“Welcome to the zoo, Claus.” Adi wasn’t sure how welcome Valentiner would be. One more new guy to find out about him. He reminded himself that Judaism probably wasn’t a capital crime any more. He reminded himself, yes, but he still had a hard time believing it.
“Doesn’t seem like there’s a whole lot of fighting left,” Poske said. “If they were going to send us down to help take Munich, they would have done it by now.”
“Too bad. I’d like to go after the blackshirts,” the kid said. “My uncle went into Mauthausen. He died in there. Heart failure, the telegram said. Right! You kill somebody, sure his heart stops.”
He’d back the Salvation Committee, then. He would if he was telling the truth, anyhow. Having told a pile of his own lies, Saul always wondered about that. Well, nobody would say anything important in front of this new guy till he showed what he was. Theo wouldn’t say anything in front of him any which way.
Saul waved at the panzer. “Want to take a look at your new home? If I’m really going to command a full crew, I’ll clear my junk away from the driver’s seat.”
“Sure. Thanks,” Valentiner said. They walked around to the left front of the machine. Saul opened the hatch. The kid climbed inside.
London. But it was a London Alistair Walsh barely remembered, a London that might as well have been at peace with the whole world. London wasn’t quite. The UK remained at war with Japan. But Japanese planes weren’t going to drop bombs on London Bridge and the British Museum. The blackout was over. Rationing remained, but if you had money to spend you could have yourself a hell of a spree.
On a staff sergeant’s pay, Walsh couldn’t buy himself that kind of spree here, the way he might have in India or Alexandria. In India or Alexandria, though, he would have celebrated along with other long-serving noncoms. When you were part of the Army’s backbone, naturally you made friends with your fellow vertebrae.
In London, to his lasting wonderment, he had Friends in High Places. That came from his unplanned meeting with Rudolf Hess, too. Winston Churchill did his best to keep Chamberlain’s appeasement-minded government from throwing in with the Fritzes. Winnie was glad to discover Walsh felt the same way. Walsh still marveled that a great man should have wanted to know what he thought, much less cared.
Then a drunk in a Bentley ran Churchill down. They said he was a drunk, at any rate. Walsh never believed it. It was too convenient. The Nazis and the Reds arranged “accidents” like that. They weren’t supposed to happen in civilized countries like England.
Only this one had. Because it had, younger MPs who couldn’t stand the German alliance, men like Ronald Cartland and Bobbity Cranford, noticed Alistair Walsh. He’d resigned from the Army in disgust, but he still had military connections that they used to help overthrow Chamberlain’s successor, the even more pro-German Lord Halifax. Coups d’état weren’t supposed to happen in civilized countries like England, either. So much for that.
And now Walsh sat in the warm, smoky comfort of the Lion and Gryphon, the pub near the Houses of Parliament where big chunks of the coup had been plotted. With him sat Cranford, Cartland, and several of the others who’d helped hatch the plot. Walsh had a pint of best bitter in front of him. Most of the rest preferred whiskey, but they made sure his mug stayed full.
Once in a while, they even let him buy a round-they knew he didn’t care to be carried all the time. Never mind that they could have bought and sold him as they pleased. A man’s a man for a’ that, he thought-a Scot’s sentiment, but one a Welshman understood, too.
He went off to the jakes. When he came back, he found his pint magically refilled. “Obliged, gentlemen,” he said.
“My pleasure.” Ronald Cartland had fought in France, too, as a captain. That made Walsh take him even more seriously than the others. They spoke the same language, as it were. Cartland went on, “It’s good to see you back, and back in one piece.”
“Thank you, sir,” Walsh said. “Have we got a peace here, or is this just a rest before we all start thrashing about on the floor again?”
The Tories looked at one another. “A peace or not a peace-that is the question,” Bobbity Cranford misquoted. Walsh had no idea where his nickname came from, but everybody used it. He clowned more than the others, perhaps to live down to his silly handle.
“If 1919 taught us anything, it taught us not to hope for too much,” Cartland said. “The War to End War … didn’t. Chances are this one won’t, either. When we go back-ay, there’s the rub.”
“Not until the Yanks and the Russians finish with the Japanese. That gives poor, battered Europe a little breathing spell, anyhow,” Cranford said. The other Tories nodded.
So did Walsh: it made sense to him. But he asked, “What about us and the Japanese?”
“With Singapore and Malaya and Burma gone, I fear we’re riding the Yanks’ coattails in that war,” Ronald Cartland said. “The logistics are impossibly bad for us to go it alone that far away. We may get back what we’ve lost-I don’t see how Japan can hope to stand up against enemies like that. How long we can keep it once we do get it back is another question, though.”
“How do you mean?” Walsh asked. England had ruled the lands that made up her empire longer than he’d been alive. As far as he was concerned, that meant she could and would keep on ruling them throughout his lifetime and beyond. That came as close to forever as made no difference.
Not to his way of thinking, at any rate. But Bobbity Cranford replied in mournful tones: “With Japan spurring them on, the Burmese have declared their independence.”
“The same way Slovakia did when Hitler told it to.” Walsh’s lip curled. That cut no ice with him.
“It looks as though Slovakian independence will stand,” Cranford said. “If enough of the people in those parts don’t fancy being ruled from Prague, trying to drag them back into the fold would start a new little war. And if enough of the Burmese can’t stomach rule from London, the same applies there.” He picked up his whiskey glass, tossed back what was left in it, and waved for reinforcements. Then, his tone more mournful yet, he went on, “The same applies to India, of course.”
“India!” Walsh exclaimed. India was far and away the most important part of the empire on which the sun never set. Without it … Without India, it would feel as if the sun were setting on the British Isles.
But all the young Tories gave back somber nods. “Gandhi and Nehru and the Hindus want us gone. So do Muhammad Ali Jinna and the Muslims. Heaven only knows what they’ll do to one another if we should leave, but they all want us to pack up and go.”
“They’ll likely slaughter one another by the carload lot,” Bobbity Cranford said. “They want us to pack up and go all the same. You rule an empire because the people you’re ruling don’t think they’ve got any better choices of their own, and so they let you choose for them. It’s not like that any more. We’ve spread nationalism across the whole world, and now-”
“It’s coming home to roost,” Walsh finished for him.
“That’s about the size of it,” Cranford said.
The barmaid came by to fill up the politicos’ whiskey glasses and Walsh’s pint mug. She was a cute young thing. Walsh wouldn’t have minded a go with her, but she had eyes only for Ronald Cartland. He’d always been like catnip for those of the female persuasion.
After a pull at his fresh pint, Walsh said, “That’s about the size of it unless you’re a Czech or a Lithuanian or some poor bugger like that.”
“I can tell you the difference,” Cartland said-he didn’t seem interested in the barmaid, even if she was interested in him. “The difference is, the Germans and the Russians don’t care how many people they kill to keep the rest quiet. We haven’t the stomach for a policy like that these days.”