Yet again, the Anglo-americans and the Russians (to say nothing of the remora French, which was what they deserved to have said of them) would not get to put on their show trial for the leaders of the Third Reich and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. A small, cold smile stole across Reinhard Heydrich’s face as he went through newspaper and magazine accounts. Some of the photos were truly spectacular.
So were some of the editorials. One American writer feared the German resistance would start what he called “a reign of terror in the air.” He imagined fighting men seizing planes full of passengers and flying them into buildings all over Europe and maybe even in the States. He imagined seizing laden planes and crashing them on purpose. He even imagined seizing planes and flying them to, say, Franco’s Spain to hold the passengers hostage till the German Freedom Front’s demands were met.
He had one hell of an imagination. None of that stuff had occurred to Heydrich. As far as he was concerned, the attack on the Berlin courthouse was a one-off job. But he recognized good ideas when somebody stuck them in front of his nose. He started taking notes.
Only a handful of these hijackings and atrocities would be needed to throw air transport into chaos all over the world, the editorial writer warned. Would travelers put up with the delays and inconveniences necessary to ensure no one can smuggle weapons or explosives aboard aircraft? It seems most unlikely.
It seemed pretty unlikely to Heydrich, too. He wrote himself more notes. Throw air transport into chaos all over the world? That sounded good to him. He didn’t know whether grabbing a few planes would have the effect this fellow foretold, but he could hardly wait to find out.
Hans Klein walked into his office with more papers and magazines. “We’ve got ’em jumping like fleas on a hot griddle, Herr Reichsprotektor,” the noncom said.
“Good. That’s the idea. May they jump out of Germany soon.” Heydrich bounced some of the American editorial writer’s ideas off of Klein. “What do you think?” he asked, respecting the veteran’s solid common sense. “Can we do these things? Would they cause as much trouble as the Ami thinks?”
“They might,” Klein said slowly. “We don’t have many pilots left to aim at buildings, but anybody with balls can crash a plane. And if you were going to fly to Spain instead of crashing, you could likely point a gun at the regular pilot and make him take you there.”
“Well, so you could.” Heydrich wrote that down, too. Some men who weren’t willing to throw their lives away for the Reich would be willing to fight for it. They might make good hijackers…and quite a few people from the Third Reich had already taken refuge in friendly-even if officially neutral-Spain.
Oberscharfuhrer Klein’s thoughts ran on a different track: “Damn shame that poor Mitzi gal’s chute didn’t open when she jumped.” His mouth twisted. “Too much time to think on the way down.”
“Ja,” Heydrich said, and left it right there. At his quiet orders, the man who’d packed Mitzi’s parachute made sure it wouldn’t open. Why take chances? She was much too likely to get captured and grilled after she landed.
When you issued orders like that, you had to do it quietly. If it got out that you’d thrown away someone’s life-especially a woman’s-on purpose, your own people would give you trouble. Never mind that it was the only reasonable thing to do. What you saw as reasonable, they’d see as coldhearted.
And now Heydrich wanted to find a discreet way to dispose of the man who’d packed Mitzi’s chute. As soon as that fellow started pushing up daisies, he wouldn’t be able to blab to the enemy. He wouldn’t be able to blab to his own pals, either.
None of which showed on the Reichsprotektor’s face. Once upon a time, the Fuhrer’d called him the man with the iron heart. If you were going to hold a position like his, an iron heart was an asset, no two ways about it.
“One more embarrassment for the enemy,” he said. “With any luck at all, it will make the Amis squeal even louder than they are already.”
“Ja!” Klein perked up. He was always eager to look in that direction. “Tomorrow belongs to us.”
“Well, of course it does,” Reinhard Heydrich said.
Lieutenant General Vlasov had looked and acted like a son of a bitch the last time Bokov and Shteinberg called on him. He seemed even less friendly now. For twenty kopeks, his expression said, both the other NKVD men could find out how they liked chopping down spruces in the middle of Siberian winter.
However much he hated them, though, he couldn’t just tell them to fuck off, the way he had before. He might want to; he plainly did want to. But the Heydrichites had humiliated the Soviet Union before the world when they crashed that plane into what would have been the war criminals’ courthouse. Striking back at them any way at all looked like a good idea.
It did to Captain Bokov, anyhow, and to Colonel Shteinberg. Whether it did to Yuri Vlasov…We’ve got to find out, dammit, Bokov told himself.
“I know what the two of you are here for,” Vlasov rasped. “You’re going to try and talk me into sucking the Americans’ cocks.”
“No, Comrade General, no. Nothing like that,” Shteinberg said soothingly. Yes, Comrade General, yes. Just like that, Vladimir Bokov thought fiercely. He wanted to watch Vlasov squirm. Maybe they could have kept the crash from happening if only the miserable bastard had put his ass in gear.
“Don’t bother buttering me up, zhid,” Vlasov said. “Nothing but a waste of time.”
“However you please…sir.” Moisei Shteinberg held his voice under tight control. “My next move, if you keep dicking around with us, is to write to Marshal Beria and let him know how you’re obstructing the struggle against the Heydrichite bandits.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” General Vlasov bellowed.
“Yes, I would. I’ve already done it,” Shteinberg said. “And if anything happens to me, the letter goes to Moscow anyway. I’ve taken care of that, too…sir.”
“Fuck your mother hard!”
“Maybe my father did,” Shteinberg answered calmly. “But at least I know who he was…sir.”
Could looks have killed, Yuri Vlasov would have shouted for men to come and drag two corpses out of his office. Bokov wondered whether the general would try something more direct. He also wondered how much good this move would do him and Shteinberg even if they turned out to be right. He shrugged, with luck invisibly. If it helped the fight against Heydrich’s bandits, he’d worry about everything else later.
“All right. All right.” Vlasov spat the words in Shteinberg’s face. “Take this other kike to the Americans, then. Go ahead. Be my guest. They’ll probably be a bunch of Jews, too. As far as I’m concerned-” He broke off, breathing hard.
“Yes, sir?” Shteinberg’s voice was polite, even curious. Bokov was curious, too. What had Vlasov swallowed? Something like As far as I’m concerned, Hitler knew what he was doing with you people? Bokov wouldn’t have been surprised. Plenty of his fellow-Russians felt that way. He didn’t love Jews himself. But you could damn well count on them to be anti-Fascist.
No matter how much rope Shteinberg fed Vlasov, the NKVD general was too canny to hang himself. “Go on,” he barked. “If you’re going to do it, go do it-and get the devil out of here.”
“If it works, he’ll take the credit,” Bokov warned once they were safely outside NKVD headquarters.
“Oh, sure,” Shteinberg agreed. “But he’d do that anyway.” Bokov laughed, not that his superior was joking-or wrong.
“Aye,” Jerry Duncan said.