by Bill Mesce
DATE: 12-1-43
COMPLY BELL TRANSPORT AS ORDERED END
MESSAGE
“That read like they’re lookin’ for an argument?” Zagottis asked.
Harry flipped back to the first message, to the entry on the Time of Transmission line. Coster had sent his signal at 0132 hours on December first. Edghill’s reply had been received thirty-four minutes later, at 0206. Zagottis had sent his caution to Edghill just a few minutes later, at 0214, with the lieutenant colonel coming back nearly as fast with his rebuff at 0223.
“This second night train,” Kneece said.
“One-twenty-one X-ray,” Zagottis wheezed.
“It did arrive the following day? December second?”
“Comes in around 1200 hours, sits just long enough to refuel, then she’s gone. She’s back the next day, mid-afternoon sometime. Same deal: top off ’er tanks and off.”
“The eastbound leg: that’s where Grassi hitched his ride to the Orkneys?”
Zagottis shrugged. “That’s how I figure it.”
“You’re not sure?”
“Hell, Kneece, I didn’t know where Grassi was ’til I get told they found ’im croaked in the Orkneys. The night train pin wheels that mornin’. By that night, I got Grassi down here, and the second his boots hit the ground he is in my ear.”
“About what?”
“Same stuff as you guys, only he’s not as polite. He doesn’t let up, either. You tell ’im somethin’ he doesn’t want to hear, somethin’ goes click in his head and he doesn’t hear it. You gotta tell him sixty-two times. ‘You sure there’s no record of night trains?’ That’s why they’re night trains, dummy.’ What’re the cargoes? Where do they come from? Where do they go? Where do I think they go? Sittin’ with him over coffee’s worse than cops goin’ at you with bright lights and a rubber hose.”
“A noodge,” Kneece said.
“What?”
“You were saying,” Harry interposed.
“When Grassi’s not on me about the night trains and the crash, he’s cryin’ about the cold, he doesn’t like his quarters, what’s wrong with the food…” Zagottis rolled his eyes. “I got a real sympathy for Captain Blume puttin’ up with him all the time. Did you know the guy, Kneece? Major? Then you know what I’m talkin’ about. I’m not surprised he give me a head cold. That guy was a head cold! All this time, makin’ it worse, I got my hands full. There’s somethin’ goin’ on in the ETO, or somethin’ ready to pop, ’cause I got transports comin’ in like this is the comer fillin’ station.”
Harry nodded. “I heard up at Bluie-West-One your traffic’s been heavy lately.”
“Heavy?” Zagottis laughed at the understatement, sparking a series of hacks. Again he spat mucus into his wastebasket. “I had six other transports come through the day the night train plowed. Had eight the next day I’m tryin’ to get them in and out, fix this hole that bonehead McKesson put in my runway, I got my birds to worry about, then I got your pal Grassi…”
“I wish you wouldn’t call him our pal,” Harry said.
“When was the last time you saw Grassi?” Kneece asked.
“Grassi wound up spendin’ a lotta time in the sick bay botherin’ Coster, which couldn’ta been a treat for Coster. I was just glad Grassi was leavin’ my people alone. This second night train, 121 X-ray, like I said, she touches down around 1200. I stick my head in sick bay, tell Coster his ride’s here, which doesn’t make him look too happy, wish ’im luck. Grassi was with ’im so I didn’t hang around.”
“Did anybody see Grassi board the night train?”
“If anybody did it’d be the ground crew. I’ll show you the duty roster, you can ask around. That night, evenin’ mess, I finally notice Grassi’s not around — far be it from him to miss a meal even if all he’s gonna do is bitch about how lousy it is. He’s gone, I just figure he got whatever he could get and went back to Godthåb.” Zagottis slumped in his chair and rubbed the warm side of his tea mug along his forehead.
“Do you know what Coster told him?”
“I’m not his CO. Grassi makes a report, he doesn’t make it to me. What I know is after his first round with Coster that night he comes to me, wants me to send a signal.” Zagottis took the communications log from Kneece, flipped to a fresh page, and handed it back.
Kneece held the log to where Harry could lean over and they could read the carbons together. There were two:
FROM: LT A GRASSI
JAG NARSARSAK [sic]
TO:LT COL EDGHILL DC ARMY GHQ
XRAY DISPATCH DATE:12-1-43
RE FLT 103 XRAY DISPATCHED BY YOU LT MCKESSON CO STOP PLS ADVISE FOLLOWING STOP ITEM ONE NATURE OF CARGO ITEM TWO DESTINATION ITEM THREE PURPOSE OF FLIGHT ITEM FOUR FLIGHT AUTHORIZATION STOP ALSO REQUEST 103 XRAY COPILOT COSTER DETAINED NARSARSAK [sic] FOR JAG INQUIRY END MESSAGE
Again Harry noted the time the message had been sent: 1110. He flipped to the response received at 1142:
FROM: EDGHILL TO:GRASSI
NARSSARSSUAQ AIR STATION
DATE:12-1-43
YOUR REQUEST PASSED ON TO HIGHER AUTHORITY STOP WILL RESPOND EARLIEST END MESSAGE
“Higher authority?” Kneece asked.
“You’re lookin’ at me like you think I’m gonna know what that means,” Zagottis said.
Harry flipped through the communications log. “Did you ever get another message from Edghill regarding Grassi’s request? Or from anyone else in D.C.?”
Zagottis shook his head. “Never thought about it once Grassi was gone. Then when I heard he was dead…”
“The night-train crews,” Kneece persisted, “were they always the same personnel? Was it a rotating pool of pilots? Did you know any of the names of the other —”
Tiredly, Zagottis sighed. “Kneece, you got any idea how many pilots come through here? It’s like askin’ the doorman at the St. Francis if he knows all the cabbies at the hack stand. You recognize some faces, some of the same guys come through more than once, but I don’t know who they are. I don’t know who most of the regular ATC pilots are. Hell, most the time, I never deal with’em; the ground crews do. If they don’t lay over for the night, I hardly see’em. McKesson, though, he hit me as a new face. Musta been new to the route.”
“What makes you think so?”
“‘Cause only a rookie who doesn’t know how bitch-evil this place can be’d be that much of a bonehead. The only thing I remember about all the night trains was they always had an X-ray designation in the flight number. That’s how we knew, when they radioed their approach, that it was a night train and not to log it.”
Kneece flipped back to a page in his notebook. “And they radioed Edghill as ‘X-ray Dispatch.’”
Harry grunted himself out of his chair and went back to Zagottis’s gallery wall. He stood by the photo of Zagottis with his wife and baby boy “Commander, how much did this little muscle man weigh when he was born?”
Zagottis’s face brightened. “Eight pounds and an ounce.”
“My first was seven and a half pounds. My second was close to eight. Planning on any more?”
“Big families run in the family Soon’s I get home, I’m goin’ to work on it.”
Harry caught the look on Kneece’s face, something best described as polite impatience. Harry looked back at the smiling baby “Commander, how big a cargo was that night train carrying? The one that crashed.”
“The crash, the fire, hard to tell. Maybe a thousand pounds. No more than two thousand.”
Harry turned to Kneece. He raised his eyebrows and dipped his head, signaling that his participation was now concluded.
“Commander, did you do any kind of follow-up on any of this?” Kneece asked Zagottis.
“Follow-up? I was so damn happy to have this mess off my desk. Look, when I saw Grassi was gone, I’m done. What’s that look, Captain? You look like you don’t believe me.”
“It’s not that, Commander, I just remember how upset you seemed over the cargo this night-train flight was carrying.
I’d’ve thought you’d want to —”
“Want to what, Captain?” Zagottis looked to Harry as if to say, I know you understand. He turned back to Kneece. “Am I p.o.’d about that cargo? Sure. Do I think it’s a waste of valuable Army transport? You betcha. An unnecessary risk of personnel? Damn right. Who’s the ambassador they got in England? The one come in after they pulled Joe Kennedy out?”
“Winant,” Kneece said. “John Winant.”
“OK, so Mr. Ambassador Winant, he wants to throw a dinner party for the Queen, he gets Mr. Roosevelt on the blower and orders up some goodies. Maybe Winant wants to have a surprise party for Eisenhower. Stupid? Yeah. A fuckin’ waste? Sure. You think there’s anythin’ in there the Army’s gonna consider a fileable charge?” Zagottis gravely closed his eyes and solemnly moved his head from one side to the other in a nonverbal proclamation of NO!
“Look, Kneece,” the commander continued, “there was one guy I would’ve loved to nail: McKesson, ’cause he was the asshole got people hurt and put a hole in my runway. Screw a court-martial, I’da pinned his ears back myself! But I saw ’em pull the kid’s body outta that plane one piece at a time. You don’t get more punished than that. He did it to himself, too, which makes it some kind of poetry.”
*
I can picture Harry sitting on the edge of his bunk, an Army blanket draped round his shoulders, head tilted back to keep his reading glasses in place as he stares down at squares of paper arrayed on the floor, upon each of which is a single line of bold printing. Harry’s lips are pursed in study as his eyes dart from one bit of paper to another, his canted chin parked in palms, splayed fingers enveloping his sagging jowls.
Harry seemed so much the image of the contemplative muse that Kneece, to gain his attention, deferentially cleared his throat as if disturbing a man at prayer. It required a second “ahem” to turn Harry’s head. Kneece was on his own bunk, his own note tablet in his hands. “What’s all that, Major? What’s with the bits of paper?”
“Nothing,” Harry said. “I’m tired. I’m turning in.”
Harry slid off his glasses and began to burrow, fully dressed, under the several blankets on his bunk. Kneece reached for his parka.
“Where’re you off to?” Harry asked.
“We never had breakfast. Why don’t you come get something to eat with me?”
“We also didn’t get a whole night’s sleep. I’m fine right here. Besides, I’m almost thawed. I’m not going back out there.” Harry pointed to Kneece’s writing tablet. “Message to Edghill? Asking what’s going on here?”
Kneece shook his head admiringly at Harry’s intuitiveness. “Something like that. I also want to know where Coster and Bell are stashed. You got a look on, Major, that says I’m wasting my time.”
“I have a look?”
“Yes, Major. A look.”
“Every time I roll to a new spot it’s cold. You have any cigarettes?”
Kneece reached inside his flight jacket and tossed the pack to Harry Harry sat up, lit one, looked for a place to toss the expired match.
“I wouldn’t be too afraid of messing these finely appointed apartments,” Kneece said. “The maid’ll be by later.” Harry smiled. He stood, looking like some Himalayan vagabond as he shuffled, swathed in blankets, across the room to toss the match into the stove. “What do you think’s going on, Woody? With these night trains?”
“I’m thinking black market. That’s why they keep the flights off the record. They’re running stuff through here, off the beaten airways you might say.”
Harry nodded. He’d considered the same thing himself. “Remember what Zagottis said? An Army transport can’t get here unless it’s supposed to. It takes a lot of coordination to put together a crew and a plane, load cargo, get the necessary flight clearances. That’s a lot of overhead for a criminal enterprise.”
“You know what they say. You have to spend money to make money.”
“I believe the trick is to make more than you spend. There wasn’t enough cargo on that plane to pay for the trip.”
“Come on, Major, I hear a bottle of even bad booze overseas can bring —”
“A planeload of booze would’ve been worth it. Not a couple of dozen bottles. Most of the stuff on that plane — the sugar, the coffee, all that stuff — is easier, simpler, and cheaper to steal out of the Quartermaster stores right in the British Isles. One of the reasons you said you wanted me on this trip is because I’ve been there and you haven’t. Take it from me then: Grapefruit is not that big a black-market draw. There wasn’t enough money at stake on that plane for Grassi to wind up dead.”
Kneece weighed Harry’s point. Then: “I don’t know about that, Major. Spend some time with Uncle Ray and you wind up thinking there’s folks’ll shoot you for a shiny button. OK, let’s let the dog run a bit. The stuff’s not black market. What then?”
“I don’t know what it is, but I’m getting an idea about what it isn’t. I don’t see this having anything to do with what happened with Grassi, Peter Ricks, and me in England last August. It looks to me like this business started here, with that wreck.”
“You don’t give up,” Kneece chuckled.
“You still think it does?”
Kneece jutted out his chin, narrowed his eyes, scratched the top of his head with his fingertips and in a voice that was a fair approximation of Stan Laurel’s, announced, “I’m not sure, Ollie.”
“You ought to get your own show on the radio.”
“Factually, Grassi’s death having something to do with August is a good theory, and I do hate to put away a good theory without a good reason. Since I don’t know what happened in August, I don’t know there still isn’t a connection between this and that.”
Harry sighed in frustration, but he couldn’t help but smile. The captain was a terrier — not all that unlike Harry — unwilling to let go. “If you want to find out about Edghill, don’t go to Edghill.”
“You think he’s involved?”
“Or maybe somebody who works for or with him. It’s only a possibility; but it is a possibility.”
“Why do you think that?”
“When were you told about Grassi’s murder?”
Kneece studied Harry a moment. “Let’s see, it would’ve been that Wednesday: the eighth.”
“About a week from the time Grassi signaled Edghill.”
“They had a hell of a time running Grassi down, once his body turned up. The Brits assumed, like anybody would, that he must’ve belonged to one of our units in the British Isles. There was a lot of running around trying to find him on duty rolls. It was only during a crosscheck they came across the record of his transfer to Greenland. Then there was some more running around trying to figure out why it was he was a stiff on a beach in the Orkneys instead of annoying people in Greenland.”
“The upshot being that it took a few days for Washington to get notified. Even if you take off the time the Washington brass spent — a day, let’s say a couple of days — trying to figure out what to do with this mess before it landed on your desk, that still means Edghill had Grassi’s request in his hands for at least a couple of days before Washington was notified Grassi was dead.”
“So?”
Harry took a last draw before pushing the remains of his cigarette through the openings of the grate. “Edghill responded to Coster’s message within a half hour. He came back to Zagottis about moving Bell even faster. Edghill put together a plane, a crew, and a replacement cargo and had them here inside of a day. Grassi had a very simple request: Where’d this plane come from, and where was it going? We know Edghill got the request; he acknowledged it about thirty minutes later; another fast reply. But Edghill never sent Grassi a response.”
“Grassi was out of here the next day.”
Harry returned to his bunk, lay down, and rearranged his blankets into a snug cocoon. “Edghill didn’t know that. For all he knew, Grassi was still here waiting for an answer. Unless Edghill had a private pipeline t
o the Orkneys and knew, before anybody else on his side of the Atlantic, that Grassi wasn’t going to be in Greenland to receive an answer. You want to find out about Edghill, ask somebody you know in C1C. I mean somebody you know personally, somebody you can trust, somebody who won’t blab about it to everybody in your office.”
“You’re sounding a little paranoid, Major,” Kneece said. Harry closed his eyes. “You told me you wanted me around because I know the ropes. That’s one of the ropes I know.”
He heard the door to the room open. “You want me to bring something back?”
“It’d be cold by the time you got it here.”
“I used that word ‘noodge’ right, didn’t I?”
“Like a Hebrew scholar, Woody.”
“You get your shut-eye, Major. I’ll see you later.”
The door closed. It was some time before Harry’s thoughts quieted.
*
Harry slowly rose to consciousness, aware of flashes of light and dark on the other side of his closed lids. His irritation at being thus stirred was compounded by reveille, a piece of music composed by some militaristic sadist for the express purpose of transforming peaceful slumbers into wakeful vexation. The nettling value of reveille was, in this case, multiplied manifold in that it was here not being tooted by a skilled bugler but by a grinning Jim Doheeny. The pilot was vocalizing the tune through the cupped fingers of one hand in an annoyingly wretched semblance of a bugle while flicking the room lights with his other hand.
Harry allowed one eye to crawl open. On seeing Doheeny by the door, his happiness over the pilot’s reappearance did not preclude him from flinging his pillow at him.
Doheeny easily caught the pillow. “Music hater.” He tossed the pillow back and moved toward the heating stove.
Keeping his blankets close about him, Harry sat upright. Kneece’s bunk was empty. The blankets were undisturbed: Kneece had never come to bed. The captain’s writing tablet lay on the bunk, its first sheet blank.
“So,” Doheeny said, “have you enjoyed your stay in the tropics?”
“The tropics?” Harry yawned.
Doheeny was shoveling lumps of fresh coal from a nearby scuttle atop the dying embers inside the grate. “Compared to where we’ve been, this is a sunny day on the beach.”