He almost yipped in surprise when he saw one. Was he that good a navigator, or just that lucky tonight? As he descended, he grew more and more convinced this really was the runway from which he’d set out. The lights were arranged the same way, anyhow, and he didn’t think the authorities would have standardized that.
He lowered the landing gear and put down as gently as if the dirt strip were paved with eggs. Night landings were not for the faint of heart. He was proud of this one, and prouder when Federov said, “We’ve come in rougher than that plenty of times in broad daylight.”
“We have,” Sergei agreed. He tried to sound as if that were routine, but couldn’t even convince himself that he managed it. If those bombs had actually hurt the Nazis, this would be a perfect run.
Hans-Ulrich Rudel was happy in the way only a man who’s wanted a woman for a long time and finally got her into bed can be happy. He was pretty much an idiot, in other words, but a sated and smiling idiot. This was the best furlough of his life. He was sure it was the best furlough of anybody’s life. Yes, he was pretty much an idiot for the time being.
Sofia, he discovered after asking eight or ten times (definitely an idiot), was half-Jewish: a Mischling First Class, as the Reich classified racial categories. She thought of herself as a Jew, though. “My father’s a miserable drunk,” she said. “Why should I want to be like him?”
Sounds like a Pole, Hans-Ulrich thought, as if there’d never been a German drunk in the history of the world. Although an idiot, he wasn’t quite an imbecile: he didn’t say what he was thinking out loud. He did ask, “What does your mother do?”
“She went to Palestine,” Sofia answered. “With the war, I haven’t heard much from her the past year or so. After she broke up with my father, she got the Zionist itch. I think she was making up for marrying a goy, but try and tell her that.” She rolled her eyes. “Try and tell my mother anything. Good luck!”
“And here you are with me,” Hans-Ulrich said, running a hand along the smooth, warm length of her. She had a tiny flat a couple of blocks from the tavern where she worked. “Maybe you’re not so different from her after all. Should I watch it if I try to tell you something?”
Not quite an imbecile, but absolutely an idiot. What woman wants to hear she’s like her mother? “You’d better not start,” Sofia replied with a bayonet-sharp edge to her voice. “And I haven’t talked about marrying you, have I? Gevalt! ”
“Well… no,” Rudel admitted. He hadn’t talked about marrying her, either. You could screw just about anybody, and your superiors wouldn’t care as long as you didn’t come down venereal. He tried to imagine a Luftwaffe officer marrying a Mischling First Class in wartime. His superiors would care about that. Oh, yes, just a little! What better way to shoot your military career right between the eyes? You’d never see another promotion again. They’d probably take the Ritterkreuz away, too.
“All right, then. Don’t be dumber than you can help,” Sofia said, which, at that moment, might have been asking for more than Hans-Ulrich could give.
“How about this, then?” he said, and rolled on top of her. She squeaked with surprise, but not with dismay. He was amazed he could go this often. He was a young, healthy animal in fine physical condition. He had very few limits when it came to horizontal athletics.
Some little while later, after both their hearts stopped thudding so hard, Sofia asked him, “And what do you do when you’re standing up?”
“It’s been too long. I don’t remember,” he answered, deadpan.
“Braggart!” She poked him in the ribs. “You-man, you.” An exquisitely timed pause. “But I repeat myself.”
He did have the mother wit to realize he ought to ask her something personal (and he wasn’t ready for another round [he didn’t think he was, anyhow]). “What do you want to do with yourself?” he said.
“Live through the war,” she said at once. “If I can’t do that, nothing else matters, does it?”
“No,” he said, wishing he’d come out with the question in a different way. His odds of living through the war were… well, not good. Stuka pilots went where things were already hot and made them hotter. That was a good way to win yourself a Knight’s Cross. It wasn’t such a good way to persuade your insurance man to write a fat policy on you.
Most of the time, Hans-Ulrich avoided thinking about that. What combat soldier didn’t? If you started feeling the goose’s footfalls every time it walked over your grave, how were you supposed to do your duty? You couldn’t-it was as simple as that. And so you figured that everything had gone all right the last time, and that meant it would this time, too.
“You’re going to forget me,” Sofia said. “When you remember me, you’re going to be embarrassed you had anything to do with me.” Most women would have started weeping and wailing after they came out with a line like that. Sofia sounded no more excited than she would have if she asked him whether he wanted more coffee.
All the same, Rudel tried to deny everything. “I’ll remember you forever.”
“Oh, cut the crap,” Sofia said. “You’re going to remember me after you’ve got four kids and a blond Aryan wife? Don’t make me laugh. You’ll do your best to pretend nothing in Bialystok ever happened.”
“How do you know I’m not married now?” he asked.
“You’re the kind who’d wear a ring. And even if you didn’t, you’re the kind who’d get upset about cheating on his sweetie back home,” Sofia answered. “It wouldn’t stop you-does it ever stop anybody?-but you’d get upset about it anyway.”
He twisted in the narrow bed so he could face her. The mattress creaked under him. It had been doing a lot more creaking than that lately. The sun was going down; shadows shrouded Sofia’s features. “You don’t much like people, do you?” he said.
She shrugged. The same excellent firm that did her ankles had also sculpted her collarbones. “I am one. What else have I got to like? I’m not one of those jerks who get a dog or a cat and pretend it’s their baby.”
“All right,” he said. He tended to get sloppy over dogs, but not the way she meant. If Sofia were to get a pet, he had the feeling she’d choose a cat instead. Or maybe a viper.
She leaned up on one elbow. Her breasts were small, with broad, dark nipples, almost as if she’d already had a child. Maybe she had; there was a lot he didn’t know about her. When he reached out to touch one, she knocked his hand away. “So,” she said, “what’s it like for a Nazi to fuck a Jew?”
He had no idea how to answer that, so he tried a counterquestion: “What’s it like for a Jew to lay a Nazi?”
“My people already don’t like me because of who my father is,” Sofia replied. “You, though, you’re different. What would your mother say if she found out who I was?”
His mother disapproved of everything that had anything to do with sex. She’d warned him about women before he had any idea what she was talking about. He was sometimes amazed he’d ever been born. His father must have been very persuasive one night-or just too horny to take no for an answer.
“I’m a big boy now,” he said. “I don’t have to worry about that any more.”
“Fine.” Sofia found a new place to stick in the needle: “What would your commanding officer say, then?”
“He teased me about having a girlfriend before I set out for Bialystok,” Rudel answered. “I just hoped he was right.”
She gave him a crooked smile. “What? You weren’t sure you could sweep me off my feet?”
“I don’t think anybody’s ever sure of anything with you,” he answered truthfully.
“I hope not.” Sofia took that as a matter of course-and as a matter of pride. “When people are sure about you, things get boring.”
Hans-Ulrich could imagine the two of them parting a lot of different ways. Heading the list was one-which hardly mattered-clanging the other in the ear with a frying pan. Other filmworthy melodramas also stood high up there. Getting bored with each other lay way down below something like being separated in an attack by flying orangutans.
He could imagine her finding a German protector useful. Poles didn’t love the Jews who made up a tenth of their country’s population. Perhaps because they had so many Jews, no laws restricting them were on the books here. The Reich had such laws, of course. Maybe Sofia feared they would come to Poland, too, and hoped a German could help her escape their bite. And maybe she was right in both fear and hope.
That might account for her taking a German into her bed. But what accounted for her taking a particular German, one Hans-Ulrich Rudel? He didn’t ask her. He had a fear of his own: that she might tell him the exact and
