Casey at the Bat

by Stephen Hunter

  “Basil St. Florian,” Basil said.

  “Chum, use radio protocol, please. Identify by call sign, wait for verification.”

  “Sorry, don’t know the protocol. It’s a borrowed radio, do you see?”

  “Chum, I can’t — Basil St. Florian? Were you at Harrow, ‘28 through ‘32? Big fellow, batsman, six runs against St. Albans?”

  “Seven, actually. The gods smiled on me that day.”

  “I went down at St. Albans. I was fine leg. I dismissed you, finally. You smiled at me. Lord, I never saw such a striker.”

  “I remember. Such, such were the joys, old man. Who knew we’d meet again like this? Now, look here, I’m trying to reach Islington Signals Intelligence. Can you help?”

  “I shouldn’t give out information.”

  “Old man, it’s not like I’m just anybody. I remember you. Reddish hair, freckly, looked like you wanted to squid me on the noggin. Remember how fierce you were, that’s why I winked. I have it right, don’t I?”

  “In fact, you do. All these years, now this. Islington, you say?”

  “Absolutely. Can you help?”

  “I’m actually wizard-keen on these things. It took a war to find out. Hmm, let me just do some diddling, they’d be John-Able-6, do you see? I’m going to do a patch.”

  “Thanks ever so much.”

  Basil waited, examining his fingernails, looking about for something to drink. A nice port, say, or possibly some aged French cognac? He yawned. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. When would the fellow—

  “Identify, please.”

  “Is this John-Able-6?”

  “Identify, please.”

  “Basil St. Florian. Looking to speak with your man Roddy Walthingham. Put him on, there’s a good lad.”

  “Do you think this is a telephone exchange?”

  “No, no, but nevertheless I need to talk to him. Old school chum. Need a favor.”

  “Identify, please.”

  “Listen carefully: I am in a bother and I need to talk to Roddy. It’s war business, not gossip.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In Nantilles.”

  “Didn’t realize the boys had got that far inland.”

  “They haven’t. That’s why it’s rather urgent, old man.”

  “This is very against regulations.”

  “Dear man, I’m actually at a Jerry radio and at any moment, Jerry will return. Now I have to talk to Roddy. Please, play up play up and play the game.”

  “Public school then. I hate you all. You deserve to burn.”

  “We do, I know. Such officious little pricks, the lot of us. I’ll help you light the timbers after the war and then climb into them, smiling. But first, let’s win it. I implore you.”

  “Bah,” said the fellow, “you’d best not put me on report.”

  “I shan’t.”

  “All right. He’s right next door. Hate him too.”

  In a minute or so, another voice came over the earphones.

  “Yes, hullo.”

  “Roddy, it’s Basil. Basil St. Florian.”

  “Basil, good God.”

  “How’re Diane and the girls?”

  “Rather enjoying the country. They could come back to town, since Jerry hardly flies anymore, but I think they like it out there.”

  “Good for them. Say, Roddy, need a favor, do you mind?”

  “Certainly, Basil, if I can.”

  “I’m to go with some boys tonight to set off a firecracker under a bridge. Nasty work, they say it has to be done. ‘Ours not to reason why,’ all that.”

  “Sounds fascinating.”

  “Not really. Hardly any wit to it at all. You know, just destroying things, it seems so infantile in the long run. Anyhow, our cause would be helped if a gang in the area called Group Roger, have you got that, would pitch in with its Brens. But it’s some red-white thing and they won’t help. I thought you had Uncle Joe’s ear—”

  “Basil! Now really! People may be listening.”

  “No inference or judgment meant. I tell no tales, and let each man enjoy his own politics and loyalties, as I do mine. That’s what the war’s all about, isn’t it? Let’s put it this way: If one had Uncle Joe’s ear, one might ask that Group Roger in Nantilles vicinity pitch in with Brens to help Group Phillippe. That’s all. Have you got that?”

  “Roger, Brens, Phillippe, Nantilles. I’ll make a call.”

  “Thanks, old man. Good-bye.”

  “No, no, you say over and out.”

  “Over and out, then.”

  “Ciao, friend.”

  Basil put the microphone down, unhooked the earphones from around his head, and looked up into the eyes of two sergeants with Schmeissers and a lieutenant colonel.

  * * *

  Leets looked at his Bulova. It had been an hour, no, an hour and a half.

  “I think they got him,” said his No. 1, a young fellow called Leon.

  “Shit,” said Leets, in English. He was at a window in the upper floor of a residence fifty yards across from the gated chateau that served as the 113th Flakbattalion’s headquarters and garrison. He held an M1 Thompson submachine gun low, out of sight, and wore a French rain slicker, rubbers, and a plowman’s rough hat.

  “We can’t hit it,” said Leon. “Not four of us. And if we got him out, on the surprise aspect of it, where’d we go? We have no automobile to escape.”

  Leon was right, but still Leets hated the idea of Captain Basil St. Florian perishing on something so utterly trivial as a bridge in the interests of one Team Casey that existed out of a misbegotten SOE/ OSS cooperative plan, silly, cracked, and doomed as all get out. Strictly a show, thought up by big headquarters brainiacs with too much spare time, of no true import. He knew it; they all knew it and had known it in all the hours in Areas A and F and whatever, disguised golf clubs mostly, where they’d trained before deployment to the god-awful food at Milton Hall. As the Brit had said, it probably didn’t make any difference anyhow. He cursed himself; he should have just planted the charges without the Brens and taken his chances on the run to the woods. Maybe the Krauts wouldn’t have been quick enough out of the gates to get there and lay down fire before he rigged his surprises. Maybe it would have been a piece of cake. But you couldn’t tell Basil St. Florian a thing, and when the man got an idea in his head, it crowded out all other concerns.

  “Look!” said Leon.

  It was Basil. He was not alone. He was surrounded by adoring young men of the 113th Flakbattalion and their commanding officer who were escorting Basil to the gate. Basil made a brief, theatrical bow, shook the commander’s hand, and turned and smartly strode off.

  It took a while for him to reach the outskirts of town, but when he hit the rendezvous, Leets and the maquis, by back-streets and fence-jumping, were already there.

  “What the hell?”

  “Well, I reached Roddy. Somehow. He’s to make certain arrangements.”

  “What took you so long?”

  “Ah, it seems the previous owner of this uniform had an illustrious career. This little trinket”—he touched the metallic emblem of a tank with its three tiny plates affixed serially beneath—”signifies a champion tank destroyer on the Eastern Front. The Luftwaffers wanted to hear war stories. So I ended up giving a little performance on the best ways to destroy a T-36. Good God, I hope none of the fellows — they seemed like good lads — try that sort of thing on their own against a Centurion. I just made it up. Something about the third wheel of the left tread being the drive wheel, and if you could hit that with a Panzerfaust, the machine would stop in its tracks. Could there be a third wheel? And I don’t believe I specified left from which perspective. All in all, it was a rather feeble performance, but the London Times critics weren’t around, just some dim Hanoverian farm boys drafted into the German air force.”

  “You made the call? You got through?”

  “Why, it worked better than our trunk lines. No operator, no interference. It was as if Rod
dy was in the same room. Amazing, these technical things. Now, what’s for dinner?”

  * * *

  It seldom worked as well as it did that night, perhaps using up the last of Team Casey’s good luck. At any rate, Roddy moseyed out of the radio shack. It was rainy in Islington and everybody was keen about invasion news. Would our boys be pushed back? Or would they stay, and was this the beginning of the end?

  So nobody paid much attention to a short, fat man with an academic’s somewhat diffident habit of moving and being. Roddy drew his mackintosh tight about him, pulled his deerstalker down about his ears to keep the surprising June chill out, and nodded at the duty officer. His specialty was coding, and he was actually damned good at it, if thought by all a trifle odd. He wandered about as if there wasn’t a war on, and by now everyone accepted that his weirdness and inability to deal with military security matters were a part of his genius and must be accepted. Actually, it was good cover for his real job, which was straight penetration for GRU Section 7, foreign intelligence.

  He crossed the busy street to a druggist’s and looked for the phone. He found it occupied and waited smilingly as a woman finished her call, then departed. He entered, dropped a tuppence, and waited. It rang three times. He hung up. The phone rang twice, then ceased. Roddy redialed the number.

  “Hullo, is that you?”

  “Of course, Roddy. Who else could it be?”

  Roddy’s conversational partner was Major Boris Zyborny, code name RAFTER, in charge of penetration of the British main target and Roddy’s controller. He worked in deep cover in the Polish Free Republic Democratic Army liaison office, doing something or other unclear, while keeping tabs on all his boys and girls for Red Army intelligence.

  Roddy said, “I need a favor. An old school chum.”

  “One of ours?”

  “No.”

  “He’s to be ignored. He’s meaningless. Enjoy his company, mourn his death if it happens, but keep him out of the equation.”

  “A good friend. I want to help him.”

  Roddy explained, and seven minutes later, Major Zyborny was on the long-range radio to Moscow GRU, where someone eventually tracked down a partisan director named Klemansk, a former Comintern agent who’d magically escaped the purges (he was in a Spanish prison awaiting execution at the time) and now commanded Activity Sphere 3, Western Europe, for GRU. Klemansk took some convincing, and in the end agreed because Zyborny assured him that Roddy was important and could only become more important and doing little things like this for him would keep him happy for the long, hard years ahead.

  So Klemansk got on Activity Sphere 3’s radio hookup, and via Paris, reached Group Roger on the matter of the Bren guns.

  * * *

  The Germans of course monitored all this information, as their radio intelligence and intercept systems were superb. However, it was buried in endless tons of other intercepted information, as the invasion had upped radio traffic to nearly torrential levels. It was beyond human capacity to analyze and interpret all of it, and by priority, it was decanted into categories depending on urgency. Since a bridge outside Nantilles was way down the list, the intercepts didn’t get the attention they clearly deserved until June 14,1944, by which time the obscure drama of Team Casey, the 113th Luftwaffe Flakbattalion, 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich, and Groups Roger and Phillippe had long since played out.

  * * *

  Leets applied the last of the burnt cork to his face. Burning corks had turned out to be no picnic. Back at Area 5 in the Catoctins, everybody had assured the trainees that burning cork was a piece of cake, but no one ever managed to explain how to do it. Major Applegate told stories about hunting Mexicans on the Arizona border with the border patrol, and how they’d always corked their faces when serious business was set for the evening, but he never ever explained exactly how to burn the goddamned cork. Leets had singed the hair off his fingers before he struck on the idea of wedging the cork into a doorway, holding it there by pressuring the door against it with his foot, and burning it with candle flame. It oxidized slowly, stupidly, and resentfully, but finally he had enough and managed to do a reasonable job of masquerading his fat, broad, uninteresting, and very white American face against the darkness.

  * * *

  He was now ready, though he felt more like the football player he’d been than the soldier he was, so packed with gear very like the shoulder and thigh pads that had protected him in Big Ten wars. He had a Thompson gun and seven mags with twenty-eight.45s in each, the mags in a pouch strapped to his web belt, as were six Gammon grenades, Allways fuzes packed with half a stick of the green plasticky Explosive 808, all ready to have their caps unscrewed, their linen lines secured, and then be tossed to explode on impact. They smelled of almonds, reminding him of a candy bar he had once loved in a far-off paradise called Minnesota. He had a wicked, phosphate-bladed M3 fighting knife strapped to his right outside lace-up Corcoran jump boot, which was bloused neatly into his reinforced jump pants, an OD cotton slash-pocketed jump jacket, almost like Hemingway’s safari coat, over his wool OD shirt with his silver first lieutenant’s bars and the crossed rifles of Infantry, as he’d been a member of the 501st of the 101st before his French got him recruitment by OSS, a Colt.45 on the web belt, seven in the mag, two more mags on a pouch on the web, and a black watch cap pulled low over his ears so that he looked like one of the lesser Our Gang members. He also carried a satchel full of Explosive 808, also smelling pun-gently of almonds and, let’s see, was that it, oh yes, time pencils, that is, Delay Switch No. 10, a tin of five of them in the satchel with the 808 for quick deployment.

  The plan: The Luftwaffers had wisely used French labor to cut down the forest around the bridge, so it was basically coverless, nude land on the approach, studded with evergreen stumps that were stout enough to stop all vehicles that ran on tires. Stealth was impossible, too, in the arc lights the Germans had mounted that blazed away all night long. There was no danger from the six 88-millimeter flak guns sandbagged around the bridge, since they were dedicated, meaning permanently mounted in antiaircraft trajectories to defend the bridge from Allied air attack, and so out of the picture tactically, and were unmanned at night, as no Typhoons or Jugs would risk a run in the dark. But there were at least six sentries, a sergeant of the guard and four or five riflemen, at each end of the bridge.

  So stealth was out. Rather, in a rattly old Citroen, Leets and his three FFI maquis would approach the bridge and when called to halt at close range open fire. They would shoot the sentries, Gammon bomb the guardhouse, and lay down fire on the men at the other end of the bridge, and Leets would hop out to the center, monkey-climb over, plant the 808, and wedge in the already primed time pencils, and then they’d run like hell to the woods two hundred yards away. If reinforcements from Nantilles got there before they made it to the woods, they’d be dead friggin’ ducks, as the Germans, even incompetent Luftwaffers, could hose them down with MG-42 fire from the guns mounted on the trucks, while the men gave chase with Mausers and Schmeissers.

  That’s where the Brens came in. The Brens could drive the trucks back, even destroy them, and scatter the easily frightened Luftwaffers. The whole thing turned on the Brens. The two Brens were the wanted nail that doomed the horse that lost the squad that let down the battalion that defeated the army that ruined the war.

  “Great news, chum,” said Basil. “You have Brens!”

  “What?”

  “Hmm, it seems that Roger had a change of mind, or perhaps an order from higher HQ. In any event, even as we speak, Roger and his two Bren gun teams are setting up on the slope overlooking the road from Nantilles, three hundred yards beyond the bridge.”

  “Do we know that for a fact?”

  “Chum, if Roger says they’re there, then they’re there.”

  “I wish I could actually see the guys.” But he looked at the Bulova he wore upside down on his wrist and saw that it was 0238 British War Time, so it was time to go.

  “Okay,�
�� he said, “then let’s blow this son of a bitch.”

  “Good attitude. I’ll be with the other boys in the woodline. We’ll lay down fire from our end.”

  “You can’t see well enough to do any good, and that goddamn little peashooter”—Leets indicated the Sten Machine Carbine hung around Basil by a sling, a tubular construction that looked as if it had been designed by a committee of very dull plumbers, a 9-millimeter burp gun that fired too fast when it fired at all, and then its bullets did little good when they got there if they got there at all—”won’t frighten anyone.”

  “Beets, I can’t help it that their guns are so much better than ours. We make do with what is. We do our bit, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Well, let’s go then. Batter up!” Leets said bitterly. He stormed to the Citroen for his drive to battle. But then he remembered his manners.

  “Sorry, captain. I’m a blowhard, I know. Just venting because I’m scared shitless. Anyhow, thanks, what you did was swell, it was, I don’t know—”

  “Stop it, Beets. Just go blow up your silly bridge.”

  “Captain, one last thing. Who the hell are you? Where are you from? How do you know so much? What are you doing here? Surely you’re too old, too advanced, too brilliant for all this running around. You should be a general or something. You look forty. Who are you?”

  “Long, long story, chum. Blow the damned bridge and we’ll have a chat.”

  * * *

  Enter Millie Beeman. Millie, from Millicent, from the Beemans, you know, the Beemans of the North Shore. Millie was a lovely girl, clever as the devil. She graduated with high marks from Smith but never bragged or acted smart, got her first job working as a secretary at Time in Manhattan for the awful Luce and his hideous wife, spent some time on a Senate staff (her father arranged it), and then when war came, she gravitated toward the Office of Strategic Services just as surely as it gravitated toward her. People knew where they belonged, and organizations knew what kind of people belonged in them, so General Donovan’s assistants fell in instant love with the willowy blonde who looked smashing at any party, smoked brilliantly, and had languid, see-through-anything luminosity in her eyes. Everyone loved the way her hair fell down to her shoulders; everyone loved the diaphanous cling of a gown or blouse to her long-limbed, definitely femalesque torso; everyone loved her yards and yards of legs, her perfect ankles well displayed by the platform of the heels all the girls wore.