Dry Bones
Page 1
ALSO BY PETER QUINN
The Man Who Never Returned
Hour of the Cat
Banished Children of Eve
Looking for Jimmy:
A Search for Irish America
This edition first published in hardcover in the United States and the United Kingdom in 2013 by Overlook Duckworth, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.
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Copyright © 2013 by Peter Quinn
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
ISBN 978-1-4683-0844-0
Contents
Also by Peter Quinn
Copyright
Dedication
Part I: Under the Apple Tree
January 1946
Part II: Operation Maxwell
January 1945
Part III: The Last Drop
January 1945
Part IV: Hidden Heroes
November 1945
December 1945
January 1946
Part V: New Trajectories
June 1958
Part VI: Amid a Crowd of Stars
August 1958
Part VII: Thus Saith the Lord
August 1958
September 1958
Part VIII: Only Then Can the Dead Rest in Peace
December 1958
Part IX: Addenda
About the Author
For Margaret and Bill
In memory of Michael Hanlon
Part I
Under the Apple Tree
DEM DRY BONES
Ezekiel cried, “Dem dry bones!”
Oh hear the word of the Lord.
Oh those bones, oh those bones,
Oh those skeleton bones!
With the toe bone connected
To the foot bone,
And the foot bone connected
To the anklebone,
And the anklebone connected
To the leg bone!
Ezekiel cried, “Dem dry bones!”
Oh those bones, oh those bones,
Oh those skeleton bones.
Oh those bones, oh those bones,
Oh mercy how they scare!
Ezekiel cried, “Dem dry bones!”
With the leg bone connected
To the knee bone,
And the knee bone connected
To the thigh bone,
And the thigh bone connected
To the hip bone.
Oh mercy how they scare!
Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk aroun’
Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk aroun’
Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk aroun’
Oh hear the word of the Lord!
January 1946
NUREMBERG, GERMANY
THE PLANE IDLED ON THE RUNWAY OUTSIDE LONDON, CO-PILOT IN HIS seat but no pilot. Rain splattered intermittently against the window, droplets sliding into one another, plump, plumper, streaming down the glass, vanishing. They had their own momentum. So did time. Days dragged, drip, drip, gathered speed. Years hurtled past, going, gone.
A year since the first meeting with Dick Van Hull in the Drummond Hotel.
Ten months since V-E Day. Time, gentlemen. Time.
Two months since Turlough Bassante’s call.
Pieces of the puzzle put together. Revelations and connections. The way they fit: Toe bone connected to the foot bone, Oh those bones, Oh those bones, Oh mercy how they scare. Dry bones everywhere. Call it Niskolczi’s Law: “This world of ours, seemingly so vast, often turns out to be quite small.”
The pilot arrived a few minutes later. Red-white-and-blue eyeballs and a phony grin punctuated his puffy, hungover face. Fintan Dunne thought he recognized him as one of the late arrivals at Bud Mulholland’s recent Christmas party. But if the pilot recognized Dunne, his sole passenger, he gave no sign. He slouched into the cockpit. “War’s over,” he muttered, answering a question that hadn’t been asked. “In case you haven’t heard.”
By the time they took off for Prague, the weather had gone from threatening to distressing. Pilot and copilot bantered about their latest sexual escapades and the enthusiastic acrobatics of the limey nurses they’d bedded the last several days. “Rule, Britannia, I love, love ya always,” crooned the younger one, the copilot, who sounded New York Italian and looked all of about nineteen. “Britannia is a great, great lay.”
The wind tossed and rocked the stripped-down, reconfigured Lockheed Electra. Relegated to taxi flights ordered up on short notice by the military brass, it looked ready to join the military aircraft spewed out by the arsenal of democracy and now destined to be discarded on the waste pile of peacetime, sold for scrap, or resold and reincarnated as a workhorse for some small-time, short-hop, five-and-dime airline.
The pilot laughed. Older than his copilot by at least a decade, he seemed to enjoy the buffeting they’d taken since leaving London, potential payback for the annoying assignment of being roused from bed to ferry a single ground-hugger who, with any luck, would soon be puking his guts out.
“They sent us up with half a tank, and battling these headwinds has eaten up what we had,” he shouted. He pointed amid a crescent of fluorescent dials at a red arrow resting on E. “No way in hell we’re going to make it to Prague. This is as far as we go tonight.”
Dunne tapped him on the shoulder. He lifted the radio headset from one ear, turned once more. Dunne put his mouth close to uncovered ear. “Where are we?”
“Nuremberg. Down there somewhere.” His face was bathed in the instrument panel’s weird emerald glow. “Airport’s too crowded. We’re being directed to the parade grounds, where Hitler hosted those Nazi shindigs. We’ll land on the military road. Been doubling as a runway, what with all the air traffic in and out of Nuremberg. Make sure you’re strapped in.”
Gray-black clouds churned and swarmed through the shaft of light the plane threw ahead. The interior had the claustrophobic feel of a tank or submarine. It was impossible to see any ground lights or trace of the devastation more than half a decade of war had unloaded on cities and towns, visiting a special fury on the ambitions and inhabitants of the once-invincible Reich.
The copilot eyed the red arrow, now nestled on E. “I don’t see the road.” The jovial edge was gone from his voice.
The plane began its descent. A moment later, the pilot pointed at parallel lines of lights visible on the ground. “I told you we were near.”
The plane banked right, nose down, descent steepened. Familiar, unwelcome sinking sensation filled Dunne’s stomach. The plane hit the runway hard, bang, bounced up, came down, bang, skidded side to side, almost out of control, until, an instant later, it steadied itself, rolled ahead, wheels rumbling and thumping over the spaces between the giant granite paving blocks the Nazi architects had intended as a permanent parade route for the Wehrmacht to strut in annual celebration of the Third Reich’s final triumph. It slowly taxied to a stop.
Dunne reached down and swiped his sweaty palms on the canvas seat covering.
The pilot switched off the motors and turned unsoured puss to Dunne. “Welcome to Nuremberg, Captain. Or what’s left of it. The RAF gave it a proper pasting back in March.” He took pipe and tobacco pouch from the pocket of his flight jacket. “Three hundred planes, mostly Lancasters, and an escort of Mosquitos. Leveled it in a night. I’ve radioed ahead to have a jeep pick you up. Quarters are tight. But they’ll find you something. We’ll see how things are in the morning.”
He scooped tobacco from the pouch with the bowl of the pipe, pressed it with his thumb. “Be careful,” he said when the door was opened. “It’s wet and slippery out there.” Tight, artificial, up-yours grin reiterated the contempt he’d spit into his radio when the flight controller in London had tried to cancel their departure because of the weather.
It was an attitude Dunne found irritating as well as inane, as if mortality itself stopped with the German surrender and death could only be delivered by bombs, bullets, and flak from AA guns. But the pilot’s confidence hadn’t been misplaced—at least not entirely, they’d made it well more than halfway—and he obviously enjoyed reiterating his disdain for the flight controller’s timorous warning.
Dunne ignored the wise-guy intonation. Lesson of two wars: Though death was disquietingly random, unpredictable, unfair, it nursed a special predilection for those who thought themselves immune. Night sky over Germany: Vortex of wind and rain rather than flak. But the flyboys might soon find themselves face-to-face with the infinite incarnations in which death greets and embraces victor and vanquished alike.
“Don’t worry about me.” Dunne took hold of the railing on the roll-away steps. A lesson learned the hard way. Night. Ice. Tumble down a hillside, not knowing where it would end. He tapped his toe to make sure there was no ice on the stairs. “I’m always careful.”
A jeep pulled up at the bottom of the stairs. One hand on the wheel, the driver stretched across the seat. The passenger door swung open.
“Colonel Dunne?”
“Captain.”
“Good enough, sir. Get in.” Pudgy, just south of fat, the driver had broad shoulders that strained against an overcoat a size too small. There were two stripes on the sleeve. “Captains need to get out of the rain same as colonels. I’m Corporal Mundy. Harry Mundy. My orders are to get you to your quarters.”
Dunne got in, removed his cap, shook the water from it.
“Be right back,” Corporal Mundy said. “Got to get your gear aboard.”
“Just a duffel bag.” A droplet struck Dunne’s cheek. He put his hat back on, reached up, fingered a small rip in the canvas roof. The jeep’s interior reeked with musty mix of wet canvas, tobacco, and motor oil; acrid trace of spent ammunition and explosives. Rear seat was stuffed to the roof with cardboard cartons.
Corporal Mundy pulled open Dunne’s door. The lashing, sideways rain was unremitting. Mundy was hunched over. He hugged the duffel bag. “Mind keeping this on your lap, Captain? Only a short ride.” He gestured with his head at the rear seat. “Afraid there’s no room back there.”
“Give it here.” Dunne stacked the bag on his lap. His mission to Prague was scheduled to be short. The bag was full but not overstuffed.
Mundy scooted around, hopped in the driver’s seat, flipped down the collar of his coat, and sprayed water in every direction. “Sorry about the squeeze.” He stepped on the gas pedal. Tires slipped and squealed before getting traction. Dunne was jolted back into his seat. Mundy made a hard right. From the inner pocket of his coat, he plucked a pack of cigarettes, jiggled it so that several stuck out, clasped one in his lips, and extended the pack to Dunne. “Smoke?”
“Thanks.” Dunne lifted out a cigarette.
“Daytime, I’d offer a grand tour of the grounds. Krauts laid it out like a regular World’s Fair. Over there, when the war started, they built a POW stalag on the grounds of the storm troopers’ camp.” At the end of the granite road, Mundy made a left. “This you got to see.” The headlights played across an empty field. “The Zeppelin Field.”
He put the gear in reverse and backed up so the beams fell on an immense stone wall. Craning his neck over the steering wheel, Mundy almost touched the windshield with his face. “That’s the marble soapbox where Hitler did his spouting.” The wipers barely kept up with the incessant rain. “In daylight you can still see the outline of where the swastika was.”
Dunne leaned over the duffel bag, glanced up. The podium loomed above. Behind, two massive flanking colonnades were dimly visible.
“Up top was that fifty-foot brass swastika that the boys of the Seventh Army blew to smithereens soon as they took the city. You must’ve seen the newsreel.” Mundy peered up into the dark. “Can’t imagine what this must have been like in person. I mean, with thousands of people packed in, torches, flags, them searchlights surrounding the place like pillars of ice, must’ve been something.” Mundy held out his lighter.
Dunne dragged on the cigarette. Eight summers ago, hot, close day in an apartment in Yorkville, he’d listened on the radio to the speech Hitler delivered here—his last from this podium, as it turned out. It was the height of the crisis that Hitler provoked over Czechoslovakia and the fate of the Sudetenland. Distant, unfamiliar places. How many Americans had even heard of the Sudetenland before the crisis arose?
The ranting, high-pitched, angry voice, reinforced by ocean-like choruses of sieg heil, heil Hitler, needed no translation. The intent carried clear across the Atlantic.
Seven summers ago and 3,500 miles away.
A distance measured in gutted cities, wounded, crippled lives, soul-scarred survivors, and the dead, the endless piles of dead. Shot, bombarded, stabbed, starved, gassed. The dead you saw and learned to act as if you didn’t. Those you tried not to think about, butchered, half-burned, derelict corpses. The dead you watched die, some instantly, others in slow, moaning agony. The dead you knew. Friends. Some buried, parachute for shroud, or pounded into pulp, or blown into a fine crimson grit of flesh and bone, nothing to inter. Ghosts.
Remembered names and faces prompted a short prayer, part mental hiccup, part heartfelt: Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.
“I feel bad I missed it.” Mundy rested his forearms on the steering wheel.
“The rally?”
“No, Captain. The big show. The war. Seems a waste to go through training and get to Germany the day before the Krauts toss in the towel.”
The drip, drip on Dunne’s cap turned steady trickle. Peter Bunde’s wish, too. Not to miss the big show. Perpetual light on him, too.
Mundy reached up and covered the tear in the jeep’s canvas top with his hand. “Sorry about that, sir,” he said. “I would’ve stuck some adhesive tape over it if I knew I was going to have a passenger. But I wasn’t told till the last minute. Nobody cares about the condition of these motor pool jalopies.”
“I’m glad for the ride.”
Mundy plucked a crumpled handkerchief from his pocket and tucked it in the leak. “That should do for now, at least till we get where we’re going.”
“Where’s that?”
“The town is filled up, what with the trial and everything. Your lodgings are north of the city. Used to be an SS retreat. Nice digs.”
“How far?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“Which route we take.”
“What’s the choice?”
“Express or local. Express will get us there in no time.”
“And local?”
Mundy jerked his thumb at the pile of boxes in the rear seat. “No telling.”
“Hooch, chocolate, cigarettes?”
“Yes, sir. Nylons, too. All on the up-and-up. I’m head driver for the motor pool. Officers, enlisted men, anyone for whatever reason, night or day—they need a lift? Call Harry Mundy. That includes the guys in the PX. For a reasonable fare, I’m your man.”
“Business must be good.”
“Like being the Good Humor Man in a heat wave. When I got here, Nuremberg seemed nothing but a burned-out shit pile. Except the Krauts are crawling back. Say what you want about them, and I know what they done, there’s no keeping them down. Dead as the city seems above, below there are bars, clubs, and the fräuleins. You can’t believe the fräuleins. Their men are dead, missing, or POWs, but they feel lucky they got us instead of the Russkies grabbing them by the hair and banging the bejesus out of them whenever they get the urge. Throw in a bottle of scotch, pair of nylons, it’s whatever you want.”
“I appreciate the offer, Corporal. But it’s been a long day.”
“Yes, sir. Express it is.” Mundy pushed open the side window flap, tossed his cigarette, and put the jeep in gear. This time Dunne was ready, bracing himself against the dashboard as Mundy hit the gas pedal. “I’ll have you there in no time, Captain.”
As they neared the city, the dull, indistinct, nightmarish landscape of ruined buildings and half-standing structures was occasionally spotlighted by an odd-standing street lamp. Though on a grander scale, the thoroughness of the destruction reminded Dunne of villages in France during the fight before this one, the War to End All Wars, which only prepared the way for round two. Despite all the glamour that surrounded the escapades of commandos and special operations, here’s how the contest was finally won: One side bludgeoned the brains out of the other with the biggest cudgel available.
“Guess you seen your fair share,” Mundy said.
“Fair share?”
“Of the war.”
Dunne tapped his cigarette, dropped ash into palm. Fair or unfair? More than his share? Who could say for sure? “I guess.”
“Don’t worry about the ashes.” Mundy grinned. “Like I said, nobody cares about these jalopies.” He pointed at a gigantic mound of bricks, concrete, wire lathe. “Don’t let that facade fool you,” he explained. The cavernous basement beneath housed an improvised beer hall, long tables, and—ah, ahh, ahhh (Mundy did a comic imitation of a man about to climax)—fräuleins, oodles of them, not like those cold-fish British broads (he obviously hadn’t met the English nurses the pilots boasted about cavorting with) or skinny-malink Frenchies—but full-bodied women, busty, lusty, and hungry for it.