Sergeant Rothe bristled at so obviously being thought a moron. But then he chuckled to himself. If the blackshirt figured him for a Dummkopf, a Dummkopf he would be, by God. "Sir, the major just gives me orders. He doesn't waste his time talking politics with noncoms."

"What's going on, anyway?" Theo sounded as innocent as an un-weaned baby. His dreamy features let him get away with that more easily than Ludwig could have.

The SS man didn't hesitate before answering, "You will have heard that certain Wehrmacht generals betrayed their country by viciously plotting against the Fuhrer?"

Ludwig had heard that, all right, from Hitler's own lips. Telling the SS man as much struck him as the very worst of bad ideas. "Gott im Himmel!" he exclaimed, as if it were a complete surprise. "I heard it, ja, but I thought it was only enemy propaganda." Beside him, Theo and Fritz nodded.

"It's true, all right," the blackshirt said. "They were disgraces to the uniform they wore, disgraces to the Volk, disgraces to the Reich. And so we must purify the army of all their associates and of everyone who might have shared their vicious views. Now do you understand why I am inquiring about Major Koral?"

"He wouldn't do anything like that," Fritz said. "He wouldn't put up with anybody else who did, either."

Theo nodded again. "That's right."

"I think so, too," Ludwig said.

"You might be surprised. You might be very surprised indeed," the SS man said. "We've found treason in some places where no one would have thought to look for it if these generals hadn't disgraced themselves."

If Ludwig hadn't heard it from the Fuhrer, he would have wondered what that meant. He did wonder what the SS and the Gestapo were up to now. Had they sniffed out more real treason, or had they "discovered" it regardless of whether it was really there? He didn't ask this fellow that kind of question. That it could occur to him might be plenty to mark him as disloyal.

He did ask, "Why do you think Major Koral might be mixed up in this…this Scheisse?"

"Scheisse it is," the SS man agreed. He pulled a scrap of paper from the right beast pocket of his tunic. "He has…let me see…a long history of association with General Fritsche, and also with General Halder. He may have been a Social Democrat before 1933-the record is not completely clear about that, but it is worrisome. And one of his cousins was formerly married to a Jew."

If Fritsche and Halder were two of the generals who'd tried to overthrow the Fuhrer, that might mean something. Or, of course, it might not. Ludwig had a long history of association with his cats, but he'd never wanted to eat mice himself. The rest didn't seem to mean much. The Social Democrats had been the biggest party in Germany during the Weimar Republic. They were about as exclusive as a blizzard. Ludwig had no great use for Jews, but he thought one of his cousins was married to one, too. He hoped to God the SS would never dig that out and use it against him.

"Sorry not to be more help, sir," he said insincerely.

"Like the sergeant said, Major Koral's always been brave in combat," Theo added. "Didn't he win the Iron Cross First Class? Didn't they put him up for the Ritterkreuz?"

The Iron Cross First Class-just like the Fuhrer, Ludwig thought-one more thing he knew better than to say out loud. But the two awards weren't really comparable. Lots of officers got the Iron Cross First Class now. For a common soldier in the Kaiser's army to have won it the last time around was much more remarkable. Even the Knight's Cross in this war wasn't the same.

The SS man looked unhappy enough at Theo's mild questions. "That has nothing to do with anything," he said stiffly. "If you recall anything suspicious about him, report it to your superiors at once. At once, do you hear?" He tramped off, his back ramrod straight.

"Jesus Christ on roller skates!" Fritz said. "I think I'd sooner go to the dentist than get another little visit like that."

"You can spread that on toast and call it butter," Theo agreed. Ludwig supposed it was agreement, anyhow. The radioman came out with the strangest things sometimes.

Fritz Bittenfeld found a new question: "Should we go tell the major he's got hounds sniffing on his trail?"

"If we see him in the field, sure," Ludwig said. "But those fucking goons've got to be keeping an eye on him. If we go blab, what happens to us? We stick our dicks in the sausage grinder, that's what?"

"Oh, that smarts!" Theo said in shrill falsetto. Ludwig and Fritz both laughed. Better to laugh than to grab at yourself, which was what Ludwig's figure of speech made him want to do. Assuming it was a figure of speech, of course. With the SS, you could never be sure. And if they did it for real…Ludwig wanted to grab at himself again.

Bitterly, Fritz said, "It's a hell of a note when you find out combat's not the worst thing that can happen to you."

"Yeah, it's a hell of a note, all right," Ludwig said. "You going to tell me it isn't true? I can deal with the Czechs and the French and the English. I can even deal with the Russians if I have to. My old man fought in the East the last time around. Yeah, I can cope with that-bet your ass I can. But heaven help me if I've got to try and handle the cocksuckers who think they're on my side."

He kept his voice down. No one but his buddies could possibly have heard him. Only after the words were out of his mouth did he wonder if he could trust Fritz and Theo. They all trusted one another with their lives on the battlefield. But political matters were different-and, as Fritz had said, worse.

If he and the driver and the radioman couldn't trust one another…Ludwig swore under his breath. This was the nastiest thing the SS did, right here. If you weren't sure you could count on people who'd already saved your bacon more times than you could remember, then what?

You were screwed, that was what.

"We're as bad as the Russians, you know?" Theo said, which was too close for comfort to what Ludwig was thinking. The radio operator went on, "Pretty soon I'm going to start praying for cloudy weather."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Ludwig demanded.

"Well, if my shadow isn't there, I don't have to worry that it'll betray me to the Gestapo when I'm not looking," Theo answered. That either made no sense at all or altogether too much.

"Maybe it isn't there because it's off betraying you to the Gestapo." Later, Ludwig wondered about himself. At the time, what he said seemed logical enough-to him, anyhow.

It didn't faze Theo, either. "Nothing would surprise me any more," he said. "Shadows aren't to be trusted. No matter how much you feed 'em, they never get any fatter than you do. And have you ever seen one that wasn't as dark as a nigger, even when it was walking on a snowbank?"

Fritz looked from one of his crewmates to the other. "I think you've both gone round the bend," he declared.

"Zu befehl," Theo said-at your service. He clicked his heels, as if he were a Prussian grandee or an Austrian gentleman with more noble blood than he knew what to do with.

A battery of French 75s near Meaux started shelling the panzer park at extreme long range. Only a few shells came close enough to drive the Germans into the holes they'd dug. They had dug holes, of course; whenever they stopped for more than a few minutes, they dug. Anyone would have thought Wehrmacht men-and their French and English counterparts-descended from moles rather than monkeys.

"Wonder if the SS shithead has enough sense to take cover," Fritz remarked.

"Nobody'll miss him if he doesn't," Ludwig said. "With a little luck, even the Frenchmen won't miss him." Fritz and Theo both groaned. Neither tried to tell him he was wrong.

After a while, when the French guns didn't blow up any ammunition dumps or show other tangible evidence of success, they eased off. The panzer crews came up above ground. And there was the blackshirt, a pistol in hand, leading Major Koral to a waiting auto with a swastika flag flying above its right fender. Face pale and set, the major got in. The car sped away, back toward Germany.