by Bill Mesce
Harry would later relate that it was the only instance during that time together he remembered seeing the young captain laugh.
“I thought Joe Ryan would be here,” Harry said.
“He’s at your quarters,” I informed him. “There’s a car and a driver waiting. The colonel thought – for reasons I’m under the impression you understand – a public warm and friendly greeting would be…impolitic.”
“Heaven forfend!” Ricks fluttered the fingers of his good hand by his mouth, as if he were some outraged innocent belle. Then, wryly, “If a guy as political as Ryan did something impolitic, I think he’d break apart at the seams.”
I led them toward the car, turned to exchange some chat with Harry, and only then saw he had not followed but was still back at the plane talking with Jim Doheeny. I couldn’t hear them over the bustle of the aerodrome, nor, in the growing dark, see their faces. But there was something in the way they stood together, an intimacy that told me two souls, who, in a brief time a year ago, had become somehow kindred, were wishing each other well in a way that would carry if they did not meet again. Later, the nature of that closeness would come to me: Jim Doheeny was a man who’d lost a son; Harry was a man who feared for both of his.
When Harry joined us at the car park, he was shaking his head, still amused over something Doheeny had said. I made an inquiry.
“Well, of course, he told me to be careful, and I told him not to worry,” Harry replied. He turned to watch Doheeny’s plane, after only minutes on the ground, roll from its hardstand toward the runway for the flight back to England. “I wasn’t doing anything dangerous, I told him; just lawyer stuff. He said things get dangerous the minute you step off the plane.”
The driver deposited the three of us and associated baggage in the lobby of my gasthaus.
“I think you’ll find it cozy enough,” I said. “You’re already registered. I’m afraid that my colleagues have taken most of the better rooms.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Ricks said. “That part about the ‘better’ rooms.”
“The only thing available your dear friend Joe Ryan could find for you was a sort of garret –”
Ricks was already peering up the stairwell. “Garret?”
“How high up is a garret?” Harry asked.
“In this case, four flights,” I said. “I expect you’ll both be able to make better time than I, so don’t be shy about trotting on up ahead. I’ll bring up the rear.”
Harry and Ricks both looked glumly up the well, then to each other.
“‘Trot on up ahead,’ the man says,” Ricks moaned.
“Eddie, you flatter me,” Harry said. “I can’t answer for my young pal here, but my trotting days are a long time gone.”
Despite their grumbling, they did make better time than I, though they were still trying to catch their respective breaths and patting at damp foreheads when I hobbled up to the topmost landing. The landing was under the eaves, crimped by the sloping roof, so much so that the top of the door to their room had been cut at an angle.
“This is looking worse all the time,” observed Ricks.
To call it a room would be to grant the sleeping space squeezed out of what should have been a portion of attic a dignity it did not deserve. The bed, a washstand, and a narrow wardrobe left little maneuvering room. The only place in the slope–ceilinged compartment one could stand erect was by the inner–most wall, except that area was filled with an uncomfortable–looking folding cot.
Not one to suffer deprivation given a choice, Joe Ryan was comfortably splayed on the down–filled bed, propped against the headboard, cap carelessly pushed back on his head, cigarette dangling lazily from his lips, shoes thoughtlessly on the quilted bedspread. “I feel like I’ve been listening to you guys clomp up the stairs for days!” He flicked his cigarette ash on the threadbare rug. “You really ought to exercise more. Or get a girdle.”
He looked about the small room. “Isn’t this place great, Harry?” To the rest of us: “Harry and I went to law school in New York. We didn’t have the money to live there, so we had to take the train in every day. We used to be so green–eyed over the fellas that lived in the dorms. We used to think this is what they looked like. Only back then, we thought this was nifty! We dreamed about having a little nest like this! C’mon, Harry, admit it; it’s cozy!”
“Somehow, I have a feeling that wherever you’re staying, it’s better than ‘cozy’.”
Ryan’s eyes appraised the room quickly. “Speaking in only comparative terms, I think I’d use the word ‘palatial.’ I see Captain Ricks decided to make the trip after all.”
“Hullo, Colonel.”
Something – a coldness – passed quickly across Ryan’s face before he returned to a bonhomie intended, in no small way, to be grating; a favored Ryan self–entertainment. “Enjoy your scholarly little hole while you can, Harry. You boys are on the road tomorrow morning.” Ryan enjoyed Harry’s confusion for a moment before continuing: “I warned you about Courie, Harry. This guy’s got the goods!”
Harry had long ago learned how to deal with Ryan’s designed annoying evasiveness. He sat himself on the cot, crossed his legs, leaned back against the wall, and assumed a pose of infinite patience.
Ryan laughed at the long–missed sight, then grew serious. “Dominick’s gone, Harry. I believe your literary friend Mr. Owen there would use the phrase, ‘spirited off in the dead of night’.”
“Want to try that in English?” Ricks asked.
“That is English, laddie,” I cracked. “Your colonial crudity is showing.”
Ryan swung his feet to the floor, snuffed out his cigarette on the bedstead, all business now. “The day I snuck out of here for Rome, I don’t know how Courie found out I was gone, but he did, and he took the opportunity to move Dominick.”
“Move him where?” Harry asked.
“A castle. No, really! An honest to God castle! Between here and Wiltz. The Signal Corps has a radio repeater station there, and no, I don’t know what a radio repeater station is. My electronic expertise is limited to the on–off knob.”
Ricks bridled. “And what authority did he use – ”
“He’s the trial counsel,” Harry cut in.
That didn’t seem to clear up the captain’s confusion.
“You need to bone up on you Manual of Courts–Martial, Captain,” Ryan said somewhat snidely, then quoted therefrom, more or less: “The Trial Counsel’s specific duties include this and that and blah blah blah and obtaining a suitable room for the trial.”
“What’s so ‘suitable’ about – ”
Ryan held up a hand for silence. They heard the muffled putter of a rocket bomb slipping by overhead.
Harry looked quizzically to me.
“V–1,” I answered, and, like the rest, looked upward at the angled ceiling, waiting, until the engine faded into the west.
“You’ll be unhappy to know you are now residing in what the boys call, ‘Buzz Bomb Alley’ ,” Ryan said, delighting in the pained look this brought to Harry’s face. “Sleep light tonight, Harry. They don’t all fly by.”
“I was saying,” Ricks put in, “What’s so suitable about this castle Courie found?”
“It’s about twenty miles southeast of here,” Ryan answered, “and what’s so suitable is that it’s close to Wiltz.”
“Cota is the convening authority,” Harry translated. “Wiltz is where he’s headquartered now.”
Ricks nodded with unhappy comprehension. “So, Courie says he’s putting the hearing where it’s convenient for Cota to keep an eye on the proceedings – ”
“And it’s close to where the witnesses are now bivouacked and all that other I’m–just–doing–my–job stuff,” Ryan concluded.
“Forgive my stepping in,” I said, “but as an objective observer I understand the how at work, but not the why.”
Harry smiled. “The why, Eddie, is to be a pain in the ass. My guess is Courie’s pretty well go
t his case set. But we’ll be trying to build our case out in the middle of nowhere with no staff, no support facilities, and the re–location alone’ll cost us half a day. Hey, Joe, is anybody at this place babysitting Dominick?”
“He’s still got that fella from his outfit with him.”
“Why didn’t you just yank the leash on this guy?” Ricks demanded.
Ryan looked ready to bark, but Harry held up a hand and interceded: “Because then Joe’d have to explain to Cota why he wasn’t around when Courie pulled this stunt.”
“I wouldn’t think our sly Captain Courie would have much trouble puzzling out the connection between you two,” I said, indicating Harry and Ryan.
“He won’t bring it up,” Harry replied. “Because then he’d have to bring up Joe’s coming to see me in Rome which is one kind of misconduct, and his taking advantage of Joe’s trip to Rome, which is another. I don’t know what kind of disciplinary action there’d be, but the short of it is we’d all be off the case then, including Courie, and he sounds like he really wants this one on his resume.”
“Mr. Owen, does it ever bother you that somebody as sweet–natured as Harry seems to understand sneaky sons–of–bitches like Lenny Courie so well?” Ryan said almost as a boast. He stood. “I’m leaving before sun–up but you guys get your rest. I’ll leave a map at the desk and directions to get you to the Boulevard de Souviner where the motor pool is. A jeep and your trip ticket’ll be waiting for you there.”
“Colonel, will anybody mind if I tag along?” I asked. “I know the ground between here and Wiltz rather well, certainly better than Harry and the good captain. I can help navigate them.”
Ryan smiled suspiciously; the respectful antagonist. “I appreciate the good deed, but how is your employer back on Fleet Street going to feel about you walking off the job?”
“Oh, I’ll be on the job, mon colonel. I suspect there’s a story worth telling in all this. In the time you’ve known me, have you ever known me wrong in that regard?”
“Unfortunately, no. It’s up to these two.”
“See you at breakfast, Eddie,” Harry said.
“That fills out the set, then,” Ryan said. “Moe, Larry, and Curly.” The colonel weaved through the crowded room, stopped at the door by Ricks. He laid a finger on the captain’s chest, and that brief flash of iciness returned. “You cost Harry a day, Captain. You better be worth it.”
CHAPTER THREE: Masada
“I THINK WE COULD WALK THERE FASTER THAN THIS.” Peter Ricks shifted uncomfortably on the cramped rear seat of the jeep amidst our piled bags. “Ya know, this isn’t so comfy I want to spend the day back here. Especially after a night on that – … What did they call that thing?”
“A cot, I think,” Harry said.
“That was damned dishonest referring to that thing as anything resembling a bed. Damned dishonest.”
Harry, behind the wheel, made some sort of humph–ing sound, sharing the captain’s impatience. “What is all this?”
We were on a narrow, tree–bound lane bearing southeast out of Liege. Along both sides of the road, nestled among the tree trunks, were hutches of corrugated tin, shorter than an average man. And also all along the road, lorries, Weasels, and jeeps were drawing up to or pulling away from the hutches. At some, handlers removed crates of rations, jerry cans of petrol, and tins of ammunition and loaded them on the vehicles; at others, they unloaded from the carriers to re–stock the caches. It fell to Harry to navigate our jeep in start–and–stop fashion along the choked road.
“Liege, my dear traveling companions,” I began, “is the largest grocery stand of the American Army in this part of Europe. Petrol, munitions, potables…it’s all stashed away in those little tin cupboards. Spread out under the trees like this keeps Jerry from getting a peep during his occasional aerial reconnaissance sortie. It also prevents him dispensing the whole lot with a single candle.”
“I’d watch where you throw your butts, Harry,” Ricks said, regarding a chain of handlers passing petrol jerry cans into the back of a deuce–and–a–half. “Otherwise, Lieutenant Sistol’ll be scraping his legal counsel off the moon.”
Beyond the trees lining the road I could see into an open field covered with a thin crust of snow. The blanket of virginal white was marred by the near blackness of the freshly turned earth of graves. I couldn’t count them, but they stretched in a half–dozen ranks across the acre field, from the road to the hedgerows bordering the opposite side. A contingent of Military Policemen watched over the German prisoners beginning yet another rank, removing canvas–wrapped figures from a line of lorries and setting them into the newly–opened ground. As the field passed from sight, I saw several new lorries and their funereal cargo lurch across the frozen furrows to take their place with the other ad hoc hearses and await their turn for emptying.
I was suddenly aware Peter Ricks was again whining from the back of the jeep.
“I’m sorry, Captain; what’s that you say?”
“I said I’m growing old back here. Hey, Harry, what’s with Ryan giving me the fish–eye last night? You’d think he caught me pissing in his shoes.”
Harry shrugged it away, but I could see the discomfort in his face.
“Perhaps…,” I began, then paused, momentarily wondering if it were my place to say. But that had never stopped me before. “Perhaps he thought he’s owed a bit more respect on your part.”
Ricks made a scoffing noise. “For what? No offense, Harry, I know you two are asshole buddies from the Year One, but I don’t quite buy this tune about him helping out somebody from the ol’ neighborhood. Whenever this guy’s around, my shoulder blades start to twitch just waiting for the knife.”
“I realize we’re fighting for liberty and all that,” I said, “and you’re certainly free to voice your opinion, but that seems odd coming from you. I mean, of all people…”
“What’re you talking about?”
I turned to confirm the sense I got from the captain’s tone; indeed, he had no idea. “You don’t know? Harry, the lad doesn’t know?”
“Know what?” Ricks demanded.
“I never had the chance to tell him,” Harry said with a shrug. “Remember? He was already gone.”
“Know what?” Ricks fumed impatiently.
Harry and I looked to each other, then he nodded in my direction. “You tell a story a lot better than I do,” he said.
“If one of you gentlemen doesn’t enlighten me pretty goddamn soon – ”
I held up a hand for Ricks to cease and desist, and grandly cleared my throat. “Prick up your ears, laddie, and I’ll tell you a tale. Once upon a time, about this time of year – actually, it was the day after Christmas to be precise – at an estate down in Canterbury, Father Christmas left a rather distasteful gift under the tree. Again, to be precise, two of them. One was Sir John Duff, a rather comfortable manufacturer of this and that, and a man of some note, and with some unsavory connections to an illicit smuggling ring as well as the homicide of an American officer of your acquaintance. The other was his personal secretary.
“Both men were found on the floor of Sir Johnnie’s posh parlor with bullet holes in their crania. The police found several cartridge casings from a .45 automatic pistol which led to the supposition the assailant might’ve been an American soldier. Am I telling it well, Harry?”
Harry kept his unhappy eyes focused on the clotted road ahead.
“What do you think, Captain? An intriguing tale thus far? A tale well–told?”
Peter Ricks had faced machine guns and mortars, rifle fire and artillery rounds. Mere words could elicit nothing more than casual interest. “I’m on the edge of my seat,” he said dryly. “Such as it is.”
“Well, Harry’s chum Colonel Ryan knew that we three had crossed paths with Sir Johnnie regarding the aforementioned smuggling business and the defunct American officer. Consequently, he made inquiries of Harry and I the subsequent day to account for our whereabouts.
&nb
sp; “You might recall, you were absent that meeting. You had told us the day before you were flying back to your unit in Italy that same night. And then here’s where the story takes a bit of an O. Henry–esque twist! Lo if Colonel Ryan doesn’t inform us that, in point of fact, there had been no air transports back to Italy that night! Curiouser and curiouser, the good colonel imparts upon us his discovery that the only Peter Ricks embarking from England for Italy had left on a troop ship earlier that morning – well after Sir Johnnie and his associate had met their untimely if deserved ends.
“And now, Captain, we come to the part of particular relevance to you. Colonel Joseph P. Ryan, whom, I’m sorry to say, all of us at the time thought had the integrity of a hyena, tells Harry and I that we must be mistaken about where we thought you’d gone. He tells us that you must have tagged along with us all that night, and that we’d simply misremembered.”
That did make an impression on the captain, and his face slowly clouded with puzzlement, as if trying to digest the fact that up was no longer up, nor down.
We sat quietly like that for a moment, each of us lost in his respective musings. We were finally jarred back to the present by Harry’s sudden jumping on the brakes and honking of the jeep’s horn as a Weasel lurched out into the road from one of the storage hutches.
“I have no illusions about the guy,” Harry said. “I know him too long and too well to nominate him for sainthood. He won’t cover our arses on this any more than he can without exposing his own.”
“I don’t know I want to see the colonel’s exposed arse,” cracked Ricks.
“But the fact is,” Harry said, unhumored by the remark, “that he covered you, Pete. You might want to give him a little less grief.”
I turned back to Ricks. “It does give one pause to ponder the man, eh, Captain?”
He nodded, not particularly appetized by having to do additional pondering about anything. He drew a packet of fags from inside his windcheater, offered me one which I accepted with a grateful nod, then lit them with his Ronson. He reclined as well as the cramped confines of the rear of the jeep allowed, stared out the rear plastic window providing a distorted view of the wintry fields outside. He sighed a stream of cigarette smoke toward the canvas roof. “Life’d be a whole lot simpler if the bastards stayed bastards and the good guys stayed good.”