In his hurry to drive away he stalled the engine. His hand began to shake on the key. He stalled it again. Two, perhaps three shots from the woods. More shouting. The sound of a truck on the road ahead. The engine engaged. He threw the jeep into first. The road was just wide enough to swing one broad U-turn. His front wheels caught the edge of a ditch but the vehicle didn’t drop into it. It bumped back onto the road and was facing away from the woods.
But coming along the road towards him was an armored car. A swastika flapped above the hood. It was thirty yards, twenty away. The Germans had closed him in like a steer trapped in a corral. With the ditches on either side of the road he couldn’t run. He was dead. He knew it. The thought that came to him at that moment was illogical, but logic perhaps isn’t worth too much when you’re about to run out of luck. He could have thrown up his hands and had a fifty-fifty chance of not losing his life. But, instead, he slammed his foot on the gas, pointed the jeep at the armored car, and ducked under the dash.
The collision smashed him against the metal plating but the engine took most of the impact. Osgood’s body was thrown onto the floor and Bodge could see him smiling between the seats. Now was the time to concede defeat. He raised his hands so they’d be seen before he emerged from beneath the smashed windshield, and painfully eased himself up onto the seat. The front of the armored car looked undamaged but smoke billowed from its engine. Yet it was the sight of the men inside the car that registered as odd in his mind. He sat on the bloody seat of his jeep with his hands up, and four German officers sat in the armored car with their hands in the air also.
Back along the road, a truck full of French resistance fighters pulled to a halt and watched astounded as a battalion of German infantrymen walked from the woods, threw their weapons onto the ground and their hands into the air. Ahead they saw a lone US soldier with a pistol unloading a group of officers from their vehicle.
So that, simply, was what happened. Bodge saw nothing heroic in the deed itself. In fact it was probably tiredness and fear that caused him to act rashly. The rest was coincidence. The Germans were tired too, and downhearted, and a decision had already been made to surrender. The sentries hadn’t yet learned of that decision. But at a juncture in the invasion when the public relations people needed heroes for the papers back home, Bodge was ready made. The French told of the brave marine who’d fought off a company of soldiers single handed and rammed a staff car full of German officers, causing their surrender.
Osgood himself didn’t help matters. When he recovered enough to describe the ambush, in his delirium he apparently saw a completely different scene. He remembered Bodge in a hand to hand battle with the sentries and his bold attack on the armored car. And it was from Osgood’s recommendation that Bodge was awarded his Medal of Honor. In the General’s absence, he continued in his role as liaison with the French and there were other more genuine acts of heroism that also found their way into dispatches. Finally, he moved into Germany with the victorious allied forces. But wherever he went, his reputation preceded him. Other men who fought campaign after campaign had died unknown, face down in the mud, but Bodge had become an unwitting celebrity.
Bodge turned on the bedside lamp and looked at the alarm clock. It was four AM. and he hadn’t slept a second. He felt incredibly ill. His body lay on top of the bedcover like a range of rolling hills. It was certainly a different body from the one that had run with resistance units for hours across muddy fields along the Somme. The Bodge Leon that had collected since then wouldn’t make it down to the street and back without a breather. He’d never be trim, he knew that. He didn’t have the build of a Brooks Brothers store mannequin, but at least he could lighten his load. Starting tomorrow he’d dig out his old sweat suit and see what he could do about finding the old Bodge.
6.
But Saturday was one of those days that doesn’t even count as a day. He’d never had such a hangover. It wrung him out. He could neither rest nor work. He even considered going to see a doctor. His head was too heavy to allow him to read and his stomach would have nothing to do with food. The doorbell rang several times but he was in no mood for talking. All he could do was loll in his easy chair, think about how ill he felt, and look around at the end of his showy but empty lifestyle.
By Monday he still hadn’t the strength to exercise so he ate a stodgy breakfast and vowed that Tuesday morning in DC would mark the beginning of his health regime. He packed an overnight bag and took a checkered taxi to Penn where he caught the 8:20 to Washington’s Union Station. It was a leisurely five-and-a-quarter hour journey and he felt a pang of southern guilt that he was being paid for train travel and sight-seeing. The briefing wouldn’t begin until the following day so Monday had been put aside for getting to the capital and moving into his lodgings.
The Sunrise Guesthouse was a converted dormitory left over from the WWII operations center that had been based at Howard University. It stood just outside the university’s back gate and was now exclusively used by the CIA. Bodge left his bag on his bed and went for a walk around the campus to build up an appetite. Although he knew of Howard’s reputation, it still surprised him, given that his own university in the south had been so white, to see so many Negroes on campus. Howard was what they called an institution for the people. That meant that even in a racially segregated city like DC, blacks and Latinos could attend mixed classes and expect equal attention. Some of the local kids who’d only ever been to Negro high schools suddenly found themselves studying alongside whites. Of course many conservatives believed those whites would have to be radical liberals or foreigners without an appreciation of American history to want to attend voluntarily. Laws were being passed all over the north that banned racial prejudice. It wouldn’t be long, they said, despite all the senatorial objections, before the District of Columbia became an integrated city. Then, as people like Senator O’Learman publicly stated, “God help the future”.
The Sunrise had a dining room and when he got back Bodge asked the motherly receptionist what time they served supper.
“Any time after six, honey,” she said. “And you had a phone call while you were out.”
“I did?”
She unskewered a square of paper from the spike beside the telephone and read the name.
“A Mr. Mooney. You know him?”
“Yes.”
“He’d like you to call him back. You have the number?” He tapped his forehead to show her where he kept it. She handed him a stack of dimes and pointed to the public phone booth across the reception area.
“Stan? It’s Bodge.”
“Hey, Bodge. How’s the orientation going?”
“Doesn’t start till tomorrow. What’s up?”
“You don’t have Lou down there with you by any chance?”
“Lou? What do you mean?”
“He decided not to come into the office today and didn’t feel like calling in sick either. I was ringing his number all morning but he’s not answering.”
“Well, he’s got plenty of sick days in hand, but that sure doesn’t sound like Lou not to let you know.”
“I was thinking maybe you two had one of your drinking orgies last night.”
“No. We tied one on Friday night. Last time I saw him he was passed out in the back of a cab. Does Eddy know anything?”
“Who in hell’s Eddy?”
“The boy who’s moving into my desk.”
“Gladstein? Some boy he is. He won’t be starting till Wednesday.”
“You’ve got me worried, now, Stan,” Bodge confessed. “You have anyone who can go down to Lou’s place?”
“I called his landlady. She said she hadn’t heard him clunking around like he normally does, but she said she’d been in and out all weekend. She let herself into his apartment in case he’d knocked himself out in the bath or something. Then she called me back. No Lou. Everything seemed neat enough. The bed wasn’t slept in.”
“This is all odd Stan. He would have told me if h
e was going away.”
“Did he find himself a woman on Friday?”
“To be honest, I can’t rightly recall much of what happened that night.”
“You remember where you went?”
“Sure, in the beginning. We started off in a couple of familiar bars, then we went to the Black Cat for a meal. Then I guess we moved on to some place Eddy recommended.”
“What Eddy?”
“You’re gonna have to pay attention, Stan. That’s twice you’ve asked me. Eddy. Eddy Gladstein.”
There was a moment of silence on the line.
“Bodge, Eddy Gladstein wasn’t with you on Friday night.”
“Sure he was. We all three of us left the office together to celebrate my move and his first posting.”
“Bodge, listen to me. Eddy Gladstein had his first posting twenty years ago.”
“You’re crazy. He’s just a kid.”
“I worked with Eddy in Japan. I’ve got his file on my desk here. He’s fifty something years old.”
“What?”
“And he wasn’t even in the country last Friday. He gets back from Korea tomorrow night.”
7.
Agents Jansen and Tuck sat on the bed in Bodge’s room at the Sunrise. It wasn’t the ideal interview room but at short notice there wasn’t a lot of choice. Bodge sat on a hard-backed chair by the TV and Palmer was upright with his backside perched on the narrow window ledge and his arms folded. At 8 PM he had things he’d sooner be doing, but this he agreed, was serious. Jansen and Tuck were an ill matching pair; the former was overweight and sweaty, the latter thin as a rail. They were taking very detailed notes on matching clipboards but it was Jansen who asked all the questions.
“But, is it normal for you to black out on these drinking sprees?” The older guy was starting to annoy Bodge. He reminded him of his father.
“No.”
“Has it ever happened before?”
“That I can’t recall where I was or what I did?”
“Yes.”
“No. Never.”
“So you either consumed an obscene amount of alcohol or your drinks were interfered with in some way.”
“Yes.”
“…Well, which do you think it was?”
“As we’ve managed to consume ‘obscene’ amounts of alcohol in the past without too many serious side-effects, I’d have to assume the latter. Lou has an incredible capacity for booze. I’ve never seen him out of it before. But he was sleeping like a baby in the cab.”
“Is there any possibility you may have divulged classified information as a result of this …moment of weakness?”
Bodge laughed. He couldn’t help himself.
“Did I say something that tickled you, agent Leon?”
“I doubt anything Lou and I have handled in the past year would be worth going to all that trouble for.”
“It’s for the agency to decide what is or isn’t important. You put yourself into a situation where you may very well have compromised agency confidentiality. In my view, that makes you and your friend potential security risks.”
Bodge managed not to laugh again. “With all due respect, Agent Jansen, if you allow unauthorized personnel to a, get hold of classified internal mail and b, stroll around our offices as free as a Texas stray, I’d say you’re more of a security risk than I am.”
Jansen shot him a look that left Bodge in no doubt what he’d like to do to him.
Palmer had no jurisdiction over security matters but he was getting tired of the line of questioning too. “Gentlemen, I too believe that is the key issue here. It concerns me greatly that any fool may walk around our offices unchallenged.”
“Of course,” Jansen snapped back. “Which is why we’re attempting to glean as much information from this interview as we can, sir. We aren’t even sure where the letter was intercepted.”
“I understand. Then let us focus on the letter itself for a brief moment,” Palmer said calmly. “I was able to reach my secretary at home. She assures me she caught the inter-departmental pouch on Thursday afternoon, just before it was sealed. That action should be recorded in the courier’s log. We can double-check tomorrow. But if she’s right, the courier would have delivered the pouch, still sealed, to the Adams Center on Friday morning. The pouch would be signed for and handed over to the building security who have a duplicate pouch key.”
“Agent Leon,” Tuck asked his first question. “Do you know how the mailing system works inside your building?”
“You’ll have to check with Mooney… Supervisor Mooney to be certain, but as far as I know all the mail and courier documents go to the sorting office.”
“Where they’re sorted and distributed to the respective sections?”
“That’s right.”
“So,” Jansen cut back in. “The sorting room would be a likely place to intercept and read mail.”
“I imagine.”
“And, if your young Eddy person was smart enough, he could take advantage of the situation and claim to be your replacement.”
“Right. Until I got the letter, I had no idea who’d be taking over. Can’t say I’d thought about it much. But he’d have to be one hell of a ballsy little guy to get away with that. He was cool as November. We didn’t suspect for a second he was anyone but who he claimed to be. If he only had from the mail room to our office to put together a cover story, he must have been some kind of genius. I’m impressed.”
Jansen wasn’t.
“Either that or his audience was, shall I say, naïve.” He was talking to his notes so he missed both Bodge and Palmer glaring in his direction. Tuck came to the rescue again.
“Robert, we’ll be sending an artist over a little later tonight to put together a sketch of what young Eddy looked like.”
“Really? I’d always assumed there’d be some sort of camera in reception taking snaps of everyone coming in and going out,” Bodge thought aloud.
“And so there should be,” Palmer agreed. It was turning into them and us in that little room. “But there’s an inborn arrogance at the Agency, Bodge. They think because we’re the good guys we’re somehow invincible. It doesn’t surprise me at all that our flimsy security system was tested and breached. Perhaps now someone will sit up and take notice.”
Bodge was impressed by the senior agent’s candor. But the two men on the bed suddenly looked at him as if he’d become a security risk himself. Bodge spotted Jansen make a note in the margin of his paper.
“Yeah,” Bodge said to Agent Tuck. “I can give you a pretty good description.”
“Assuming you can remember anything through the alcohol blur,” Jansen said in a whisper loud enough to be heard.
When all the questions had been asked, the two security men put their pens in their top pockets, folded their clipboards under their arms and shook hands with Bodge and Palmer as if they were acquaintances in a train carriage and had arrived at their destination. Bodge wasn’t at all surprised that Jansen’s shake was soft and clammy.
Once they’d gone, Palmer went over and sat on the bed.
“You must be concerned about your friend.”
It was the first humane comment anyone had made.
“It isn’t like him to go off without saying a word. We aren’t joined at the hip or anything. He has his private life, I have mine. But we usually go for drinks at the end of the week and he tells me if he’s met someone or if he’s about to split up. You know?”
“Do you think something might have happened to him?”
Bodge bowed his head in thought, “I don’t get it. It’s weird. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. If young Eddy has something to do with this, I mean with Lou not being at the office today, I should have known about it. There were the two of us in the cab at the end of the evening, and no sign of the boy. I guess he even paid the cabby and gave directions to our homes.”
“Yes. I admit that doesn’t sound very Mata Hari. But one could ask how he just happened to have you
r home addresses.”
“Do you suppose our security agents are up to this?”
“An investigation? Laurel might be. I don’t put much faith in Hardy.” Bodge laughed for the first time since he’d heard from New York. “Look, as far as Lou’s concerned, there may be no connection with this Eddy Gladstein mess. He may just turn up at work tomorrow with a hangover and a good excuse. Let’s wait and see what happens. Your briefing starts in the morning. If by Wednesday we still don’t have any news I don’t think it would do any harm if we took a trip to New York in the afternoon and poked around a little ourselves.”
“You wouldn’t mind?”
“Life’s dull for an old field operative who finds himself stuck behind a desk. I would honestly love to be involved. But I admit, I’d be just as happy if your friend turned up in one piece.”
8.
Ban Methuot
Monsieur Dupré, the latest in a long line of administrators of Ban Methuot, was settling in to his new post. He was a dull, overweight forty-year-old bureaucrat. He’d never been to Vietnam before, nor to Asia, nor Europe beyond the boundaries of his own France.
After a long, loyal undistinguished career in French local government service, he’d reached the level of P6. He was then offered a difficult choice. He could either spend another five years at his present place of employment but with an incremental rise of fifty francs per month, or, for sixty more francs plus a living allowance, he could volunteer to perform colonial service. After great deliberation, and perhaps to escape his mother, he opted for the latter.
He could apply for either West Africa or Indochina. He wasn’t partial to men with dark complexions, and, being of short stature, he was certain he’d feel threatened by towering African natives. So he filled in the requisite form and was awarded a posting in Vietnam in a town he had to look up on an atlas.
Bleeding in Black and White Page 4