by James R Benn
"Carrefour? Isn't that a password?"
"No, no. It is a place. You found the paper? From the notebook?" There was a touch of hope in his voice. We were having a conversation, which appealed to him more than picking pieces of his kneecap out of a dirty mattress.
"Yeah, I found it. What do you mean, a place?"
"The bar, that was the first place, the first place to meet. Then, if that didn't work, the crossroads. But I swear, he never told me where it was. He said if we needed to go there, then I would know."
I released the hammer and took my finger off the trigger. That same sound again, but reversed, like time going backward.
"Who were you going to meet there?"
"Customers, Arab traders, whoever would pay the most."
This time I just had to move my finger only a quarter of an inch.
"The Germans, he was in touch with the Germans. They wanted all the penicillin he could deliver. They were going to pay in gold, as soon as he got the next shipment." He spoke in a rush, hurrying to get the words out that would move my finger back. But I didn't shift it. Next shipment? No one had said a word about another shipment. I had to think it through.
"When and where will the next shipment arrive?"
"In two nights, but I do not know where. I would tell you, I owe that pig nothing!"
Yeah, now we were pals. No one liked Villard.
"Anything else you can tell me?" I asked.
"No, Villard did not trust me with any information. He always told me things right before they were about to happen."
"So that's it?" I asked.
"Yes, truly. Please take me to the doctor now."
I patted down his uniform jacket pocket, the pocket I saw him put something in when he'd taken the briefcase. I felt a notebook inside and reached in for it. A black leather notebook, flail of pages just like the sheet I found on Casselli.
"You missed a page when you killed Casselli, by the way. It was folded inside the matchbook," I offered, just being helpful. I flipped through the pages, seeing nothing but a lot of letters that didn't make sense. Code again. "Smart move palming the notebook. A nice insurance package in case your boss turned against you," I said. "But it was not smart to lie to me."
He started to shake again, his whole body trembling, waiting for my hand to raise the gun and make that sound again. I wanted to, I wanted to empty his goddamn pistol into his chest and watch him die. Then I wanted him to come back, so I could do it all over again.
"Ain't worth it, Lieutenant," Duxbury said quietly. "Not even a rotten piece of garbage like that one."
I had to agree. "Let's go," I said. But I knew someone else who was well worth it.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Captain Gauthier was happy to take Mathenet into custody, and I was happy he didn't ask about the hole in Mathenet's foot. Duxbury had given it a good bandaging, and the last I saw of Mathenet, a grinning French sergeant was opening the trap door to that hole Villard had kept Gauthier and his men in for two days. Mathenet had tried to protest, but I told him he didn't have a leg to stand on. Duxbury thought it was funny, but I guess it lost something in translation since Mathenet didn't laugh.
Duxbury and Rodney dropped us off at Harry's boat. They said it had been fun, and I don't think they were kidding. We traded handshakes and cigarettes, and I pretended to be glad to fork over a couple of packs of Lucky Strikes for English cigarettes, which tended to taste more like straw than tobacco.
Harry's crewmen helped him aboard and then promptly ignored him while they made Diana comfortable. Banville got on the radio and contacted base. They relayed our situation to HQ in Algiers, and we were told that Harding had issued orders for an RAF Catalina flying boat to pick us up just outside the harbor. Harry, Diana, and I were to be taken to the 21st General Hospital in Algiers. Back to square one. But now I had Diana with me.
Aboard the giant seaplane, watching Banville turn the MTB out to sea for the long ride back, I observed Diana as the Catalina took off. Its two engines revved high and the hull bounced hard each time it sliced through a wave until it finally lifted off, leaving the heavy seas behind. The Catalina was outfitted for Air-Sea rescue; Diana lay on a stretcher, covered in blankets. Her eyes were closed, but I knew she wasn't sleeping because I could see her brace herself every time the Catalina hit one of those waves. I reached over to place my hand on her shoulder, and she stiffened. I took it away and I made believe she was sleeping too.
Harry had his leg propped up on a case of ammo. Just beyond him were the waist gunners, who had great views from the observation blisters that jutted out from the narrow fuselage. Great, except when what you saw were German or Italian fighters diving toward you. The waist gunners ignored us as they swiveled their guns around and scanned the sky, which was fine with me.
"How's the leg?" I asked, settling down on the metal seat next to Harry.
"Hurts like the devil, not that I dare complain about a little through and through, as our Commando friends kept reminding me."
"Shot is shot," I said. "The human body wasn't built to have red hot lead smash through it. You have a right to complain."
He didn't say anything. After a minute or so he pointed with his thumb to Diana.
"How is she?"
"Asleep. I think, or hope. You saved her life, and I owe you for that."
"Trick is, Billy, will she think I did her a favor? And did I? She's obviously suffering, and I've just given her the chance to face more sleepless nights, more anguish, more memories…"
"What happened?"
"What do you mean?"
"What happened to your last boat?"
More silence. His eyes stayed glued to the floor.
"You knew what she was going to do before I did," I said. "Maybe even before she did. You knew what she was feeling by the way she moved. Like a caged animal, looking for a way out, you said."
"Only there is no way out," he finished.
"Except- "
"Yes, except that. By your own hand, or someone else's, what does it matter? This is war, people die all the time!" Harry bit off those last words with anger, his face turning red.
"Before I ran into you, back in England, I was questioning a woman about a murder. Her husband had gone down with his bomber and she didn't know if he was alive or dead. Know what she said to me?" "What?"
"She said, thousands die every day, and they send no one. One old man dies, and they send you."
"The difference being?"
"That old man didn't have to die. Diana didn't either. It wasn't her time. You don't, at least not by your own hand."
Harry laughed at that, more of a grunt, really, with a lazy smile tacked onto the end of it.
"I couldn't, anyway. Too much of a bloody coward. But it did seem like the only way out, when the walls were closing in and nothing made any sense at all."
"So what happened?"
"Deuce of it is, I don't really know. Or remember. We were on patrol, nothing special really. Last thing I remember is coming up on deck. Then, being in the drink I woke up with blood in my eyes, floating in the water, my boat capsized and burning. I couldn't remember how I got there, or what had happened. I looked around for the others, and there was no one. I saw one body, yards away, badly burned and obviously dead. That was it. Everybody gone, just me with a gash on my head bobbing around in my life jacket, watching my boat burn and go under. Maybe we hit a mine and it happened all in a second, or maybe we were jumped by S-Boats or Messerschmitts. I have no idea. I found a piece of wreckage and floated on it, and one of our own boats finally found me. Just by chance, too. How lucky is that, Billy, to be spared death in an explosion and then to be picked up before I could die of exposure?"
"If you were really lucky, you would've been ordered to stay in port that day."
Harry grunted again, his slight grin offering the hope there might be something to really smile about someday He looked out the small round window behind his head. The sea was choppy and there
were small white plumes riding the crests of a thousand waves below. I thought about Harry floating in a sea like that, all alone, and remembered something. What had been just a story now seemed very real and terrifying.
"My Uncle Dan had something like that happen to him," I said.
"Yes…?"
"He fought in the First World War, in France. His squad had crawled out on a night patrol in No Man's Land to cut wire. That night it was his turn as rear guard, to make sure a German patrol hadn't spotted them, to stay put in a shell hole while the rest of the squad crawled back to their trench."
I could see Uncle Dan out there now in a way I never could before, all alone and listening for any tell-tale sound in the darkness.
"He said the Germans sent up a flare, so he buried his head in the mud and didn't move a muscle. Then he heard the artillery start up. He heard the shells whistling overhead and felt the ground shake as they hit behind him. He couldn't tell how long it lasted, but it seemed to go on forever. When it stopped, he waited and waited, not moving a muscle. Then he started crawling back, heading the same way his squad had. He never found them, not a trace. They could have been blown to pieces, or been buried in the mud; he never knew. They were gone, and he was fine. Just gone."
Harry didn't look at me, or speak. We were quiet for a while.
"So it made sense to you, did it?" Harry said, not taking his gaze off the water below. "What?"
"Being sent because one old man died."
"It's about the only thing that does."
"Why? The pursuit of justice and all that rot?"
"Justice? What the hell do I know about justice? I'm not a lawyer politician, thank God. I don't know a damn thing about justice. Injustice, that's easier. You know injustice when you see it. That old man's dead body. Sergeant Casselli with his throat slit. And…"
I pointed to Diana.
"Look how easy it is to spot," I said. "Everything looks wrong, like some terrible hand from hell reached up and turned people's lives upside down, broke their hearts, ruined their dreams."
I realized my voice had risen; I was almost yelling. The waist gunners both were looking at me as if I was crazy, and maybe they had a point. I made a gesture with one hand that said, Never mind, I'm okay, just a little worked up. They went back to craning their necks.
"So you're here to set things right," Harry said.
"I know there's damn few dreams left in this war, Harry. The thing is, that's what makes murder so hard to take. War's going to take lives, we know that. So why let some bastard get away with murdering somebody who might otherwise have a chance?"
"It must be the pain, but I think you're actually making sense," Harry said, bracing his bad leg with both hands.
I shrugged. I was done explaining myself. But it bothered me, like when you walk by a picture hung crooked on the wall. It can bug you until you have to turn around and fix it. In my line of work, it just requires a little more effort to get things back in order.
I felt the Catalina start to lose altitude. Through the window across from me I could see the coast with Algiers harbor ahead.
"Almost there," I said to Harry. "How's the leg?"
"Starting to throb like the dickens. I almost wish I'd taken that dose of morphine Rodney offered."
"Why didn't you? It would have made the ride a lot more comfortable."
"I can't abide needles of any sort. I really am a coward at heart, you know. The thought of being stuck with one of those gives me nightmares. And I don't think much of hospitals, either."
"You'll love this one, then. This is the place the drugs were stolen from, where that supply sergeant was murdered and the kid overdosed on morphine."
"Thank you very much for that information," Harry said. "Now I have to worry about idiot doctors as well as needles. Don't they know how to measure doses?"
"I'm not really sure how that happened. But the good news is they do have some pretty nurses there," I said, trying to make up for worrying him.
"I'm all for pretty nurses, but I prefer to see them off duty and outside of a hospital. As far as I'm concerned, if you can walk into a hospital under your own power, don't. There are more chances of getting sick inside than outside."
"Well, you could probably hop into a hospital under your own power. Does that count?"
"Go ahead and have your laugh, Billy. But this is almost like a religion in my family. My grandmother had nothing to do with doctors all her life, after her mother went to hospital for an ache in her side and never set foot out of it. Alive anyway. And Grandmamma lived to be ninety-six, and was in good health until a few weeks before she died. I plan to do the same, if this war doesn't interfere."
"All right, I give up," I said. "I suppose she didn't like needles either."
"Not one bit," Harry said, and then smiled. "Actually, I think she's the one who instilled that fear in me when I was a child, always going on about doctors and their long needles. She was a very nice woman, but just a trifle touchy on the subject of medicine. She finally came down with some kind of cancer just after her ninety-fifth birthday. She allowed a doctor to come to the house, but after he diagnosed her she refused to go to hospital. She carried on just as she always had, until the pain and weakness were too much for her."
"So no needles, even at the end?"
"She wouldn't allow it. The doctor did give her morphine, mixed in with liquor, which helped. We stayed with her, Mother and I, until the end. I have to say it was a lot better than being in a sterile hospital."
"You won't have to worry about that in Algiers. Nothing is sterile there." I smiled and patted his shoulder. "I'm going to check on Diana."
"Billy, I'm sorry I punched you. You didn't deserve it. I… I mean I keep thinking, maybe there was something I could have done that would have changed things, that would have kept my crew alive. But I don't know. Sometimes it gets to be too much and then I explode. You were convenient, and I thought I could at least blame you for those deaths in Norway."
"I blame myself, Harry."
"But don't you see, they were all dead men already," he said, gripping my arm. "It was just a fortnight later that it happened, whatever it was. It didn't matter what you did, where you took us. They already had a date with death. We were already headed for that mine, or whatever it was, we just didn't know it. So what does it matter? I might as well blame the chap who wrote the orders for that patrol. Anyway, I'm sorry."
"Yeah, me too. I wish I never got you involved in that mission, but I wasn't thinking straight."
"You had to put things right. That makes some sense, more sense than waking up in the water wondering where all your chaps went. Now, go tend to that young lady before I do. She's quite beautiful, you know. I may hop over there any second."
He let go of my arm. It was strange that they each had a boat sink from under them. And then I thought that hanging around survivors like them wasn't such a bad idea. Maybe their luck would rub off, although from the shape they were both in, that kind of luck carried a steep price tag.
I knelt beside Diana, started to take her hand, then thought better of it.
"Diana, it's Billy," I whispered. "You're safe, and the plane is about to land in Algiers. Then we're going to a hospital. There will be privacy, clean sheets, and doctors and nurses to take care of you. And I'll be there. Major Harding and Kaz too. We'll be together and you'll be safe."
Her eyes stayed closed but I could see her hands grip the blankets more tightly. She squeezed her eyelids shut, but tears leaked out. Her hands let go of the blankets and searched the air for mine. She grasped my hand in hers and pulled it to her face. She didn't say a thing as she held my hand against her tears.
I felt in that moment how much I loved her, and how even that small gesture meant everything in the world to me: The feel of her palms surrounding my hand, the softness of her moist cheek, brought back the past. After everything she had been through, she still trusted me.
I had only one thought, aside from Dian
a. I would have to kill Villard, to keep him from haunting us. I felt ashamed that it was his leering face I saw when I closed my eyes.
The plane hit the water and bounced on the waves three of four times before it settled and taxied into the harbor toward a pier where another Catalina was tied up. The jolt had almost knocked me over, and in so doing it knocked Villard's image from my mind, but I knew it would be back.
Diana still had her eyes closed and I wondered what she'd see written on my face when she opened them.
Chapter Twenty-eight
"Boyle, wake up."
"Ummmm."
"Now, Boyle!" Harding's voice drifted into my dream and took it over. I was dreaming that I was lost in a city, unable to find the train station. Then Harry was there, trying to tell me something important, but I couldn't understand him. He turned into Harding. My tough luck.
"Okay, Major. I'm up." I felt the hard wooden slats of the cot digging into my ribs as I forced my eyelids apart.
"Lieutenant Kazimierz is on his way in from Headquarters," Harding said. "We'll meet in the Officer's Mess at 0700."
Harding didn't wait to see if that fit in with my morning plans. I managed to keep one eye open long enough to observe the heels of his combat boots retreating to the door. I had to focus to figure out where I was. Oh yeah. Algiers. Back at the goddamn hospital. I looked around. There were half a dozen cots in the room, a flophouse for doctors and orderlies on duty. Light from the rising sun filtered into the room from the single window above me. The walls were stark white, still smelling of whitewash and lye, the army's standard scheme for redecorating. There were lumps in two other cots and one of them snored.
It had been dark when the ambulance met us at the harbor. When we reached the hospital Harding met us at the entrance with a guard detail, guys from Headquarters Company, not from the General Hospital detachment. He had stationed men out front, by the Medical Supply Depot and the motor pool. After we got Diana to a room, he left a GI by her door too. I liked that. I also liked that my old pal, Doc Dunbar, was on his way to the front with the 1st Armored Division, posted to a Battalion Aid Station. Sergeant Willoughby, too, except now he was a private again. Dunbar's replacement, Doctor Perrini, had shipped in straight from the States, and Diana was his patient. I liked that, too, since Perrini had no connection with anyone else at the hospital. He was from Chicago, and seemed like a regular guy. First thing he did was to have a couple of nurses clean Diana up, check her over, and give her a sedative. Then he examined Harry's wound, changed the bandage, and approved of the job our Commando pals done to patch him up. I left before he could pull out a needle.
