But the Nazi hooligans were another story. Why had the Brucks died, anyhow? Because Hitler started his stupid war, that was why. If he hadn’t tried to rob the Czechs and Slovaks of whatever small store of happiness they possessed, her in-laws and husband would still be baking bread today.
And she couldn’t even scream Why didn’t the RAF bomb the stupid Fuhrer instead? Her mother would understand. Understand, nothing-her mother would agree with her. She still didn’t know for sure whether the house was bugged, though. The whole family would head straight for Dachau if the SS heard something like that from her.
Hitler had started the war, and the Nazis were intent on making-on stealing-a profit from it. What could one Jew do against a Juggernaut’s car? Try not to get crushed under the enormous wheels: that was all she could see. Long odds against managing even so little.
In lieu of her scream, she said, “Something needs to happen. Something good, I mean. We’ve had too much of the other stuff.”
“I know,” Mother said. “But what can you do?”
“Nothing.” Sarah let even more bitterness out. “Nothing is all they’ll let you do. They’re going to take away whatever the Brucks had, and they’re going to find some stupid reason to pretend it’s legal.”
She imagined herself writing an indignant letter to the Fuhrer. She imagined her clever words persuading him that his henchmen were overstepping. She imagined him being so impressed, he decided he’d been foolish to hate Jews all these years.
Then she imagined the attendants at the asylum strapping her into a straitjacket so she couldn’t hurt herself or anyone else. Hitler wouldn’t listen to her. Hitler never listened to anybody. That was part, and not such a small part, of what made him Hitler. No, he didn’t listen to anybody. He made everyone else listen to him instead. And if you didn’t, if you wouldn’t … Well, that was what places like Dachau were for.
They were going to steal the Brucks’ estate, or confiscate it, or whatever other label they’d slap on it to make it seem good to them. She wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Except hate them. And she was already awfully good at that.
Summer in Egypt. Alistair Walsh swore at himself for volunteering for … this. He’d been swearing at himself ever since the Germans pulled Musso’s fat out of the fire at Tobruk. Now the question was whether Fritz would spread his fire all the way to Alexandria and beyond to the Suez Canal.
Fritz, damn him, had a dashing panzer general, and the dashing panzer general had the bit between his teeth. Walsh had seen photos of him. He didn’t look like anything speciaclass="underline" kind of pudgy, more like a Bavarian tavernkeeper than a fifth-generation Junker trying out the General Staff’s latest bit of trickery.
But, no matter what Walther Model looked like, he knew his trade as well as any starchy Prussian with a poker up his arse. German tanks kept driving deep into the desert and coming back into view anywhere the hard-pressed English commanders didn’t expect them.
No one would have accused the English officers defending Egypt of much in the way of dash. They weren’t the Donkeys who’d led the King’s Army during the last war-Walsh didn’t suppose they were, anyhow-but they weren’t a great deal better.
Every time Model drove deep into the desert like a dolphin after tunny in the sea and then came up for air in their rear, it took them by surprise. Every time they got taken by surprise, they retreated. They’d be back in Alexandria pretty soon. And wouldn’t that make a pretty kettle of tunny, by God?
Of course, General Model wouldn’t be able to go around them and flank them out of Alexandria, the way he had so often farther west. Alistair Walsh didn’t suppose he would, anyhow. Wouldn’t the Nile get in the way? You couldn’t cross that on little rubber rafts the way the Wehrmacht had paddled over so many smaller streams in France.
Could you?
That Walsh had to wonder didn’t speak well for his confidence in his country’s officer corps. If I were in charge … he thought, but then, If I were in charge, what? The officers weren’t doing any too well, true. But it wasn’t as if he had any better ideas himself.
He didn’t even have the better ’ole Bruce Bairnsfather’s Tommies had sheltered in during the last dust-up. He rode in the back of a lorry whose engine hacked and wheezed with too much inhaled sand. All the lorries were alleged to have desert-strength air filters. So were all the tanks. Lorries and tanks nevertheless went down for the count with depressing regularity.
The soldiers jammed in there with him shared cigarettes and food. One of them squeezed liver paste from a tinfoil tube onto a cracker. As far as Walsh was concerned, that paste was the best ration in anybody’s army. Pointing at the tube, he said, “Took that off a dead Fritz, did you, Algie?”
“No, Sergeant. Off a prisoner,” Algie answered. He was half Walsh’s age, and red and peeling from sunburn. Gingery whiskers sprouted on his cheeks and chin and upper lip. He hadn’t found a chance to shave any time lately, and wouldn’t have cared to any which way: the sun would have left his skin as tender and sensitive as a baby’s. He stuffed the cracker into his mouth. With it still full, he added, “Not half bad.”
“That’s a tasty one, all right,” Walsh agreed.
He didn’t sound wistful or expectant. He made a point of not sounding that way. He was nonetheless a staff sergeant: perhaps not God Incarnate to a private soldier, but certainly no lower than His vicegerent on earth. Algie held out the tube to him. “Want some for yourself?”
“Obliged,” Walsh said, and he meant it. He’d have to find some way to pay back the youngster before too long. In the meantime … In the meantime, he’d eat. You grabbed food and sleep whenever you could. You never could tell how long you’d have to do without them.
As far as Walsh was concerned, the only ration that even came close to the German liver paste was tinned steak-and-kidney pie. It wasn’t as good, but it was plenty good enough-and you didn’t have to kill or capture somebody to get your hands on it. As long as he had the real prize, he’d enjoy it. He tried to remember not to make too much of a pig of himself as he squeezed the tube onto a cracker of his own.
His belly growled when food first hit it, then grew quiet and contented. He pulled out a packet of Navy Cuts, lit one, and passed the packet first to Algie. One fag wasn’t enough to give for a squeeze from that tube, but it made a start.
The lorry rumbled along. The road, such as it was, was bad. Along with the wheezy rumble, the lorry gave forth with an irregular series of thuds and bangs. And so Walsh and his comrades didn’t hear the German fighters till the 109s were right on top of their column.
His head had just come up in alarm when machine-gun bullets stitched through the rear compartment of the lorry. Blood splattered. Men tried to topple, wounded or dead. The driver let out a hideous shriek. The machine slewed sideways and went into the sand. The driver’s foot must have come off the pedal, because it quickly slowed to a stop.
“Out!” Walsh yelled. “Out and take cover!”
Some of the men were already moving when he shouted. They got the wounded out of the lorry as gently as they could. One man they left behind: a 7.92mm round had gone in one side of his head and blown off most of the other. No medic would help him-nor would anything else this side of Judgment Day.
Walsh ran around the lorry to get the driver out if he could. “It hurts!” the man moaned. “It hurts!” There was blood all over that compartment, too.
But he was lucky, even if he didn’t think so. He’d got shot through the right nether cheek-no wonder his foot came off the accelerator! “Come on, dammit!” Walsh said, hauling him out from behind the wheel by main force. “That’s a Blighty wound, or it is if you don’t get hit again.”