The Man with the Iron Heart

Major Frank-the other man’s promotion had come through about the same time as his own-was smoking too. Well, of course they were rich here. They were Americans, after all.

“I was talking to a guy who hit the beach at D-Day,” Lou remarked.

“Yeah?” Howard Frank tried to blow a smoke ring. It was a ragged botch.

“Uh-huh.” Lou nodded. “He told me his LCI was a few hundred yards from the beach when it got hit by a round from an 88.”

“He’s lucky he’s still here to tell you the story, in that case,” Frank said. The German 88-antiaircraft gun, antitank gun, and main armament in the Tiger tank and the Jagdpanther tank destroyer- was one hellacious piece of artillery.

“No shit,” Lou agreed. “Only reason he is, is the Jerry gunners loaded an AP round instead of high explosive. So the damn thing went through the side of the landing craft, went through two of his buddies, and went straight out through the bottom.”

“Okay. I’m hooked. Give me the next reel of the serial,” Frank said.

“Well, the LCI started to sink like you’d expect,” Lou said. “Not real quick, but it took on more and more water and rode lower and lower…till finally it scraped up onto the beach and the guys who hadn’t got ventilated got out and headed for the war.”

“Mmp.” Major Frank essayed another smoke ring, with no better luck than before. He looked disgruntled, maybe at the miserable puff of smoke, maybe at Lou. “And you’re telling me this story because…?” By the way he said it, he didn’t believe Lou had any reason.

But Lou did. “On account of it kinda reminded me of what we’ve been doing here since the surrender. We’ve been sinking an inch at a time, like. You know what I mean, sir?”

“I only wish I didn’t.” Frank stubbed out the cigarette in his shell-casing ashtray and promptly lit another. As he took a deep drag on the new coffin nail, he asked, “So where’s the beach?”

“The beach?…Oh. I was hoping you could tell me,” Lou said. “If we can’t make it that far before we go under, all we leave is a trail of bubbles, and then we’re gone for good.” He got a fresh smoke going, too. The inside of his mouth felt like sandpaper. Still, the little nicotine buzz was worth it. He’d tried quitting a time or two, but that hurt, so he hadn’t.

“One more time,” Major Frank said, and tilted his head back. This smoke ring was…not good, but better, anyhow. As if it helped jog his brain, he continued, “Maybe if we kill Heydrich…”

“Maybe,” Lou allowed. “If one of our bombs had blasted Hitler in 1943, that would’ve kicked over the anthill for sure.”

To his surprise, Howard Frank looked less than enthusiastic. “They might’ve fought the war better if old Adolf did go to hell halfway through, you know. He told ’em to do a lot of dumbass things, and nobody had the nerve to go, ‘Wait a minute. You’re out of your goddamn mind.’”

Lou grunted. No doubt his superior had something there. Something for the Reich in 1943, for sure. Now? Wasn’t now a different story? “You think Heydrich’s meshiggeh, too?” Lou asked.

“Meshuggeh,” Frank said. “It’s a miracle the krauts can understand you, the kind of Yiddish you talk. It’s all in the front of your mouth.”

“Yeah, yeah, bite me,” Lou said-they’d gone around that barn before, a time or twelve. “I did proper German in college, too. You know that. But do you think Heydrich’s squirrelly?”

“Bite me, sir,” Major Frank said without rancor. He paused to chew on the real question. Reluctantly, he shook his head. “Nah, I guess not. Coldhearted son of a bitch, but that’s not the same thing. For somebody with a crappy hand, he’s played it damn well. Or do you think I’m wrong?”

“Wish I did,” Lou answered. “Boy, do I ever. But I’m not sure how bad his hand really is, y’know? Yeah, his guys can’t fight us straight up any more, like they did before the surrender. But so what? They sure can drive us nuts, same as the Russian partisans did with them. And those assholes were ready for this. They started gearing up a couple of years before the Wehrmacht threw in the towel-stashing guns, getting men out of regular units and salting ’em away…. Not a lot of men, not when you’re talking about a real army. For partisans, though, they got plenty.”

“Ain’t it the truth?” Frank said mournfully. “And how do you stop somebody who doesn’t care if he kills himself as long as he gives you a good one in the balls?”

“Two atom bombs made the Japs believe they honest to God lost,” Lou said. “Our guys over in the Pacific don’t have any trouble now-lucky bastards.”

“You don’t like it where you’re at, you can always put in for a transfer,” Major Frank said. “I’ll endorse it like nobody’s business.”

Lou sent him a reproachful look through the smoke that hazed the office. “You know I don’t want to do this. I want to clobber these Nazi mothers. I’ve got millions of reasons why, too, same as you do. I just wish to hell I knew how we were gonna do it, and that Congress would let us do it.”

As if to punctuate his words, the thump of not-too-distant explosions rattled the windows that gave Major Frank a look at the devastation outside. Lou tensed, ready to hit the dirt. Before he did, a veteran’s judgment told him he didn’t have to. Howard Frank didn’t dive under his desk.

“Only a mortar,” Lou said. Frank nodded. Mortars were the small change of this war. Unless one came down close to you, you didn’t have to worry about them. (Much good that did old Adenauer, Lou reminded himself.) But trucks full of explosives and Heydrichite fanatics wearing vests stuffed with TNT and nails were what you really needed to worry about.

The Germans had surrendered more than a year before. This kind of picayune crap-maybe a couple of GIs wounded, maybe just something smashed-looked as if it could go on forever. Are we ready to hold these shitheads down forever? Lou wondered. He was. He was much less sure about the rest of his country.

Lights from light bulbs. Slightly stale air. The hum of fans in the background. Reinhard Heydrich hardly heard them any more, not unless he made a conscious effort and listened. Nowadays, this was where he belonged: deep underground. The raid into the British zone that netted the German physicists only rubbed his nose in the truth. However much he wished he were, he wasn’t a field operative any more.

This is what happens to a field marshal…or to a Fuhrer, he thought. The Allies spread stories about how Hitler had gone mad down in his bunker. Heydrich didn’t think that was happening to him…but he’d changed, no doubt about it.

He was damn glad his wife and children made it to Spain while things were falling apart in the Reich. A lot of people had used that escape route, and Franco wouldn’t give them up. Of course, the whole war would have gone differently if Franco had let the Wehrmacht take Gibraltar away from England…. Hitler came back from that meeting saying he would rather have three teeth pulled than dicker with the Caudillo again.

At least Heydrich didn’t have to worry that the Yankees would try to use Lina and the kids against him. Better still, he didn’t have to worry that the Russians would. Whatever they tried wouldn’t have swayed him-he was sure of that-but it might have clouded his judgment. He couldn’t afford that, not when he had to fight this unbalanced, unequal kind of war.

Oberscharfuhrer Klein came in with the latest stack of newspapers from all over Germany-and from beyond. He laid a copy of Le Figaro on Heydrich’s desk and pointed to a photo on the front page. “Isn’t this disgusting?” he growled. “They’re so damned proud of themselves because they tied themselves to the Amis’ apron strings.”

The photo showed a French panzer rumbling down the Champs Elysees. It looked rather like a Panther; Heydrich knew the French army was using some of those it had taken more or less intact. His French was rusty, but he could make sense of the story under the photo. It bragged about how the French-built panzer showed that France was a great power again.

Heydrich wanted to spit on the newspaper. “How great was France in 1940?” he growled.

“That’s what I was thinking, Herr Reichsprotektor.” Hans Klein leered. “I was on leave in Paris in ’42, and the girls were pretty great-I’ll tell you that. Leave a few Reichsmarks on the dresser and they’d do whatever you wanted. They’d smile while they did it, too.” He chuckled reminiscently. “Those were the