The Dyers, not knowing where to go and looking uncomfortable, waited for the others to catch up with them at the foot of what had been the servants' stairway to the first floor. The Countess went up ahead of them. They came out in the large, elegantly furnished sitting room overlooking the square.
Fulmar immediately sat down on a fragile-looking gilded wood Louis XIV sofa and began to pull his black leather boots off.
The Countess looked askance at him, but von Heurten-Mitnitz sensed there was something wrong.
"Something wrong with your feet?" he asked.
"These goddamned boots are four sizes too small," Fulmar said.
"I soaked them with water, but it didn't help a whole hell of a lot."
When he had the boots off, he pulled a stocking off and, holding his foot in his lap, examined it carefully.
"Goddamn, look at that! "he said. The skin was rubbed raw, and was bleeding in several places.
The Countess walked to the sofa, dropped to her knees, and took the foot in her hand.
"How did you manage to walk?" she asked.
"Why, Cousin," Fulmar said, "I simply considered the alternative."
"You'll have to soak that in brine," she said.
"It's the only thing that will help."
"By brine, you mean salt in water?" he asked, and she nodded.
"Before we do that, I would like a very large cognac," he said, and pulled off the other sock. The other foot was worse. The blood from the sore spots had flowed more copiously, and when it had dried, it had glued the sock to the wounds. He swore as he pulled the stocking off.
The Countess walked to a cabinet and returned with a large crystal brandy snifter.
"I'll heat some water," she said.
"And make a brine."
"And pickle my feet," Fulmar said dryly.
"Thank you, Cousin, ever so much."
"Why do you call her 'cousin'?" Professor Dyer asked.
"We are, by marriage," the Countess said.
"My late husband and Eric are, or were, cousins."
"Your late husband?" the professor asked.
"The professor tends to ask a lot of questions," Fulmar said mockingly.
"My husband, the late Oberstleutnant [Lieutenant Colonel] Baron Manfried von Steighofen, fell for his fatherland on the eastern front," the Countess said dryly.
"And you're doing this?" the professor asked.
"It's one of the reasons I'm doing 'this," my dear Herr Professor," the Countess said.
"And the other?" Fulmar asked.
"Is it important?"
"I'm curious," Fulmar said.
"If I were in your shoes, I would be rooting for the Germans."
"If I thought they had a chance to win, I probably would be," she said matter-of-factly.
"But they won't win. Which means that the Communists will come to Budapest. If they don't shoot me, I'll find myself walking the square outside asking strangers if they're looking for a good time."
"Beatrice! "von Heurten-Mitnitz exclaimed.
"Face facts, my dear Helmut," the Countess said.
"The flaw in your logic," Fulmar said, "is that you are helping the Russians to come here."
"In which case, I can only hope that you and Helmut will still be alive and in a position to tell the Commissar what a fearless anti-fascist I was," she said.
"There's a small chance that would keep them from shooting me out of hand."
There was a moment's silence, and then she went on.
"What I'm really hoping for is that there will be a coup d'etat by people like Helmut against the Bavarian corporal, and in time for whoever takes over to sue for an armistice. If there's an armistice, perhaps I won't lose everything."
"Huh," Fulmar grunted.
"And what has motivated you, my dear Eric,"the Countess said, "to do what you're doing?"
It was a moment before he replied.
"Sometimes I really wonder," he said.
The Countess nodded, then turned to Gisella Dyer.
"Would you help me, please?" she said.
"I made a gulyas, and if you would help serve it, I'll heat some water to 'pickle' Eric's feet."
The sting of the warm salt water on his feet was not as painful as Eric Fulmar had expected, and he wondered if this was because he was partially anesthetized by the Countess's brandy, or whether his feet were beyond hurting.
The gulyas was delicious, and he decided that was because it was delicious and not because of the cognac--or because they'd had little to eat save lard and dark bread sandwiches since leaving Marburg an der Lahn.
Von Heurten-Mitnitz waited until they were finished and Fulmar was pouring a little brandy to improve his small, strong cup of coffee, and then he said:
"I think it would be best if I knew precisely what has happened since you entered Germany, Eric."
"A synopsis would be that everything that could go wrong, did," Fulmar said.
"What about the Gestapo agent? Did you have to kill him?"
"I killed him when he opened the luggage that had been left on the train for me," Fulmar said matter-of-factly, "and found the Obersturmfuhrer's uniform.
And then the boots didn't fit."
Von Heurten-Mitnitz nodded.
"And in Marburg, was what happened there necessary?"
"Yes, of course it was," Fulmar said impatiently.
"I don't like scrambling people's brains."
"You could learn some delicacy," the Countess said.
"We are not in a delicate business, Cousin," Fulmar said.
"But that's it? There's nothing else I don't know about?" von HeurtenMitnitz asked.
Fulmar's hesitation was obvious.
"What else?" von Heurten-Mitnitz persisted.
"I was recognized on the train," he said.
"Before I got to Frankfurt. On the way to Marburg."
"By whom?"
There was another perceptible hesitation.
"Christ, I really hate to tell you," he said.
"I don't want you playing games with her."
"I think I have to know," von Heurten-Mitnitz said.
"Fuck you," Fulmar said.
"You have to know what I goddamn well decide to tell you."
Von Heurten-Mitnitz stiffened. He was not used to being talked to like that.
But he kept control of himself.
"Someone you knew when you were at Marburg?" he asked reasonably.
And then, when Fulmar remained silent, he added, "I don't want to sound melodramatic, but I will be here when you are safe in England."
"Tell him, Eric," the Countess said.
"As you pointed out, we are not in a delicate business."
"I don't want you trying to use her, you understand me? Her, or her father."
"Who recognized you? "von Heurten-Mitnitz persisted gently.
"Elizabeth von Handleman-Bitburg," Fulmar said.
Von Heurten-Mitnitz's eyebrows went up. The Countess looked at him with a question in her eyes.
"Generaloberst von Handleman-Bitburg's daughter?" von HeurtenMitnitz asked.
Fulmar nodded.
"Possibly it's meaningless," von Heurten-Mitnitz said.
"She met a young Obersturmfuhrer whom she had once known. Was there any reason you think she was suspicious?"
"Her father had told her that I was seen in Morocco in an American uniform," Fulmar said.
"She knew."
"And what do you think she will tell her father?" von HeurtenMitnitz asked.
"Nothing," Fulmar said.
"She won't tell him a thing."
"I wish I shared your confidence," von Heurten-Mitnitz said.
"The only reason I'm telling you this, "Fulmar said, "is because I don't want you to protect your ass by taking her out."
"Telling me what?"
"We spent the night together," Fulmar said.
"Okay? Get the picture?"
"Yes, I think I do," von Heurten-Mitnitz said.
/> "If anything happens to her," Fulmar said.
"I will..."
"Don't be childish," von Heurten-Mitnitz said.
"I was about to say something childish, "Fulmar said.
"Like I will come back here and kill you myself. But I won't have to do that. All I'll have to do is make sure the Sicherheitsdienst finds out about you."
"My God!" von Heurten-Mitnitz said.
"I made a mistake in telling you," Fulmar said.
"No, you didn't, Eric," the Countess said. She walked to von HeurtenMitnitz and put her arm in his, then stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.
"Helmut understands that even in the midst of this insanity, people fall in love."
Fulmar looked through them, then chuckled.
"Well, I'll be goddamned," he said.
"The Merry Widow in the flesh."
lONE]
The Maylaybalay-Kibawe Highway Island of Mindanao Commonwealth of the Philippines 4 February 1943
The mountainous center of the island of Mindanao is virtually inaccessible by motor vehicle, and accessible by foot only with great difficulty. It was for that reason that Brigadier General Wendell Fertig Commanding, U.S. Forces in the Philippines, had elected to place his headquarters and the bulk of his force in the mountains: the Japs had a hell of a hard time getting in there, and when they tried it, he was always notified in plenty of time to plan his defensive strategy.
Almost without exception, that strategy was to evacuate his headquarters and, from positions in the mountainous jungle nearby, observe how close the Japanese had come to finding it.
So far they had failed, although on occasion they had come across outposts or villages where he had stationed small detachments of his guerrilla force.
That was, he knew, a somewhat grandiose manner of describing the six, or eight, or a dozen armed men living in those villages and earning their support from the villagers by working in the fields.
When the Japanese had proof (or strongly suspected) that a village was harboring guerrillas, they burned it to the ground. They would have shot the village leaders, had they caught them, but the villagers--men, women, and children, as well as the guerrillas--invariably found safety in the surrounding jungle when Japanese appeared.
Pour I'encouragement deles autres, the elders of several villages that had not been housing guerrillas had been shot, and their villages burned down by the Japanese. The result of this had been to increase the number of natives willing to support U.S. forces in the Philippines. The remaining men would have been happy to enlist in USFIP, but Fertig had neither food to feed them nor arms with which to equip them.
The Japanese had quickly learned, too, that their expeditions into the mountains were very expensive--and did little good. They were almost always engaged by Fertig's guerrillas. Not in pitched battles, not even in situations that could be considered an armed engagement. Although Fertig liked to think that he was doing to the Japanese what the Minutemen had done to the English on their way back from Concord--causing them serious harm by attacking their formations "with accurate rifle fire from the surrounding forests--all he was really able to do was harass the Japanese patrols.
When it was absolutely safe to do so--in the sense that there was a sure escape route into the impenetrable jungle--and when there was an absolutely sure target, two or three or half a dozen shots would ring out from the jungle, and one or two or three sweating Japanese soldiers marching along a trail would be killed or wounded.
With some exceptions-there were some guerrillas who had as much as one hundred rounds of ammunition, which they were unwilling to share), most of Fertig's troops had no more than twenty-five rounds of ammunition for their Model 1917 Enfield.30-06-caliber rifles, or their Arisaka 7.7mm-caliber captured Japanese rifles, or their Winchester or Savage hunting rifles, or their Browning and Remington shotguns.
Fertig's guerrillas were not equipped to engage Japanese forces in battle.
Before long, the Japanese, who were not fools, had for all practical purposes abandoned their expeditions into the mountains. Fertig wasn't posing any bona fide military threat to their occupation. He was contained. And they could live with him until such time as the Filipinos came to understand that it was in their best interest to cooperate with the Japanese, to enter willingly into the Japanese Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere. At that point, they would stop feeding and supporting Fertig's guerrillas, and the threat would be over.
The Japanese had turned to winning the hearts and minds of the people.
Propaganda detachments, protected by company-size detachments of riflemen, began to visit villages on the periphery of Fertig's mountainous jungle area of operations. The propaganda detachments carried with them l6mm motion picture projectors and generators, and gifts of food and candy. They would set up a screen and show Charlie Chaplin and Bugs Bunny motion pictures, along with newsreels of the fall of Singapore, and of Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright surrendering to General Homma, and of long lines of American soldiers--hands in the air in surrender--entering Japanese captivity.
And then there would be a speech, or speeches, most often by Filipinos already convinced that the future of the Philippine people lay with their Japanese brothers. The speeches would invariably contain sarcastic references to General Fertig and his so-called U.S. forces in the Philippines.
Where were they? If they hadn't already died of starvation, hiding out like rats in the jungle, why weren't they attacking the Japanese?
General Fertig was aware of the problem, and aware that it had to be dealt with. With some reluctance, he had concluded that the only way to deal with it was by doing exactly what he believed he was probably incapable of doing:
engaging a Japanese company-strength unit in a battle. A battle in which there would be a winner and a loser, not just a dozen shots fired from concealment in the jungle.
The Japanese cooperated in two ways that helped Fertig's plans. First, they were methodical. Their propaganda detachments had a schedule. And Fertig obtained a copy of it from a Filipino woman who had been employed by the Japanese as a typist. Secondly, when it had become apparent to the Japanese that Fertig was unwilling to attack the propaganda detachment convoys, they had grown a little careless.
When the first convoys had gone out, fully expecting to be attacked, they had moved slowly and with great caution. They had sent a point ahead and they were prepared to fight at any moment. Now, as a general rule of thumb, the troops in the trucks did their best to sleep when they were on the road.
Their officers indulged them, for they believed that if Fertig were going to attack, he would do so at night. The way to preclude that was to establish a strong perimeter guard. That required the use of wide-awake soldiers. It was better that the troops get what sleep they could when they could, so they would be wide-awake guards at night.
Two highways crossed the main portion of the island of Mindanao, both running north-south, one to the west of the mountains, the other to the east.
There was no highway running east-west through the mountains. The terrain was difficult, construction would be practically impossible, and there was no economic justification to build such highways.
The place Fertig picked for the attack on the convoy was almost exactly equidistant between Maylaybalay and Kibawe on the highway that crossed Mindanao to the west of the mountains. The nearest Japanese reinforcements would be twenty-three miles north in Maylaybalay, or twenty-one miles south in Kibawe. In one possible scenario--where one of the trucks would escape the ambush and run for help--it would be anywhere from an hour and a half to two hours before Japanese reinforcements could reach the ambush location.
In another--and much worse--possible scenario, they would not be able to totally overwhelm the Japanese in twenty minutes. In that scenario, the Japanese troops would be equipped with both machine guns and mortars. If they were not able to knock out the mortars and machine guns in the first minute or two of the ambush, overwhelming the Japanes
e would be difficult and time-consuming.
W E B Griffin - Men at War 4 - The Fighting Agents Page 10