In the Balance w-1 Read online

  Third-line troops, Bagnall realized, maybe fourth-. The real German army, the past year, was locked in battle with the Russians or grinding now forward, now back across the Sahara. Beaten France got the dregs of German manpower. Bagnall wondered how happy these Occupation warriors were at the prospect of holding back the Lizards, a worse enemy than the Red Army ever dreamed of being.

  He also wondered, rather more to the point, if the tacit Anglo-German truce held on the ground as well as in the air. The Germans up ahead might be overage and overweight, but they all carried Mauser rifles, which made the aircrew’s pistols seem like toys by comparison.

  The Feldwebel in charge of the German squad owned a belly that made him look as if he were in a family way. He held up a hand to rein in his men, then approached the British fliers alone. He had three chins and his eyes were pouchy, but they were also very shrewd; Bagnall would not have wanted to sit down at a card table with him.

  “Sprechen Sie deutsch?” the sergeant asked.

  The Englishmen looked at one another. They all shook their heads. Ken Embry asked, “Do any of your men speak English? Or parlez-vous francais?”

  The Felwebel shook his head; his flabby flesh wobbled. But, as Bagnall had suspected, he was a resourceful fellow. He went back to his squad, growled at his men. They hurried into shops on the boulevard. In less than a minute, one of the soldiers emerged with a thin, frightened-looking Frenchman whose enormous ears looked ready to sail him away on the slightest breeze.

  That, however, was not why the soldier had grabbed him. He proved to speak not only French but also fluent German. The Feldwebel spoke through him: “There is a Soldatenheim, a military canteen, at the Cafe Wepler, Place Clichy. That is where English fliers are being dealt with. You will please come with us.”

  “Are we prisoners?” Bagnall asked.

  The Frenchman relayed the question to the German sergeant. He was more at ease now that he saw be was to serve as interpreter rather than, say, hostage. The sergeant answered, “No, you are not prisoners. You are guests. But this is not your country, and you will come with us.”

  It did not sound like a request. In English, Embry said, “Shall I point out it’s not his bloody country, either?” With the rest of the aircrew, Bagnall considered that. The Germans had his comrades outnumbered and outgunned. No one said anything. The pilot sighed and returned to French: “Tell the sergeant we will go with him.”

  “Gut, gut,” the Feldwebel said expansively, cradling that vast belly of his as if it were indeed a child. He also ordered the Frenchman to come along so he could keep on interpreting. The fellow cast a longing glance back at his little luggage store, but had no choice save to obey.

  It was a long walk the Soldatenheim lay on the right bank of the Seine, north and east of the Arc de Triomphe. The Germans and the English had both respected the monuments of Paris. The Lizards knew no such compunctions; a chunk had been torn out of the Arc, like a cavity in a rotting tooth. The Eiffel Tower still stood, but Bagnall wondered how many days more it would dominate the Paris skyline.

  In the end, though, what lay longest in the flight engineer’s memory about the journey to the canteen was a small thing: an old man with a bushy white mustache walking slowly along the street. At first glance, he looked like Marshal Petain, or anyone’s favorite grandfather. He carried a stick, and wore a homburg and an elegant, double-breasted pinstripe suit with knife-sharp creases. On the left breast pocket of that suit was sewn a yellow six-pointed star with one word: Juif.

  Bagnall looked from the old Jew with his badge of shame to the fat Feldwebel to the French interpreter. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. What could he possibly say that would not make matters worse both for himself and, all too likely, for the Jew as well? He found nothing, but silence was bitter as wormwood to him.

  German military signs, white wooden arrows with angular black letters, had sprouted like mushrooms on every Paris streetcorner. The British aircrew probably could have found the military canteen through them without an escort, but Bagnall supposed he could not blame the sergeant for taking charge of them. If not exactly enemies, they were not exactly friends, either.

  The canteen had a big sign, again white on black, that announced what it was: Soldatenheim Kommandantur Gross-Paris. On another panel of the sign was a black cross in a circle. Men in field gray came in and out below. Those who recognized the fliers’ RAF uniforms stopped to stare. No one did anything more than stare, for which Bagnall was duly grateful.

  The Feldwebel turned the interpreter loose just outside the doorway without even a tip. The fellow hadn’t translated more than half a dozen sentences, most of them banal, in the hour and a half it had taken to get here. Now he faced an equally long walk back. But he left without a backward glance or a word of complaint, as if escaping without trouble was payment enough. For a man in his shoes, perhaps it was.

  Not far inside the entrance, a table with a sign lettered in both German and English had been set up. The English section read, for british military seeking repatriation from france. Behind the table sat an officer with steel-rimmed spectacles; the single gold pip on his embroidered shoulder straps proclaimed him a lieutenant colonel.

  The German sergeant saluted, spoke for a couple of minutes in his own language. The officer nodded, asked a few questions, nodded again, dismissed the Feldwebel with a few offhand words. Then he turned to the Englishmen. “Tell me how you came to Paris, gentlemen.” His English was precise and almost accent-free. “I am Lieutenant Colonel Maximilian Hocker, if knowing my name puts you more at ease.”

  As pilot, Ken Embry spoke for the aircrew. He told the tale of the attack on the Lizard installation in considerable detail, though Bagnall noted that he did not name the base from which the Lancaster had set out. If Hocker also noted that-and he probably did; he looked sharp as all get-out-he let it pass.

  His gray eyes widened slightly when Embry described the forced landing on the French road. “You were very fortunate, Flight Lieutenant, and no doubt very skillful as well.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Embry took up the tale again, omitting the names of the Frenchmen who had helped the aircrew along the way. They’d learned only a couple of those, and then just Christian names. Even so, Embry did not mention them. Again, Hocker declined to press him. The pilot finished, “Then your sergeant found us, sir, and brought us here. By the sign in front of you, you don’t intend to hold us prisoner, so I hope you’ll not take it amiss if I ask you how we go about getting home.”

  “By no means.” The German officer’s smile did not quite reach his eyes-or maybe it was a trick of the light reflecting off his spectacle lenses. He sounded affable enough as he continued: “We can put you on a train for Calais this evening. God and the Lizards permitting, you will be on British soil tomorrow.”

  “It can’t be as simple as that,” Bagnall blurted. After going on three years of war with the Nazis-and after seeing the old Jew wearing the yellow star-he was not inclined to take anything German on trust.

  “Very nearly.” Hocker plucked seven copies of a form off the table in front of him, gave them to Embry to pass out to his crew. “You have but to sign this and we shall send you on your way.”

  The form, hastily printed on the cheapest of paper, was headed parole. It had parallel columns of text, one German, the other English, The English version was florid legalese made worse by some remaining Germanic word order, but what it boiled down to was a promise not to fight Germany so long as either London or-no, not Berlin, but the country of which it had been the capital-remained at war with the Lizards.

  “What happens if we don’t sign it?” Bagnall asked.

  If the smile had got to Lieutenant Colonel Hocker’s eyes, it vanished from them now. “Then you will also go on a train this evening, but not one bound for Calais.”

  Embry said, “What happens if we do sign and then end up flying against you anyhow?”

  “Under those circumstances, you would be well-advis
ed to avoid capture.” Hocker’s face was too round and mild to make him fit the film cliche of a German officer; he seemed more Bavarian peasant than Prussian aristocrat. But he packed enough menace into his voice for any three cinematic Huns.

  “Have you received any communication from the RAF or His Majesty’s government permitting us to sign such a document?” Embry asked.

  “I have not,” Hocker’s said. “Formally, we are still at war. I give you my word of honor, however, that I have learned of no punishment given to any who have so signed.”

  “Please be so good as to put that assurance in writing, for us to present to our superiors. If it should prove false, we shall consider ourselves at liberty to deem our paroles null and void, nor should sanctions be applied against us in the event we are captured in arms against your country.”

  “Jolly good, Ken,” Bagnall whispered admiringly.

  Hacker inked a pen, wrote rapidly on the back of another parole form. He handed it to the pilot. “I trust this meets with your approval, Flight Lieutenant?” He pronounced it leftenant, as a native Englishman would have.

  Embry read what be had written. Before he replied, he passed it to Bagnall. Hocker’s script, unlike his speech, was distinctly Germanic; the flight engineer had to puzzle it out word by word. But it seemed to set forth what Embry had demanded. Bagnall gave it to Alf Whyte.

  The German lieutenant colonel waited patiently until the whole Lancaster crew had read it. “Well, gentlemen?” he asked when Embry had it back.

  The pilot glanced from one flier to the next. No one said anything. Embry sighed, turned back to Hocker. “Give me the bloody pen.” He signed his parole with a few slashing strokes. “Here.”

  Hocker raised an eyebrow. “You are not pleased with this arrangement?”

  “No, I’m not pleased,” Embry said. “If it weren’t for the Lizards, we’d be fighting each other. But they’re here, so what can I do?”

  “Believe me, Flight Lieutenant, my feelings are the same in every particular,” the German answered. “I had a sister in Berlin, however, and two nieces. So I shall adjourn my quarrel with you for the time being. Perhaps we shall take it up again at a more auspicious moment.”

  “Coventry,” Embry said.

  The lieutenant colonel answered, “Beside Berlin, Englander, Coventry is as a toddler’s scraped knee.” Hocker and Embry locked eyes with each other for most of a minute.

  Bagnall took the pen, wrote his name on his parole form. “One enemy at a time,” he said. The rest of the aircrew also signed theirs. But even as Hocker called for an escort to take the Englishmen to the train station, Bagnall wondered how many nieces the old Jew with the yellow star had, and how they were faring.

  A squadron of devils tramped down the main street of the prison camp. Like everyone else who saw them, Liu Han bowed low. No one knew what would happen if the little scaled devils were denied all the outward trappings of respect their captives could give. No one, least of all Liu Han, wanted to find out.

  When the devils were gone, a man came up to Liu Han and said something. She shook her head. “I am sorry, but I do not understand your dialect,” she said. He must not have been able to follow hers, either, for he grinned, spread his hands, and walked away.

  She sighed. Hardly anyone here spoke her dialect, save the few villagers taken with her. The scaly devils threw people from all over China together in their camps; they either did not know or did not care about the differences among them. For the educated few, those who could read and write, the lack of a common dialect mattered little. They spoke together with brush and paper, since they all used the same characters.

  Such was the ignorance of the demons that they had even put Japanese in the camp. No Japanese were left any more. Some had slain themselves in despair at being captured. Those whose despair was less deep died anyhow, one by one. Liu Han did not know just how they’d met their ends. So long as they were dead, and the little devils none the wiser, she was satisfied.

  Two streets over from the one the devils most regularly patrolled, a market had sprung up. People landed in camp with no more than what they had on their backs, but they soon started trading that-no reason for a man with a gold ring or a woman whose purse had been full of coins to do without. Inside days, too, chickens and even piglets had made their appearance, to supplement the rice the devils doled out.

  A bald man with a wispy mustache sat on the ground, his straw hat upside down in front of him. In it nestled three fine eggs. Seeing Liu Han looking at them, he nodded and spoke to her. When he saw she did not follow him, he tried another dialect, then another. Finally he reached one she could also grasp: “What you give for these?”

  Sometimes even understanding did not help. “I am sorry,” she said. “I have nothing to give.”

  Back in her own village, it would have been the start of a haggle with which to while away most of a morning. Here, she thought, it was nothing but truth. Her husband, her child, dead at the hands of the Japanese. Her village, devastated first by the eastern barbarians and then by the devils in their dragonfly planes-and now gone forever.

  The man with the eggs cocked his head to one side, smiled a bland merchant’s smile up at her. He said, “Pretty woman never have nothing to give. You want eggs, maybe you let me see your body for them?”

  “No,” Liu Han said shortly, and walked away. The bald man laughed as she turned her back. He was not the first in the market who had asked her for that kind of payment.

  She went back to the tent she shared with Yi Min. The apothecary was becoming an important man in the prison camp. Little scaly devils often visited him, to learn written Chinese and the dialects he spoke. Sometimes he made suggestions to them about the proper way to do things. They very often listened-that was what made him important. If he wanted eggs, he had influence to trade for them.

  All the same, Liu Han sometimes wished she had moved in with the other prisoners from her village, or with people she’d never seen before. But she and he had come here in the belly of the same dragon plane, he had been a speck of the familiar in a vast strange ocean-and so she had agreed. He’d been diffident when he asked her. He wasn’t diffident anymore.

  She lifted the tent flap. A startled hiss greeted her. She bowed almost double. “I am very sorry, lord devil, sir. I did not mean to disturb you,” she said rapidly.

  Too rapidly. The demon turned back to Yi Min, from whose words she had distracted it. “She say-what?” it asked in abominably accented Chinese.

  “She apologizes-says she is sorry-for bothering you.” Yi Min had to repeat it a couple of times before the little devil understood. Then he made a noise like a boiling pot. “Is that how to say the same thing in your language?” he asked, switching back to Chinese once more.

  The scaly devil hissed back at him. The language lesson went on for some time, with both Yi Min and the devil ignoring Liu Han as completely as if she’d been the sleeping mat on which they squatted. Finally the little demon bubbled out, what must have been a farewell, for it got to its clawed feet and scurried out of the tent. Even in going, it brushed past Liu Han without a word in either Chinese or devil talk.

  Yi Min patted the mat. With some reluctance, Liu Han sat down beside him in the place the little scaled demon had just occupied. The mat was still warm, almost hot; devils, fittingly enough, were more fiery creatures than human beings.

  Yi Min was in an expansive mood. “I shall be rich,” he chortled. “The Race-”

  “The what?” Liu Han asked.

  “The, Race. It is what the devils call themselves. They will need men to serve them, to be their viceroys, men who can teach them the way real people talk and also learn their ugly language. It is difficult, but Ssofeg-the devil who was just here-says I pick it up more quickly than anyone else in this whole camp. I will learn, and help the devils, and become a great man. You were wise to stick by me, Liu Han, truly wise.”

  He turned to her and kissed her. she did not respond, but he har
dly noticed; his tongue pushed its way into her mouth. She tried to fend him off. His greater weight overbore her, pressed her down to the mat. Already he was tugging at her tunic. She sighed and submitted, staring up at the gray fabric of the tent ceiling and hoping he would finish soon.

  He thought he was a good lover. He did everything a good lover should, caressing her, putting his face between her legs. But Liu Han did not want either him or his attentions, and so they failed to stir her. Again, Yi Min was so full of himself that her response, or rather lack of it, did not even reach him. Had she not been there at a convenient moment, she was sure he would simply have taken himself in hand. But she was there, so he took her instead.

  “Let us try the hovering butterflies today,” he said, by which he meant that he wanted her on top. She sighed again. He would not even give her the chance just to lie there limply. Once more she wished the scaly devils had herded someone else into the dragonfly plane with her. she did not know why she’d yielded the first time he forced himself on her, save that he was the last link she had to the vanished life she was used to. Having yielded once, saying no became more nearly impossible every time afterward.

  Looking in every direction but at his flushed, rather greasy face, she straddled him, lowered herself. He filled her, but that was all she felt: none of the delight she had known from her husband. She moved vigorously just the same-that was the way to make it over soonest.

  He was thrashing beneath her like a gaffed carp when the tent flap opened. She gasped and grabbed for her cotton trousers at the same moment that Yi Min, oblivious as usual to everything not himself, groaned with his final pleasure.