Blackbone

by George Simpson

  There were frowns and grumblings from the small core of true Nazis among the senior officers. While they didn’t subscribe to Bruckner’s wild statements, neither did they trust the Americans—any Americans. To them, Hopkins was more typical of the American character. Hopkins met all their expectations.

  “Major Steuben.” Mueller piped up from the rear, coldly contemptuous. Mueller was the senior Luftwaffe officer and resident escape artist—or so he fancied himself.

  “What is it, Mueller?”

  “Same as always, Major. When will I get a hearing before the escape committee?”

  “Let’s give Major Gilman a little time to settle in before we start taking advantage.”

  “I don’t understand that, Major. Are we supposed to hang up our balls until we find out if Gilman has any of his own? I’ve got serious plans that require discussion, and I’m willing to abide by the rules—no independent efforts. But there are other men involved, and we want a hearing.”

  Hoffman stood behind him, nodding.

  “So noted.”

  Mueller’s eyes went icy with hatred. He was a disciplined officer, but his patience was sorely tried by Steuben’s unbending reluctance to permit escape attempts. If Mueller didn’t get his hearing soon, he might go without approval, and Steuben knew it.

  “The escape committee will meet within the next forty-eight hours,” Steuben said, “to discuss the general issue of escape. No plans will be heard at that time. But we will let you know our thinking.”

  Mueller’s contempt only deepened. “What more could I ask for?” he said, then turned and walked out.

  “At least we know one thing about Gilman,” said Gebhard, the lone U-boat officer imprisoned at Blackbone. “He likes dogs.”

  Everybody glanced at Churchill and smiled. Churchill recognized the attention and let out a happy bark. Bruckner snorted. “Making love to the dog was for our benefit. If Hopkins killed it, do you think Gilman would punish him?”

  “It’s your own fault,” said Hoffman. “You had to go and name him Churchill.”

  “Right,” said Gebhard. “Maybe if we call him Goering and kick him now and then—”

  A few of the officers laughed. The Nazis in the corner glared at Gebhard.

  Steuben dismissed the meeting and cleared the room. He stopped Bruckner at the door. “Hans,” he said, “I don’t understand where you get some of your ideas. Do you really believe the Americans are trying to find a way to kill us?”

  “This is war, Major,” Bruckner said with a bitter smile. “Some things you wouldn’t dream of could already be reality.”

  Psychotic? Or just paranoid? Steuben wondered if he shouldn’t turn Bruckner over to an American psychiatrist. There was no one on the prisoners’ medical staff qualified to judge. But Bruckner was paranoid about American doctors, too, convinced that they were conducting horrifying experiments on war prisoners.

  A few months ago, when he had run a fever and suffered chills, Bruckner had not even admitted he was sick, he was so afraid of being turned over to the Americans for treatment.

  “In their hands, I would just disappear like a bug down a frog’s throat,” he had told Steuben in his delirium. “You would never see me again. I would end up cut into pieces. They would attach wires to what remains and run currents of electricity through me, and I would go on and off like a lamp.” He had ranted and raved, and Steuben had ended up nursing him alone, not even permitting the German medics near him.

  Since then, Bruckner had been more careful about his hygiene, his sleeping and eating habits.... And he had devoted himself to that dog, convinced that caring for another living being put him in good grace with God, and therefore he was protected.

  “You are convinced we are losing this war,” Bruckner told Steuben. “I don’t blame you for that. In fact, I may believe it myself. But you are content to stay where you are, in the comforting bosom of America, the international tit. Your only concern is survival and, beyond that, repatriation. Some of these two hundred-odd men don’t share that view. Mueller, for instance. You keep putting him off, expecting him to come around to your point of view and realize that escape is hopeless. But some of our men do not believe it is over. And they have grown rather unhappy with you.”

  Steuben was surprised to hear all this from Bruckner. “You mean they’re finally paying attention to your portents of doom?” he said.

  “No.” Bruckner smiled. “I believe what I believe. They have their own ideas. And I...” He frowned, then gazed into space. “I live with what I know.”

  He shook Churchill’s leash and made kissing sounds. The dog followed him down the corridor and out the door.

  Steuben stepped back into his room and shut the door. Bruckner was right. His only interest was survival and, beyond that, going home. If there was a home to go back to. And it wasn’t just for himself that he hoped. It was for all two hundred of the men in” his care.

  Steuben unbuttoned his tunic and lay down on his bunk. He closed his eyes and wished everyone away. Bruckner, Mueller, Hopkins, even Gilman. Send them all to another planet. The only thing he wanted right now was a glass of schnapps and the warm flesh of his wife.

  Lust faded quickly as he thought of his family back in Germany, trapped like helpless mice, directly in the path of the advancing Russian Army. And here he sat in the comforting bosom of America—safe.

  Chapter 4

  “Hi.”

  Loring held the door open. Warren Clark was leaning against the jamb—clothes rumpled, tie askew, damp stains on his shirt, drunk, and regarding her with a look of complete disgust. His head bobbed, and it seemed as if any second it might roll off his shoulders.

  “It’s past midnight, Warren. What do you want?”

  “Me? What do I want?” He laughed then spoke again, trying to control a slur. “My pumpkin has become a coach, my footman has become a dog, and oops, my glass slippers have become huaraches.” He laughed again and sagged against the jamb. His coat rode up, pulling his shirttail out on one side.

  “You’re a mess. Go home and sleep it off.”

  Warren’s face darkened. His foot lashed out, kicking the door wide. He tumbled into the room. “May I come in?”

  Loring thought quickly. She decided it would be better to let him pass out in her apartment. In the morning, he would be his usual contrite, cooperative self, easier to get rid of. She shut the door. He fell onto the sofa, stretched out in a long heap, and stared at her.

  “I’ve hit a dead end,” he said. “I can’t help you anymore. What do you think of that?”

  Loring leaned against the door. “What sort of dead end?”

  “You know. Delaware Trader.”

  “What have you found out?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “Yes, I would. Do I have to pull your teeth to find out?”

  “Maybe—you might have to pull something.”

  “Look, Warren, if you’ve got some gripe with me, can we settle it later? If you have any information about that ship, I would appreciate hearing it right now. It’s vital!”

  Warren lay motionless a moment then erupted. “Of course it’s vital! Everything is vital to you except us! Well, shit! I’m tired of playing the lapdog! Warren, will you do this? Warren, will you check into that? Warren, would you use your connections? Warren, I don’t want to tell you this, but I really think you’re nothing more than the perfect doormat! And that’s what I think of you!” He waved a demonstrative hand. “Isn’t it?”

  “No, and I’m sorry you feel that way.”

  “You’re sorry for nothing. The only purpose I serve in your life is to run your goddamned errands and squire you around. You’re using me!”

  She stayed at the door. “Warren, you want too much.”

  “Too much? All I want is a sign that you care!”

  She watched him a long moment then said quietly, “I’ve never encouraged you.”

  He sank deeper into the sofa. The anger flowed out o
f him, replaced by defeat. “That’s right,” he said. “That’s right. You never have. Oh, God, you’re a cold one. You knew this would happen, that you could just frost me and frost me and sooner or later I would complain, and then you could wriggle right out of it by saying, Sorry, Warren, old asshole, I never fucking encouraged you! And, by God, you never did. You certainly never did.”

  Loring moved away from the door. “I’ll make some coffee.”

  “No!” Warren rolled over. His legs hit the floor and with effort he pulled himself up. He reeled from dizziness and dropped back again. “Okay. Go ahead. Make it. It’s the least you can do for me.”

  Loring went to the kitchen, resisting an impulse to pick up a rolling pin and beat some sense into him. She put water up to boil then touched her cheeks. They were burning. Why should she be embarrassed, or feel guilty? She was only telling him the truth. She had never encouraged him. Simple as that. And he knew it, too, or he wouldn’t be so angry. The sleeping dog wakes. But he knew something, or he would never have had the courage to come here, even drunk, and pull this nonsense. She went back into the living room, flashing a smile. He was still on the sofa, watching her balefully.

  She could blame her mother for this. She had wanted to get rid of Warren after the first date, but Mother had begged her not to be hasty. Mother, the professional club woman and would-be marriage broker. She had successfully found husbands for seven young ladies from the better New Haven families, but she had failed miserably with her own daughter, who had rebelled from the time she could spell the word. Bryn Mawr and Radcliffe hadn’t been good enough for Loring, even though her father—a Wall Street securities specialist whose portfolio remained fat no matter what the political climate—could afford to send his daughter to the top school in the world. Instead, she had picked plain old Columbia University in New York City. And not to study home economics, either. Entirely on her own and with no encouragement at home, Loring had managed to turn herself into a professional archaeologist. And it utterly burned her parents’ collective egos that she chose to soil her hands with field work. They would rather see her stashed away in a Park Avenue town house with good old Warren Clark, leading a life they could understand and at least partially control.

  More than ever, Loring was convinced she could never let that happen. Besides, Warren did nothing for her sexually. Oh, he wanted it all right. The poor fool was beside himself with unresolved sexual tension. But he awakened nothing inside Loring, not even the remotest stir.

  Especially not like this, when his courage—what there was of it—came from a bottle.

  The kettle whistled. She returned to the kitchen, made the coffee strong and black, and brought him a large cup. She helped him sit up and got him to drink some of it.

  When he was beginning to think more of his throbbing head than his rage at her, she sat down on the floor in front of him and waited.

  For a long time, he wouldn’t look at her. Then his eyes slid to her face, and some of the fight went out of him.

  “What did Charlie Hemphill say?” she asked.

  Warren ran a hand through his hair. “He wanted to know why I wanted to know, so I made up some bullshit about State Department business, hush-hush, connection with the museum, and then I mentioned your shipment. He had the cargo manifest as cabled from Liverpool, and we found it on there with no trouble. One crate shipped from the British Museum, care of Loring Holloway, Metropolitan Museum, New York. There’s some kind of a lid on information regarding sinkings but—”

  “Sinking?”

  “Yeah... latest word is that the Delaware Trader was torpedoed by a German U-boat seven days ago. She went down with all hands.”

  Loring’s eyes shot to the floor.

  “And cargo,” Warren added.

  She hardened. “All of it?”

  “Well, now, that’s the interesting part. There was a survivor—”

  Loring looked up sharply.

  “—from the U-boat. A German officer. Nice catch for the Navy. Seems that after they torpedoed the Delaware Trader, this U-boat surfaced to finish her off with their deck gun. Very dumb. They got nailed by one of our antisub patrol bombers. The survivor was their gunnery officer, one Herr Leutnant Rolf Kirst, rescued at sea by the destroyer escort USS Sharpe.”

  “When did they pick him up?”

  “Oh, couple days later. He was found floating around in the Atlantic inside—guess what?—a crate.”

  Loring stared at Warren. A weight descended in her stomach. “Where is it?”

  “You’re so sure it’s yours, aren’t you?”

  Oh, Christ, Warren, she thought. You don’t know how sure I am, how I know, I know! But I have to know for certain and can’t you please stop playing this little game and get on with it... ?

  “It’s a goddamned miracle, is what it is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That he’s alive at all. I went to see Commander Lehman, captain of the Sharpe, over at the Brooklyn Naval Yard. He said nobody survives that amount of time in the Atlantic this time of year. Kirst should have died of exposure within minutes, but somehow he found that crate and crawled inside—”

  “Was it my crate?”

  Warren glared at her. He wanted to tell it his way. “Yes, damnit. Stickered and tagged, stenciled all over it— ‘Property of Metropolitan Museum, New York City, U.S.A.’“

  Loring’s heart jumped. “You say he was found inside it? What about the—the shipment—the artifacts... ?”

  “The only thing in the crate was Kirst.”

  “Well, what did he do with... ?”

  “Nobody knows. He wouldn’t talk. Lehman questioned him through an interpreter. He didn’t even respond to German. Not a peep. But the crate was empty—”

  “Did you... ?”

  “I asked, yes. Lehman figured Kirst must have thrown everything out in order to make room for himself.” Warren gave her a hard look. “He was trying to save his life. I doubt if he looked at your stuff and put his hand over his heart and said, Oh, my God, the museum needs this, I’d better jump out.”

  “I want to meet him.”

  “Not possible. He’s been shipped to a POW camp.”

  “Where?”

  Warren smiled thinly. “Ah, that’s where Sherlock really had his work cut out for him. I had to hop my ass over to Naval Intelligence and see someone named Zalman Ball. I invoked the museum, the city of New York, the State Department, Anglo-American friendship, and he just kept saying, Sorry, the disposition of prisoners in this country is classified, and so is the location of POW camps. And since I couldn’t exactly be too open with him about what was in the goddamned crate that was even remotely interesting to State—”

  “The shipment contained archaeological artifacts from a dig in Iraq. Call him up and tell him, and find out where they sent Kirst.”

  Warren stared at her with a little crooked, drunken smile. He sipped more coffee. “At last a morsel, a tidbit, a tiny scrap of a hint. What sort of artifacts?”

  “Pottery, tablets, some things over two thousand years old—a major find, Warren.” She didn’t dare tell him more.

  Warren sipped loudly. “A sad loss for the world of archaeology, I am sure.”

  “More than that.”

  “What more?”

  “The significance would be... meaningless to you. It wouldn’t make sense.”

  “It already doesn’t.”

  Loring shifted uncomfortably.

  “Look, Lor. The stuff in the crate is gone. It went to the bottom of the ocean so Kirst could get into the crate and save his ass. So make a report to the museum director and call it quits. You can’t change what’s happened, and you’re certainly not the first person in this war to lose some shipping.”

  Loring jumped up. “I’ve got to know what happened!”

  “Loring, for God’s sake, the museum is wall-to-wall artifacts! What’s another more or less?”

  “It’s not enough for somebody to tell me it went
to the bottom of the sea. I have to know for sure!”

  “You’re obsessed with this.”

  Her eyes blazed. “Yes!”

  Warren sat back grimly. “Oh, Christ, I’m a fool. I am just a goddamned pipeline for you. And I’ve been clinging to hope for months. Hope when there is none. I realized it today, when I was on the line to Washington trying to squeeze information out of some chicken general.... You don’t trust me—not with your life, your love, or your body. You don’t even trust me with those goddamned errands you send me on. I’m pulling strings for you, but you keep me in the dark over why!”

  He spread both hands on the sofa and heaved himself to his feet. “What’s so goddamned important about the Delaware Trader and that shipment and you getting to that German officer? Why do you have to know?”

  “Warren, I can’t discuss it. Thanks for what you’ve—”

  “Don’t patronize me!”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it.”

  “No?” He was shouting now. “Well, if I wouldn’t, then what about the people in Montana?”

  His face twisted with emotion, then all at once he was falling backward. He landed on the sofa and slid from there to the floor. He sat looking at her stupidly, then broke into a satisfied smirk. She knelt beside him.

  “What people in Montana?”