He took a drink. “I’m really not sure what the hours will be.”
Nautaung chuckled. “Carlotta, do you not know the Dua? He thinks the eight hour day is something you read of in science fiction.”
“I know him, Nautaung,” she said suspending her statement in that way she had of suspending a statement so that you couldn’t tell whether it was a compliment or a cynicism. “You’re going to fight again, aren’t you, Con?” she asked pointedly.
“Hardly,” he said.
“Hardly,” she repeated irately. “Hardly. How do you hardly fight? You’ve never done anything hardly in your life,” she laughed sarcastically. “You think moderation is a dirty word.”
“I’m not going to be in any danger if that’s what you mean,” he said trying to avoid her last statement.
“No. That’s the nice thing about this war. It’s not dangerous.” Then in a new voice: “Why you, Con? Why? Haven’t you done enough? What’s wrong with some of the other Americans? They don’t have to fight. They don’t have …”
“Carla, for God’s sake come off it,” he said. “You’re imagining things.”
She sat there rigid, thoughtful for a moment. Nautaung got up. He didn’t say a word. He seemed to simply vanish out the porch door, without sound. Seconds later Con caught a glimpse of him plodding through the sand toward the beach.
Imagining what, she wanted to say. I suppose that crease in his side the first sick leave was imagination. Or the four holes and the hundreds of pieces of shrapnel the second leave. Or Danny being dead.
She stood up. She lit a cigarette, took a drink, then turned looking out toward the beach her back to him. “How long have you known about this job?”
“Is it important?”
“I think you should have told me.”
“I guess I should have. I’ve had an idea about it for some time. I didn’t know the details until I went up to Kandy before I went to Sinlum. The final details I got today.”
“You didn’t have to take the job, did you?” she asked still staring out at the beach.
“No. Not that way I didn’t have to take it. But I had to take it another way.”
“I should have known that.”
“I don’t know why you should have known,” he said. “I didn’t know for sure until yesterday myself.”
“But I should have,” she replied.
He didn’t understand.
She turned around facing him. “I’ll get dinner.”
“No cook?”
“She went to Galle. I’m fixing some Stroganoff for Nautaung. He’s never had it. It hasn’t been much of an evening for him so far.”
“Nautaung doesn’t mind.”
“Of course,” she said. “Goddamn you, Con Reynolds. Why do you have to be the way you are? Why? Don’t you see that every time you come back here you’re banged up worse and worse. You can’t beat the game indefinitely. Not even you.”
“I’ve thought about it, Carla. Thought about it carefully. There’s one thing you haven’t considered. Experience. I’ve got that working for me.”
She knew it would be useless to carry it any further. His mind was made up: “Sometimes I wish I were a man. Just for an hour. Just so I could beat your stubborn, impossible brains in,” she said clenching one fist upward and shaking it.
He grinned. She didn’t want to but she was forced to smile. He came across and took her in his arms and held her, her head on his shoulder, his hand in her hair, holding her suddenly very close and tight, feeling with a sudden strange longingness all her warm supple longness up against him, marveling again at the clean firm feel of her body through the dress.
“Be careful, Con,” she whispered. “Please. Promise you’ll be careful.”
“I’ll be careful,” he said. “I’ve got too much to live for not to be careful.”
He took her head in his hands and for a second their eyes spoke their every thought and then he kissed her. She started out of the room his eyes following her.
“You’ve got the nicest little roll to your ass,” he said.
She looked over her shoulder without breaking stride and winked a big exaggerated wink and then just before she disappeared into the living-room gave her skirt a slight flip upward flippantly so that he caught a glimpse of the tanned back of her thigh. And then he heard her laugh.
He smiled. How very much I love you, he said to her in his mind. How very much, Carla. How lucky I am.
He went out on the beach and found Nautaung. He gave the old man a short briefing on the new set-up, then they went in to dinner. They ate and drank and Con and Nautaung began to tell her stories about the Hills and the people and the funny things that happened with the troops: like that Christmas tree that Niven had made and the cocktail party he threw in the jungle, and how drunk he was, and how silly stupid relaxed he was when he was drunk. And what they did to that visiting colonel from the Inspector-General’s department. And how frantically Con had tried to get out of his sleeping bag the first time the Kachins had put a live snake in it as a joke. One story making them remember another.
Nautaung telling the story about the night that Danny and the priest got drunk and Danny taking several glasses and busting them and then walking over the glass in his bare feet, the Priest trying to emulate him, cutting his feet severely. Later Danny had shown Con how it was done. And Con telling her about the look on Doc Travis’s face when, after remarking how delicious one of his first meals with the Kachins was, was told that he had eaten monkey stew and fried honey-bees. And how consistently Niven and Danforth would bitch about the fighting, then how they would argue to see who got to do it.
Carla laughed until she cried, drinking right along with them; yet feeling through Con’s own laughter his welling affection and pride in the people and the troops. They sat at the table until a little before midnight, then they had a cup of coffee and called it a night.
The next morning at five Con and Nautaung left for the office in their chauffeured limousine. Nautaung sat side by side with Con in the map room as Mark briefed them. Then Con gave Nautaung some money and sent him into town to get some uniforms and other clothing for himself.
Con called Carla at dinnertime and said he wouldn’t be home until late. He called her again at midnight and told her he wouldn’t be home at all. He saw her only twice for dinner that whole first week.
The second week he went on his first mission landing an agent by P.T. near Moulmein and then going to the outskirts of that town to liquidate an agent who had begun to play both sides against the middle. A month passed and he had been in and out of Japanese occupied Burma seven times. One night going right into the suburbs of Rangoon.
He drove his staff to the point of exhaustion, driving himself even harder. Mark told Gus that he had never seen anything like it in all his soldiering. It was as if Con were possessed, he said. As if this had become a one man war. As if he were attempting to gain a diabolic revenge of some sort. “Why I’ve seen him come off a mission where he hasn’t slept in four days, take a cold shower, a drink, then sit down and work for twelve hours straight. Sleep for three, a drink and a sandwich at his desk, then work fifteen more hours. He’s inhuman, Gus. And the best bloody officer I’ve ever known.”
But Gus didn’t see it that way. He believed that Con hated war more than any man he had ever known. And that this was his way of ending it as fast as he could.
As the legend spread within their service, agents began to fear working for him almost as much as they feared the enemy. If the prize was big enough Con demanded that they take fantastic chances which he himself always assumed right along with them; using elements of surprise or sheer boldness to accomplish his coups.
The second month passed. Germany was falling. And still Con never let up. Twice he had sent Nautaung back to the Hills to bring him news of the demobilization and well-being of the men. During his second trip to Sinlum Nautaung found that word of Con’s feats had arrived ahead of him. No one showed su
rprise. Niven said that Con had begun to get that way right after Lewje. Ringa and Doc Travis said they felt Con had been itching for a scrap ever since Danny had died. They all agreed that he was now battling the percentages. When Nautaung returned he urged that Con leave them all at Sinlum as they provided much aid for the administering priest. Con said that for the present they could stay but that eventually he would have to have them; he needed their experience.
Frenziedly Con drove his unit on. He hardly ever saw Carla. He had both his men and women agents trained to the edge of physical perfection. He grilled them personally in fluent Burmese and tongue whipped them when they didn’t know their lessons thoroughly. Some quivered before him; yet no one could deny that he wasn’t always fair. He drove himself always to be fair. And when there was a dirty job he assumed that task himself.
His agent net spread. He would go into Burma and recruit prospects personally, bring them out by boat or plane at night, and train them on the estate. He didn’t know it at the time but he was furnishing five times as much information on the Rangoon situation alone as Colonel Pearson’s unit working out of Ramree. His information always got the highest classification. As his reputation for reliability spread among the higher authority he received more and more requests. His net spread out into Thailand, then French Indo-China. He had Gus commandeer the neighboring estate and joined it with his, moving all the staff except the radio crew, Nautaung, and his personal male secretary to that main house. He had a double guard thrown around the estate and no one was permitted to leave or enter without written permission from Mark.
The only time he ever seemed to slow down at all was when Nautaung would bring in the weekly report from Ringa from Sinlumkaba. Then if there were any prevailing problems he would discuss them with Nautaung leisurely, then in his own hand write his advice to Ringa or the priest or Niven or the Doc.
He never called Carla any more. She didn’t know when he would come. Sometimes it would be three in the morning. Sometimes he would stop by the office. He never stayed long. He hardly ever slept with her anymore. When he did it was with such an abounding tenderness that she would be left bewildered. Being near him, feeling his tensiled wiredness, she expected anything but tenderness. She loved him with an almost schoolgirlish adoration. The more he abused her with his lack of consideration the more she seemed to love him; yet sometimes she hated him and herself for that. She began not to be able to sleep and then to lose weight. She longed for Monday and Friday nights when Nautaung would come for dinner and tell her about him.
Then one night Gus came down from Kandy to see Con. And Con took him over to the map in his office as had been their custom, and gave him a briefing on each agent group. It took three hours. When the briefing was finished Gus stood up: “Get your hat,” he said.
“Where are we going? I’ve got work to do.”
“You’re not working this week. That’s an order.”
“This is no time for jokes, Gus,” Con said brushing his goatee with the back of his hand.
“That’s an order,” Gus said incisively leveling his beady eyes at Con. “We invade Rangoon in two weeks. We open another office there. As soon as we have the town. You’re going to be in charge of that one along with this. And you’re going to need time to formulate the new set-up. You won’t have the time, driving yourself with all this detail.…”
“I’m no executive.”
“You’re wrong. You’re a damn fine executive. And you’re going to have to be, Colonel. Lieutenant Colonel, I should say.”
“When?”
“You were made one last week. Here’s the orders. Delhi sent them to me,” he said handing Con the orders. Ringa was on the same orders, a captain, Con saw. He threw them on the desk.
“O.K. Gus,” Con said. “You’re the boss. I better go see Mark.”
“I told Mark two days ago,” Gus said.
“Don’t ever do that to me again,” Con said glaring. “You ever go to a man under me again, behind my back, and we’ve had it.”
Gus chuckled: “You’re a real character, old boy. A real character.”
Con was still glaring. His face was red. Slowly he broke into a smile. “You got a lot of guts calling anyone a character. But I mean what I just said.”
“Let’s go. You can drive me into town. And I don’t want to hear that you’ve been here for one week.”
“Give Carla the week off, will you?”
“I have. You can marry her any time after the fifteenth of next month. Permission came.”
“Why the fifteenth.”
“They wanted you to have suitable waiting time.”
They started out the door.
“I’ll be married on the fifteenth then,” Con said. “That’s a little over two weeks from now. Almost three weeks.”
Gus briefed Con and Mark on the new set-up as they drove into town. Con promised Gus that if he got into Rangoon before the attacking troops that he would secure the Bank of China but only after he had released the forty Kachin prisoners that were being held in the main Japanese stockade. Mark had trained a special platoon of Burmese Rifles that were to be used to prevent the looting of the main financial institutions. Con said he didn’t think they’d have any trouble, that the Japanese would evacuate.
“Evacuate hell,” Mark had said. “They know damn well we’re coming. Why should they evacuate.”
“I rather think they believe we’ll hit below, around Molmein,” Gus said.
“They know we’re coming all right,” Con said. “They always know. But they can’t take a chance on a fight there. They can be too easily cut off. They’ll mine that town, booby-trap it, it’ll be like one big firecracker. But they won’t fight. I’ll make you a bet Mark.”
“For ten pounds you’re on,” the Englishman said.
“Let’s make it an even hundred rupees,” Con grinned.
“I’ll take a hundred rupees of it too,” Gus said to Mark. “I think Con’s got it figured.”
“Con’s had it figured too often lately,” Mark said. “I’ve soldiered too long, laddie, you better not press it any more. You’re about pressed out.”
“Better get a psychiatrist, Gus,” Con said. “I think Mark’s shot his bolt.”
“Kheeeee, Kheeee,” the Greek wheezed. “After a week with his woman, Mark, how you going to hold him down. He’s got armor plate where his heart ought to be.”
“That’s what Danny thought,” Mark said.
“How I wish Danny was here for this one,” Con said. “He used to talk about going into Rangoon when Rangoon was a million miles away. Somehow he made you feel that once you got the big city it was all but wrapped up.”
“I feel that way myself,” Mark said.
“If they don’t make a fight here, that’s the tip,” Gus said. “They’ve had it.”
“I want a month at Sinlum when this is over,” Con said to Gus. “A whole month.”
“On two conditions, Con. One you save those banks. Two you send me that chap, your exec from up there.”
“Ringa?”
“Yes.”
“Why, you conniving bastard. Don’t you ever give anything without getting double in return?” Con grinned. “I’ll think about it.”
Con left them off at the Galle Face and went by the office and picked up Carla. They drove out along the beach road and he told her the news.
“You’re sure you still want to marry me,” she asked.
“I love you, Carla.”
“You haven’t shown it much lately, Con,” she said softly.
“Drive slowly,” Con said to the driver then turned back to her. “Knowing that you love without having it is the test of love.… That is love, Carla. I found that out one night in the jungle.”
“Yes,” she said. She was staring out the window at the beach, the salt-scented air funneling through the window gently to her hair, her eyes distant and misty. And with no make-up and the beautifully serene child’s face he noticed for the first time
how thin she had become.
“You’re thin,” he said.
“I’ve worried, Con,” she said. “What’s happened to you lately? What is this terrible thing you’re trying to prove?”
“Prove?” he said. “I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m doing a job the best I can. The best I know how.”
She reached out and placed a hand over his. “You’ve avoided me. I don’t think you know it yourself but you have.”
He took off his bush hat and set it on the seat and ran his hands through his hair.
“You’ve avoided Nautaung lately, too, haven’t you? You never ask Nautaung for advice anymore.”
“My God, Carla, I’ve got to make you understand what this job entails. Remember Lau’rel? What happened to him. Please listen. Do you remember?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know now that it has happened how very obvious it is to me that it was bound to happen. That if I had been perceptive enough, concerned enough, it might have been avoided. Can’t you see I’m faced with the very same problem every day. Every morning. Every night. With every single person that I work with.”
“You weren’t like this in the Hills. Not from what I’ve heard you weren’t like this.”
“It was different in the Hills. A different kind of operation altogether.”
“You were different.”
“Granted. And that’s what makes a soldier; the ability to adapt. To be different in different situations.”
“This isn’t your war alone.”
“No. It wasn’t the Kachins’ war either.”
“Why you? Why must you assume the responsibility?”
“I think it’s pretty obvious that I’ve simply inherited it. I think it’s pretty obvious, too, that unless the Kachins get a decent peace everything they’ve done will have been for nothing.”
“And you’re taking this gamble just to gain the influence to see that the Kachins get what you think they ought to have.”
“They deserve a lot more than they’ll get anyhow. Besides it’s much less of a gamble than you think,” he said. “I can promise you this, Carla, that what I’ve been doing is just about over. I’ve got a new job. After it’s set-up I’m going to the Hills for a whole month. To Sinlumkaba.”
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