Striking the Balance by Harry Turtledove

her turning pink. He grunted a couple of times, softly, unhappily. At last, he looked up from the paper and said, “I am very sorry, Senior Lieutenant, but I cannot do as the German commandant of Pskov requests.”
    She hadn’t imagined a German could put that so delicately. Even if he was a Hitlerite, he was
kulturny.
“What does General Chill request, sir?” she asked, then added a hasty amendment: “if it’s not too secret for me to know.”
    “By no means,” he answered—he spoke Russian like an aristocrat. “He wanted me to help resupply him with munitions—” He paused and coughed.
    “So he would not have to depend on Soviet equipment, you mean,” Ludmila said.
    “Just so,” Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt agreed. “You saw the smoke in the harbor, though?” He courteously waited for her nod before continuing, “That is still coming from the freighters the Lizards caught there, the freighters that were full of arms and ammunition of all sorts. We shall be short here because of that, and have none to spare for our neighbors.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” Ludmila said, and found she was not altogether lying for the sake of politeness. She didn’t want the Germans in Pskov strengthened in respect to Soviet forces there, but she didn’t want them weakened in respect to the Lizards, either. Finding a balance that would let her be happy on both those counts would not be easy. She went on, “Do you have a written reply for me to take back to Lieutenant General Chill?”
    “I shall draft one for you,” Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt said. “But first—Beck!” He raised his voice. The adjutant came bounding into the room. “Fetch the senior lieutenant here something from the mess,” Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt told him. “She has come a long way on a sleeveless errand, and she could no doubt do with something hot.”
    “Jawohl, Herr Generalleutnant!”
Beck said. He turned to Ludmila. “If you would be so kind as to wait one moment, please, Senior Lieutenant Gorbunova.” He dipped his head, almost as if he were a maitre d’ in some fancy, decadent capitalist restaurant, then hurried away. If his commander accepted Ludmila, he accepted her, too.
    When Captain Beck came back, he carried on a tray a large, steaming bowl.
“Maizes zupe ar putukrejumu,
a Latvian dish,” he said. “It’s corn soup with whipped cream.”
    “Thank you,” Ludmila said, and dug in. The soup was hot and thick and filling, and didn’t taste that alien. Russian-style cooking used a lot of cream, too, though sour as often as sweet.
    While Ludmila ate, Beck went out to his own office, then came back a couple of minutes later to lay a sheet of paper on General Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt’s desk. The German commander at Riga studied the message and glanced over at Ludmila, but kept silent until, with a sigh, she set down the bowl. Then he said, “I have a favor to ask of you. If you don’t mind.”
    “That depends on what sort of favor it is,” she answered cautiously.
    Graf
Walter von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt’s smile made him look like a skeleton that had just heard a good joke. “I assure you, Senior Lieutenant, I have no improper designs upon your undoubtedly fair body. This is a purely military matter, one where you can help us.”
    “I didn’t think you had designs on me, sir,” Ludmila said.
    “No?” The German general smiled again. “How disappointing.” While Ludmila was trying to figure out how to take that, Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt went on, “We are in contact with a number of partisan bands in Poland.” He paused for a moment to let that sink in. “I suppose I should note, this is partisan warfare against the Lizards, not against the
Reich.
The bands have in them Germans, Poles, Jews—even a few Russians, I have heard. This particular one, down near Hrubieszów, has informed us they could particularly use some antipanzer mines. You could fly those mines to them faster than we could get them there any other way. What say