As soon as he stepped over the threshold, he felt as if he’d been taken back through time. Guttering torches cast weird, flickering shadows on the irregular stonework of the wall. Up above, everything was lost in gloom. In the torchlight, the three fur-clad men who sat at a table waiting for him, weapons in front of them, seemed more like barbarian chieftains than twentieth-century soldiers.
Over the next couple of minutes, the other Englishmen came in. By the way they peered all around, they’ had the same feeling of dislocation as Bagnall. Martin Borcke pointed to one of the men at the table and said, “Here is Generalleutnant Kurt Chill, commander of the 122nd Infantry Division and now head of the forces of the Reich in and around Pskov.” He named the RAF men for his commander.
Chill didn’t look like Bagnall’s idea of a Nazi lieutenant general: no monocle, no high-peaked cap, no skinny, hawk-nosed Prussian face. He was on the roundish side and badly needed a shave. His eyes were brown, not chilly gray. They had an ironic glint in them as he said in fair English, “Welcome to the blooming gardens of Pskov, gentlemen.”
Sergei Morozkin nodded to the pair who sat to Chill’s left. “Are leaders of First and Second Partisan Brigades, Nikolai Ivanovich Vasiliev and Aleksandr Maksimovich German.”
Ken Embry whispered to Bagnall, “There’s a name I’d not fancy having in Soviet Russia these days.”
“Lord, no.” Bagnall looked at German. Maybe it was the steel-rimmed spectacles he wore, but he had a schoolmasterly expression only partly counteracted by the fierce red mustache that sprouted above his upper lip.
Vasiliev, by contrast, made the flight engineer think of a bearded boulder: he was short and squat and looked immensely strong. A pink scar-maybe a crease from a rifle bullet-furrowed one cheek and cut a track through the thick, almost seallike pelt that grew there. A couple of inches over and the partisan leader would not have been sitting in his chair.
He rumbled something in Russian. Morozkin translated: “He bid you welcome to forest republic. This we call land around Pskov while Germans rule city. Now with Lizards”-Morozkin pronounced the word with exaggerated care-“here, we make German-Soviet council-German-Soviet soviet, da?” Bagnall thought the play on words came from the interpreter; Vasiliev, even sans scar, would not have seemed a man much given to mirth.
“Pleased to meet you all, I’m sure,” Ken Embry said. Before Morozkin could translate, Jerome Jones turned his words into Russian. The partisan leaders beamed, pleased at least one of the RAF men could speak directly to them.
“What is this thing you have brought for the Soviet Union from the people and workers of England?” German asked. He leaned forward to wait for the answer, not even noticing the ideological preconceptions with which he’d freighted his question.
“An airborne radar, to help aircraft detect Lizard planes at long range,” Jones said. Both Morozkin and Borcke had trouble turning the critical word into their native languages. Jones explained what a radar set was and how it did what it did. Vasiliev simply listened. German nodded several times, as if what the radarman said made sense to him.
And Kurt Chill purred, “You have, aber naturlich, also brought one of these radar sets for the Reich?”
“No, sir,” Embry said. Bagnall started to sweat, though the room in this drafty old medieval tower was anything but warm. The pilot went on, “Our orders are to deliver this set and the manuals accompanying it to the Soviet authorities at Pskov: That is what we intend to do.”
General Chill shook his head. Bagnall sweated harder. No one had bothered to tell the RAF crew that Pskov wasn’t entirely in Soviet hands. Evidently, the Russians who’d told the English where to fly the set hadn’t thought there would be a problem. But a problem there was.
“If there is only one, it shall go to the Reich,” Chill said.
As soon as Sergei Morozkin translated the German’s English into Russian, Vasiliev snatched up the submachine gun from the table in front of him and pointed it at Chill’s chest. “Nyet,” he said flatly. Bagnall needed no Russian to follow that.
Chill answered in German, which Vasiliev evidently under stood. It also let Bagnall understand some of what was going on. The Nazi had courage, or at least bravado. He said, “If you shoot me, Nikolai Ivanovich, Colonel Schindler takes command-and we are still stronger around Pskov than you.”
Aleksandr German did not bother gesticulating with the pistol on the table. He simply spoke in a dry, rather pedantic voice that went well with his eyeglasses. His words sounded like German, but Bagnall had even more trouble with them than he had in following Kurt Chill. He guessed the partisan was actually speaking Yiddish. To stay up with that, they should have kept David Goldfarb as crew radarman.
Captain Borcke made sense of it. He translated: “German says the Wehrmacht is stronger around Pskov than Soviet forces, yes. He asks if it is also stronger than Soviet and Lizard forces combined.”
Chill spoke a single word: “Bluff.”
“Nyet,” Vasiliev said again. He put down his weapon and beamed at the other partisan leader. He’d found a threat the Germans could not afford to ignore.
Bagnall did not think it was a bluff, either. Germany had not endeared itself to the people of any of the eastern lands it occupied before the Lizards came. The Jews of Poland-led by, among others, a cousin of Goldfarb’s-had risen against the Nazis and for the Lizards. The Russians might do the same if this Chill pushed them hard enough.
He might, too. Scowling at the two partisan brigadiers, he said, “You may do this. The Lizards may win a victory through it. But this I vow: neither of you will live long enough to collaborate with them. We will have that radar.”
“Nyet.” This time Aleksandr German said it. He switched back to Yiddish, too fast and harsh for Bagnall to follow. Captain Borcke again did the honors: “He says this set was sent to the workers and people of the Soviet Union to aid them in their struggle against imperialist aggression, and that surrendering it would be treason to the Soviet state.”
Communist rhetoric aside, Bagnall thought the partisan was dead right. But if Lieutenant General Chill didn’t, the flight engineer’s opinion counted for little.
And Chill was going to be hard-nosed about it. Bagnall could see that. So could everyone else in the tower chamber. Captain Borcke edged away from the RAF air crew to one side, Sergei Morozkin to the other. Both men slid a hand under their coats, presumably to grab for pistols. Bagnall got ready to throw himself flat.
Then, instead, he hissed at Jerome Jones: “You have the manuals and such for the radar, am I right?”
“Of course,” Jones whispered back. “Couldn’t very well come without them, not when the Russians are going to start making them for themselves. Or they will if anyone comes out of this room alive.”
“Which doesn’t look like the best wager in the world. How many sets have you got?”
“Of the manuals and drawings, you mean? Just the one,” Jones said.
“Bugger.” That put a crimp in Bagnall’s scheme, but only for a moment. He spoke up in a loud voice: “Gentlemen, please!” If nothing else, he succeeded in distracting the Germans and partisans from the bead they were drawing on each other. Everyone stared at him instead. He said, “I think I can find a way out of this dispute.”
Grim faces defied him to do it. Trouble was, he realized suddenly, the Germans and Russians really wanted to have a go at each other. In English, Kurt Chill said, “Enlighten us, then.”
“I’ll do my best,” Bagnall answered. “There’s only the one radar, and no help for that. If you hijack it, word will get back to Moscow-and to London. Cooperation between Germany and her former foes will be hampered, and the Lizards will likely gain more from that than the Luftwaffe could from the radar. Is this so, or not?”