by Greg Iles
He had awakened in jail with ribs so bruised he could barely breathe, and a new American slang term added to his growing list. Shitbird. He railed at his jailers to call Brigadier Smith — and they claimed they had — but the Scotsman never showed up. Either the police were lying, Stern decided, or else he was precisely where the brigadier wanted him. Yesterday he had used Peter Owen’s handcuff key to unlock his manacles and attempt an escape, but the coppers had been ready. That escapade had caused his transfer to his current accommodations.
His body jerked at the harsh clang of metal against metal.
“Shove yer bucket through the bars and make it quick!” barked a jailer. “If you spill any, you’ll clean it up wiv your shirt!”
Stern rolled over and faced the stone wall. He couldn’t decide whom he hated more, Brigadier Smith or Doctor Mark McConnell.
At that moment McConnell was going over some notes in his laboratory in Oxford. When the telephone rang, he tried to ignore it, but the caller was persistent. McConnell glanced at his watch. Ten P.M. Perhaps it was Mrs. Craig, the woman of the house he billeted in, offering him a late supper. He picked up the phone.
“Yes?”
“Yeah, hey,” said a male voice with a Brooklyn accent. “Is this Dr. McConnell?”
“Yes.”
“I need to see you, Doc. I got a problem.”
“Excuse me, I think you have the wrong number. I’m a medical doctor, but I don’t see patients. I’m associated with the university.”
“Right,” said the caller. “You’re the one I want. I been patched up pretty good already. It’s something else. I really need to see you.”
McConnell wondered who in God’s name had recommended him to a man with mental problems. “I’m afraid I’m not a psychiatrist either. I can recommend a good man in London, though.”
The voice on the phone grew agitated. “You got it all wrong, Doc. It’s you I need to see. Not a sawbones or a head-shrinker.”
“Who is this?” McConnell asked, bewildered. “Do I know you?”
“Nah. But I knew your brother.”
“You knew David?” McConnell felt his heart thump. “What’s your name?”
“Captain Pascal Randazzo. Dave just called me Wop, though. I was his copilot on Shady Lady.”
McConnell’s heart rate was still rising. A member of David’s crew had survived? “Where are you, Captain?” he asked excitedly.
“Right here. Oxford.”
“My God. How did you get out of Germany? Do you have word of David?”
A long pause. “That’s what I need to talk to you about, Doc. Do you think we could meet tonight?”
“Hell yes, Captain. You can come to my lab, or I could buy you supper somewhere. Have you eaten yet?”
“Yeah. I’ll come to you, if you don’t mind. Sooner the better.”
“My lab’s sort of tucked away in the university. Do you think you can find it?”
“I’m from New York, Doc. Long as it’s streets and buildings, I can find it. It’s trees and woods that screw me up.”
McConnell couldn’t help but smile. What a strange pair Randazzo the Wop and David the Georgia redneck must have made. “Where are you now, Captain?”
“The Mitre Inn.”
He gave Randazzo detailed directions, then hung up. What the hell was going on? If there was word of David’s crew, why hadn’t the Air Force called him? Five days ago he had made the most difficult telephone call of his life, to tell his mother that her youngest son was presumed dead. Had that status changed? He paced the floor while he waited for Randazzo to arrive. What could the copilot’s survival mean? No chutes had been sighted by the other bomber crews on the raid, but that didn’t necessarily mean there weren’t any. In the last four years he had heard stories of miraculous survival that defied all explanation. Perhaps David had managed to crash-land his bomber, instead of just crashing. He was a fantastic pilot. He had the medals to prove it.
McConnell jumped the first time he heard the sound: thump-thump-bump. It was irregular in tempo but continued to grow louder. He decided it must be a janitor pushing something heavy up the three flights of stairs. Probably a mop and a bucket of water. Then he heard a knock on his lab door.
“Doc?” said a muffled voice. “Hey, Doc!”
He hurried over and opened the door. Before him stood a short young man with dark eyes, curly black hair and a thick five-o’clock shadow. He leaned heavily on crutches, and his left leg was encased from ankle to hip in heavy plaster. The air force uniform was soaked with sweat.
“Captain Randazzo?”
“The Wop in person.”
“I had no idea you were wounded. I’m sorry.”
“No problem, Doc.”
Randazzo thump-bumped his way across the floor and collapsed into a chair beside the very window Mark had dropped the telegram from just a week before. “Still ain’t used to these fuckin’ things,” he said.
“What happened to your leg?”
“Broke it in two places.”
“In the crash?”
“Bad parachute landing. Never had much practice.”
Mark could hardly contain his excitement. “You mean you got out of the plane? Did David get out?”
“Sure did.”
“But the air force said no chutes were sighted!”
Randazzo snorted. “I ain’t surprised. We’re flying in coffin corner to start with. And we were so goddamn low by the time we jumped that the squadron had already left us behind.” The Italian thumped his plaster cast with the tip of a crutch. “That’s how I got this fuckin’ thing. We jumped too late. Still, it’s better than dying, I guess.”
McConnell studied the olive-skinned face and bleary eyes. Randazzo had been drinking. Probably for several days. “Maybe you should just tell me what happened, Captain.”
The young officer looked out of the window at the dark skyline of Oxford. Only black spires broke the indigo screen of sky and stars. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I came for.”
McConnell waited.
“The raid went okay. Made the Initial Point with only two losses in the squadron. We dropped all ten bombs within a thousand feet of the Mean Dropping Point. We creamed ’em. Won’t be no fighters rolling out of Regensburg for a while.”
“The problem came after?” McConnell prompted.
“Fuckin ’ay right. After we left the Rally Point. The return leg. A real problem.”
“What happened?”
“About five flak shells, that’s what. They happened to blow about ten holes in Shady Lady. The Germans had us conned before we ever passed over. Add in about twenty ME-109s attacking wingtip to wingtip.”
Randazzo licked his lips and stared out of the window. “Looks like some kind of castle out there, huh? Like an Errol Flynn movie or something.”
McConnell waited, but the captain said nothing further. “What do you remember about David, Captain, after the flak hit the plane?”
“Those fuckin’ bastards!” Randazzo screamed suddenly. “Goddamn murderers!”
McConnell rocked back on his feet. Spittle flew from Randazzo’s mouth as he tried to get to his feet using one crutch. Mark hurried over and gently pushed him back down onto the chair. “Take it easy, Captain. You said you were hit by flak. What happened then?”
“Flak,” Randazzo said in a remote voice. “Yeah. After five or six hits, Shady Lady was buckin’ like a Jersey hooker. Guys were screamin’ in back. Joey, our ball turret gunner, was dead already. I told Dave it was time to bail out, but he wanted to try to nurse her back to England. We were somewhere near Lille. That’s in France. After the Messerschmitts made their pass, I knew the Lady wasn’t ever gonna see England again. The engines were on fire and she was dropping like a brick off the Empire State Building.”
McConnell felt his mouth going dry. He actually heard the scrape as Randazzo drew a hand across his heavy black cheek stubble.
“I screamed at Dave to hit the silk, but he says we g
otta wait ’til the crew gets out. I tell him I think the crew’s dead. He tells me go check. Pilots sit way up high in a Fortress, you know. So I go back. Radio man, waist gunners — dead. I hump down the chute. Bombardier and navigator cut to shreds. Nobody on the interphone. It was time to bug out. Shady Lady was shaking herself to pieces. Dave held her steady while I jumped. He jumped a few seconds later.”
Randazzo cleared his throat and took a deep, shuddering breath. “Dave had got us away from the flak batteries, thank God, or they’d have shot us while we fell. We landed about a quarter mile apart. I stayed put. My leg was broken. I didn’t know that then, but I knew it hurt like a son of a bitch. Dave got unharnessed and started working his way toward me.”
“Were you in a forest? Fields? What?”
“I was at the edge of a tree line, in a big bunch of bushes.” Randazzo looked at the floor. “But Dave was exposed for the whole walk. Open field.”
McConnell looked at the floor.
Randazzo’s voice was barely a whisper. “We didn’t know it, but we’d landed fairly close to a village. An SS unit saw us coming down. They sent out a patrol to follow the chutes. A Kubelwagen — that’s a German jeep — came over the top of a little rise while Dave was still walking. He dropped to the ground when he heard the motor, but they’d seen him. Drove straight to him.”
Randazzo scratched violently in his hair. “They started interrogating him on the spot. There was a lieutenant there, and four other guys. All SS. One sergeant, I think. They were asking Dave where I was. He wouldn’t tell ’em. Name, rank, and serial number, just like in the movies. John fucking Wayne.” Randazzo buried his face in his hands, sobbed once, then fell silent.
Mark struggled to find his own voice. “Then what happened, Captain?”
“Well . . . three of the SS guys stood Dave up in front of the lieutenant. Lieutenant pulls out his SS dagger. Ever seen one? Like some kind of miniature sword. This Kraut holds the dagger up to Dave’s chest and starts asking questions.”
“In German or English?” McConnell asked, not knowing why except that David understood no German.
Randazzo looked temporarily at a loss. “German,” he said finally. “Yeah. Didn’t matter, though, ’cause Dave wasn’t having any. After about the third question, the lieutenant slaps him. Hard. Right then, Dave spits in the guy’s face.”
Mark closed his eyes.
“The Kraut lieutenant stabbed him. The guy just exploded, went crazy.”
“No.”
Randazzo’s face worked strangely as he spoke. “The other guys let go of Dave. He fell. He laid there on the ground a minute, then rolled over onto his back. Then they . . . uh—”
Mark held up his hand. “Don’t tell me the rest, Captain. I don’t think I want to know.”
“I gotta tell you,” said Randazzo. “It was my fucking fault!”
McConnell realized then that the young copilot was wounded far more extensively than in the leg. “All right,” he said softly. “What happened?”
“I never seen nothin’ like it. Dave was still alive, but they started puttin’ dirt in his mouth. Dirt. Then the sergeant finds a stick and starts shoving the dirt down Dave’s throat.” Randazzo was crying now. Mark couldn’t stop himself either. “He died like that, Doc. Those Kraut lowlifes choked him with dirt, and . . . and I just laid there and watched it happen!”
McConnell could scarcely move. He forced himself to reach out and squeeze Randazzo’s shoulder. “There was nothing you could have done, Captain. Not without sacrificing your own life.”
The Italian looked up with tear-filled eyes. “Dave would have done something.”
McConnell wanted to deny this, but he knew it was true.
“That redneck son of a bitch would have come screamin’ out of those bushes like a whole goddamn division, armed or not.” Randazzo was sobbing and laughing at the same time. “Not the Wop though.” He shook his head pathetically. “I just laid there like a goddamn yellow coward and pissed my pants.”
McConnell waited until the man had regained his composure. “Captain?”
“Goddamn it—”
“Captain, I’d like to know the rest. How did you get out?”
“Well . . . the SS kind of seemed to lose interest after Dave was dead. They poked around the field awhile, but by the time they got to the woods it was getting dark and I’d been crawling for all I was worth. I was damn lucky. The next morning some Resistance guys from the village walked right over me. They were half crazy, arguing all the time like a bunch of senators, but they got me to some people who’d taken flyers out before.” Randazzo shook his head. “So here I am. And Dave is still back there in France. I don’t know, Doc. HQ doesn’t like these kinds of stories to get out, but . . . I just had to make sure you knew the truth. Your brother was the bravest son of a bitch I ever met. He was a goddamn hero.”
“You’re probably right, Captain,” McConnell said, absurdly trying to maintain some semblance of professional distance. “But you’re no coward.” He let his gaze wander to the window. “What will you do now?”
Randazzo leaned over and picked up his crutches, then struggled to his feet. “If this leg heals up right, I’m goin’ straight back to the flight line.”
McConnell looked back at him. “You must be joking.”
Randazzo’s face was set in stone. “I ain’t joking, Doc. I’m gonna drop bombs on those bastards until Germany ain’t nothing but a crappy footnote in some dusty old book in a broken down college like this one.”
McConnell felt suddenly lightheaded, as if he might simply float up to the ceiling. I’m in shock, he thought.
“Thank you for coming tonight, Captain. It means a lot to me to . . . to know the truth. I wish you well.”
Randazzo worked his way over to the door. He saluted Mark, then turned without a word and hobbled from the room. McConnell heard him thump-bumping his way slowly down the stairs. The three flights took him nearly three minutes.
After the echoes faded, McConnell went to the window, pushed it open, and sucked in great gulps of cold air. His skin was tingling. Just as he had finally begun to accept the idea that his brother had perished bravely in an air battle, Pascal Randazzo had appeared like a specter to shatter even this grim comfort. David had not died in battle. He had been brutally murdered in cold blood. Murdered by Hitler’s infamous Black Corps. The Schutzstaffeln. The SS.
One of McConnell’s clearest childhood memories was of the day his younger brother was born. Their father had delivered David himself. His medical practice had long been moribund, but he insisted upon bringing his own son into the world. Mark remembered the look of pride on his father’s scarred face, one of the only times the pride was in himself and not his sons.
He braced his hands on the stone window casement and leaned out. The air here was so different from the sweltering nights of his youth. The dark parapets and spires rising from the icy English cobbles did look like something out of Robin Hood. A great castle. A fortress. And wasn’t that what he had used it for? A place of refuge from the war? For five years he had worked here in safety while braver men had given their lives to fight the Nazis. They had watched friends die, just as Randazzo had, yet they fought on in spite of their fear.
I know you, Doctor, the young Jew with Brigadier Smith had told him. You’re no coward. You’re a fool. You believe in reason, in the essential goodness of man. You believe that if you refuse to commit evil yourself, someday you will conquer evil. You have yet to taste even a sip of the pain so many have drunk to the dregs in the last ten years . . .
“I’ve had my sip of pain,” McConnell said softly.
The feeling churning in his belly was like nothing he had ever known. Bitter, burning, volatile. It was fury, he realized, an inchoate anger so profound he could not give shape to it.
He tried to fight it, to remember the words thoughtful men had spoken about the futility of violence as a means to a better world. But compared to the images flashing behind
his eyes, those words meant nothing. They were merely aggregates of letters, symbols of the futility of language in the face of deeds.
He turned away from the window and went to his small, cluttered desk. He rummaged in the top drawer for a few moments, then pulled out a small white card. He lifted the telephone and placed a call to London, to the number on the card. Despite the late hour, the phone was answered on the third ring.
“Smith here,” said a gruff voice.
“Brigadier, this is Doctor Mark McConnell.”
There was a pause. “What can I do for you, Doctor?”
“That trip you mentioned. Germany.”
Smith grunted. “What about it?”
“Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”
The brigadier said nothing for some time. “Get some sleep,” he said finally. “Don’t say any goodbyes. We’ll take care of all that. I’ll send a driver to your house at 0600 sharp.”
McConnell set the phone in its cradle and walked out of the laboratory without looking back.
At ten before midnight, the telephone rang in a London police station. The duty officer listened to the gruff voice on the line for a few moments, then hung up and grumbled, “Thinks he’s the bloody First Sea Lord, that one.”
“Who the ’ell was it, Bill?” asked the night jailer.
The duty officer squared his shoulders with exaggerated crispness. “Brigadier Duff bloody Smith, that’s who.”
“Who’s he when he’s at home?”
“I’m not sure. Curses like a Regimental Sergeant-Major, though.”
“What did he want?”
“The Jewboy. Told me to have him washed and ready by six in the morning or he’d have my balls for breakfast.”
“You going to oblige?”
The duty officer scowled. “Aye, I reckon. Smith’s got connections with the Commissioner. That’s how the Jewboy’s been here all week without being charged.”
The night jailer raised a bushy eyebrow. “I’d hop to it, Bill. It’ll take a while to clean him up.”
The duty officer hiked his belt over a bulging belly. “I’m glad to be rid of that bastard, to be honest. Makes me nervous. Hardly said a word since his first day in. It’s his eyes. I think he’d cut both our throats for a shilling.”