The Man with the Iron Heart

have cracked this one. Lieutenant General Vlasov’s right hand cramped into a white-knuckled fist; his cheeks and ears blazed red. Had he tried playing games with some German popsy with big tits and come up short?

Whether he had or he hadn’t, he snarled, “Fuck your mother, Shteinberg. I told you you couldn’t go to the American pricks, and you goddamn well can’t. That is an order. Do you understand it?”

“Da, Comrade General,” Shteinberg answered tonelessly: the only thing he could say.

Those fierce Tartar eyes lit on Bokov again. He wished they wouldn’t have. “What about you, Captain?” Vlasov demanded. “Do you also understand the order?”

“Da, Comrade General,” Bokov said, as Shteinberg had before him.

“Khorosho.” But it wasn’t good enough to suit Vlasov, for he rounded on Shteinberg once more. “You’re a zhid yourself, so you were born sneaky-just like this so-called informant of yours. Asking if you understand isn’t enough. Will you obey the order?”

Bokov didn’t know whether the loophole had occurred to Shteinberg. It had occurred to him: a measure of his own rage and desperation. He waited to see what Shteinberg would say. The Jew said what he had to say yet again: “Da, Comrade General.” He sighed afterwards, which did him not a fart’s worth of good.

Yuri Vlasov proceeded to nail things down tight: “You will obey, too, Captain Bokov?”

“Da, Comrade General. I serve the Soviet Union.” Bokov did his best to turn the ritual phrase of acknowledgment into a reproach.

His best wasn’t good enough. “All right, then. That’s settled,” Vlasov said, relentless as a bulldozer. “Fuck off, both of you.”

They…fucked off. Once outside of-well outside of-Yuri Vlasov’s office, Bokov began, “I’d like to-”

“Wait in line, Captain. I’m senior to you,” Shteinberg said. “So many people like him, and we beat the Hitlerites anyway. Only goes to show Germany was pretty screwed up, too.”

“But this Shmuel-” Bokov kept spluttering phrases. “We ought to-”

Colonel Shteinberg took him by the elbow and steered him out of NKVD headquarters before he could splutter a phrase that would cook his goose. “No,” Shteinberg said, regretfully but firmly. “He gave us an order. We promised to obey it. If we go back on that…” He shivered, though the day was warm enough and then some. “Even if it worked out well, they’d still make examples of us.”

That was such obvious truth, Bokov didn’t waste his breath arguing it. He did say, “That goddamn fathead will be sorry he gave his stupid order.”

“One way or another, things will even out,” Shteinberg said. “Unless, of course, they don’t.”

A crew of German Stevedores In Overalls Loaded Crates InTO the C-47. First Lieutenant Wes Adams eyed his cargo manifest. Equipment, it said, which told him exactly nothing. “You know what we’re taking to Berlin?” he asked his copilot.

“Buncha boxes and two krauts,” answered Second Lieutenant Sandor Nagy-he inevitably went by Sandy.

The krauts were on the manifest, too, at the bottom. “Wonder who they paid off to get a lift,” Wes said.

Sandy shrugged. “Beats me. They finagled it, though, one way or another. So we’ll haul ’em and kick ’em off the plane and say bye-bye.”

The Germans came aboard right on time. They were krauts, all right-probably figured somebody’d execute ’em for showing up five minutes late. The guy was pale and skinny, in a suit that had been new about when the Depression started. The woman would have been pretty if not for a scar on one cheek. The way she scowled at Wes and Sandy made the pilot bet she’d got the scar in a wartime air raid.

Tough shit, lady, Wes thought. He pointed to a couple of folding seats right behind the cockpit. “Sit here. Buckle yourselves in. Stay here till we get to Berlin.”

“Kein Englisch.” The guy spread his hands regretfully. Wes repeated himself, this time in rudimentary German. “Ach, ja. Zu befehl,” the man said, and the gal nodded.

Wes eyed him. Zu befehl was what a Jerry soldier said when he got an order, the way an American would go Yes, sir. Well, there weren’t a hell of a lot of German men who hadn’t gone through the mill. And he and his lady friend were settling into the uncomfortable seats peaceably enough. “Let’s go through the checklist, Sandy,” Wes said with a mental shrug.

“Sure thing, boss,” the copilot replied.

Everything came out green. Wes set an affectionate hand on the Gooney Bird’s steering yoke. A C-47 would fly through things that tore a fighter to pieces, and take off with all kinds of shit showing up red. He’d done that kind of thing during the war more often than he cared to remember. You didn’t have to in peacetime flying, which was nice.

Twin 1,200-horsepower Pratt and Whitney radial engines fired up as reliably as Zippos. Wes and Sandy taxied out to the end of the runway. Taxiing was the only thing that could get tricky in a C-47. In tight spaces, you really needed pilot and copilot both paying close attention. But they had plenty of room here.

When the tower gave clearance, Wes gunned the engines. He pulled back on the yoke as the C-47 got to takeoff speed. Up in the air it went-sedately, because it was a transport, and a heavily laden transport at that-but without the least hesitation. If you wanted to fly something from here to there, this was the plane to do it.

They headed up toward 9,000 feet, where they’d cruise to Berlin. No need to worry about oxygen, not lazing along down here like this. Wes leaned back in his seat. “This is the life,” he said over the Pratt and Whitneys’ roar.

“Beats working,” Sandy agreed. The C-47 bounced a little as it ran into some turbulence. It was enough to notice, not enough to get excited about. Wes had flown straight through thunderstorms. A Gooney Bird was built to take it.

Because of the engine noise, he didn’t hear the cockpit door open. Motion caught from the corner of his eye made his head whip around. There stood the German couple. They both held pistols-no, cut-down Schmeissers. “What the fuck?” Wes said.

“Sorry, friend,” the man said. He spoke English after all.

That was Wes’ last startled thought. Then the submachine guns barked.

Luftwaffe Oberleutnant Ernst Neulen and the former Flak-hilferin he knew only as Mitzi-what you didn’t know, you couldn’t tell-pulled the Amis’ bodies out of their seats. “Good job,” he told her as he settled into the pilot’s seat himself. It was bloody, but that wouldn’t matter for long.

“Vielen Dank,” she said primly, as if he’d complimented her on her dancing.

“Go get your umbrella,” Neulen told her.

She gave him a smile-a twisted one, because of that scar. Then she went back into the cargo compartment. The forwardmost crate had a trick side that opened easily if you knew what to do. Mitzi did. She shrugged on the parachute she found inside.

That done, she stepped into the cockpit again for a moment. “Good luck,” she told him.

“You, too,” he answered, his voice far away. He was cautiously fiddling with the throttle. Did it work German-style or like the ones in French and Italian planes, where you had to push instead of pulling and vice versa? Some young German pilots had bought a plot by forgetting the difference after training on foreign aircraft. Oberleutnant Neulen found out what he needed to know and relaxed.

“I’m going to bail out now,” Mitzi said.

“Right,” Neulen agreed, still getting a feel for the plane. It was a hell of a lot more modern than the trimotored Ju52/3s that had hauled cargo and soldiers for the Reich. He wouldn’t have wanted to try to land it, though he’d heard even coming in wheels-up was a piece of cake for a C-47. But he didn’t have to worry about that.

Mitzi disappeared again, no doubt heading for the cargo door. Neulen hoped she would make it down in one piece. She’d practiced on the ground, but she’d never jumped out of an airplane before. She’d never really landed, either. Well, all you could do was try and hope for the best.

He also hoped the Americans-or was the C-47 over the Russian zone by now? — wouldn’t grab her as soon as she touched ground. How much did she know? Too much: Neulen was sure of that. He hoped for the best again.