The Company of the Dead

by David Kowalski

  One moment the German fighter appeared to float, suspended in midair. The next, a fireball pummelled them in searing waves. There was a shower of fragments that might have been metal and might have been bone.

  Morgan’s head pounded.

  Hardas’s mouth moved soundlessly.

  There was no sound but the slosh of blood behind Morgan’s bruised eardrums. He was shoved up against the thick metal wall as more bodies swept in. He tried to look up, but Hardas forced his head back down. Newcombe’s knees were in his face.

  The metal point of a booted foot propelled Morgan away as hands clawed for ammunition feeds and someone started swinging the anti-aircraft gun skywards. There was gunpowder, sweat and the reek of gasoline everywhere.

  A gunner yelled at one of the policemen, pointing to the emplacement’s edge. Morgan felt arms slung beneath his damp armpits and was lifted, thinking fuck this, but unable to resist the eviction.

  He was back on deck with Hardas and Newcombe and they were running again, side-stepping pilots who were still fastening belts, adjusting helmets, streaming to where others clambered below. The deck shuddered as two fighters catapulted past and screamed into the sky. Towards its edge a gaping fissure exposed the carrier’s entrails. Sunlight fell where it shouldn’t on the wreckage of craft caught in the hangar below. Morgan thought crazily, That’s a big hole, then recalled what he’d seen within the hot trail of the crashing plane.

  A second plane.

  Suddenly he was caught in a swift shadow. Looking up, he saw the plane plummet. Looking side-ways at Hardas and Newcombe running beside him and then leaping sideways, rolling, rolling, with them beneath and above him and then nothing.

  When the first waves of narcotic-fuelled dreams parted he’d found himself in the infirmary, Hardas at the foot of his bed.

  “Finally,” Hardas had said, and smiled.

  A dull ache beat its way through the haze. Morgan’s eyes shifted to the crude bandage wrapped around his leg.

  He spent that afternoon in the infirmary. Hardas explained what had happened. How a second fighter had crashed into the deck. How Morgan had grabbed and hurled both Newcombe and Hardas from its path.

  They were fire-planes, Hardas had said. Old German fighters, captured from some other conflict—maybe Suez, maybe Vietnam, he didn’t know—but piloted by Japanese warriors strapped in bonds that were never meant to be undone, and bristling with incendiary devices and live ammunition. There’d been fifteen in all. Two had managed to crash into the Bismarck before ship’s defence had kicked in. Two more had smashed through the hull of one of the dreadnoughts they’d seen earlier. The others had been shot out of the sky.

  Then a flight of Japanese FS-Zs had fallen upon the fleet.

  It had been a close call until Merkur’s planes had arrived and the japs had been beaten back.

  “Where’s Newcombe?” Morgan asked.

  “That shithead’s locked up in the admiral’s cabin. We’d all be in the brig, but I managed to have a quick word with Admiral Merkur after he arrived.”

  “You got your leverage?”

  “I think so. Our scout’s gone but something else came up. We’re leaving as soon as you’re mobile.”

  “I’m just going to be a liability now.”

  “Christ, Morgan, you were always a liability.” Hardas fixed him with an appraising eye. “We’ll make do.”

  The painkillers had rendered the rest of Morgan’s time with the Germans a muddied void. The fragments of conversation and subsequent events were mercifully unclear. Now sequestered by the smoke of battle and the Parzifal’s steady wake, the remnants of the fleet lay beyond the darkened horizon.

  Savannah remained a further two days south.

  Awake and asleep, Morgan listened.

  Thálatta thálatta: a Greek chorus of sound that pummelled his ears and vibrated through his bones, a cry of woe beating out an ancient and indecipherable code. Thálatta: Ancient Greek for ocean, for Homer’s wine-dark sea. The Atlantic, named for Atlas, world-bearing Titan of Greek mythology.

  They had spent two days crossing the Sargasso Sea, while sortie after sortie of Japanese aircraft left indelible marks in twisted metal and blood on the flotilla’s decks. Two days crossing the Sargasso, the only sea in the world bordered by ocean currents rather than land. Calm and warm, an ellipsis of water, flowing ever clockwise in an inexorable whirlpool that could sink a continent.

  This wide dank sea had spawned so many myths. Here lay Atlantis, bound by the Devil’s Triangle, and here lay ships lost or abandoned. Yes, here lay the Titanic. Here lay—

  “Why don’t you go below, grab some shut-eye?”

  “What’s that?” Morgan’s eyes snapped open.

  “You almost fell over the side.” Hardas had to shout above the engines. “Go below.”

  Morgan tried to stand, but his leg gave way. Hardas came over and slid an arm beneath his shoulder, taking the weight off his injured limb.

  “How you holding up?”

  “I’m okay.”

  Hardas nodded in the direction of the stairs. “Go below. I’ll send Newcombe to get you when it’s your watch. If you’re up to it.”

  “I’m up to it.”

  “You’ve got four hours.”

  Hardas stayed close by his side as Morgan limped towards the bow of the Parzifal.

  Up until eight hours ago it had been the property of the German navy; Admiral Merkur’s own private barge. A lightly armed runabout, designed for inter-ship transfers, it had been handed over to Hardas with little ceremony; payback for the intelligence Major Kennedy had provided concerning the Japanese fighters. A last gasp of Camelot’s ties to the Germans.

  Morgan had been unable to assist Hardas and Newcombe in provisioning the vessel. His injury confined him to light tasks. Instead, he’d made his own minor contribution. Settling himself near the bow and using a tin of paint he’d found aboard the vessel, he made the ship their own, working the name Parzifal onto the side in a spidery scrawl of red. It was the German name for King Arthur’s wise-fool, whose quest had ultimately claimed the Holy Grail and renewed Camelot. A spiritual change that had passed unnoticed in a world reborn.

  Newcombe, one hand on the wheel, looked over his shoulder. “How’s our hero?”

  Morgan smiled weakly by way of reply.

  “He’s doing fine,” Hardas said.

  Morgan paused for a moment, resting against the gunnel. The moon had yet to rise; just stars and the play of the Parzifal’s lamp on the black waters. I will be here again, he thought. I’m going back. He glanced at Hardas. We’re going back. I seem to be forever crossing and recrossing these waters, but I’m closing in on you, Doctor Wells.

  “Give me one of your cigarettes,” Newcombe said.

  Hardas reached for his packet and gave it a shake, yielding three cigarettes. Newcombe leaned across, snaring one of the butts with the side of his mouth. Hardas looked at Morgan.

  “Sure, what the hell.” Morgan took one and let it dangle between his lips.

  “Light?” Hardas asked.

  “Eventually. Let me look tough for a while. Coughing tends to detract from the otherwise debonair appearance this lends me.”

  Hardas smiled.

  “What do you think will happen to them?” Morgan asked after a while. “The Germans.”

  “Even with Merkur at the helm, they’re in trouble,” Hardas replied. “The japs can pull in planes from any airfield in the Union. It’s going to be steady attrition. And they can’t afford to lose another carrier.”

  Morgan nodded. He’d witnessed the fate of two of the massive vessels.

  “I can’t look at you like that. Makes me think of quitting.” Hardas leaned over to light the cigarette.

  Morgan pulled away. “I’ll have it next watch.” He placed the cigarette carefully in his breast pocket, nudging it down with his finger.

  “See you in four hours,” Hardas said. “I’m going to do some more work on the aft deck. I’ll take a br
eak around five. Accounting for drift and course corrections, we should make Cape Fear by sun-up. Another one-sixty’ll get us to Savannah.”

  “After picking up more fuel,” Morgan added.

  “After picking up more fuel.”

  “And we’re just going to roll up to some mooring and buy us some gasoline in a German utility boat...” Morgan caught himself, then continued, “Hell, we could always tie a piece of wood to my leg and stick a parrot on my shoulder. We’ll say it’s a pirate raid. After all, my name is Morgan.”

  The flash of a passing thought creased Hardas’s brow. He dropped his gaze to the injured leg, saying, “You need something more for the pain?”

  “I’ll pass. Might help me sleep, but won’t be much good when I need to be awake.”

  Morgan hobbled below decks and dropped heavily on one of the bunks. He stared up at the low ceiling, but sleep would not come. Just the rush of thoughts and a German melody he’d overheard aboard the carrier.

  The lights bothered him now so he slipped the thin pillow over his forehead, just shielding his eyes, as he had done as a child. The cotton felt coarse against dry skin. It carried the antiseptic flavour endemic to hospital and military wash, and made him think about Red Rock and wish for home.

  He slept, and dreamt he was back in the desert. The campfire’s crackle and the buzz from one beer too many and Major Kennedy’s voice. He was there with Kennedy, Hardas, Shine and Doc. There was no installation. Red Rock was just a makeshift depot, a tarp thrown over the carapace.

  Kennedy had returned like Lazarus, back to tell them all, and he told them all.

  And then Morgan realised what that scent was that wasn’t the coals or the bark or the leftovers or anything else but the taste of the time machine’s ozone afterglow. So it was that, angered and frightened, he asked Kennedy not where, but when he had gone to.

  And Kennedy told him.

  He dreamt he was pressed close to the Parzifal’s hull, riding low in the water like some pilot fish, but being guided by rather than guiding this shark of a vessel. It was a shark, its teeth twin-barrelled machine-guns concealed beneath a tarpaulin on the bow, and Hardas—no, Newcombe—was its dark brain, and it had to keep moving, moving. The future was a continent, shifting slowly on tectonic plates, waiting for just the right shove. Morgan rode an eternity of Atlantics, rising and falling with the Parzifal’s steady motion.

  Beneath him, littering the oceans’ floors, lay an infinity of Titanics.

  III

  April 24, 2012

  Flat Rock, Kentucky

  It was early evening and outside the window the street was slowly dying, shopfront by shopfront. Curfew. They’d seen it in all the towns they’d passed through, from Trenton to Louisville.

  Lightholler glanced at his watch and then back out the window. “You think you can rely on this man?”

  “He’s our best bet.” Kennedy shrugged. “But if he doesn’t show by nine-thirty, we go it alone.”

  Five past nine on the clock mounted above the bar. Blackout would be in full swing by ten. If they weren’t out of town by then, it would be another day lost.

  Kennedy was aware that his hold on Lightholler was slipping. The mission was taking on an illusory quality. Reality was outside. It was the sparks thrown by horses’ hooves on the cobblestone paths, the trucks full of soldiers that swore and spat their way down the main street of every town they negotiated. The half-cooked meals wolfed down, the boxcars they’d rode, the hay and chaff trapped in every fold of their clothes after a night spent cramped and cold in a stranger’s barn. The carapace was beyond Nevada now; it lay in the realm of dream, as far away as yesterday.

  He believed he was arriving at some twisted understanding of his quarry. Somewhere across time, Wells had written a journal, making of it an anchor. He’d fashioned a talisman that he’d only parted with at sea.

  What evil had followed? Casting away his journal, had Wells cast away his former life and melted into a world of his own making? Had he roamed history’s backlot with a nudge here and a push there as planned? Kennedy felt him everywhere, only finding solace in the fact that, by now, the fucker must be long dead.

  I will supplant you and remake the world as it should be. World without end, hallelujah. Amen.

  “That your man?” Lightholler spoke as if with the mildest interest.

  Kennedy looked up with little expectation. It was the crowd’s response that spurred him to wakefulness. Had it been one of those old westerns, the band would have stopped playing mid-note and the cowboys would have slid out of their chairs nice and slow, reaching for their holsters.

  The man strode into the bar with as much purpose as the circumstances appeared to demand. He spotted them and smiled broadly; his teeth were gold-capped and filed to a point. His eyes were narrowed slits issuing an age-old challenge that was received with the better part of valour. The barflies and the soldiers and the deadbeats and maybe even the spies turned back to their glasses and their conversations.

  “Watanabe,” Kennedy said, as the man bowed slightly before them.

  “Boss.”

  The acknowledgment was spoken softly. If there was a touch of sarcasm to the title Kennedy chose to ignore it. He rose and bowed with convincing sincerity, and Lightholler, after a moment’s hesitation, followed suit.

  “Everything has been prepared for your crossing.”

  Kennedy reached for the satchel, the talismans within, and tossed a couple of coins on the table. Lightholler stood, a bag containing all his worldly goods tucked under his arm.

  “I should drink a toast to the both of you,” Watanabe said, inclining his head. “To better days.”

  “Can’t see them getting worse,” Lightholler replied without conviction.

  The Cadillac’s interior was plush. It would take more than a shower and fresh clothes for Kennedy to feel clean again. He planted his feet wide on the expanse before him and reclined, leaning against the door rest.

  Watanabe sat opposite him and smiled generously. “I barely recognised you, boss.”

  Kennedy had dyed his hair black and hadn’t shaved in days, but he was sure that Watanabe wasn’t talking about his appearance.

  “Tell me,” Watanabe continued, “which one of you is supposed to be Tom Sawyer, and which one is Huck?”

  Kennedy offered a smile. “How’s business?”

  “I get by.” Watanabe’s eyes twinkled with contained mirth. “The cross-border express is a recent but lucrative development.”

  The yakuza voiced little love for authority, East or West, and they made a show of their disdain. That was their history. Tradition. Behind the scenes they dined with princes and invested in big business. They loved the Kennedy legacy: politicians and bootleggers on one side; arms contracts and air fleets on the other. Watanabe’s master, Kobe, dealt with Kennedy by virtue of old debts, long outstanding.

  The streets were silent save for Union soldiers and cars like the one in which they rode, exempt and abrogated by the contents stored under their hoods. The Japanese may have demilitarised, but their presence was entrenched within the yakuza’s hydra-like folds. Even in Kentucky.

  Indian summer lay plastered over the town, formed in the smelters and foundries located along this stretch of countryside. Alluvial sands and windswept silts had once provided some of the best agricultural land this side of the Mason-Dixon Line, but there was coal here, it ran thick in the veins of the Appalachian Plateau, and it was pursued ruthlessly. Bluegrass to black soot in the space of fifty years.

  “How is Kobe?” Kennedy asked after a while.

  “He has concern for your well-being.”

  “How deep does his concern run?”

  “You are currently worth a hundred-thousand Confederate dollars. Another fifty for your friend.”

  “Chump change for a traitor’s bounty,” Kennedy replied.

  “These are hard times, with worse to come, boss. Bad for business, which of course reminds me.” Gold flashed between
purple-flecked lips.

  Kennedy patted his chest. “Fifly now, the rest when we reach Arkansas.”

  “You get a discount for warning Kobe about New York.” Watanabe smiled. He turned his attention to Lightholler. “I am now thinking something completely different,” he said. “You know who I am, who I represent?”

  Lightholler, nonplussed, replied, “You’re yakuza. You’re a very scary gangster. You’re going to get us to safety.”

  “Yes, it’s true, I am kobun, a man to be feared. But I wonder, with all respect to Mr Kennedy, if you both are not, by strict definition, yakuza yourselves.”

  “How’s that?” Lightholler asked, ignoring or missing Watanabe’s thrust.

  “It’s Watanabe’s oldest and only joke, I suspect,” Kennedy said. “We’ve just been insulted.”

  “You will land on your feet, boss. You always do.” Watanabe gave his bullion grin. “For this round, however, you have been dealt a losing hand to the tune of a hundred-and-seventy-five-thousand dollars.”

  “Ya-ku-za,” Kennedy enunciated for Lightholler’s benefit. “The name comes from a losing hand in a card game you don’t want to play, unless you feel like losing a thumb.” He cracked his knuckles, then splayed his fingers, saying, “Five and five, Watanabe. How’s about you?”

  The gangster held up both hands. A tattoo of livid red and green scales ran down one arm, to the amputated stub of an extended finger. The mark of his crime family blending with the mark of a recent defeat. “Swings and roundabouts as they say, boss. Swings and roundabouts.”

  IV

  April 24, 2012

  North Atlantic, 33”27’ N, 77”39’ W

  A clear night and the ocean. Stars in such numbers reminded Hardas that at times imagination was no substitute for reality.

  Before they had left the German fleet, Merkur had taken him aside. Perhaps the admiral had felt a need to justify why he was letting them go. He mentioned a sizable bounty on their heads and told him that they had been accused by the Confederacy of some undisclosed and terrible crime. This was the last assistance they could expect. All debts were now paid.