W E B Griffin - Corp 03 - Counterattack

by Counterattack(Lit)

  Daphne had started drinking early in the morning, when she awoke in their bed and cried with the knowledge that John would never again share it with her. She had tossed down a shot of straight gin before she'd left their bed for her bath.

  And she'd had another little taste just before they'd gotten in the cars to go to St. Paul's for the service. And she had had three since they had returned from church, timing them care-fully. John had once told her that if you took only one drink an hour, you could never get drunk; the body burned off spirits at the rate of a drink an hour. She believed that.

  As if she needed another one! There was one more proof that she was a bitch, because she knew that what she really wanted to do was get really drunk. She had been really drunk only three times in her life, the last time the day after she had returned here after watching John's ship move away from the pier in Mel-bourne.

  She could not do that today, of course. It would disgrace her-not that that seemed important. But it would hurt her fam-ily, especially her mother and John's mother, if she let the side down by doing something like that, when she was expected to be the grieving, virtuous young widow.

  She left the crowd of people in the big house to walk to her own house. She did that because she had to visit the loo, and there was actually a line before the loo in the big house.

  She just happened to notice the car coming across the bridge over the Murrumbidgee River. It made the sharp right onto their property.

  Still somebody else coming? I really don't want one more ex-pression of sympathy, one more man to tell me, "Steady on, girl," or one more woman to tell me, "The Lord works in mysterious ways. You must now put your trust in the Lord."

  There's no one behind the wheel.

  Of course not. It's an American car, a Studebaker like the Americans at The Elms have.

  What is an American car doing coming here?

  Oh, my God, it's him. It can't be. But it is.

  What in the name of God is Steve Koffler doing here?

  She cut across the field and got to the Studebaker a moment after Steve Koffler had parked it at the end of a long row of cars, got out, and opened the rear door.

  The first thought she had was unkind. When she saw his glis-tening paratrooper boots, sharply creased trousers, and the tightly woven fabric of his tunic and compared it with the rough, blanketlike material John's uniform had been cut from, and his rough, hobnailed boots, she was annoyed: Bloody American Ma-rines, they all look like officers.

  He got whatever he was looking for from the backseat of the Studebaker, then stood erect and turned around and saw her.

  "Hello," he said, startled, and somewhat shy.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "Lieutenant Donnelly told me about your husband," Steve said, holding out what he had taken from the backseat: a bou-quet of flowers, a tissue-wrapped square box, and a brown sack, obviously containing a bottle.

  "What are you doing here?" Daphne repeated.

  "I didn't know what you're supposed to do in Australia," he said, "to show you're sorry."

  "What is all that?"

  "Flowers, candy, and whiskey," Steve said. "Is that all right?"

  "It's unnecessary," Daphne snapped, and was sorry. "What are you doing here?"

  "I came to tell you how sorry I am about your husband get-ting killed," Steve said.

  "And you drove all the way out here to do that?"

  "It's only two hundred and eighty-six miles," he said. "I just checked. And that includes me getting lost twice."

  It never even entered his stupid American mind that he might be intruding here; he wanted to come, so he just got in his sodding car and came!

  "I really don't know what to say to you," she said.

  "You don't have to say anything," he said. "I just wanted you to know I'm sorry."

  Is that it? Or did you maybe think that now that I'm a widow, you could just jump into my bed?

  What the hell is the matter with me? He`s just stupid and sweet. Except that I know he's not really as stupid as I first thought Naive and sweet, rather than stupid,

  "That's very kind of you, Steve, I'm sure. Thank you very much."

  Steve Koffler relaxed visibly.

  "It's OK. I wanted to do it."

  But my mother is not going to understand this. Or John's mother. Or anybody. They're going to suspect that this boy and I are... what? Something we shouldn't be. That that is absurd won't matter. That's what they're going to think.

  And I can`t just send him packing, either. Not only would that be cruel of me, but by now everyone has seen the car and will be wondering who it is. What the hell am I going to do?

  "I suppose you must think I'm terrible," Daphne Farnsworth said to Steve Koffler as the Studebaker turned onto the bridge over the Murrumbidgee River, "lying to my family like that."

  "No. I understand," he replied, turning his head to look at her.

  "Well, I feel rotten about it," she said. "But I just couldn't take any more. I was going to scream."

  After quickly but carefully coaching Steve in the story, she had led him up to the big house and introduced him to her fam-ily. She had told them that her officer, Lieutenant Donnelly, had learned that the American Marines were sending a car to the Wagga Wagga airfield. The lieutenant had arranged with a Ma-rine officer to have Steve, the driver, whom she referred to as "Corporal Koffler," stop by the station and offer her a ride back to Melbourne. Her "death leave" was up the next day anyway. It would save her catching a very early train, and a long and uncomfortable ride.

  It sounded credible, and she was reasonably sure that no one had questioned the story. They had been effusive in their thanks to Steve for doing her a good turn. All of which, of course, had made her feel even worse.

  "I'm just glad I decided to come," Steve Koffler said.

  They rode in silence for a long time, while Daphne wallowed in her new perception of herself as someone with a previously unsuspected capacity for lying and all-around deceit, the proof of which was that she felt an enormous sense of relief at being able to get away from people who shared her grief and would, quite literally, do anything in the world for her.

  Steve Koffler broke the silence as they reached the outskirts of Wangaratta, fifty miles back into Victoria.

  "Would it be all right if I looked for someplace I could get something to eat? I could eat a horse."

  "You mean you haven't eaten?"

  He nodded.

  "You should have said something at the station," she said. "There was all kinds of food..."

  He shrugged.

  "On condition that you let me pay," Daphne said. "I really do appreciate the ride."

  "I've got money," he said.

  "I pay, or you go hungry."

  He smiled at her shyly.

  As he wolfed down an enormous meal of steak and eggs, Daphne asked, "Tell me about your family, Steve. And your girl."

  "There's not much to tell about my family. My mother and father are divorced. I live with her and her husband. And I don't have a girl."

  "I thought Marines were supposed to have a girl in every port."

  "That's what they say," he said. "I know a bunch of girls, of course, but there's no one special. I've been too busy, I suppose, to have a steady girl."

  He's lying. That was bravado. He's afraid of women. Then why did he drive all the way out to Wagga Wagga? For the reason he gave. He felt really sorry for me. Whatever this boy is, he is no Don Juan. He's just a sweet kid.

  When they were back on the road, she found herself pursuing the subject, wondering why it was important.

  "There must have been one girl that... stood out... from all the others?"

  From his reaction to the question, she sensed that there had not only been a girl in Steve Koffler's life, but that it had not been a satisfactory relationship. "Who was she, Steve?" Why am I doing this? What do I really care? Over the next hour and a half, Daphne drew from Steve, one small detail after another, the story of
Dianne Marshall Nor-man. By the time she was sure she had separated fact from fan-tasy and had assembled what she felt was probably the true sequence of events, she had worked up what she told herself was a big-sister-like dislike for Diane Marshall Norman and a genu-ine feeling of sympathy for Steve.

  Women can be such bitches, she thought, getting what they want and not caring a whit how much they hurt a nice kid like Steve Koffler.

  (Seven)

  U.S. Navy Element

  U.S. Army General Hospital

  Melbourne, Australia

  1705 Hours 6 June 1942

  Soon after they met, Commander Charles E. Whaley, M.D., USNR, told Ensign Barbara T. Cotter, NC, USNR, that he had given up a lucrative practice of psychiatry in Grosse Point Hills, Michigan, and entered the Naval Service in order to treat the mental disorders of servicemen who had been unable to cope with the stress of the battlefield. He was happy to do so.

  But he had not entered the Naval Service, he went on to tell Ensign Cotter, to administer to the minor aches and pains of the Naval brass gathered around the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief, Southwest Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur, and especially not to cater to their grossly overde-veloped sense of medical self-protection. And he had absolutely no intention of doing so.

  He specifically told Ensign Cotter, who was in his eyes an un-usually nice and bright kid, that he had no intention of making a goddamned house call to the "residence" of some Navy brass hat named Pickering. This guy had apparently heard somewhere of a battery of rare tropical diseases. Since, for some half-assed reason, he felt threatened by those diseases, he wanted himself immunized against them. At his quarters.

  "I think I know where this goddamn thing started, Barbara," Dr. Whaley said. "I have never even seen a case of any of these things-and I interned and did my residency in Los Angeles, where you see all sorts of strange things-but this morning there was a Marine officer in here, armed with a buck slip from an admiral on MacArthur's staff, ordering that he be immediately immunized against them. They had to get the stuff from the Aus-tralians to give it to him.

  "Then I get a message-if I'd been here to take the call, I would have told him what I thought-from this Captain Picker-ing, ordering me to come to his residence prepared to give the same series of shots to at least one other person. What I think happened is that this sonofabitch Pickering heard about the Ma-rine and decided he wasn't going to take the risk of coming down with something like this himself. No, Sir. I mean, why should he? I mean, after all, here he is, far from the Army-Navy Club in Washington, risking his life as a member of MacArthur's pal-ace guard."

  Barbara chuckled.

  "What would you like me to do, Doctor?"

  "If I go over there, Barbara, I'm liable to forget that I'm an officer and a gentleman and tell this Pickering character what I think of him specifically and the Naval Service generally. So, by the power vested in me by the Naval Service, Ensign Cotter, I order you to proceed forthwith to"-he handed her an interof-fice memorandum-"the address hereon, and immunize this of-ficer by injection. See if you can find a dull needle. A large one. And it is my professional medical judgment that you should in-ject the patient in his gluteus maximus."

  "Aye, aye, Sir," Ensign Cotter replied.

  "And go by ambulance," Commander Charles E. Whaley, M.D., USNR, added.

  "Ambulance?"

  "With a little bit of luck, Captain Pickering will inquire about the ambulance. Then you will tell him that the immunizations sometimes produce terrible side effects," Dr. Whaley said, pleased with himself. "And that the ambulance is just a precau-tion."

  "You're serious?" Barbara chuckled.

  "You bet your ass I am," Commander Whaley said.

  (Eight)

  The Elms

  Dandenong, Victoria, Australia

  1755 Hours 6 June 1942

  When Barbara Cotter saw The Elms, she was glad that Dr. Whaley had sent her and not come himself. This Captain Picker-ing, whoever he was, seemed one more proof that Karl Marx might have been on to something when he denounced the over-accumulation of capital in the hands of the privileged few. Navy captains, for rank hath its privileges, lived well. But not this well. Dr. Whaley could have gotten himself in deep trouble, let-ting his Irish temper loose at this Navy brass hat.

  A middle-aged woman opened the door.

  "Hello," Mrs. Hortense Cavendish said with a smile. "May I help you?"

  "I'm Ensign Cotter, to see Captain Pickering. I'm from the hospital."

  "Are you a doctor?"

  "I'm a nurse," Barbara said.

  "I think he was expecting a doctor," Mrs. Cavendish said. "But please come in, I'll tell him you're here."

  She left Barbara waiting in the foyer and disappeared down a corridor. A moment later a man appeared and walked up to her. He was in his shirtsleeves and wearing suspenders. And his collar was open and his tie pulled down. He held a drink in his hand.

  Barbara was prepared to despise him as a palace-guard brass hat with an exaggerated opinion of his own importance-and with what Dr. Whaley had so cleverly described as "an overde-veloped sense of medical self-protection."

  "Hello," Pickering said. "I'm Fleming Pickering. I was rather expecting Commander Whaley, but you're much prettier."

  "Sir, I'm Ensign Cotter."

  "I'm very pleased to meet you," he said. "We saw the ambu-lance. What's that all about? Is the Navy again suffering from crossed signals?"

  "Sir, I'm here to administer certain injections," Barbara said. "There is a chance of a reaction to them. The ambulance is a precaution."

  "Well, the first stickee seems to be doing fine," Pickering said. "We're hoping that your intended target will show up momen-tarily. I'm afraid you're going to have to wait until he does."

  "Sir?"

  "You're here to immunize Corporal Koffler," Pickering said. "At the moment, we don't know where he is. You'll have to wait until he shows up. If that's going to pose a problem for you at the hospital, I'll call and explain the situation. This is rather im-portant."

  "I was under the impression the immunizations were intended for you, Captain."

  "Oh, no," Pickering said, and smiled. "I suspected crossed signals. Shall I call the hospital and straighten things out?"

  "If I'm going to have to stay, I'd better call, Sir," Barbara said.

  "The phone's right over there," Pickering said, pointing to a narrow table against the foyer wall. "If you run into any trou-ble, let me know. Sometimes the Regular Navy is a bit dense between the ears."

  She looked at him in shock.

  "Between us amateurs, of course," Pickering smiled. "I pre-sume you're a fellow amateur?"

  "I'm a reservist, Sir, if that's what you mean."

  "I was sure of it," Pickering said. "When you're through on the phone, please come in the sitting room." He pointed to it.

  "Yes, Sir," Barbara said.

  "Oh, Barbara," Dr. Whaley said when she called him at his quarters. "I hope you're calling because you're lost."

  "Excuse me?"

  "You found The Elms without any trouble?"

  "Yes, Sir. I'm here now. I've just met Captain Pickering."

  "How did that go?"

  "It's not what you thought, Doctor."

  "I already found that out. The men to be immunized, the Ma-rine officer who was here at the hospital, and the one you're there to see, are about to go on some hush-hush mission behind the lines. High-level stuff. And I learned five minutes after you left that Pickering is not what I led you to believe he was."

  "He's really nice," Barbara said.

  "He's also General MacArthur's personal pal," Dr. Whaley said. "And Frank Knox's personal representative over here. Not the sort of man to jab with a dull needle."

  "No, Sir," Barbara chuckled. "The other man to be immu-nized isn't here yet. Captain Pickering said I'll have to stay here until he shows up. That's why I'm calling."

  "You stay as long as you're needed," Dr. Whaley said, "and be as
charming as possible, knowing that you have our Naval careers in your hands."

  "Yes, Sir."

  "You better send the ambulance back, Barbara. When you're finished, I'll send a staff car for you."

  "Yes, Sir."

  Barbara hung up, walked out of The Elms, sent the ambulance back to the hospital, and then reentered the house.