Dry Bones

by Peter Quinn

  After Bartlett left, Dunne and the two Czechs carried Van Hull to the bathroom, sat him in a chair, put his head in the sink, and ran cold water over him. Horak went upstairs and came back with two sets of fresh clothes, suits, shirts, and shoes. They stripped off Van Hull’s old clothes, re-dressed him, and laid him on his cot.

  Dunne changed into his new clothes. He gathered his and Van Hull’s discarded outfits and checked the pockets before he stuck them in the tall garbage pail. In the pocket of Van Hull’s trousers was a badly creased, tattered photo of a handsome, youthful lieutenant with blond wavy hair. His lips were parted as if he were about to speak or sing or ask a question. Van Hull must have had it with him since they left Bari. Dunne strained to make out the faded handwritten inscription on the back: Dick, One man loved the pilgrim soul in you / And loved the sorrows of your changing face. Mike.

  He lit a cigarette, exhaled through his nose. He should be anxious, worrying whether they’d be intercepted and detained by the Russians. But he wasn’t. Operation Maxwell was over. The war with the Japs was still on. But the OSS was undoubtedly readying a new set of field operatives for that mission, highly trained, eager men—crème de la crème—their enthusiasm not yet curdled by experience, memories not yet tainted by the memory of those who never come back.

  Van Hull was motionless. Dunne gently lifted Van Hull’s hands and folded them on his chest. He’d learned almost nothing about Van Hull in their time together, none of the details of childhood or prewar life and career, yet he knew everything he needed—or wanted—to know, everything important.

  Dunne tucked the photo he’d found into the pocket of Van Hull’s jacket. His handsome face was relaxed, peaceful. The cold water left it with a rosy glow.

  Jan Horak appeared at the door. It was time to rendezvous with Bartlett. They carried Van Hull upstairs into the waiting car, raced to the airport, and boarded the plane, which took off immediately. Once they were aloft, Bartlett broke out a fresh supply of champagne. Van Hull abstained. He sat beside Dr. Herschel Cernak, a frail, shy, white-haired man in his seventies, the horror he’d witnessed imprinted in his wide, anguished eyes. He and Van Hull spent the entire flight to Paris conversing in German.

  They landed in Paris and spent the night at the Ritz, a luxurious but very brief interlude for Van Hull and Dunne, who were flown to London the next morning. Dunne expected an intense debriefing. Except for an hour’s conversation with one of Bartlett’s aides, there was none. A doctor examined Dunne and advised him that unless he wanted to walk with a limp for the rest of his life, he required a corrective operation on his ankle.

  Van Hull came to see him while he was recuperating. He was thin but otherwise his old movie-star self. General Donovan had called him back to Washington to help make the case for keeping the OSS in business. He held out a soft, circular package wrapped in plain brown paper.

  Dunne tore off the wrapping. Inside was a roll of toilet paper.

  “I promised, remember?”

  “I’ll keep it as a reminder of our vacation in Slovakia with Maxwell Tours.”

  “Minute I found that photo of Mike Jahn in my pocket, I knew who put it there.”

  “Figured you went to a lot of trouble to keep it.”

  “The quote on the back is from Yeats.”

  “Whaddaya know? My favorite poet.”

  Van Hull laughed. “Mine, too. ‘When You Are Old and Grey’ is the title.” Van Hull handed Dunne a second package in the same brown wrapping.

  “What’s this?”

  “Open it and see.”

  Inside was a book. He read the title aloud: “The Oxford Book of Modern Verse.”

  “A first edition. Yeats edited it. Given your newfound love of poetry, I thought you’d enjoy it.”

  That was the last Dunne saw of Van Hull. He’d believed their paths had permanently diverged until Bassante’s phone call.

  The pub had filled up. The crowd made it feel less gloomy. He resisted having another scotch. Didn’t see much use in waiting until tomorrow to give his answer.

  When she opened the door to Columbia Casualty & Life, Miss Thompson couldn’t hide her surprise. “Why, you caught me just in time.”

  He stepped inside. The office was as empty as it had been earlier. “Everyone has left for the day. I was just closing up.”

  “The answer is yes.”

  “I’ll convey it right away.” Her wide smile gleamed with alabaster teeth.

  December 1945

  LONDON

  SEVERAL TIMES BASSANTE SCHEDULED MEETINGS AND EACH TIME postponed because of “urgent business.” His patience at an end, Dunne was surprised to find Miss Thompson at his door, pert and pretty in fur-collared coat and gray hat, brim turned up, with a bottle wrapped in Christmas gift paper. “’Tis the season. Major Bassante hopes this ration of French bubbly will keep you in the holiday spirit. He also asked I convey his personal regret at the unavoidable nature of these delays.”

  “Tell him thanks, but I’m on my way home.” He forced an unconvincing grin. “Merry Christmas.”

  At the landing, she wiggled the fingers of her right hand, a nonchalant good-bye. “I trust you’ve been good so Santa won’t feel compelled to shove a lump of coal up your … your”—she put forefinger to lips as if searching for the right word—“stocking.”

  Christmas Eve, he went solo to midnight Mass at the Jesuit church on Farm Street, a long ceremony, three priests, clouds of incense, and a well-trained boys’ choir. Before Mass, he’d shared with Bud Mulholland the bottle of Dom Pérignon Bassante had sent via Miss Thompson. He dozed during the sermon. In a suddenly empty church, Miss Thompson did a stripper’s strut down the aisle, hips swaying rhythmically, fingers wiggling enticingly. She let her coat drop to the floor. Besides a sparkling, champagne smile all she was wearing were coal-black stockings and black high heels.

  He woke with a start. No kind of dream for church. The altar boys repeated the concluding words of the Suscipiat with clarity and emphasis: “… totiusque Ecclesiae suae sanctae.”

  He waited until Christmas morning to open the present Roberta had sent: blue-and-white-striped shirt and tie from Rogers Peet that matched perfectly. The accompanying letter was affectionate and understanding. She knew he wouldn’t have put off his return if it hadn’t involved business of real consequence. She just hoped it would be over very soon. “It feels like forever, Fin: Long the skies are overcast / But soon the clouds will pass / You’ll be here at last.”

  Rush of homesickness surged from stomach to throat. Long ago and far away. Goddamn Bassante and his last-minute pitch.

  Dunne wore the shirt and tie to the Christmas dinner Mulholland had booked in the private dining facilities of a high-class hotel. No greasy, skinny-assed goose, I promise, Mulholland wrote on the invitation. This will be an American affair from soup to nuts. He’d hired his own cook—a colored sergeant who boasted he’d helped run General Eisenhower’s kitchen—and had him prepare a Yuletide feast, centerpiece an outsized rib roast liberated from the larder of the General Staff.

  The guests comprised a mix of former OSS men, Army Air Corps, and Naval Intelligence, several accompanied by slim, wan, impossibly polite English girls in their late twenties. The girls fussed over the hors d’oeuvres. The men mustered at the bar. Mulholland handed the cook the carving knife and jokingly threatened to use it on him if the roast were overdone. “Better be the American way, medium rare, or else!”

  “Don’t worry, done it right for Ike, do it right for you.” The cook wiped knife on apron, muttered, “Wasn’t for my cookin’ Ike wouldn’t had the swing he needed to roll them Krauts.”

  Dinner was served. The roast was medium rare and delicious. Mulholland summoned the cook from the kitchen for a round of applause. Everyone ate heartily, especially the girls. After dinner, one of them did an a cappella solo, a bluebird over white cliffs of Dover, tomorrow, just you wait and see. Sweet but sad.

  They went back to the bar.

  “This i
s beginning to feel like a goddamn wake,” Mulholland barked. “War’s over, everybody! Get some goddamn music on the radio.” The bartender tuned in a tribute to Glenn Miller, who’d gone missing the previous Christmas when the plane carrying him to rejoin his fifty-piece Army Air Force Band in Paris went down over the English Channel.

  “Moonlight Serenade” came on. Some of the guests started to dance with their dates. The party finally took off when a late arrival showed up with a portable phonograph and a mixed stack of V-Disc 78s and prewar swing records made by Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, and Tommy Dorsey.

  “Come on,” he roared. “Let’s get it shaking!”

  Dining room became dance hall. Table and chairs were pushed against the wall. The English girls, previously reserved, revealed themselves expert, uninhibited jitterbuggers. Even Mulholland joined in, doing a passable Lindy. The longer it went on, the more girls and soldiers wandered in—mostly Army Air Corps—spontaneous jumble of jiving, swinging, colliding couples caught up celebrating first postwar Christmas.

  Peace on earth—long as it lasts. Goodwill to all—for now.

  The cook stood next to Dunne at the bar. “Man, makes you wonder, don’t it, the way Mister Charlie can’t abide the colored but can’t get enough of our music.”

  Next morning, Dunne received another telegram from Bassante with a New Year’s greeting and solemn promise to keep the next appointment, which he scheduled for the following week, at the Drummond Hotel, at one in the afternoon.

  January 1946

  DRUMMOND HOTEL, LONDON

  DUNNE ARRIVED EARLY. THE CLOCK IN THE HOTEL LOBBY WAS FIVE minutes shy of one. The only other guest, a tweedy, professorial type, slouched next to the softly playing radio in the corner. Dunne caught a few lines of a BBC commentary on “the spirituals of the American Negro.” Uninterested in the radio as well as the copies of the London Times and the Tribune splayed on the stub-legged table in front of his chair, Dunne signaled for the waiter.

  Black swallowtail coat hanging from curtain-rod shoulders, the waiter turned out to be the same one from a year ago. He approached with a slight limp. His parchment-like skin tautly stretched from crown of head across sharp jut of cheek and awkwardly prominent Adam’s apple. He replaced the used napkin with a fresh one and served Dunne’s scotch and side of water from a tray the same tarnished silver as his thinning hair. Decidedly less harried than he’d been the year before, he lowered the glasses onto the table with the solemnity of a priest placing a chalice on the altar.

  Dunne was resolved not to give vent to his resentment at Bassante’s several reschedulings. What good would it do? Bassante would have his excuses—true or false, Dunne didn’t give a hoot. All he cared about was finishing this last bit of business and getting home—ASAP.

  Bassante arrived punctually at one and checked his coat. His well-tailored blue chalk-stripe suit gave him a passing resemblance to those transatlantic diplomats in the newsreels shuttling in pursuit of a framework for Europe’s postwar reconstruction. He leaned over the front desk. His needle nose pointed down at the clerk, who nodded in Dunne’s direction.

  “Don’t get up.” Bassante gestured for Dunne to stay where he was. “I owe you a mea maxima culpa.” He rearranged the adjoining chair so they sat shoulder to shoulder. “I see you’ve already ordered a drink. It would be rude to make you drink alone. This nation, unlike ours, frowns on bad manners.”

  The waiter returned. Bassante ordered a glass of sherry. His face had lost none of its fierce angularity, but he seemed more at ease than in Bari. “Let me reiterate my apology for all these delays as well as my great gratitude for your patience.”

  “Just so you know, I’m over my surgery, my papers are filed, so whatever this involves, it better be quick.”

  “It will be, I promise.” Bassante felt under his chair and did the same to the table.

  “Are you doing what I think you’re doing?”

  “What’s that?” Bassante sat back.

  “Scouting a mike.”

  “I suggest you do the same.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Did you choose the chair or did someone direct you?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Check the chair and we’ll know.”

  Dunne ran his hand across its underside. Nothing.

  The waiter returned. A tray with sherry-filled crystal glass was balanced on his right palm. “Will that be all, sir?”

  “Fine for now, thank you.”

  “As you wish, sir.” He retreated with studied footsteps that mitigated his lameness.

  Bassante raised his glass in a quasi toast. “Here’s to Kipling. He had it right. ‘Lo, all our pomp of yesterday / Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! / The tumult and the shouting dies / The Captains and the Kings depart.’ No empire lasts forever. The best the Brits can do is shuffle off with a modicum of dignity. This is among the truths—”

  “Look, Bassante, let’s get down to business, now! The war’s done, and I’m going home.” Dunne slammed down his glass. The sound echoed through the room.

  The gentleman by the radio gave a daggerlike stare in their direction. Obviously perplexed—if not surprised—by their rude behavior, he fumbled with the dial, momentarily amplifying a snatch of the spiritual he’d been listening to: “Oh those bones, oh those bones, oh those skeleton bones.” He flipped the dial in the opposite direction, turned the radio off, and headed to the dining room.

  Bassante sighed. “I’m afraid we’ve put another dent in Anglo-American relations.”

  “Let’s cut to the chase, okay?”

  “You’re right. I apologize again. It’s complicated.” Bassante picked up the Tribune from the table. He crossed his legs, resting right ankle atop left knee. Toe caps of his narrow, elegant black wing tips were decorated with intersecting circles of subtle perforations. “I don’t know if you saw it, but there was an important article in this paper back in October.”

  “I don’t read the papers, especially the English ones.” A taxi pulled up in front of the window. A bowler-hatted Brit with umbrella hooked on his forearm got out. The taxi idled where it was, awaiting another hire. Dunne felt ready to run out, hop in, get back to his quarters, and start packing.

  Bassante folded the newspaper and tapped Dunne’s knee. “You should look up this one. Everyone should. ‘You and the Atom Bomb,’ by Orwell, an English journalist. Bleak but prophetic. What we face, he writes, is not the kind of drôle de guerre—the phony war that preceded the German blitzkrieg. This is a struggle neither side can wage outright. It will be fought through subversion and in proxy wars, a guerre froide, or cold war, a ‘peace that is no peace.’ It’s already under way. No way to tell when it will end.”

  “What’s any of this got to do with Dick Van Hull?”

  “I’m the one who got Dick involved, or at least got him started. Donovan called him back to Washington to help save the OSS. Once Truman pulled the plug, I recruited Dick to the Counter–intelligence Corps. The CIC’s brief, I explained to him, is ensuring that the prosecution of war criminals doesn’t end with the handful of headliners on trial in Nuremberg. The Reich’s terror apparatus wasn’t limited to the SS, the Gestapo, and the like. The murder of millions wasn’t the work of a small gang of fanatics.

  “The crimes couldn’t have been carried out without the schreibtischtäter, the ‘desk criminals’—eugenicists, physicians, scientists, industrialists, railroad officials, professors, bureaucrats, and paper pushers who signed the necessary forms and assigned subordinates to do the dirty work. The British War Crimes Group has ten thousand names of those involved in abetting mass murder. The actual number is far beyond that—horrifyingly far.”

  “How do you try that many?”

  “At a bare minimum you put in place a process that establishes the dimensions of the crime, identifies those involved, punishes the worst offenders, and publicly brands and bars their accomplices from government employment.”

  “Isn
’t that what’s going on in Nuremberg?”

  “It’s a start. An infinitesimally small start. But more and more, the emphasis is putting the war behind us, wiping the slate clean, and squaring off against the Russians.”

  “You still haven’t explained the fix that Dick Van Hull is in.”

  “I’m getting there. With his linguistic skills and OSS experience, he was perfect for the job. He was with me at a CIC briefing last summer when it came up that Reinhard Gehlen and several adjutants were in Washington to confer with some of the brass.”

  “Should I know who Reinhard Gehlen is?”

  “Forgive me for taking for granted what I shouldn’t. Gehlen was made head of German military intelligence for Eastern Operations when Operation Barbarossa was launched. He amassed a tremendous amount of data on the Red Army. No mere observer, he was intimately familiar with the fact that at least three million Soviet POWs were systematically starved to death, that the interrogation of prisoners routinely included torture and execution, that millions more civilians were murdered throughout the Baltics, Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland, and that the extermination of European Jews had been undertaken by the SS.

  “After Hitler fired him in March of ’45, Gehlen and a cadre of aides transferred the reams of information they’d gathered on the Red Army to microfiche. The Wehrmacht’s surrender was unconditional. Gehlen’s was on his terms. Although he was far more implicated than Nuremberg defendants like Konstantin von Neurath and Franz von Papen, who were never near a battlefield or concentration camp, Gehlen offered his archives and expertise in exchange for immunity. He counted on present utility trumping unsavory past. He hasn’t been disappointed. He’s been returned to the American zone in Germany and put to work. Van Hull vociferously opposed Gehlen getting a free pass.”