“-all their other neighbors,” Skorzeny finished for him. He didn’t acknowledge that the Germans had done the same thing on a bigger scale all through the east. He couldn’t have been ignorant of that; he just deliberately didn’t think about it. Jager had seen that with other German officers. He’d been the same way himself, until he saw too much for him to ignore. To him, a lot of his colleagues seemed willfully blind.
Skorzeny pulled a flask off his belt, unstoppered it, took a healthy belt, and passed it to Jager. It. was vodka, made from potatoes that had died happy. Jager drank, too. “Zhiveli,” he said, one of the few words of Serbo-Croatian he’d picked up.
Skorzeny laughed. “That probably means something like ‘here’s hoping your sheep is a virgin,’ ” he said, which made Jager cough and choke. The SS man had another swig, then stowed the flask again. He glanced around with a skilled imitation of casual uninterest to make sure nobody but Jager was in earshot, then murmured, “I picked up something interesting n town yesterday.”
“Ah?” Jager said.
The SS colonel nodded. “you’remember when I went into Besancon, I had the devil’s own time finding any Lizards to do business with, because one of their high mucky-mucks had gone through there and cleaned out a whole raft of the chaps who’d gotten themselves hooked on ginger?”
“I remember your saying so, yes,” Jager answered. “It didn’t seem to stop you.” He also remembered his own amazement and then awe as the bulky Skorzeny writhed his way out of a Lizard panzer several sizes too small for him.
“That’s my job, not getting stopped,” Skorzeny said with a mug grin that twisted the scar on his cheek. “Turns out the name of that mucky-muck was Drefsab, or something like that. Half the Lizards in Besancon thought he was wonderful for doing such a good job of clearing out the ginger lickers; the other half hated him for doing such a good job.”
“What about it?” Jager said, then paused. “Wait a minute, let me guess-This Dref-whoever is down there in Split now?”
“You’re clever, you know that?” The SS man eyed him half in annoyance at having his surprise spoiled, half in admiration.
“I wasn’t stupid to bring you along here, either. That’s it exactly, Jager the very same Lizard.”
“Coincidence?”
“Anything is possible.” Skorzeny’s tone said he didn’t believe it for a minute. “But by what he did back in France, he’s got to be one of their top troubleshooters. And there aren’t any ginger lickers down there. The locals would be selling to them if there were, and the ten kilos I brought with me is gathering dust here in Klis. And if it’s not about ginger, what’s he doing down there?”
“Dickering with the Croats?”
Skorzeny rubbed his chin. “That makes more sense than anything I’ve come up with. The Lizards need to do some dickering, not just to get their toehold here but also because the Italians were occupying Split until they surrendered to the Lizards. Then the Croats threw ’em out. The scaly boys might be making a deal for Italy as well as for themselves. But it’s like a song that’s a little out of tune-it doesn’t seem quite right to me somehow.”
Jager was indignant at having his brainchild criticized.
“Why not?”
“What this Drefsab did in Besancon, that was police work, security work-call it whatever you like. But would you send a Gestapo man to negotiate a treaty?”
Now Jager looked around to make certain neither Captain Petrovic nor any of his merry men could overhear. “If I were negotiating with Ante Pavelic and his Croatian thugs, I just might.”
Skorzeny threw back his head and bellowed laughter. A couple of riflemen in the khaki of the Independent State of Croatia glanced over to see what was so funny. Wheezing still, Skorzeny said, “Wicked man! I’ve told you before, you were wasted in panzers.”
“You’ve told me lots of things. That doesn’t make them true,” Jager said, which made the SS man give him a shot in the ribs with an elbow. He elbowed back, more to remind Skorzeny he couldn’t be pushed around than because he felt like fighting. Jager gave away, centimeters, kilograms, and nasty attitude in any scrap with him; he didn’t think Skorzeny knew what quit meant, either.
“Here dig out those plans again,” Skorzeny said. “I think I know what I want to do, but I’m not quite sure yet.” Jager obediently dug. Skorzeny bent over the drawings, clucking like a mother hen. “I like these underground galleries. We can do things with them.”
The halls to which he pointed lay below the southern part of Diocletian’s palace. “There used to be upper halls above them, too, with the same plan, but those are long gone,” Jager said.
“Then screw them.” Skorzeny didn’t care about archaeology, just military potential. “What I want to know is, what’s in these galleries?”
“Back in Roman days, they used to be storerooms,” Jager said. “I’m not so sure what’s in there now. We need to talk to our good and loyal Croatian allies.” He was proud of himself; that came out without a hint of irony.
“Yes, indeed,” Skorzeny said, accepting the advice in the spirit in which it was given. “What I’m thinking is, maybe we can dig a tunnel from outside the wall into one of those galleries-”
“Always making sure we don’t happen to tunnel into the Lizards’ barracks.”
“That would make things more complicated.” Skorzeny chuckled. “But if we can do that, we have our good and loyal allies make a nice, loud, showy attack on the walls, draw any Lizard who happens to be underground up to the top… and then we bring in some of our lads through the tunnel and up, and-what was that? The horse’s cock up the arse?”
“Yes,” Jager said. “I like that.” Then, like a proper devil’s advocate, he started picking holes in the plan: “Moving men and weapons into the city and into the place that houses the tunnel or at least somewhere close by it isn’t going to be easy and we’ll need a lot of men. That’s a big palace down there, big enough for a church and a baptistry and a museum to fit inside, plus God knows what all else. The Lizards will have packed a lot of fighters into it.”
“I’m not worried about the Lizards,” Skorzeny said. “If these Croats decide to hop into bed with them, though, that’ll nail our hides to the wall. We have to keep that from happening, no matter what; I don’t give a damn what we have to give Pavelic to keep him on our side.”
“Free rein would probably do it, and he has that already, pretty much,” Jager said with distaste. The Independent State of Croatia seemed to have only one plan for staying independent: hammering all its neighbors enough to make sure nobody close by got strong enough to take revenge.
If Skorzeny felt the same revulsion Jager did, he didn’t show it. He said, “We can promise him more chunks of the coast that the Italians are still occupying. He’ll like that-it’ll give him fresh traitors to get rid of.” He spoke without sarcasm; he might have been talking about the best way to sweeten the deal for a secondhand car.
Jager couldn’t be so cold-blooded. Very softly, he said, “That Schweinhund Pavelic runs a filthy regime.”
“You bet he does, but he’s our Schweinhund, and we want make sure he stays that way,” Skorzeny answered, just as quietly. “If it does, every one of these Lizards, that Drefsab included, is ours, too.” He brought a fist down onto his knee. “That will happen.”
Compared to yielding to the Lizards, making deals with Ante Pavelic seemed worthwhile. Compared to anything else, Jager found it most repugnant. And yet, before the Lizards came, Pavelic had been a loyal and enthusiastic supporter of the German Reich. Jager wondered what that said about Germany. Nothing good, he thought.