W E B Griffin - Men at War 4 - The Fighting Agents

by The Fighting Agents(Lit)

  Then they followed it, ten or fifteen yards behind, making a series of slow turns on the cobblestones so they would not catch up with it and have to stop.

  St. Gertrud's prison was on the edge of Pecs. Three minutes after leaving the prison, the truck was groaning in low gear as it climbed a narrow and winding cobblestone street. The motorcycle had to come to a stop three times to wait for the truck to get ahead.

  The truck climbed to the top of a hill, then started down the other side, equally steep and winding. The truck moved very slowly, in low gear, for it had snowed the night before, and there was a layer of slush over the cobblestones.

  When the road was clear, the truck went down the hill at a terrifying rate.

  When it had almost reached the bottom of the hill, the truck turned off onto a road that appeared to be paved with coal. There was a dirt road under the coal, but coal falling from trucks had then been crushed under other trucks, so that there was in fact a three-inch-deep layer of coal paving the road.

  When the truck reached the mine head and stopped, the prisoners, without being told what to do, got off the truck and walked to the shaft head.

  There, suspended from an enormous wheel, like a monstrous water bucket over a well, was a steel-framed elevator. The prisoners filed onto it until they closely packed it.

  Then the basket descended into the mine.

  Fifty feet from the surface, it began to get dark. At one hundred feet, they could see nothing at all; it was like being blind. By three hundred feet, however, their pupils had reacted to the absence of light and dilated to the point where some sight returned.

  At five hundred feet, when the basket stopped with a groan and then bounced up and down until the elasticity of the cables had expended itself, there were faintly glowing electric lights.

  The prisoners were issued carbide headlamps by a foreman. They gathered around a table to clean them. Then they filled the brass fuel tanks with fingernail-size pellets of carbide, adding water, and quickly screwed the covers in place. The headlamps began to hiss as the water reacted chemically on the carbide and produced gas. The prisoners ignited the escaping gas from a lamp burning on the table, then adjusted the lamps to their heads.

  The foreman looked over the prisoners and gestured at two of them. They went to him as the others walked into a tunnel.

  I have been selected to shovel donkey shit, First Lieutenant Eric Fulmar, Infantry, Army of the United States, thought. I wonder why. That job usually goes to the old men; shoveling donkey shit and spreading straw doesn't require as much strength as wielding picks or sledgehammers or coal shovels.

  The basic motive power in the mines was donkeys. They were hitched to a coal car and dragged the full car to the elevator. They were then unhitched, the coal car manhandled onto the basket, and the basket hauled to the surface.

  The donkeys were then hitched to an empty coal car, which they dragged back along the rails to be filled again with coal.

  Eric at first had been horrified at what appeared to be cruel and inhumane treatment of the animals, even though he was aware that, in the circumstances, there was little room for him to pity anything, human or animal. He had then expected any minute that the Gestapo or the SS--or the Hungarian version thereof, the Black Guard--would show up and introduce themselves by knocking him down and kicking his teeth out to put him in the right frame of mind for the interrogation to follow.

  But that had not happened. Except for one man, the last Black Guards he had seen were the ones who had carried him and Professor Dyer to St.

  Gertrud's prison. That man had been a corporal or a sergeant (Fulmar was not sure about their rank insignia) he had seen the next morning. That morning, the one Black Guard had been sitting backward on a chair watching, as prison guards went through the paperwork.

  A prison guard had dumped on the table the contents of a gray paper envelope containing all the personal property taken from him when they had arrested him on the barge. Except for his wristwatch and his money. The prison guard, in soft German, had told him to identify the property taken from him, and to sign a form he handed him. It had not seemed to be a propitious time to bring up the missing money or the wristwatch.

  "Your property will be returned to you at the completion of your sentence," the guard had said.

  Fulmar had said nothing, praying that his relief would not be evident on his face. He had quickly come up with a scenario that seemed to make sense, but was frightening because it seemed to be too good to be true: He and Dyer had been arrested not because the Gestapo and the SS-SD were looking for them all over German-occupied Europe, but because they seemed to be black marketeers who had come to Hungary with a good deal of money in search of foodstuffs.

  Painfully aware that it was wishful thinking, he began to realize that the Black Guards who had stopped and searched the barge and found them had been looking for black marketeers--not to bring them before the bar of justice, but to find them with large amounts of cash that could "disappear" between the time they were arrested and the time they got to the police station.

  If the Black Guards charged them with black marketing, which was a serious crime, requiring a formal trial, the state would take the money Fulmar had , with him. If, on the other hand, they were charged with "unauthorized travel," the euphemism for Austrians and Germans who came privately to Hungary to buy sausage and smoked ham and salami for their own use, there was no need for the subject of the money to come up at all.

  "May I ask, Sir, what my sentence is?" Eric had asked very carefully.

  "You have been sentenced by the Municipal Magistrate to three months' confinement at hard labor for unauthorized travel to Pecs," the prison guard had said.

  "Yes, Sir," Fulmar said.

  "Thank you. Sir."

  "Three months in the mines," the Black Guard had said, in barely understandable German, "will be good for you. And maybe it will even teach you that you can't slip things past the river patrol."

  There was a suggestion there that if he had offered the Black Guard on the boat a little money, he would not have been arrested at all.

  There was a terrible temptation to press his luck, to offer them more money to let them go. But he realized in time that he was so overexcited by fear that he couldn't trust his own judgment. He was deeply aware that a vein on his temple was pulsing in time with his heart. And his ears rang.

  "I will remember that, Sir," Fulmar said, managing a weak smile.

  Smiling, the prison guard waved him out of the little office.

  As quickly as the first scenario had come to him, others followed, and they were not nearly as pleasant. A hundred things could go wrong: Professor Dyer might paniG. He might decide to try to save his own skin by turning on Fulmar. And Gisella had not been arrested. So he might decide that turning himself and/or Fulmar in would somehow help her.

  But above all, there was the alarm sounded for all of them by the Gestapo and the SS-SD. It was wishful thinking gone mad to hope that no connection would be made between the two men the entire German security services were looking for and the two "persons traveling to Pecs without authorization."

  But there had been nothing to do about that possibility but pray.

  On his second day in the mines, Professor Dyer had crushed his fingers under the wheels of one of the coal cars. He had been taken from the mine, howling in pain. It had been easy then to imagine that the accident would attract the authorities to him, but that hadn't happened, either.

  Dyer's hand had been treated and bandaged. And he now spent his days one-handedly sweeping out the cells in St. Gertrud's and replacing the straw in the mattresses.

  Every night, when he got back, Fulmar had to display a confidence that he did not feel at all. He had to reassure Dyer they had nothing to worry about, that all they had to do was avoid attracting attention to themselves, and they would be turned free.

  And every morning, he gave the professor what he hoped was an encouraging wink as he filed out of the
cell block to get on the truck.

  The donkeys in their stalls stood waiting stoically to be led out and hitched to the coal cars. They didn't seem to mind, obviously, doing what was expected of them. Being in the mines, for them, was the way things were.

  The mine corridor where the donkeys had their stalls was several hundred feet long; the donkey stalls occupied the center portion. It smelled, not unpleasantly, of donkey manure. There was a sharp odor on top of that, ammonia like from donkey urine.

  Three-quarters of the way down the line of stalls the donkey-shit car sat waiting for attention. As they approached it, Fulmar understood why he and another muscular young prisoner had been selected from the line of incoming miners. There was more than donkey shit to be loaded aboard the donkey-shit car today. There was a dead donkey.

  "Tot [dead],"the foreman said, quite unnecessarily.

  Then he showed them how one of the sides of the donkey-shit car could

  be removed, and how, with the aid of a block and tackle, they were to load the carcass onto the car. The donkey's eyes were open, a curious white. And he was already starting to decompose, and to smell. When they got the block and tackle in place and hauled him out of the stall onto the tracks, the movement caused the contents of his lower bowel, not ordinary donkey shit, but a foul smelling bluish semiliquid, to pass from his anus.

  More of it came out after they had rearranged the block and tackle and dragged him onto the car. Fulmar felt nauseated, tried to fight it down, and failed.

  The foreman laughed at him and said he could tell that he was a city boy who had never lived on a farm.

  After they got the donkey carcass into the car and closed the side, they went down the line of donkeys and shoveled the donkey shit into the car. By the time they were finished, you couldn't see the donkey carcass.

  And then they hooked a donkey to the car to drag the car to the elevator.

  Fulmar had another unpleasant thought. He didn't know how long he had been in jail and working in the mine, and therefore did not know how much longer he would be in the mines. He thought he was a damned fool for not having made a scratch on his cell wall once a day. Then he would have known.

  Then he thought it really didn't matter. Long before his ninety-day sentence was up, they would find out that he wasn't a black marketeer.

  And soon after that, some other prisoner would roll his dead body off somewhere in a cart, just as he was doing with the donkey. The donkey. Fulmar thought, was actually better off than he was. The donkey had not had the ability to stand around imagining what was going to happen to him.

  VII

  lONE]

  Headquarters, Commander-in-chief, Pacific Pearl Harbor Naval Hase

  Lieutenant Commander Stuart J. Collins, United States Navy, Cryptographic Officer, Headquarters, CINCPAC, was aware that the lieutenant commander in

  the crisp white uniform in the outer office of CINCPAC was looking askance at his uniform. Commander Collins's khaki uniform was mussed and wilted, and there were sweat stains under the armpits.

  The cryptographic section, in the basement of the neatly white-painted, red-tile-roofed headquarters office building, was of course air-conditioned. But it had been air-conditioned in 1937, when no one could have guessed how many people and how much equipment it would be necessary to stuff into the three small rooms. It was hot down there, and people sweated.

  If the commander in the crisp white uniform in the admiral's cool and spacious office didn't like his sweaty, shapeless uniform, fuck her. Goddamn women in the Navy, anyway.

  "The Admiral will see you, Commander, "the WAVE Lieutenant Commander said, quite unnecessarily. Commander Collins was not deaf; he had heard the Admiral tell her, over the intercom, to send him in.

  Commander Collins walked into the CINCPAC's office.

  "Good afternoon, Sir," he said, and extended a clipboard to the Admiral, who scrawled his name on the form, acknowledging receipt of Top Secret Incoming Message 43-2-1009. Commander Collins then handed him the message, hidden beneath a top secret cover sheet.

  CINCPAC read it:

  PROM CHIEF OF KAVAL OPERATIONS WASHINGTON DC

  TO [EYES ONLY) COMMANDER IN CHIEF PACIFIC, PEARL HARBOR

  TERR HAWAII

  DP YOU WILL MAKE AVAILABLE GATO CLASS SUBMARINE FOR SUCH

  TIKE AND FOR SUCH MISSION AS SPECIFIED BY C.J. CHENOWITH

  OP THE OFFICE OF STRATEGIC SERVICES. CHENOWITH AMD PARTY

  OF THREE [3 EH ROUTE BARBERS POINT NAS ABOARD NATS FLIGHT

  232 ETA 1530 HOURS 14 FEBRUARY. CARGO ACCOMPANYING

  CHENOWITH PARTY OF APPROXIMATELY TWO [2] TONS GROSS WEIGHT

  IN THIRTY TWO 132] WOODEN CRATES WILL REQUIRE TREATMENT AS

  TO? SECRET MATERIEL. OCNO DOES NOT DESIRE TO DISCUSS THIS

  ORDER. OCNO WILL BE ADVISED IN DETAIL BY MOST EXPEDITIOUS

  MEANS OF REASONS FOR INABILITY TO COMPLY WITH THIS ORDER.

  BY DIRECTION: SOLOMON VICE ADMIRAL.

  CINCPAC looked up at It. Commander Collins.

  "No reply, Commander," he said.

  "Yes, Sir," Collins said, and started to do an about-face.

  "Collins?" CINCPAC said.

  Collins faced CINCPAC again.

  "Hot in the basement?"

  "You talk to the engineer about it?"

  "And what did he say?"

  "He said that the ambient temperature is within the operating range of the equipment, Admiral, and there's no way he can authorize more air-conditioning."

  "Collins," CINCPAC said.

  "There's a Chief Kellerman over in Civil Engineering.

  We were aboard the old Des Moines together. You go see him, tell him I sent you, and ask him to cool your shop down."

  "Yes, Sir," Commander Collins said.

  "Thank you, Admiral."

  "And on your way out, ask Commander Oster to get COMSUBFORPAC in here just as soon as possible."

  "Aye, aye, Sir."

  COMSUBFORPAC, Rear Admiral (Upper Half) Geoffrey H. Keene, USN, a ruddy-faced, freckled man of forty-three, who looked much younger, was a professional officer, and thus accustomed to carrying out any order given with cheerful, willing obedience.

  "Gerry, what boat, or boats, Gato class, have you got here ready for sea?"

  "None this minute, Sir," Admiral Keene said.

  "But the Drum's just about through with her sea trials. She's off Kahoolawe Island right now, and she's scheduled to go on patrol in three or four days, as soon as they correct what needs fixing."

  "There will be a mission for her," CINCPAC said.

  "Apparently, a people carrying mission."

  "Yes, Sir?" Admiral Keene said. His tone made it clear he wanted more information.

  "If the Drum is all that's available, it'll have to be the Drum," CINCPAC said.

  "Admiral, may I suggest that the Narwhal will shortly be available? She's about to leave Diego."

  "It'll have to be the Drum, Admiral," CINCPAC said.

  "And if you had anything special planned for her, it will have to be put on the back burner."

  COMSUBFORPAC could not help but question the wisdom of using a multimillion-dollar naval vessel and its highly trained crew as a kind of seagoing taxicab. Transporting people somewhere was something that submariners did from time to time--but at the pleasure of the submariners, if and when that could be reasonably fitted into the normal duty of submariners:

  That, first, last, and always, was the destruction of enemy men-of-war and the interdiction and destruction of enemy shipping.

  But CINCPAC had addressed Keene as "Admiral," rather than by his Christian name, a subtle reminder that he was giving an order.

  "Aye, aye, Sir," COMSUBFORPAC said.

  CINCPAC handed him the Top Secret folder.

  "If you can find the time, Gerry," CINCPAC said, "it might be a good idea if you met this Mr. Chenowith at the airfield. Present my compliments, and as tactfully as possible, let him know that I would be grateful to learn what t
he hell this is all about."

  "Aye, aye, Sir, "Admiral Keene said.

  [TWO]

  Waikahalulu Bay, Kahoolawe Island Territory of the Hawaiian Islands

  The Alenuihaha Channel (depths of at least 1,000 fathoms) runs between the Hawaiian Islands of Hawaii, Maui, and Kahoolawe.

  There is a shelf approximately forty miles off the southern coast of Kahoolawe Island, where the depth changes abruptly from about 1,400 fathoms to 650. Then, five miles off the Kahoolawe shore, the depth changes again abruptly to approximately forty fathoms.