Hitler's War (59 page)

“Aramaic,” Samuel Goldman said in a low voice. He might have been someone who dabbled in drugs confessing that he planned to start shooting morphine into his veins.

All Sarah knew about Aramaic was that it was an ancient language. Growing up in a family that prided itself on its secularism, on its Germanness, she hadn’t learned much more about Hebrew. Maybe that was why she blurted, “Teach me!”

“Teach…you?” her father echoed. The idea might never have occurred to him before. No, no
might
about it: plainly, the idea never
had
occurred to him before.

But she nodded. “I’m not a blockhead, you know. I could learn it. And you taught from the end of the last war till the Nazis wouldn’t let you do it any more. You liked doing it, too, and everybody always said you were good at it.”

“What on earth would you do with Aramaic, dear?” Samuel Goldman asked. “Or even Hebrew, come to that?”

“Beats me,” Sarah said cheerfully. “What’ll
you
do with them?”

Father blinked. Then he started to laugh. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know, either. I just thought learning something new would help me pass the time. Of course, pick-and-shovel work is liable to take care of that.”

Sarah nodded. “If you’re able to go on with it yourself. If you’re not too tired.”

“A bargain.” Her father held out one abused hand. She solemnly clasped it. He hesitated, then went on, “I have found one possible use for all this.”

“Oh?” Sarah couldn’t see any, not at first. Then she thought she did: “You mean going to Palestine, if we ever got the chance?”

“Mm, that, too, for Hebrew—if we ever got the chance.” By the way Father sounded, he didn’t think they would. “But that isn’t what I meant. I was thinking that, if I asked God in one of His own languages why He was doing this to us, I might possibly get an answer.” With a sigh of regret—or exhaustion—he shook his head. “Too much to hope for, isn’t it?”

She wished she could tell him no. But, almost of its own accord, her head bobbed up and down. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid it is.”

PETE MCGILL LISTENED TO MAX WEINSTEIN
spit out singsong syllables at Wang. Wang answered; damned if he didn’t. McGill stared at Max. Like most of the Marines at the American Legation in Peking, he’d picked up a few Chinese words and phrases himself, most of them foul. But he’d never imagined he’d be able to sling the lingo the way Max did. He’d never imagined he would want to, either.

“What are you going back and forth with him about?” he asked. “Has he got a nice, clean sister?”

“Shit, McGill, drag your mind out of the gutter, why doncha?” Max said. “Me and Wang, we were talking about Mao Tse-tung.”

“About who? About what?” For a second, the name was just another singsong noise in Pete’s ears. Then it rang a bell. He looked disgusted. He sounded that way, too, as he went on, “Jesus Christ on a fuckin’ pogo stick! You go to all the trouble of learning that dumb language, and what do you want to talk about? A lousy Red! My aching back, man! Worry about the important stuff first.” As far as he was a concerned, women and food topped the list, with weapons running a strong third. He was a Marine’s Marine.

Nobody ever said Max couldn’t hold his own in brawling and drinking. He wasn’t big, but he didn’t back away from anybody. “Mao’s no lousy Red,” he said. “Mao’s the straight goods. If anybody in this crappy country can give the Japs grief, Mao’s the guy.”

“Chiang Kai-shek—” Pete McGill began.

“My ass,” Weinstein said, and then, “‘Scuse me. My ass,
Corporal
. See, the difference is, Chiang’s all about Chiang, first, last, and always. Mao’s about China instead. Ain’t that right, Wang?”

“What you say?” Wang wasn’t about to admit he understood enough English to make sense of that. But Max started spouting Chinese and waving his arms. Even in his own language, Wang answered cautiously. Pete knew why: if Wang sounded like a Red, he’d lose his cushy post at the Legation. He’d have to try to make an honest living instead, if there was any such thing in China these days.

“He’s not telling me everything he’s thinking,” Max complained.

“He’s smarter’n you are, that’s why,” Pete said, and explained his own reasoning.

“Oh.” Max grunted. “Yeah, I bet you’re right. That’s just how the reactionaries who run the Corps would respond to constructive, class-centered criticism.”

“Give it a rest, willya?” Pete said, rolling his eyes. “I bet you even sound like a Communist recruiting pamphlet when you’re getting laid.” He did his best to imitate a pompous Red proselytizer: “The triumph of the waddayacallit, the proletariat, cannot be denied—and wiggle your tongue a little over to the left, sweetheart.”

He laughed himself silly. He thought that was funny whether Max did or not. After a second, the Jewish Marine laughed, too. “Ah, fuck you, McGill,” he said between chuckles. Then he got serious again. “You ever hear of a hooker in the States or here who
wasn’t
from the proletariat? Gals who can find any other way to make a living…well, they do.”

“You get an extra charge out of feeling guilty when you screw ‘em?” McGill asked. Max couldn’t claim he didn’t lay Chinese whores. If he tried, Pete would call him a liar to his face, even if that started a fight. Weinstein was one of the horniest Marines in Peking, and that was saying something.

He gave Pete the finger. Aside from that, he didn’t try to answer. Wang said something in Chinese. Max replied in the same language. Pete didn’t know just what he said, but it sounded like a phrase that was definitely raunchy. Whatever it was, Wang giggled. Then he said something that set Max snickering.

“C’mon, man—give,” Pete urged.

“He says Mao’s the really horny son of a bitch,” Max answered. “Mao’s gotta be up near fifty, but he likes his broads young—eighteen, twenty, twenty-two, like that. Wang says he likes a bunch of ‘em in bed with him all at the same time, too.”

“What a dirty old man!” Pete said. It wasn’t that that didn’t sound like fun, and it wasn’t that he didn’t like young women, either. But he was young himself. Imagining a Chinaman old enough to be his father in the middle of an orgy made him want to puke, or at least to trade places. After a few seconds, he asked, “Does Captain Horner know about this shit?” Then he started laughing again, this time on account of the captain’s name.

“Well, I never told him—I know that,” Max got out between snickers of his own. He went back and forth with Wang in Chinese again. “Wang says he never talked about it with any other round-eye. I believe him. He doesn’t know enough English to do it, and how many leathernecks speak Chinese?”

“You make one, and everybody knows you’re a queer duck,” McGill said. Max flipped him off again. Ignoring that, Pete went on, “You really ought to pass this stuff to the captain. He picks up as much intelligence as he can on the Chinese and the Japs.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Max said.

Pete knew what that meant, or thought he did. “Listen, I don’t care if you don’t feel like telling ‘cause it’ll make one of your precious Red heroes look bad. But I don’t give a shit about that, so if you don’t pass it on, I damn well will.”

“All right, already. Shut up,” Weinstein said.

Shut up Pete did—then. Three days later, he quietly went up to Captain Horner. The officer listened, then nodded. “I heard some of this from Weinstein, but not all of it,” he said. “It’s interesting. I’m not sure what I can do with it—hell, I’m not sure what the United States can do with it, assuming it’s true—but it is interesting.”

“Yes, sir.” Pete had hoped to get a bigger rise out of him. Maybe what Horner had already heard from Max took the edge off of it.

And maybe the captain had other things on his mind. That didn’t occur to Pete till the following Wednesday, when a bombshell hit the American Legation: more than half the Marines in the garrison would be transferred to Shanghai, effective immediately.

“There are many more foreigners—not just Americans, but also Europeans—in Shanghai than in Peking,” Horner told the assembled leathernecks. “We can be more useful there. Also, Shanghai is a port, with direct connections to the United States.” He paused, looking unhappy. “If the war between Japan and China keeps getting worse, moving our men between here and the coast may prove neither easy nor safe. Better to reduce our presence in Peking now, when we don’t lose face by doing it under duress.”

That sounded to Pete as if the United States had to react to what was going on around it—as if the country had little choice. He would rather the USA dictated circumstances and didn’t have to respond to them. Sometimes, though, you had to play the hand you were dealt even if it was a bad one.

Captain Horner displayed a couple of typewritten sheets of names, several columns’ worth on each. “I shall post these as soon as we finish here,” he said. “If your name is on the list, pack your kit and be ready to move tomorrow. The Japanese authorities have promised there will be no difficulties as we march to the train station.” He looked as if he were biting down on something nasty as he spoke. That American Marines should need Japanese permission to move through Peking—! But they did. At least they had it. “Questions?” the captain asked.

Nobody had any. If the other Marines were anything like McGill, their only question was whether their name had made the list. As soon as Captain Horner posted it, everybody swarmed forward to see.

Pete’s was there. So were those of most of his buddies. “Misery loves company,” he said, and he wasn’t joking. He had a day to boil everything he’d picked up in Peking into a duffel’s worth of stuff. Some of the residue he could mail back to his folks: jade and enamelwork and the like. The rest…He set it out for the Marines who were staying behind. “Take whatever you want and pitch the rest,” he told them. He wasn’t the only guy saying that, either—not even close. Somebody who stayed in Peking would hit the jackpot with what other Marines thought was junk. Whether he’d get the chance to enjoy it might be a different question.

Japanese and Chinese stared at the leathernecks marching through the city. Some of the Chinamen pointed and exclaimed. The Japs showed better discipline. “Eyes—front!” Sergeant Larry Koenig bawled. McGill’s head went to the front. He kept looking around, though. Koenig wouldn’t catch him at it—and he didn’t.

The train flew American flags and had the Stars and Stripes painted on, and on top of, every car. No one wanted another incident like the gunboat
Panay’s
misfortune. Pete knew damn well he didn’t. He climbed onto the train. His corporal’s stripes assured him of a seat. The whistle screeched. The train started to roll. In a day or so…Shanghai.
Well, it’ll be different, anyhow
, Pete thought, and lit up an Old Gold.

HIDEKI FUJITA WOULD HAVE LIKED
to see better weather before Japan unleashed its attack along the Ussuri. Other sergeants who’d been stationed along this stretch of the border between Manchukuo and the Soviet Union longer than he had laughed at him for saying so. He would have bet even privates who’d been stationed here a while laughed at him. They knew better than to do it where he could catch them, though.
He would have made them sorry. He couldn’t thump other sergeants. As long as he didn’t do anything permanent, he could knock privates around as he pleased.

The hell of it was, the laughing sergeants and even the laughing privates might be right. This was the kind of place that had about twenty minutes of summer every year, with a half hour of spring to warn you it was coming and another half hour of fall to warn you it was going. If the army waited for perfect weather in which to strike, it might still be waiting in 1943.

This weather was a lot of things. Perfect it wasn’t, not unless you were a polar bear. One blizzard after another howled down from Siberia. The swirling snow did let the Japanese hide the men and matériel they brought forward for the attack. Of course, it also made bringing troops and guns and munitions forward that much harder. But if you complained about every little thing…

Sergeant Fujita did wonder whether the horrible weather also let the Russians bring up reinforcements and guns. When he mentioned that to Lieutenant Hanafusa, the platoon commander indulged in what seemed to be everybody’s favorite sport: he laughed at Fujita. “Not likely, Sergeant!” Hanafusa said. “The Russians are too busy fighting the Poles and the Germans to even worry about us.”

“Yes, sir,” Fujita said woodenly, and dropped the subject like a live grenade. He wasn’t an educated man or anything. He couldn’t hold his own in an argument against somebody who was. But he knew his own country was up to its armpits in China. That didn’t keep anybody from starting this new adventure. Russia was bigger than Japan, a hell of a lot bigger. Why shouldn’t it also be able to pat its head and rub its stomach at the same time?

After a while, snow started melting faster than it fell. More and more bare ground appeared; white no longer cloaked the pines and firs and spruces on both sides of the Ussuri. Here and there, flowers started blooming. They sprouted with what struck Fujita as frantic haste, as if
they knew they wouldn’t have long to do whatever they did. He wouldn’t have called this spring in Japan, but it looked to be as much as the Ussuri country had to offer.

Lieutenant Hanafusa seemed delighted. “Spring comes early this year!” he exclaimed. “Even the weather
kami
are on our side.”

No one told him he was wrong. Fujita only hoped the spirits in charge of the weather knew what they were doing. No, not
only
. He hoped the people in charge of the Kwantung Army knew what they were doing, too.

Whenever he got the chance, he peered across the Ussuri with field glasses. He rarely glimpsed Russians. Whatever the Red Army had over there, it was concealed. The Japanese would find out when they crossed the river—no sooner.

He kept hoping the people in charge of things would change their minds. Hope was cheap—no, free. And one of the big reasons it was free was that it was so unreliable. Men and guns kept right on moving up toward the Ussuri. Fujita presumed planes did, too, but the airstrips were farther back, so he didn’t see them.