Tilting the Balance

Skorzeny threw back his head and bellowed laughter. A couple of riflemen in the khaki of the Independent State of Croatia glanced over to see what was so funny. Wheezing still, Skorzeny said, “Wicked man! I’ve told you before, you were wasted in panzers. ”

“You’ve told me lots of things. That doesn’t make them true, ” Jager said, which made the SS man give him a shot in the ribs with an elbow. He elbowed back, more to remind Skorzeny he couldn’t be pushed around than because he felt like fighting. Jager gave away, centimeters, kilograms, and nasty attitude in any scrap with him; he didn’t think Skorzeny knew what quit meant, either.

“Here dig out those plans again, ” Skorzeny said. “I think I know what I want to do, but I’m not quite sure yet. ” Jager obediently dug. Skorzeny bent over the drawings, clucking like a mother hen. “I like these underground galleries. We can do things with them. ”

The halls to http://storerarity.ru which he pointed lay below the southern part of Diocletian’s palace. “There used to be upper halls above them, too, with the same plan, but those are long gone, ” Jager said.

“Then screw them. ” Skorzeny didn’t care about archaeology, just military potential. “What I want to know is, what’s in these galleries? ”

“Back in Roman days, they used to be storerooms, ” Jager said. “I’m not so sure what’s in there now. We need to talk to our good and loyal Croatian allies. ” He was proud of himself; that came out without a hint of irony.

“Yes, indeed, ” Skorzeny said, accepting the advice in the spirit in which it was given. “What I’m thinking is, maybe we can dig a tunnel from outside the wall into one of those galleries-”

“Always making sure we don’t happen to tunnel into the Lizards’ barracks. ”

“That would make things more complicated. ” Skorzeny chuckled. “But if we can do that, we have our good and loyal allies make a nice, loud, showy attack on the walls, draw any Lizard who happens to be underground up to the top… and then we bring in some of our lads through the tunnel and up, and-what was that? The horse’s cock up the arse? ”

“Yes, ” Jager said. “I like that. ” Then, like a proper devil’s advocate, he started picking holes in the plan: “Moving men and weapons into the city and into the place that houses the tunnel or at least somewhere close by it isn’t going to be easy and we’ll need a lot of men. That’s a big palace down there, big enough for a church and a baptistry and a museum to fit inside, plus God knows what all else. The Lizards will have packed a lot of fighters into it. ”

“I’m not worried about the Lizards, ” Skorzeny said. “If these Croats decide to hop into bed with them, though, that’ll nail our hides to the wall. We have to keep that from happening, no matter what; I don’t give a damn what we have to give Pavelic to keep him on our side. ”

“Free rein would probably do it, and he has that already, pretty much, ” Jager said with distaste. The Independent State of Croatia seemed to have only one plan for staying independent: hammering all its neighbors enough to make sure nobody close by got strong enough to take revenge.

If Skorzeny felt the same revulsion Jager did, he didn’t show it. He said, “We can promise him more chunks of the coast that the Italians are still occupying. He’ll like that-it’ll give him fresh traitors to get rid of. ” He spoke without sarcasm; he might have been talking about the best way to sweeten the deal for a secondhand car.

Jager couldn’t be so cold-blooded. Very softly, he said, “That Schweinhund Pavelic runs a filthy regime. ”

“You bet he does, but he’s our Schweinhund, and we want make sure he stays that way, ” Skorzeny answered, just as quietly. “If it does, every one of these Lizards, that Drefsab included, is ours, too. ” He brought a fist down onto his knee. “That will happen. ”

Compared to yielding to the Lizards, making deals with Ante Pavelic seemed worthwhile. Compared to anything else, Jager found it most repugnant. And yet, before the Lizards came, Pavelic had been a loyal and enthusiastic supporter of the German Reich. Jager wondered what that said about Germany. Nothing good, he thought.

Shanghai amazed Bobby Fiore. Much of the town was pure Chinese, and reminded him of a large-scale, rowdier version of the prison camp where he’d lived with Liu Han. So far, so good; he’d expected as much. What he hadn’t expected was the long streets packed full of European-style buildings from the 1920s. It was as if part of Paris, say, had been picked up, carried halfway round the world, and dropped down smack in the middle of China. As far as Fiore was concerned, it didn’t fit.

The other thing that amazed him was how much damage the city had taken. You walked around, you knew they’d been in a war here. The Japs had bombed the place to hell and gone, and then burned it when they took it in 1937; he still remembered the news photo of the naked little burned Chinese boy sitting up and crying in the ruins. When he first saw it, he’d been ready to go to war with Japan right then. But he’d cooled down, and so had everybody else. Then Pearl Harbor came along and said he’d been right the first time.

When the Lizards took Shanghai away from the Japs, they hadn’t exactly’ given it a peck on the cheek, either. Whole blocks were leveled, and human bones still lay here and there. The Chinese weren’t what you’d call eager to bury Japanese remains. Their attitude was more on the order of let ’em rot.

In spite of everything, though, the town, especially the Chinese part of it, kept right on humming. The Lizards made their headquarters in some of the Western-style buildings; the rest remained ruins. In the Chinese districts, things were going up faster than you could shake a stick at them.