Dry Bones

by Peter Quinn

  The sergeant kept pecking at the typewriter. Pinned on the wall above his desk was a large Mercator map. The borders of the world’s nations, Dunne noticed, didn’t register any of the changes imposed since 1938.

  The casual observer might find it hard to believe this was the antechamber of the U.S. spymaster in chief. But underselling himself had always been one of Donovan’s strengths. Those lulled into thinking him a lightweight who’d be quickly KO’d by the bare-knuckle heavyweights prowling the capital’s corridors soon learned otherwise.

  Without losing his temper or indulging in verbal fisticuffs, Donovan transformed an innocuous-sounding fact-gathering bureau, the Office of the Coordinator of Information, into the Office of Strategic Services, an audacious, all-purpose agency for intelligence gathering, special operations, psychological warfare, sabotage, espionage, and counterespionage. As well as self-effacing master of the internecine struggle among government departments and military services, he became the first man to wrangle a burgeoning multimillion budget from Congress and not have to account for a single dime.

  The red button on the phone beside the typewriter silently pulsed. The sergeant grabbed the receiver. “Yes, sir,” he snapped, “right away.” He nodded at the door. “The general will see you now.” He went back to his tap-tap-tapping.

  Dunne knocked and opened the door. The blinds were drawn. A single gooseneck lamp provided the only light. Donovan sat in the darkness beyond, dim but recognizable. Dunne took the seat in front of the desk—a twin to the one he’d sat on in the hallway—and waited to see who was in charge: Wild Bill or Black Will.

  With those he wanted to impress or manipulate—celebrities, senators, cabinet secretaries, the president—affable, outgoing Wild Bill never failed to appear. But at one time or another, whether it meant crossing a corridor or continent, his associates scurried to answer the summons from Black Will. They’d wait as he studied a lone paper stranded on his uncluttered desk, or stared out the window, or gazed at the ceiling. Sunk in his own emotional trough, he said nothing. After fifteen or twenty minutes (what felt like an hour to the person sitting there), he’d look across, wide-eyed, to find he had company, fumble with a pen or paperweight, and issue a quick dismissal.

  Dunne’s fear that this might be a Black Will occasion quickly evaporated. After an awkward silence, Donovan thanked him for coming, as if he’d sent a request rather than an order, and got down to business. A mission was coming up involving the rescue of several OSS teams that had fallen into German hands in a failed attempt to bring downed fliers out of Slovakia.

  Given the war’s imminent end—Germany’s failed offensive in the Ardennes, its cities pulverized from the air, the Russians closing in from the east—it might have seemed unnecessary from a short-term strategic perspective. But in terms of the honor of the OSS and the country’s long-term interests, it was vital.

  “Slovakia?” Unable to hide his surprise, Dunne blurted out the word. Except for its status as part of the Czechoslovak state Hitler dismembered in ’38 and ’39, he thought of Slovakia (when he thought of it at all) as thread in the tapestry of empires unraveled at the end of the last war. In peacetime, it was hard to distinguish between Baltic and Balkans: Slovenia, Serbia, Ruthenia, Estonia, Lusatia, Bukovina, Latvia, Bosnia, all indistinct patches on the shifting fabric of central and eastern Europe, ethnic enclaves and nationalities stitched, unstitched, and restitched, now enmeshed in the titanic struggle between the USSR and Nazi Germany. “The Russians are already in there, aren’t they?”

  Donovan twisted the lamp toward himself. Dark crescents underlined his eyes. He’d put on weight. “In the eastern part, yes. But the Soviets have had a hell of a time getting across the Carpathians. Up until now, the British have controlled most clandestine operations in the western part. They managed the assassination of SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich in ’42, the governor of the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia. But the altered balance of power in the east means we need to take a more direct role.”

  His face receded into the shadows. “Dick Van Hull has volunteered to lead the operation. Nobody is better equipped. You know him, don’t you?”

  “We’ve met, but I’ve never served with him. I know he’s held in high regard.”

  “His classmate is among the captured. They crewed on the Harvard rowing team. An experience like that, pulling together on the same team or scull, can bind men together the same way as a battlefield. There’s truth to the old saying that ‘Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.’ There’s a danger as well. I’d appreciate you not mentioning this discussion to Van Hull, but in part, that’s why I’m sending you along. Make sure he doesn’t get distracted by any … any”—he seemed to be searching for a word—“sentiment.”

  “I’ll do my best.” Given a choice, he might have begged off. But where was the choice expressed (or even implied) in “I’m sending you along”?

  “There’s something else.” Donovan rose and faced the window. Night had settled over the city. “There’s an important contact who’s been in touch with us. A German. He’s in possession of information that can affect events that will arise when the war ends. It needs to be kept out of the wrong hands. We think the Slovakian partisans know where he is. Major Bassante will be in charge of your briefing. He’s very good at his job. He’ll spell out the details before you go.”

  “Is Major Van Hull aware of this?”

  “He will be after the briefing. I’m counting on you to keep him on course.”

  Donovan came from behind the desk and flipped a wall switch. The burst of illumination from the crystal fixture above swallowed the lamplight and revealed a spacious, high-ceilinged suite whose dimensions made Donovan seem shorter than he was.

  On the walls flanking the desk hung large paintings of military scenes: To the left, a troop of saber-waving cavalrymen riding frantic, frightened horses thundered into the foreground; to the right, lines of blue-coated grenadiers advanced over the fallen and dying, one of them pulling a wounded comrade to his feet.

  “They’re by Hippolyte Bellangé. Melodramatic, I know.” Donovan shook his head as Dunne examined the painting on the right. “‘The Old Guard dies but never surrenders.’ The French insisted on putting them there. Once they excelled at war. Now, à la de Gaulle, it’s mostly melodrama they’re good at.” He extended his hand. “Sorry to have to charge you with this. But no combination can come close to Van Hull and you.”

  They shook hands. It was the general’s style to stick with big pictures. Let briefing officers fill in the details. “Fin, how long is it now I’ve known you?”

  “Twenty-eight years, sir. I was eighteen. I had a lot to learn.”

  “You learned quickly. Not everyone did.” Donovan didn’t mention that time during the fighting at the Ourcq when he’d been hit in the leg and Dunne had come back for him, lifted him on his back, and carried him away just before a German shell obliterated everything in the vicinity. He didn’t have to. The bond between them was unspoken. But unbreakable.

  Dunne first met Donovan at Camp Mills, before they shipped overseas. Fit and handsome, Donovan was a man in his prime, now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t interval when mental and physical components mesh and purr like a smoothly running motor.

  The Methodist chaplain who’d teamed with Father Duffy to bless them as they’d left to join the action on the Western Front spouted the phrase “the quick and the dead.” A Protestant formulation that proved truer than Catholic mouthwash about pax vobiscum. Over the top, into the maze of rusted wire, fatal monotony of machine guns. If you learned to move quick—duck, zigzag, throw yourself facedown in the mud—you had a chance; either that or requiescat in pacem. Amen.

  By the time they got home, Donovan was gaunt—one of the few times in his life—a genuine national hero, winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, AEF’s most decorated officer. The day the regiment disbanded after a tumultuous homecoming march down Fifth Avenue, when he said good-bye to his
Micks, he had a haunted look.

  The image that had stuck with Dunne across the years was of the helmeted, mud-flecked battlefield commander poised atop a trench crammed with frightened doughboys mired up to their ankles in foul-smelling, mustard-colored ooze.

  All they could hear above the din of artillery fire intended to soften the enemy lines were snatches of what he said … nobody wants to be the last man to die in this war … but we are soldiers … our ancestors who fell at Marye’s Heights … bravery that will never be forgotten. The final line sounded like it was lifted from Shakespeare or some old poet … ours but to do and die … then shrill whistle, shouted command, momentum of fear, obedience, and loyalty to their buddies—that above all—moving them forward.

  Lieutenant Quentin Osbourne and Private Bartholomew Mullen were the first over the top, running blindly ahead in a straight line when they were stuck by a misplaced American artillery round, bone and flesh blown to smithereens, bits of cloth scattered on the bristling metal briar, blood transformed into crimson mist.

  They were officially listed as missing in action.

  The quick moved on. The dead stayed behind.

  The room was warm. Dunne did his best to look alert and interested. He’d yet to feel the inevitable anticipation and anxiety of undertaking another mission. For now, he was tired, eager for sleep.

  “I wish I could say our work is done. Or even close.” Donovan spoke with a detached reserve, as though addressing a large audience. “We’ve seen how the Soviets behaved in Romania, crushing the non-Communist resistance and turning the country into a vassal state. It’s clear that’s their intent in Poland and right up to the English Channel—and beyond—if they can get away with it.”

  Donovan continued: This war was the second act in a three-act play; ahead, the most important act of all, twilight struggle between a single-minded, ruthlessly monolithic movement and a loose coalition of cynic-ridden, querulous, self-indulgent democracies. He and the organization he’d built—“our own legion of honor”—were crucial to the outcome. If a part of him recoiled at what it would involve, a deeper part embraced what lay ahead, the service of a purpose that dwarfed career, comfort, material success. “The coming showdown will determine the fate of Western civilization and the world.”

  Dunne didn’t ask any questions. He’d only half listened to Donovan’s words about the act after this one. He saluted and left the general to his phantom audience.

  He didn’t begrudge Donovan his view of himself as indispensable. The general traveled in the realms of diplomacy, political philosophy, economic theory. But he was no mere paper pusher. He’d sucked in the sour, poisoned air of real battlefields as well as glided through the marble corridors of strategists and power brokers.

  Maybe the general was right about a “twilight struggle” to come. But until further notice, getting in and out of Slovakia alive was all the play Dunne cared about.

  Dunne exited the hotel through the lobby. Lieutenant Colonel Carlton Baxter Bartlett was still entertaining a clutch of officers. Rotund, bottom-heavy head of press relations, he was derisively referred to by some as “the Pear,” a play on both his last name and the protruding roundness of his hips and buttocks, which was tamed but not erased by his carefully tailored uniform from Wetzel’s in New York, tailors to the General Staff.

  Since their encounter in Washington three years before—the same night he was introduced to Dick Van Hull—Dunne had run into Bartlett a few times in London. Their conversations were never long. Bartlett was always on the fly, eyeing the room with periscopic sweep for the highest-ranking or most influential person in reach and then heading as straight as a torpedo toward his target. Dunne was sure that Bartlett never brought up their brief prewar association for the simple reason it wasn’t important enough to recall. It involved a routine investigation of the blackmailing mistress of an oil company executive whose public relations were handled by Bartlett & Partners.

  After he’d unearthed her record of previous arrests for possession of narcotics, shoplifting, and prostitution—which hadn’t exactly required Sherlock Holmes—Dunne had been ushered into Bartlett’s office for a few polite words, a handshake, and, most important, a substantial check.

  The pictureless walls of his understated office gave no hint of the role genealogy played in Carlton Baxter Bartlett’s success. Son of a sales manager at Equitable Life, he had the good fortune to be a nephew of Cornelia Bartlett Lee, wife of Ivy Lee, who in his role as VP of the Pennsylvania Railroad and founder of the firm of Ivy Lee & Associates was given the title (his rivals claimed it was self-conferred) “the father of public relations.” Though his campaigns on behalf of questionable practices by clients like Standard Oil, IG Farben, and Bethlehem Steel led some to dub him “Poison Ivy,” his list of prestigious clients kept him atop the industry.

  Bartlett & Partners had taken up where Ivy left off, becoming, as Alvin Capshaw put it in his column in the New York Standard, “a shoot off the old vine.” Its clients included the New York Central Railroad, MGM, and Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. Bartlett volunteered his talents to the OSS before General Donovan had a chance to ask.

  The officers around Bartlett burst into laughter. He was living up to his reputation as a bon vivant and raconteur. He ordered another round of drinks. The buzz from the barroom was raucous and happy. It was as if the war was already over.

  Dunne decided against going in. He slipped by the entrance without being noticed.

  The raw Parisian night felt refreshing.

  Returned from Paris to London, Dunne found a note waiting for him from Major Van Hull requesting he phone his room at the Drummond Hotel to arrange a meeting. As soon as Van Hull answered, Dunne recognized the distinct upper-crust Hudson Valley pitch of his voice, not unlike that of the president. Common enough among the OSS’s hoity-toity recruits, it had grated on Dunne that time back in ’42, when they’d first met in the bar of Washington’s Mayflower Hotel.

  In that initial period of the OSS’s existence, the Mayflower had been General Donovan’s favorite fishbowl for showcasing his most impressive catches to congressional and political bigwigs, encouraging them to feel they had an inside take on the country’s hush-hush, cloak-and-dagger military outfit. Fond as he was of his Micks, the remnant from the 69th Regiment he’d brought into the OSS, Donovan made no secret of his desire to recruit from the blue-blooded social elite swaddled in the silken WASP cocoon of Ivy League/Wall Street/white-shoe law firm connections. He’d been so successful some joked OSS stood for “Oh So Social.”

  As Dunne entered the Mayflower bar, Bud Mulholland had signaled from a booth. He was sitting with another officer. Dunne had brought Mulholland, fellow veteran of the first war and NYPD, into the OSS. If he had spotted anyone else in the room he knew other than Mulholland—a man of dour moods and ulcerated soul—Dunne might have begged off. No such luck. He sat and ordered scotch on the rocks.

  Mulholland introduced his companion, who was eagerly surveying the room, as “Carl Bartlett.”

  Without ceasing his scouting, he offered Dunne his hand. “I’m C. B. Bartlett. It’s a pleasure.” He obviously had no recollection that they’d met before.

  “Well, Wild Bill has landed himself a prize fish this time.” Bartlett subtly leaned his head toward where Donovan was standing with a strikingly handsome officer sporting a Clark Gable mustache. “That’s Thornton Van Hull. A fine pedigree.”

  “Horses have pedigrees.” Mulholland downed his drink. “And dogs.”

  “You’re wrong there, my friend. Biology is destiny. For beasts and men.”

  “Comes to biology, I’ll take a good lay over a fine pedigree.”

  Turning his back on Mulholland, Bartlett spoke directly to Dunne: “The Van Hulls have been Harvard men for several generations. Thornton Van Hull III was part of the merger of Brown Brothers and Harriman. A Harvard man in a den of Yalies, he’s a noted collector of the world’s finest automobiles. His son, Major Van Hull IV, heads the
English as well as Classics departments at Adams-Thayer Academy in New York. It’s the school of choice for Social Register families. Sends more boys to the Ivy League than any other prep school in the country. We’re all in favor of democracy. That’s what this war is all about. But in the end, breeding will out.”

  Donovan briefly paused to introduce Van Hull. Before he was whisked away, Bartlett stood and gave him a hearty pat on the back. “Welcome, Major, we’re a better organization for having you aboard.”

  Mulholland ordered another drink. “Looks like Donovan has landed another rookie from the firm of Hooey, Phooey and Kerflooey.”

  Bartlett excused himself. Mulholland lifted his glass in mock farewell. “The Pear’s head is so far up his ass he can see out his mouth.”

  In those early days, Mulholland hadn’t thought much of Van Hull either, dismissing him as a Boy Scout, a put-down reserved for the educated, earnest types whose incurable amateurism posed a clear and present danger to those set on eliminating the enemy with clear-eyed, homicidal efficiency. Before long, however, Mulholland came to see that Van Hull was as good an operative as the OSS possessed, someone even he was eager to serve with.

  Raised by his New York banker father in Paris, fluent in German, French, and Italian, sharp and skeptical, and prized by Donovan for his high-level relationships, Major Thornton Richard Van Hull could have attached himself to Carlton Baxter Bartlett’s rapidly expanding Department of Information, Communication & Policy Analysis. Instead, he joined Special Operations and was rarely out of action since his first mission in Yugoslavia, in the spring of 1943. Before long, every team dropped behind enemy lines shared Mulholland’s hope that Major Van Hull be at its head.

  Dunne had observed him from a distance as part of the program to train the OGs dropped into occupied France to coordinate operations of the Maquis, the Resistance, in preparation for the Normandy invasion. Neither loner nor snob, Van Hull impressed Dunne as being as self-assured and unpretentious as any of Hollywood’s cowboy heroes. (Randolph Scott as Wyatt Earp in Frontier Marshal came to mind.)