by Bill Mesce
“What’s the world coming to?” Harry pondered.
“Quite,” Gordon Fordyce said.
Harry drew his Lucky Strikes from his blouse pocket and extracted the last cigarette. He crumpled the empty package and tossed it on the table, then lit his cigarette. He took a long drag, sighed out a stream of smoke. “Woody Kneece is dead, Sir John. To refresh your memory, he was the young captain who was with me on Sunday — the one who played your whatchamacallit in the other room.”
“Captain Kneece?”
“Yup.”
“Dear God. Do you hear, Gordon?”
“Yes, Sir John.” While Duff digested this latest bit, Fordyce removed the crumpled cigarette packet from the table and tossed it into the fire.
“Major Voss,” Duff said, “all this, this affair, this business up at Orkney… is all this connected to the death of the American officer you first came to see me about?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve been through all… all this because of that dead officer?”
Harry shrugged. “Sure.”
“Extraordinary. Was he a friend of yours?”
“Couldn’t stand the man.”
“As I say: extraordinary. Off to bed with you, Gordon.”
“Perhaps I should —”
“Leave us.”
If he was peeved, Fordyce concealed it superbly. He rose without another word and left, closing the library door behind him.
Duff waited a moment, studying the closed door before turning to Harry. “Major Voss, I apologize in advance for being presumptuous, but I get the impression you have a great deal more to tell me.”
“Funny you should say that.” Harry wriggled in his chair as if preparing himself to deliver a ripping good yam. “Let’s go back to those heady days of appeasement before the war. There’s you, your good pal the American ambassador to the Court of St. James — Joe Kennedy — and your buddies from across the Channel. You all see an opportunity to make some money together and also teach the world a lesson in profitable coexistence in the bargain. But despite your shining example, here comes the war. Kennedy gets the ax and is sent home, and your other friends go back where they came from: You call it Sweden, I call it Germany, but let’s not quibble.
“You all agree this is too good a partnership to break up just because of some silly old war. Kennedy knows a young Army officer named Edghill willing to do him some favors he shouldn’t, and Joe Senior still has enough muscle left in Washington to muscle Edghill into a position to do those favors — specifically, the transporting of goodies to his business buddies back in England. Those goodie-carrying planes need a place to land, so you pick out a place up in the Orkneys and get another of your good friends — the Duke of Windsor — to use his pull to see that the land-buy goes through.
“But then one of Edghill’s flyboys gets sloppy. There’s the crash in Greenland: Enter Lieutenant Armando Grassi. Grassi hitches a ride with the only crash survivor — a pilot named Coster — on the replacement flight. There was a plan for Coster: Hide him at the Italian front until things cooled off. And because you are the civilized guys who tried to prevent the second Great War, nobody said it out loud, but the hope was there that if some combat misfortune should come down on Andy Coster’s head… well, you’d owe Fate a thank-you note.
“But Grassi was a surprise, and somebody at the landing field panicked. And from such acorns do mighty oak trees grow.”
Duff took a deep breath, made as if to speak.
“Extraordinary, I know,” Harry said.
Sir John Duff stood, poked at the fire, and drew open the blackout curtains. He looked out across the rain-sodden lawn and scowled at something outside. “Do you know why I keep that obscenity out there?” He pointed to the gutted B-17 ploughed deep into the heather by the estate’s drive. “You must have wondered,” Duff continued. “Your Air Corps wanted to take it away, even brought round equipment. I chased them off. I ordered them to leave it. Do you know why, Major?”
“Not a clue.”
“There was an RAF officer, someone from one of the ministries, an American officer as well. They wanted me to give over some of my land for some sort of military post, an aerodrome, I think. I don’t really remember. But what I remember is they sat here, in this room, right where you are, and the RAF man quoted me Henry V. At that very moment, a flight of bombers flew over. I don’t know if these men had timed their visit to coincide with a mission, or the aeroplanes were a planned part. No matter. The planes roared over and he sat there quoting: ‘Gentlemen in England, now abed, shall think themselves accursed they were not here’ — and so on. I suppose the idea was to inflame my patriotism” — Sir John pounded a fist over his heart — “to make me hunger to be part of the great adventure. It is very easy to be captured by the heroic spirit of the moment, Major, particularly a moment built as exquisitely as that. And that is why I leave that hideous thing out there. To remind them — to remind me — as to what the great adventure truly is.” He gestured out at the blackened hulk. “Those happy few didn’t look so happy when I saw their burned bodies dragged from that monstrosity. Those heroes will not be showing their scars and saying, ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’”
“But you help build those monstrosities,” Harry said. “You help build the guns and the bombs.”
“As you somewhat wryly pointed out, Major, my friends and I tried damnably hard to keep this war from coming. Now it’s here. Whatever I can do to end it as swiftly as possible, I’ll do.”
“You’re rationalizing.”
“Perhaps. But now my primary concern is to see that this war is the last war.”
Harry took a last puff on his cigarette and tossed it into the flames. “I believe you believe all this crap, Sir John. Did it ever occur to you you’ve been played for a sucker by a bunch of people who just want to make a buck?”
“Major, did you know that the Chinese were buying Coca-Cola in Shanghai back in the twenties? As much as a million cases per annum, even while China was at war with the Japanese for control of Manchuria.”
“Maybe I’m just tired, but now it’s time for me not to see your point.”
Duff smiled. “Major, I lost all my illusions twenty-five years ago. I don’t trust in the altruism of others. I think the current state of world affairs is evidence enough that heroism has died an ugly death. But commerce — base self-interest — I had hopes there, Major. My friends, my houseguests, they have a saying where they’re from: ‘One crow does not peck out the eyes of another.’ Ironic, eh? My faith was in their greed. Their very rapaciousness would be the salvation of the world. How can you possibly consider that to be naive?” Harry stood and pulled on his parka.
“Leaving, Major? Why did you come here?”
“I’m wondering.”
Duff followed him to the door. As Harry crossed to his jeep, Sir John called out to him: “You’ll extend my condolences to Captain Kneece’s family? He seemed quite a decent sort of young man. I liked him.”
Harry halted, stood there in the rain, his right hand dropped into the pocket of his parka. “Does it still hurt that your sons are dead?” Harry asked.
“Certainly.”
“I’m glad.”
*
It was an ignored cul-de-sac not far from Rosewood Court: drab shops peddling bric-a-brac, and at the end of one walk a dark, worn cubby of a pub called the Old Eagle. Of little interest to most of the Americans billeted at the Annex, the Old Eagle had always provided Harry and Joe Ryan relief from the constant sight of the American uniforms filling London, as well as a respite from the Annex canteen fare.
This rainy afternoon, every shop in the cul-de-sac was boarded up, abandoned, including the Old Eagle. A massive bomb crater ripped the cobbles at the end of the street, reaching almost from curb to curb. The blast had collapsed several buildings, blown out the glass and scarred the faces of all the others. The street had been nearly lifeless before: the bomb had been its deathblow.
Harry stood across the street from the pub. The boarded door had been pried open, and in the darkness beyond Harry could see a small circle of flickering warm light. He carefully navigated the rim of the bomb crater and stepped inside.
At a far booth, Joe Ryan sat huddled in his trench coat. The light came from a candle he’d planted on the table. Also on the table rested a thermos and a small linen bundle. At the creak of the door Ryan looked up. “Bring back any memories?”
“You don’t want to be tickling my memory.”
“Are you going to just stand there?”
“You had a message waiting for me at the Annex to come here.”
“I had a message — and a car — waiting for your plane at Duxford. Where’ve you been? Nobody knew where you —”
“I’m here. What do you want?”
“Right now I want — I’d like you to sit down. Jesus, Harry, you look awful.”
“Some people think I’m pretty cute.”
Ryan unscrewed the top of the thermos, poured out a mug of steaming coffee, and set it in front of Harry He fumbled with a briefcase on the bench beside him. “I’ve got powdered milk and saccharin in here if you —”
Harry was already sipping at the mug.
Ryan unknotted the bundle: a napkin from the canteen containing three breakfast rolls. “I snitched these on the way over. I thought maybe you hadn’t had time to get anything to eat this morning. They’re cold now. Sorry.” From the briefcase, a pack of cigarettes and matches. “How’re you fixed for butts? Never mind, just take’em.”
Harry remembered Dominick Sisto: Fattening the sheep. He lit a cigarette. Isn’t that what the firing squad leader does? Doesn’t he offer you a last cigarette?
“So,” Harry said. “Do I get court-martialed here? Or back in the States? Or is it going to be that old trick of shooting me off to some far comer of the world?”
“Oh, no. You’ll be going home. As a matter of fact, a C-87 with Captain Kneece’s remains on it’ll be flying you out tonight. There’ll be a few days’ leave so you can enjoy what’s left of the holiday season, then, by the time you report back to Dix, there’ll be a letter of commendation from the Judge Advocate General waiting there for you. Sometime after that, you might even be trading those gold oak leaves of yours for silver ones.”
“Commendation?”
“There’ll also be one sent to Captain Kneece’s family, and one for Ricks, an official thanks to that snoop Owen, Doheeny and his crew, too. And there’ll be some noise about cooperation between allies and a tip of the hat to those RAF maniacs who sank Duff’s yacht. By the way, Harry, who the hell are those guys? Mac-something and —”
“Macnee and Donlay. Jim Doheeny’d met them the first time we came through the Orkneys.”
“How’d they get drafted into serving the cause?”
“Evidently, I cut a less-than-inspiring warrior figure. Doheeny saw us marching off armed to the teeth, thought I was getting in over my head…”
“I can see where he would. How’d he know he could depend on those two?”
“He knew they weren’t involved — after all, these were the guys who’d found Grassi’s body. And you only have to talk to them for five minutes to know they’re crazy enough to take off in bad weather without filing a flight plan on an unapproved mission. They actually thanked us afterward for breaking up the boredom. I also think there was something about the brotherhood of airmen and that kind of crap. Now: what’s this baloney about a commendation? Commendation for what?”
Ryan took a moment as if steeling himself. Then he put on the broad, practiced smile that had oiled his way from Newark street urchin to JAG colonel. “For smashing a smuggling ring.”
Harry closed his eyes, pained. “Smuggling.”
“I don’t know what the exact language of the commendations will be, but something along the lines of the risks — professional and personal — you and your plucky little group took to bring down this band of vile profiteers.”
“Who are they saying are the vile profiteers behind this ‘smuggling’ ring?”
“Edghill and Moncrief.”
“Of course.”
“The story they’re dishing out is Moncrief brought in this old coot Bowles, and Bowles knew somebody named Carl Booke —”
“Carlyle.”
Ryan looked at him curiously, then shrugged it off. “Moncrief is going to be demoted and transferred to some black hole of the British Empire. I heard they’re considering someplace in the CB1 Theater like Burma, which is going to make him wish they had thrown him in the jug. Edghill will probably spend the duration shoveling snow in the Aleutians. As for Bowles, it seems you made the old guy some kind of offer about going easy if he cooperated? Our British colleagues feel bound to honor that commiI’ment —”
“Noble of them.”
“— so Bowles will be charged, undoubtedly convicted, but there’ll be no jail time. Hell, Harry, at his age the old bastard won’t live long enough to see the end of this business.” Harry wrinkled his face the way one might over a child’s outlandish tale of monsters beneath the bed. “Moncrief would know Bowles from them both being on Orkney Mainland, and Bowles would know Carlyle Booke because they both worked for John Duff. Anybody happen to mention how it is Edghill and Moncrief came together?”
Joe Ryan’s smile twisted wryly. “They haven’t figured that out yet.”
“I’m sure they’ll think of something.” Harry drained his mug. Even before he set it back on the table, Ryan poured him another cup. “That was Duff’s boat,” Harry persisted, “pulled up at Duff’s dock by Duff’s cabin. How come I don’t hear Sir John Duff’s name getting mentioned here?”
“Gordon Fordyce made a statement to the British authorities this morning. It seems — according to Fordyce — this guy Booke —”
“Stole the boat.”
Joe Ryan blinked. “How’d you know that? Wait a minute: do I want to know how you know that?”
“They’re going to buy this fairy tale about the stolen boat?”
“It may not be very believable, but it is credible; that’s all they need. Unless Edghill, Moncrief, or Bowles fingers somebody, that’s where it ends.”
“Hang some jail time over their heads and maybe they will.”
Ryan’s smile faded. “It’s been decided, Harry. This is the way it’s going to happen.”
“What about the other men from the boat?”
“They’re just a bunch of dockside goons. According to them, Booke would hire a group of them every time he had to make one of these Orkney runs, as many as he thought he’d need, not even the same ones each time. They only dealt with Booke. As far as they knew, this was Booke’s show. One of them says he was there the night Grassi flew in. He says —”
“Booke killed Armando Grassi.”
“How’d you know that?”
“Educated guess. This is all wrapping up very neat.” Harry tore off a piece of breakfast roll, then reconsidered and tossed both pieces down on the napkin. “Coster’s promised that heyll talk. Coster can name the names.”
Ryan’s eyes dropped to the table. “Andrew Coster’s dead, Harry.”
“Oh, Christ…“
“I got the word right after you left yesterday. A kraut mortar took out his OP an hour after you left him.”
The two weeks of near-nonstop traveling, the nights with little or no sleep, Woody Kneece, the sudden pointlessness of it all… Harry wanted to close his eyes, climb on top of the table, and cry himself to sleep. “Somebody’s been protecting these guys all along. Somebody still is.”
“And you want to know why?”
“You’re goddamned right I do.”
Ryan chuckled.
“If you think that’s funny, Joe, you should hear my story about the major who beat the colonel to death with a thermos.”
Ryan waved a calming hand. “It’s just that this is how I told them you’d be. I said this guy has got to know. Because even with his co
mmendation and a lieutenant colonelcy, Harry Voss’ll keep pushing until he does know.”
“Flattering, real sweet of you to say. Now: why?” Harry’s palm came down on the table hard enough to topple the candle.
“Easy, Harry! You’ll bum what’s left of this place down! They never really protected anything. It was more like they turned a blind eye —”
“Who turned a blind eye to what?” Ryan let a moment go by; enough for Harry to know he was only going to be told so much, and that what he would be told would not necessarily include all the whos and whats and whys.
“Harry the war’s going to end one day.”
“That’s the rumor.”
“There’s Nazis who are going to find themselves at the end of a rope when it’s all over, or in prison, or on the mn. The ones left behind are, at the very least, going to lose their jobs.”
“Won’t that be a crying shame?”
“The Nazis’ll be out. The Gestapo has already gutted their opposition. That means that once the shooting stops, there’s going to be a power vacuum in Germany. The only people Churchill hates almost as much as the Nazis are the commies. He hates them so much he keeps lobbying Eisenhower for a landing in the Balkans, even though everybody tells him it would be a disaster. He’s worried about cutting the Russians off before they advance into Europe.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The next generation of leaders in Germany, Harry. The people who are going to hold the public offices and mn the businesses. The way the Brits see it, Sir John is cultivating people they believe are a pro-British, pro-democratic bunch of procapitalists.”
“Is that our side’s take on it, too?”
Ryan shrugged. “Roosevelt thinks he can work with Stalin more than Churchill does, but that doesn’t mean FDR’s not worried about what might happen in an unstable postwar Germany. And it’s a way of protecting American business interests. Some of Duff’s friends worked for companies that had American parents before the Nazis seized them. Joe Kennedy provided a conduit to the American parents to monitor their German operations, and connections to the people that will help them pick up the pieces and get their shops back in working order after the smoke clears.”