Striking the Balance

Von Ribbentrop did not answer, not to bellow defiance, not even to acknowledge he’d heard. The only thing that worried Atvar worse than a blustering, defiant Big Ugly was a silent one.

Ludmila Gorbunova pressed the self-starter of the FieselerStorch. The Argus engine came to life at once. She was not surprised. German machinery worked well.

Ignacy waved to her. She nodded back as she built up revolutions. She would have had to push theStorch hard to get it airborne before it rammed the trees ahead. Her old U-2 could never have taken off in so short a space.

She nodded again. More partisans bent to remove the blocks of wood in front of the light plane’s wheels. At the same time, Ludmila released the brake. TheStorch bounded forward. When she pulled back on the stick, its nose came up and it sprang into the air. She could see the trees through the cockpit glasshouse: dark shapes down there, almost close enough to reach out and touch. The Poles whose candles had marked the edge of the forest for her now blew them out.

She buzzed along steadily, not wanting to gain much altitude.

As long as she was on the Lizard side of the line, she might be shot down as an enemy. Ironic that she’d have to make it to German-held territory to feel safe.

Safe wasn’t all she hoped she’d feel. By the coordinates, she was returning to the same landing strip she’d used before. With luck, Heinrich Jager would be there waiting for her.

Off to the right, muzzle flashes blazed in the darkness. Something hit the side of the fuselage, once, with a sound like a stone clattering off a tin roof. Ludmila gave theStorch more throttle, getting out of there as fast as she could.

That complicated her navigation. If she was going faster, she needed to fly for less time. How much less? She worked the answer out in her head, decided she didn’t like it, and worked it out again. By the time she discovered where she’d gone wrong the first time, a glance at her watch warned her it was time to start looking around for the landing strip.

She hoped she wouldn’t have to do a search spiral. The Germans were liable to start shooting at her if she buzzed around for too long, and the spiral might take her back over Lizard-held territory if it got too big.

There! As usual, the lanterns marking the landing strip were small and dim, but she spotted them. Lowering the enormous flaps on theStorch killed airspeed almost as if she were stepping on the brakes on the highway. The light plane jounced to a stop well within the area the lanterns marked off.

Ludmila flipped up the cockpit door. She climbed out onto the wing, then jumped down to the ground. Men came trotting up toward theStorch. In the darkness, she couldn’t be sure if any of them was Jager.

They recognized her before she could make out who they were. “There-you see, Gunther?” one of them said. “Itis the lady pilot.” He gave the word the feminine ending, as Jager sometimes did, as she had so often heard Georg Schultz do (she wondered what might have happened to Schultz and Tatiana, but only for a moment: as far as she was concerned, they deserved each other).

“Ja,you were right, Johannes,” another German answered. “Only goes to show nobody can be wrongall the time.” A couple of snorts floated out of the night.

Gunther, Johannes-“You are the men from Colonel Jager’s panzer, not so?” Ludmila called quietly. “Is he-is he here, too?” No point pretending she didn’t care; they couldn’t help knowing about her and Jager.

The panzer crewmen stopped in their tracks, almost as if they’d run into an invisible wall. “No, he’s not here,” one of them-Gunther, she thought-answered. He spoke hardly above a whisper, as if he didn’t want his words to go beyond the span of theStorch’s wings.

Ice ran down Ludmila’s back. “Tell me!” she said. “Is he hurt? Is he dead? Did it happen before the cease-fire started? Tell me!”

“He’s not dead-yet,” Gunther said, even more softly than before. “He’s not even hurt-yet. And no, it didn’t happen in the fighting with the Lizards. It happened three days ago, as a matter of fact.”

“Whathappened?” Ludmila demanded.

Maddeningly, Gunther fell silent. After a moment when Ludmila felt like yanking out her pistol and extorting answers at gunpoint. If need be, the crewman named Johannes said, “Miss, the SS arrested him.”

“Bozhemoi,”Ludmila whispered. “Why? What could he have done? Was it on account of me?”

“Damned if we know,” Johannes said. “This weedy little SS pigdog came up, pointed a gun at him, and marched him away. Stinking blackshirt bastard-who does he think he is, arresting the best commander we’ve ever had?”

His crewmen muttered profane agreement. It would have been loud profane agreement, except they were all veterans, and wary of letting anyone outside their circle know their thoughts.

One of them said, “Come on, boys, we’re supposed to be loading ammo into this miserable little plane.”