But arguing politics with a Jerry was a waste of time. “It seemed like this guy, whoever he was, placed himself to hurt as many Americans as he could before he, uh, exploded himself.” That wasn’t supposed to be a reflexive verb, but nobody’d had to talk much about human bombs before.
Herr Herpolsheimer understood him, which was the point of the exercise. The old man nodded. “Yes, I thought so. He did it with definite military effect.”
“Wunderbar,” Lou muttered. If he’d been speaking English, he would have said Terrific the same way.
Herpolsheimer eyed him. “Your German is quite good, Herr Oberleutnant, but I do not think I have heard an accent quite like yours before.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. Half the time, it isn’t German, or isn’t exactly German-it’s Yiddish.” Lou waited. Come on, you old bastard. Let’s hear the speech about how you didn’t know what those wicked Nazis were doing to the Jews here. No, you had no idea at all.
The town councillor clicked his tongue between his teeth. “My niece had a Jewish husband,” he said after a moment.
“Had?” Lou didn’t like the sound of that.
“Max hanged himself in 1939, after Kristallnacht,” Herpolsheimer said. “He could not get a visa to any foreign country, and he could not live here. In his note, he said he did not wish to be a burden on Luisa. She did not believe he was one-but, the way things went, she might have come to do so….”
What were you supposed to say after something like that? Lou couldn’t think of anything, so he got out of there as fast as he could. Then he had to tell Sergeant Benton what Herpolsheimer had said, which made him feel great all over again. “Son of a bitch,” the ordnance sergeant said when he got done. “Son of a bitch. Ain’t that a bastard?”
“Mazeltov, Toby,” Lou said. “That may be the understatement of the year.”
“Hot damn,” Benton said. “So what the hell are we going to do about this asshole who turned himself into a bomb?”
“What you said, pretty much-hope he’s one lone nut and there’s no more like him,” Lou answered. “Past that, I have no idea-I mean, none. And I may be breaking security to tell you the higher-ups don’t, either, but I don’t think I’m surprising you much.”
“Nope,” Sergeant Benton said. “I only wish to God you were.”
The explosion had taken out most of a city block. The damage wasn’t so obvious in fallen Berlin. The lost capital of the Reich had already taken more bombs and shells and rockets and small-arms fire than any town this side of Stalingrad. After all that, what difference did one more explosion make?
Captain Vladimir Bokov knew too well the difference this one explosion made. The bloodstains on still-standing walls and on the battered pavement were noticeably fresher than most in Berlin. And he could also make out bits and pieces of the GMC truck some clever German had packed with explosives before driving it up to some parading Russian soldiers and blowing them up-and himself with them.
“You see, Comrade Captain,” Colonel Fyodor Furmanov said. He’d led those parading Red Army troops. Only dumb luck no flying piece of truck got him in the kidneys-or in the back of the neck. He had burns and scrapes and bruises, nothing worse…and he seemed embarrassed to remain alive while so many of his soldiers didn’t.
“Oh, yes. I see,” the NKVD man said. Colonel Furmanov flinched. He knew his next stop might be a labor camp somewhere north of the Arctic Circle. “What kind of precautions did you take to keep that truck from getting close to your men?”
Furmanov flinched again. Bokov eyed the decorations on his chest. They said the Red Army officer had had himself a busy war. He spread his hands now. “Comrade Captain, I took none. The responsibility is mine. I thought the war was over. I thought no one would strike at us. I was wrong-and my poor men paid the price for my mistake.”
“You didn’t expect that the Fascist would be willing to blow himself up if that meant he could strike at the Soviet Union?” Bokov asked.
“No,” Colonel Furmanov said stonily. “If you believe what the Yankees are saying, the Japanese fight like that. But the Germans don’t-didn’t, I should say. Not before the surrender, they didn’t. You must know that as well as I do, Comrade Captain.”
His words said the right things. His tone said he doubted whether an NKVD man knew anything about what had gone on at the front-but didn’t say so blatantly enough to let Bokov call him on it. Abstractly, the captain admired the performance. The only way he could respond to the challenge was by pretending not to notice it. And so he simply nodded and said, “Yes. I do know.”
“Well, then.” Colonel Furmanov sighed. He’d been right to come out and accept responsibility. It would have landed on him anyhow. Being ready for it made him…look a little better.
Bokov lit another of his American cigarettes. When he handed Furmanov the pack, the older officer stared in surprise before taking it. Furmanov leaned close to get a light from Bokov’s cigarette. After giving it to him, the NKVD man spoke slowly and deliberately: “It seems, Comrade Colonel-it seems, I say-that some Nazis have decided to continue resistance in spite of the regime’s formal surrender. This bomb in the truck…is not an isolated incident.”
He didn’t want to admit that. Coming out and saying it made the USSR-and, maybe even more to the point, the NKVD-look bad. Easier by far to let this officer vanish into the gulag. Maybe he’d come out in ten years, or more likely twenty-five. Or maybe they would use him up before he finished his sentence, the way they did with so many.
If this were an isolated incident, Furmanov would be gone. As things were, though…“There are reports from the American occupation zone of Germans using explosives to kill U.S. soldiers-and killing themselves in the process.”
“Bozhemoi!” the infantry colonel exclaimed. “In the American zone, too? There really is a resistance, then!”
“It would seem so, yes,” Bokov said. “We are also trying to see whether these bombings are connected to Marshal Koniev’s assassination.”
Colonel Furmanov said “My God!” again. Then he cursed the Nazis with a fluency Peter the Great might have envied. And then, after he ran down, he asked, “What can we do about it?” He held up a hand. “Can we do anything about it that leaves more than maybe three motherfucking Germans alive?”
“That is the question.” Bokov impersonated Hamlet. After a moment, he added, “Why do you care? I promise you, nobody in Moscow will.” The Nazis had come much too close to wiping the Soviet Union off the map. Anything to help ensure that that never happened again seemed good to the men who shaped Soviet policy. It seemed good to Vladimir Bokov, too, not that his opinion on such things mattered a fart’s worth.
“Comrade Captain, if we send Germans up the smokestack the way the SS got rid of Jews, I’ll wave bye-bye to them while they burn. You’d best believe I will,” Furmanov said. “You can see by my record that I’m not soft on these fuckers. But if we do something that makes them desperate enough to go after my men without caring whether they live or die themselves…That I care about, because it endangers Soviet troops for no good reason.”
“The Germans aren’t doing what they’re doing because of how we’re treating them.” Now Bokov spoke with authority. “Like I said, they’re pulling the same damned stunts in the American zone, and you know the Americans go easy on them-Americans and Englishmen are halfway toward being Fascists themselves.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Colonel Furmanov agreed. “So why are they doing it, then?”