by Bill Mesce
“We’ll know in a few hours, won’t we? Perhaps we’re the stones.”
*
“How do I invest in this place?” Kneece asked. “Business looks good.”
Woody Kneece was commenting on the whirl in the Søndre Strømfjord Operations shack. The cramped tin-sided hut buzzed with men flitting round maps on tables and walks, chalking data on a gridded slate giving operational information, hovering before a bank of communications equipment. Doheeny shepherded Harry and Kneece to a corner out of the flow of traffic.
“The dispatcher says it’s been like this for a couple of weeks now, and the same down at Cape Farewell,” Doheeny told them. “With that much cargo moving through this fast, I’m guessing something major’s cooking in the ETO. They’re also racing a storm front coming down from the north. They shoved one plane out of here just before we got in, and there’s another one five minutes behind us they want out before the snow hits. You guys are going to have to hotfoot it if you want to beat the storm. The strip at Godthåb’s too small for us, so we’ll sit it out here for you. That little puddle-jumper you saw on the runway is for you. They’re already putting your bags on it. So…” The captain held out his hand. “Happy trails, fellas.”
*
“If you guys never landed on skis before,” the pilot cautioned, “brace yourselves.”
The “landing strip” was nothing more than an area of tamped-down snow marked off with flares, outside the meager cluster of snow-topped buildings that was Godthåb. The Britannica will tell you that Godthåb is the provincial capital for South Greenland. However grandiose that may sound, it looked no more than a hamlet to Harry. The pilot hadn’t exaggerated; the landing was a teeth-jarring experience, even after the plane was taxiing toward a large shed and the man in the parka trudged over and pulled open the cabin door. Harry gasped at the incredible cold that whooshed in. The moisture in his nostrils instantly froze.
“What the hell’sa matter with you, Fred?” the parka-clad man snapped. He gestured at the falling snow. “You think you could cut it any closer?”
“Fred” patted the man on his fur-covered cheek. “You worry too much, Mother.”
While the pilot and the man in the parka hooked a towline from a tracked “Weasel” to the plane to tow it into the shed, another man in winter furs came lumbering up to the plane.
“Captain Kneece? Major Voss? I’m Corporal Olinsky. Want to follow me?”
Harry and Kneece zipped up their parkas and tugged up their fur-lined hoods, then followed Olinsky toward a nest of Quonsets linked to each other by a network of waist-high trenches dug in the snow.
Olinsky pointed beyond the Quonsets to low squat houses half buried in the snow, windows yellow with firelight peeping out from under snow-laden eaves. A winding road — really just an open strip of snow twisting between the buildings — seemed to mark the center of town, passing beneath the guardian steeple of the church.
“You fellas ever been through before?” Olinsky called over his shoulder. “That’s the town over there.”
Slogging through the snow, bent against the wind, Harry had no breath to spare for a comment, but Kneece did: “So that’d be downtown Godthåb?”
Olinsky laughed. “Yeah! Downtown! Downtown Goddamn’s more like it. Dance halls, fine dining, and the Bijou! Too bad for you guys we got none of that! A hot night in downtown God damn is watchin’ the clock hands go around! Get a good look at ’er, such as she is, ’cause after this storm, there’s not even gonna be that much to see!” He helped them down into one of the trenches. “Wanna see somethin’? New guys get a kick out of this.” Olinsky pulled the fur trim of his hood away from his mouth and spat. Even with the wind in his ears, Harry heard a small but distinct snap: The glob of saliva landed on the snow as a solid projectile. “Froze ’fore it hit the damn ground! How goddamn cold is that?”
Harry needed no such colorful demonstrations to concede the brutal temperature. Less than five minutes, and the small areas of Harry’s forehead and cheek open to the air already throbbed with pain. A merciless stinging plagued his extremities.
“G’ahead,” Olinsky said. “Try it.”
Kneece pulled back his hood enough to spit clear of the fringe of fur. Again came the snap. “My Uncle Ray would say it’s colder ’n a brass toilet seat on the shady side of an iceberg,” he said, delighted. “And he was talking about it being forty degrees.”
“Above zero?” Olinsky said in good-natured amazement. “Damn, Cap’n, I’d be happy if the windchill around here bottomed out at forty below! Forty above? That’s not cold! That’s the damn tropics!”
*
“What’s all this guff I hear about them making Veronica Lake pin her hair back?” Despite the worsening storm, and the fact that a member of his command had been murdered a thousand miles across the North Atlantic, confronted with two officers who’d just come another thousand miles to query him on the matter, the only issue in which Captain Israel Blume seemed to express any acute interest was that of Miss Lake’s new coif.
“I heard it was the War Department asked her to do it,” Kneece replied obligingly “All the ladies are working in the dee-fense plants. A lot of them were wearing that peekaboo number Veronica had. And it seems the ladies’ hair kept getting tangled in the machinery. So the War Department asked ol’ Veronica if she’d do something different with her hair.”
“Veronica Lake without the peekaboo.” Blume shook his head glumly. “I can’t see where that would still look like Veronica Lake.”
Kneece nodded in somber agreement. “Well, factually, she doesn’t.”
Olinsky, who, out of his parka, carried a soft babyish roundness to his face, had led them to the Quonset serving as mess and rec hall. There had been a halfhearted attempt to bring some Christmas cheer to the drab room by draping sickly garlands round the windows. An equally feeble Yuletide tableau was set on a table against one wall. It consisted of a plastic Coca-Cola-bearing Father Christmas and pieces of wood nailed together in the approximate skeletal shape of a Christmas tree. The “tree” was festooned with strips of the same poor garland as the windows and some makeshift ornaments: tableware, pieces of scrap wood and paper cut into stars and circles childishly daubed with paint. Two dozen soldiers were scattered round the tables eating, playing cards or checkers, flipping through magazines with the look of men who’d already flipped through those magazines a dozen times. A Victrola had been playing “You’ll Never Know” as Harry and the others had entered. By the time they had finished peeling off their parkas and flight jackets, the record had finished. No one bothered to stop the Victrola from resetting and beginning the record again.
Olinsky had led them to a dark-complected, curly-haired fellow, thirtyish or so, with a heavy brow over large, dark eyes that gave him a fixed look of intense study Israel Blume was trying to stay warm inside a West Point varsity sweater pulled over a West Point sweatshirt and under a very civilian-looking plaid blanket draped round his shoulders. Blume had looked casually up from his meal and offered neither salute nor greeting. His gaze flicked over Harry and Kneece. The wind had escalated to a howl and the windows were white with blowing snow. “Seems like you guys made it just under the wire. Help yourselves to some chow.”
The cook dished them each a plate of two fleshy lamb chops, a slab of bread, a hill of mashed potatoes, and a microscopic portion of sliced carrots and peas. Blume fixed Olinsky with that intense look of his when they’d returned to his table and said, “Grown-up stuff,” nodding the corporal to another table. Soon thereafter came the elocution on Veronica Lake and her new hairstyle.
Kneece looked respectfully down at the meat on his plate. “Lamb chops. You guys are living pretty high.”
“Oh, yeah,” Blume said flatly. “We’re living in the lap of luxury. I may move here permanently after the war.”
“I’m just thinking what my wife has to go through to get a pound of hamburger these days,” Harry said.
“The rationing gett
ing that bad?” Blume asked.
“This year meat, cheese, and fat went on the list. Ground beef was hitting twenty cents a pound before I went into the Army.”
Blume’s lips pursed appreciatively. “The locals, they raise sheep. These chops are like hamburger around here. Spend a month or two here. These chops won’t seem so special. And not every part of a sheep is chops. You ever have mutton?” Harry and Kneece shook their heads.
“Don’t.”
Kneece nodded. “We had a hell of a fine cook back home, so I know what a good chop tastes like. This ol’ boy you have in the kitchen knows what he’s doing.”
“He should. He cost me six gallons of peaches, a canned ham, and a Dorothy Lamour movie. I traded Bluie-West-Eight for him. That’s a weather station up on the north coast. The boys were sorry to lose Dorothy Lamour, but we’d seen it a hundred times. I think they were sorrier to lose the peaches. But this guy earns his keep. You pull duty in a place like this, a good cook makes it a bit more bearable.”
“I’ll give you that,” Kneece grinned through a mouthful of lamb.
“You’ll Never Know” ended again. The Victrola reset.
“Either put another record on,” Blume said loudly, without looking up from his plate, “or turn it off, because if I hear that goddamned thing one more time today somebody’s gonna eat it for dessert!”
The Victrola was turned off.
Blume sighed. “That thing must’ve played a hundred times today. One more time and I would’ve went completely batty — instead of half-batty, which this place makes you on a good day.”
“Captain, you do know why we’re here?” Kneece asked, producing his little notebook and setting it open on the table in front of him.
“Tourist season’s over. So I’ll say Grassi.”
“How much do you know about what happened to him? What’ve you been told?”
“All I know is he showed up in England somewhere —”
“The Orkneys,” Kneece supplied.
“ — wherever. And he’s dead. Then I heard somebody was going to stop by for a talk about him which, I suppose, is you. I’m guessing you guys wouldn’t be here if he just slipped on a banana peel and cracked his nut.”
Kneece cleared his throat. “Well, factually, we can’t discuss the details —”
Blume waved this away with his fork. “Fine. It’s said. What’re you looking for here? Suspects?”
“Why? Do you think you have any?”
The comer of Blume’s mouth flickered. “Just everybody here.”
“Including you?”
“Sure. Why not?” Blume noticed the smile of recognition on Harry’s face. “That’s the look of a fellow sufferer.”
“Grassi and I were in the same unit in England,” Harry said.
“For how long?”
“Six months.”
Blume set down his knife and fork and held out a hand, which Harry took. “Welcome to the lodge, brother. You’ve got my sympathies.”
“Every time I talk to somebody about this fella,” Kneece interjected, “I get the impression he was not a guy you’d want to be stuck on a raft with.”
“You know what the two worst days of my life were?” Blume demanded. “The day I wound up with a Baptist mother-in-law, and the day Armando Grassi’s jaw healed up enough for him to talk. I’m not sure which is number one. Two days like that in one life nobody should have.” Blume went back to his lamb chops, but after the first forkful thinking about Grassi had vexed him so that he put his utensils down and pushed his plate away.
“Let me explain a couple of things. Look around. A pull here is no picnic. You’re going to spend a good part of the year snowed in with your buddies. That being the case, it helps if your buddies can act buddy-like.”
Kneece gestured at Blume’s plate. “You gonna finish that? This stuff’s really good.”
Blume pushed his plate in Kneece’s direction. “So I try to keep things loose. Why not? This is no combat post. You hear anybody shooting at us here? The Navy is down at the Cape running antisub patrols. We don’t run antisub patrols. The day I tell my men to grab their weapons, I’ve got six men in the hospital because they can’t find the business end of an Ml without hurting themselves. This isn’t even a place like the Cape or Bluie-West-One, where you’ve got transports going through so you still feel like you’re part of the rest of the world. Half the time, I’m not sure anybody remembers us. We’re just out here.”
“What is it you do do?” Harry asked.
“Weather. From Rommel and Patton my people don’t know bubkes, but I’ve got the Sergeant Yorks of weather-predicting here.” Blume pulled his plaid blanket closer round his shoulders. “You guys aren’t cold?”
“After being outside this is practically a sauna,” Harry said.
“Give it an hour. Wait for the novelty to wear off.” Blume took a sip of his coffee and made a face. “Hey, Olinsky!” He held up his cup. “Be a good soldier and get your captain something hot in here, OK? What I’m saying is you should try to make things easier here. Not harder.”
“And Grassi made things harder?” Kneece asked.
Blume turned a wry face to Harry. “What would be your guess, lodge brother?”
“Unbelievably harder. No, make that excruciatingly harder.” Blume turned back to Kneece. “We all know it’s cold here. And boring. And miserable. We should all be someplace — anyplace — else. So, who needs to hear that every day? And me, I should especially hear this from one of my officers? Some guy who’s supposed to help me keep these poor bastards together by setting an example? The minute Grassi stepped off the plane, I said to myself, ‘Izzy, here comes a pain in your head.’”
“How’d you know that?” Kneece asked.
“Because he was here. Captain, let me explain another something to you. You’re in the Army. You ask for something, you fill out your requisitions and all those damned copies, that thing you ask for is what you don’t get. I didn’t want this guy. I didn’t ask for this guy. I didn’t ask for anybody. I didn’t have any personnel requisitions in; I didn’t have any holes in my T.O. to fill. I didn’t even know this guy was coming until he showed up.”
“What did his orders say?”
“What did his orders say? They said, ‘Look, here, this is for you! An extra body! Enjoy! Happy Hanukkah!’”
Kneece blinked, puzzled. “Happy what?”
“Happy —” Blume frowned. “I take it there’s not too many of the Chosen People where you come from.”
“The what?”
“Jews, Kneece. The Thirteen Tribes. Moses and The Guys. The Old Testament Gang.”
Kneece looked uncomfortable. “Oh, uh, no. None I know of, anyway.”
Blume nodded, unsurprised.
“Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday,” Harry explained. “It comes around the same time as Christmas. ‘Dreidel dreidel dreidel!” he sang, “‘Dreidel made of clay.”
For the first time, Blume’s face softened and he permitted himself — with a certain reluctance — a smile. “I didn’t think ‘Voss’ was a —”
“It’s not,” Harry told him. “I have a neighbor — a good friend, really. He’s Jewish. I’ve picked up a few things from him.”
“Where was that?” Blume asked, warming. “Where’re you from, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Newark.”
“Over in Jersey? We’re practically neighbors! I’m a little south and across the Delaware: Philly.”
“No kidding.” Harry saw the impatience on Kneece’s face. “About Grassi: you said you knew he was trouble from the beginning.”
“A lieutenant I didn’t ask for appears — presto — with no specific orders and a busted jaw. I should think this is a gift? That somebody’s not dumping their own headache on me? Look around. Short of Leavenworth, can you think of a better place to stick somebody who’s trouble?”
“Grassi ever talk about why he was sent here?” Kneece asked. “Mention this trouble he got himsel
f into?”
Blume shook his head, sat silent as Olinsky returned with his cup. Blume waited until Olinsky returned to his own table. “The only thing Grassi’d do is whine about how he’d been screwed. He seemed to have a pretty strong opinion that he’d been screwed.”
“But he didn’t mention any particulars? Or any names of parties he thought were involved in his getting screwed?” Blume studied Kneece for a moment. “Tell me something: You get special training for this kind of job?”
“Some.”
“In all of that special training, did you ever think you’d be asking an official interrogation question about the particulars of a screwing?”
“Come to think of it, no.”
“Well, so you have an answer, no, he never said anything specific. Just about how —”
“He’d been screwed.” Kneece let his eyes roam around the soldiers in the mess hall. “Is everybody here because they got screwed?”
“Not everybody.”
“How about you?”
“Oh, I was screwed all right.”
“Mind if I ask what you did to piss off somebody enough to get yourself sent here?”
Blume’s face grew cold. “What did I do? I was born with the name Israel Blume and I finished in the top twenty of my class at The Point. That’s what I did. And somebody decided that was a damned sin.”
“What exactly were Grassi’s responsibilities?” Harry asked. “When you find out, let me know.”
“What’d he get sent here as?” Kneece asked. “What’d his orders say?”
“His orders? I told you. His orders said, ‘Here he is.’ No classification, no assignment. They didn’t even forward his 66-1 to me until he’d already been here a couple weeks. Maybe they were afraid I wouldn’t let him off the plane if I’d already seen his file.”
“So what did he do here?” Harry asked.
“He spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get the hell out of here is what he did. Besides that? I went easy for the first week or so because of his jaw. I figured I’d run some administrative stuff through him.” Blume shook his head grimly.