they surrendered? Must be close to two thousand by now. And what about England? And France? And Russia?”
Truman’s face hardened. “Yes, what about Russia? Stalin isn’t acting like good old Uncle Joe any more. Now that Hitler’s gone and Germany’s
“Oh, piffle!” One more thing Diana had never imagined was that she might one day say
“It’s not so simple as you make it sound. Do you know, nobody told me about the atom bomb till after I was in the White House? I was Vice President, and nobody told me. That’s how secret it was.” Truman sounded plaintive-and who could blame him? “One thing is plain-it’s not something you can use casually. It’s like swatting a fly by dropping a Sherman tank on it.”
“And so we have this running sore instead,” Diana said. “How long will the Germans go on murdering GIs, sir? Will we still have soldiers over there in 1949? In 1955? Do you think the American people will let something this senseless go on that long?”
“Holding down the Nazis and holding out the Reds isn’t senseless,” Truman insisted. “If we’d done things the right way after World War I, we never would’ve had to fight World War II.”
“Getting thousands of soldiers killed after everybody said the war was over is senseless.” Diana could dig in her heels, too. “Grandchildren who’ll never be born…” She told herself not to puddle up. That wasn’t easy, but she managed.
“I have to do what I think is right,” Truman said. “I have to think of the long term, not just today and tomorrow.”
“If you foul up today and tomorrow, what’s the long term worth?” Diana retorted. “And if you foul up today and tomorrow, the American people will throw you out before you can do anything about it later on.”
“Chance I have to take,” Truman said.
“You’ll be sorry, sir,” Diana told him. “I am already, and you will be.”
X
New Year’s Eve. New Year’s Day. The big holiday in the Soviet year. Behind Christmas in the Gregorian calendar, but conveniently ahead of the old Julian reckoning the Orthodox used. This year, celebrating the slide from 1945, the year of victory, to 1946, the year of…what? The year when the Soviet Union didn’t need to worry about victory any more. Not much, anyhow.
And, here in Berlin, the year where the Russians could celebrate in style. Here where Fascism had grown, here where it had done its bloody-handed best to annul the Revolution and destroy the Soviet people…How many officers would swill up the loot of a conquered country? How many frightened German barmen would pour the drinks? How many frightened German barmaids would serve them? How many of those frightened German barmaids would serve the conquerors in other ways later on, whether they much wanted to or not?
Three days earlier, Vladimir Bokov had been looking forward to getting his own drunken blowjob from some blond German bitch. Life wasn’t fair. He’d thought so for a long time. Now he was sure of it. Instead of going off and drinking till he puked and getting his cock sucked, he lay tossing on the meager mattress of a steel-framed cot, knocked flat by the nastiest case of influenza he’d ever had.
Colonel Shteinberg lay one cot to his left. Shteinberg looked like hell. No doubt Bokov looked like hell, too, but he couldn’t see himself. He and his superior were both running a fever close to forty Celsius. Bokov’s head ached. So did every other part of him. Sometimes he shivered and wished he had more blankets. Five minutes later, sweat would river off of him.
He was, in short, a mess. So was Moisei Shteinberg. The only difference between them was that Bokov remembered liking Christmas when he was a small, small boy before the Revolution. Shteinberg never would have given a damn about it.
A male nurse-a Red Army private who’d done something wrong and was lucky not to have drawn some worse punishment-brought them aspirins and glasses of heavily sugared hot tea. The tea stayed down. Some of the other things Bokov had tried didn’t want to. He had vivid memories of that, and wished he didn’t.
The sullen nurse moved no faster than he had to. No doubt he wished he were out carousing, too. And he had plenty to keep him busy. Bokov and Shteinberg weren’t the only ones down with the grippe-not even close. As the aspirins lent Bokov’s wits brief clarity, he thought,
“This is shit,” Colonel Shteinberg said-maybe the little white tablets were also helping him think straighter. “We’ll be flat on our backs for days more, and then feeling steamrollered for another week after that. Pure shit, nothing else but.”
“Don’t worry about it, Comrade Colonel,” Bokov said.
Shteinberg gave him a bleary stare. “Don’t worry? Are you out of your mind? Why not?” He plucked at the cold compress on his forehead-except, if it was anything like Bokov’s, it wasn’t cold any more.
“Because all the officers out drinking tonight will be just as bad off as we are,” Bokov answered. “They’ll have more fun getting there”-no German girl was going to suck him off tonight, not when he couldn’t get it up with a crane-“but they’ll be fucked over, too.”
“Maybe,” Shteinberg said grudgingly. “But do you suppose the stinking Heydrichite fanatics will drink themselves blind tonight? Not likely! They’re no fools, damn them-they know how we do things. And you just wait and see if they don’t try something while we’re plastered out of our minds.”
That struck Captain Bokov as much too likely. He shrugged anyway. It hurt-but what didn’t right now? This was even worse than a hangover, and he hadn’t even had the pleasure of getting plastered himself. Definitely unfair.
“Comrade Colonel, the two of us can’t do a thing about it,” he said.
“Too right we can’t,” Shteinberg agreed. “I feel like dogshit.”
He didn’t see the fellow. Where the devil had he gone? Was he off smoking a cigarette? Or had he cached a flask somewhere? Was he swigging right this second? Bokov’s spirit lusted after vodka. His body told his spirit it had to be kidding. Sometimes you had to listen to your body, even if you didn’t want to.
The orderly came back. He didn’t look so sullen now. Sure as hell, he’d found some way to make himself feel better. And if the men he was supposed to be taking care of got short shrift, that was their hard luck. They were already sick, weren’t they?
Bokov drifted into a restless, uneasy sleep-the only kind he’d had since this miserable thing landed on him like a
Then a doctor with a thin, clever Jewish face much like Colonel Shteinberg’s was shaking him awake. Another doctor, this one an authentic Slav, was waking the NKVD colonel. “Get up,” the Jew told Bokov. “We need you.”
“What is it?” Bokov tried to sit up. His head swam. “I beg your pardon, Comrade Physician. I am not well.” He gulped, hoping the juices in his stomach would stay down. He wasn’t kidding, not even a little bit. In the next bed, Shteinberg was also feebly protesting.
“You don’t have time to be sick,” the Jewish doctor said bluntly. “The fucking Nazis have poisoned half the officer corps in Berlin, maybe more. You’ve got to track them down and pay them back. Give me your arm.”
“
