Striking the Balance

“Your colonel must be a good officer,” he said-softly, because the brooding presence of the woods weighed on him. “This regiment has come a long way east since the bomb went off near Breslau.” That was part of the reason he needed to talk with the local commandant, though he wasn’t going to explain his reasons to a private who probably thought he was nothing but a damn kike anyway.

Stolid as an old cow, the sentry answered,“Ja,” and then shut up again. They walked past a whitewashed Panther tank in a clearing. A couple of crewmen were guddling about in the Panther’s engine compartment. Looking at them, hearing one grumble when the exposed skin between glove and sleeve stuck to cold metal, you might have thought war no different from any other mechanical trade. Of course, the Germans had industrialized murder, too.

They walked by more tanks, most of them also being worked on. These were bigger, tougher machines than the ones the Nazis had used to conquer Poland four and a half years before. The Nazis had learned a lot since then. Their panzers still didn’t come close to being an even match for the ones the Lizards used, though.

A couple of men were cooking a little pot of stew over an aluminum field stove set on a couple of rocks. The stew had some kind of meat in it-rabbit, maybe, or squirrel, or even dog. Whatever it was, it smelled delicious.

“Sir, the Jewish partisan is here,” the sentry said, absolutely nothing in his voice. That was better than the scorn that might have been there, but not much.

Both men squatting by the field stove looked up. The older one got to his feet. He was obviously the colonel, though he wore a plain service cap and an enlisted man’s uniform. He was in his forties, pinch-faced and clever-looking despite skin weathered from a lifetime spent in the sun and the rain and, as now, the snow.

“You!” Anielewicz’s mouth fell open in surprise. “Jager!” He hadn’t seen this German in more than a year, and then only for an evening, but he wouldn’t forget him.

“Yes, I’m Heinrich Jager. You know me?” The panzer officer’s gray eyes narrowed, deepening the network of wrinkles around their outer corners. Then they went wide. “That voice… You called yourself Mordechai, didn’t you? You were clean-shaven then.” He rubbed his own chin. Gray mixed with the brownish stubble that grew there.

“You two know each other?” That was the moon-faced younger man who’d been waiting for the stew to finish. He sounded disbelieving.

“You might say so, Gunther,” Jager answered with a dry chuckle. “Last time I was traveling through Poland, this fellow decided to let me live.” Those watchful eyes flicked to Mordechai. “I wonder how much he regrets it now.”

The comment cut to the quick. Jager had been carrying explosive metal stolen from the Lizards. Anielewicz had let him travel on to Germany with half of it, diverting the other half to the United States. Now both nations were building nuclear weapons. Mordechai was glad the U.S.A. had them. His delight that the ThirdReich had them was considerably more restrained.

Gunther stared.“He letyou live? This ragged partisan?” Anielewicz might as well not have been there.

“He did.” Jager studied Mordechai again. “I’d expected more from you than a role like this. You should be commanding a region, maybe the whole area.”

Of all the things Anielewicz hadn’t expected, failing to live up to a Nazi’s expectations of him ranked high on the list. His shrug was embarrassed. “I was, for a while. But then not everything worked out the way I’d hoped it would. These things happen.”

“The Lizards figured out you were playing little games behind their backs, did they?” Jager asked. Back when they’d met in Hrubieszow, Anielewicz had figured he was no one’s fool. He wasn’t saying anything now to make the Jew change his mind. Before the silence got awkward, he waved a hand. “Never mind. It isn’t my business, and the less I know of what isn’t my business, the better for everyone. What do you want with us here and now?”

“You’re advancing on Lodz,” Mordechai said.

As far as he was concerned, that should have been an answer sufficient in and of itself. It wasn’t. Frowning, Jager said, “Damn right we are. We don’t get the chance to advance against the Lizards nearly often enough. Most of the time, they’re advancing on us.”

Anielewicz sighed quietly. He might have known the German wouldn’t understand what he was talking about. He approached it by easy stages: “You’ve gotten good cooperation from the partisans here in western Poland, haven’t you, Colonel?” Jager had been a major the last time Mordechai saw him. Even if he hadn’t come up in the world, the German had.

“Well, yes, so we have,” Jager answered. “Why shouldn’t we? Partisans are human beings, too.”