like a pretty big if.
"Maybe you can get a train out of town if you hustle," she said.
"It could be, Mademoiselle," he said, not noticing the ring on her finger. Herb was still in Philadelphia. He'd been set to join her in Paris in a couple of weeks. Well, that wouldn't happen now. All kinds of things wouldn't happen, and all kinds of worse ones would. The man went on, "Will you accompany me? This is no more-no longer-a good place to be."
He was dead right-no, live right-about that. "Let's go," Peggy said.
As soon as she got her first look at a bomb crater, she wasn't sure outside was the best place to be. Marianske Lazne sat in a valley with pines and firs all around. The hotels and other buildings were mostly Austro-Hungarian leftovers from before the war (before the last war, she thought). They had more architectural gingerbread than the wicked witch's house in the Grimm fairy tale.
Right now, Peggy was trapped in a grim fairy tale of her own. Some of those buildings had chunks bitten out of them. Several were burning. Wounded people, bodies, and pieces of bodies lay in the streets. And everybody who wasn't wounded or blown to bits seemed to be running toward the train stations.
All kinds of people took the waters here. Some were ordinary Czechs and Slovaks. Some were Germans. Some came from other European countries. Peggy spotted half a dozen Jews in long black coats and wide-brimmed black hats. If the Frenchman beside her didn't want to deal with the Germans, they really didn't want to-and who could blame them?
There was a shriek in the air, getting louder by the moment. The Frenchman knocked her down and lay flat on top of her. She started to scream. Then more explosions shook Marianske Lazne, and she realized he hadn't gone mad and wasn't trying to assault her right out in the middle of the street.
"Artillery!" he bawled in her ear. "When you hear that sound, for God's sake get down!"
Peggy did scream then, but on a note different from the one she might have used a moment earlier. Through the shell bursts she heard more shrieks, men's and women's and Lord only knew whose. Something warm and wet and sticky splashed her hand. She looked at it. It was blood-not hers, or she didn't think so. With a little disgusted cry, she wiped it off her robe. No, not hers: no more welled out.
More and more shells landed on and around Marianske Lazne. How many guns did the Germans have, anyway? "Make it stop!" she yelled to the Frenchman. "Jesus, make it stop!"
"I wish I could, Mademoiselle," he replied.
Peggy heard guns going off, too, in the woods around the spas. The Czechs were making a fight of it, anyhow, or trying to. But Marianske Lazne was within artillery range of the border, as she knew much, much too well. How long could this little country hold off Hitler's armored legions?
After what seemed forever, the bombardment eased. Peggy raised her head and looked around. She wished she hadn't. Her husband had fought in the Great War. He'd never talked much about what he'd done and what he'd seen. If it was anything like this…Peggy understood why not. She would spend the rest of her life wishing she could forget what artillery did to the civilians in Marianske Lazne. She remembered one thing Herb had said, talking to someone else who'd seen the elephant: "Artillery-that's the killer." Jesus, he wasn't kidding.