by James R Benn
Uncle Ike welcomed the idea. He said he liked having a trained detective on his staff, but neglected to mention he was headed to Great Britain to head up US Army forces. I went along, surprised to find myself investigating low crimes in high places and generally in danger of getting shot or blown up instead of enjoying the nightlife in our nation’s capital.
All of which brings us back to General Eisenhower. Uncle Ike.
“Sure, Kaz,” I said. “I’ll speak to him as soon as I get out of here.”
“I need you to come to your senses now, Billy. I don’t have the luxury of time. They could discharge me from the service tomorrow and I would have no recourse. Pull yourself together. I know it’s difficult, but you must. For your own sake, as well as mine and Angelika’s, please.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll get my head screwed on straight, I promise.” I got up and stood by the window, staring out at the forest beyond the grounds. I couldn’t look Kaz in the eye. He never asked for favors and he never pleaded for anything, and here he was doing both. But it wasn’t that. It was my own uncertainty. I didn’t even know how to begin. I needed to feel normal. Like before. Before Paris.
“You have to come to grips with reality, Billy. About this place and about what happened—”
“No,” I said, cutting him off as I turned and held out my hand, as if the words might bounce off my palm. I didn’t want to hear them, couldn’t hear them, wouldn’t let myself hear or speak them. “Shut up, Kaz. Not another goddamn word. Or else I swear . . .”
All I felt was pure rage pouring out from my gut, filling the room, and driving away the thoughts that clawed at the edges of my mind. I saw that my open hand had become a fist. Kaz sighed, a look of pity rather than fear on his face.
“Lunch,” an orderly announced, barging into the room without bothering to look at either of us. He set a tray down next to Kaz and left behind the aroma of a sausage roll and boiled carrots. I felt myself gagging as the smell filled the small room.
I bolted, slamming open the door and pushing the orderly aside as I made for the nearest bathroom.
I retched, giving up what little I’d eaten as the bile at the back of my throat helped tamp down the memories from that damned City of Light.
It’s a helluva thing when you’re thankful for the distraction of threatening your best friend and then puking into a toilet bowl.
I got off my knees, splashed cold water on my face, and almost laughed. I had just enough time for lunch before my appointment with Robinson.
Chapter Five
I was a fool. I cursed myself as I made for the mess. Us loonies in the north wing didn’t rate room service, so we ate in a cramped dining hall. I liked sitting next to the mutes, since it cut down on small talk.
I’d gone to see Kaz for a couple of reasons. One was to be a buddy, and I blew that one to hell and gone. The other was to tell him about Holland and what I saw up in the tower, which would have to wait until I apologized. If he’d listen.
To kill some time, I got a cup of joe and a doughnut. Just the thing to calm my nerves and my gut. I scanned the tables for an empty spot and then saw a fellow Yank, the same guy who’d been at the scene with Sinclair.
“I’m Boyle,” I said, taking a seat across from him. “I saw you this morning, out front.”
“Miller,” he said, pushing aside a bowl of congealed brown mush strewn with lima beans. Mutton stew, they called it. Good a name as any. “You’re talkative all of a sudden.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, studying his face. Black hair, prominent cheekbones, and a thin mouth would have made him good-looking, except for his brown eyes, set deep in their sockets and squeezed close together.
“I’ve tipped my hat in your direction a few times,” Miller said, leaning back and shaking a smoke from a pack of Luckies. He fired it up and took a long drag, like it was life itself. “Out there, on the path. But you kept on walking, like you were too good to be bothered. I thought maybe the cat got your tongue, like some of these silent types.” He shot a glance to one of the Brits who was alternating between his mutton and long looks out the window.
“No, sorry, I had a lot on my mind, I guess. No offense meant,” I said. “So, this morning. Did you see Holland?”
“Holland? That the guy who jumped? No, I heard him hit the ground, though. Once you’ve heard that sound, it’s hard to forget. Hard to mistake it for anything else but flesh and bone. Did you see him go over?”
“Yeah,” I said, nibbling at my doughnut. I raised the cup and managed to take a sip without spilling. As I set it down it rattled in the saucer.
“Nerves, huh?” Miller said, his gaze lingering on my right hand.
I laid it flat on the table. “So they tell me,” I said. “What about Sinclair? He see what happened?”
“I doubt it. Guy’s got his head in the clouds. He doesn’t let on much, but I think he’s some sort of scientist or professor. Said he came here for a rest cure,” Miller said, twirling his finger in circles around his temple. “Nervous breakdown, maybe.”
“What about you?” I asked. “You nervous in the service?”
“Nah,” Miller said, taking a long drag on his cigarette. “They think I enjoyed it too much.”
“Enjoyed what?” I dunked my doughnut. Easier not to spill the java all over me that way.
“Killing people,” he said. “That’s what we’re here to do, right?”
“That’s the general idea. Although the brass does seem to prefer we kill Germans, for the most part.” I worked on the soggy doughnut, taking small bites and managing to keep them down. I waited for Miller to fill in the silence. Always better than peppering a guy with questions.
“Things aren’t so simple, not out where I’ve been,” Miller said, crushing out his cigarette with nicotine-stained fingers.
“Where’s that?”
“Southern France. The OSS sent me in to organize a Resistance group in the mountains. You heard of the OSS, Boyle?”
“Sure. You’re some sort of secret outfit,” I said. I knew the Office of Strategic Services well. One of their agents had smuggled Kaz and me into occupied Italy a while back. I even knew the joke that their initials stood for “Oh So Social” since so many of them were drawn from the top layer of society, from the Harvard Club to Wall Street, which was the world of their boss, Wild Bill Donovan. But the less Miller knew that I knew, the better.
“Secret enough that they decided to lock me up in here until they figure out if I’m more Baby Face Nelson than Sergeant York,” he said, giving a sharp laugh with bitter overtones.
“What happened?”
“There was an informer in the group. A woman. Young girl, really,” he said, lighting up another Lucky.
“You knew that for certain?” I asked.
“Smoked her out with the oldest trick in the book,” Miller said. “I had her deliver a message to another Resistance group asking for more plastic explosive to blow up a railway bridge. She came back with the plastique. Only problem was I knew that cell had already been betrayed. Everyone was killed or arrested.”
“She got the plastique from the Germans?”
“Yes,” Miller said. “I had no intention of blowing that bridge, but she didn’t know that. I got into position about a half mile away with my binoculars and settled in to see if my suspicions were correct. The plan was to plant the charges at midnight. A little before dusk the Germans showed up, along with those Milice bastards. I watched them set up their ambush. They had a long night, waiting for nothing.” The Milice were the Vichy French militia. Pro-Nazi thugs who hunted their own people.
“What’d you do?”
“I slit her throat,” Miller said, cocking his head to blow smoke at the ceiling. He grinned, as if reveling in a fond memory. “It was quick, best way to do these things. She had no idea what was about to happen. Merciful, I say.”
“Did you have any other proof?” I asked.
“Proof? What more would you need? The girl was a menace to everyone. No telling how much death and torture she’d been responsible for. It had to be done, and she had to be made an example,” Miller said, going quiet and drumming his fingers on the table, his gaze lingering on something beyond the window glass. Something in France, perhaps.
“I guess your OSS bosses didn’t care for the example you set,” I said, finishing my coffee left-handed.
“My own partner ratted me out,” Miller said. “Claimed I was out of control. He was too scared to act and jealous that I wasn’t. A couple of the maquisards complained as well. Bastards. I probably saved their lives.” The maquisards were hard men who took to the mountains and fought both the Germans and the elements. If they didn’t like Miller’s rough justice, he’d gone too far.
“I guess they didn’t appreciate the execution of one of their own,” I said.
“Or that I sprang it on them,” Miller said, spitting out a bitter laugh. “I did it in front of twenty of them in their encampment as we were planning out a raid. I thought it would be instructive.”
“I bet it was,” I said. In regard to his mental state, at least. “Was that the only thing that landed you here?”
“Jealously and small minds, Boyle. That was enough. They didn’t like the way I handled prisoners, either. As if you can take prisoners while the Krauts are chasing you all over kingdom come. Right?”
“Right,” I said, getting up. “Gotta go. Time to see Sigmund Freud.” I had no need to listen to Miller brag about what he’d done to his prisoners. I was more concerned about what he may have done here.
“Don’t fall for Robinson’s line. He wants you to think he’s a nice guy. But he works for the brass. All he wants is to get in here,” Miller said, tapping his head. “And I ain’t lettin’ him in.”
“Good advice, thanks,” I said, happy to get away from the guy. He gave me the creeps.
Then I thought about it. How different was I? I wasn’t letting Robinson help either. It was like I’d put a big do not disturb sign on my forehead. Listening to Miller rant had chilled me. He clearly did enjoy killing, as well as talking about it. As unsettling as that was, the worst part was seeing myself in how closed off he was. He didn’t want help, maybe because he liked the way he was. I’m no medico, but I knew I didn’t like what was going on inside my brain. I could see myself sitting in that dining hall weeks from now, telling anyone who had the misfortune to sit near me how the odds were stacked against me, all the while keeping my nightmarish thoughts under mental lock and key. I didn’t much like what the future seemed to have in store.
I knocked on Robinson’s door.
I was nervous.
No, I was scared as hell.
“How are you doing, Boyle?” Robinson asked as soon as we were settled into the worn leather armchairs by the window. Usually he sat at his desk with a notepad, but now he was empty-handed. “After all the excitement this morning.”
“Fine,” I said, resisting the temptation to tell him I’d seen someone in the clock tower with Holland. I couldn’t have him wondering if I was seeing things. “I just had lunch with Miller. He was there too.”
“Uh-huh.” Robinson’s face was impassive.
“He’s a strange one. Enthusiastic about the war, I hear. Too enthusiastic, even for the OSS.”
“Boyle, I’m not going to comment on another patient. These sessions are strictly confidential. Anything said in here goes no further,” Robinson said, even as he picked up a pad to scribble a quick note.
“But you report on us to your superior officer, don’t you? Isn’t that what this place is all about? Deciding who’s fit enough to keep serving, and who’s going to be weeded out?”
“No, Boyle, that’s not what we’re doing here. I’m here to help get you back on your feet,” Robinson said.
“Or give me a Section Eight,” I said.
“There are specific criteria for a Section Eight discharge,” Robinson said. “I don’t think you’re a psychopath, alcoholic, or bed-wetter, so don’t worry about that. You’ve been through a lot, and I want to help you regain a sense of your own emotional balance and mental health. You can’t say you’re feeling yourself lately, can you?”
“Not exactly,” I said, looking out the window. I could make out the fence through the trees, about thirty yards out. Movement flickered between branches as the guards patrolled along the path. How many of them were out there?
“Boyle?” Robinson prompted. “I asked you a question. Do you consider yourself a well-adjusted person, under normal circumstances?”
“Sorry, I was watching the guards. Why do you need so many of them? Worried about a mass escape?”
“Never mind the guards,” Robinson said, with a quick glance out the window. “We’re talking about you. Before you came here, before Paris, did you consider yourself well-adjusted?”
“I don’t think I’ll ever adjust well to the army,” I said.
“A remarkably rational statement,” Robinson said. “A wisecrack masking a deeper truth. But you don’t feel well-adjusted now, do you?”
“No,” I said, gasping out that single word and burying my face in my hands. I listened to the seconds tick away on the clock. I heard the scribble of Robinson’s pencil on paper, like a claw on flesh. “Everything’s wrong. Shattered. I don’t know how to get back. It feels like it’s going to be like this forever.”
“When you were brought here, you were severely exhausted, in a state of profound confusion,” Robinson said. “It takes a while to come back from that. You were physically and emotionally spent. Add to that the effect of the drugs you’d taken, and anyone would have a hard time.”
“It was only a few pep pills, Doc, come on.”
“You continue to minimize the seriousness of the drugs you took. It was methamphetamine, and from what you said, you took enough to win the Kentucky Derby without a horse. Just because the Germans give them to their troops doesn’t mean they’re safe. We’re talking about Nazis, remember.”
“Pervitin,” I said. “That’s what it said on the container.”
“Right. You took enough of it to scramble your brains for a while.”
“But I didn’t get hooked,” I said. “I’ll be happy to never see the stuff again.”
“No, you weren’t taking it long enough. But the quantity you ingested over a short period of time did some temporary damage. That’s why you’re feeling disoriented and depressed. Is that an accurate description of what’s going on?”
“Okay, okay, I’m not feeling on top of the world, if that’s what you mean.”
“Irritable too,” Robinson said. “Did you sleep much last night? Honestly.”
I shook my head. “I can’t sleep. I’m tired all the time, but once I shut my eyes it all starts up again.”
“What does?” Robinson said, his pencil poised in midair.
“Paris. You asked me what happened in Paris.”
“I did. Several times,” Robinson said. He sat back, crossed his legs, and waited.
So did I.
“Will it stop, if I tell you? Will I be able to sleep? And I need to get out of here, so I can help Kaz. He’s depending on me. If I tell you everything, will you let me go?” Panic was rising in my gut, a thousand questions and a cavernous fear filling my mind. My hand trembled and I stuck it under my arm, desperate to quiet it, to hide what it meant about me.
“Don’t worry about anyone else right now. Tell me what happened, and we’ll take it from there. Sit back, relax, close your eyes, and tell me the story. About Paris.”
Robinson was talking in soothing tones, almost a whisper. I let my head rest against the back of the chair and took a deep breath. I let him talk some more. I listened, hearing the easy cadence of his words, the rhythm of
relaxation.
I started to talk. This is what I told him.
I’d been on a mission in occupied Paris. Kaz and me, to be specific.
But first, I need to explain about Diana. Lady Diana Seaton, the woman I love. She’s an upper-class Brit, and I’m from a Boston family of working-class stiffs not that long off the boat from Ireland. We’re as different as can be, but sparks flew from the first moment we met. That was back in ’42, and since then we’ve only had brief snatches of time together. You see, Diana works for the Special Operations Executive, SOE. She’s worked undercover in Italy and France, maybe other places for all I know. Up until recently, she was in Paris, operating under the code name Malou.
So Kaz and I got into Paris dressed as civilians. Malou was our contact, and things were meant to go like clockwork. We looked her up and began to do our job. It was supposed to be easy.
Yeah, right.
We weren’t more than a couple of days ahead of the advancing Allies, and all we had to do was complete our mission then find a safe place to hide until the cavalry arrived. Easy.
We hadn’t counted on the Parisians launching a fight against the occupying Germans. After four years of brutal occupation, they didn’t want to wait to be liberated, they wanted to do it themselves.
There was a lot of shooting. People died. Kaz had a heart attack.
I got ahold of a supply of Pervitin and used it to keep going, day and night. It worked. Like gangbusters.
We were betrayed.
“Boyle,” Robinson’s voice was sharp, his forehead wrinkled in concern.