Over the border, Vaclav saw the last of the French tricolor. He was glad to see the last of it, even if the colors were the same as those of his conquered homeland. They stood for liberty, equality, and fraternity, and what did any of those have to do with fighting side by side with Adolf Hitler? Damn all, as far as he was concerned.
On the other side of the frontier flew the Spanish Republic’s flag-another tricolor, this one of red, yellow, and purple. It was certainly gaudier than France’s standard, or Czechoslovakia’s. But the Republic hadn’t turned its back on whatever those colors stood for. It wouldn’t still be fighting if it had.
Marshal Sanjurjo’s side had another flag yet. Well, to hell with him. This was the one Vaclav had chosen. It might not be his first or even his second choice, but it seemed better than anything else out there right now.
The train wheezed to a stop. At first, he thought it had broken down again. The French had given the Czechs going off to fight in Spain the worst rolling stock they had. Their good passenger cars and new locomotives were hauling French troops east to fight the Russians. That being so, breakdowns were almost a badge of honor.
But no. This was some kind of customs inspection. Normally, countries frowned on large bands of uniformed men importing weapons. These weren’t normal times, though. Vaclav doubted he would live to see normal times again.
He stared when a Republican officer came into the car. He supposed this was an officer, anyhow-what else would the fellow be? But the man was bareheaded, and wore denim coveralls over a collarless worker’s shirt. He looked more likely to repair a clogged drain than to give orders.
“Revolutionary chic,” Benjamin Halevy whispered to Vaclav. After that, the fellow’s outfit made more sense. He spoke a sentence in a language that wasn’t French but sounded something like it. Vaclav couldn’t even swear in Spanish. He was surprised, but not very surprised, when Halevy answered in what sounded like the same tongue.
After a bit of back and forth, the Republic officer grinned and nodded and went on to the next car. “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish,” Vaclav told the Jew in admiring tones.
“Not Spanish-Catalan. Kind of halfway between Spanish and French,” Halevy answered. “And I don’t speak it, but I can fake it some.”
“Ah.” Jezek nodded. He could make a stab at Slavic languages not his own. It didn’t always work-he’d been reduced to speaking German with the Polish soldier who interned him. But it was usually worth a try. He hadn’t thought that the Romance languages might work the same way. He found a more relevant question: “So what did the guy want?”
“To make sure we’ve come to fight for the Republic and against the Nationalist shitheads-I think that’s what he called them.”
“Sounds right to me,” Jezek said. “What did you tell him?”
“That we were really here for a picnic, and to meet all the pretty Spanish gals,” Halevy replied without changing expression.
“Ahh, your mother.”
“She was a pretty gal, but not Spanish.” Halevy seemed willing to tell bad jokes all day. Vaclav planted an elbow in his ribs, not hard enough to hurt but to suggest he should quit acting like a jerk. It was a forlorn hope, and Vaclav knew it. Still, you had to make the effort. Vaclav also knew all about making the effort despite forlorn hope. If he hadn’t, would he have come to Spain?
Another officer strode into the car. This one wore khaki, and he had on a cap with a flat crown. If his pink skin, broad face, and pale eyes hadn’t told which army he belonged to, the uniform would have. He greeted the Czechs not in Spanish but in Russian, which he confidently expected them to understand.
Vaclav caught the gist, anyhow. Most of his countrymen probably did. The USSR had helped Czechoslovakia when nobody else would. Now the Czechs were helping Spain, the Soviet Union’s ally, when hardly anyone else would. He thanked them for that.
Had he left it there, everything would have been fine. But he went on to say something to the effect that now the Czechs would have to follow Stalin’s orders like everybody else. That was what Vaclav thought he said, anyhow. The Russian took no questions. He went on to inflict his greetings on the next car farther back.
“Did he say what I thought he said?” Vaclav asked Halevy.
“I don’t know,” the Jew answered. “But what I thought he said, I didn’t like it for beans.”
“Neither did I,” Vaclav said. “That probably means we both think he said the same stupid thing.”
“What can you do?” Halevy said with a sigh. “He’s a Russian. Without the Russians, the Republic would have lost the war a long time ago. Then France would have had to ship us to Paraguay or something when she switched sides.”
“Is there a war in Paraguay? I hadn’t heard about a new one, and I thought the old one was over,” Vaclav said.
“For all I know, it is,” the Jew replied. “The French government would ship us over there any which way. They’re my people, too, and I know how they work. If nobody’s fighting there now, they’d count on us to start something.”
That had an appalling feel of probability to it. Vaclav said, “Me, I was thinking they’d send us to China if they didn’t have Spain. Everybody hates the Japs, pretty much-even the Russians.”
“You’re right. They do,” Benjamin Halevy agreed. “The Japs may play even less by the rules than Hitler and Stalin do.” He threw his hands in the air in mocking triumph. “And they said it couldn’t be done!”
The train chose that moment to jerk into motion again. On they went, deeper into Spain and a brand-new war.
Pete McGill was getting to the point where he could move pretty well on crutches. He could even hobble fifty feet or so with just a cane. And he’d made it from his bed to a chair nearby with no artificial aids whatever, for all the world as if he were a normal human being. One of these days, the cast on his arm would come off, and then he could truly start working on getting his strength back.
He couldn’t wait. He wasn’t the only injured serviceman in Manila who wanted to get back into action as fast as he could, or else a little faster. When he listened to the radio or read a paper, he could add two and two and get four. He might have had trouble in school, but he sure didn’t in the real world.
Russia had patched up a cease-fire with Japan. She was trying to fight Hitler with everything she had. Okay, fine, but that also meant the Japs wouldn’t have any distractions any more. Oh, they were stuck in China, but they could lick the Chinks whenever they set their minds to it. Chiang Kai-shek’s troops wouldn’t parade through Tokyo any time in the next hundred years. And neither would Mao Tse-tung’s, no matter how much Stalin wished they would.
Well, if Japan had gone and started clearing her decks for action, where would the action be? To Corporal Pete McGill, right about here looked like the best answer to that question.
It wasn’t as if the prospect of a war between Japan and the United States was a first-class military secret. The exact plans for fighting it were bound to be secret, of course. But almost every Navy file and leatherneck could give the short version of those plans. (Pete wasn’t nearly sure Army guys could do the same thing: a firm Marine Corps belief was that men who joined the Army were a few ice cubes short of a whole tray.)
When you got down to it, the thing looked simple. The U.S. Navy would steam west from Pearl Harbor. The Japanese Navy would steam east from Tokyo Bay. Wherever they bumped into each other, they’d start slugging away. The last fleet standing would go on and thump hell out of the other side till they got sick of it and gave up. Not subtle. Not pretty. But plans didn’t have to be. They just had to work, and being simple sure didn’t hurt.
Things like aircraft carriers did complicate the game. Pete assumed his side knew how many the Japs had so they could make more. That wasn’t necessarily the wisest assumption, but Pete had never tried to persuade American taxpayers to fork over for national defense. What he didn’t know could hurt him, but he didn’t know that, either.
He figured the fight would look like Jutland from the last war, only bigger. Somebody’d described the English admiral at Jutland as the only man who could lose the war in an afternoon. Both the American and Jap commanders in the next fight would wear the same mantle, whether they liked it or not-and chances were they wouldn’t.
The logical place for the big smashup was somewhere in Philippine waters. Japan would want to clear the USA out of this colony so close to the Home Islands. Do that and you’d also deprive the U.S. Navy of bases within striking distance of Japan. And the Americans wouldn’t be able to interfere with whatever Japan decided to do in China and French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies.
