Comes the War

by Ed Ruggero

  “If a drunk can make a good confession I might start taking the sacrament again.”

  Harkins got his brother a watered-down whiskey. By the time he waded through the crowd to hand Patrick his drink, three women had gathered around the priest and Patrick was sweating, though the room wasn’t all that warm.

  “I should get myself a Roman collar,” Harkins said to no one in particular.

  He chatted with a few of the Americans, listening to their stories about Batcheller. The words he heard most often were “smart,” “tough,” and “independent.” No one mentioned an argument with Lionel Kerr.

  It was easy to spot Wickman entering the pub, since his head floated far above everyone else in the room. Harkins waved at his partner, who was followed by a young woman in a dress with a modest neckline, a little clingy. Harkins was admiring the curve of her neck as she drew closer.

  “Good evening, sir,” Lowell said.

  “Oh,” Harkins said, flat-footed. “Hello, Lowell.”

  Wickman grinned. “I didn’t recognize her, either!” he said, a little too loudly.

  Lowell looked down at the floor.

  “You look great, Lowell,” Harkins said. It was Lowell’s idea to join them for the memorial, and she had asked if she could wear civvies. Harkins was glad to have her. She was observant and patient and it might help to have another set of eyes and ears.

  A man started banging a glass with a spoon to get everyone’s attention. “May I have your attention?” he said. “May I have your attention, please?”

  When the room quieted a bit he said, “Thank you all for coming. My name is Wade Foley, for those of you who don’t know me. I worked with Helen. In fact, she was the first one to welcome me here to London. I’m glad you all could join us to hoist a glass in her honor, in her memory.”

  Wade Foley lifted his glass to shoulder height, but it seemed like everyone was waiting for him to say more. He took a big gulp, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Harkins thought it wasn’t Foley’s first drink of the evening.

  “Yes, well. Helen was a hardworking girl with a brilliant mind. A true idealist who believed the world could be a better place if we were willing to sacrifice. She gave up a cushy job at Stanford to serve her country. Gave up all that California sunshine to come here to not-so-sunny England.”

  “You can say that again,” Wickman chimed in, turning a few heads his way. Harkins looked over; it was possible his partner had started drinking earlier, too.

  “We don’t know why she was taken from us,” Foley continued, his voice catching. Another man approached, whispered in Foley’s ear.

  “No, thank you. Thanks anyway. I’ll be okay.”

  Foley climbed onto a chair, never a good idea for a drunk.

  “This war has taken so many good people from us, and I suspect it will take many more before we hear church bells announcing victory.”

  Foley looked into his glass, searching for his train of thought. After a long few seconds he held his drink high and said, “To Helen!”

  “To Helen,” the crowd answered.

  Harkins and Wickman made eye contact; Wickman made a Can you believe it? face.

  “Mingle,” Harkins said to his colleagues. Lowell walked away, but Wickman stayed in place.

  “You okay?” Harkins asked.

  “I’m not much good at parties,” Wickman said, surveying the room from his vantage point. He looked at Harkins, swirled his drink. “That’s why I needed a little pick-me-up.”

  “You can just listen,” Harkins said. “Most people here will have something to say about Batcheller.”

  Wickman looked around, like a kid who wasn’t sure how he’d wound up on the high dive. “You have a girl back home?” he asked.

  Harkins thought about Kathleen Donnelly, who was somewhere in Italy, as far as he knew.

  “Not really,” he said.

  “I was seeing a girl,” Wickman said. “Met her right before I shipped out. Only had a few dates, so we weren’t really a couple or anything. She wrote a couple of times, signed her letters ‘fondly.’”

  When Harkins looked at him, Wickman shrugged and smiled.

  In the few letters Harkins had gotten from Kathleen, she drew a little heart above her name.

  “It’s passing strange,” Wickman went on, reluctant to leave Harkins’ side. “With everything that’s going on, the ways our lives have been upended, I think we crave a little normalcy. Just a chat with a nice girl, or a drink at the bar.”

  Harkins often had the same feeling, a longing so powerful it was nearly a physical pain. He reached up and patted Wickman on the shoulder.

  “Go on,” he said. “Maybe you’ll meet a nice girl.”

  Wickman lifted his glass in a mock toast, drained it in one swallow, squared his narrow shoulders, and waded into the crowd. When Harkins glanced around, Patrick stepped away from the knot of female admirers and picked his way through the room toward his brother.

  “Lots of women here looking for spiritual counseling, I see,” Harkins said.

  “Aren’t they all?” Patrick said. He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get back to my gang. I already stood up my boss for dinner. I better be there at breakfast. I’m going to ask for a pass, see if I can’t wiggle free for a few hours while we’re in the same city.”

  “That would be great, Pat. You can always leave a message for me at Grosvenor Street.”

  The two men shook hands, then Harkins watched his brother make his way to the door.

  “Excuse me.”

  A woman tapped Harkins on the shoulder. He figured it was one of his brother’s admirers. “He’s gone,” he said.

  She looked confused. “You are the police, yes?”

  “I am,” Harkins said.

  “I am Elena Didenko. From the Soviet Embassy. I am friends with Helen for a time. Some months ago.”

  She was short and thin, brown hair pulled up in a tight bun, thick glasses. She couldn’t weigh a hundred pounds, Harkins thought.

  “So you weren’t friends recently?” Harkins asked.

  “Our relationship changes,” Didenko said. “She becomes impatient with us, with the Soviets.”

  “Do you know why?” Harkins asked.

  Didenko shrugged, then looked around the room. Anxious.

  “I do not speak freely here,” she said.

  “Is someone watching you?”

  She made eye contact with him again. “Someone is watching always.”

  “Can I meet you somewhere? Later on?”

  “I will leave in fifteen minutes,” she said. “You follow me. We will walk outside and talk.”

  She shook his hand, one quick pump, then turned back to the bar. Harkins did not see her speak to anyone else. He checked his watch, then looked up to see Lowell approaching.

  “Learn anything?” Harkins asked her.

  “I learned that your brother attracts a crowd,” Lowell said. “Mostly women.”

  “Yeah. It figures the guy who looks like a movie star doesn’t date.”

  “I think the women feel safe approaching him,” Lowell said. “He’s nice, but it’s also because he doesn’t pose a threat.”

  Harkins studied her for a few seconds. “How old did you say you were?”

  Lowell laughed. “My mother used to say that I was an old soul when I was a little girl.”

  Her dress was plain but pretty, a tiny floral print. Her hair was past her shoulders, pulled back with a tortoise-shell clip; he wondered how she fit it all under her cap. He caught a whiff of something floral, maybe lavender.

  “Anyway, I asked him if he’d read Vera Brittain.”

  “And?” Harkins asked.

  “He has. I told him many of the things she writes about disturb me. He promised we could talk about it.”

  “Around your work schedule, you mean.”

  “Certainly sir,” Lowell said. Then, “Who was that woman?”

  “She was a friend of Batcheller’s, at least until so
mething changed.”

  “Will you be able to interview her at some point?”

  “She’s leaving in fifteen minutes,” Harkins said. “Wants me to follow her outside.”

  “To go where?”

  “To talk as we walk, I guess,” Harkins said.

  “You can’t do that.” When he looked again at her she added, “Sir.”

  “Now you’re telling me what I can and cannot do?”

  “I just mean it doesn’t sound safe. You’ve never seen this woman before and you’re ready to follow her out into blacked-out London streets.”

  “I never met you before I got in a car with you. I didn’t even know if you could drive.” He was smiling, but Lowell was clearly alarmed.

  “We’re allies,” she said.

  “And the Soviets? I thought they were allies, too.”

  “Sir, please don’t tease me. This is serious.”

  Wickman approached them, definitely a little sloshy. “What’s serious?” he asked.

  “I thought we were going to move around the room and talk to people,” Harkins said. “Not stand around like the shy kids at an eighth-grade dance.”

  “He’s going to follow a woman outside to talk to her about Batcheller,” Lowell tattled. “A woman he’s never met.”

  Wickman looked around. “That short girl you were talking to? She doesn’t look like much of a threat. I’ll come with you.”

  “No one is coming with me,” Harkins said. “I’m a grown man and can take care of myself. Besides, it’s hard enough to get people to talk without convening an inquisition.”

  “Sinnott is not going to like you meeting with all these Soviet Embassy types,” Wickman said.

  “So we won’t tell him,” Harkins said. “I’m not going to stop digging.”

  Wickman looked worried. When it came to spontaneity, he talked a good game. Living that way would take a bit longer. Lowell also looked worried, but she was more concerned with Harkins’ safety.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, patting Lowell on the upper arm.

  Harkins turned away, checked his watch, and stepped out into the darkened street.

  * * *

  There was a crowd of four or five Americans a few steps from the doors of the pub. In the near blackness, their accents gave them away.

  “You guys see a woman come out here a few minutes ago?” Harkins asked. “On the short side?”

  “Yeah,” one of the men said. “None too friendly.”

  Another man gestured, the lit cigarette in his hand a tiny beacon. “She went thataway.”

  In the little bit of ambient light, Harkins could just make out the fog-dampened sidewalk, lined on one side by the white-painted curb. He walked about half a block before hearing a woman’s voice say, “Here.”

  “Elena?”

  She stood in the doorway of a building, a disembodied voice more than something Harkins could see.

  “Any persons followed with you?”

  Harkins looked back toward the pub. He could hear the GIs laughing.

  “No.”

  “Walk with me.”

  A sliver of moon came out from behind a cloud, and Harkins could see her shape, head down, hands in the pockets of her long coat.

  “You said you were friends with Helen Batcheller,” Harkins said. “But then her attitude changed and she wasn’t as friendly. Do you know why?”

  Didenko looked over her shoulder once, twice, before stopping. She reached out and took Harkins’ arm to pull him close.

  “This is very dangerous for me,” she said.

  Harkins looked around, spooked by her anxiety.

  She turned abruptly, walked to the next corner and onto a narrow street where the buildings blocked what little moonlight there was. He tried to keep track of their turns so he could find his way back to someplace familiar.

  “Helen was friendly at first,” Didenko said, still walking. “Then she was not.”

  “Where did you meet her?” Harkins asked.

  “Come this way,” Didenko said, turning right again, maybe heading back to where they’d started.

  “Elena, stop.”

  She halted a few steps ahead of him. He could hear her breathing but could not see her expression.

  “Where did you meet her?” Harkins asked again.

  “At the embassy,” Didenko said.

  “Which one?”

  “The Soviet Embassy, of course.”

  “Why was Helen at the Soviet Embassy?”

  “I don’t know,” Didenko said. Then, “A party.”

  Harkins felt a tingling at the base of his skull, a warning. Didenko’s story was shaky, but it could just be that she was nervous about talking to an American OSS officer.

  “Please,” she said. “We walk.”

  She didn’t wait for an answer, but marched off, moving surprisingly quickly for someone with short legs. Harkins hurried to keep up.

  “We have to stop somewhere,” he said to her back when he got close.

  They turned another corner and Harkins heard the same GIs laughing a few blocks away. He wasn’t sure, but he thought they’d circled around and were on the same street, passing the same darkened buildings.

  Didenko was covering the same ground.

  Harkins lengthened his stride, caught up to her in a few steps, and pulled her arm. She’d talk to him here or he’d abandon her, stumble his way back toward the American voices and the pub.

  “Stop!” he said in a stage whisper.

  Then he heard footsteps. Someone, no, two people, coming up behind them. Harkins yanked Didenko into one of the dark doorways. Just for a second he considered putting his hand over her mouth, but she quieted on her own. Did she know who was coming?

  Harkins waited as the footsteps drew closer. Then he heard a woman’s laugh, and a man with an American accent saying something to keep her laughing.

  “I could get used to warm beer faster than I could figure out the money,” the man said when they were close.

  The couple, just visible in the weak moonlight, passed from left to right in front of the doorway where Harkins and Didenko sheltered. Harkins could make out epaulets on the man’s coat, some gold striping. A naval officer. He let a few seconds pass before he stepped back out onto the sidewalk behind the couple, holding Didenko’s arm close by his side. He could see the other woman’s pale legs under the hem of her coat as she moved away. The man was closer to the street, the light barely enough to catch the gold on his shoulders.

  Then a shadow appeared from another doorway between Harkins and the couple. In quick succession, a gunshot flash, someone running, and a second of stunned silence before the woman up ahead screamed.

  “Stay here,” Harkins told Didenko before sprinting to where the woman, now on her knees, keened over the body. “No! No! No!”

  There was just enough light to see that the victim was on his face, arms flung in a perfect T, the back of his head splashed open in a monstrous wound. Beside Harkins, the woman had fallen to a sitting position, her legs curled under her, her hands pressed to her face.

  Harkins turned away from her and looked back. Didenko was gone.

  17

  24 April 1944

  0615 hours

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Major Richard Sinnott yelled, slapping his palm on the desk. Harkins and Wickman stood at attention across from him, the closed door behind them doing nothing, Harkins was sure, to prevent staff in the adjacent rooms from hearing the tirade.

  “You don’t have goddamn free rein to go anywhere you want! Talk to anyone you want!” Sinnott said. He held up his hand, thumb, and forefinger close together. “We’re this goddamn close to an international incident.”

  Harkins knew, from long experience of getting chewed out by authority figures, that he was supposed to stand there and take it in silence. He’d never been good at that approach.

  “Sir, all we did was go to a memorial service,” Harkins said. “That woman approached me and o
ffered information on Batcheller. What was I supposed to do? Say, ‘No, thanks’ and let it drop?”

  Harkins had spent most of the night with Scotland Yard detectives, then with U.S. Navy investigators, as the victim was an American naval officer. Everyone told him he wasn’t a suspect, but he wasn’t released until Wickman showed up to vouch for him. They arrived at Sinnott’s office just after zero six hundred, fifteen minutes before Sinnott came back from what looked like a long night on the town.

  “Who else did you talk to?” Sinnott asked. “Have you had contact with any other Soviets?”

  Harkins sidestepped the direct question. “We tried to talk to people at that little memorial. Turned out to be mostly Americans. We weren’t there that long when that woman approached me.”

  “That brings up a good goddamn point, Harkins,” he said. His face was red, maybe from anger, maybe from alcohol.

  The Soviet Embassy says they don’t have a woman named Elena Prodenko on their staff.”

  “Didenko, sir,” Harkins said. “Her name was Didenko, just like I wrote in my statement. Did they deny her, too, or just this Prodenko person?”

  “Don’t fucking get wise with me, Harkins,” Sinnott said, pointing Harkins’ own written statement at him.

  “And you say here that you think you were the target,” Sinnott said. “Or you and this woman.”

  “Me,” Harkins said. “When she led me around the block the second time, I got suspicious, so I pulled her into a doorway. That’s when this couple passed us. I think she was supposed to parade me in front of the shooter.”

  “All the more reason to stay away from the goddamn Soviets,” Sinnott said. “You two are to go nowhere near their embassy. You’re not to approach these people without my specific permission. In advance. I don’t even want you talking to anyone with a goddamn accent, you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear, sir,” Wickman said.

  “Where’s your goddamn captain’s bars?” Sinnott asked.

  “The paperwork never came through, sir,” Wickman said, managing to sound a bit surprised. “I didn’t get my pay raise, so I looked into it. I can’t imagine what happened.”