Rommel waved at Dresser. “The Admiral was very complimentary of you and your efforts on my behalf. I shall miss your expertise and guidance, but so be it.” He offered an afterward: “You’ve performed admirably here.”
Reubold watched as Walters glowed and suddenly it became very clear. So it was all a game and the boats would quickly be forgotten. They were tokens, Walters’s gambit. Their success would assure his advancement, but through a strange combination of circumstances victory did not enter into it. Walters would return to Olympus and stand among the gods, Reubold thought grimly. Should I have expected anything less?
“You,” Rommel shot Reubold a glance. “What is your name?”
“Fregattenkapitan Reubold,” Reubold said. He did not bother to come to attention. Somehow, it seemed distasteful to do so.
“What do you do?”
“I am commander of Flotilla Eleven,” Reubold said.
Rommel went quickly to a large table and began sifting through maps. “Here. You. You,” he called Dresser and Reubold to his side. “Come here. Look at this. Look here.” He slapped a map with the palm of his hand and threw it on the floor. “Here. Look at this.” Another map fluttered to the carpet. “Here. Here.” Rommel slammed his fist onto the table. “The coast of France. The Atlantic Wall. Half complete. Half!” His shout filled the room while the others remained silent. Rommel gathered himself, staring at a map sprinkled with fortifications. He took a pencil out of a cup on the table and became lost in sketching out an oblong shape on the paper. “Admiral Dresser?” he said, his voice even, almost mellow. “Can I count on you to place mines here?”
Dresser leaned over Rommel’s shoulder and studied the map. “Indeed, Feldmarschall.”
Rommel tapped the pencil on the paper in a thoughtful rhythm. “Here, then,” he said, looking at Dresser as if the outburst had never occurred. “Off these beaches?”
“Of course, Feldmarschall.”
Rommel nodded. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said without looking at the men. “Walters? Have Janh come in. This irrational Channel weather is becoming irritating.” A grim smile followed. “Again. My congratulations to you on your appointment.”
“Of course, Feldmarschall,” Walters said. Reubold noticed his appreciation was sprinkled with humility. He watched the kommodore disappear through another set of doors before Dresser motioned him into the hallway.
“Fregattenkapitan,” Dresser said. “You must learn to quit chasing fame. Sometimes simply doing what is asked of you is enough. You must also learn that it is far too easy for one of your gullibility to be led astray.”
“It appears that you are right, Admiral,” Reubold said, wondering if Walters ever had any intention of championing his boats. A champion, Reubold thought bitterly; do I really think such men exist?
Admiral Dresser looked through the tall windows on one side of the hallway. “What a barren sky,” he said at the bank of low gray clouds. “Our protector, however. The Allies can’t see us through the cloud cover, can they, Reubold? They can’t see us build fortifications, or move troops,” he smiled at Reubold. “Or lay mines.”
“No, Admiral,” Reubold said. Nor can we see them, he thought, but kept the idea to himself.
“Well,” Dresser said, signaling to an orderly at the far end of the long hall. “Go back to Cherbourg and make your boats ready. Let’s have no more nonsense about Sea Eagles, shall we?”
“No, Admiral,” Reubold said. What else could he say? He searched for an argument that might extend the life of the boats, but his mind refused to cooperate. It kept returning to that single word—champion—and the irony of his belief that such men existed.
“Oh, Reubold,” Dresser said as the orderly appeared with his cap and gloves. “I spoke with Reichsmarschall Goering this morning. A very pleasant conversation. He asked after your health.”
Reubold smiled as Dresser pulled on his gloves and straightened his cap. “The reichsmarschall,” Reubold said, “has had a special interest in my well-being for some time.”
“Yes, I gathered that,” Dresser said, fitting the gloves around and between his fingers until they appeared to be a second skin. “Strange, however. He seemed disappointed when I replied that you were in excellent health.”
“Perhaps, Admiral,” Reubold said. “You will have the sad duty to report to the reichsfuehrer that I perished in battle. I’m sure that his reaction will be quite different.”
Chapter 21
Edland watched as McNamar walked to the fireplace, his arms locked behind his back, digesting the report. He turned.
“That bad, huh?”
“Yes, sir,” Edland confirmed. “Five sunk. Two heavily damaged. At least a thousand dead.”
“But they found the bigots?” Ten men who knew a great deal about the invasion had been on the LSTs. They were reported missing and for several hours there had been a frantic search for the officers. The loss of the men and ships had been a disaster; the capture of the ten bigots would have been a catastrophe. There was a macabre sigh of relief when their bodies were hauled out of the cold water.
“Yes, sir,” Edland said. He had watched as the body of the last of the men who knew so much about the invasion was dragged up on the stony beach and laid with the others.
McNamar shook his head. “Jesus. We can’t keep this up.”
Edland understood. The five LSTs sunk comprised the reserve of all of the invasion fleet’s LSTs. The two that were damaged would probably not be repaired in time for the invasion. There were a few LSTs, old British ships that were quickly being overhauled, but time and the condition of the ships were factors. And those ships amounted to exactly—three.
“You’d think that we’d be able to scrounge up half a dozen LSTs from somebody, wouldn’t you?” McNamar said, walking back to Edland. “MacArthur won’t give them up. Nimitz can’t part with any. I’ve shanghaied every ship in the Mediterranean I could get my hands on and the goddamned British can’t get theirs ready in time. Jesus. What a fiasco.”
Edland remained silent. It was logistics. Men and materiel delivered to the scene of the battle. Delivered quickly and on time. This was not the part of the war that inspired paintings, songs, or patriotic movies. There were never triumphant poems written about making sure soldiers had beans and bullets—but if they didn’t …
“Those goddamned E-boats,” McNamar said. Edland saw the worry in McNamar’s face. “We can’t get to them, Mike. The British have finally got enough Tall Boys and it’s a damn good thing because any other bomb is just too light. They won’t penetrate the concrete roof of those pens. It’s like throwing spitballs. This is going to be a fucking disaster unless those E-boats are eliminated. That goes for your winged boats as well. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe especially your winged boats.”
“Thermopylae,” Edland said, and then was instantly sorry that he said it. But the word explained everything. A small band of brave Greeks holding off an entire Persian army at a narrow pass.
McNamar looked at him in a flash of anger, but it quickly died. “You think that’s what this is all about?”
“I don’t know, Admiral.”
“Well, isn’t that what we’re paying you for? To know? You’re supposed to be the expert on these things, aren’t you?” McNamar said, his anger rising. “Jesus Christ, Mike, this is a hell of a time for you to plead ignorance. Pretty soon we’re going to have a couple of thousand ships and several hundred thousand men in a hell of a fix and we need to know everything. So don’t give me that ‘I don’t know’ crap. How fast are they? How many do the Krauts have? Where are they? You’ve got to give me something.”
Edland nodded, carefully selecting his words. “Our first encounter with these vessels showed them to be fast, but their fire was inaccurate. Maybe because of the speed. Sixty knots. Some reports gave eighty knots. Lyme Bay was different. The hits were well grouped, very accurate. A torpedo attack was the follow-up. The whole thing took less than three hours by most accounts.”
“Okay,” McNamar said, calming. “Now what? You’re a smart boy, what do you think?”
“I think that there are only a few of them,” Edland said, trying to offer some hope. “A flotilla. Maybe two.”
“But there could be more? Right?”
“Yes, sir. But I don’t think there are. I think if there were more, we’d be seeing more attacks.”
“Maybe the Krauts are holding them for the Sunday punch?”
Edland nodded. It was just as reasonable to suspect that they would be unleashed in swarms, enveloping the invasion fleets by the hundreds.
“Yeah,” McNamar said. “They don’t have to win, do they, Mike? All they have to do is fuck things up. Just foul up things so badly that Ike is forced to call the whole thing off.” He let a moment pass before speaking. Edland could see that McNamar was worn out. The days were too long and the nights were too short, and if he wasn’t faced with emergencies he was pounded by responsibilities. The weight of command, Edland thought. It sounded trite, and maybe someone who hadn’t seen what he had seen could make it sound trite just by saying it. The newspapers. Politicians. But command was a physical thing, a block of iron that good men struggled to keep aloft so that it didn’t crush them, or those they were responsible for. “I saw Ike today. This morning. All he talked about was the goddamned weather. The weather looks lousy. We might have a day or two in early June, if we’re lucky. If Ike wants to give the word. How the hell he keeps from going nuts I’ll never know. I guess reading those Westerns.” He looked at Edland, regaining his composure. “Thermopylae, huh? Well, it’s up to us to keep that from happening.” He seemed to have noticed Edland for the first time and that the lieutenant commander had something on his mind. “Okay. Spill it.”
“I’d like to try again.”
McNamar gave Edland a harsh look. “Hell, no. You’ve done your sea duty and you’re not going out again. That’s not your job. You stick with me and do what you’re supposed to do. I’ll get ahold of Harris and Ramsey. We’ll turn up the heat on those pens.”
“It’s important that we capture one intact, Admiral,” Edland pushed. “Maybe we can learn something from it. A way to fight them.”
“The way to fight them is to blow them out of the water. It may not be fancy or fair, but it’ll work. Christ, Mike. You’re too important to go wandering all over the Channel looking for your white whale.”
Edland tried again. “They might just hold some secrets worth having.”
“You’re carrying your own share of secrets, Mike,” McNamar said angrily. “I can’t chance you falling into the wrong hands.”
“That won’t happen, sir,” Edland said. “I’ll take precautions.”
McNamar understood immediately. “You know what you’re saying? This is no game, Mike. If push comes to shove, you can’t be captured. Is your life worth some half-assed attempt to get one of these boats?”
“Yes, sir. If we move quickly enough we might have a chance to learn their secrets. It could save a lot of lives.”
“That’s a hell of a way to go.”
Edland, despite the subject, was amused that McNamar was unable to bring himself to say the word out loud—suicide. “I always carry a sidearm,” Edland said. “Not as sophisticated as a cyanide tablet but just as effective.”
McNamar shook his head in wonder. “You’re one cold son of a bitch, I’ll give you that. You’d do it, wouldn’t you, just to prove me wrong?”
Edland smiled.
“God help me for being a fool and you for being seven kinds of an idiot,” McNamar said. “I can’t figure you, Edland. You’re no hero and I’m really not sure what you think you can accomplish.” A full minute passed before he said anything, but this time he spoke as if he were a man who’d just come to his senses. “What’s that old expression? ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice …’ ” He shook his head slowly. “No can do, Mike. You stay on dry land and that’s an order. No more adventures for you. We clear on that?”
Edland nodded. “Yes, sir. No more adventures.”
Gierek watched the sheets of rain roll across the runway in the false night of an afternoon storm. He was safe inside the hangar, smoking a cigarette, with the comforting sounds of the erks working on the Mosquitoes behind him. He was cold, despite the sheepskin jacket that he wore—the dampness sliding its fingers into his bones until he found himself trembling in its grip. He could have walked away from the entrance of the hangar, sought out the kerosene heater that the erks kept burning near the work shed, but he decided against it. He preferred to be alone, staring out across the gray field, his thoughts suspended—time at a standstill.
He flicked the cigarette into the hard rain and lost sight of it. He bowed his head and lit another and thought of Poland. Sister. Brother. He would not say their names, he vowed when he escaped across the Channel with a battered group of Poles, until he returned home. They would only be Sister and Brother.
Her hair was blond, almost white, because she spent so much time in the garden with her flowers. When Gierek came home on leave before the war he would say: “Sister, tell me what those are?” She would explain the flowers carefully. What they were and how they liked to grow and whether they were annuals or perennials. She would touch the leaves or petals with her frail fingers, caressing each as if from her touch she conveyed her regard for the sanctity of life.
Gierek would sit on the bench in the bright sunlight under a clear blue sky, ignoring the hovering schoolgirls who found his airman’s uniform and his newly acquired maturity too difficult to resist. He caught sight of them out of the corner of his eye but he never lost track of what Sister was saying. Time for the girls later.
He thought of Brother and the image troubled him. The boy was too outspoken and too ready to fight, and although he had just entered his late teens, he was big and aware of his size. Brother never wavered in his opinion of people or causes, and when Gierek, himself used to expressing his opinion whether asked or not, tried to explain that sometimes moderation or caution were acceptable attributes, Brother dismissed the idea.
“You’re getting old,” Brother had said. Gierek was surprised at the comment because he thought of himself as young, and rather good-looking, and self-possessed. Less than five years separated him from Brother, but it might as well been a century— the old and the new of it. Especially now that Gierek had seen so much of what war was really like—not the uniforms or the adoration of small-town girls who spun like satellites around a celestial body. But the real war—guilt, fear, rage, and loss.
Gierek heard a noise and looked down at his side. The Black Prince sat next to him, looking through a thatch of greasy fur into the storm. A pink tongue hung listlessly from a parted mouth and his panting was accompanied by soft wheezing.
Gierek stared at the disgusting creature, while the Black Prince ignored him. “Are you truly lucky?” Gierek said in Polish, keeping his voice low so that no one heard him except the animal. “So many of us go up and so few of us return each time. Are you truly lucky?”
A stream of drool dropped from the dog’s mouth and created a puddle in the hard-packed dirt.
Gierek stared into the storm. “I live in a little town, dog. One day the Germans came and that was that. They shot our planes out of the sky and destroyed our army. I ran and hid. Finally I found some men to fight with but soon they were killed. Then I found others to fight with. That is all I did. Fight, hide, retreat.”
The dog yawned and sunk to the earth, resting its chin over its crossed paws.
“So I come to England and fly wonderful airplanes. Sometimes I think that I shall never see my village”; the images of Sister and Brother interrupted his testimonial and he winced. “Sometimes I fear that my family is dead. So I concentrate on killing Germans. But I am troubled. I have flown too many times. I think that my time is nearly done.” He looked at the dog. He appeared to be asleep. “If you are truly lucky, be lucky for me. I want to live to see my village and my fami
ly again.”
The wind pushed a sheet of rain into the hangar, spraying Gierek. He stepped back out of the weather, noticed that his cigarette was soaked, and threw it away in disgust. He searched through his pockets for another one when he looked down. The Black Prince was gone.
“I hope that you are truly lucky,” Gierek whispered, lighting another cigarette.
Chapter 22
Farley Manor, near Petersfield, England
Cole drove up the tree-lined gravel drive, his apprehension building. He had come close to turning the jeep around and heading back to the base a dozen times but he couldn’t make himself do it. His better sense, or guilt, or a combination of the two, said that he had to see Rebecca. He tried to harden his attitude toward her on the drive, creating conversations where he played both roles. He was masterful in the imaginary encounters, his harsh words slicing through her weak excuses for ending the affair, until his own decency got the better of him and he realized that he was being unfair to her.
He had tried to deny his excitement, masking it by concentrating on the odd English road signs and the challenge of driving on the wrong side of the road. When he had called Dickie Moore to ask for directions to the Manor, the Royal Navy officer had been his usual cheerful self. “About bloody time,” he had said over the sound of a radio playing swing music in the background and the hum of a dozen voices. Another of Dickie’s parties. “I say, Cole. Are you going to be pleasant?”
“Of course,” Cole had said, cupping the phone close to his ear to hear his friend’s voice.
“You see I ask,” Dickie said, and then apparently afraid that he wasn’t being heard over the noise in the background, “I ask because you are such a piker.”
“Just give me the address,” Cole had said. “You can insult me later.”
He had the address and he made the short drive to Petersfield, and as he dropped the jeep down into second, he could see the impressive stone building at the apex of a curved drive. Farley Manor.
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