Comes the War

by Ed Ruggero

  “It is possible that someone at Eighth Air Force figured out what the report was about, figured out its conclusions, in which case they will want to bury it. Nevertheless, I’m not sure we should bring Major Sinnott into the conversation, in case he—like the air force people—wants to frame Major Cushing.”

  Harkins, who didn’t trust Sinnott anyway, decided he could live with that.

  “Is there anyone in the Soviet mission who would kill Batcheller to keep that report from surfacing?”

  “I cannot imagine any Soviet citizen wanting to suppress that report—as long as they understood what it is. But as for someone killing Batcheller?” He shrugged his shoulders. “There are factions in the Soviet mission here,” Novikov continued. “One does not always know what one’s comrades are doing.”

  “I still have a murder to solve,” Harkins said. “If I agree to help you, I expect something in return.”

  “You would like me to learn if she was killed on the orders of someone in our mission.”

  “I’d like you to bring me the murderer in handcuffs,” Harkins said. “Though I can see that would put you in an awkward position. I’d be grateful for enough information to clear Major Cushing, at least.”

  Novikov extended his hand. When Harkins shook it, the colonel said, “I am happy that you agreed to meet me, and since this is such an important mission for our cause, I am happy that you are willing to trust me, to work with me to some extent.”

  “We’re both sticking our necks out,” Harkins said.

  He left his next thoughts unsaid. At worst, Harkins might get sent back to a front-line MP unit for running a rogue investigation that included a Soviet officer. Novikov could wind up in the basement of his own embassy, a bullet in his skull.

  15

  23 April 1944

  0700 hours

  Harkins did not see Beverly Ludington in the morning, did not hear her getting ready for work. He tore a page out of his notebook, wrote, “Sorry. Got caught up last night.” He considered writing more, but left it alone, signed, “Eddie,” and stuck it under a teacup on the table.

  He caught a bus to headquarters, secured a thermos of coffee from the canteen. He carried it upstairs to Wickman’s office, where the rangy accountant had managed to score a half-dozen stale donuts from a meeting the previous day. The two men drank the coffee and ate every crumb while Harkins filled Wickman in on his meeting with Novikov.

  “Well, that’s a turn of events I didn’t see coming,” Wickman said at last.

  “Me, neither,” Harkins said. He used his finger to blot the last bits of sugar from the paper napkin.

  “I saw your landlady again this morning,” Wickman said. “She works here?”

  “Helping out,” Harkins said. “Part-time, I think. She’s from the British library. Sounds like they brought librarians on board to help organize all the raw data coming in from the continent.”

  “That makes sense. It’s probably a mess when it arrives. Kind of like the accounts were when I got here.”

  “I also asked her about how stuff gets classified, like the report I found on Cushing. She said it’s not really her area, but that it’s not hard to do. Someone just stamps a document and records the date and time.”

  Wickman was quiet for a moment, staring at a point over Harkins’ head. “I’ll bet there’s a log,” he said. “Some record of what gets classified and by whom.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Well, if Batcheller’s report really was done outside of regular channels, like your Soviet friend suggests, then it won’t be in any log, at least until after Sinnott got a hold of it.”

  “And if there’s no record anywhere of it being classified until Sinnott had it,” Harkins began.

  “Then Sinnott—or Gefner—might be trying to squirrel it away.”

  “To make sure the report doesn’t get introduced at Cushing’s court-martial.”

  “My head is spinning a little bit,” Wickman said. “Let me see what I can find out. What’s your landlady’s name?”

  “Beverly Ludington.”

  “I’m on it,” Wickman said.

  “Don’t get her into any trouble,” Harkins said. “Or yourself, come to think of it.”

  “No one will even notice me,” Wickman said, standing to his full height. “I can completely blend in to any crowd.”

  * * *

  Harkins spent a frustrating day chasing down one uncooperative lead after another. He wasted nearly three hours at the headquarters of the Judge Advocate General, pinballing from office to office and lawyer to lawyer, posing hypothetical scenarios in which someone who was not a lawyer, not the accused’s commander, or even a witness might derail an ill-advised court-martial. No one offered him an approach. He cooled his heels for another hour outside the office of Professor Reed, Batcheller’s boss, before being turned away by some flunky. Harkins wondered if Reed had been warned by Major Sinnott not to discuss Batcheller’s work with the cop.

  It was seventeen hundred hours by the time he decided that it would be better for his mental health to look for his brother.

  “When did you last see your brother, sir?” Lowell asked as they drove east toward the oldest part of this old city and Saint Paul’s Cathedral.

  “Last summer,” Harkins said. “In Sicily. His unit jumped in ahead of the invasion. That was July. We spent some time together over a few days in August.”

  They’d been together shortly after they learned that their younger brother, Michael, was lost at sea. Then Patrick left Sicily to prepare for the next campaign, leaving Eddie Harkins to stew in his anger at the navy, at the Japanese, at the war, at himself.

  In September Patrick’s regiment made another combat jump onto the Italian mainland. Harkins did not hear from him for five weeks, plenty of time to imagine all the things that could have gone wrong. Finally, a letter from his sister saying that Patrick had written to the family; he had come through safely.

  “Are you two close?” Lowell asked.

  Patrick Harkins had left home at eighteen for seminary. Eddie Harkins, then sixteen, felt abandoned, as if he’d been competing with the Church for his brother’s attention—and lost. He’d said something to that effect to his mother, who told him, “You can’t lose to Jesus.” That didn’t make him feel any better, and he didn’t bring up the subject again.

  “Yeah, we were close,” Harkins said. “He was my first boxing coach, and we used to go to the gym together all the time. He was a good fighter.”

  Lowell glanced at Harkins in the rearview mirror.

  “Though he kept his fights inside the ring.”

  “And you?” she asked, smiling.

  “I spread myself around.”

  “Your family must have been proud of him,” Lowell said. “A son who is a priest. That’s very important to a Catholic family, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a big deal, yeah.”

  Harkins remembered Patrick’s ordination, their mother beaming like a shined penny, all faith and happiness. He didn’t know if it was because Mary Theresa Harkins felt all her prayers had paid off—her eldest now a respected man of the cloth—or because she felt secure that Patrick’s soul was saved.

  A bomb-cleared lot by the river offered a parking place for the sedan.

  “May I come along, sir?” Lowell asked.

  “Can I stop you?” Harkins said.

  The two of them got out of the car and walked toward the iconic dome. As with every other place in central London, the streets were full of soldiers on pass, most of them American. Just inside the church the great aisle was clogged with GIs, heads tilted back to stare at the vaulted ceiling, some with their hats still on, a few chewing gum. Harkins stepped past the first group, removed his own cap. Lowell moved up beside him.

  “Quite a sight, isn’t it?” she said.

  “You religious?” Harkins asked.

  “I suppose so,” she said. “We were regular churchgoers when I was a child.”

&n
bsp; “And now?”

  “I struggle a bit, to be honest.”

  They were jostled by a gaggle of GIs who pushed past, making too much noise.

  “Hey, men,” Harkins said. “Try to keep it down to a low roar, would you? It’s a church.”

  The little gang quieted for a moment, then started jawing again once they were past. As he watched them, Harkins got a glimpse along the entire length of the nave to the transept and another group, a half-dozen men in uniform, their dress trousers tucked into the tops of their distinctive brown boots.

  “Paratroopers,” he said, moving forward. He pushed past the noisy GIs and got a better look. Then he spotted the red, white, and blue shoulder patch of the Eighty-Second Airborne Division, Patrick’s outfit. He felt a giddy rush of adrenaline, sensed Lowell hurrying along behind him.

  Patrick wasn’t in the group. These were all junior enlisted men, privates and privates first class, the little brass discs on their collar points showing the crossed rifles of the infantry. They listened as a tour guide, an elderly man with wispy white hair and a bow tie, explained that the King, in this constitutional monarchy, did not have complete power.

  “That don’t make no sense,” a GI offered. “What good is it being king, then?”

  “Any of you men from the 505?” Harkins interrupted.

  “We’re 507, Lieutenant,” one of the men said.

  “Do you know if anyone from the 505 is here? Did you see anyone on the train?”

  A voice from behind him. “Does somebody from that outfit owe you money, bub?”

  Harkins turned to see his older brother smiling at him. A bit overcome, he grabbed Patrick in a two-armed hug, pulling the bigger man close, hard enough to squeeze some of the breath from him.

  “Well, well,” Patrick said. “Good to see you, too, brother.”

  And suddenly Harkins felt the back of his throat close up. Beside them, the herd of paratroopers had gone silent at the spectacle of two officers in a fierce embrace.

  Harkins grasped Patrick’s arms, pushed back to get a good look at him.

  “You look better than the last time I saw you,” Harkins said. Patrick had put on some of the weight he’d lost in that first campaign. He was taller than Harkins, a bit over six one, with dark-haired good looks he got from his father’s side of the family. Eddie Harkins, wiry, pale, and freckled, looked like his mother’s brothers.

  “Hello,” Patrick said over Harkins’ shoulder.

  “Oh,” Harkins said. “This is Lowell. Private Pamela Lowell. My driver.”

  “How do you do?” Patrick said, extending his hand to the young woman. “You’re quite an improvement from the driver he had last year.”

  Lowell’s cheeks flushed at the compliment. “Thank you, Reverend. Vicar. I mean, Father.”

  Harkins and his father used to joke about which women in their home parish had a touch of “Father Pat Fever.”

  “She’s never even been in the stockade,” Harkins said. “So that right there is an improvement.”

  Lowell gave him a quizzical look.

  “In Sicily last summer, Patrick set me up with a paratrooper as a driver,” Harkins said. “Turned out to be quite a character.”

  “Are you visiting London or working here?” Patrick asked.

  “Working,” Harkins said. “Been here three days.”

  “They keeping you busy?”

  Harkins laughed. “Let’s go outside, shall we?”

  They stepped out into the garden behind the high altar. American deuce-and-a-half trucks were dropping off and picking up groups of GI tourists.

  “So what are you doing in London?” Harkins asked.

  “Well, today I’m taking in the sights,” Patrick said. “Tomorrow I have a meeting with a bunch of the other chaplains.”

  “What do chaplains talk about in meetings? Whose God is better? No, wait. I’ll bet you argue over who has the more arcane rituals. Catholic voodoo will win that every time.”

  Patrick looked at Lowell and said, “My brother likes to keep me grounded, so I don’t get an outsized picture of my own importance.”

  The benches nearby were full, so they found a place to sit on a low wall near the base of the building. Lowell seemed hesitant to join them until Harkins motioned her to sit.

  “What do you hear from home?” Harkins asked Patrick.

  “You heard about Aileen’s beau?”

  Aileen was their youngest sister, same age as Lowell. Harkins had set her up with a young patrolman named Timothy Brady.

  “Her beau?” Harkins said. “Tim Brady, you mean? Was that a serious relationship?”

  “They weren’t engaged or anything, but I know they’d talked about getting married,” Patrick said.

  “I heard he enlisted,” Harkins said. “Wanted to be a pilot.”

  “Wound up as a gunner in a bomber,” Patrick said. “Went missing a month or so ago, over Germany.”

  “Oh, shit,” Harkins said. “Is he a prisoner?”

  “Other crews reported seeing four chutes from the plane. It’s possible that Tim was one of them.”

  “How’s Aileen holding up?”

  Patrick shrugged. “Hard to say. For a while there she went over to Tim’s parents’ place every day, to see if maybe a Red Cross postcard had come.”

  Sometimes a family got a confirmation from the International Red Cross that a son or brother or husband had been captured alive and was in a POW camp.

  “I guess the visits got to be too much, maybe too painful a reminder,” Patrick said. “Tim’s mother asked Aileen to stop coming by.”

  Harkins thought about his parents, living in the home where they’d raised their kids, where they were surrounded by reminders that their youngest, Michael, was never coming back. Lost at sea. Not even a body to bury.

  Harkins felt Patrick’s hand on his shoulder, as if his older brother could read his thoughts. Eddie Harkins would always feel complicit in Michael’s death. Patrick understood and forgave him.

  “So what do they have you doing in London?” Patrick asked.

  “Funny you should ask,” Harkins said. He started with his arrival, just a few hours after the murder of Helen Batcheller.

  Patrick had always been a sounding board and counselor to him, so Harkins shared the details and challenges of the case, hoping to get another perspective. He talked about Captain Gefner and the vendetta Eighth Air Force appeared to have against Major Cushing. He told him about the airfields and East Anglia and the ball-turret gunner. He talked about Lionel Kerr and Annie Stowe and Major Sinnott.

  He told Lowell to take a walk and, when she was gone, he filled the priest in on Sinnott’s drinking and the offer of a promotion that Harkins knew was a bribe. And then he told Patrick about Colonel Novikov.

  “Holy cow,” Patrick said at last. “If it’s true that all these generals are battling it out—including Ike, for crying out loud—I mean, do you really want to get involved in that?”

  “Not in a million years,” Harkins said. “But look at it this way: Batcheller had some sort of bone to pick with the Soviets. If I believe Novikov and help him, maybe he can help me learn if somebody from their mission killed her. Besides, it’s certainly in my best interest to have the invasion succeed.”

  “Mine too,” Patrick said. “Why do you believe this Novikov?”

  “He shared a lot of stuff with me that could get him into trouble. Hell, just meeting with him can probably get me in trouble. Anyway, I think he’s got to be desperate, turning to some American lieutenant for help.”

  “Could he be trying to recruit you as a spy? A mole inside the OSS?”

  Harkins was brought up short. “Damn,” he said. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “If he somehow gets you to compromise yourself by cooperating with him, then he has leverage over you. Maybe he gives you a copy of this report and then your boss catches you with it. What was his name?”

  “Sinnott.”

  “And Sinnott already told
you it was classified. You get nabbed with a copy, that’s not going to look good. I’m not saying that’s what’s happening, but you sure as heck have to be careful.”

  Harkins leaned back against the wall. “I’m on the second case in my illustrious career as a detective; the first one was a bust and the second one looks even more complicated.”

  “You know,” Patrick said after a pause. “Not to make this any more difficult, but why would this Novikov guy give up some other Russian?”

  “Yeah, I thought of that, too. But he said something about factions in their embassy. They might not all be rowing in the same direction.”

  “So, if Novikov is all about helping the invasion succeed, even to the point of asking you for help, what’s the other faction trying to do? I assume it isn’t trying to make the invasion fail.”

  Harkins saw Lowell appear about twenty yards away. She stopped on the garden path, waiting for him to say it was okay to approach. He waved her over.

  “I have no idea what else is going on over there, or who has another agenda,” Harkins said. “But I know where I can ask a few questions.”

  16

  23 April 1944

  2200 hours

  Captain Patrick Harkins’ name was on the guest list for an informal dinner hosted by the chaplain of the U.S. First Army, of which the Eighty-Second Airborne Division would be a part when they reached the continent. His seat, between a rabbi from St. Louis and a Unitarian minister from New Jersey, remained empty, as Father Harkins accompanied his brother Eddie to a pub a few blocks north of Piccadilly.

  “Tell me again what we’re doing here,” Patrick said when they threaded their way into the crowd inside a pub called John the Unicorn.

  “Drinking and mingling,” Harkins said. “This is a little memorial for Batcheller, and I want to learn anything I can about her connections with the Soviets. What they thought of her. What she thought of them.”

  “Stay together or separate?” Patrick asked.

  Harkins looked at his brother’s dress uniform, whose lapels were adorned with silver crosses. “What do you think?”

  “The chaplain costume sometimes makes it easier to talk to people,” Patrick said. “Of course, I might wind up hearing someone’s drunken confession.”