“Your old mother was woolgathering there, I’m afraid. Must be second childhood coming on.”
“Oh, sure,” her daughter said with a snort. “What I said was, Buster and I’d better head for home. Stan won’t last much longer, and-”
“
“We know you’re not, Killer, but we’re going home anyway,” Buster said. Stan yawned again. He was too “not sleepy” to put up much of an argument. Buster went on, “Maybe I’ll show up for my shift tomorrow, and maybe I won’t.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Ed agreed. “Hey, tomorrow’s Friday. Who wants to work a one-day week right after New Year’s?”
Their daughter and son-in-law and grandson headed out into the cold. Stan dozed off on Buster’s shoulder before the Nefts even made it out the door. It closed behind them. That left Diana and Ed all alone.
“Happy New Year, babe,” he said.
“You, too,” she replied automatically, even as she wondered,
“Want to-you know-celebrate, like?”
Her answering yawn was pretty much authentic. “Can we hold off a day? I’m really sleepy, and I don’t have to pretend I’m not, the way Stan does.”
Ed chuckled. “He’s a corker, all right. Yeah, it’ll keep a day. Sure.”
He was accommodating, which meant she’d have to be accommodating tomorrow night. And she’d lie there thinking about what Marvin knew and he didn’t, and….
“Hey, babe,” he said, more anxiety than he usually showed in his voice. “It’ll be okay, right?”
“Sure, Ed.” She might have been soothing little Stan.
“You did what you set out to do. I’m proud of you,” Ed said.
“I just wish I’d never set out to do it. I wish I’d never had to,” Diana said. And that was nothing but the truth. If Pat were alive…But he wasn’t, and he never would be. She started to cry. She’d been doing that a lot lately. Ed took her in his arms. He thought he knew all the reasons he was soothing her.
Lou Weissberg was taking papers out of filing cabinets and stuffing then into boxes when Howard Frank came in to see how he was doing. Lou was glad for the chance to stop for a couple of minutes. “Last man out of Germany-is me, or maybe you,” he said.
Major Frank winced. “It’s not quite
“Close enough, goddammit,” Lou said. “A garrison in Berlin. A few air bases and a little bit of armor-just enough to make the Red Army think twice about marching in…if we’re very, very lucky. Not enough to hold down the goddamn fanatics, and fat chance we’ll ever bring any guys back to take care of that.”
“The Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats say they can whip the Nazis in any halfway honest election. The German police say they can fight the bastards off. They get a lot of the equipment we’re leaving behind,” Frank insisted.
“Yeah, all the other parties were so wonderful at stopping Hitler in 1933, too,” Lou said, which made his friend flinch again. “And how many German cops still get up on their hind legs and whinny every time they hear the
“Some, sure. Not too many. I hope.” Major Frank spread his hands. “We’ve done the best we could, considering….”
“Yeah. Considering.” Lou made an ordinary word sound extraordinarily foul.
“Unless you want to stay here as a civilian, we’re heading for home day after tomorrow,” Frank said. “In its infinite wisdom, Congress has decided that’s the best thing-the very best thing-the United States can do.”
“Oh, yeah. Every fucking American Jew ever born is dying to be a civilian in Germany.
All Howard Frank did was sadly wag an index finger and say, “Naughty, naughty.” A moment later, he added, “You must be slipping, man. I’ve called those assholes way worse than that.”
“Well, goody for you,” Lou said. “You gonna resign your commission after we get back to the States?”
This time, Major Frank looked genuinely sorrowful. He nodded anyway. “Yeah. After we go and do this, I don’t see any point to staying in. You?”
“Same here,” Lou said. “Back to my family, back to teaching English, back to being a civilian. And I’ll spend the rest of my days hoping I can live out the rest of my days before things blow up again, know what I mean?”
“Don’t I wish I didn’t!” Frank exclaimed. “Now that you’ve cheered me up, I’ll go back and cram more of my crap into boxes. The records will all be on file-if anybody ever bothers to look at ’em.”
“Yeah,” Lou said. “If.”
Two days later, trucks and halftracks pulled up in front of the commandeered Nuremberg hotel to take departing soldiers and the paperwork of an occupation gone bad north to the sea, and to the ships waiting to carry them across the Atlantic. Outside the building, Lou smoked a last cigarette and shot the shit with one of the German gendarmes who’d be taking over the place once the Americans were gone. Rolf was a pretty good guy. He’d been a corporal during the war-but
“We will miss you when you go,” the gendarme said. “You are the only thing standing between us and chaos.”
“You guys will do fine on your own,” Lou answered. You always reassured a sickroom patient, even- especially-when you didn’t think he’d make it.
“I fear the new parties will not have the moral authority they need to oppose the old order,” Rolf said. “I fear we-the police-will not have the weapons to hold back the fanatics.”
“Sure you will,” said Lou, who feared the very same things. Somebody yelled at him from a halftrack. He cussed under his breath, then handed Rolf what was left of the pack of Chesterfields. “Good luck to you, my friend.”
Rolf Halbritter coughed from the dust the retreating convoy kicked up. He shook his head in wonder not far from awe. The Amis were really and truly going-no, really and truly gone.
Which meant…He had a badge pinned on the underside of his collar, where it didn’t show. Now he could wear it openly again. It was round, with a red outer ring that carried a legend in bronze letters: NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHE DEUTSCHE ARBEITERPARTEI. The white inner circle held a black swastika. Every Party member had one just like it. Pretty soon, they’d all be showing it, too.
HISTORICAL NOTE
There really was a German resistance movement after V-E Day. It was never very effective; it got off to a very late start, as the Nazis took much longer than they might have to realize they weren’t going to win the straight-up war. And it was hamstrung because the
