The legality of all this was way up in the air, Canada was still officially British, invaded by the nasty USA, and the Quebecois were in revolt against all comers. My first thought was, “I guess this means Patton won’t be coming over here for his victory lap anytime soon.” The second thought was that this was the last honest word we would get out of any government source in approximately forever. Check. Yep, not a word from the BBC, Großdeutschen Rundfunk, or any of the US stations. Horses do shit.
I saw Verna in the corner, told her to go tell Justine what we knew, and to ask for any information. “You drive?”
“What? No I never learned.” She looked put-upon that I even dared to ask. Her world was gone, and she would never even notice. Noble missionaries bringing the holy word to the heathens was over. The heathens were bringing something back for the white folks, and it wasn’t salvation and cookies.
“Frances, you take a flivver, drive Verna anywhere she needs to go. This is a big deal.”
She just sort of saluted, and went to the key board for a set of keys. Frances is another good one. She may not know what sex she is all the time, but she does what you tell her, and does it well. Good guy. She knows what counts. Another dough from the maelstrom of France. A lot of us wound up a whole lot more screwed up than she is. If she had an actual pussy, I would have latched on to her so hard. She was a better person, woman, and a few I had been to bed with recently. Maeve had been another solid person. They run pretty rare, no matter what kind of a hole they piss though.
>>>>>>>
Peaches Donovan and her crew, mostly Lizzie and the original crew from the Radio Listening Room at the Machine Shop, the early days, all the way back in April, four or five months ago, were sorting files, copying the ones that looked relevant, sorting and stacking. I hacked out a report of what little we knew with four carbons, sent one to Hodges, one to the Bulletin, and three for our files. Then I flipped through our so-called reference library, a couple of atlases and an ancient Britannica, trying to find out anything about Labrador. Dogs come from there. And most of it had been left to the Indians, which must mean it was pretty fucking bleak. Nothing good here. For being the big-ass head of Intelligence, I was feeling pretty supernumerary at this. Fuck it. Let’s go down to Port Arthur, see what the big kids were playing at. I looked around the office, the only one not head down working was young Barbara, so I asked her if she wanted to go for a ride. She looked askance for a long second, then shrugged, and agreed. I told her, “Grab your hat.”
She actually had a fedora, which I would have coveted, if it had a chance of fitting me, but off we went. I took the Maxwell, Isis was still gone with the LaSalle, who knows where. I remembered she was tight with the mysterious Miss Aneko, who was some sort of heavy-duty Japanese-Siberian spy or revolutionary, so no telling what the two of them were up to. Both Siberians, for all the good that did trying to figure them out. General Stillwell had trusted both of them, for whatever that was worth. None of the above was any sort of a fool, so leave it be. Push at people that much smarter than you, and they push back. Sometimes you never know what hit you.
We headed back through town, what town was left, southwest past the Ferry landing, The Trucks and tanks from DAT House were still mucking up traffic, but once past their road to the railhead, it was better, the Ferry Landing was now an export port, so the traffic was going our way. We crested the last hill, and I had to pull over to take it all in. I had been here just a few months ago, and Port Arthur had been a stagnant pool of oil-fouled water, with lots of rusting scrap iron poking up through the murk. The city had been rubble, with a few thousand raggedy-assed Chinese scraping up scrap brass to survive. But now, it was still mostly rubble, but it was organized rubble. Teams of men and bulldozers were clearing roads though the mess, while other teams of coolies were building houses and offices with salvaged bricks. Chinese masons organize their bricks into temporary huts, so they have places to live while they lay up bricks for somebody else’s house. I am always amazed with the way they do things, if they ever get a government that has any competence at all, they will be a world-beater. Perhaps the Japanese or us could do the job, it would not be the first foreign Dynasty to rule China, but it seemed like a large contract, and at the end of it, we would not be ourselves, we would be Chinese. History is a bitch. And not learning from it is even worse.
There were ships being raised, and a swathe of shoreline had been swept clear, foul hulks of ships run aground there, more swarms of workers were ripping them apart as we watched. We set off again, coming to a USA road checkpoint a few yards farther on. The wanted to see ID, mine was good enough for both of us, they gave us directions to Salvage HQ, so there we went, just like good little boys and girls.
It was screamingly busy, a madhouse, except it wasn’t mad. There seemed to be four or five main offices, signs over doors directed us to Salvage, Shipping Incoming, and Shipping Outgoing, Ship Breakers, Scrap Export, and Personnel. Pretty ad hoc, to say the least. I asked for Eppi, they looked at me like I was bereft of my senses. Which I probably was. Not to mention in danger of being trampled by salvage men of all sorts, and scurrying office workers. Finally, the sergeant behind the main desk admitted that I could leave a message with an Aide at the Commandant’s Office, which was around back, “that way,” he pointed. We went there, but all we could see was more elbows and assholes, people head down and working. I talked to the desk guy, a civilian, he said he would make a note, scribbled something on a clipboard, and went right back to whatever three things he was doing before we interrupted.
“One more thing?”
He lifted one eye.
“Lunch?”
“Canteen on dock five.” He jerked his pen to the left. “That way.” Any words of thanks would have been unheard.
>>>>>>>>
We left the Maxwell, it would have been ridiculously dangerous trying to fight our way through the mill, dangerous even, a lot of the traffic was huge lorries massively overloaded with huge chunks of armor plate from the ship-breakers to our left. The loads going the other way were bags of cement, structural steel, and men. Lots of men. Lots of oxygen and acetylene tanks too. We found the Canteen, assembly line cafeteria place, pay for a tray and help yourself, good food, meat and potatoes and rice and beans and of course, eggs. While we ate outside on a rough picnic table, I tried to sort out the salvage in front of us. Dock Five was for water taxis, Three and Four were work boats, they were screamingly busy. It looked like Two was Chinese, probably the diver ladies. Now that I could take time and look, there were constant detonations of mines, but way far out in the harbor. It would have looked like a distant battle, but it was construction, not destruction.
It was hard to see Dock One, the furthest down into the harbor, but they had a big American flag flying, so that was probably the Navy. To our left was the breaking-shore, strand, whatever the right term might be. That was just a hive of activity, hulks melting away, cranes loading slabs of steel on trucks, while tow-trucks and improvised haulers piled brass and copper in huge mounds of corroded green scrap. A long way past that was an area of dozens of smaller piles of some things I could not make out. Possibly salvaged munitions. I had seen separated piles of shells and land mines like that in France, whenever we had to clear land after a battle. You have to make small piles, each a goodly distance apart, lest you set up Armageddon on the cheap.
That had been a battle that we had won, you understand. I resolved to stay the hell away from there. The sappers have to drill out the fuses under a constant water spray, and hope your relationship with Jesus is up to date. There are so many different ways you can fuck up it is not worth even trying to count them. And nerve-wracking is a weak word for the stress those guys endure. It takes a very special type of person for that job, and they can’t even drink to relive the tension. Don’t want shaky hungover hands the next morning, it might be your last.
And you can’t just pile the crap up and let it rot. Sometimes heat or cold will make the
explosives decompose, become more unstable, and some of those shells were thirty years old and make by Russians in the first place…
>>>>>>
So, if I was Eppi, Chief of Salvage Port Arthur, where would I be? Right in the middle of the toughest job they had going. I scanned the harbor, this time I had my binoculars, I am capable of learning. There were quite a few hot spots, ship raisings, but I managed to make out something in the middle distance that looked a lot like that ferry Eppi had turned into his first salvage ship. The Eiben, if I remembered correctly.
So, go there. We ankled down to the water taxi dock. They had an actual office there, and I had my first stroke of luck on this trip. Actually, there is no such thing as good luck, there are just good connections. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. And there he was; Stearns, a Section Five guy I had set to getting a sunken power launch to Eppi back this spring. He had done that job, gotten a hire as water taxi driver, and now seemed to be in charge of a good-sized operation, at least judging by the status chalkboard behind him. A dozen or more boats, with notes on crewing, engine repairs, destinations, ETAs back home, things like that. The man himself was behind the counter, talking on two phones at once and trying to take notes at the same time. I waited until he hung up one of the phones, said, “Stearns, you need a secretary.”
“Miles! Tell me about it. You look better, if not happier.”
“I could say the same about you.”
“It’s a hell of a job. But better than riding the blinds. Three hots and a cot and all the crap I can eat. What can I do you out of?”
“I need to talk to Eppi.”
“Good luck with that. He is busier than the one-legged man in the ass-kicking contest. He’s out on the big dry-dock, I can get you there, but talking to him …”
“Is another matter. I understand. I’ll take that ride.”
He turned to his board. “Ten minutes. Boat Nine. Wait on the dock, if Clemmons gives you any shit, I’ll set him straight. Right down that way.” He pointed.
I tried to say thanks, but two more phones rang, so I just waved. There were signs showing where to wait for the different boats, so we followed orders, stood below Sign Nine, with a dozen or so steel workers, some of whom looked like American Indians. We didn’t ask. Barbara was soaking in the sights with both eyes. Obviously, somebody who enjoyed learning new things and seeing new sights. She was gaining points in my little mental black book.
Clemmons looked like the kind of fiercely-bearded ruffian who would love to give somebody a hard time, but he didn’t this time. Too busy, probably. We clambered down, he reversed into the channel, and off we went.
The Eiben was anchored next to a couple of lines of air hoses going down, and masts and things sticking up, stuff I had seen before. You find a wreck, pump compressed air into it, and patch as many leaks as you can until the bastard comes on up. Easy to say, harder to do, especially when you are dealing with tens of thousands of tons of waterlogged steel that may or may not be booby-trapped. Makes for more fun when some double-dyed bastard has bent his best effort towards fucking your ass up.
If this operation was standard procedure, what was right behind the Eiben was pretty damn unusual. There was a smaller dry dock there, but it was holding a huge warship. Holding half of it. It was twice as long as the dry dock, which looked to be about as long as a football field, the bow was on the dock, and the whole crazy contraption was tilted enough to lift the bow far out of the water, while the stern was nearly awash.
Pumps and compressors were hammering away, water and bubbles everywhere, and teams of men were welding, grinding, scraping barnacles, slapping paint, and just generally being as busy as over-caffeinated bees.
Clemmons pulled up to a landing welded to the side of the Eiben, we decanted ourselves, everybody was too busy to even notice a fat guy and a woman, they all had places to go, and the hammer of the compressors made casual questions impossible. I led Barbara around the worse coils of hose and line, made it up to the main air manifold, which had been Eppi’s command point before. And there he was, at ease for a moment, keeping a sharp eye on the dozen pressure gauges on the manifold. I caught his eye, he nodded, beckoned to a younger officer, who took his station without a word. We walked a few feet away where a wall gave a little shelter from the noise of the compressors.
“Miles. Good to see you. Sorry to hear about Maeve.” He looked over at Barbara. “And this is?”
“Barbara Wertheim.” I saw the question in his eyes. “One of our new hires. Just in from the states.”
“Wertheim? I may know your family.” Her eyes widened in recognition. “But no matter. All us Jews will be over here soon enough. Those of us that live. But what can I do for you, Miles?”
“Not much. I just wanted to lay eyes on your operations, get a feel for the progress. We beat the Germans at Jiu-quan, they were not as much of a threat as we feared. An armed rabble. You remember Isis, we have an alliance, and are desperately trying to keep up, do our jobs at the Recon Office. You are making fantastic progress here.”
“Not bad, not bad at all.” That was as much credit as he allowed himself. “We are floating warships if possible, the Japs are towing them to their ports for refurbishing as fast as the tugs can haul them. Everything else gets broken up for scrap.”
“So, Japan is enlarging the Imperial Navy as fast as possible?”
“Faster. Some of the smaller ships, destroyers and escorts are going to our Navy, there is quite a war going on for the Pacific.”
“You heard that the Germans and the Royal Navy have seized the mouth of the St. Lawrence?”
“No, but no surprise. An obvious move.”
“A real World War. Deep shit, brother Epstein, deep shit.”
“It will get deeper. Count on it.” He said, flatly.
“You know something?”
“Nothing more than I know by applying my native wit to obvious problems. If the Atlantic is an Anglo-German lake, the Pacific is Japanese and American, then the big battles will have to be in the South Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean. Our Navy is mostly bottled up in East Coast ports, we have a Fleet in Pearl Harbor and another, smaller one in Manila. There is a lot of ship-building capacity in the Lower Mississippi, but they are not set up to make the big stuff, like Norfolk was. Or is. Nobody is talking.”
“So destroyers, torpedo boats, and subs, I suppose. They are not all that big.” He nodded, but smiled in a way that told me I was missing something. “What?”
“Carriers. Converting anything that floats to something that will carry and launch airplanes. Dive bombers. Fast merchant craft and liners. Speed is the key. We will never catch up to the krauts on U-Boats, so…”
“And I don’t suppose anti-submarine warfare works very well.”
“It does not. If you have a big fat convoy, and the subs have to come to you, that’s one thing, but if you are out by your lonesome looking for a single U-Boat…”
I liked the way he was feeding me enough to make me get to the answer on my own. A good teacher. “Not going to happen.”
“Correct. So, our job is making carriers, salvaging hulls to convert, and training pilots.”
“Are land pilots going to be good enough to land on carriers?”
“They will learn, or they will die. A hard school.” Again, cold, flat, and truthful. A hard teacher in a hard school.
“I hear you talking. Fine. Anything you need me to do?”
“I’m good. You take care of yourself, we need to live through all this crap, we have a job at home to take care of.”
“Yeah. A word to the wise.” I shook his hand, and went back to harass Clemmons for a ride home. A day’s work, one way or another.
>>>>>>>
We were back in the Recon Office for late lunch, Isis was there, she did not even look slunch-eyed at Barbara. “You back for a while?” I asked her.
“For a while.” She almost shrugged. “My Counter Intelligence work has been g
iven top priority. And the word is, that you had best be ready to move up to the front with Hodges. Very soon.”
“Thanks for the warning. So, does that mean you will be staying in Dalny?”
“I may be working for this General Marshall. Chances are good. But we still have an alliance. Don’t you forget.” I could see she had not ignored Barbara, after all.
“Whatever you say.” I said, even less sure what I was talking about. “How will I get in touch with you?”
“The very nature of my job means I will be undercover. Hard to find.”
“Well, keep in touch.” I was going to say something about needing a little affection from time to time, but on second thought, all this had just gotten too weird for me. I would do what I needed to do, and if she didn’t like it, she would have to do something about it, one way or another. She nodded and left, I didn’t even try to kiss her goodbye. Like kissing a buzz-saw. I looked around the office, all under control. The Radio Corner was buzzing, but no emergencies there. I needed to hack out a report on what I had learned from Eppi, just for background, no hot revelations there either. My eye fell on young Barbara. “So, Barbara, what the hell do you want to do?”
“Here, or in general? With my life, or today?”
“I meant in general. I have to boil down what I saw today. But I need to know where to put you. Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“I’m not much of anybody. I’m interested in the East, I had some idea of becoming an historian, but I don’t suppose that’s a valid aspiration anymore.”
“On the contrary. Journalism is often called the first draft of history. I was a newspaperman; this office is just one step more official than running a newspaper. You help me hack out this report now, and we will see what we can do later on.”
Black Bear Blues Page 4
