That was what Anielewicz was there for, but he didn’t like the way the sentry said it even so. The German spoke as if the universe permitted no other possible outcome. Maybe it didn’t. Mordechai followed him through the cold and silent woods.

“Your colonel must be a good officer,” he said-softly, because the brooding presence of the woods weighed on him. “This regiment has come a long way east since the bomb went off near Breslau.” That was part of the reason he needed to talk with the local commandant, though he wasn’t going to explain his reasons to a private who probably thought he was nothing but a damn kike anyway.

Stolid as an old cow, the sentry answered,“Ja,” and then shut up again. They walked past a whitewashed Panther tank in a clearing. A couple of crewmen were guddling about in the Panther’s engine compartment. Looking at them, hearing one grumble when the exposed skin between glove and sleeve stuck to cold metal, you might have thought war no different from any other mechanical trade. Of course, the Germans had industrialized murder, too.

They walked by more tanks, most of them also being worked on. These were bigger, tougher machines than the ones the Nazis had used to conquer Poland four and a half years before. The Nazis had learned a lot since then. Their panzers still didn’t come close to being an even match for the ones the Lizards used, though.

A couple of men were cooking a little pot of stew over an aluminum field stove set on a couple of rocks. The stew had some kind of meat in it-rabbit, maybe, or squirrel, or even dog. Whatever it was, it smelled delicious.

“Sir, the Jewish partisan is here,” the sentry said, absolutely nothing in his voice. That was better than the scorn that might have been there, but not much.

Both men squatting by the field stove looked up. The older one got to his feet. He was obviously the colonel, though he wore a plain service cap and an enlisted man’s uniform. He was in his forties, pinch-faced and clever-looking despite skin weathered from a lifetime spent in the sun and the rain and, as now, the snow.