The General's Women

by Susan Wittig Albert

  An armed guard stood in the corridor outside the General’s office. Because Kay didn’t have an official pass, he made her wait until Tex came out to vouch for her. Whatever was going on was serious, she thought, judging from the urgent whispers traded by officers hurrying back and forth. Down the hall, a teletype rattled and quit, then rattled again. In another room, she could see a bank of switchboards lit with flashing lights, and uniformed operators, like stage magicians, deftly manipulating the cords. What was it? she wondered uneasily. What had happened? A substantial German advance? An unexpected Allied loss?

  None of that, thankfully, but something that provoked an enormous uncertainty: an assassination. When Tex finally emerged, he told her that Darlan—the Vichy French admiral with whom Eisenhower had made what the London newspapers called “a devil’s deal”—had been murdered the day before. No one was sure what might happen next. There were rumblings of an uprising among the French military. Would there be other assassinations? Bombings? The Algiers police had quickly captured the assassin—Chapelle, a young Frenchman barely out of his teens—but it wasn’t clear who put him up to the murder because the admiral had enemies everywhere. De Gaulle’s Free French forces, the Algerian police, the British, even the American OSS (the Office of Strategic Services)—all had plenty of reason to want the man dead. Exactly who was behind the assassination might never be known.

  In the meantime, General Clark, who had been involved with Darlan since his secret trip to North Africa back in October, had managed to reach Eisenhower at the front. The Boss would be back in Algiers that evening, Butch said. So, on this Christmas Day, in the midst of the tension that filled the St. George like an electrical storm, there was nothing for Kay to do except get settled. She spent the day getting her papers in order and collecting pieces of her uniform—new skirt, jacket, slacks, blouses, shoes, cap—from a supply depot a couple of blocks down Michelet. She needed a heavy coat, too, for the weather was expected to turn cold. She stood in one queue after another, and it was late afternoon before she got back to the office. She changed into her new uniform and sat down at her desk.

  “These are your maps, Irish,” Beetle said, dropping a stack in front of her. “Better study up. You start driving tomorrow—and Algiers is a bitch of a place to find your way around in. The roads are like corkscrews, and hubcap-deep in mud. And the Germans are still bombing.”

  “Can’t be any worse than London during the Blitz,” Kay said. “And I won’t be hauling any dead bodies.”

  Across the room, Tex gave her a wicked grin. “Yeah, but it’s the wrong side of the road for you, kid. You’ll have to get used to a left-hand drive.”

  Mickey, who was in charge of shopping for the General’s household, took the ration coupons Tex had obtained for him. “And just wait till you see the armored Cadillac the General’s got lined up for you. Bigger’n a Sherman tank.” He held up his hand, palm out. “Swear to God, Kay. So big it won’t go through most of them narrow streets out there.”

  “Watch me,” Kay retorted cheerfully. “If I can’t drive it, I’ll fly it.” She was smiling. In spite of the worries over the Darlan murder, everything seemed so normal. All they were missing was the Boss.

  And then, just as she was opening a map of Algiers, the General walked in, with Harry Butcher on his heels. His shoulders were stooped, his shoes were caked with mud, and he looked bone-weary. But his blue eyes lit up when he saw her and his grin nearly split his face.

  “Kay!” he exclaimed. “Hey, glad you’re here! Stay put until we get this goddamned mess sorted out, will you? Seems to me Beetle said something about a Christmas party at his place tonight.” He stopped, frowning. “It is Christmas, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes, sir,” she said happily. And suddenly, just like that, she knew she had come home.

  • • •

  Ike’s first order of business was to get Mickey to build up the fire in the fireplace. It was the only heat in the whole damned office and he was glad to have it. His second was to write a note of sympathy to be hand-delivered to Admiral Darlan’s widow. His third was to call Beetle in for a briefing.

  “Were you surprised?” Beetle asked, after he had run through the homicide reports from the police and the situation reports from Giraud and the Vichy French posts around Algiers.

  “Don’t ask.” Ike took out a cigarette.

  “Like that, huh?” Beetle raised an eyebrow.

  “Like that.” The battlefield was cleaner, but sometimes things had to be handled otherwise. Lies and deception and calculation were the ordinary commerce of war. The swifter the act, the fewer people who knew, the better. A line from a long-ago reading of Hamlet crossed his mind. If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly. It had been done quickly, while he was conveniently out of the city. The mop-up would no doubt be just as quick.

  He fished out a cigarette and lit it. “Probably a good idea if the OSS agents left town for a few days.” He pulled in a lungful of smoke. “Where’s de Gaulle on this? What have we heard from London? I’ll need to talk to Clark first. Then get Giraud over here. And coffee. A couple of buckets of coffee. Hot coffee.” He frowned. “And get Mickey to bring in more coal for that fireplace, will you? All it does is smoke, damn it.” Over the fireplace, somebody had hung a large framed photograph of President Roosevelt. FDR’s face was already stained with soot.

  “Right.” Beetle headed for the door, then turned. “We’re still on for a late Christmas dinner tonight, if you’re not too tired. Patton sent a couple of live turkeys over from Casablanca. Ethel has been planning quite a spread.”

  “Not tired at all, damn it,” Ike lied. He hated it when anybody worried about his health, but the truth was that his chest hurt and he couldn’t seem to get rid of the hacking cough he’d acquired in those damned damp tunnels on Gibraltar. He straightened his shoulders. “I hope Ethel has already got the turkeys roasted. I’m hungry enough to eat them both myself.” Beetle had arranged for Ethel’s transfer to Algiers, and Ike was glad. Beetle was easier to get along with, now that he was shacking up with the attractive nurse. His bridge game was better, too.

  Beetle grinned. “You bet she has. I’ll get Clark. And coffee.”

  Clark came, and after an extended discussion, a series of coded cables was dispatched to Washington and London. Giraud arrived, stiffly French and correct as always, and after a twenty-minute discussion, Clark left, taking Giraud with him. By that time, the replies to the cables had come back from Whitehall and the Pentagon, and more cables were sent. There were telephone calls, and more telephone calls, some of them so static-laden that he was forced to shout to be heard.

  Finally, just before nine, Ike had done everything he could on the Darlan issue. It was all over but the post-game quarterbacking, although there would no doubt be plenty of that, in every newspaper on the globe. He hated to see his name in the papers. It was usually embedded in a hash of the facts. He drained his third cup of coffee, stubbed out his cigarette, and pushed his chair back from his desk.

  “Kay,” he shouted through the open door. “Kay, get in here and let me see that you’re all in one piece.”

  The drive to the front had been a long one, with plenty of time to think. The news of the Strathallan’s sinking had pulled him up short and made him understand just how much he cared about the girl, how much he wanted her here, with him. But nothing was going to make him forget his duty to his wife, and to himself, as an honorable officer. From here on out, he was behaving like Kay’s commanding officer. Period. Paragraph. End of story.

  He had this resolution fixed firmly in his mind when Kay came into his office and he stepped around the desk to greet her. She stood in front of him, smiling and composed, and he was flooded with an unexpected—and unexpectedly disconcerting—warmth.

  “You see?” she said. “All in one piece, and newly outfitted. Getting torpedoed was not much fun and I don’t plan to do it again. But no damage done.” She snapped him a credible
salute. “I’m glad to be here, sir.”

  “We’re glad you’re here,” he said, steadying himself, surprised by the sudden flare of desire that threaten to undo his resolve. He had never wanted anything as much as he wanted this young Irishwoman, whom he had so nearly lost to the sea. She was even lovelier than he remembered, the light catching in her auburn hair, her head tilted, her mobile mouth curving in a small smile—

  He lifted his hand and took an impulsive step toward her before he was able to check himself. He fumbled in his shirt pocket for another cigarette as if that was all he had meant to do, and turned back to his chair.

  “I haven’t yet talked to a soldier who’s been torpedoed and lived to tell about it,” he said stiffly. “You’ll be the first. Have a seat and give me the story.”

  He lit his cigarette and leaned back as he listened to her description of the storm the ship had sailed through in the Atlantic, the torpedo strike in the Mediterranean, the lifeboats and rafts, the night on the open water, the rescue by HMS Verity.

  “They took us to Oran,” she said. “I checked in at headquarters there and called you.” She took a breath and met his eyes directly. “And then good luck for me—smashing good luck, actually. As it happened, Dick Arnold was there. Colonel Richard Arnold. My fiancé.”

  Was her tone defiant? Her glance certainly was. “Excellent,” he made himself say. “So you didn’t have to sleep on the street. I suppose Arnold gave you a place to spend the night.” He heard the dryness in his tone and despised it.

  “Yes.” She was poised but tense and unsmiling. He had the sense that she had made up her mind to something. To what? She took a breath.

  “Actually, it was worth being torpedoed,” she said, “if that’s what it took to give Dick and me a few hours together.”

  Eisenhower was lanced by a stab of envy, imagining Arnold—young Arnold, her age, twenty years his junior—making love to this woman, holding her all night in his arms, lying beside her in his bed. All night. What would he give for the privilege of—

  But he was a goddamned fool. He pulled on his cigarette and—carefully—allowed himself to say part of what was in his mind, editing it from the singular to the plural.

  “All of us here had a few bad moments until we heard you’d been picked up. If something had happened to you—” He paused, considered, and said the thing a commanding officer would say. “I’d be the one to write the letter to your mother. I’d sure as hell hate that. Kul would never forgive me for letting you come out here.” He pushed his chair back and stood up. “Enough. It’s Christmas. Beetle’s invited us to his big, fancy house for a late supper—turkey and the trimmings, he says.” He picked up a set of keys from his desk and tossed them to her. “Your car.” Butch thought it was a gift to her, and maybe that’s what he had imagined. But that was foolish, too. He was a foolish old man.

  She caught the keys in midair and with a laugh, turned them over in her fingers. “Mickey says it’s big as a Sherman.”

  “Bigger. Meaner, too.” He pointed to the door. “Let’s see if you can handle it.”

  The Cadillac was big and Ike could tell that the left-hand drive felt awkward to her. But the streets were empty of vehicles and they didn’t have far to go. He sat beside her and gave her directions to Beetle’s rented hillside villa. It belonged to a wealthy Frenchman and boasted terraces and gardens, mosaic floors, and luxurious furniture. Beetle, in his element, dropped his sonofabitch office persona and played the gracious host. Butch had brought a young Red Cross nurse named Molly (he wouldn’t be writing to his wife Ruth about her, Ike guessed). And even Mickey had a date—Pearlie, a shy, pretty young WAC who seemed awed by the company of officers.

  The table was splendid: traditional American turkey and stuffing and a great many Algerian foods, with an English plum pudding for Kay and plenty of champagne for everyone. As if in defiance of the day’s ugliness, there was laughter and singing and more champagne. Somewhere, somebody had found a limp scrap of mistletoe, and the playful kissing was accompanied by loud hoots and cheers as, one after another, the women were enticed beneath it. Ike got in line and to resounding laughter, cheerfully bestowed an enjoyable avuncular kiss on Ethel, Pearlie, Molly, and Sue Sarafian, one of the office stenographers.

  And then it was Kay’s turn. But when he looked for her, she had disappeared, so that was the end of the game. A little later, she was back again, standing quietly apart from the champagne-fueled merriment. He felt drawn to her, despite his resolution.

  But hell’s bells, he told himself, it’s Christmas. He’d been working hard, damn it, harder than anybody else in this man’s army. He deserved a little celebratory kiss. He’d kissed all the others—why not Kay? He waited until the group went out on the terrace to admire the full moon over the Mediterranean, then took her arm and pulled her under the mistletoe.

  “Your turn, Irish,” he said, brushing his lips lightly against her cheek, then her mouth. He put a hand on her waist. She was slimmer than he remembered, and he was suddenly jolted by a deep, strong hunger. He put his arms around her and pulled her closer. She half-turned her head, but he put his fingers under her chin and kissed her again, his mouth seeking hers. For a moment, she gave his kiss back to him, urgently—and then just as urgently pushed herself away.

  “I can’t, Ike,” she whispered, stepping back. Her eyes were on his, almost pleading, and she let out a ragged breath. “I . . . just can’t. You know why.”

  He dropped his hand, instantly regretting. “I know.” He heard himself say the most honest thing he had said yet. “I can’t either, Kay. But I wish I could.” The words were almost wrenched out of him. “Oh, God, I wish I could.” But he couldn’t pull his eyes from hers.

  Her eyes widened and, half unwillingly, she lifted her hand as if to touch his face. Impulsively, he caught her fingers and kissed them. What might have happened next, he would never know, for a gust of Mediterranean wind pushed the terrace door open and the sound of laughter blew into the room, followed by Butch and Molly. They were chuckling at a private joke.

  Ike stepped back. In as normal a tone as he could manage, he said, “There’s a small black dog at my house who can’t wait to see you, Kay. Will you come over and have breakfast with Telek and Butch and me in the morning?”

  “Oh, Telek!” Her hand, her fingers—the fingers he had kissed—went to her mouth. “Oh, that would be the best Christmas present ever!”

  “Even better than the Eisenhower Cadillac?” Butch asked with a laugh. “It’s got to be the fanciest car in Algiers.”

  Kay rolled her eyes. “Infinitely better. It was love at first sight with that Scottie. It’ll take a while for me to make friends with the car.”

  “Let’s hope you can knock some sense into that damn-fool little dog,” Ike said wryly. “He’s decided he’s boss of the place.”

  “Yeah,” Butch said. “And he shows it by forgetting he was ever house-trained. He needs somebody to lay down the law.”

  “And that’s where I come in, I suppose,” Kay said lightly. “I get to walk the dog.”

  Ike put on a grin. “He’ll be happy to see you, I promise.” He straightened his shoulders, glad now for the interruption. In spite of his resolution, he’d almost lost his head again. Who knows what might have happened if Butch hadn’t come in when he did?

  • • •

  It was very late when Kay got to bed in her room at the clinic, but sleep was slow in coming. The memory of Ike’s arms around her was as powerful as his embrace had been. In answer to his wrenched I wish I could she had wanted to echo Oh, so do I. So do I! But however much she might have wanted that kiss, she had been constrained by her promise to marry Dick, just as—she knew—Ike was constrained by his promise to his wife, by his duty. Still, if Butch and Molly hadn’t come in just then, she might have given in to him and to herself. But then what? One kiss, another, and what after that? She couldn’t answer that question.

  When she finally fell asleep, she dreamed tha
t she was in a lifeboat, like the one that had saved her from the Strathallan. She was alone in the large boat, oars in her hands, trying frantically to row toward a beach where Dick was standing amid the wreckage of war, his hands out to her, frantically calling her to come to him. But no matter how hard she rowed, a strong offshore wind and current kept pushing her away from the beach, pulling her out to the vast and stormy sea.

  • • •

  At six-thirty, she got up and showered and dressed and drove to Ike’s rented villa for breakfast. Built on the lip of a green hill high above Algiers, it bore the apt Arabic name of Villa dar el Ouad—the Villa of the Family. In the same compound as Beetle’s house, it was not nearly so luxurious. The place was large—seven bedrooms, she would learn, and a library with a Ping-Pong table, a music room with a grand piano, and a mosaic-tiled bathroom with a tub almost large enough to swim in—and set far enough back from the street to afford a little privacy.

  But it wasn’t the comfortable privacy Kay had loved at Telegraph Cottage. There was a wariness about this place, for Algiers had only recently been taken from the enemy, and at any moment, the war might invade from the sea or fall from the sky. A vicious-looking spike strip was deployed across the driveway, uniformed guards patrolled the grounds, anti-aircraft guns were dug in at strategic points, and the sentry stationed on the terrace asked to see her identification and searched her bag before she was allowed into the house.

  When Kay walked through the door, all that was forgotten. She was met by a bouncing black ball of a puppy, barking with wild delight. She scooped the little dog up in her arms, holding him tight and burying her face in his fur. “I’ve missed you, funny little boy,” she whispered as Telek lavished kisses on her. “Oh, I’ve missed you!”