Page 95 of In the Balance (Worldwar 1)

“You have to keep me out of the Lizards’ sight,” Jager insisted.

Yossel laughed. “No, no, we just have to keep you from being noticed. It’s not the same thing at all. Get moving, we’ve already wasted too much time here on jabber.”

The Jew proved to know what he was talking about. Over the next few days, Jager saw more Lizards at closer range than he ever had before. Not one even looked at him; they all assumed he was just another militiaman, and so to be tolerated.

Encounters with armed Poles were more alarming. Although he’d grown a gray-streaked beard, Jager was ironically aware he looked not the least bit Jewish. “Don’t worry about it,” Yossel told him when he said as much. “They’ll think you’re just another traitor.”

That stung. Jager said, “You mean the way the rest of the world thinks of you Polish Jews?” He’d been with the band long enough now to speak his mind without fearing someone would shoot him for it.

“Yes, about like that,” Yossel answered calmly; he was hard to rile. “Of course, what the rest of the world still doesn’t believe is that we had good reason to like the Lizards better than you Nazis. If you know about Babi Yar, you know about that.”

Since he did know about that, and didn’t like what he knew, Jager changed the subject. “Some of those Poles looked like they’d just as soon start shooting at us as not.”

“They probably would. They don’t like Jews, either.” Yossel’s voice was matter-of-fact. “But they don’t dare, because the Lizards have given us enough in the way of weapons to hurt them bad if they play their old games with us.”

Jager chewed on that for a while. The Jew frankly admitted his kind depended on the Lizards. Yet he’d had endless chances to betray Jager to them and hadn’t done it. lager admitted to himself that he didn’t understand what was going on. With luck, he’d find out.

That evening, they came to a town bigger than most of the others through which they’d passed. “What’s the name of this place?” Jager asked.

At first he thought Yossel sneezed. Then the Jew repeated himself: “Hrubieszow.” The town boasted cobblestone streets, three-story buildings with cast-iron awnings, and a central boulevard that had a median strip planted with trees, perhaps to achieve a Parisian effect. Having seen the real Paris, Jager found the imitation laughable, but kept that to himself.

Yossel went up to one of the three-story buildings, spoke in Yiddish to the man who answered-his knock. He turned to Jager. “You go in here. Take your saddlebags with you. We’ll get your horse out of town-a strange animal that stays around is plenty to make people start asking questions.”

Jager went in. The gray-haired Jew who stood aside to let him pass said, “Hello, friend. I’m Lejb. What shall I call you while you’re here?”

“Ich heisse Heinrich Jager” Jager answered. He’d grown resigned to the looks of horror he got for speaking German, but it was his only fluent language-and, for better or worse, he was a German. He could hardly deny it. Stiffly, he said, “I hope my presence will not disturb you too much, sir.”

“A Nazi-in my house. They want to put a Nazi-in my house?” Lejb was not talking to Jager. The German didn’t think he was talking to himself, either. Whom did that leave? God, maybe.

As if wound into motion by a key, Lejb bustled over and shut the door. “Even a Nazi should not freeze-especially if I would freeze with him.” With what seemed a large effort of will, he made himself look at Jager. “Will you drink tea? And there’s potato soup in the pot if you want it.”

“Yes, please. Thank you very much.” The tea was hot, the potato soup both hot and filling. Lejb insisted on giving Jager seconds; the Jew apparently could not force himself to be a poor host. But he would not eat with Jager; he waited until the German finished before feeding himself.

That pattern persisted over the next two days. Jager noticed he got the same chipped bowl, the same cup, at every meal; he wondered if Lejb would throw them away once he’d left, along with his bedding and everything else he’d touched. He didn’t ask, for fear the Jew would tell him yes.

Just when he started to wonder if Yossel and the rest of the Jewish fighters had forgotten about him, his first captor returned, again under cover of darkness. Yossel said, “Somebody here wants to see you, Nazi.” From him, unlike from Lejb, the word had somehow lost most of its sting, as if it were a label and nothing more.

An unfamiliar Jew stepped into the living room of Lejb’s house. He was fair and thin and younger than Jager would have expected for someone obviously important enough to be sent for. He did not offer to shake hands. “So you’re the German with the interesting package, are you?” he said, speaking German himself rather than Yiddish.

“Yes,” Jager said. “Who are you?”

The newcomer smiled thinly. “Call me Mordechai.” By the way Yossel started in surprise, that might even have been his real name. Bravado, Jager thought. The more the German studied Mordechai, the more impressed he grew. Young, yes, but an officer all the way: those light eyes were hooded and alert, alive with calculation. If he’d worn German field-gray, he’d have had a colonel’s pips and his own regiment before he hit forty; Jager recognized the type. The Jews had themselves a hotshot here.

The hotshot said, “I gather you’re a panzer soldier and that you’ve stolen something important to the Lizards. What I’ve heard from Yossel here is interesting, but it’s also secondhand. Tell it to me yourself, Jager.”

“Just a minute,” Jager said. Yossel bristled, but Mordechai only grunted, waiting for him to go on. He did: “You Jews cooperate with the Lizards, yet now you seem ready to betray them. Show me I can trust you not to hand me straight over to them.”

“If we wanted to do that, we could have done it already,” Mordechai pointed out. “As for how and why we work with the Lizards-hmm. Think of it like this. Back three winters ago, Russia swamped the Finns. When you Nazis invaded Russia, Finland was happy enough to ride on your c

oattails and take back its own. But do you think the Finns go around yelling ‘Heil Hitler!’ all day long?”

“Mmm-maybe not,” Jager admitted. “And so?”

“And so we helped the Lizards against you Nazis, but for our own reasons-survival, for instance-not theirs. We don’t have to love them. Now I’ve told my story, and more than you deserve. You tell yours.”

Jager did. Mordechai interrupted every so often with sharp, probing questions. The German’s respect for him grew at every one. He’d figured the Jew would know something of war and especially partisan operations-he had him pegged for a high military official. But he hadn’t figured Mordechai would know so much about the loot he carried in his saddlebags; he soon realized the Jew, though he’d never seen the mud-encrusted chunks of metal; understood them better than he did himself.

When Jager was through (he felt squeezed dry), Mordechai steepled his fingers and stared up at the ceiling. “You know, before this war started, I worried more about what Marx thought than about God,” he remarked. His speech grew more guttural; his vowels shifted so Jager had to think to follow him-he’d fallen out of German into Yiddish. He went on, “Ever since you Nazis shut me up in the ghetto and tried to starve me to death, I’ve had my doubts about the choice I made. Now I’m sure I was wrong.”

“Why now in particular?” lager asked.

“Because I would need to be the wisest rabbi who ever lived to decide whether I ought to help you Germans fight the Lizards with their own filthy weapons.”

Yossel nodded vehemently. “I was thinking the same thing,” he said.

Mordechai waved him to silence. “I wish this choice fell on someone besides me. All I wanted to be before the war was an engineer.” His gaze and Jager’s clashed, swordlike. “All I am now, thanks to you Germans, is a fighting man.”

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