by James R Benn
"You remember that you said you'd find them," Diana said, not really a question but a statement. I had to struggle to think about what it was she was talking about.
"You mean the other prisoners?"
"Yes. You promised."
"I'll start tomorrow," I said, "first we have to take care of something tonight. I'll come see you in the morning and then-"
"No," Diana said, clipping off the word with a firmness I didn't think she still had. "Go find them now. I don't need to see you. You must find them before he starts on someone else. Go."
She sat with her robe bunched up in two clenched fists, shielding her wounds from the world. And from me.
"Okay, I will," I told her.
Chapter Thirty-one
I took the stairs two at a time, my hand sliding along the brass banister as my heels smacked the marble stairs leading into the main lobby. I wanted to leave the hotel, to flee the vision of Diana's bruised body, to disappear into the desert and let the sun scorch my eyes and burn away what I'd seen and what I still imagined.
"Billy," Kaz said, coming toward me from the lobby. I halted at the landing, only a few steps left before the main floor and the open doors, escape beckoning to me with ocean breezes.
"What?" I said, with more irritation than I meant to. I couldn't look at Kaz, I couldn't trust my face to hide the effects of what I had seen and how it was tearing at me inside. Wiping sweat from my forehead with my sleeve, I leaned against the railing, my sight fixed on the sliver of blue sea visible through the double doors.
"General Eisenhower is here, and he wants to see you." Kaz leaned on the railing, and I felt his eyes on me.
"We've got things to do," I said.
"I know," said Kaz, "after we see the general." He put his hand on my arm, like a cop leading a suspect or a mother taking her kid to school. I wanted to shake off his grip and run, but it was Kaz, and I knew he meant well. I also knew I couldn't skip out on Uncle Ike, even as crazed as I was feeling. We walked through the lobby, into a wing of the hotel filled with busy clerks and WACs and admirals, lots of hustle and even more bustle as they organized the new home of Allied Forces Headquarters.
Kaz was about to knock on a door when it flew open and General Mark Clark strode out, all six feet plus of him brushing past us as two aides hurried to keep up. The door remained open, held by a woman in a khaki skirt and blouse that she somehow made look faintly glamorous.
"Hello, Kay," I said. "I heard the general wants to see us."
"Yes, Billy, he's been asking about you. And about Miss Seaton. He's very concerned."
Headquarters staff was like a big family. Everyone knew everyone else's business. And Kay Summersby was no exception. Kay was Uncle Ike's driver, occasional secretary, and constant companion. Kay had known Daphne, and was good friends with Kaz. So of course she'd heard about Diana, which meant so had Uncle Ike. I braced myself for their pity as Kay led us into the next room.
"William," Unkle Ike said, advancing on me with his right hand extended. His left clasped me on the shoulder. "How are you?"
"Fine, sir," was all I could manage.
"Lieutenant Kazimierz told me about your rescue of Miss Seaton. That was very brave, William."
"It was nothing compared to what she went through, sir." I regretted how that sounded as soon as it came out. I didn't want to make Uncle Ike feel guilty or add to his burden. I only wanted to get out of here and set things right.
"I know, I know, William. She took a tremendous risk, but it was necessary. We had to take every measure to ensure safe landings for our troops and to rally the French to our side."
"I didn't mean-"
"Don't worry, William, I'm growing a thick skin these days. Did you know Edward R. Murrow asked if we were fighting the Nazis in North Africa or sleeping with them? Jesus Christ on the mountain! The press is after me as if I were the devil himself." He reached for a cigarette but the crumpled pack was empty. He threw it away, his mouth twisted in frustration. Before he could say a word, Kay was opening a fresh pack and handing it to him.
"Thanks, Kay," he said. She smiled at him and went back to her seat. She had a way about her, with that faint Irish lilt in her voice and her dark, lively eyes. I could see she calmed the general down by her presence, handing him cigarettes, sitting with him, being someone who made no demands of him.
Uncle Ike drew deep on his cigarette, blowing out blue smoke that rode on a sigh into the air. "I was sick when I heard what Miss Seaton endured, William, I want you to know that. That went beyond all bounds of civilized conduct. She will recover, won't she?"
"Yes-yes, I think so. The man who-"
"Yes, yes, William. You want him held accountable."
Uncle Ike's eyes held mine, and I wondered why he wanted to see me, what could be so important in the midst of everything else he was responsible for. I saw his eyes drift toward Kay, seated in a soft leather chair, her long legs crossed, the heel of her shoe dangling off her foot. Then he closed them, as if he couldn't bear the vision in his mind either. Maybe I was reading too much into it, maybe I was thinking about myself, but I sensed loss and regret and longing in those averted eyes.
"Yes, sir, I do."
"You have to leave that aside, for now, William. Not everything we want in this life comes to pass. These are delicate times. One mistake, and everything we've worked for can be destroyed. You have to leave things as they are. Do you understand, William?"
I didn't understand a damn thing, except that Uncle Ike felt he had to explain himself to me, and that he felt guilty enough to take the time to tell me it was important to lay off Villard. Maybe he knew all those reporters had a point. Maybe he wished he could do what he wanted, not simply what was best for the war effort. For all I knew, Darlan himself was cooling his heels in the hallway while we had this little talk, and Uncle Ike needed to steel himself to shake hands with a snake. No, I didn't understand anything, as I began to comprehend how the world really worked.
"Sure, Uncle Ike," I said in a whisper, allowing myself the familiarity we sometimes shared in private. "Sure."
Kaz and I didn't go straight back to the hospital, although we were supposed to rendezvous there with Harding to plan for meeting up with the train carrying the second penicillin shipment. First we took a detour to the Algiers docks, to a warehouse that served as the headquarters for the Quartermaster Corps. These were the guys who controlled the shipment of all supplies through Algiers and up to the front. If anyone had evidence as to who'd signed off on the receipt for the order detailing the second shipment of penicillin, it would be the Quartermaster Corps.
We drove through the city center, which was filled with shops and cafes. This was France, not Algeria. All the signs were in French, and the only Arabs in sight were sweeping the sidewalks. Men in suits walked hurriedly down the streets between the four- and five-story buildings, all richly decorated with ironwork grills and tall windows. People sat under awnings at sidewalk cafes, sipping tiny cups of thick coffee as they watched the world go by. I was the world going by. I had places to go, people to kill, no time for lolling around a cafe. As we drove closer to the water, the road skirted the shore. The buildings to our left, each house painted the same light sea-green color that made them look cool even as they baked in the harsh brightness, had their shutters closed tight against the blazing sun. While I admired the architecture, Kaz had been studying the notebook with the codes in it. Or ciphers, if that's what they were. He tapped his finger on an open page, nodding to himself.
"This has to be a book cipher. It has to be."
"What do you mean?"
"Book cipher, or dictionary code in its simplest form-"
"Well, which is it, a code or a cipher?"
"Both, in a way. Did you know the English word code comes from the Latin codex, which means book? So, actually…"
"Okay, okay, I'm sorry I asked. Just tell me what it means. Is it good news or bad?"
"Oh, very bad indeed, for us. Unless we
know which book, then it is very good news."
"Kaz, could you start making sense anytime now? That would be fine."
"Very well. Remember when I told you about the sets of three numbers? For instance, like this set, 236-16-5."
"Yeah."
"I think this is a variation on a dictionary code. With that, two people have the same edition of a dictionary. There are two number sets used, such as 90-25. That means go to page ninety and then the twenty-fifth entry. Therefore, 90-25 stands for that word."
"Okay, but we have three numbers."
"Yes, that is why this is so clever. I am guessing that there is a book, but it is not necessarily a dictionary. It could be anything. And, the third number refers to a letter. Page number, line number, then count to the number indicated and you get one letter."
"Is that safer?"
"Quite. One way to break a code is to look for patterns. The most common letters in the English language are E, T, O, A, and R, in that order. You can look for patterns in codes to see how often certain substitutions are used."
"But with this book code, I could use a different three-number combination for every E in my message!"
"Excellent, Billy! Yes, there need never be a repeat. No pattern, nothing to go on. The only way to break this code, if it is what I think it is, would be to discover what book is being used."
"But only the people using the code know that, and it would be incredibly easy to hide."
"Oh, yes, it could be anything. Even a magazine, if it had enough pages. Or a manual, or a novel, or…" He gave up and shrugged.
"Great. So the codebook is useless."
"Yes. I went through the substitution code, the simple one, and that is all place names. I will check a map later but I doubt anything important was consigned to that code. It's only a shorthand, as I said."
"Well, good work anyway, Kaz. Sure would be nice if we could catch a break for a goddamn change." I hit the horn as an Arab leading a couple of donkeys took more than his share of the road. Just one little break, that's all, one damn break.
The shore ahead curved to the right, and so did the road, bringing us into the harbor district. The buddings were of worn, cracked stucco with peeling paint, displaying their age. Piers jutted out into the water, which had turned from a brilliant blue to a dark, oil-stained pool where dead fish, seaweed, and garbage marked the high tide line. This was the working Algiers, not a single cafe in sight. Small craft, from sailing boats to tenders, crowded the first piers we passed, and the docks were crammed with even larger ships, unloading tons of supplies every hour. Most of it would make it to the front or wherever it was supposed to go. It was the rest of it that I was interested in.
Farther out, a line of destroyers sat at anchor, guarding the harbor entrance. I could see anti-aircraft emplacements on the heights above the harbor, and as I looked around at the stacks of ammo, fuel, beans, boots, and black oil, I hoped they wouldn't be needed for the next few minutes. Gulls were everywhere, squawking at each other, looking for choice morsels from the broken cases and open boxes that littered the wooden docks in either direction. We stopped at a fork in the road. It went inland to the left, or onto a concrete roadway leading down to the main dockyard on the right. I read the freshly painted signs that were nailed up on a telephone pole, their arrows pointing every which way. Harbormaster, to the right. Local Labor, dead ahead. Quartermaster, hard left. New York City, straight out to sea. Every GI's a joker.
A Quonset hut had already been erected in front of the warehouse, at the far edge of the harbor, not much beyond the breakwater the locals called the Jetee du Nord. A line of Arab workers passed, each guy carrying a sack of flour over his shoulder that looked like it weighed more than he did. A single GI with a carbine walked behind them, telling them to hurry up, but their pace didn't change much one way or the other. The place smelled like saltwater brine, rotting fish, and sweat. I tried not to breath too deeply as we got out of the jeep.
Inside the Quonset hut, an overworked corporal was sitting on two cases of Scotch, typing a form on a typewriter that sat on another two cases of Scotch. It was nice to see the QM Corps making do with what they had. A stack of forms was piled up on either side of the typewriter, and an ashcan filled with cigarette butts sat in front of him. His shirt, showing off his two stripes, was hung over a crate behind him. He was in a sweat-soaked T-shirt, peering intently at the form he was working on, lining up the carriage to fill in those little boxes neatly. He ignored us until he got it right, then looked up at me as he started typing. I told him what I wanted, and he didn't stop clacking the keys, one by one, for even a second. He just nodded toward the end of the hut, gesturing with the cigarette clenched between his lips.
"Knock yerself out, Lieutenant. The files are all back there. Pardon the mess."
Not exactly the height of military courtesy, but it's amazing how agreeable officers can be to supply clerks with so much Scotch they use it for furniture. I threaded my way between the liquor, radios, cartons of Lucky Strikes, condoms, and all the other highly convertible currency of war. At the end of the aisle there were three large filing cabinets lined up against the wall. The only problem was that they hadn't had time to file any paperwork yet. Two cardboard boxes overflowing with carbon paper and crumpled forms stood in front of the filing cabinets. Really large boxes. I looked at Kaz and shrugged. One for each of us.
It was hot, very hot, not too surprising since the sun was baking the sheet metal skin of the Quonset hut at about 102 degrees this time of day. We each pulled up a wooden crate; Kaz's was marked SPAM and mine was SOCKS, WOOLEN, GREEN. We sat and read U.S. Army requisition forms in the stifling heat, at the back end of this tin hut stuck out on the worst smelling dock outside of Boston harbor in August. And it was all my idea; I couldn't even blame anyone else. I tried to think of something short of bodily injury that could be worse, and came up empty.
About an hour later I had learned that you could requisition a pool table if the order was signed off" by a major or higher. I filed that information away for use later, but didn't have more to show than that, other than a small dent in the paperwork in my box. I was going through a stack of requisitions for blister cream when Kaz pulled out a large, worn manila envelope from underneath his pile of papers.
"Billy, this is marked Receipts, Orders!" The envelope was about three inches thick and bulging at the seams. Kaz emptied the contents onto the floor with his good arm and started pawing through them. I came over and lent a hand. There were receipts for movement orders, receipts for orders detailing the distribution of tents, receipts for orders of cooking supplies to Company kitchens, all sorts of acknowledgments of orders to send or receive supplies, none in any discernable order. There was even a receipt for an order of receipt forms. We were more than halfway through the pile when Kaz yelled out.
"Billy! Here it is! An order to the 21st General Hospital, Colonel
M. Walton Commanding. For the receipt of a shipment of penicillin, to be delivered tomorrow! It's dated 9 November." He turned it over, looking for the signature on the back of the form indicating receipt by the proper command. It was a carbon copy, so the signature wasn't exactly clear. But it was still unmistakable.
Sgt. J. Casselli.
"Joe signed this on the 9th and was dead the next day," I said.
"Is it normal procedure for a sergeant to sign such a receipt?" asked Kaz.
"Sure, when he's the supply sergeant, like Joe was. Only thing is, normal procedure is to give it to your CO after signing for it. Walton would have gotten the original. Walton had to know about the shipment."
"So he lied to us?"
I thought about that question. Could Casselli have kept the receipt from Walton? Why would he? I sat there with the sweat running down my face, dripping onto the plywood floor, evaporating in a second. I watched as the little drops hit the floor and then disappeared. Now you see it, now you don't, just like the missing orders. I thought about that phone in Walton's office, a
nd how quickly that shooter had had us in his sights. I thought about gambling, and wondered what other vices Walton dabbled in. I thought about Blackpool, and how he was CO of a hospital in a city where the organized crime boss was related to a crooked French soldier in Algiers. I thought about letters, and codes, and disappearing supply sergeants. Now they're here, now they're gone. Drip, splash. Vanishing orders, evaporating in an instant. First here, then gone, now back again. I looked down at the piece of paper in my hand. Joe Casselli had scribbled his own death warrant, never knowing what that hasty scrawl had meant. I wondered what had happened. Had he taken the order to Walton, only to be told to keep it on the QT? Had he refused? Walton would yell and scream, Casselli would stand his ground. Walton would seem to give in… and then contact Mathenet, who would arrange to eliminate Casselli, the guy who wasn't crooked enough for their plans.
"Billy?"
"Yeah, he lied. Let's go."
Chapter Thirty-two
"Because everything fits, that's why!" I gunned the jeep up the sloping roadway, away from the stinking docks, forcing Kaz to hang on, and hopefully to shut up.
"But there is no real evidence…" Kaz said, as he was slammed back in his seat. He alternated using his good arm to hold onto the brim of his service cap and to clutch the frame of the jeep. As usual, nothing stopped him from talking.
"Whaddya mean, no evidence? Walton had to have known about the second supply shipment. If Casselli never gave him the receipt, why did he end up with his throat slit? They must've argued, and Walton decided he had to be silenced. He had access to the only telephone within miles, and he came here from the same city in England where the Bessette family ran the local rackets. Plus, he gambles. He may have gotten in too deep in Blackpool and this is his payback."
I took the next corner hard, glad I had the steering wheel and gearshift to hang onto. Kaz braced himself with his feet and clung to his hat.