Striking the Balance

He staggered to his feet and ran back toward the fortress that had been the core around which the town of Pskov grew. The great gray stones had been proof against arrows and muskets. Against high explosives precisely aimed, they were useless, or maybe worse than useless: when they toppled, they crushed those whom blast alone might have spared. During the Blitz-and how long ago that seemed! — unreinforced brick buildings in London had been death traps for the same reason.

Smoke began rising from the wreckage. The walls of theKrom were stone, but so much inside was wood… and every lamp in there was a fire that would spread given fuel. The lamps had been given fuel, all right.

The screams and groans of the wounded reached Bagnall’s ears, stunned though they were. He saw a hand sticking up between two blocks of stone. Grunting, he and Embry shoved one of those stones aside. Blood clung to the base of it and dripped. The German soldier who’d been crushed under there would never need help again.

Men and women, Russians and Germans, came running to rescue their comrades. A few, more alert than the rest, carried stout timbers to lever heavy stones off injured men. Bagnall lent the strength of his back and arms to one such gang. A stone went over with a crash. The fellow groaning beneath it had a ruined leg, but might live.

They found Aleksandr German. His left hand was crushed between two stones, but past that he hardly seemed hurt. A red smear beneath a nearby stone the size of a motorcar was all that was left of Kurt Chill and Nikolai Vasiliev.

Flames started peeping out between stones. The little crackling noise they made was in and of itself a jolly sound, but one that brought horror with it. Soldiers trapped in the rubble shrieked as fire found them before rescuers could. Smoke grew ever thicker, choking Bagnall, making his eyes run and his lungs burn as if they’d caught fire themselves. It was as if he was working inside a wood-burning stove. Every so often, too, he smelled roasting meat. Sickened-for he knew what meat that was-he struggled harder than ever to save as much, as many, as he could.

Not enough, not enough. Hand pumps brought water from the river onto the fire, but could not hold it at bay. The flames drove the rescuers away from those they would save, drove them back in defeat.

Bagnall stared at Ken Embry in exhausted dismay. The pilot’s face was haggard and black with soot save for a few clean tracks carved by sweat. He had a burn on one cheek and a cut under the other eye. Bagnall was sure he looked no better himself.

“What the devil do we do now?” he said. His mouth was full of smoke, as if he’d had three packs of cigarettes all at once. When he spat to get rid of some of it, his saliva came out dark, dark brown. “The German commandant dead, one of the Russian brigadiers with him, the other one wounded-”

Embry wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Since one was as filthy as the other, neither changed color. Wearily, the pilot answered, “Damned if I know. Pick up the pieces and go on as best we can, I suppose. What else is there to do?”

“Nothing I can think of,” Bagnall said. “But oh, to be in England in the springtime-” That dream was gone, smashed as terribly as Aleksandr German’s hand. What was left was the ruins of Pskov. Embry’ s answer was the best choice they had. It was still pretty lousy.

Air raid sirens screamed like the souls in the hell Polish Catholic priests took such delight in describing. Moishe Russie hadn’t believed in eternal punishments of that sort. Now, after enduring air raids in Warsaw and London and wherever in Palestine this was, he wondered if hell wasn’t real after all.

The door to his cell opened. The hard-faced guard he’d learned to loathe stood in the doorway. The fellow had a Sten gun in each hand. Even for him, that much weaponry struck Moishe as excessive. Then, to Russie’s amazement, the guard handed him one of the weapons. “Here, take it,” he said impatiently. “You’re being liberated.” As if to emphasize the point, he pulled a couple of magazines from his belt and gave them to Russie, too. By their weight, they were full. “Treat ’em like you would a woman,” the guard advised. “They get bent up, especially at the top, and they won’t feed right.”

“What do you mean, I’m being liberated?” Moishe demanded, almost indignantly. Events had got ahead of him. Even with a weapon in his hands, he felt anything but safe. Would they let him out of his cell, let him walk round the corner, and then riddle him with bullets? The Nazis had played tricks like that.