The Man with the Iron Heart

Diana watched a couple of GIs tenderly lift a canvas-wrapped bundle into the back of a jeep. The announcer went on, “The Army is pursuing the heartless fanatics who murdered Private Cunningham, and expects to make arrests soon.”

Diana wondered why the Army expected to do that. To look good in the newsreels? She was getting more and more suspicious of everything the government claimed. The Army sure hadn’t had much luck getting rid of the fanatics up till now.

The newsreel went on with floods and spectacular car crashes and highlights from football games. Diana couldn’t care about any of them. The Flash Gordon serial that followed also left her cold. Spaceships! What a bunch of nonsense that was! (But then, she would have said the same thing about atom bombs a few months earlier.)

Even The Bells of St. Mary’s had trouble cheering her up. That told her how far down she was more clearly than anything else could have. But Ed and Betsy and Buster enjoyed it. She could enjoy their enjoyment, even with none of her own.

Afterwards, as they went out into the cold, Betsy sighed and said, “Back to the pressure cooker.”

“It gets better. It gets easier,” Diana said. She wondered if she would ever feel the same way about the burden she carried.

After she and Ed got back to the house, they talked for a few minutes about nothing Diana remembered the next day and then went to bed. She wasn’t amazed when he reached for her under the covers. She didn’t quite feel like it, but she let him pull her close. If he didn’t fully please her, he never knew it. He went into the bathroom for a minute, then came back and started to snore right away.

She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling. She had to get up early tomorrow to catch the train for Washington, but sleep stayed away. The ticking clock sat on his nightstand. She looked over at it, but couldn’t read the dimly glowing hands. Her sigh sounded just like her daughter’s. After what seemed a very long time, her eyes slid shut at last.

Captain Howard Frank was not a happy man. He stared at Lou as if over the sights of a machine gun. “You know this mamzer Schmidt?”

“I’ve run into him a few times.” Lou told the truth. If he didn’t, his superior could find out easily enough. And when he did…Lou didn’t care to think about that. He wanted out of the Army, yeah, but not with a court-martial giving him a boot in the seat of the pants.

Frank drummed his fingers on the card table that did duty for his desk. “What d’you think of him?”

Lou shrugged. “He’s a reporter. He’ll never make anybody forget Shirer or Howard K. Smith.”

“He’s doing his goddamnedest.” The CIC captain drummed harder. “What d’you know about how he got his hands on that film?”

Ice walked up Lou’s back. Did the brass think he had something to do with that? “Only what he’s said, which isn’t much.”

“Which isn’t bupkis,” Frank snapped. “A German gave it to him! That only cuts it down to eighty million people. Maybe to forty million, if it’s a fucking kraut from the American zone. Hot damn!”

“We ought to get more than that out of him,” Lou said.

“No kidding! But he’s a civilian. He goes on about not revealing his sources. All we can do is ship his sorry ass back to the States.” Captain Frank made as if to tear his thinning hair. “Yeah, throw me in the briar patch, too, why don’t you? And you know what else?”

“No, but you’re gonna tell me, aren’t you?” Lou said.

“You better believe it. The isolationist chowderheads who want us to bring all the boys home day before yesterday, they’ll make a hero out of him.” Frank lit a cigarette. He looked mad enough to breathe fire and smoke without one. “They’ll say he was telling the truth, and the Army’s trying to hide how horrible things are over here. They’ll wrap him in the First Amendment and beat us over the head with it.”

The Army was trying to hide how bad things were in Germany. It would have been crazy not to, as far as Lou was concerned. You did what needed doing. And if holding down the resurgent Nazis didn’t need doing, he’d never seen anything that did. But these-chowderheads struck him as much too nice a word-wanted to joggle Truman’s elbow.

“What can we do about it, sir?” Lou asked.

“Find out where his footage came from-that’d make a halfway decent start,” Captain Frank answered. He blew out more smoke. “And relax, for cryin’ out loud. I’m pretty sure you’re clean, ’cause we checked you out…. That surprise you?”

“Not for this, sir,” Lou said slowly. “I would’ve hoped you could’ve trusted me, but…. With this, you want to know. It’s the Army.”

“Hey, they’ve been on my ass, too,” Frank said reproachfully. He rolled his eyes. “Gottenyu, have they ever. They really want to know how this Schmidt item got his hands on that movie.”

“What’s your best guess?” Lou asked.

“Same one Bruce the morale officer made when I first showed it to you,” Frank answered. “Heydrich’s goons figured we’d try and sit on it, so they made more copies and spread ’em around. Schmidt got his hands on one some kind of way.”

“Makes sense to me.” Lou’s chuckle held no real mirth. “If we were the Gestapo, we’d ram splinters under his fingernails and set ’em on fire. He’d sing-he’d sing like a goddamn canary. Or even if we were the NKVD, over in the Russian zone.” His gaze sharpened. “How bad is it, over in the Russian zone? D’you know?”

Captain Frank hesitated. “Officially, you didn’t get this from me.”

“Get what, sir?” Lou was the picture of innocence.

“Okay.” His superior’s laugh sounded as dry as his had a moment before. “From what I hear, if the fanatics don’t want us occupying them, they really don’t want the Russians occupying them. So they’re kicking up their heels in the Russian zone and in what Poland’s holding and in the Czech mountains, too. But the Russians aren’t Mr. Nice Guy like we are. They aren’t taking the gloves off, on account of they never put the gloves on to begin with. So things are kinda rugged over there right now.”

Lou nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, I bet. They ever ask how things are going over here?”

“Not through channels, or not that I’ve heard of, and I think I would have,” Frank answered.

“Too bad. It’d be nice if we were still making like allies on something, you know?” Lou said.

“It would, wouldn’t it?” Frank agreed. As soon as the Germans went down for the count, the USA and the USSR started glaring at each other over the fallen body-and in the Far East, too. Berlin wasn’t going to be the capital that ruled the world. Washington and Moscow both had ambitions along those lines. Neither liked the idea that the other had ambitions. Lou didn’t know what he could do about that. Well, actually, he did know what he could do-bupkis, as Captain Frank had said. But he didn’t know what anyone else could do, either.

“I wonder if we ought to talk to their people,” Lou said. “We might do better against Heydrich’s boys if we were all fighting the same war, not two separate ones-know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I do,” Frank said. “But you are not to talk to the Russians without orders from somebody above you. That’s a direct order, Lou. You try sliding around it and I promise the brass will crucify you. When they aren’t looking for Nazis under the bed, they’re looking for Reds. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” Lou said resignedly-he knew Frank was right.

“Besides,” the captain went on, “we aren’t fighting two separate wars against the fanatics. We’re fighting four. Well, we do work with the English some, but the French are almost as prickly as the Russians-and almost as rough on the Jerries, too.”

“I’ve heard that. Breaks my heart,” Lou said, which won him another wry laugh from Captain Frank. They weren’t the only American Jews who wouldn’t have been sorry to see their own government come down harder on the Germans it ruled, not by a long shot. Lou added, “French’re getting some of their own back for four years under the Nazis’ thumbs.”

“Sure they are,” Frank said. “But it still rubs me the wrong way when de Gaulle goes on about turning France