between the lines if you were even going to see through a glass, darkly.
“Lieutenant General Andrei Andreyevich Vlasov continues to distinguish himself in combat against the Hitlerites,” the announcer said. “An entire German panzer division has been hurled back in confusion by his troops.”
That was interesting. Except for Stalin and Marshal Zhukov, the news rarely mentioned generals by name. Maybe that was a hangover from a few years before, when so many of them got purged. Any which way, this Andrei Vlasov seemed to have evaded the restriction.
“There is also an important announcement in the field of foreign relations,” the newsreader said. Mouradian tensed-and he wasn’t the only flyer listening to the news who did. What had gone wrong now? Had Finland declared war on the USSR? Had the United States? The one would be a misfortune; the other, a catastrophe. But, for once, it wasn’t that kind of announcement. The familiar voice continued, “Foreign Minister Litvinov will travel to Tokyo to confer with officials from the Empire of Japan about terms for ending the war in the Far East which Japan will find acceptable.”
Mouradian and several other officers sighed on the identical note. Peace against Japan hadn’t come cheap in the early years of the century, and it would be even more expensive now. Vladivostok would go, and with it the Soviet Union’s main Pacific port. The Trans-Siberian Railway wouldn’t go all the way across Siberia any more. The last war had cost Russia the southern half of Sakhalin Island north of Japan; this one would probably cost the USSR the rest of the place. And who could guess what else Japan would want to squeeze out of Litvinov?
On the other hand, the USSR desperately needed peace on the distant frontier, because it had a much bigger, much more urgent war much closer to home. When it came, the country could pay full attention to the Nazis and everybody else coming out of the west. Stas only hoped that would prove good enough to save the Soviet Union. Frighten all your neighbors and make them hate you, and this was the kind of mess you wound up in.
“President Franklin Roosevelt of the United States has offered to help mediate the dispute between the Soviet Union and Japan,” the announcer said. “His cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, was President of the USA during the Russo-Japanese War, and helped work out the terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended it. General Secretary Stalin immediately accepted the American proposal. The Japanese, however, refused it, declaring that they doubted America was truly committed to peace. This being so, Japan and the peace-loving Soviet Union will pursue their talks bilaterally.”
Some of Mouradian’s colleagues scratched their heads, trying to work out what was going on there. He sighed inside his own mind; some people really shouldn’t have been allowed to run around loose. Japan thought the USA would sabotage the peace talks, not help them along. That was obvious to Stas, if not to his comrades. As long as Japan was busy fighting the Soviet Union, she wouldn’t also take on the United States-not if her leaders were in their right mind, she wouldn’t.
But she was clearing the decks for the big fight, the important fight, no less than Stalin was. Knock America back on her heels and Japan was master of the Pacific. No one else could challenge her there. England and France were busy far closer to home. Holland, mistress of the resource-rich Dutch East Indies, lay under Nazi occupation. If Japan didn’t have to worry about the USA…
The newsreader spoke of the anticipated harvest and by how much it would exceed the norms established by the agricultural planners. Only the planners had any real idea of how much grain came in across the country. If they cooked the books to make things sound better, who would stop them? Who else would even know? As long as people didn’t start starving, nobody. And if people did start starving, it might be for reasons political rather than agricultural. Anyone who didn’t believe that could ask the surviving Ukrainians.
“Stakhanovite shock brigades continue to increase steel, coal, and aluminum production,” the newsreader said proudly. “Output rises even as factories are knocked down and transported east, out of range of the Hitlerite savages and their terror-bombing campaign.”
“Good. That’s good,” murmured the pilot sitting next to Mouradian. It would indeed be good if it was true. That it could be true struck Stas as most unlikely. The less you said, sometimes, the better. He said not a word here.
The newsreader blathered on and on. He seemed to speak very candidly: everything was for the best in this best of all possible worlds. Mouradian smiled a little when that occurred to him. Too bad it was a joke he would have to keep to himself. Somehow, he didn’t think the NKVD would find it funny.
When music finally came out of the speaker instead of the newsreader’s perpetual optimism, Lieutenant Colonel Tomashevsky addressed the squadron: “Well, boys, you heard it yourselves. We’re going to make nice with the little slanty-eyed shitheads for a while. One thing at a time, I always say. Once we give the Nazis what they deserve, we’ll go back to the East and pay what we owe there. Oh, yes. You’d best believe we will.”
Speaking of perpetual optimism… Did the squadron commander really believe what he was saying? If he did, Stas wanted some of whatever he’d been drinking. Or maybe not. Whatever it was, it was probably too full of sugar to be palatable for an ordinary man.
Then again, perhaps you needed that kind of spirit-and that kind of spirits-if you were going to keep serving the Soviet Union. They weren’t flying from the airstrip they’d used when they first took their Pe-2s into action against the Germans and Poles. German bombers had worked that one over.
As far as Mouradian could see, the new Russian plane was better than any bomber the Luftwaffe used. It had at least as large a bomb load, and it was faster and more maneuverable than the German bombers. But that mattered only so much. Back in the day, the SB-2 really had been able to outrun the biplane fighters it met in Spain. Against the Bf-109, it turned into a death trap. If the Germans had chased the Pe-2 across the sky with Heinkel and Dornier bombers, everything would have been lovely. Sadly, the Messerschmitt fighter remained more than a match for the Petlyakov machine as well.
But the USSR was a big place-bigger, maybe, than the Nazis fully understood. They had only so many 109s: nowhere near enough to cover all of Soviet airspace all the time. The Pe-2s stood a much better chance of getting through and coming back than did the older, slower SB-2s. Not for the first time, Mouradian hoped Sergei Yaroslavsky and Ivan the Chimp remained among those present.
Plenty of train lines in southern France went down toward Spain. Only two actually crossed the border: one near the Atlantic, which led into territory loyal to Marshal Sanjurjo, and this one hard by the Mediterranean, which took the Czech soldiers who had fought for France against Germany into the Republic to fight Fascism now that France wasn’t interested any more.
Vaclav Jezek made a sour face when Benjamin Halevy told him that. “So those French assholes could be shipping shit to Sanjurjo at the same time as they’re giving us to the Republic?” he said.
“That’s about the size of it,” Halevy agreed. He was heading into exile, too.
Because he was, Vaclav saw fit to add, “Nothing personal.”
“Don’t worry about it,” the Jew replied. “I think they’re assholes, too.” He wore a new uniform from the army of the Republic of Czechoslovakia, with a Czech sergeant’s three dots on his shoulder straps replacing the French hash mark on his sleeve. Running a finger between his collar and his neck, he grumbled, “I’m still not used to the way this damn thing fits.”
“If you’re a Czech, you never fit in the way you’re supposed to,” Vaclav said. “You’d better get used to it.”
Halevy raised a gingery, ironic eyebrow. “I think I can just about manage that, you know?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Vaclav felt foolish. The only way Jews would ever feel at home anywhere was to get their own country. Fat chance of that! And even if they did, they’d probably kick Christians and Moslems around just because they could. They were human beings, weren’t they?
Till Vaclav got to know Halevy, he wouldn’t have bet a single Czech koruna that Jews were human beings. He’d scorned them, distrusted them, despised them for no better reason than that they had their own funny religion-and, as often as not, they were too goddamn smart for their own good.
Halevy was no dummy. He wouldn’t put Einstein out of business any time soon, though. And he made a good noncom, even if he’d had his cock clipped. He took war seriously. He wouldn’t be wearing a Czech uniform, he wouldn’t be carrying Czech papers in his pocket, if he didn’t. Even the French weren’t dumb enough to try to make Jews fight on the same side as Nazi Germany. He could have sat out the war in safety. He could have, but he didn’t want to.
On second thought, who said he was no dummy?
