The Man with the Iron Heart

Bokov had read his share of Sherlock Holmes stories in translation. Many Russians had; unlike so many English and American authors, Arthur Conan Doyle was ideologically inoffensive. All the same, he said, “How much good does it do to know who the criminal is when you can’t catch him because he’s blown himself to smithereens?”

“A point,” the senior NKVD officer admitted. “But only some of a point. These Fascist jackals run in packs. Sometimes the trail of one will lead you to the next.”

“Sometimes it will, yes, sir. Only sometimes it won’t.” Bokov hesitated, then hurried on so that what he said came from his mouth and not Shteinberg’s: “Doesn’t look like the Americans have done anything with that damned DP we gave them, for instance.” Shteinberg couldn’t blame him for that if he’d already blamed himself. He hoped Shteinberg couldn’t, anyhow.

The Jew stayed silent so long, Bokov started to worry. At last, though, Shteinberg said, “Don’t lose any sleep over that one, Volodya. If it doesn’t work out, then it doesn’t. But the world won’t end if one single solitary cat happens to land by a bowl of cream.”

Would he have said the same thing had the man they let go been an anti-Fascist German, not another Jew? Vladimir Bokov had his doubts. By the nature of things, he had to keep them to himself.

“And besides-” Shteinberg added, and not another word. But when he puffed out his cheeks, narrowed his eyes, and glowered, he did a remarkable impression of Lieutenant General Yuri Vlasov. Maybe there was a mike hidden in Bokov’s office, maybe not. There was no cinema camera. Nobody but the two of them would ever know he’d just wordlessly said they’d given the evil-tempered general a finger in the eye. And Bokov couldn’t prove a thing.

“If they stole a tank, they couldn’t have done it with one lone man,” Bokov said. “Did we know where they did it yet? Do we know how?”

“We may. I don’t.” Moisei Shteinberg sighed. “Something went wrong somewhere-you can count on that. We forgot about a machine, or we figured the Germans couldn’t make it start because we couldn’t, or a guard got drunk and passed out, or the Heydrichites knocked somebody over the head, or somebody who spoke Russian had forged papers, or…” He spread his hands as if to say he could go on.

Some of the schemes he proposed struck Bokov as more likely than others, but any one of them was possible. “Why do we fuck up like this all the time?” Bokov burst out.

“It’s not as though the rest of the Allies haven’t got bitten, too.” The other NKVD man gave such consolation as he could. “And the Germans lost the big war, so they aren’t immune, either.”

“What does that mean?” Bokov answered his own question: “The whole human race is fucked up, that’s what!”

One of Shteinberg’s dark eyebrows rose a few millimeters: “And this surprises you because…?”

Joe Martin nodded to Jerry Duncan. “The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Indiana,” the Speaker of the House said.

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker,” Jerry said. “I rise to discuss the administration’s flawed-no, I should say failed- policy in Germany.”

“You’ve got no right to do that,” Sam Rayburn growled from the other side of the aisle. “The administration can’t carry out its policy in Germany, because you people won’t let it. Running away and giving the place back to the Nazis is your policy, not the President’s.”

Bang! Speaker Martin brought down his gavel with obvious relish. “The gentleman from Texas is out of order, as I am sure he knows perfectly well.”

“I’ll tell you what’s out of order,” Rayburn said. “This idiotic retreat you’re ramming down everybody’s throat is out of order, that’s what.”

Bang! Bang! “That will be quite enough of that, Mr. Rayburn. Quite enough.” Martin often repeated himself for emphasis. Diana McGraw does the same thing, Jerry thought. Then he wondered if he did it himself without noticing. The Speaker of the House went on, “Mr. Duncan has the floor. You may continue, Mr. Duncan.”

“Thank you again, Mr. Speaker,” Jerry said. “It’s nice to have somebody on my side up there. I’m still getting used to that.”

A ripple of laughter ran through the not especially crowded House chamber. Even Sam Rayburn smiled gruffly. While he was up on the dais, he hadn’t been on Jerry’s side, and he didn’t give two whoops in hell who knew it.

“We had the wrong troops in the wrong places, and they were trying to accomplish the wrong mission,” Jerry went on. “Other than that, everything was fine with President Truman’s policy.”

Most Republicans in the chamber applauded, along with the growing number of anti-occupation Democrats. Catcalls and boos rose from the pro-administration Democrats, and from the Republicans, mostly in the Northeast, who couldn’t see their way clear to agreeing with the majority in their own party.

“We tried everything we knew how to do. Did we manage to stop the German partisans, or even slow them down very much? We did not,” Jerry said. “No one’s been able to slow them down very much. The way they blew up the Russians’ monument in Berlin proves that. If the Russians can’t keep them from doing things like that, nobody’s going to be able to.”

The Russians are tough, evil bastards. They can do all the stuff we haven’t got the stomach to do ourselves. Jerry didn’t come right out and put that in his speech, but it lay below and behind his words. By the way several Congressmen nodded, they heard what he wasn’t saying-heard it loud and clear.

“Isn’t it time we deal with what we’ve got instead of what we wish we had?” he asked. “Let the damned Nazis come out in the open-not because we love them, because we know they’re there. Once they are out in the open, they won’t be able to cause nearly so much trouble.”

“Tell it to Frankfurt,” Sam Rayburn said. “How many years before it’ll be fit for human beings to live there again?”

“Mr. Duncan has the floor,” the Speaker said, and used the gavel again.

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The partisans weren’t out in the open when they attacked our poorly guarded compound in Frankfurt,” Jerry said. “When they come out of hiding, we’ll know who they are and where their strength lies. And we will sit over them with our planes and our bombs, and we will make sure they stay inside their own borders.”

“Till one of their rockets lands on New York City-or Washington,” Rayburn said.

“Oh, come off it!” Jerry rolled his eyes. “I do believe the distinguished gentleman from Texas has been pawing through too many of those magazines with the bug-eyed monsters on the cover.”

He got a laugh, but it was a more nervous laugh than he would have liked. And Rayburn said, “The gentleman from Indiana had better tell that to London and Antwerp. Anybody who hit London yesterday will be able to hit New York-and Moscow-tomorrow.”

Jerry was saved not by the bell but by the gavel. “The gentleman from Texas is out of order, as I’ve reminded him before,” Joe Martin said. “It’s also my opinion that his argument forgets all about where we are today.”

Martin got a much bigger, much deeper laugh than Jerry Duncan had. When the Speaker of the House cracked a joke, Congressmen who knew what was good for them found it funny. Some Speakers had long memories for slights of any kind. Sam Rayburn had, when he was on the rostrum in front of the House. You crossed him at your professional peril. Joe Martin seemed more easygoing than the dour Texan, but he might yet find he needed to toughen up one of these days.

Now he nodded to Jerry. “You may continue, Mr. Duncan. Hopefully, you may continue without further interruptions from the peanut gallery.” He glanced in Sam Rayburn’s direction. Rayburn looked back, unrepentant.

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was almost done,” Jerry said. “I did want to add for the record that I’m proud the person who first publicly pointed out that the President’s German policy has no clothes on is from my district. The whole country owes Mrs. Diana McGraw a vote of thanks.”

“She has a lot to answer for, all right, but that’s not the same thing,” Rayburn said. Speaker Martin gaveled him into silence-about a dozen words too late to suit Jerry.

By now, Bernie Cobb had seen too goddamn many German Alpine valleys. The most excitement he’d ever got