The Man with the Iron Heart

soldiers ate U.S. C-and K-rations and slept in U.S. pup tents.

Desroches followed Lou’s gaze down himself. He went red. “You Americans have the arrogance of power,” he said.

“Aw, bullshit,” Lou said in English. As he’d figured, Captain Desroches got that just fine. In German, Lou went on, “Hitler had the arrogance of power. If we had it, you guys would be going ‘Heil Truman!’ right now.”

Desroches turned redder. He stubbed out his foul cigarette and lit another one. “Perhaps you are right. I phrased it badly. I should have said that you Americans have the arrogance of wealth.”

That did hit closer to the mark. Lou was damned if he’d admit it. “We have some worries about Hechingen- that’s what we have. France and the USA are allies, ja? We pass the worries on to you, the way allies are supposed to. If anything happens there, we hope you’re ready and we hope you’ll let us know-the way allies are supposed to.”

Captain Desroches sent up more smoke signals. “I will take this report back to my superiors, and we will do…whatever we do. Thank you for this…very interesting session, Lieutenant. Good day.” He got up and stamped out of Lou’s crowded little Nuremberg office.

“Boy, that was fun,” Lou said to nobody in particular. Dealing with the French was more enjoyable than a root canal, but not much.

He went to Captain Frank’s office down the hall. Frank was talking to a German gendarme-who also wore mostly U.S.-issue uniform, though dyed black-and waved for him to wait. Lou cooled his heels in the hallway for fifteen minutes or so. Then the Jerry came out looking unhappy. Lou went in.

“Nu?” Frank asked. Lou summarized his exchange with Desroches. His superior muttered to himself. “You sure we were on the same side?”

“That’s what folks say,” Lou answered.

“Are they going to pay any attention to Hechingen?” Captain Frank asked.

“My guess is, it’s about fifty-fifty, sir,” Lou said. “They sure are touchy bastards, aren’t they?”

“Oh, maybe a little,” Frank said. They both laughed, but neither smiled.

“Other thing is, sir, we don’t know for sure the fanatics’ll hit Hechingen, and we don’t know for sure the froggies’ll tell us if they do,” Lou said.

“Uh-huh. Ain’t we got fun?” Frank tacked on another mirthless laugh. “Gotta be something to do with the damn bomb scientists, doesn’t it?”

“Looks that way to me,” Lou agreed. “That’s where we grabbed those guys in the first place. But it could be something else, I guess. If they’ve got a big old stash of mortar rounds or Panzerfausts or something outside of town, they might be all hot and bothered about those instead.”

“Yeah. They might.” Howard Frank didn’t sound as if he believed it. Well, Lou didn’t, either.

XV

Jerry Duncan got back to Anderson whenever he could. He got to see his wife, Betsy, more that way. They’d been married for going on thirty years, and still got on well.

And he’d long since decided that any Congressman who turned Washington into his full-time home town deserved to lose his next election-and probably would. He also knew he was liable to lose his next election anyhow. The Democrats were putting up a decorated and twice-wounded veteran named Douglas Catledge.

Even though it was still spring, Catledge’s posters and signs were everywhere. VOTE CATLEDGE! they shouted. SUPPORT OUR PRESIDENT! SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!

When Jerry spoke at the local American Legion hall, he met that one head-on. “Anybody who says I don’t support our troops is a liar,” he declared. “It’s just that simple, folks. I don’t support keeping our troops in the wrong place at the wrong time for all the wrong reasons. I’m afraid Harry Truman does. We did what we needed to do in Germany. To do what Truman wants, we’ll need soldiers there for the next fifty years. If that’s what you’ve got in mind, you’d better vote for the Democrats. But I’ll tell you what I think. I think it’s no accident they use a donkey to stand for their party.”

He got a few chuckles and more than a few smiles. Plenty of the guys who hung around the hall had known him for years. After he made his speech, everybody went to the bar and hoisted a few. A younger guy wearing a Ruptured Duck on the lapel of his tweed jacket stuck a forefinger in Jerry’s chest and declared, “The Germans deserve every goddamn thing that happened to them. I was there. I saw…Hell, Mr. Duncan, you don’t want to know most of what I saw.” He gulped down his highball.

“I don’t say they don’t. I’ve never said they don’t,” Jerry answered. “What I do say is, our boys don’t deserve what’s happening to them in Germany right now. We won the war. We knocked the Nazis flat. Isn’t that enough?”

“They aren’t knocked flat enough,” the newly returned soldier said. He hurried back to the bar and reloaded. Then he planted himself in front of Jerry Duncan again.

“They won’t cause any more trouble now,” Duncan said confidently. “They can’t. We’ve got the atomic bomb, and they don’t. If they get out of line-wham! We blow ’em off the map.”

“What about the Russians?” asked the guy with the Ruptured Duck.

“Well, what about the Russians?” Jerry said confidently. “If you believe General Groves, it’ll be years and years before they figure out how to make an atom bomb-if they ever do. And they won’t let Germany get too big for its britches, either.”

“Mm-maybe.” The younger man didn’t sound convinced. He jabbed a forefinger at Jerry again. “And you waste too much time with that crazy McGraw gal.”

Before Jerry could answer that, a middle-aged guy in a chambray shirt and dungarees spun the youngster toward him. “Diana McGraw isn’t crazy. My daughter graduated high school with her boy Pat. I’ve known her and Ed since dirt. He fought the krauts the last go-round, same as me, and he’s been at Delco-Remy ever since. And Diana…How do you expect her to feel when her only son gets bumped off after the goddamn war’s supposed to be over and done with?”

“‘Supposed to be’ is right. Thanks, Art,” Jerry said.

“Any time, Jerry,” Art answered. “Me, I dunno if I’d go whole hog, the way Diana went and did. But, hey-I’ve got girls. They didn’t have to head out and get their asses shot off. Uh, pardon my French.”

“Maybe,” the new vet said again. Then he went off to finish the fresh highball somewhere else.

Art laughed. “We whipsawed him, you and me.”

“I guess we did,” Jerry agreed. That wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind. Showing the other guy he was wrong-or showing him he’d get popped in the snoot if he kept mouthing off-wasn’t how you won his vote. You made him like you. If he liked you, he wouldn’t care whether you kept a cashbox marked BRIBES on your desk back in Washington. He’d vote for you because he thought you were a good fellow, and he wouldn’t need any better reason.

Hell, there was no better reason.

Another man, one more of Jerry’s vintage, came over to him and said, “Y’know, I hate like the dickens to cut and run in Germany.”

“If you make a mistake, don’t you try and get out from under it?” Jerry said. “If what we’re doing in Germany isn’t a mistake, what would you call it, Ron?”

Ron grinned-the Congressman remembered his name. Jerry remembered a gazillion names, but his constituents didn’t think about that. They just noticed that he remembered theirs. Jerry nodded to himself. Make them like you, he repeated silently. Nothing made somebody like you more than recalling his name. It made him seem important in your eyes…regardless of whether he really was.

“Well, we did mess up some,” Ron allowed now.

“Oh, maybe a little,” Jerry allowed. In another tone of voice, it would have been polite agreement. The way he said it, it sounded more like the understatement of the year.