Tilting the Balance

“Yes, and not all of it good, either, ” Embry said, evidently willing to drop his bitterness. “These people have spent their entire history being stepped on. Tsars, commissars, what have you-it’d be a miracle indeed if that didn’t show in the language. ”

“Shall we put Mr. Jones’ knowledge of Russian to more practical use? ” Bagnall said. Without waiting for a reply from Embry, he asked the radarman, “What do you hear, going up and down in the city? ”

“The name is Jones, sir, as you noted, not Job, ” Jones replied with a grin which rapidly slipped. “People are hungry, people are battered. They don’t love the Germans or the Bolsheviks. If they thought the Lizards would feed them and leave them alone otherwise, a lot would just as soon see them as top dogs. ”

“If I’d stayed safe at home in England, I’d have trouble imagining that, ” Bagnall said. Of course, flying bomber missions first against the Germans and then against the Lizards had been anything but safe, but Jones and Embry both nodded, understanding what he meant. He went on, “After the Jews rose for the Lizards and against the Nazis, I thought they were the blackest traitors in the history of the world-until their story started coming out. If a tenth part of what they say is true, Germany has more blood on her hands than a thousand years of Hitler’s Reich can wash away. ”

“And they and we are allies, ” Embry said heavily.

“And they and we are allies, yes, ” Bagnall agreed. “And so are they and the Russians, and so are we and the Russians, and Stalin, by all that’s said, matches Hitler for butchery any day of the week, even if he’s not so showy about it. ”

“It’s a rum old world, ” Embry said.

Not far away, somebody fired a rifle in the street. Somebody else fired another one, with a report that sounded different: one weapon was German, the other Soviet. Another handful of shots followed, then silence. Bagnall waited tensely wondering if the shooting would start up again. That would be all anyone needed-war inside Pskov between alleged allies to accompany war outside against foes. But silence held for a couple of minutes.

Then the shooting started again, worse than ever-one of those new German machine guns, the ones with the terrifyingly high cyclic rate that made them sound even more dreadful than they really were, added to the chaos. Several Russian submachine guns gave answer. Through the raucous racket of gunfire came hoarse screams. Bagnall couldn’t tell if they were Russian or German.

“Oh, bloody hell, ” Jerome Jones said.

Embry took hold of one end of a chest of drawers and started pushing it toward the front door, saying, “Best we put up something of a barricade, wouldn’t you say? ”

Bagnall didn’t say anything, but did put his back into helping the pilot manhandle the heavy wooden chest into place. Then he picked up a chair and, grunting, set it on top of the low chest. Together, he and Embry leaned a table against the window by the doorway.

“Jones, you have your pistol with you? ” Bagnall asked, then answered himself: “Yes, I see you do. Good. ” He went into the bedroom and returned with his Mauser, Ken Embry’s, and as much ammunition as they had left from the raid on the Lizard base. “I hope we shan’t have to use these, but-”

“Quite, ” Embry said. He glanced over at Jones. “No offense, old man, but I’d sooner Tatiana were here than you. She’d be likelier to keep us safe. ”

“No offense taken, sir, ” the radarman answered. “I’d sooner Tatiana were here, too. Given any choice at all, I’d sooner be back in Dover, or better yet, London. ”

Since Bagnall had had almost the same thought not long before, he could only nod, Embry went into the bedroom. He came back with their pair of coal-scuttle helmets. “I don’t know whether we ought to put these on. They’ll keep out splinters or glancing bullets, but they’ll also make the Russians take us for Jerries, which might prove less than ideal under the circumstances. ”

A random bullet smashed through the wooden front wall, just missed Jones and Bagnall, and buried itself in plaster next to the samovar. “I’ll wear a helmet, ” Bagnall said. “The Russians may ask questions about who we are and whose side we’re on, but their ammunition doesn’t. ”

He heard the pop of a mortar and, a moment later, the much louder bang as its bomb went off. He found cover behind another chair and aimed his rifle at the doorway. “The Lizards may not need to take Pskov, ” he said. “Seems to me more as if the Russians and Germans want to give it to them. ”

A tracked Lizard troop carrier rattled down the wet dirt road, splattering mud in all directions. Some of it splashed Mordechai Anielewicz as he trudged along on the soft shoulder. The Lizards in the tracked carrier took no special notice of him: to them, he was just another gun-toting Big Ugly on the move.

His lips skinned back from his teeth in a humorless smile. The motion set his whole face itching. Moishe Russie, when he fled the Lizards, had been able to get rid of his beard in one fell swoop. Growing one took longer and, as far as Anielewicz was concerned, was a lot less comfortable.

Also uncomfortable was the Gewehr 98 slung across his back. He valued the rifle all the same: he’d promised himself Zolraag and his minions would not take him alive, and it was the means by which he could keep that promise. He’d also had the sense to take German marching boots a size too large when the time came to disappear from Warsaw. His feet had swollen in them, yes, but he could still take them off and put them on without trouble.

He’d sent Russie west to Lodz. Now that it was his turn to escape the Lizards, he was walking south and east, into the part of Poland the Russians had occupied in 1939 before the Germans ran them out less than two years later. His chuckle sounded anything but mirthful. “Sooner or later, the people who used to work with the Lizards are going to be scattered all over the countryside, ” he said, and waved his arms to show what he meant. The motion startled a magpie, which flew away, chattering angrily.

He sympathized with the bird. Till he’d moved suddenly, it had taken him as harmless. He’d thought the same about the Lizards, or at least that they were a better bargain than the Nazis. For the Jews of Poland, he still thought them a better bargain than the Nazis; had they not come, Poland would have been Judenfrei-without Jews-by now.