by James R Benn
“So there is no invasion? All those troops and commandos, the underground, was that all a fraud?” I was still having a hard time taking it all in.
“No, William,” Uncle Ike said. “Not a fraud. A plan to save Allied lives. A deception. We’re going to turn Norway into the biggest German POW camp you ever saw, for the rest of the war. Right now, the Germans are transferring more infantry units to Norway. Infantry that we, or the Russians, won’t have to face elsewhere. Good job, son!”
They each shook my hand. I was stunned. Now I was a hero. Now that I wasn’t the total fuckup they thought I was, it was time for congratulations and pats on the back. It was a dirty, rotten low down trick. It made me feel like a little cog in a big machine, two-timed by people I had trusted, including my own uncle.
“Wait a minute, sir,” I said. “Was there anybody else in on this deception?”
Uncle Ike seemed to understand. He nodded to Harding and Cosgrove to leave us alone. They filed out and Uncle Ike waited, standing by the window and looking out at the quiet park in the middle of Grosvenor Square.
“No, William. Daphne didn’t know. She didn’t deceive you, we did. Lieutenant Kazimierz doesn’t know, and won’t. And no one else will either. This has been your initiation, William, and you’ve passed with fly-ing colors. But with that comes responsibility. You’ve saved countless lives by your actions. Now you simply need to keep quiet about it. Do you understand, William, I mean, really understand what I’m telling you?”
“Men died, General. Others were captured. . . .” I shrugged, unable to finish, feeling confused and betrayed. I stood by Uncle Ike and looked out the window as he lit another cigarette. Late afternoon shadows reached like fingers across the small green park below.
“This is war, William. Nearly everything I do is a calculation balancing lives against victory. Men did die on your mission, and it was totally your responsibility. There’s no way around that, is there?”
“No, sir. No way.”
“But you also saved many, many more. You’re ahead on this one, William, if you can stand to do the calculation at all.”
“I understand.”
He gripped my shoulder. “I wish you didn’t have to, with all my heart.”
The famous Ike grin vanished. All that was left was a weary sadness. He gave my shoulder a tight squeeze, turned, and walked out of the room. He had left a cigarette half stubbed out in the ashtray, and the blue smoke rose lazily up, a thin strand pooling under the lamp, dulling the light in the room. I did understand, God help me, I did. I was glad their plan had worked, understanding the lives it had saved.
But I had been out on that boat and seen Higgins and the other crewmen, alive one minute, cut down the next. I had killed them, just as much as any German sailor. I could do the calculation all right, but those few numbers on one side of the equation had faces that I would always remember. Daphne had a face.
I put my palm on the window, feeling the coolness of the glass. I watched a GI and a young girl stroll arm in arm through the park. Was he headed for the real invasion? Maybe I’d saved his life. A group of sailors rounded the corner, laughing, pushing each other playfully. Maybe them, too. I looked down the street to the crosswalk. A stream of uniforms hustled across the street, American, British, who knows what else. All of them, too? I wanted to run out, look each of them in the face, ask their names, look at pictures of their girlfriends.
I didn’t. I stood there, counting. I could have stayed there all night. But Harding collected me and walked me down to his office.
“Just one more thing, Billy,” he said as he paused in front of his door. “I want you to know that I admire what you did. It took guts. And if you ever do it again I’ll string you up by your balls. Got it?”
“I get it, sir. This is my initiation, remember? I get to play the numbers game now.”
“Shut up, Boyle. Now that we’re not going to shoot you, there are people waiting to see you.”
He opened his door and shoved me in. The first person I saw was Diana. There were others behind her but they were just a blur.
“Billy!” She flew across the room and flung her arms around me.
“Thank God you’re safe,” we both said at exactly the same time. She looked deep into my eyes. We just stood there for an eternity, until we heard a polite cough.
“Diana, move aside, will you, there’s a line forming, dear.” That was Kaz, in a wheelchair, pushed by Captain Richard Seaton, guiding it with his one arm.
“Kaz!” I bent down and gave the little guy a bear hug as best I could. “Kaz, how are you? God, it’s good to see you!”
“I’ll be fine, Billy, if you don’t squeeze the life out of me,” he said, looking up at me with a sad smile. A red, raised scar split the side of his face. It wasn’t pretty, but at least he was alive. His leg was wrapped in a plaster cast but otherwise he looked to be in one piece.
“Lieutenant Boyle,” Captain Seaton said, “I’d like to personally thank you for what you’ve done. It showed great loyalty and determination. Traits I admire.”
He extended his hand and I knew that buried within what he had said was an apology. A proud guy like he was would never say it straight out, but there it was anyway. I held on to to his hand for a few seconds.
“Thank you, sir. I’m . . . I’m so sorry, about Daphne.”
“As are we all,” said Diana.
Kaz looked down at the floor. Moisture softened the captain’s eyes, but after a pause, all he said was, “Yes, well, we’re here for a more pleasant duty. Kaz has arranged for a quiet meal back at the Dorchester. We want to hear all about your exploits, how you pulled it off!”
“Great, I’ll tell you everything,” I lied.
We piled into a cab for the short ride to the Dorchester. The wheelchair folded inside the capacious front seat of the taxi next to Diana, and Kaz hobbled into the back, holding on to my arm for support. It winded him, and we had to work at swinging his leg with the heavy plaster cast safely into the car. The captain and I sat on the jump seats. Kaz grimaced as the cab pulled away from the curb and kept his eyes shut during the ride. He was paying a price for meeting me today, and I wondered at the price he’d pay every day for the rest of his life.
We pulled up to the Dorchester and there were more hands to assist, doormen springing up to unfold the wheelchair to bring it to the door and help Kaz out. He gave them all a smile and called them by name. There was tenderness in how they treated him, and I was glad that at least he had a home here.
“By the way,” said Kaz as I wheeled him through the door to his rooms, “I’ve had your few pitiful belongings brought down from that tiny garret. You’ll have the sitting room. I have too much space here as it is.”
“Kaz, I can’t . . .” I caught a glance from Diana that said, No, don’t dare refuse, he needs you here.
“Hell, it’d be great. Thanks.”
Kaz didn’t reply. He wheeled himself over to the table and changed the subject.
“I should be rid of this cast and up and about in two weeks. Not soon enough, if you ask me.”
“How are you otherwise?” I asked.
“They say I’ll have a permanent scar,” he said, fingering the healing rip on the side of his face. I could see that the stitches had just recently come out. His eyes wandered around the room. There are scars and then there are scars. There was a silence for a while. Then Kaz came back, and brightened up.
“Billy, do you know I’ve been assigned to you? As soon as I’m back on active duty.”
“Assigned to me? What for?”
“Don’t be so modest, Lieutenant,” Captain Seaton said. “You’re among friends here. You and the baron are now Eisenhower’s Office of Special Investigations. A name like that covers a multitude of sins, don’t you think?”
I couldn’t agree more. If they only knew how many. The captain poured champagne and we drank a toast to great multitudes of sin. He poured again, and offered another toast.
&nbs
p; “To Daphne.”
We clinked our glasses and said her name, and I half expected her to walk through the bedroom door in a gown, apologizing for being late as she fiddled with an earring. The door never opened. We sat, gleaming silver and shining china before us on the table illuminated by candles.
Here in this room, haunted by memories, surrounded by friends and the promise of a future, a little of the past seemed to drop away. I didn’t feel as terrible as I had before about my part in causing those deaths. Maybe it really was for the best. Maybe I had been used, but in a good cause. Daphne’s killer wasn’t out there still enjoying life. He had paid for his crime. And some other guys might not get knocked off in the real invasion when it came. The guilt was still there, however, whenever I thought of Higgins and Harry and all the others the course of whose lives I’d had a part in altering. It would always be there with me, I knew, like a tune that I couldn’t stop humming even as I grew to hate it. But the people in this room had faces, too, and we were alive and together for now. That, too, went into the equation.
Most of all, Diana was safe and here, with me. I looked over at her and felt a shiver go through my body. It was part joy at being with her and part fear at the thought of losing her. But there was guilt, too, a wrenching guilt that made me ashamed of feeling happy whenever I looked at Kaz and saw the scar that marked his loss. Now that I really had joined in this war, much of the time joy and fear, life and death, decision and responsibility were jumbled together. Things were intense, awful, terrible, and then sort of majestic when it was all over and you forgot the dirt, smoke, and stink, and were grateful you were alive. I had never thought about being grateful for life before: it was just there, like air and water. Now, it felt like I owed it to the dead, even to those who had yet to die in this war, to be grateful for the simple grace of drawing breath.
Captain Seaton poured again, filling our glasses. I watched him and saw lines in his face that hadn’t been there a few weeks ago. Maybe it was better for him now, knowing Daphne’s killer was dead. Maybe not. Maybe it was just better for me, I don’t really know, and I wasn’t going to ask.
“I have a toast,” I said, pulling out a tattered paperback from my pocket. “It’s from an old Viking poem, from a place like Nordland. I think it’s about the promise of justice.”
I cleared my throat and read from the page words that had haunted me since I first saw them.
I know a hall whose doors face North
on the Strand of Corpses far from the sun.
Poison drips from lights in the roof;
that building is woven of backs of snakes.
There heavy streams must be waded through
by breakers of pledges and murderers.”
I set down the book, the three Vikings with swords drawn still marching in the same direction, toward battle.
“Let them beware,” said Kaz, with a dark look as he raised his glass.
We drank.
Author’s Note
Billy Boyle and his immediate circle of friends and suspects are, of course, fictional. The historical settings and circumstances of Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery are not.
In 1940, with invading German forces just hours away, the Norwegian government began the daunting task of removing over eight tons of gold bullion from the Bank of Norway. With the assistance of soldiers, police, and civilians, a caravan of over thirty-five vehicles began the journey from Oslo to the west coast, hoping to meet up with an Allied ship before the German forces found them and confiscated the gold. They were successful. With the widespread cooperation of the people of Norway, the incredible smuggling operation brought more than a hundred million dollars (in 1940 dollars) out of Norway safely to banks in the United States and Canada, where these gold reserves helped support the Norwegian government in exile during the war. In actuality, not a single gold coin was lost.
Operation Jupiter was, in fact, an Allied deception campaign aimed at convincing the Germans that Norway was a likely invasion target. Eisenhower exploited Operation Jupiter fully, even to the extent of issuing winter-weather gear to troops in England who were actually about to depart for the invasion of North Africa. His desire to make Norway into one big prisoner-of-war camp was fulfilled. When the Germans invaded Norway in 1940, they did so with five divisions. In 1941, they had a total of thirteen divisions on occupation duty in Norway. That increased to sixteen and a half in 1943, including armored forces. Over 375,000 German soldiers, sailors, and airmen sat idle in Norway by the end of World War II.
