Striking the Balance

He thought the chances that one of those bombs would make its way to China were slim. But he did not have to let Ppevel know that. The more likely the little devil reckoned it to be, the better the bargain the People’s Liberation Army would get.

And he’d rocked Ppevel too. He could see as much. The high-ranking scaly devil and his interpreter went back and forth between themselves for a couple of minutes. Ppevel finally said, “I still do not altogether believe your words, but I shall bring them to the attention of my superiors. They will pass on to you their decision on whether to include you Chinese in these talks.”

“For their own sake and for yours, they had best not delay,” Nieh said, a monumental bluff if ever there was one.

“They will decide in their own time, not in yours,” Ppevel answered. Nieh gave a mental shrug: not all bluffs worked. He recognized a delaying tactic when he saw one. The little devils would discuss and discuss-and then say no. Ppevel went on, “The talks between us now are ended. You are dismissed, pending my superiors’ actions.”

“We are not your servants, to be dismissed on your whim,” Hsia Shou-Tao said, anger in his voice. But the interpreter did not bother translating that; he and Ppevel retreated into the rear area of the enormous orange tent. An armed little devil came into what Nieh thought of as the conference chamber to make sure he and Hsia departed in good time.

Nieh was thoughtful and quiet till he and his aide left the Forbidden City and returned to the raucous bustle of the rest of Peking: partly because he needed to mull over what Ppevel had so arrogantly said, partly because he feared the little scaly devils could listen if he discussed his conclusions with Hsia Shou-Tao anywhere close to their strongholds.

At last he said, “I fear we shall have to form a popular front with the Kuomintang and maybe even with the Japanese as well if we are to harass the little devils to the point where they decide staying in China is more trouble than it’s worth.”

Hsia looked disgusted. “We had a popular front with the Kuomintang against the Japanese. It was just noise and speeches. It didn’t mean much in the war, and it didn’t keep the counterrevolutionaries from harassing us, too.”

“Or we them,” Nieh said, remembering certain exploits of his own. “Maybe this popular front will be like that one. But maybe not, too. Can we truly afford the luxury of struggle among ourselves while we also combat the little scaly devils? I have my doubts.”

“Can we convince the Kuomintang clique and the Japanese to fight the common enemy instead of us and each other?” Hsia retorted. “I have my doubts of that.”

“So do I,” Nieh said worriedly. “But if we cannot, we will lose this war. Who will come to our rescue then? The Soviet Union? They share our ideology, but they have been badly mauled fighting first the Germans and then the scaly devils. No matter what we told Ppevel, I do not think the People’s Liberation Army will get an explosive-metal bomb from the USSR any time soon.”

“You’re right there,” Hsia said, spitting in the gutter. “Stalin kept the treaty he made with Hitler till Hitler attacked him. If he makes one with the little scaly devils, he will keep it, too. That leaves us fighting a long war all alone.”

“Then we need a popular front-a true popular front,” Nieh Ho-T’ing said. Hsia Shou-Tao spat again, perhaps at the taste of the idea. But, in the end, he nodded.

XV

“Armor-piercing!” Jager barked as the Panther’s turret traversed-not so fast as he wished it would move-to bear on the Lizards’ mechanized infantry combat vehicle. He was hull-down behind a rise and well screened by bushes; the Lizards hadn’t a clue his panzer was there.

“Armor-piercing!” Gunther Grillparzer echoed, his face pressed up against the sight for the Panther’s long 75mm cannon.

Karl Mehler slapped the discarding-sabot round into the breech of the gun. “Nail ’em, Gunther,” the loader said.

Grillparzer fired the panzer’s main armament. To Jager, who stood head and shoulders out of the cupola, the roar was like the end of the world. He blinked at the glare of the meter-long tongue of flame that shot from the muzzle of the gun. Down inside the turret, the brass shell casing fell to the floor of the panzer with a clang.

“Hit!” Grillparzer shouted exultantly. “They’re burning.”

They’d better be burning,Jager thought. Those discarding-sabot rounds could punch through the side armor on a Lizard panzer. If they didn’t wreck the more lightly protected combat vehicles, they wouldn’t be worth using.

“Fall back,” he said over the intercom to Johannes Drucker. The driver already had the Panther in reverse. He backed down the rear slope of the rise and continued in reverse to the next pre-selected firing position, this one covering the crestline to attack any Lizard vehicles that pursued too aggressively.