Einar Person stepped out of his office door and stretched his stiff back. He saw Michael sitting on a capstan on the foredeck of the Brunnhilde splicing a cable, and smiled. He loved the young American like a son now, and he was glad to see he had finally regained his health. “Michael!” he called out as he clenched his big meerschaum pipe between his teeth and began walking toward the boat. His voice must have registered, because Michael looked up. Their eyes met and Michael smiled. He could picture Person at the tiller of a Viking longboat a thousand years ago, with a horned helmet, a bearskin draped over his shoulders and a sword and shield in his hands. Like his ancestors, those piercing blue eyes looked ready for anything that providence might throw at them as the old Captain walked across the quay, up the gangplank, and joined him.
Einar placed one of his meaty paws on Michael’s shoulder. The young American looked up with an embarrassed smile, but it was Person who spoke first. “Emma tells me something is wrong with you.”
“Wrong with me?”
“Yes, she says you received a letter yesterday and looked all depressed. You didn’t eat dinner or breakfast and you are all moody now. Emma is never wrong about such things, you know.” Michael looked away and started to say something, but Person cut him off. “You owe me no explanation, boy. We just want to be of help if we can.”
Michael pulled a small, wrinkled envelope out of his shirt pocket and looked at it.
“Bad news from home? I didn’t think anyone knew you were here.”
“No, it’s from someone else, from the father of my best friend, Eddie. I wrote him a few weeks ago.”
Person frowned. “And now you have to leave, don’t you?”
Michael looked up at him, surprised, but not really.
“No, this is good,” Person said. “Emma will hate to see you leave — I will too — but it shows you are healing. You know you will always be welcome here, my boy, but it is time you went home.”
Home? Michael thought. Even the word sounded strange. And healing? Not really; and he doubted he ever would. There had been too much damage deep inside for that to happen any time soon. It left him hollow, like a burned-out husk. “You’ve been unbelievable to me since the day you pulled me in,” he said. “But I have to go back to the States, for a while anyway, to talk to Eddie’s family.”
Person turned his eyes away, sad and shaken. “Emma will miss you.”
Michael looked up at him and smiled. “Emma will, huh?” he said, continuing the old man’s game. “I don’t want to go, but I promised Eddie I would go back, see his father and his sister, and tell them what happened. I’ve been putting it off, but…”
“Well, if you give the man your word, then that’s what you must do.”
“I finally wrote his father. They want me to come.”
Person looked out across the harbor for a moment, thinking. “You never said a word about what happened out there, what happened before we found you.”
“I didn’t want to get you involved.”
“Maybe not, but you have no papers, no passport.”
Michael looked away, realizing the dilemma he was in now.
“I saw how you would look up at the sky whenever an airplane flew over, and how you would flinch when you heard an engine backfire. Emma guessed you were in the Navy, maybe from a boat that sank, but I always thought that was wrong. Your Navy never got up here into the Baltic, not that I know of. You are a sailor now, but not when we found you. No, I always thought you were a flier, maybe from one of those big bombers. After a raid on Hamburg or Wilhelmshaven, I guess anything could have happened, eh?”
“It was Berlin. I was a waist gunner on a B-17.”
“And you lost your friend from South Carolina and the rest of your crew?”
A dark cloud crossed Michael’s face. “Dead, all of them.”
Person looked down at him. “But they weren’t killed that night, were they?” he asked, but Michael didn’t answer. “That liferaft did not come from an American airplane. The markings were in German, from a ship, or a U-boat, I think. And your clothes, your hair and beard, and the state you were in — your B-17 came down months before, didn’t it?”
Michael sat quietly, afraid to look at Einar for fear it would all pour out.
“We saw a big explosion further out to sea that night — me, little Jan, Sven, and all the rest of them — we all saw it. Even in town, they saw a flash and a dark orange glow. And there were oil drums floating up on shore for days after, all black and burnt…”
“Einar, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You don’t have to, boy. Not now, not ever. We don’t care what happened.”
Randall sat there thinking.
“Look, Trelleborg is a small town. The Mayor, the local government people, even the police, they all left you alone because you worked for me and I vouched for you. But if you want to go back to the States, you must go to Stockholm to the American Embassy and talk to them, or they will never let you in.”
“Yeah, I was afraid of that.”
“All you have to say is that your plane was shot down and we pulled you out of the water. You were hurt bad, in shock, and no one knows what happened. I’ll testify to that. So will Jan and Emma, and I can get the doctors to write something. Tell them you don’t remember a damned thing and you want to go back home; that will be the end of it.”
“Yeah, but there’s one little problem, Einar. My plane took off from Italy in October, 1944, and I didn’t show up here until five months later. They’re going to want to hear more than that.”
“Tell them your plane crashed and you were hurt. Tell them you don’t remember much, but you managed to escape and make it to the coast. Say you stole a boat and headed north. By God’s mercy, somehow you made it across to Sweden.”
“Who’s going to believe a story like that?”
“They will, because they’ll want to. The war’s been over for three years now, and you are an open file they will be very happy to see closed. Besides, I am not letting you go to Stockholm alone. I will take you. I have friends there. Those clerks at your Embassy might argue with you, but they will not argue with me.”
Michael looked up at the old trawler captain with a puzzled expression.
“Do not look surprised. I spent a few years in our Navy and this is a small country. I should be able to cut a little red tape for you.”
“I don’t know how to thank you for all you’ve done, Einar, you and Emma.”
“No need. We always hoped you would stay, but we understand.”
“I’d like to come back.”
“You are always welcome, but don’t make promises you cannot keep.”
“No, no, I’ll never do that,” he answered. “Once we get to Stockholm, I figure I can get a job on a freighter, maybe work my way across to New York.”
“A freighter? You can book a stateroom on the Queen Mary if you like.”
Michael laughed. “The Queen Mary? I have no money, Einar.”
“Oh, yes, you do. More than enough.”
“Einar, I’m not taking yours. You’ve done enough for me already.”
Person smiled and shook his head. “Michael, other than a few Kroner for a beer or to buy a book, you’ve never asked me for anything, no pay, no nothing. Hell, boy, you’ve been living on a cot in my warehouse and I never even had to pay for a night watchman.”
“You saved my life. You brought me here and took me in, a complete stranger; you gave me a job…”
“And you’re the best worker I’ve ever had. Look at you. You must have put on fifty, maybe sixty pounds since we fished you out that night, and they are all solid muscle. It’s all those long hours you spent fighting the nets and the fish, that’s what gave you back your strength. All those fish you helped me catch earned me a lot of money, and you are entitled to your share like all the rest of the men who crew out for me.”
“You don’t owe me a thing.”
“Maybe not, but the union says I had
to pay you anyway; and the good Lord knows I always do what the union tells me.”
“You?” Michael laughed. “When did you start listening to the union? Besides, I never joined; I don’t have a union card.”
“Oh, yes, you do. Rules are rules, and you’ve been a member in good standing for two and a half years now, ever since the first day you went out with me on the Brunnhilde. You got the same wages everyone else got, plus the bonuses and your shares of the catch.”
“What are you talking about, Einar?”
“Those Kroner I gave you for the beer? That was your own money. Emma opened an account for you at the bank. It’s all sitting there, over $7,000 now, so you don’t need to borrow anything from me. That money should take you a long way, and back again if you have a mind to.”
“Einar, I don’t know what to say.”
“Then don’t say anything.”
“But $7,000?”
“You earned it, every cent, so don’t thank me. It’s yours. Look, boy, Emma and I never had the good fortune to have a son, but as time passed, we hoped you would think of yourself that way.” Michael looked up at him. “You must go back to America now. That is only right. But after you’ve slain all of your demons, we hope you will come back.” Person looked around and motioned toward the harbor with the sweep of his hand. “We have three boats now and you know how to run them every bit as well as I do. So, they are yours if you want them. I see no point in selling it all off or leaving it to the tax collectors.”
PART THREE
ROCK CREEK
SOUTH CAROLINA
OCTOBER 1948
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Rock Creek, South Carolina
It was with a deep sense of foreboding that Mike Randall stepped off the Greyhound bus in Beaufort, South Carolina, and began walking south and east with his thumb out and a leather suitcase in his hand. The Hodges lived on Rural Route 3. The waitress in a small coffee shop gave him directions out a dusty country lane that wound east along the water. After that winter in Königsberg and three years on the Baltic coast, palm trees, Spanish moss, and humidity thick enough to cut left him feeling even more out of place. Despite the seven thousand dollars in a Swedish bank, he chose to work his way across the Atlantic on a merchantman from Stockholm to London, and another from London to Baltimore; knowing he had to keep his mind and his hands busy. He caught a train to Charleston and hitched the rest of the way.
While the States had their obvious attractions, after being abroad for all those years, it didn’t feel like home anymore. Everything seemed disjointed and oddly out of focus, especially the thought of seeing Eddie’s father and sister. That would be gut-wrenching. No matter how hard he fought it, he continued to feel guilty, and he knew he shouldn’t. Millions of soldiers, sailors, and airmen had gone off to that war and tens of thousands never returned. That was the luck of the draw — wrong place, wrong time — as it was in every war. But being here in the States, walking around the hometowns of the men who came back and the men who didn’t, was more than Michael could take. Why had he survived? He was no better, no quicker, and no smarter, just luckier. It wasn’t just that Eddie had died, it was how he died, and it was Michael’s role in that death that ate at him like a cancer. From Earl’s letter, Michael could tell they thought he was some kind of hero, when all the time he had Eddie’s blood on his hands. What would they think when they learned the truth?
It was Indian summer in South Carolina. Beaufort lay limp as a wet towel in a coastal low country that was known for rice, indigo, crayfish, clams, and oysters. Half river and half tidal marsh, the river looked more brown than blue as it ambled down to the sea, only a few miles away. Walking down the narrow road, he saw small wooden piers jutting out into the river behind every house. The water was everything, Michael could see.
On the freighters coming across, Michael chose to work long shifts down in the hold or the engine room and he spent his free time running around the deck or exercising. The rest of the crew were Poles, Greeks, and Turks; and they thought he was certifiably crazy. Maybe he was, but running was the best way he knew to control a mind that refused to behave. It was something he had done in high school when he wasn’t playing football, in those long Air Corps training schools in Texas, and at the bomber base in Italy. He took it up again in Sweden, and he always found a long run cleared his mind. There was something magical in the rhythmic pounding of feet on pavement. After a few miles, the deep breathing and piston-like movement of his arms and legs put him in a place where he could get away from himself and his head full of painful memories. Rhythm was the key. Synchronize the breathing; measure each stride; pump the arms like pistons — feel it — lose yourself in the rhythm. Run. Breathe. And forget. Forget. Forget.
He was about a mile south and east of Beaufort’s downtown with his thumb out and a smile on his face when a dented green pick-up truck pulled over and stopped. An old, toothless man in bib overalls and a tattered John Deere baseball cap looked out at him and asked, “Where ya goin’, son?”
He pulled out Eddie’s father’s badly wrinkled envelope and showed him the return address. “Rural Route 3 in Rock Creek, the Hodges’ place? I think they live down on the water somewhere?”
“Old Earl? I’d say he does,” the old man chuckled as he looked Michael over, head to toe. “But I don’t think he’s lookin’ to hire anybody right now.”
“No, no, nothing like that. I was in the Air Corps with his son.”
“You wuz with little Eddie? Oh, Lord, but that was a tragedy. A real tragedy, losin’ him like that. Here, you hop right in. I’ll give you a ride,” the old man said as he pushed the passenger door open. “Come on.”
The narrow road took them through fields of leafy, yellowing tobacco plants and big gnarly oaks covered with Spanish moss that overhung the narrow road. “A lot of folks around here lost kin in that war. You know how us Southerners are, always the first to jump into a good fight. Well, enough of our boys volunteered, that’s for sure, from Pearl Harbor right on through.”
“That was Eddie and me. We went in together, in 1942.”
“Then you wuz in bombers, same as him?”
“The same plane.”
The old man looked over at him, studying him for a long moment. “I heard tell he got shot down over Germany.”
Michael did not answer. He turned and looked out the window.
“That why you’re here? To see old Earl?” Michael offered no reply. “You don’t have to tell me jack, son, I can see it all over your face. In fact, I seen it on a lot a faces these past couple a years, so you ain’t got no explainin’ to do. Weren’t your fault. Weren’t nobody’s fault, ’cept them damned Krauts, but I don’t think nobody took it hard as old Earl. Maybe Leslie, I guess she did. ’Cause they ain’t been the same since that letter came that his airplane was missing. That’s why you came down here? To talk to them?”
“Yeah,” Michael answered again.
“Well, God bless ya, son. I know how hard that must be. I know’d Earl since I was your age, so you sit back. I’ll take you down there.”
Three miles further down several flat county roads, the green pick-up turned in a long gravel driveway that ended at a small, low-slung white clapboard house nestled in a grove of pines down on the water. It had a rusting standing-seam tin roof and a wide screened porch that wrapped around all four sides. The temperature that day was quite pleasant, but as he got out of the truck, the heavy damp air wrapped itself around him.
The house’s front door swung open. “Michael?” a man’s raspy voice called out to him from the porch.
“Mr. Hodge?” Michael asked as he pulled his suitcase out, turned, and saw a small, weathered man in bib overalls with a tall, teen-aged girl standing next to him on the porch. He looked like Eddie, aged about a hundred years, and the girl had to be Leslie, Eddie’s sister. In Italy, Eddie had shown him a photo of a much younger girl in pigtails. She couldn’t have been more than 12 or 13, but that had been taken in
1942. Clearly, Leslie had grown up. She was a young woman now, at least a head taller than her father, and “all filled out,” as they say. God, he thought to himself, this is going to be horrible!
The old man turned the green truck around, stuck his head out the window, and waved. “You need anything, Earl, you let me know.”
“Thanks, Homer.” He waved back as Homer drove away. Finally, he turned back and looked at Michael, looking equally awkward and unsure. “Got your letter. And we had the pictures of you and Eddie he sent from Texas. Thought you might be here last week. Been lookin’ for ya.”
“So did I, but boats don’t always do what you want.”
Earl turned toward the girl. “This here’s Leslie, Eddie’s little sister. Guess she ain’t so little anymore, but you know what I mean. Anyway, come on in,” he said as he held the screen door open. “Lord, we sure are glad you came. Yes we are.” He and Mister Hodge shook hands, although he felt very awkward doing it. The old man held on, continuing to shake Michael’s hand as if he needed the contact while he held up an old photo. “See, here’s you and Eddie standing in front of that old B-17. Knew I’d recognize you.”
Michael looked at Leslie. Tanned and fit from working on an oyster dredge, she wore bib overalls like her father’s and the same wiry frame as Eddie; but she was taller, softer, and one hell of a lot better looking. Her hair was blond and she wore it short and well above her collar, which was probably very practical down here, he thought, as their eyes met. Hers were an iridescent green; and when they locked onto his, they grabbed him by the throat and drew him on in. “Uh, hi,” he tried to say as his voice cracked. “Sorry.” He coughed and tried to look away but he couldn’t. “You know, all that dust out on the road.” He coughed again, but he knew it wasn’t. In that tiny fraction of an instant, it was all over. He was utterly doomed. He knew it and he saw she knew it, too.
Cold War Trilogy - A Three Book Boxed Set: of Historical Spy Versus Spy Action Adventure Thrillers Page 44