Striking the Balance

Embry and Jones came up behind Bagnall. As if by chance, the pilot casually held a Mauser, while the radarman bore a Soviet PPSh 41 submachine gun. “We understand you,” Bagnall said. “Do you understand us?”

Schultz spat in the mud by the doorway. “Try and do some people a favor and this is the thanks I get.”

Bagnall looked at Embry. Embry looked at Jones. Jones looked at Bagnall. They all started to laugh. “Why the devil would you want to do us a favor?” Bagnall demanded. “Far as I can tell, you want to see us dead.”

“Me especially,” Jones added. “I am not responsible for the fair Tatiana’s affections, or for the shifts thereof.” He spoke as he might have of blizzards or earthquakes or other ineluctable forces of nature.

“If you’re dead, she can’t yank your trousers down-that’s so,” Schultz said. “But if you’re gone, she can’t yank your trousers down, either. One way or another, you aren’t going to be around long. I already told you that. You can clear out or you can end up dead-and you’d better figure out quick which one you aim to do.”

“Who’s going to kill us?” Bagnall said. “You?” He let his eyes flick back to his companions. “Good luck.”

“Don’t be aDummkopf,”

Schultz advised him. “In real fighting, you three would just be-what do they say? — collateral damage, that’s it. Nobody would know you were dead till you started to stink. And there’s going to be real fighting, sure as hell. We’re going to set this town to rights, is what we’re going to do.”

“Colonel Schindler says-” Bagnall began, and then stopped. Lieutenant General Chill’s second-in-command made most of the right noises about maintaining Soviet-German cooperation, but Bagnall had got the impression he was just making noise. Chill had thought working with the Russians the best way to defend Pskov against the Lizards. If Schindler didn’t-

“Ah, see, you’re not so stupid after all,” Schultz said, nodding in sardonic approval. “If somebody draws you a picture, you can tell what’s on it. Very good.” He clicked his heels, as if to an officer of his own forces.

“Why shouldn’t we go off to Brigadier German with news like this?” Ken Embry demanded. “You couldn’t stop us.” He made as if to point his rifle at Schultz.

“What, you think the Russians are blind and deaf and dumb like you?” Schultz threw back his head and laughed. “We fooled ’em good in ‘41. They won’t ever let us do that again. Doesn’t matter.” He rocked back on his heels, the picture of arrogant confidence. “We would have whipped ’em if the Lizards hadn’t come, and we’ll whip ’em here in Pleskau, too.”

The first part of that claim was inherently unprovable. However much he didn’t care for it, Bagnall thought the second part likely to be true. The Soviet forces in and around Pskov were ex-partisans. They had rifles, machine guns, grenades, a few mortars. The Nazis had all that plus real artillery and some armor, though Bagnall wasn’t sure how much petrol they had for it. If it came to open war, theWehrmacht would win.

Bagnall didn’t say anything about that. Instead, he asked, “Do you think you’re going to be able to keep the fair Tatiana”-die schone Tatiana;it was almost a Homeric epithet for the sniper-“as a pet? I wouldn’t want to fall asleep beside her afterwards, let me tell you.”

A frown settled on Schultz’s face like a rain cloud. Plainly, he hadn’t thought that far ahead. In action, he probably let his officers do his thinking for him. After a moment, though, the cloud blew away. “She knows strength, Tatiana. When the forces of theReich

have shown themselves stronger than the Bolsheviks, when I have shown myself stronger than she is-” He puffed out his chest and looked manly and imposing.

The three RAF men looked at one another again. By their expressions, Embry and Jones were having as much trouble holding in laughter as Bagnall was. Tatiana Pirogova had been fighting the Germans since the war started, and only reluctantly went over to fighting the Lizards after they landed. If Schultz thought a Nazi win in Pskov would awe her into thinking him a GermanUbermensch, he was in for disappointment-probably painful, possibly lethal, disappointment.

But how could you tell him that? The answer was simple: you couldn’t. Before Bagnall even started to figure out what to say, Schultz spoke first: “You have your warning. Do with it what you will.Guten Tag.” He did a smart about-turn and clumped away. Now that spring was truly here, he wore German infantry boots in place of the Russian felt ones everyone, regardless of politics, used during the winter.

Bagnall shut the door, then turned to his fellow Englishmen. “Well, what the devil are we supposed to do aboutthat?”

“I think the first thing we do, no matter what Schultz said, is to go pay a visit to Aleksandr German,” Jerome Jones said. “Knowing the Germans don’t love you is rather different from knowing they aim to kick you in the ballocks one day soon.”