“Is and must be ours,” von Ribbentrop declared.
“Nyet.”Atvar understood that word without any help from the interpreters; Molotov used it so much, it had become unmistakable.
“The Race shall, for the time being, retain possession of those parts of Poland it now holds,” the fleetlord said. “We shall continue discussion with Deutschland, with the SSSR, and even with the Poles and Jews, in an effort to find a solution satisfactory to all parties.”
“General Secretary Stalin has instructed me to acquiesce in this,” Molotov said.
“TheFuhrer does not, will not, and cannot agree,” von Ribbentrop said.
“I warn you and theFuhrer once more: if you resume your war against the Race, and especially if you resume it with nuclear weapons, your not-empire will suffer the most severe consequences imaginable,” Atvar said.
Von Ribbentrop did not answer, not to bellow defiance, not even to acknowledge he’d heard. The only thing that worried Atvar worse than a blustering, defiant Big Ugly was a silent one.
Ludmila Gorbunova pressed the self-starter of the FieselerStorch. The Argus engine came to life at once. She was not surprised. German machinery worked well.
Ignacy waved to her. She nodded back as she built up revolutions. She would have had to push theStorch hard to get it airborne before it rammed the trees ahead. Her old U-2 could never have taken off in so short a space.
She nodded again. More partisans bent to remove the blocks of wood in front of the light plane’s wheels. At the same time, Ludmila released the brake. TheStorch bounded forward. When she pulled back on the stick, its nose came up and it sprang into the air. She could see the trees through the cockpit glasshouse: dark shapes down there, almost close enough to reach out and touch. The Poles whose candles had marked the edge of the forest for her now blew them out.
She buzzed along steadily, not wanting to gain much altitude.
As long as she was on the Lizard side of the line, she might be shot down as an enemy. Ironic that she’d have to make it to German-held territory to feel safe.
Safe wasn’t all she hoped she’d feel. By the coordinates, she was returning to the same landing strip she’d used before. With luck, Heinrich Jager would be there waiting for her.
Off to the right, muzzle flashes blazed in the darkness. Something hit the side of the fuselage, once, with a sound like a stone clattering off a tin roof. Ludmila gave theStorch more throttle, getting out of there as fast as she could.
That complicated her navigation. If she was going faster, she needed to fly for less time. How much less? She worked the answer out in her head, decided she didn’t like it, and worked it out again. By the time she discovered where she’d gone wrong the first time, a glance at her watch warned her it was time to start looking around for the landing strip.
She hoped she wouldn’t have to do a search spiral. The Germans were liable to start shooting at her if she buzzed around for too long, and the spiral might take her back over Lizard-held territory if it got too big.
There! As usual, the lanterns marking the landing strip were small and dim, but she spotted them. Lowering the enormous flaps on theStorch killed airspeed almost as if she were stepping on the brakes on the highway. The light plane jounced to a stop well within the area the lanterns marked off.
Ludmila flipped up the cockpit door. She climbed out onto the wing, then jumped down to the ground. Men came trotting up toward theStorch. In the darkness, she couldn’t be sure if any of them was Jager.
They recognized her before she could make out who they were. “There-you see, Gunther?” one of them said. “Itis the lady pilot.” He gave the word the feminine ending, as Jager sometimes did, as she had so often heard Georg Schultz do (she wondered what might have happened to Schultz and Tatiana, but only for a moment: as far as she was concerned, they deserved each other).
“Ja,you were right, Johannes,” another German answered. “Only goes to show nobody can be wrongall the time.” A couple of snorts floated out of the night.
Gunther, Johannes-“You are the men from Colonel Jager’s panzer, not so?” Ludmila called quietly. “Is he-is he here, too?” No point pretending she didn’t care; they couldn’t help knowing about her and Jager.
The panzer crewmen stopped in their tracks, almost as if they’d run into an invisible wall. “No, he’s not here,” one of them-Gunther, she thought-answered. He spoke hardly above a whisper, as if he didn’t want his words to go beyond the span of theStorch’s wings.
Ice ran down Ludmila’s back. “Tell me!” she said. “Is he hurt? Is he dead? Did it happen before the cease-fire started? Tell me!”
“He’s not dead-yet,” Gunther said, even more softly than before. “He’s not even hurt-yet. And no, it didn’t happen in the fighting with the Lizards. It happened three days ago, as a matter of fact.”
“Whathappened?” Ludmila demanded.
Maddeningly, Gunther fell silent. After a moment when Ludmila felt like yanking out her pistol and extorting answers at gunpoint. If need be, the crewman named Johannes said, “Miss, the SS arrested him.”
“Bozhemoi,”Ludmila whispered. “Why? What could he have done? Was it on account of me?”
“Damned if we know,” Johannes said. “This weedy little SS pigdog came up, pointed a gun at him, and marched him away. Stinking blackshirt bastard-who does he think he is, arresting the best commander we’ve ever had?”
His crewmen muttered profane agreement. It would have been loud profane agreement, except they were all veterans, and wary of letting anyone outside their circle know their thoughts.
One of them said, “Come on, boys, we’re supposed to be loading ammo into this miserable little plane.”
“It has to be because of me,” Ludmila said. She’d always worried the NKVD would descend on her because of Jager; now, instead, his nation’s security forces had seized him on account of her. That struck her as frightful and dreadfully unfair. “Is there any way to get him free?”
“From the SS?” said the crewman who’d just urged getting the 7.92mm rounds aboard theStorch. He sounded incredulous; evidently the Nazis invested their watchdogs with the same fearsome, almost supernatural powers the Russian people attributed to the NKVD.
But the tankman called Gunther said, “Christ crucified, why not? You think Skorzeny would sit around on his can and let anything happen to Colonel Jager, no matter who’d grabbed him? My left nut he would! He’s an SS man, yes, but he’s a real soldier, too, not just a damned traffic cop in a black shirt. Shit. If we can’t break the colonel out, we don’t deserve to be panzer troopers. Come on!” He was aflame with the idea.
That cautious crewman spoke up again: “All right, what if we do break him out? Where does he go after that?”
No one answered him for a couple of seconds. Then Johannes let out a noise that would have been a guffaw if he hadn’t put a silencer on it. He pointed to the FieselerStorch. “We’ll break him out, we’ll stick him on the plane, and the lady pilot can fly him the hell out of here. If the SS has its hooks in him, he won’t want to stick around anyhow, that’s for damn sure.”
The other panzer crewmen crowded around him, pumping his hand and pounding him on the back. So did Ludmila. Then she said, “Can you do this without danger to yourselves?”
“Just watch us,” Johannes said. He started away from theStorch, calling, “The pilot’s got engine troubles. We’re going to get a mechanic.” And off they went, tramping through the night with sudden purpose in their stride.
Ludmila, left by herself, thought about loading some of the German ammunition into theStorch herself. In the end, she decided not to. She might want every gram of power the light plane had, and extra weight aboard would take some away.