The Man with the Iron Heart

would just have to let his imagination run wild.

He glanced over at Howard Frank. Was the same burning question uppermost in Frank’s mind, too? The other Jewish officer didn’t seem to keep glancing at the nameplate the way Lou did. But did that mean anything?

Baxter had cold blue eyes that bifocals did nothing to warm up. He eyed Lou and Major Frank in turn. If either man impressed him, he hid it goddamn well. Well, he doesn’t impress me, either, Lou thought. Except his initials. A star on each shoulder put R.R.R. Baxter among the Lord’s anointed in the Counter-Intelligence Corps. He wouldn’t give a rat’s ass whether he impressed a lonely subordinate or not.

“How’s your German, boys?” he asked in that language. His own Deutsch had a strong American accent, but he was plenty fluent.

“Ganz gut, Herr General,” Howard Frank said. Lou nodded.

“Figured as much, but I wanted to make sure. From what I hear, German will work well enough,” Baxter said.

“Well enough for what, sir?” Lou paused, filled by a hope he hardly dared believe. “Has the Red Army finally decided to work with us?”

“Not the Red Army,” Baxter replied, and Lou’s hope crashed and burned. Then it rose phoenixlike from the flames, for the CIC big wheel went on, “The NKVD. The Russians wanted to try the top Nazis in their zone in Berlin ’cause we screwed it up twice. If they did it right, they figured they could score propaganda points off of us. Well, they ended up with egg on their face, too. They don’t like that any better than we would. They’re proud people.”

“After what they went through against the Germans, pride’s about all they’ve got left,” Lou remarked.

“Pride and most of Eastern Europe,” R.R.R. Baxter pointed out. “But, yeah, I know what you mean. They paid for everything they got-paid in blood. Now they’ve got something they can’t use themselves. That’s all I know about it. Right this minute, that’s all anybody who isn’t a Russian knows about it. Your job is to find out what it is and what we can do with it.”

“Why us, sir?” Frank asked. “Why not somebody with more clout?”

“For one thing, you’ve both been heard to say we ought to work more with the Russians,” Brigadier General Baxter answered. Lou blinked. He had said things like that. How closely were people here monitored, though, if the higher-ups knew he’d said it? Well, that one answered itself, didn’t it? Baxter went on, “And the Russians don’t want to make a big deal out of this. If it doesn’t work out, the blame won’t land on them-that’s our best guess. So they don’t want anything more than a midlevel contact. Not yet, anyhow. You’re it, the two of you…if you’re game, of course.”

If you aren’t, you’re nothing but a couple of gutless, worthless pieces of shit. Baxter didn’t say that, but he didn’t have to. One other thing he might not have said was a couple of gutless, worthless Jewish pieces of shit. Maybe such a rude, unfair thought never once crossed his mind. Maybe. But plenty of American officers still had their doubts about Jews in spite of Hitler.

Which was why Lou said, “Oh, hell, yes, sir!” as fast as he could-but no faster than Howard Frank said, “You’d better believe it, sir!”

R.R.R. Baxter nodded smoothly. He wasn’t a general for nothing, Lou realized-he knew how to get people to do what he wanted. He sure did. “Glad to hear it, gentlemen,” he said. “We’ll work out the details of the meeting with the Russians, and we’ll go from there.”

“COME ON,” VLADIMIR BOKOV SNAPPED AT SHMUEL. “GET MOVING, dammit.”

“I’m right here with you,” the Jewish DP said. “I’m not going any place but where you tell me to.”

“Too fucking right you’re not. You wouldn’t last long if you did,” Bokov said. Maybe there really were snipers with beads drawn on Shmuel’s gray head. Or maybe Bokov would have to plug him if he tried to bug out. The NKVD man didn’t know for sure. Shmuel couldn’t know, either.

Together, they crossed to the south side of the Wittenbergplatz. Whoever’d set up this meeting had an evil sense of humor. Captain Bokov suspected Yuri Vlasov was taking a measure of revenge for having his hand forced. The sign above the tavern proclaimed that it was Fent’s Establishment. And so it was…now. If you looked closely, though, under Fent’s name you could still make out the smeared letters that spelled out who the former proprietor had been.

Up until Berlin fell to the Red Army, this had been Alois Hitler’s tavern. From everything Bokov had heard, the Fuhrer’s half-brother wasn’t a bad fellow. With a different last name, he would have been indistinguishable from a thousand other saloonkeepers. Bokov didn’t know what had happened to him in the wake of the Reich’s collapse. Alois Hitler hadn’t been important enough in the grand scheme of things for anybody to worry about him.

Shmuel didn’t seem to know about the tavern. Bokov couldn’t resist telling him, just to see the look on his face. It was everything the NKVD man could have hoped for. The DP stopped in his tracks. “I won’t go in there!”

“Like hell you won’t,” Bokov said. “If I’ve got to, you’ve got to. A minute ago, you said you weren’t going anywhere except where I told you to. And I’m damn well telling you to.”

“Hitler’s place!” Shmuel cried in horror.

“Hitler’s place,” Captain Bokov agreed. “But not that Hitler, and it hasn’t been his place for a couple of years now. So get your sorry old ass in gear.”

“Hitler’s place!” the DP said again. Shaking his head, he went inside with Bokov.

It smelled like tobacco smoke and beer and sweat: like the inside of a tavern, in other words. The light was dim. Whether the man behind the bar was Fent himself or just a hireling, he looked nothing like any Hitler ever born. That was a relief.

Americans were sitting at two or three tables. Even just sitting there, they irritated Bokov. They had so much, and didn’t have the faintest idea how well off they were. An officer at one of the tables nodded to Bokov. The NKVD man walked over and sat down. Again, Shmuel followed. The DP was still muttering to himself.

A barmaid hurried up. She was pretty, although on the skinny side. Bokov thought a lot of German women were skinny, which didn’t keep him from laying them when he got the urge. But this gal was skinny even by German standards. He preferred his women with something to hold on to.

He ordered beer. So did Shmuel. The Americans already had seidels in front of them. The barmaid hustled away. A Russian wouldn’t have moved so fast, not at a no-account job like that. Germans did apply themselves, no matter what they were up to. It was one of the things that made them dangerous.

Both Americans looked like Jews. That matched Bokov’s briefing. The barmaid came back with two more mugs of beer. Bokov raised his and trotted out the phrase he’d been told to use: “To cooperation between allies.”

“To nailing down the ironheart!” one of the Americans returned: the proper answer. He went on, “I’m Frank. This is Weissberg.”

Maybe those were real names, maybe not. Bokov hadn’t been told to hide his identity, so he said, “Bokov.” He jerked a thumb at the DP. “And this is Shmuel Birnbaum.” He would have identified a new-model mortar the same way-he thought of Shmuel more as a weapon than as a human being.

But a new-model mortar wouldn’t have gulped beer as if it would be outlawed tomorrow. A new-model mortar wouldn’t have waved to the barmaid for a refill, or pinched her on the butt when she brought it. She glared at him and got out of there in a hurry. And a new-model mortar wouldn’t have said, “I can talk for myself.”

“We saw you before!” the American called Weissberg exclaimed. “We gave you some chow and some cash.”

“You did,” Birnbaum agreed. He nodded at Bokov. “This guy and his pal made it all disappear. Well, I got to eat some of the chocolate.”

Suspicion sparked in Bokov. This was bending the arm of coincidence if not breaking it. The Americans were both scowling at him, no doubt for abusing a fellow zhid. Well, the hell with ’em. As if reporting to his own superiors, he said, “This man was shot by a guard for approaching the perimeter around our courthouse too closely. The guard might have killed him had another officer and myself not intervened. Naturally, we searched the prisoner. Naturally, we confiscated personal property.”

“So you’re releasing him now, right?” Weissberg said. “Will you give it back?”

“Not our policy,” Bokov answered, which was true enough. Colonel Shteinberg had done whatever he’d done