The Man with the Iron Heart Read Free

not be something we could manage to scrape together at the last minute, with everything going to the devil around us. If we’d taken Moscow the first autumn and hanged Stalin in front of the Kremlin, what would the Soviet partisan movement be worth now?”
    Himmler plucked at his red lower lip again. He let it spring back into place with a soft, liquid
plop.
After another pause, he said, “If we were to go forward with these preparations, it would be an SS undertaking.”
    “Aber natürlich, Herr Reichsführer!”
Heydrich exclaimed. “This is the SS’s proper business. The
Wehrmacht
fights ordinary battles in ordinary ways. We need to be able to do that, too, but we also need to be able to do whatever else the State may require of us.”
    “Jaaaa.”
Himmler let the word stretch. Seen through the pince-nez, his stare didn’t seem too dangerous—if you didn’t know him. Unfortunately, Heydrich did. The
Reichsführer
-SS said, “Since you propose this project, do you expect to head it?”
    “Yes, sir,” Heydrich answered without the least hesitation. “I’ve been thinking about it for some time—since things, ah, first went wrong last fall at Stalingrad and in North Africa. Even if worse comes to worst, it would give us the chance to do the enemy a great deal of harm. In the end, it might save the
Reich
despite what would ordinarily be reckoned a defeat.”
    “Do you think so?” Himmler looked and sounded unconvinced.
    But Heydrich nodded. “I do. Especially in the west, the enemy is basically soft. How much stomach will he have for occupying a country where his soldiers aren’t safe outside their barracks—or inside them, either, if we can smuggle in a bomb with a time fuse?”
    “Hmm,” Himmler murmured. He plucked once more.
Plop
—the lip snapped back. Heydrich thought the mannerism disgusting, but couldn’t very well say so. Pluck. Plop. Finally, the
Reichsführer
said, “Well, you’ve given me a good deal to think about. I can hardly deny that. We’ll see what comes of it.”
    “The longer we wait, the more trouble we’ll have doing it properly,” Heydrich warned.
    “I understand that,” Himmler said testily. “I have to make sure I can get it moving without…undue difficulties, though.”
    “As you say, sir!” Heydrich was all obedience, all subordination. Why not? Himmler played the cards close to his chest, but Heydrich was pretty sure he’d won.

Lichtenau was a little town—not much more than a village—a few miles south and west of Nuremberg. Charlie Pytlak walked down what was left of the main street, a BAR cradled in his arms. He had the safety off and a round chambered. He knew the Nazis had surrendered the day before, but some damnfool diehards might not have got the word—or might not care. The only thing worse than getting it during the war was getting it afterwards.
    He admired the shattered shops and houses and what had probably been a church. The bright spring sun cast his shadow ahead of him. “Wow,” he said with profound unoriginality, “we liberated the living shit out of this place, didn’t we?”
    “Bet your ass, Sarge,” said Dom Lombardo. He’d liberated a German submachine gun—a machine pistol, the krauts called it. He kicked a broken brick out of the way. “Got any butts on you?”
    “Sure thing.” Pytlak gave him a Chesterfield, then stuck another one in his own mouth. He flicked a flame from his Zippo to light both cigarettes; his unshaven cheeks hollowed as he sucked in smoke. He blew it out in a long stream. “Dunno why they make me feel good, but they do.”
    “Yeah, me, too,” Lombardo agreed. “Couldn’t hardly fight a war without cigarettes and coffee.”
    “I sure wouldn’t want to try,” Pytlak said. “I—”
    He broke off. Half a dozen German soldiers came around a corner. A couple of them wore helmets instead of Jerry field caps—a sign they’d likely fought to the end. One of the bastards in ragged, tattered field-gray