The evening was filled with singing, dancing, and fun—“Swell fun,” Elspeth said, “to be one of the few women on a ship filled with men!” It was nearly two by the time they got back to their cabin, all three of them a little tipsy. Elspeth was pinning up her hair, Peggy was writing in her journal, and Kay was pulling off her uniform tie when a dull, thudding explosion rocked the ship, catapulting all three of them onto the floor of their compartment.
We’ve been torpedoed, Kay thought without surprise. This is how it feels when a ship is hit. The Strathallan shuddered like a wounded animal and the engines growled to a stop, the silence so immediately deafening that her ears seemed to ring—until it was filled with startled yelps, the clamor of women’s voices, and the sudden brassy clang-clang-clang of the alarm gong. The single bulb in the ceiling blinked and went out. The cabin was plunged into utter blackness.
Suddenly sober, Kay fought down the acid fear that rose in her throat. She was a soldier, dammit, and the rattle of the ship dying under her feet was no more terrifying than the shriek of bombs that had rained around her in the Blitz. But her hands were shaking as she groped for her flashlight and found her coat, her shoes, and her life vest. Elspeth pulled the pins out of her hair. Peggy scrambled for her cameras, a Rolleiflex and her favorite Linhof, grabbing lenses and film. There was jostling but little visible panic as they joined the stream of nurses jamming the narrow passageway, moving as if in slow motion toward the companionway. Somebody was sobbing. Somebody else growled, “Shut the hell up, Crandall,” and the crying stopped.
By the time Kay reached B-deck, the ship was already listing hard to port, and she slid down the steeply angled deck on her way to the lifeboat station. A brilliant moon high overhead illuminated the ships of the convoy, steaming like ghost vessels past their crippled ship. But Kay knew it was too dangerous for any ship to attempt a rescue. The U-boat that had struck the Strathallan could be lurking nearby, with others in its wolf pack. They would fire on any that came to help.
Her heart was hammering as she reached her lifeboat station. The last of the convoy slipped past them and Kay suddenly felt the enormity of their isolation, alone on a vast silver sea under a canopy of aloof and distant stars. And yet, she wasn’t alone. She was with five thousand others, standing together against the implacable night and the uncaring ocean and a waiting enemy. She would forever remember that moment as the point at which her old life ended and a new life began. If I survive, she thought, I will be different. I will know, always, that I am a part of something larger than myself. It was a strange new thought—one that had not come to her before, even during the Blitz—and strangely comforting. She carried it with her as she clambered over the rail and into the lifeboat—and into icy water sloshing over the seats. The torpedo that had crippled them had splashed enough water into the boat to fill it.
Their lifeboat was designed to carry a hundred passengers, but because of the weight of the water, the crew began lowering it before all were aboard. As it jerked downward, several of the women grabbed the outboard gunwale and leaned over, peering fearfully at the sea below. The lifeboat tipped and water sloshed. Kay found her voice.
“Goddamn it, sit down!” she shouted. “Sit in the middle of the boat. Don’t move unless you want us all to drown!”
It was the General’s vocabulary, but the order came from a woman who had grown up on the River Ilen and understood what it took to capsize a boat. Everybody sat down. The lifeboat hit the surface with a giant splash and they were adrift in a sea of moon and stars and bobbing soldiers and nurses who had scrambled down the network of rope ladders that had been flung over the Strathallan’s port rail. As Kay watched, afraid to look but unable to look away, a cluster of nursing sisters dropped like grapes from the ropes into the sea and swam toward the fleet of inflatable rafts the crew had tossed from an upper deck.
Amid geysers of exploding depth charges, the nurses and WACs in Kay’s boat began pulling swimmers from the oil-slicked water while the crew strained to row them away from the dying ship. With each rescue, their overloaded craft settled further into the water, waves washing over the gunwales. Those who were wearing helmets snatched them off and began to bail, while Kay and others grabbed oars to help the crew.
As she rowed, Kay turned to look over her shoulder at the Strathallan. The ship was settling lower in the water, and she knew it couldn’t last long. She thought wistfully of her lovely collection of silk undies and satin gowns, her little hoard of jewelry, the family photos, Dick’s letters—the last traces of her previous life. Before long, she thought, it will all be at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Once again, she had the sense that the life she had known was gone, disappearing with the ship that had brought them here, and that the future was an empty horizon.
But they were alive and safe, as long as they weren’t swamped and capsized by a depth charge. Lifeboats and rafts began to cluster together, and soon there was a little flotilla of bobbing vessels under a lowering moon. A cold wind came up, and Kay shivered inside her wet coat. After a long while, the stars began to fade and streaks of a pink and lavender dawn brightened the eastern horizon. Surely we’ll be picked up soon, she thought, and heard a small cheer go up as a British destroyer sliced through the waves toward them. But an officer with a bullhorn leaned over the rail, shouting that it was still too dangerous—they couldn’t be picked up until mid-morning. As the ship disappeared, the vast loneliness of the infinite sky and water settled across Kay’s shoulders.
Beside her, Peggy muttered, “Drat. I thought they might be bringing breakfast.”
“That’ll be the next ship. Curbside service.” Kay raised her voice. “Okay, everybody, taking breakfast orders. I’m having bacon and toast with three eggs sunny-side up, no yolks broken, please. Yours?”
“Lox and bagel,” a nurse said. “Plenty of onion.”
From a nearby raft, a voice said, “I’ll have what she’s having. With a gallon of hot coffee.”
“And a pitcher of Bloody Marys,” somebody shouted, and laughter rippled around them.
And then, against the dawn horizon, Kay saw a dark shape breaking the surface. A German sub?
“Oh, shit,” the soldier beside her muttered under his breath.
“On a shingle,” Kay said brightly, and they all laughed.
• • •
In Algiers, news of the sinking reached Eisenhower’s Allied Forces headquarters early that morning. The AFHQ had taken over the Hotel St. George on Rue Michelet, an ornate alabaster palace of Moorish arches and crenellated red-tile roofs flanked by pink oleander, purple bougainvillea, and statuesque palms. Eisenhower had just settled down at his desk with a doughnut and a steaming cup of black coffee when Butch rushed in with the message.
“Torpedoed!” Ike stared at Butch, his mouth suddenly dry. “Christ. Where? What’s the situation?”
Butch shook his head. “We don’t know much. The Strathallan was the only ship hit in the convoy. They have her under tow now. Happened around two in the morning, off Oran.” He looked at his watch. “Six hours ago.”
Butch was talking about the ship, but Ike was thinking of Kay. Six hours ago. Six hours. He pulled a pack of Camels out of his shirt pocket. If they had the Strathallan under tow, chances were good that the passengers had gotten off. Most of them.
He shook out a cigarette. “Did the lifeboats get away?” But he knew that the crowded troopships never carried enough lifeboats. If there was a sharp list, half would be useless. He felt suddenly cold. “Losses?”
“Like I said, we don’t know.” Butch gave him a pale smile, meant to be reassuring. “Don’t worry, Boss. Must have been a lone wolf—there are no other reports of enemy activity. It’s light out there now. They’ll be picking up survivors.”
Survivors. Eisenhower flinched. The lists of torpedoed ships weren’t released because of the need for secrecy and because the government feared the effect of bad news on public morale. But he saw the reports, and the recent disasters—the nu
mber lost to German U-boats just since September—hung like albatrosses around his neck. The British troopship Laconia, sunk off West Africa with sixteen hundred lost, many killed when the German rescue vessel—the same sub that had torpedoed the ship—was attacked by a B-24 Liberator. The Nova Scotia, eight hundred; the Juneau, seven hundred; the Ceramic the previous month, six hundred on board, no survivors. Just those four ships totaled more than twice the number of losses at Pearl Harbor. What were the odds that Kay had survived?
He struck a match with his thumbnail and lit his cigarette. He knew Butch was watching him, trying to read his expression, to see how he really felt. But Eisenhower had learned the importance of looking confident and optimistic, no matter how dicey the operation. Concealing his apprehensions, his personal feelings, was second nature to him now. In the last six months, he had built an increasingly higher wall between his public and his private lives. His old friend Butch now belonged to the public life, the life that was owned by the army. Mamie, too, the quintessential army wife, such an important asset to an army career.
But not Kay Summersby. While he didn’t fully understand how he felt about her, he knew without question that she belonged to his private life, to his secret self, to the man whom nobody, not even Mamie (or especially not Mamie), knew. His feelings about Kay, whatever they were, were nobody’s goddamned business but his own.
Still, it was difficult to hide his apprehension from Butcher, who had known him for fifteen years and could probably read him pretty well. He got up from his desk and walked to the tall, narrow window of his corner office, feeling Butch’s eyes on the back of his neck. Cigarette in one hand, he shoved the other into his pocket and fingered the lucky coins he’d carried during the invasion: a silver dollar, a French franc, and a silver crown piece newly minted with the image of George VI. Luck, luck. They needed it now. Kay needed it now.
He stared out across the great crescent of the bay where ships were moored two and three deep at every pier, seeing beyond them to the brilliantly blue Mediterranean, bright under the morning sun. Kay was out there somewhere on the unforgiving sea, and the thought of it made him want to highjack one of those ships—or maybe an airplane—and get out there and join the search. But he couldn’t do that, goddamn it. He was helpless to help her. Somebody else had to do it.
He pulled on his cigarette. At least the Strathallan had gone down in the Mediterranean, where rescue was more likely than in the Atlantic. But not certain. There must have been five thousand men and women on the ship. They’d be lucky if there were lifeboats for twenty percent of the passengers, and that only if they’d all been lowered fully loaded. What were the chances of that?
He pulled smoke deep into his lungs, feeling its acrid bite. In the streets below, the city was going about its ordinary business. The Allies had captured the port facilities nearly intact (although not quite as handily as they had expected), while eager French partisans had taken the power stations, police station, Radio Algiers, the central telephone exchange, the Vichy French army headquarters. But war had scarcely touched the busy, bustling market streets around the St. George. Vendors’ awnings shaded trays and baskets of tangerines and grapes and olives and figs. Skinned goat carcasses hung from cedar poles, and wooden bins were filled with bottles of Algerian wine and boxes of the local cigarettes—“Dung d’Algerie,” the Yanks called them. The streets were shrill with the metallic drone of electric trolleys, acrid with the stink of the charcoal engines that powered buses and lorries, and crowded with plodding horses pulling hay carts and flat-footed camels laden with bags of market-bound goods. The muezzins’ midday calls to prayer were laced with the vivid laughter of the blue-uniformed girls of the École Ste. Geneviève and brightened by the cries of old women hawking red and white and yellow roses. Sunny Algiers, unmindful of war, going about its pleasant business, while out there on the Mediterranean, prowling subs killed ships and people drowned.
Ike turned away from the window. His office suite, four rooms at the end of a first-floor hallway guarded by armed soldiers, was small but functional. Beetle, Butch, and Tex had desks in the adjoining rooms. Kay’s desk was there, too, waiting for her, and down on the street, his armored Cadillac had just been delivered, for her to drive. Yes, he had known it was risky to bring her here—a British civilian, a young and beautiful woman promised to one of Fredendall’s engineers, who had come to North Africa to be close to the man she loved.
But while Eisenhower was relatively inexperienced with women, he wasn’t naive. He knew damn well that Butch—and Beetle and Tex and probably Clark and Patton and even Churchill, that dirty old man—would think that he and Kay had been sleeping together in England and they would sleep together when she got to Algiers.
Well, they hadn’t, by damn, and by damn, they wouldn’t. She was dedicated to her young officer. For his part, he wasn’t much of a lover. What’s more, nothing would make him forget his duty to his wife. Given that resolution, there was nothing wrong with having Kay here, where he could see her smile and hear her lilting Irish voice and occasionally touch her hand.
Yes, he had to admit to a few reckless, adolescent mistakes back in England—lying beside her on the train (how in bloody hell had he been so stupid?) and kissing her on his birthday and before he left for Gibraltar. He’d acted like some love-struck kid. But he had already promised himself that there wouldn’t be any more of that foolishness. The simple fact was that Kay Summersby made his work easier and more pleasant. He intended to have her with him, goddamn it, and people could think whatever the hell they wanted.
He intended to have her with him . . . if she’d survived the sinking of the Strathallan. He steeled himself against that chilling possibility, and against the guilty awareness that he should have put her on the plane with the rest of the staff. But the newspaper guys hung out at the Maison Blanche airfield. He’d thought that Kay would attract less attention if she arrived by ship, just one of a crowd of nurses and WACs. Unfortunately, Mamie had seen the photo of his official family in Life magazine, the one where Kay was described as “the General’s pretty Irish driver.” Ike didn’t want any more photos—or any more haranguing letters like the one Mamie wrote when she saw that Life photo. His wife had a jealous streak a mile wide and a mile deep and she had given him Hail Columbia and then some. The truth was that he had put Kay on that ship to keep from provoking Mamie. Wrong, wrong, wrong, goddamn it. But there was nothing he could do about it now.
Butch was waiting. Eisenhower turned and walked briskly to his desk, sat down, and pulled a stack of papers toward him. Without looking up, he said, “Since Kay isn’t here, you’ll need to line up another driver for tomorrow. You and Whiteley and I are leaving at six a.m. for the front.”
“The front?” Butch’s voice registered surprise. “How long will we be gone?”
Eisenhower thought of the operation that was planned for his absence, so secret that no one in his command—not Clark, not Beetle, and certainly not Butch—had been told of it. When it happened, he would be meeting his generals at the V Corps command post at Souk el Khemis, four hundred miles from Algiers.
“We’ll be back on Saturday,” he said. “The day after Christmas. Probably late in the evening. It’s a helluva long drive.” He glanced up to see Butch giving him a peculiar look. He took a last pull on his cigarette and stubbed it out. “Oh, and let me know when you hear something about the Strathallan survivors. If Kay won’t be here, I’ll need to find another permanent driver.”
• • •
Resisting the urge to slam the door behind him, Butch left the office and walked down the hall, avoiding a barefoot Arab woman wearing a traditional ivory cotton haik, vigorously brushing dried mud from the mosaic floor with a straw broom. Who the hell was Ike trying to fool, putting on that I-don’t-give-a-damn face when he heard that the Strathallan had been torpedoed? Everybody in the whole damn office knew how eager he was for Kay to arrive. His calendar was marked and he had dogged the supply guys, making sure t
hat new Caddy was waiting when she got off the ship.
Oh, yeah, that car. Ike had had to pull serious rank to get it, since Fleetwood had built only a handful of Seventy-Fives. The left-hand drive Caddy had a standard flathead V-8, blackout shields on the lights, fine leather upholstery, a siren, flag mounts, and enough armor to bump its weight to nearly three tons. The only spots of color on the olive-drab sedan were the two red plates emblazoned with three stars, mounted front and rear. The Cadillac crest was all over the car, however, every logo intact. Beetle could laugh and tell him he was nuts, but Butch was convinced that the Caddy was Ike’s gift to Kay, and a damn impressive one, at that. He hoped the girl would appreciate it. If she was still alive, of course.
He crossed the high-ceilinged lobby. Still dignified by imposing Moorish arches, mosaic floor, and gilt chandeliers, it was now crowded with the gray metal desks of the rapidly expanding headquarters staff they hadn’t been able to squeeze into the rooms upstairs. Ike had originally wanted to keep the AFHQ to 150 officers: “Am particularly anxious to strip down to a working basis and cut down on all the folderol,” he had told Marshall. But that idea had died immediately. Now, just six weeks after the invasion, there were already some 2,000 staff in four hundred offices scattered among eleven buildings on the Rue Michelet. Ike and Beetle were expected to keep track of all the whole motley crew, as well as mastermind the critical Allied push to retake Tunis and Bizerte, currently stalled in rain and mud out there in the desert. It was impossible. Goddamned impossible.
And to make a bad situation worse, the storm over the Darlan deal was still intensifying in both Washington and London. Butch—who was in charge of press relations and had heard a helluva lot more about it than he wanted to hear—couldn’t see how the controversy could be defused. Not as long as Darlan was still around, anyway. Too bad there wasn’t a way to ship the impertinent little bastard off somewhere. Devil’s Island, maybe.
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