Fox On The Rhine (23 page)

“Fire!” Fritzi, as usual, anticipated the lieutenant’s order and the long gun instantly spit an armor-piercing shell.

“Got him! Driver--reverse! Gunner--train forward!”

Carl-Heinz smoothly backed the tank past the house as the turret once more swiveled toward the front. The driver stared through the periscope, startled as a Sherman appeared around the comer of the building. The American tank fired, the shell ricocheting off the Panther’s frontal armor with a deafening clang. Fritzi shot back, hitting the base of the Sherman’s turret. The resulting explosion blinded Carl-Heinz momentarily, but when his vision cleared he saw that the cannon of the M4 had bent back like an aluminum drainpipe.

The shell casing rattled into the turret as Peltz jammed another round into the breach. This time Fritzi didn’t wait for the command, blasting his second point-blank shot into the forehull of another tank. Smoke belched from the hatches, and the gun stopped its frantic motion. The driver popped out of his escape hole but Schroeder quickly squeezed the trigger on the turret machine gun, dropping the helpless tanker halfway out of the hatch. The body collapsed forward, arms dangled off the front of the olive-drab tank.

“Driver--reverse!” snapped Lieutenant Schroeder. Again Carl-Heinz double-clutched and rocked backward. The Panther lurched as it struck the stone wall and then pitched up and over the broken barrier. Carl-Heinz saw the receding gap, a neat notch the size of the panzer, as he continued to back away from the house and farmyard.

“Driver--stop--forward--left turn; Gunner, train right!” Immediately Clausen repeated the gear-shifting process, the Panther responding with a grace worthy of its namesake. Quickly the German tank rolled past the back of the house. Risking a look through his periscope, Carl-Heinz saw the hump-backed silhouette of another Sherman rumbling off the road, straight toward the Panther. The American gun fired, but the fast-moving panzer had already darted past the gun trajectory--the shot was a clean miss.

“Driver--stop! Gunner--fire!” The Panther’s cannon barked and Fritzi’s shot caught the nearest M4 squarely in the forehull. Smoke instantly spewed from the ruined tank, secondary explosions continuing to rock the metal carcass. Another Sherman had darted off the other side of the road, racing toward the forest in a standard dispersal tactic in the face of ambush. Those tankers were obviously unaware that the German was now perched directly to their rear.

Fritzi settled into a careful shot, blasting the American tank in the back of the turret, where it was most vulnerable. The shell punched through the armor, and, while the Sherman showed no outward sign of damage, it stopped moving. Slowly, its gun settled toward the ground.

Meanwhile Carl-Heinz swung the periscope leftward to check the road. He saw half-tracks, white stars emblazoned on the doors, rolling into the ditch. Infantrymen scrambled out of the vehicles, ducking into the makeshift trench, racing toward the Panther.

He called over the intercom. “Leutnant! Up the road!”

“Loader--high explosive,” Schroeder ordered, and Peltz smoothly replaced the antitank round in the breach as the turret swiveled to the left. Carl-Heinz pressed his eye against the periscope’s rubber eyepiece, watching American infantry rush forward. They moved much more slowly than the steadily swinging tank gun. They’re doomed--why don’t they run?

“Fire!” The high explosive projectile struck the ground in front of the first half-track, concussion blasting the vehicle backward, killing the nearby soldiers in a flash of blast and shrapnel. Fritzi put the second round into the next half-track, which exploded in a spectacular fireball, the blaze popping off ammunition like stuttering bursts of gunfire.

“Driver--forward, right turn! Let’s get down the road!” Carl-Heinz needed no coaxing. The Panther rumbled through its circuit around the farmhouse, rolled past smoking Shermans and then growled into high gear on the road. They raced at top speed, more than forty kilometers per hour, toward the south.

“Radioman--coordinates?”

“Three kilometers west of Mortain,” Pfeiffer chattered into his microphone as the crew awaited a reply.

Carl-Heinz had heard the same rumors as the rest of the crew: that Avranches had already fallen, that they were all but surrounded here in Normandy as the American attack swept into the rest of France. But there was nothing he could do about that, so he concentrated on holding the rumbling Panther on the road, throttle wide open. A shell whizzed over the tank, and another exploded just beside them, but their luck held as the range between them and the enemy tanks lengthened. Within a kilometer, he had to drive through the ditch to avoid a pair of burned-out trucks, but he quickly regained the highway and rumbled over a low elevation.

At last they were out of sight of the American armored column, but the driver muttered a curse as he saw that the road before them was blocked with blazing tanks and trucks, all in the field gray of the German army. Marshes pressed close against either side of the road, and there seemed to be no way around the blocked road. Clearly this bottleneck had been a killing ground for the Allied air forces.

Lieutenant Schroeder threw open the turret hatch, rising for a look at the situation.

The fighter came seemingly from nowhere, machine guns spitting lethal bullets. The lieutenant’s body was riddled before he could drop through the hatch. When Fritzi finally got him into the turret, Lieutenant Schroeder could only moan softly and die.

“More of the Jabo bastards!” shouted Peltz. “Looks like a bomb run!”

Carl-Heinz knew the Panther was a sitting duck, parked at the end of the file of wrecked vehicles. He turned the wheel violently, driving down the embankment and into the soft mud of the marsh. Gunning the engine, holding the throttle at top speed, he urged the big vehicle through the soft muck as bullets tore the earth around him.

“Come on, baby... you can do it... I know you can,” he said encouragingly.

A bomb went off nearby, casting a sheet of muddy water across the periscope, and the desperate driver pushed open the hatch, sticking his head just far enough that he could see.

We’re doomed--we’re going to die here!
He had the desperate thought as he felt the mud sucking at the treads, trying to pull the Panther down. Traction was all but gone, and the tank wallowed to the left, to the right, and back again as the tracks flailed at the too-soft ground. Gradually their headway slowed until they were barely crawling, and Carl-Heinz knew that if they stopped they would never get started again.

So he could not let them stop.

“Please, baby ... do it for Papa,” he whispered, vaguely aware that Ulrich was staring at him, wide-eyed, from the radioman’s seat.

More bullets sprayed the muddy ground, but now the tracks were biting into solid dirt. The engine raced into an almost human scream, pushing them through water and mud. Sticky goo splashed up the forehull into his face, and Carl-Heinz spat it out, not taking the time to wipe his eyes.

Finally, with a groaning lurch, the huge tank found its footing, pushing to the edge of the marsh, then crawling up a bank. With his head still out of the driver’s hatch, Carl-Heinz felt branches lash his face as he drove between two massive trees and straight into the cool shelter of a small woods.

Ukraine, Soviet Union, 2320 hours GMT

“I’m not cut out to be a diplomat,” Müller said. “This waiting is driving me crazy!”

Reinhardt smiled. It was the third day of the negotiations between Ribbentrop and Molotov--or, more properly, between Ribbentrop’s aides and Molotov. The work of the negotiations was taking place almost around the clock, with pots of awful coffee and stale bread sandwiches grabbed and eaten during the talks. Ribbentrop’s collapse was now virtually complete; he was in bed with one guard while his staff tried valiantly to resolve difficult issues without the power or authority to do so. If they came back with a deal Himmler didn’t like, Müller was sure they would be punished, probably killed. Alternately, Müller feared, Molotov could decide to have them all shot at any moment. The Russians were cold, unyielding, frustrating to talk to. It was just their traditional negotiating style, Reinhardt observed.

The meetings had stopped for an hour to allow people to shower and change clothes. Müller found the icy water terrible and jumped out in seconds, drying himself off and struggling back into his clothes. Reinhardt seemed to glory in the stoic torment, washing himself thoroughly. He studied his reflection in the small mirror, slicking his jet black hair down just so.

Müller hoped for a detailed briefing of the progress, but Reinhardt was not forthcoming. He suggested in vague terms that the situation was not quite hopeless, and that had to be enough for Müller. It wasn’t. “They hate us, Gunter,” he said in a plaintive voice. “Or are you claiming that’s just a negotiating ploy?”

Reinhardt smiled. “Those aren’t mutually exclusive concepts, you know,” he replied.

The conference was in a temporary barracks, surrounded by barbed wire and soldiers. Müller thought it looked more like a POW camp than the site of intergovernmental negotiations at the foreign minister level, but then any job on which he was assigned always turned out to be a lot less elegant than he expected.

What surprised him was Reinhardt. Gunter had fast moved into a leadership position on the effectively headless team. Baron Steengracht was weak and inconsequential, a man fit primarily for embassy parties and occasions of show. He had been von Ribbentrop’s “parrot” for years and was best known for his extremely beautiful wife, not for his intellect.

Reinhardt stepped up, first with whispered ideas, then with diffidently phrased suggestions that cut through complicated issues, and finally worked his way into the negotiations as nearly a full partner. Molotov regarded him suspiciously at first, then seemed to accept him as a man with whom he could do business.

“The Soviet Union is a peaceful nation,” Molotov said with a grunt. “You had peace with us, but you lied. We cannot trust a nation of liars. This discussion is useless. We see no value in continuing.” He began to stand up. Müller was panicked, then noticed that Steengracht seemed to be panicking as well.

“But Commisar,” Steengracht said, rising rapidly to his feet in hopes of heading off the Russian. But it was Reinhardt who cut through Steengracht’s empty protestations before they could get started. As Steengracht was saying, “We are prepared to commit the honor of the Third--” Reinhardt interrupted him.

“It’s very simple, Commissar Molotov. You cannot trust us. Nor can we trust you.”

“Eh?” said Molotov, taken aback by the nondiplomatic brusqueness.

“I beg your pardon!” said Steengracht with an icy stare, but Reinhardt ignored the clear hint to sit down and shut up.

“As Catullus says, ‘Let none believe that a man’s speeches be trustworthy.’ If any part of our arrangement depends on mutual trust, we are doomed.”

Molotov slowly settled back in his chair. His body language still radiated disinterest, but Müller thought he picked up some slight hint of amusement at the young German officer’s efforts. “We agree with half that statement. We cannot trust you. You may explain further.”

“Very well, Commissar. If there is no cessation of hostilities, the Soviet Union will eventually conquer at least the eastern portion of Germany. The only uncertainties are the exact number of casualties and the extent to which you will be able to penetrate before your allies stop you.”

“Our allies have been reliable, unlike the German Reich,” Molotov said dismissively.

“But that is not true. You worry about them constantly. You no longer worry about us, although you must still finish what has been started. But you must surely know that those allies have no more love for you than you have for us, and that once we are finished, you will surely be next.”

Molotov grunted. “This does not interest us. You are merely trying to create distrust between us and our allies, an obvious tactic and unworthy. In any event, let Napoleon and Hitler serve as an object lesson for anyone who considers invading us. We have no fear.”

“I suppose you must say that,” Reinhardt said with a nod. “That’s what diplomats must say. But as a military officer, I was trained to consider threat synonymous with ability, and therefore it is axiomatic that the Western Allies pose a threat to you. If nothing else, your allies surely are not eager to see the Marxist dream of the historic inevitability of Communism become fulfilled.”

Müller was starting to get a sense of the real dialogue. This time Molotov’s dismissive grunt was not accompanied by any attempt to stand and leave the negotiating table.
He must be interested in what Reinhardt is saying
, Müller thought.

“Then your goal must be to finish this war in the best position for the next one, for the next one will surely follow, and you will be its target.”

“This is idle speculation and has no basis in fact,” stated the commissar stolidly. But his eyes were interested.

Reinhardt took a deep breath. There was a mirror on the far wall, and Müller could see his face and the back of his head simultaneously. “We are not a threat to you as long as there is enough space between us for you to see a potential double-cross. If we can stalemate our enemies in the west, we can increase the buffer between you and them. You can use your military energies far better than crushing us by annexing better strategic territory. May I suggest Norway, for its Atlantic access, and Greece, for your long-awaited warm-water port?” There was stunned silence on both sides of the negotiating table. This was an outrageous concession, far in excess of Reinhardt’s authority, the sort of thing that normally would be broached over time. Molotov snorted, and Müller realized it was a stifled laugh. “So,” the commissar said after taking a sip of tea with jam in it--which had become one of Müller’s favorite Russian customs--and returned to his stoic Slavic demeanor. “You would trade away Norway and Greece for peace? You talk about a lack of trust. Why shouldn’t we take Norway, Greece, and you?”

“Two reasons: First, you can’t. If you double-cross your allies, you won’t be able to go back, not with them. Certainly not without a peace offering at least as dramatic as what I’m suggesting. Second, you don’t want to. You want a Germany with some significant military strength to tie the Allies down in the west. If we are able to throw them back into the Atlantic, all well and good. If we can only stalemate them, then they can hardly mobilize to go after you, at least for a long time.” A glint of sunlight flashed into the mirror and onto his face. Müller could see a single bead of sweat, the only evidence of Reinhardt’s tension as he spoke.