Casualties of War: The Advocate Trilgy

by Bill Mesce

  “I was going to ask you for some help.”

  “You were.”

  “We don’t know everybody that’s involved, but we’re obviously talking about people on both sides of the Atlantic. They know Kneece, they know me.”

  “They see you coming and up goes the drawbridge. No information. This has a horribly familiar ring to it, Major.” “Like you said, you’re not JAG anymore, Pete. You have no tie to us. You’re just some infantry officer on medical leave trying to find an old friend.”

  “What’s my old friend’s name?”

  Harry produced a notebook and pen from his inside jacket pocket, scribbled on a page, tore off the sheet, and handed it to Ricks. Ricks tried to read it by the moonlight. “What’s this? Caster?”

  “Coster. That’s his name and his serial number. He was the copilot of a plane that went down on December first in Greenland. He flew out of Kap Farvel with Grassi. The wire in Greenland said there’d be orders waiting for him on this end.”

  “How do you know they didn’t just put a pill in this guy’s head, too?”

  “I don’t. I think the decision to kill Armando was made in the Orkneys. I don’t think it was planned in advance.”

  “And from what evidence do you derive these intriguing suppositions?”

  “If they’d planned all along to kill Armando, why not dump him out over the North Atlantic? Nobody would ever have found the body. No, I think somebody local was surprised when Grassi showed up three weeks ago. So, if the higher powers in this thing weren’t planning on killing Armando Grassi, I’m guessing they weren’t planning any harm for Coster, either. That means he could be intact somewhere, that they really did cut orders for him.”

  “So, you think if I just wander casually over to G-l, and in an offhanded, quite unofficial way ask if they know where my old chum Flyboy Coster is…” Ricks shook his head. “Do you know how many bodies get processed through here every —”

  “They’ll remember him.”

  “He had that distinctive a personality?”

  “It would’ve been recent.”

  “The last troopship was recent. Do you know how many men —”

  “He would’ve shown up alone, without his file, no written orders, not even any gear. G-l would’ve gotten his assignment orders from an authority high enough where they would’ve passed him through as fast as they could without asking questions.”

  Ricks lifted his flask from the table. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing here, Major. Maybe you feel bad about how things turned out for that girl, maybe you really do feel bad about Grassi. But you can’t undo anything. If you came back because you think that somehow this’ll even the score for what happened last summer…” Ricks uncorked the flask and drank deeply. He looked out at the dark water of the Serpentine, the placid surface iced with the cold light of the new moon. “You can do everything right and somebody’s still going to get hurt.”

  They were both silent.

  “I’ll ask a few questions over there,” Ricks told him resignedly, after a time. “But I’m not going to drive myself crazy.”

  “Thanks.”

  Ricks took a last sip and slipped the flask back into his coat. “I’m getting out of here before you get me writing briefs next.” He started to walk away, following the curve of the lake, but then stopped and called back: “We know each other a while now, Major; can I say something in the clear?”

  “Sure.”

  “You had to be out of your frigging mind to come back here.”

  “I was out of my mind.”

  Peter Ricks disappeared into the shadows. Twilight had become evening. Harry sat alone at the dark cafe. He wished he hadn’t given Ricks his last cigarette.

  *

  My affection for the Rose & Crown public house grew with each freshly poured drink. Halfway through a pitcher of bitters, the dowdy, dark interior of the pub became a cozy womb, the sullen duffers hunched over their pints and chessboards fine old English sods who appreciated the exquisite flavor of quiet and the need for an introspective body to be left alone with his thoughts.

  “Yer o’er the line,” Lil said from the bar.

  I ignored her, leaving her to busy herself behind the bar. Instead, I focused — as much as my ale-fogged intellect could — on the dartboard. I loosed the projectile along what I considered an immaculate parabola toward the board and watched it gracelessly crash sidelong into the cork and clatter to the floor.

  “There seems to be some fault in your equipment. I find it structurally unsound.”

  “There seems to be some fault with yer bein’ a drunken old sod,” Lil told me.

  “I am not old,” I objected, cocking my arm with a fresh dart. “I am venerable.”

  “And yer venerable foot’s still o’er the line. Cheat yerself, it’s no mind to me, Eddie, but I thought you might care to know.”

  “Och, afoul, you say? Which leg is it, Lil? Please, point out the transgressor to me! What leg has sinned and stands in foul?”

  Her ruddy cheeks were crisscrossed with a filigree of veins, her hair a scratchy tuft of gray-streaked brown. Her husband was fighting the Japs in Burma under Wingate, her son in Baghdad keeping Raschid Ali’s people from going over to the Nazis, and little that occurred in the pub she now managed alone warranted more from her than mild interest.

  “No, I beg thee, Lilith my treasure, be this the offending limb? I offer my suffering in amends. If thine eye deceiveth thee, pluck it out…”

  “Oh, Christ,” Lil muttered, rolling her eyes tiredly.

  “If thy foot missteps —” At that, I brought the dart in my hand with full force down upon my leg, stabbing again and again. “There, you damned rotter! And again, you most foul fouling fouler!” The dart made a solid thunk as it sunk deep into my wooden limb.

  Perhaps if I’d imbibed a little less of that pitcher I would have remembered that this was a too oft repeated jape, no longer deliciously grotesque but stale.

  “That’s got to be a little hard on the pants.”

  I had not had so much to drink that I did not instantly recognize the accent as American. The cloud I’d been under since August, and had sought shelter from almost nightly in the somber confines of the Rose & Crown, scudded away.

  “Bugger all!” I declared. “Harry!” I swung the leg round, clasped his hand in mine, and threw my other round his neck. “Lil, my sweet, have you ever seen a sorrier-looking bastard than this Yank?”

  She gave me a droll look. “Haven’t I?”

  I leaned close to Harry’s ear. “There’s nothing as cruel as the tongue of a woman seeking to conceal her affections.”

  Lil rolled her eyes again. “The muck that comes out of that gob of yours…”

  “Uh, careful you don’t stick me with that thing,” Harry said. He was looking at the dart still embedded in my leg.

  “I should leave it, don’t you think?” I took my snap-brim from where it’d been resting on the back of my head and hung it from the tail of the dart. “Useful, eh?”

  “Ya’ve got the taste of a ghoul, have yer been told that, dearie?” Lil said.

  “She’s a love, isn’t she, Harry? Have you eaten? Victuals for my mate, woman! Give her leave, Harry; Lil’s a proper barkeep, but a bloody barbarian in the kitchen: no hot food here. Lil, this poor man’s traveled all the way from the Colonies to sample some fine English cuisine. What can you lay on for my chum?”

  “I can do you a plate of some cold meats and cheeses.”

  “That’ll see him right, won’t it, Harry? Bring it to my private dining quarters when it’s ready, Lil. My God, you’re a sight, Harry!”

  I led him by the arm to a comer booth, carrying the remaining half of the pitcher and a pair of mugs with me. I sat him across from me and poured two pints. His face was drawn and more weathered than I remembered; he looked very much the world-weary traveler with his crushed officer’s cap and flying jacket. But I sensed it was more than mileage that had seasoned Harry V
oss.

  He toyed with the handle of his pint. I suddenly remembered how badly drink used to sit on his stomach.

  “You don’t have to drink it just to be polite, Harry. Leave it and it’ll be twice as much for me.”

  He laughed.

  I wiggled the dart free of my leg, jabbed it into the scuffed tabletop, and set my hat over it. “There. Done and done.”

  I could see in his eyes — so much more shrewdly appraising than they used to be — that he saw a change in me as well; the mien and sickly pallor of someone spending too much time entombed in the Rose & Crown.

  I asked after his family and was surprised when he responded with the terse reticence of an interrogation subject. Harry’s family had, as I remembered, been his touchstone; he’d never before been hesitant over an opportunity to revisit the thought of them. Now, with uncharacteristic abruptness, he deflected my course. “Did you see Elisabeth McAnn like I asked?”

  “Soon as she was well enough to receive visitors.”

  “How is she?”

  “She seemed right enough when she left hospital. Not particularly amicable, mind you, but then what should one expect under the circumstances?”

  “What about after she left the hospital?”

  “She applied for travel papers to Ireland. Old family relations still there, I understand. There was some fuss over her application. Talk of security and all that. Some of the military nabobs fretting the poor little lass might open her pouty lips to some anti-British Dublin rag and rekindle the whole business. But I talked to a few people I knew at the Foreign Office, did some of my best convincing, made the point she was as eager to have it all behind her as anyone else. She was seen right, Harry. She made it home with no trouble. After that…” I shrugged. “I suppose we could find her if you’re of a mind.”

  He shook his head, but seemed to consider it a few moments, his face clouding.

  “I did go to my editor with the story,” I told him.

  “I thought you said they’d never print it.”

  “They didn’t. You haven’t said what brings you back to London. Have you been reassigned here?”

  “I need you to do something for me, Eddie.” He fell silent as Lil brought the plate of food, waiting until she’d withdrawn.

  “A favor?” I asked. “You need a favor?”

  He frowned at the plate of food. “Eddie. Can you be a friend?”

  I’m not sure I understand —”

  “As opposed to a reporter.”

  “Ah. You mean off-the-record and so on.”

  “I need this, Eddie.”

  “Aye, Harry. I can be a friend.”

  He paused, still unsure.

  I drained my glass, poured another pint. “When I’m writing a piece, if I don’t quite know how to start it, I just sit at the typewriter and bang away. Eventually, it works its way.”

  “Have you ever heard of a man — a big businessman supposedly — named John Duff? He’s got a title —”

  “Sir Johnnie, of course. I’d be a rather poor member of the guild if I didn’t.”

  “He’s that famous?”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘famous.’ ‘Well-known within certain circles,’ if one aspires to a certain journalistic specificity. Don’t feel a complete ignoramus, Harry. Duff’s a name for the Brit cognoscenti, not American venues.”

  “So, what’s the cognoscenti word on this guy?”

  “Well, as you say, Sir Johnnie’s a rather prosperous industrialist. Quite a few military contracts. Well connected socially.”

  “How well connected?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t call him a bosom friend, but he’s been known to sit for tea with the almost-Edward VIII.”

  “Who?”

  “Windsor, man. The duke? The one-time Prince of Wales? Wally Simpson, the abdication, and all that?”

  “Sir John Duff is friends with the Duke of Windsor?”

  “Before you go all agog, Harry, understand that people in those circles don’t have friends as you and I mean the word. Friends for them are people who come for cucumber sandwiches and discuss the affairs of the day. Good friends come for dinner. Amongst that ilk, your friendship is only as valued as your conversation. On that basis, Sir Johnnie must be quite the silver-tongued dinner companion judging by his chumminess with those of official and titled rank — most particularly those with the power and position to help or hinder his various enterprises. And I don’t just mean those native to the British Isles. He became quite social with your Mr. Kennedy when Kennedy was ambassador here. It’s good that Sir Johnnie has such well-placed friends, because our military types have always felt him a bit, oh, suspect.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Well, he’s a bit of a paradox. Here’s Sir Johnnie, a major supplier of royal arms, yet he was a regular attendee of the Cliveden set.”

  Harry’s nose wrinkled and he reached for a slice of Cheddar, avoiding the Spam on the plate. “What’s this Cliveden thing?”

  “All right, then, here’s a short brief on recent British social history. Ready? Before the war — that is, before all the shooting and blowing up of much of Europe made political discourse academic — not everyone held an antagonistic stance against Herr Hitler. There were several minds on the subject. You had your peace-at-any-cost tribe; they were still heartily sick enough of the last great war to want to avoid another.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “But then there were more esoteric views. There were English bluebloods to whom Hitler was just another form of king — a vulgar, ill-mannered king, but a monarch nonetheless, and kingship is an office and authority which our aristocracy is both familiar with and accustomed to. In fact, this camp harbored a certain admiration for a chap who, wielding absolute power in the grand old European tradition, brought a prostrate Germany back from defeat and depression to ironfisted strength in just a few short years. To hell with Parliament and the Magna Carta, laddies! Leave us to a right proper monarch with star chambers and public beheadings and the lot!

  “Your own Mr. Lindbergh was quite public in expressing respect for the Reich. He seemed to fancy all that marching in step. After seeing the Condor Legion’s performance in Spain during the Civil War, Lindbergh proposed — with a certain undisguised admiration — peaceful coexistence with Germany on the simple basis that, militarily speaking, Jerry was obviously unbeatable.

  “It also didn’t hurt that many of these people — your Mr. Lindbergh included — shared, to some degree or another, the Reich’s anti-Semitic bent. In other words, to them, anyone who hated Jews couldn’t be all bad.

  “Then there were the, oh, what shall we call them? Let’s call them capitalist pragmatists. They felt that whether they admired Hitler — as some did — or thought him a rather uncouth upstart — which some also did — he was merely looking to carve Germany a share of the European economic pie. The unlamented Neville Chamberlain held that view, as did Mr. Kennedy. They, and a number of like minds, were regularly invited by Lady Astor and her husband to their Cliveden estate —”

  “The Cliveden set.”

  “— precisely — where they would chat over dinner and brandies about what bone could be thrown to Mr. Hitler. The idea was to keep the peace so everyone could go on doing business with everyone else and making mountains of loot, including the Germans, which, in turn, would be an incentive for them to remain at peace. It was a reasonable view espoused by reasonable people. The flaw in the theory was its proponents never quite understood they were dealing with someone who considered reason a character weakness.” “So, Sir John Duff was one of these Cliveden people.”

  “Sir Johnnie, being a bit shrewder than most, managed to keep a presence in all camps. Par exemple, he was, as I said, an acquaintance of the Duke of Windsor. Windsor was, in those days, something of an idealogue, always on about getting along with the Germans, how Hitler wasn’t such a bad chap and was more concerned about the Russians than moving against the West, and some other astoun
dingly naive claptrap. When with the duke, Sir Johnnie loudly proclaimed his support for the duke’s views. But when he sat at table with Mr. Kennedy, whom the duke could not abide, he was equally adamant in his agreement with the ambassador’s particular interpretation.”

  “And at the same time, Duff’s making guns or whatever for the military.”

  “Well, call me a cynic, Harry, but one could harbor a suspicion that Sir Johnnie’s interest in keeping global peace was more commercial than altruistic. A Germany at peace is a customer. A Germany at war… To be fair, I’m not sure Sir Johnnie’s interest in the sundry peace lobbies was completely mercenary. He’d had two sons.”

  “‘Had’?”

  “Lost them both to the first war. You know; the one that was supposed to end them all.”

  He had, up until then, listened to my disquisition with a growing air of distaste for the parties concerned. But at the mention of Sir John Duff’s loss, his face grew suddenly soft. “Two sons, you said?”

  I nodded.

  For a moment, it looked as if he had changed his mind about going forward. I prodded: “What does this have to do with the favor you wanted?”

  He took a breath, seemed to make a commitment. “What do you know about Duff’s holdings in the Orkneys?”

  “I didn’t know he had holdings —” And then the lights went on for me. “Och! You’re here about the Yank soldier they found dead up there!”

  “You know about that?”

  “Harry, any self-respecting London newspaperman who doesn’t have a set of cooperative ears at Scotland Yard should chuck it in.”

  “What’d you hear?”

  “Not much. An American soldier found dead near Scapa Flow, the apparent victim of some foul play. I got the impression it was a true Agatha Christie program, all mystery and such.”

  “That’s all?”

  “After the body was brought down to the Yard for a postmortem, someone turned off the info spigot. That was all there was to get.”