W E B Griffin - Honor 1 - Honor Bound
Page 3
He then led the Battalion Sergeant Major to understand that he would not be heartbroken if Lieutenant Pelosi's application for transfer became lost.
Next, he tried, and failed, to have the battalion commander declare Pelosi as essential, and thus ineligible for transfer.
"The only thing you can do is talk him out of it, Red," the battalion commander said. "There's nothing I can do to keep the application from going forward."
That had been more than a month ago, long enough for Captain McGuire to begin to hope that Pelosi's application would never reemerge from the maw of Army administration-like so many other documents inserted into it.
But this morning it had finally surfaced.
And now there was one last hope... because it actually looked like MI had sort of shot themselves in the foot: When Pelosi saw what they'd done, he could, after consideration, withdraw his ap-plication for transfer. An officer could change his mind about a volunteer assignment. People decided every day, for example, that they'd rather not jump out of airplanes anymore. Since parachute duty was voluntary, they could quit. This MI assignment was also voluntary; Pelosi could change his mind about it.
When the charges Pelosi had been laying all morning (in half the time McGuire felt was necessary to do a proper job) failed to do more than make noise, a chastened, humiliated Second Lieu-tenant Pelosi might be willing to listen to reason. Instead of jumping all over his ass, McGuire was going to be kind and understanding.
When McGuire's jeep reached the power station, he found the company scattered over a small rise two hundred yards from the chimney, some on the ground, some sitting on trucks and three-quarter-ton dozers, scrapers, and the flatbed tractors that had car-ried them to the site.
When they saw the company commander's jeep, some of the noncoms started moving among the men, to get them up and at least looking interested.
McGuire turned toward the chimney and saw Second Lieuten-ant Pelosi coming out of one of the gutted buildings. He signaled for his driver to head for the chimney.
When he drove up, Second Lieutenant Anthony J. Pelosi sa-luted crisply, smiled, and said, "Good afternoon, Sir. I'm glad you could come out. I'm just about ready to blow this sonofabitch."
McGuire returned the salute.
"I'm glad you waited until I came out here, Pelosi," McGuire said, more than a little annoyed.
Pelosi picked up on the sarcasm.
"Sir," he said, a little uneasily. "The Captain did not say he wished to be here when I blew it."
No, I didn't, McGuire realized. It never entered my mind that you would come close to having your charges in place before fifteen or sixteen hundred.
"No problem, Lieutenant. I'm here now. You say your charges are laid?"
"All I have to do is hook up the detonator, Sir. This was my final look-around."
"Well, let me have a look," McGuire said.
He gestured for his driver to take the jeep over to where the company waited for the show to start, then walked around the site, following the electrical cord to the various places Pelosi had laid his charges.
They were in much the same places he would have chosen himself, the difference being that he would have used at least twice as much explosive.
"You're sure you're using enough explosive?"
"Yes, Sir. If anything, I used a little more than I had to."
That, Lieutenant, is the voice of ignorance speaking.
He noticed more wire on the ground and followed it with his eyes. The first pair disappeared under one of the derelict World War I tanks.
"Would you care to explain that to me, Lieutenant?"
Pelosi looked uncomfortable.
"Sir, it was my understanding that the Captain wanted this to be a familiarization exercise for the men."
"And?"
"Since I had a little extra stuff, and the time, I had some of the noncoms lay charges under those old tanks. I figured they would like to see something blow they had laid themselves."
"You didn't use all the stuff-the explosives-you asked for?"
"No, Sir," Pelosi said, and pointed to several canvas satchels. "Even after rigging the tanks, that was left over."
Pelosi, you are about to make a three-star horse's ass of your-self in front of the entire company. All they are going to see is a couple of puffs of smoke. I really hate to see that happen, but it's too late to do anything about it.
"Pelosi, you're sure about what you've done? The men expect to see that chimney come down."
"It'll come down, Sir. That's not my first chimney."
OK. A dose of humiliation is often just what a second lieutenant needs.
"I'll give you a hand with your excess explosives," McGuire said, and bent to pick up one of the canvas satchels. He started toward the rise where the company was waiting. Pelosi picked up the other satchel, caught up with him, and fell in step.
"You'll remember, Tony," McGuire began conversationally, "that I was suspicious of it when we talked about you volun-teering for the Military Intelligence assignment?"
"Yes, Sir."
"There is no greater joy in a man's life, Pelosi, than being able to say, "I told you so."
"Sir?"
"Your orders are in," McGuire said, and, taking them from the lower right pocket of his field jacket, handed Pelosi a quarter-inch-thick stack of mimeograph paper.
HEADQUARTERS
82nd Airborne Division
Fort Bragg, N.C.
5 October 1942
SPECIAL ORDERS:
NUMBER 207:
EXTRACT
***************
56. 2nd Lt PELOSI, Anthony J 0-459967, CE, USAR, is relieved from Co ``A'' 76th Para Eng Bn, 82nd A/B Div this sta, and transferred to WP 4201st Army Detachment, National Institutes of Health Building, Washington D. C. AUTH: TWX Hq War Department, Subj: ``Transfer of Officer'' dtd 10 Oct 42. Off auth US Govt Rail Tvl. No Delay En Route Leave Is Auth. Off is not auth shipment of household goods or personal automobile, and is not authorized to be accompanied by dependents. Approp: S99-99999910.
***************
BY COMMAND OF MAJOR GENERAL RIDGWAY:
OFFICIAL:
Charles M. Scott, Jr.,
1st Lieutenant, AGC
Acting Adjutant
"The National Institutes of Health?" Lieutenant Pelosi asked wonderingly.
"Well, I told you it was going to turn out to be something like that," McGuire said. "But maybe, Pelosi, just maybe, I could go to the Colonel and see if he could get you out of this."
"You think he could?" Lieutenant Pelosi asked.
"Well, it wouldn't hurt to ask. I'll have the company clerk type up a letter for you, saying that you've changed your mind."
Lieutenant Pelosi looked at Captain McGuire but said nothing.
They were approaching the small rise. A network of wires lead-ing from the chimney, the buildings, and the tanks came together at a waist-high wall of sandbags. Two noncoms were behind it, guarding a canvas-cased detonator.
"You mean you want to go to the Army detachment at the National Institutes of Health?" McGuire asked incredulously.
"What I want to do now, Sir, is take down that chimney," Pelosi said, walking toward the firing pit. "I don't like leaving primed charges laying around any longer than I have to."
If I don't get him to change his mind now, that's the end of it. He'll be so humiliated that he'll be willing to go to the National Institutes of Health as a ward boy.
The two noncoms came to attention.
"You two join the company on the hill," McGuire ordered, and waited until they had gone.
"You didn't need them anymore, did you, Pelosi?"
"I just wanted to know where the detonator was, Sir. I didn't want one of the men to start doing this himself."
He took the detonator and began to hook wires to it.
"Pelosi, I don't like to see an officer, any officer, but especially one I like and in whom I see a good deal of potential, embarrassed in fro
nt of his men."
"Sir?"
"The charges you laid, Lieutenant," McGuire said sternly, "are wholly inadequate. When you twist that handle, all you're going to get is a large bang and a puff of smoke. Now, what I'm going to do is call this off and lay them properly."
Pelosi met his eyes.
"Sir, with respect, when I blow this, the chimney will come down. If it doesn't, I'll withdraw my application for transfer."
Better to have him here, even humiliated, than to humiliate him by relaying his charges and then see him go.
"You have a deal, Lieutenant," McGuire said.
"With your permission, Sir?"
McGuire nodded.
"Fire in the Hole!" Pelosi shouted, in a surprisingly loud voice, repeated the shout twice, and then twisted the handle of the detonator.
McGuire looked at the chimney. As he expected, there was a dull explosion, a faint suggestion of fire, and a small cloud of smoke.
He looked at Pelosi. His face bore a look neither of surprise nor embarrassment, but of satisfaction.
McGuire turned back toward the chimney. As he watched, as if in slow motion, the 150-foot-tall brick chimney shuddered, then seemed to fall in on itself, settling toward the ground erect, in an almost gentle motion.
There were shouts from the men on the rise, and then applause.
McGuire saw now a large cloud of dust at the base of the chimney as it seemed to disintegrate in front of his eyes.
Pelosi had meanwhile connected a second set of wires to the generator. McGuire watched as he twisted the handle. There was now a rumbling roar from the crashing bricks, over which nothing could be heard, and the dust cloud at the base was thick, and nothing could be seen through it.
McGuire wondered if the second set of charges had gone off. But after a moment, he judged that they had, for the cloud at the base of the chimney had grown. Pelosi was already connecting a third set of wires to the detonator.
He waited the forty-five seconds or so necessary for most of the dust cloud on the ground to disperse enough to show every-body that the walls of the buildings were down, shattered into six-foot segments, and lying on their sides. Then he twisted the handle again.
This time there was a series of small explosions. After each, one of the World War I tanks flew into the air, one of them at least fifty feet.
McGuire met Pelosi's eyes as another burst of cheers and ap-plause came from the company on the rise.
"The First Sergeant can collect this gear and get the company back to the Post. You can ride with me, and collect your gear, at the BOQ," Captain McGuire said. "I'll see about getting you a ride into Fayetteville. With a little bit of luck, you might be able to get a berth on the 7:05 to Washington."
Chapter Two
[ONE]
Schloss Wachtstein
Pomerania
8 October 1942
"You are talking treason, you realize," Generalmajor Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein said softly, without emotion. The short, slight, nearly bald fifty-four-year-old very carefully placed his crystal cognac snifter on the heavy table in his library, men leaned back in his chair, raised his eyes to Generalmajor Dieter von Haas, and waited for his old friend to reply.
"I am talking about saving Germany, Karl," von Haas said.
"The Austrian Corporal is protected by a regiment, each of whose members devoutly believes he is the salvation of Ger-many."
"He will destroy Germany, and you know it."
' 'You are not the first to come to me, Dieter,'' von Wachtstein said.
"I am ashamed that I was not."
"I told them all the same thing: I believe any attempt to as-sassinate Hitler is doomed to failure."
"So is Freddy von Paulus's mission at Stalingrad," von Haas interrupted.
"And that in the unlikely happenstance that such an attempt did succeed," von Wachtstein went on, ignoring him, "we might not-Germany might not-be at all better off. His successor would be Hermann Goering. We would exchange a psychopath for a drug addict. And upon the death of Herr Schicklgruber, the slime around him... and I include the entire inner circle... would immediately put into operation their own plans to get rid of Hermann. There would be chaos."
"Wouldn't anything be better than what we have now, Karl?" von Haas asked.
"I'm not at all sure," von Wachtstein said.
"I thank you for hearing me out, Karl."
"I have not turned you down," von Wachtstein said.
"That's what it sounded like."
"I have a condition... a price."
Von Haas could not quite mask his astonishment. And obvi-ously to find time to carefully consider his reply, he leaned for-ward and picked up the bottle of Remy Martin and poured from it carefully into his glass.
"There would be, of course," von Haas began carefully, "a substantial realignment of the General Staff. I feel sure..."
"My God, Dieter!" von Wachtstein flared. "Have we grown so far apart that you really believed I was thinking of a promo-tion?"
Von Haas met his eyes.
"Karl!" he said, and shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
"I have given two sons to this war," von Wachtstein said. "I am thinking of the third. I am thinking of the family. This insanity will pass. I want a von Wachtstein around when it does."
"Peter," von Haas said.
"Peter," von Wachtstein repeated, nodding his head. "I have been thinking about honor. As strange and alien a concept as that has become. I have concluded that Peter has made all the contri-bution to this war, save giving his life, that honor demands."
"The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross," von Haas said.
"From the hands of the Austrian Corporal himself," von Wachtstein said. "He was in Spain with the Condor Legion, in Poland, Russia, and France. He has been five times shot down, and twice wounded."
"What do you want for him?"
"I want him out of the war and out of Germany."
"I don't quite understand."
"I want him assigned to some procurement mission, or some embassy as a military attach‚. To some neutral country. Not Italy or Hungary or Japan. He speaks Spanish. Somewhere in Latin America."
"That will be difficult to arrange," von Haas said, thinking aloud.
"Dieter, if you don't have anyone high up in the Foreign Min-istry, your coup doesn't have a chance. And I am not as important to your plans as you have suggested I am."
"I will see what can be arranged, Karl."
"You will arrange it, or this conversation never took place."
"Where is he now?"
"He commands a Jaeger squadron near Berlin. Focke-Wulf 190s."
"Oberstleutnant?"-First Lieutenant.
"Hauptmann"-Captain.
"He's young to be a Hauptmann."
"He was eighteen when he went to Spain as a Feldwebel"- a sergeant.
"After," von Haas chuckled, "he was sent down from Mar-burg, ('Philip's University, in Marburg an der Lahn, in Hesse. It was to Marburg that the Russian and East European royalty sent their children to be educated, and at Marburg that Roentgen discovered the X ray.)
I recall."
"You and I, Dieter, came very close to being sent down from
Marburg," von Wachtstein said. ;
"They were better times, weren't they?" von Haas said. He looked at his watch. "It's a long drive to Berlin. I'd better be going."
Von Wachtstein stood up.
"Understand, Dieter, that my desires for Peter are not wishful thinking. Your telling me that you're sorry, you tried, but it couldn't be arranged will not be enough."
"I understand," von Haas said, and put out his hand.
"What do they say in Spanish? 'Vaya con Dios'? Vaya con Dios, Dieter. Go with God."
Von Haas met his eyes, nodded, and turned and walked out of the room.