by Bill Mesce
“Eleven men are dead.”
“Nobody’s happy about that, Harry.”
“Eleven. Men. Are. Dead!”
“And that’s why the powers that be are happy you brought all this to light! They looked the other way when Edghill and Moncrief were doing favors for Kennedy and Duff, but they didn’t know — they’re saying they didn’t know — how out of whack the whole operation had become: planes, crews, then what happened to Grassi —”
“Goddammit, Joe, it’s not just Grassi. I realize that these days, eleven corpses may not mean much —”
“C’mon, Harry, do you really give a damn about those bone breakers last night? And that crash in Greenland, the way I hear it that was because a lousy pilot made a lousy call. We’re all lucky that guy was flying booty instead of troops or bringing home wounded. Besides, I’m told they were all a bunch of shirkers, Coster included.”
Jesus God I am so tired! “Armando Grassi’s dead, Joe. And so is Woody Kneece. Make me feel better about that.”
“I can’t.” In one of those rare moments spread thinly over all the years they’d known each other, Harry heard Joe Ryan speak with candor. “All I can tell you is if Grassi hadn’t been murdered, this business would still be going on. He was the price of uncovering it. Woody Kneece was the price of stopping it. You won, Harry. This operation, this ring, it’s over. Finished. And the guy who killed Grassi, he’s dead. The guy who killed Woody Kneece, he’s dead. That’s all you’re going to get, Harry, and I hope to God this time you learn to live with that.”
Harry pulled himself from the bench. He walked idly about the shadows of the barroom, kicking at the litter on the floor, glass crunching underfoot. He stopped at the threshold, watching the rain pepper a muddy pool in the bomb crater outside.
“It’s more than anybody else could’ve gotten, Harry,” Ryan said. “It’s more than anybody else would’ve pushed for.”
Harry pulled Armando Grassi’s photograph from inside his jacket. He touched his cigarette to it and the paper began to smolder, then burn. He flicked the burning square of paper into the rain. “Can you do me a favor, Joe? Doheeny should fly Woody back to the States. And I should take him home.”
“Are you sure?”
Harry nodded.
“Yeah, I can arrange that. I was hoping to have you with Cynthia and the kids by tomorrow. There’d still be Christmas leftovers in the icebox.”
“Even a late Christmas’ll be a better Christmas than the Kneeces are going to have.”
Joe Ryan gathered up his thermos and mug, left the bread for the rats, and snuffed out the candle. “You did a hell of a job, Harry. It’s just that it’s not a perfect world.”
Harry sent his cigarette sailing in a long arc, ending in the water in the bomb crater with a small phhht. “So they keep telling me.”
*
I was incredulous. “Harry, you — you — went down there to —”
“What’d you ever do with that.45?” Peter Ricks asked.
Harry smiled a dopey, liquory grin. “Right here in my parka.” He started to reach for it, but a laughing Ricks stopped him.
I was still shaking my head, unbelieving. “Harry, you crazy old sod, I can’t believe you went down to Sir Johnnie’s to — to —”
“I don’t know what I was going to do,” Harry said. “Not really. I thought I would know once I got there. But I didn’t.”
“You had it when you saw Ryan?” Ricks asked.
“Sure.”
“And you didn’t use it?”
We all laughed.
I’d conducted the three of us to a cafe I knew with inelegant food and a tolerable wine cellar (aided and abetted by the more potent contents of Peter Ricks’s flask). Harry’s usually troublesome stomach evidently had risen to the occasion, or else Harry had made a commiI’ment to ignore the consequences, and got himself as pissed as Ricks and I. After the cafe, it was off to the Rose & Crown where, I’m afraid, we provided quite a disturbance.
We told stories, war tales of the last weeks, a few caustic memories of Armando Grassi. And then we spoke of Derwood Kneece.
“You would’ve thought he’d learned his lesson in Italy,” Harry moped into his beer.
“Learned what?” Peter Ricks plucked Harry’s cigarette from his lips, used it to light a fresh one of his own, then slipped it back into Harry’s mouth. “I’ll be damned: you think that kid screwed up again!” Ricks laughed, shaking his head. “Major, that kid saved your bacon!”
Harry turned his foggy eyes toward Ricks. “What’re you talking about?”
“Three men came off the boat, Major. But only two of ’em went for the barn. The third one — the guy you pipped — he was headin’ right for the house.”
“He’s right, Harry,” I said. “There were only two of them at the barn.”
Ricks smiled, amused at Harry’s befuddlement. “You couldn’t see him ’cause you were down like you were supposed to be. Where I was in those rocks, I couldn’t see him either. The only person who could see him was Kneece. For him to get his sights on that guy, Kneece had to go way up on the rocks, and that left him open to the guys on the boat. He had to know that. But if he hadn’t done it, you wouldn’ta seen that guy until he walked in the door, and that woulda been messy.” Ricks looked down into his glass, swirling the liquor about, then held it up in salute. “Woody Kneece did all right, Major.”
Lilith rang the closing bell, warned us not to end up jailed in our disgusting condition, shooed us out. The day’s rain had set the stage for a bracingly chill evening. I volunteered that I had a bottle of not-too-appalling stuff back at my flat that would surely keep us warm. Harry was game, but Ricks begged off.
“I’m on a midnight flight back to Italy,” he said. “The hospital told me if I’m well enough to fly off to Italy and Orkney and every other goddamn place, then I must be well enough to send back up to the line.” He squinted at his watch in the blacked-out street. “Jesus, I gotta shake a leg if I’m gonna make it! Hey, Major, you better let me have that piece. If I let you keep walking around with it, I’m going to be sweatin’ the whole flight that you’re gonna get yourself hurt.”
Harry dug the .45 out of his parka pocket, but didn’t hand it over right away.
Ricks snatched the weapon out of Harry’s hand and buried it in his own pocket. “Don’t,” he warned.
“Don’t what?”
“C’mon, walk me to the train. I’m freezin’ my ass off out here.”
Hunched against the cold, hands jammed deep in pockets, we walked a wavering line abreast to the nearest Underground.
“Sooner or later you’re gonna be thinkin’ ’bout all this.” Ricks took a nip from his flask before passing it round. “‘N’ you’re gonna be thinkin’ maybe it’s your fault.’Bout ol’ Woody Kneece. Well, don’t. He made a choice like we all did.”
“The man’s dead, Pete.”
“One man, Major. Let me impart some words of wisdom based on my vast military experience.” Ricks stopped at the top of the Underground stairs, swaying. “That wisdom is this, Major Voss, sir: If you wanna get in a fight, expect somebody’s gonna get hurt. If you’re gonna fight a war, figure somebody’s gonna get killed. If you don’t want to pay, don’t dance. Gentlemen, I take your leave. Mr. Owen, next time I read the funny papers I’ll think of you.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. It’s been a pleasure to serve with you.”
“Pete…” Harry looked for words, didn’t find them.
Peter Ricks grinned, took Harry’s hand in both of his, then bounded down the stairs. His whistle echoed up the well, an off-key rendering of “The Minstrel Boy”.
*
I drove up to Duxford with Harry the following afternoon to see him off. We sat next to each other in the cargo cabin of Jim Doheeny’s C-47, waiting for the flyer and his copilot to return from a last-minute briefing at the Operations shack. We said little; most of it had been said the night before, and the late hours we’d kept and the
drinks we’d downed had left us fagged and sullen. And even had we had a full night of restful sleep, there was still the long crate lashed to the cargo deck holding the body of Derwood Sitgreaves Kneece to brood over.
Sparks plucked at his guitar. Harry cocked his head; I thought I saw the ghost of a smile. I guessed the wireless operator was threading through one of the tunes Woody had taught him.
The flight mechanic politely suggested to Sparks — with a respectful nod in our direction — that the wireless operator lay his guitar down.
“Let him play,” Harry said. “It’s all right.”
“Hey, Harry!” Doheeny called from outside. “I think this is for you!”
There was a jeep barreling across the aerodrome. The driver honked his horn to ensure our attention. It was Joe Ryan.
“How nice of you to come say good-bye,” Harry said to Ryan.
The colonel killed the engine of the jeep but did not climb out. “Where were you last night?” he asked Harry coolly.
“Did we have a date?”
Ryan glared at Doheeny and his copilot. They mumbled something about preparing the ship for takeoff and climbed aboard.
“What were you doing last night?” Ryan asked again.
“Peter Ricks, Mr. Owen, and I went out for a couple of drinks.”
“Until what time?”
Harry stepped closer to Ryan’s jeep, his face wary.
“I asked you, how long were you and Ricks and Mr. Owen out having drinks?”
“Til closing,” I volunteered. “That would’ve been tennish or so.”
“And then what?”
“Pete had to run for an air transport to Italy,” Harry said. “Then Mr. Owen and I went back to his place for a bit. I don’t remember how long. It was pretty late when I got back to the Annex. You can check the sentry’s log. What’s this about?”
“Sir John Duff and some guy who works with him —”
“Gordon Fordyce?” I offered.
Ryan nodded. “They were found dead this morning in some place he has down around Canterbury.”
I wished I was sitting down. Harry turned his back to Ryan so he could lean against the jeep.
“It looks like it happened around two this morning,” Ryan went on in a tight voice. “The prepared statement is going to say that Scotland Yard is working on the assumption that Duff and Fordyce stumbled across an intruder.”
“But that isn’t the story,” I said.
Ryan sighed grimly. “The on-scene report says it looks like they were kneeling, somebody stood behind them, held a pillow over the muzzle of his gun, and put a bullet through the back of each of their heads.”
“That’s an execution,” I said.
“Whoever it was was very careful,” Ryan continued. “He picked up his shell casings. The ballistics prelim says the slugs show rifling from a .45 automatic. An American round has people thinking an American killer. The Yard doesn’t want that news getting out until they know more.”
“Why create unnecessary friction between the Allies, eh?” I asked.
Ryan took a long breath. “There was no air transport to Italy last night,” he announced.
Harry went rigid. “Maybe —”
“Peter Ricks didn’t fly out of England last night on any plane to anywhere,” Ryan said coldly. “He shipped out by sea with a convoy for the Mediterranean that left Portsmouth this morning.”
The three of us were quiet a long time then. I saw some large, black birds picking at something out by the tarmac. Crows, I thought, but then one began bobbing its head, letting out a laughing toc-toc-toc that carried sharply across the quiet aerodrome. Ravens.
Joe Ryan cleared his throat. “So, you two must be mistaken.”
Harry and I exchanged a confused look.
“If Peter Ricks didn’t have to catch a flight, he must’ve been with you guys all last night,” Ryan declared. “Jesus, Harry, I’m not surprised you don’t remember. You must’ve really been tanked. You never could hold your liquor.” Ryan’s foot reached for the jeep’s starter. “You better get going,” he told us as the motor coughed to life. “You don’t want to keep your plane waiting.”
“Hey, Joe!” Harry called as Ryan wrestled the jeep into gear. “I’ll tell Cynthia you said hello.”
Ryan smiled and nodded. “I’ll see you around the old homestead one of these days.”
“That’d be nice. Merry Christmas, Joe.”
“Merry Christmas, Harry-boy.”
Harry and I watched as the jeep rumbled away.
“You really should try a social visit one time,” I told Harry. “Something not as… exciting.”
He grinned. “Eddie, you have been a friend; a good one. Thanks.”
“Stay home this time, Harry. You earned it.”
“You’d miss me.” He held out his hand.
I raised mine high. “‘I will never forget you. I have carved you in the palm of my hand.’”
“Shakespeare?”
“The writer’s friend: the Bible.” I brought the hand down into his, clasped my other over it. “Safe home, Harry.”
The hatch closed behind him, the energizers whined, the engines sputtered, then roared, scattering the ravens. I watched the plane lift off and grow small with distance, finally disappearing into the northern sky
Epilogue: Drops of Amber
I was given the Duff story to write for the afternoon edition since I’d been the one who’d broken the news about the supposed black-market ring. It was an easy piece to do: a few facts from the police report, a statement from Duff’s people, and the high points of his biographical hie. I’d become so well acquainted with the file I hardly needed to reference it.
*
The Boss collapsed in his office on January 6 of the New Year — by the Christian calendar, the Epiphany.
I sat by him on the floor as we waited for the ambulance. He was conscious throughout, although he looked a fright, ghostly pale, his breath labored.
“You’ll miss me, you will, eh, my son?”
“You should’ve just drawn your holiday like everyone else,” I pretended to scold him, “instead of cadging a sick leave, you lazy sod.”
His hand squeezed mine. “Be good, my son.”
As it read in the next morning’s edition, he died peacefully in his sleep at 5:40 A.M., attended by his wife.
The associate editor was asked to take the helm for the moment. The AE asked that I write a column under his name — a tribute to the Boss. I begged off and he seemed to understand. The Boss’s missus asked me to say something at the service. Again I had to refuse.
Twenty years on the job had left me quite skilled at dealing with the pain of others. But I found in myself little ability to deal with my own.
It rained the day of the burial. Cathryn stood arm in arm with me by the side of the missus as they laid him to rest. We shared a taxi taking the missus home. I said to her, “I’m glad I didn’t write the tribute piece.”
“Why is that?”
“He would’ve stood up in the grave to pencil out mention of the rain. ‘Doesn’t need it, my son,’ he would’ve said. ‘A bit too dramatic, eh?’”
Even the missus smiled.
They made the AE’s posting permanent. He asked me if I’d mind going through Himself’s sanctum to collect his personals. I set them carefully in a box: family photos, citations, and the like. And, of course, those two chipped teacups hiding in his desk drawer.
I brought the lot round to the missus. She was puzzled over the cups. When I explained them, she laughed. “That old bugger!” She handled them a moment, then pushed them to me. “They seem something you should have.”
I stopped by the Rose & Crown on my way home. I told Lilith to dig deep behind the bar for her best stuff, the stuff the customers never see, the special-occasion stuff, even if it took my entire pay packet to pay for it.
It was a fine, fiery old brandy, the likes I was shocked she was even acquainted with, let alone posses
sed. “I’ve been saving a few bottles of this for their homecoming,” Lil said, nodding at the pictures of her husband and son on the wall behind the bar as she poured the brandy in the cups. We drank to the Boss, to her husband, to her son, to all the husbands, to all the sons.
The buildup in Italy we’d seen that December explained itself when American and British troops landed at Anzio and Nettuno sixty miles behind the German lines on January 22nd. The U.S. Army Public Information Office described the landings as a daring attempt to flank the Gustav Line and strike deep into the German rear. In truth, the Anzio beachhead was a mammoth piece of bait. The hope was that the Germans, panicked by an Allied force deep in their rear, would draw strength away from the Gustav Line to repel the landing, leaving the line weak enough for the Allies to finally punch through.
But the Germans responded in better fashion than anticipated. The Anzio/Nettuno sector was swiftly contained and the Allied main force continued its brutal inching up the Italian boot. The hoped-for breakthrough would not occur until May.
If, as Peter Ricks had claimed, it was a headline Mark Clark and his 5th Army were fighting for, it would be a short-lived glory. The newspaper banners announcing the taking of Rome on June 5th were stale within twenty-four hours, with the announcement the following day of Operation Overlord: the Allied landings in Normandy.
Peter Ricks, wounded in the horrific fighting round Cassino that presaged the May breakthrough, missed the brief victory parade.
*
I received a letter from Harry the week after the Anzio landings. It was a long letter, running several sheets. Also enclosed were two American ten-dollar bills.
There were a lot of the usual banalities: bits about his family, about home, how was I faring, talk of Anzio, had I heard anything from Ricks. Trite, trivial, expected, yet good to read coming from his pen.
He told me about taking Woody Kneece home:
I spent the trip wondering just what exactly I was going to say to these people. When I met them, I told them that Woody had died like a hero, saving a fellow soldier’s life. I didn’t have the nerve to tell them it was me he’d saved.
