Page 70 of Striking the Balance (Worldwar 4)

“They’re much too good at giving them to us, too,” Bertha Fleishman said. “Before, their rockets would send over a few kilos of nerve gas at a time, with a big bursting charge to spread it around. But this… we salvaged more than a tonne from that bomb. And they were going to have us place it so it hurt us worst. The rockets could come down almost anywhere.”

Solomon Gruver’s laugh was anything but pleasant. “I bet that Skorzeny pitched a fit when he found out he couldn’t play us for suckers the way he thought he could.”

“He probably did,” Mordechai agreed. “But don’t think he’s done for good because we fooled him once. I never thought themamzer would live up to the nonsense Gobbels puts out on the wireless, but he does. That is a man to be taken seriously no matter what. If we don’t keep an eye on him all the time, he’ll do something dreadful to us. Even if we do, he may yet.”

“Thank God for your friend, the other German,” Bertha said.

Now Anielewicz laughed-uncomfortably. “I don’t think he’s my friend, exactly. I don’t think I’m his friend, either. But I let him live and I let him carry that explosive metal back to Germany, and so… I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s just a stiff-necked sense of honor, and he’s paying back a debt.”

“There can be decent Germans,” Solomon Gruver said reluctantly. That almost set Mordechai laughing again. If he had started, the laugh would have carried an edge of hysteria. He could imagine some plump, monocled Nazi functionary using that precise tone of voice to admit,There can be decent Jews.

“I still wonder if I should have killed him,” Mordechai said. “The Nazis would have had a much harder time building their bombs without that metal, and God knows the world would be a better place without them. But the world wouldn’t be a better place with the Lizards overrunning it.”

“And here we are, still stuck in the middle between them,” Bertha Fleishman said. “If the Lizards win, everyone loses. If the Nazis win, we lose.”

“We’ll hurt them before we go,” Anielewicz said. “They’ve helped us do it, too. If they should come back, we won’t let them treat us the way they did before. Not now. Never again. What was the last desire of my life before the Lizards came has been fulfilled. Jewish self-defense is a fact.”

How tenuous a fact it was came to be shown a moment later, when a Jewish fighter named Leon Zelkowitz walked into the room where they were talking and said, “There’s an Order Service district leader down at the entrance who wants to talk with you, Mordechai.”

Anielewicz made a sour face. “Such an honor.” The Order Service in the Jewish district of Lodz still reported to Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, who had been Eldest of the Jews under the Nazis and was still Eldest of the Jews under the Lizards. Most of the time, the Order Service prudently pretended the Jewish fighters did not exist. That the Lizards’ puppet police came looking for him now-he needed to find out what it meant. He got up and slung a Mauscr over his shoulder.

The Order Service officer still wore his Nazi-issue trench coat and kepi. He wore his Nazi-issue armband, too: red and white, with a blackMagen David on it; the white triangle inside the Star of David showed his rank. He carried a billy club on his belt. Against a rifle, that was nothing much.

“You wanted me?” Anielewicz was ten or twelve centimeters taller than the district leader, and used his height to stare coldly down at the other man.

“I-” The Order Service man coughed. He was chunky and pale-faced, with a black mustache that looked as if a moth had landed on his upper lip. He tried again: “I’m Oskar Birkenfeld, Anielewicz. I have orders to take you to Bunim.”

“Do you?” Anielewicz had expected a meeting with Rumkowski or some of his henchmen. To be summoned instead to meet with the chief Lizard in Lodz… something out of the ordinary was going on. He wondered if he should have this Birkenfeld seized and drop out of sight himself. He’d made plans to do that at need. Was the need here? Temporizing, he said, “Does he give me a safe-conduct pledge to and from the meeting?”

“Yes, yes,” the Order Service man said impatiently.

Anielewicz nodded, his face thoughtful. The Lizards were perhaps better than human beings about keeping those pledges. “All right. I’ll come.”

Birkenfeld turned in what looked like glad relief. Maybe he’d expected Mordechai to refuse, and also expected to catch it from his own superiors. He started away with his shoulders back and a spring in his step, for all the world as if he were on a mission of his own rather than a puppet of puppets. Sad and amused at the same time, Anielewicz followed him.

The Lizards had moved into the former German administrative offices in the Bialut Market Square.Only too fitting, Anielewicz thought. Rumkowski’ s offices were in the next building over; his buggy, with its German-made placard proclaiming him Eldest of the Jews, sat in front of it. But Mordechai got only a glimpse of the buggy, for Lizard guards came forward to take charge of him. District Leader Birkenfeld hastily disappeared.

“Your rifle,” a Lizard said to Anielewicz in hissing Polish. He handed over the weapon. The Lizard took it. “Come.”

Bunim’s office reminded Mordechai of Zolraag’s back in Warsaw: it was full of fascinating but often incomprehensible gadgets.

Even the ones whose purpose the Jewish fighting leader could grasp worked on incomprehensible principles. When the guard brought him into the office, for instance, a sheet of paper was silently issuing from a squarish box made of bakelite or something very much like it. The paper was covered with the squiggles of the Lizards’ written language. It had to have been printed inside the box. As he watched, a blank sheet went inside; it came out with printing on it. How, without any sound save the hum of a small electric motor?

He was curious enough to ask the guard. “It is askelkwank machine,” the Lizard answered. “Is no word forskelkwank in this speech.” Anielewicz shrugged. Incomprehensible the machine would remain.

Bunim turned one eye turret toward him. The regional sub-administrator-the Lizards used titles as impressively vague as any the Nazis had invented-spoke fairly fluent German. In that language, he said, “You are the Jew Anielewicz, the Jew leading Jewish fighters?”

“I am that Jew,” Mordechai said. He wondered how angry the Lizards still were at him for helping Moishe Russie escape their clutches. If that was why Bunim had summoned him, maybe he shouldn’t have admitted his name. But the way he’d been summoned argued against it. The Lizards didn’t seem to want to seize him, but to talk with him.

Bunim’s other eye turret twisted in its socket till the Lizard looked at him with both eyes, a sign of full attention. “I have a warning to deliver to you and to your fighters.”

“A warning, superior sir?” Anielewicz asked.

“We know more than you think,” Bunim said. “We know you Tosevites play ambiguous-is that the word I want? — games with us and with the Deutsche. We know you have interfered with our war efforts here in Lodz. We know these things, I tell you. Do not trouble yourself to deny them. It is of no use.”

Mordechai did not deny them. He stood silent, waiting to see what the Lizard would say next. Bunim let out a hissing sigh, then went on, “You know also that we are stronger than you.”

“This I cannot deny,” Anielewicz said with wry amusement.

“Yes. Truth. We could crush you at any time. But to do this, we would have to divert resources, and resources are scarce. So. We have tolerated you as nuisances-is this the word I want? But no more. Soon we move males and machines again through Lodz. If you are interfering. If you are nuisances, you will pay. This is the warning. Do you understand it?”

“Oh, yes, I understand it,” Anielewicz said. “Do you understand how much trouble you will have all through Poland, from Jews and Poles both. If you try to suppress us? Do you want nuisances, as you call them, all over the country?”

“We shall take this risk. You are dismissed,” Bunim said. One eye turret swiveled to look out the window, the other toward the sheets of paper th

at had emerged from the silent printing machine.

“You come,” the Lizard guard said in his bad Polish. Anielewicz came. When they got outside the building from which the Lizards administered Lodz, the guard returned his rifle.

Anielewicz went, thoughtfully. By the time he got back to the fire station on Lutomierska Street, he was smiling. The Lizards were not good at reading humans’ expressions. Had they been, they would not have liked his.

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