Fujita crouched in a log-roofed dugout artistically camouflaged with dirt and pine boughs and, now, the latest snowfall. He peered across the Ussuri toward the Red Army positions on the far bank. He couldn't see as much as he would have liked. The other side of the border was as thickly wooded as this one-and the Russians, damn them, were at least as good as his own people at hiding what they were up to.
"What do you see, Sergeant?" Lieutenant Kenji Hanafusa asked.
"Trees, sir. Snow," Fujita answered. "Not much else. No tigers. No Russians, either."
"They're there," the lieutenant said.
"Oh, yes, sir," Fujita agreed. "They're everywhere. The Mongols would have fallen over years ago if the Russians weren't propping them up."
"No, the Russians are really everywhere," Hanafusa said. "A quarter of the way around the world, they're fighting the Poles and the Germans. And that's why we're here. When things get cooking on this front, they'll be too busy in the west to do anything about it."
"Yes, sir," Fujita said resignedly. Japanese officers always figured enlisted men were hayseeds. The sergeant had figured out why his unit was transferring from the Mongolian border to the northeast as soon as it got the order. He knew what a map looked like. And if he'd never slept in a bed with a frame and legs till he got conscripted…Lieutenant Hanafusa didn't need to know that.
"As soon as the weather warms up and the snow melts, I think we'll move," Hanafusa said.
"Sounds good to me, sir," Fujita said. You needed as many clothes here in the winter as you did in Mongolia, and that was saying something.
Something buzzed by high overhead: an airplane. "Is that one of ours or one of theirs?" Hanafusa asked.
"Let me see, sir." Fujita raised the field glasses. The plane was too far off to let him make out whether it bore the Rising Sun or the Soviet red star. But he recognized the outline, and spoke confidently: "It's one of ours, sir."
"Well, good," Hanafusa said. Both sides sent up reconnaissance planes: each wanted to see what the other was up to. Every so often, one side would send up fighters to chase off the spies or shoot them down. Sometimes the other side would send up fighters of its own. Then the men on the ground could watch dogfights and cheer on the planes they thought were theirs.
Sergeant Fujita hoped the Russians would open up with their antiaircraft guns. He didn't want them hitting the Japanese plane-that was the last thing he had in mind. But if they started shooting at it, his side could see where they'd positioned their guns. That would be worth knowing when the big fight started.
He wasn't much surprised when the guns stayed silent. The Russians were better at hiding their artillery till they really needed it than he'd imagined anyone could be. If you didn't think they had any guns nearby, half a dozen batteries were zeroed in on you. If you thought you knew about those half a dozen batteries, four wouldn't be where you expected them to be and you'd missed another half a dozen. You wouldn't find out about them, either, not till the Russians needed to show them to you.
He said as much to Lieutenant Hanafusa. Not all of the Kwantung Army had as much experience with the Russians as the men who'd fought them in Mongolia did. These fellows who'd been on the Ussuri or over by the Amur…well, what did they know? Not much, not so far as Fujita could see.
But Hanafusa nodded. "Thank you, Sergeant," he said. "We've seen that ourselves. There have been skirmishes along this frontier, too, you know. Even the Korean Army got into the act-but they had to ask us for help when the Russians turned out to have more than they expected."
"All right, sir." Fujita wasn't sure it was, but what could he say?
He did share Hanafusa's scorn for the Korean Army. The Kwantung Army was a power unto itself. It dictated policy for Japan as often as Tokyo told it what to do. The Kwantung Army had masterminded and spearheaded the Japanese thrust deep into China. Some people said there were men in the Cabinet back in Japan who didn't like that and wanted to pull back. If there were, those people were keeping their mouths shut and walking softly. Army officers had assassinated Cabinet ministers before. They could again, and everybody knew it.
The only force that had any chance of restraining the Kwantung Army wasn't the Cabinet. It was the Navy. Generals here saw the Russians looming over Manchukuo like the bears cartoonists drew them as. The admirals looked across the ocean and babbled about America-and, sometimes, England.
"Can the Americans give us trouble, sir?" Fujita blurted.
"What? Here on the Ussuri?" Lieutenant Hanafusa stared. "Don't be ridiculous."
Fujita's cheeks heated in spite of the chilly wind wailing down from Siberia. "No, sir, I didn't mean that. I meant, well, anywhere."
"Oh. I see." The lieutenant relaxed. "Mm, they won't jump in and pull the Russians' chestnuts out of the fire, the way they did in the Russo-Japanese War. I'm sure of that. The Communists don't have any friends. England and France are fighting Germany, too, but the two wars might as well be one on the moon, the other on the sun. They don't like Stalin any better than we do, and neither do the Americans."
"Yes, sir." That did help ease Fujita's mind. All the same, he went on, "I've talked to some guys who served in Peking. They say the United States doesn't like what we're doing in China."
"Who are these people?" Hanafusa asked softly.
Sergeant Fujita beat a hasty retreat: "I don't know their names, sir. Just some guys I was talking with waiting in line for comfort women." That wasn't exactly true, but Lieutenant Hanafusa would never prove it. You didn't rat on your friends.
"I see." The lieutenant had to know it was a lie, but he also had to know he wouldn't get anything more. His snort sent steam jetting from his nostrils. "Your brothel buddies aren't too smart-that's all I've got to say. The Americans go right on selling us fuel oil and scrap metal, no matter what's happening in China. As long as they keep doing that, they don't much care-right?"
"Oh, yes, sir." Fujita knew he wasn't the smartest guy ever born. But he wasn't dumb enough to get into an argument with an officer. If you were that dumb…He shook his head. He couldn't imagine anybody that dumb, not in the Japanese Army.
Julius Lemp scowled at U-30. "What the hell have you done to my boat?" he demanded of the engineering officer standing with him on the quay at Kiel.
"It's a Dutch invention," that worthy answered. "We captured several of their subs that use it. We're calling it a snorkel-well, some of the guys who install it call it a snort, but you know how mechanics are."
"Ugliest goddamn thing I've ever seen," Lemp said. "It looks like the boat's got a hard-on."
The engineering officer chuckled. "Well, I've never heard that one before."
He couldn't appease Lemp so easily. "All you have to do is put it on. I'm the poor son of a bitch who has to take it to sea. Why the hell did you pick on me?"
"I couldn't say anything about that. I got my orders and I carried them out," the engineering officer replied. He wasn't chuckling any more. "If you've really got your tits in a wringer about it, go talk to Admiral Donitz."
That shut Lemp up with a snap. He'd done more talking with the head of the U-boat force than he ever wanted to, and about less pleasant subjects. Sinking an American liner when the Reich wasn't at war with the USA would do that to you. German propaganda loudly insisted England had lowered the boom on the Athenia. Lemp and Donitz both knew better.
And despite all that, it could have been worse. Lemp hadn't got demoted. He did have that reprimand sitting in his promotion jacket like a big, stinking turd, but nobody'd said a word about putting him on the beach and letting him fill out forms for the rest of the war. A good thing, too, because he wanted nothing more than to go to sea.