Comes the War

by Ed Ruggero

  “So, it’s not really classified?” Harkins asked.

  “Not at OSS. And since it was the product of an OSS analyst, that’s where it should be logged.”

  “So Sinnott is just bullshitting us? Won’t he have to show it to someone eventually if they’re going to accuse Cushing of mishandling secret stuff? Seems like someone will notice that it’s not really classified.”

  “That’s what I thought, too,” Wickman said. “Beverly suggested something else.”

  Harkins looked at his landlady.

  “Thomas told me that there is a lawyer at Eighth Air Force who seems intent on putting Cushing away,” Beverly said. “It could be that he will try to get the report classified by the Eighth Air Force intelligence people, or that he has already done that.”

  “So we end up in the same place,” Harkins said. “It will be classified when they bring it up at the court-martial. Sorry, I don’t see how this helps us.”

  Wickman’s grin widened, showing all his teeth. He was enjoying this immensely.

  “Eighth Air Force can’t classify it, since it’s an OSS product. If Sinnott and Gefner put it in the Eighth’s log—trying to make it look legitimate—there’ll be a discrepancy, because it’s not in the OSS log. It’ll be obvious that they’re playing fast and loose with the rules in order to screw Cushing.”

  “So we have to somehow get access to the Eighth Air Force log of classified materials,” Harkins said. “Compare it to the OSS log. How do we do that?”

  Wickman leaned back as far as his outsized frame would let him in the tiny chair.

  “We haven’t figured that out yet,” he said.

  “Okay,” Harkins said. “We know what to look for, at least. That was good work. Thanks.”

  Wickman jumped up, banging his head on a chandelier. “Ouch,” he said, rubbing his bald spot. “I’ve been this tall forever. You’d think I’d know to look by now.”

  Beverly smiled at Wickman. They’d obviously enjoyed their day together.

  “Thomas has some ideas as to how to approach the next problem,” she said.

  “That’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow,” Wickman said.

  “I spoke to a lawyer I know,” Harkins said. “I worked with him in Sicily last year. He said that the prosecution might have accused Cushing of murder as a smoke screen. Once the court sees there’s not enough evidence to convict, they’ll drop the murder charge but leave in place the charge of mishandling classified materials. By that point, the court will be prejudiced against Cushing.”

  “That’s pretty low,” Wickman said.

  “Oh,” Harkins said. “And I got a warning order to be ready to head out to some training exercise.”

  “Well, that seems like poor timing,” Wickman said.

  “Not from Sinnott’s point of view,” Harkins said.

  “You think he’s trying to get rid of you?” Beverly asked.

  “Yep.”

  “I’m on it,” Wickman said. He brought his hand up in a sharp salute, then turned to Beverly, bowed, and said, “It’s been a real pleasure.”

  “I feel the same.”

  Wickman straightened, took a giant step toward the door before turning back. “Off to slay the Eighth Air Force dragon!”

  When Wickman closed the door behind him, Beverly said, “He’s quite an enthusiastic fellow.”

  “He is that.”

  “I take it he’s desperate to get out from behind his accountant’s ledgers. He’s quite brilliant, you know. Just a little shy.”

  “I’m glad to have him pitching in,” Harkins said.

  “Are you in for the day, or just stopping in for a quick bath?”

  “Hasn’t been a week yet,” he said. “What would the King say?”

  “Oh,” she said. “Sadly, I just had an image of the King, naked, climbing into a tub. I believe you may have ruined my evening.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t make it in time for dinner the other night.”

  “Sounds like it’s been an exciting few days.”

  “Very much so,” Harkins said. He noticed a framed picture on the side table, a man in uniform.

  “My husband,” Ludington said, when she saw him looking. “Tomorrow is the anniversary of his death, actually,” she said. “Three years.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She picked up the frame, held it in her lap, used the heel of her palm to wipe the glass.

  “I have a hard time remembering what his voice sounded like,” she said. “Isn’t that terrible?”

  “I’m sure it’s not your fault,” Harkins said. “It’s probably to be expected when we lose someone.”

  “We had so many plans,” she said.

  And then here comes the war, Harkins thought. And it all goes to shit.

  He wanted to hug her, comfort her in some small way, but instead he stood in her tiny, dimly lit parlor like an out-of-place statue. He felt completely useless.

  The awkward moment was broken when a man in a dark blue uniform opened the front door and let himself in.

  “Oh, my apologies,” he said, glancing into the parlor. “I must get some things from my room.”

  “Ah,” Beverly said, animated again. “Lieutenant Wronecki. I’m so glad to see you! This is your roommate, Lieutenant Harkins.”

  The Polish aviator, Harkins thought. He offered his hand.

  “Eddie Harkins.”

  “Bartosz Wronecki. Very nice to meet you.”

  “You’re a pilot,” Harkins said.

  “Yes. The 303 Squadron. You have heard of it?”

  Harkins knew the story. Polish airmen who’d battled the Germans and then escaped after the occupation of their homeland, come to England to continue the fight. Harkins had heard several British pilots claim that the Poles were the best of the RAF, had tipped the scales in favor of the defenders in the Battle of Britain.

  “Yes,” Harkins said. “I have heard many great things about your squadron. It’s an honor to meet you.”

  Wronecki looked skeptical, as if he expected the compliment to be qualified. After a few seconds’ pause he said, “Thank you.”

  “May I ask you a question?” Harkins said.

  “Yes, but come with me. I must hurry.”

  Wroencki took the stairs two at a time. Harkins, behind him, turned to Beverly and said, “Good night.”

  “Good night, then,” she said.

  He put a foot on the bottom step, then turned back again.

  “What was his name?” he asked her, nodding at the picture.

  “William,” she said.

  “William,” he repeated.

  By the time Harkins got to their room, Wronecki had stuffed his uniforms into a canvas bag. He grabbed a framed picture of a family from the windowsill. A mother and father, a young man—Wronecki as a teen, Harkins thought—and two younger girls.

  “Your family?” Harkins asked.

  Wronecki nodded. It was possible he had not seen or heard from them since the 1939 German invasion. Harkins did not ask. Wronecki glanced at the photo, brushed off some invisible dust, wrapped it in a wool sweater for padding before shoving it in the duffle.

  “I’m a military police officer,” Harkins said. “Now working with the OSS to investigate a murder.”

  Wronecki stopped for a moment. “The American woman?” he said. “What was her name?”

  “Batcheller,” Harkins said. “Helen Batcheller.”

  “I did not know her, so I doubt I can help.”

  “The victim had a falling-out, maybe an argument with some colleagues that seems to have had something to do with news out of Poland. Maybe some Polish captives were executed?”

  “The Katyn Forest,” Wronecki said. “Murdered by the Soviets.”

  “You’ve heard of this incident, too?”

  “Every Pole knows of this. The Soviets invaded my country when they were still allies with Hitler. We were not even at war with them and our commanders told us not to resist. They captured tens of thousand
s of Poles, even rounded up civilians. The Germans handed over their prisoners, too. The Soviets and the Nazis worked together, you see; they dissolved our government, our state. They took the prisoners into Russia, near Smolensk. You have heard of it?”

  “I have,” Harkins said.

  “This was in the spring, 1940. They killed them. Thousands of prisoners.”

  Wronecki had stopped moving, one hand still inside the duffel, his gaze fixed on Harkins.

  “Last April, the Germans announced that they had found the mass burial site. Published photographs. They blamed the Soviets, hoping that this would drive a wedge between Stalin and the other western allies. But the Soviets just blamed the Germans.”

  The pilot looked around the room, checking to see if he’d left anything behind. He picked up a small towel that was hanging on the end of the bunk. “You can have this,” he said, laying the towel on Harkins’ mattress.

  “But some people in the west,” Harkins said. “Some people in the American Embassy, the OSS, believed that the Soviets were responsible.”

  “The Soviets are responsible,” Wronecki said, his face reddening. He twisted the top of the duffel closed with more force than was necessary.

  “And yet,” Wronecki said, “the Soviets are our allies. Roosevelt and Churchill accepted their lies because we need them right now. Because they kill so many Germans.”

  He lifted the duffel by the strap, put it across his shoulder, and picked up his cap from the now-unmade bed.

  “Now I go kill Germans, too.”

  “You coming back here?” Harkins asked.

  The pilot gave him a sad smile. “This is a question you must never ask a combat pilot. We are a superstitious lot.”

  “Sorry,” Harkins said. “Are you moving to another flat?”

  “We are moving. Perhaps I will see you in France.”

  Wronecki squeezed past Harkins to the landing at the top of the stairs, then turned back.

  “Stalin will never willingly leave our country,” he said. “After the war. He will want to keep Poland as a buffer between him and the west. And by the time the war is over, by the time you are reading about all of this in your history books, the lie about Katyn will have become the truth.”

  He lifted one hand, tapped a finger on his chest, over his heart.

  “But I know, Lieutenant. I know.”

  23

  25 April 1944

  0800 hours

  Lowell knocked on his door a few minutes before eight. Harkins, startled, fell off the top bunk and landed on all fours. He’d been dreaming of Kathleen Donnelly, and it showed when he looked down at his skivvies.

  “Who’s there?” he asked the closed door.

  “It’s Lowell, sir. I have a message for you from Major Sinnott. He said it’s urgent.”

  Harkins looked at his watch. He’d slept for almost nine hours and felt reborn.

  “What’s the message?”

  “It’s in a sealed envelope, sir.”

  Harkins hid himself and his erection behind the door, which he opened only enough to show his face. Lowell smiled and handed an envelope through. “Sorry to disturb, sir.”

  If you only knew, he thought.

  Inside the envelope was a single typed sheet ordering him to report to London Paddington Station at 0930 to board a troop train for Plymouth. He was to bring gear for a training exercise that would start with a practice amphibious landing on the channel coast. Sinnott had scrawled across the bottom, “Now we get you ready for the real thing!” His initials were at the bottom of the page.

  And with just a few sentences, Sinnott had removed the threat of Harkins derailing the court-martial. There were no dates mentioned for the training exercise, but if Gefner got things going the first week in May, Harkins would not be around.

  “Goddammit,” he said to the back of the closed door.

  “Sir?”

  “Give me a few minutes, okay, Lowell?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  Harkins dressed quickly and found the canvas duffel that contained his field uniforms, which he had not touched since leaving North Africa weeks earlier. A blast of odor and memory shot out of the bag when he yanked it open: the desert smell of dust, burned fuel, spilled rations, cordite. He dumped everything on the floor, dressed quickly, and picked up his most badly mildewed gear, which he carried at arm’s length to the first floor, then to the rubbish cans in the dooryard. He touched the kettle as he passed through the kitchen. It was cold. Beverly had probably been gone for an hour.

  Lowell stood by the car outside, looking parade-ground sharp. She saluted. “Good morning, sir. I put a flask of coffee in the back for you. A few biscuits, though I’m afraid they’re left over from yesterday.”

  “Lowell, you’re a saint.”

  Harkins poured himself half a cup, burned his lip a little as he gulped. He handed the order from Sinnott over the seat to show Lowell the destination and time.

  “Very good, sir. But there’s someone I think you should talk to first.”

  “Well, unless you have this person stashed in the trunk, I won’t have time. Major Sinnott ordered me to get on this train, and if I don’t, I’ll be missing movement, a court-martial offense.”

  “It won’t take long,” Lowell said. She pulled out onto one of the larger streets and accelerated. Harkins had to hang on to the door handle.

  “So now you’re a race car driver?”

  “I promise to get you to the station, sir.”

  “Who is this person?”

  “I met a girl at the canteen. British girl. She’s a typist at the American Embassy.”

  Lowell downshifted as they crawled up the back of a bus filled with GIs. She hit the horn, then pulled out into oncoming traffic to go around. A jeep swerved out of their way, the driver wide-eyed at the near miss.

  “Jesus, Lowell! Major Sinnott tell you to get me killed?”

  “This girl—the typist—told me that this Kerr fellow and Miss Batcheller had a rather loud argument a while back,” she said. She rattled on without taking a breath, excited by the prospect of having found useful information, or by the threat of sudden death in an automobile accident. “It was after hours, and they didn’t know she was still in the building.”

  “She hear what the fight was about?”

  Lowell looked at him in the rearview.

  “You’ll want to hear this straight from her, I think. I told her I’d try to get you to come by at half-eight, before you caught your train south.”

  Harkins looked at his watch. He was already cutting it close, but it seemed pretty clear that Sinnott was trying to get him away from the investigation, from London, from the court-martial. His natural inclination, when pushed, was to push back.

  “Goddamn Sinnott,” Harkins said, mostly to himself. Then, to Lowell, “How did the subject of Batcheller and Kerr come up when you met this girl?”

  “She told me she worked for the American Embassy, and I asked if she knew Kerr, or at least knew of him. She told me she had a little crush on him, a schoolgirl thing, really. That is, until she heard him arguing with a woman this one evening. Apparently, he said some unkind things.”

  “What makes her think it was Batcheller?” Harkins asked. “I hope you’re not going around blabbing about everything you’ve seen and heard these last few days. I’ll send you back to the motor pool and Corporal Moore.”

  “Oh, no, sir! I would never do that. I’m the soul of discretion.”

  Lowell sounded hurt. Harkins thought she was probably constitutionally incapable of lying.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “I just needed to give you a warning.”

  “This typist didn’t know Batcheller by name,” Lowell said. “She only knew who Kerr is. But she mentioned that she thought the woman was the one who was murdered later.”

  Lowell, still driving too fast, made a sharp turn. Outside his window Harkins saw a crew unspooling a cable attached to a barrage balloon. A half mile later, Lowell br
aked alongside a small café and turned to Harkins. “She’s a chatty one, so when you’ve heard enough, we’ll just drop her off.”

  Lowell jumped out of the driver’s seat, but before she could even step onto the sidewalk a young woman came out of the café and approached the car. Lowell, standing with one foot on the driver’s side running board, told her, “Get in the back.”

  She looked to be no more than eighteen or nineteen, wearing an elaborate hat and too much lipstick. Her spring coat smelled like mothballs.

  “This is my boss, Lieutenant Harkins,” Lowell said, turning to face them. “Sir, this is Lisolette.”

  Harkins put his hand out. “Eddie Harkins.”

  “Oh, my, this is very exciting, isn’t it?” Lisolette said, shaking hands. “Very exciting indeed!”

  “Private Lowell here tells me you might have some information on Lionel Kerr of the U.S. Embassy.”

  Lisolette turned to face him, close enough that their knees touched, and began talking rapid-fire. Harkins pulled out his notebook and scribbled as fast as he could to keep up with the stories that came rolling out.

  Lisolette was still going fifteen minutes later when Harkins interrupted her. He leaned across the seat to open her door, and said, “Thank you very much.” He thought she was still talking when she got out, maybe even as they pulled away.

  Harkins finished making notes, then closed the little book and shoved it into a canvas bag along with another notebook he’d filled up in the course of the investigation.

  “I want you to hang on to this stuff for me,” he said, handing the satchel over the seat back to Lowell. “My investigator’s notes so far. I don’t want to take them with me on this exercise.”

  “Why me, sir? Why not Lieutenant Wickman?”

  “Because Sinnott would expect me to give my notes to Wickman. He might even search Wickman’s stuff, but he wouldn’t expect me to give them to you.”

  “Very clever, sir.”

  “How much of what Lisolette told us do you believe?” Harkins asked as Lowell made a three-point turn to head to the train station.

  “Most of it, I think,” Lowell said.

  Harkins tapped his knuckles against the inside of the window. “Let’s go find Kerr,” he said.