In the Balance полностью

“Hello, Boris, you skinny old prune-faced bastard,” Skorzeny boomed back. Jager waited for the heavens to fall. The NKVD man, who really was a skinny old prune-faced bastard, just gave a tight little nod, from which Jager inferred he’d been working with Skorzeny for a while and had decided he’d better make allowances.

The NKVD man-Boris-turned toward Lieutenant Colonel Kraminov. “Perhaps all five of us will work together today,” he said. “In chatting before you gentlemen arrived, Viktor Danielovich and I discovered that we all may be able to contribute to an operation which will benefit both our nations.”

“It is as Lieutenant Colonel Lidov says,” Kraminov agreed. “Cooperation here will aid both the Soviet Union and the Reich against the Lizards.”

“You mean you want German help for something you don’t think you can do on your own,” Skorzeny said. “Why do you need us for an operation which I presume will be on Soviet soil?” His gaze came to a sudden, sharp focus. “Wait! It’s on territory we took from you last year, isn’t it?”

“That may be,” Lidov said. The noncommittal reply convinced Jager that Skorzeny was right. He made a mental note: the SS man might bluster, but he was anything but stupid. Lieutenant Colonel Kraminov evidently saw dissimulation was useless, too. He sighed, perhaps regretting it “Come, all of you.”

The Germans followed the two Russian officers down the long, high-ceilinged halls of the Kremlin. Other Russian soldiers sometimes paused in their own duties to stare at Skorzeny’s SS uniform, but no one said anything: they seemed to accept that the world had grown stranger these past few months.

The office Jager and Schultz entered was not the one Kraminov used. Like Kraminov’s, though, it was surprisingly light and airy, with a large window that gave a view of thegrounds of the Kremlin compound. Jager had looked for nothing but dank gloom at the heart of Soviet Russia, but a moment’s reflection after finding the opposite told him that was silly. Even Communists needed light by which to work. And the Kremlin was far older than either Communism or electricity; when it was raised, the only light worth having came from the sun. So, large windows.

Lieutenant Colonel Lidov pointed to a samovar. “Tea, tovarishchii?” he asked. Jager frowned; Kraminov didn’t call Schultz and him “comrades,” as if they were Reds themselves. But then, Kraminov was a tankman, a warrior, not NKVD. At home, Jager drank coffee thick with cream. But he hadn’t been at home for a long time. He nodded.

Lidov poured for all of them. At home, Jager didn’t drink tea from a glass, either. He had done that before, though, with captured samovar sets in steppe towns and collective farms overrun by the Wehrmacht. Lidov brewed better tea than he’d had there.

The NKVD man set down his glass. “To business,” he said. Jager leaned forward and looked attentive. Georg Schultz just sat where he was. Skorzeny slouched down in his chair and looked bored. If that disconcerted Lidov, he didn’t let it show.

“To business,” he repeated. “As the Hauptsturmfuhrer has suggested, the proposed action will take place in an area where the, fascist invaders had established themselves prior to the arrival of the alien imperialist aggressors commonly known as Lizards.”

Jager wondered if Lidov talked that way all the time. Skorzeny yawned. “By fascist invaders, I presume you mean us Germans.” He sounded as bored as he looked.

“You and your lackeys and running dogs, yes.” Maybe Lidov did talk that way all the time. However he talked, he didn’t retreat a centimeter, though Skorzeny could have broken him over his knee like a stick. “To resume, then: along with bands of gallant Soviet partisans, German remnant groups remain in the area under discussion. Thus the apparent expedience of a joint Soviet-German operation.”

“Where is the area in question?” Jager asked.

“Ah,” Lidov said. “Attend the map here, if you please.” He stood up, pointed to one of the charts tacked onto the wall. The lettering, of course, was Cyrillic, but Jager recognized the Ukraine anyhow. Red pins showed Soviet positions, blue ones surviving German units, and yellow the Lizards. The map had more yellow measles than Jager liked.

Lidov went on, “We are particularly concerned with this area north and west of Kiev, near the town of Komarin. There, early in the struggle against the Lizards, you Germans succeeded in wrecking with heavy artillery two major ships of the common enemy.”

That made Georg Schultz sit up straighter. So did Jager-it was news to him, too. Skorzeny said, “And so? This is no doubt excellent, but how does it concern us here?”

“In and around the wreckage of one of these ships, the Lizards appear to be making no more than an ordinary effort at salvage. This is emphatically not the case at the other.”

“Tell us about the second one, then,” Jager urged.