Or, of course… but Atvar did not care to think about that.

Even under a flag of truce, Mordechai Anielewicz felt nervous about approaching the German encampment. After starving in the Warsaw ghetto, after leading the Jewish fighters of Warsaw who’d risen against the Nazis and helped the Lizards drive them out of the city, he was under no illusions about what Hitler’s forces wanted for his people: they wanted them to vanish from the face of the earth.

But the Lizards wanted to enslave everybody, Jews andgoyim alike. The Jews hadn’t fully realized that when they rose against the Nazis. Had they, it wouldn’t have mattered much. Measured against extermination, enslavement looked good.

The Germans were still fighting the Lizards, and fighting hard. No one denied their military prowess, or their technical skill. From afar, Anielewicz had seen the nuclear bomb they’d touched off east of Breslau. Had he seen it close up, he wouldn’t be coming here to dicker with the Nazis.

“Halt!” The voice might have come out of thin air. Mordechai halted. After a moment, a German wearing a white camouflage smock and a whitewashed helmet appeared as if by magic from behind a tree. Just looking at him made Anielewicz, who had Red Armyvalenki on his feet and was dressed in Polish Army trousers, aWehrmacht tunic, a Red Army fur hat, and a sheepskin jacket of civilian origin, feel like a refugee from a rummage sale. He needed a shave, too, which added to his air of seediness. The German’s lip curled. “You are the Jew we were told to expect?”

“No, I’m St. Nicholas, here late for Christmas.” Anielewicz, who had been an engineering student before the war, had learned fluent standard German. He spoke Yiddish now, to annoy the sentry.

The fellow just grunted. Maybe he didn’t think the joke was funny. Maybe he hadn’t got it. He gestured with his Mauser. “You will come with me. I will take you to the colonel.”