In the Balance

Not without effort, Bagnall ignored the gunner’s interruption. “Not quite what I meant, Ken, but close enough. Paris stood for good times-Gay Paree and all that. You always had the feeling everybody who lived here knew how to enjoy himself better than you did. Lord knows whether it was really true, but you always thought so. You don’t, now.”

“Hard to be gay when you’re hungry and occupied,” Alf Whyte said.

“Occupied, yes,” Ken Embry said softly. “Straighten up, lads, here comes Jerry himself. Let’s look like soldiers for him, shall we?”

The German infantry of propaganda photographs looked more machined than born of man and woman: all lines and angles; all motions completely identical; hard, expressionless faces under coalscuttle helmets that added a final intimidating touch. The squad ambling up the street toward the aircrew fell a good ways short of Herr Goebbels’ ideal. A couple of them were fat; one wore a mustache that had more gray than brown in it. Several had the top, buttons of their tunics undone, something a Goebbels soldier would sooner have been shot than imagine. Some were missing buttons altogether; most had boots that wanted polishing.

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.