Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

Edward D. Hoch I’d Know You Anywhere

A powerful story — one of the most powerful Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine has published in some time... a memorable story... a story that anthologists will be reprinting for years to come... a story which marks, we think, a turning point in Mr. Hoch’s writing career...

16 November 1942

From the top of the dune there was nothing to be seen in any direction — nothing but the unchanging, ever-changing sameness of the African desert. Contrell wiped the sweat-caked sand from his face and signaled the others to advance. The tank, a sick sad monster wanting only to be left to die, ground slowly into life, throwing twin fountains of sand from the path of its tracks.

“See anything?” Grove asked, coming up behind him.

“Nothing. No Germans, no Italians, not even any Arabs.”

Willy Grove unslung the carbine from his shoulder. “They should be here. Our planes spotted them heading this way.”

Contrell grunted. “With old Bertha in the shape she is, we’d be better off not running into them. Six men and a battered old tank against the pride of Rommel’s Afrika Korps.”

“But they’re retreating and we’re not, remember. They just might be all set to surrender.”

“Sure they might,” Contrell agreed uncertainly. He’d known Willy Grove — his full name was an impossible Willoughby McSwing Grove — for only a month, since they’d been thrown together shortly before the North African invasion. His first impression had been of a man like himself, drafted in his early twenties into an impossible war that threatened to envelop them all in blood and flame. But as the weeks passed, another Willy Grove had gradually become evident, one that stood next to him now, peering down into the empty, sand-swept valley before them.

“Damn! Where are they, anyway?”

“You sound like you’re ready for a battle. Hell, If I saw them coming I think I’d run the other way.” Contrell took out the remains of a battered and almost empty pack of cigarettes. “A sand dune on the Tunisia border is no place for a couple of corporals.”

Grove squatted down on his haunches, resting the carbine lightly against his knee. “You’re right there — about the corporal part, anyway. You know, I been thinking the last few weeks — if I get back to the States in one piece I’m going to go to OCS and become an officer.”

“You found yourself a home.”

“Go on, laugh. There’s worse things a guy could do for a living.”

“Sure. He could rob banks. What in hell do army officers do when there’s no war around?”

Willy Grove thought about that. “Don’t you worry. There’s goin’ to be a war around for a good long time, maybe the rest of our lives.”

“Think Hitler will last that long?”

“Hitler, Stalin, the Japs. It’ll be somebody, don’t you worry.”

Contrell took another drag on his cigarette, then suddenly came to sharp attention. There was something moving at the top of one of the dunes, something... “Look!”

Grove brought up his binoculars. “Damn! It’s them, all right. The whole stinkin’ German army.”

Contrell dropped his cigarette and went sliding down the dune to tell the others. The officer in charge was a paste-colored captain who rode the dying tank as if it were his grave. He looked down as Contrell spoke and then spoke a sharp order. “We’ll take Bertha up the dune and let them see us. They might think we’ve got lots more and call it quits.”

“Sure. Sir.” And then again, Contrell thought, they just might blast the hell out of you.

By the time the wounded steel monster had been moved into position, the first of the three German tanks was within firing range. Contrell watched the big guns coming to bear on each other — two useless giants able only to destroy. He wondered what the world would be like if guns had the power to rebuild too. But he had little time to think about that or anything else before the German gun recoiled in a flash of power, followed an instant later by the thud of the sound wave reaching them. A blossom of sand and smoke filled the air to their left as the shell went wide of its mark.

“Hit the ground!” Grove yelled. “They’ve got us zeroed in!”

Old Bertha returned the fire, scoring a lucky near-miss on the nearest tank, but the odds and the firepower were all against her. The Germans second shell hit the left tread, the third slammed into the turret, and Bertha was as good as dead. Someone screamed — Contrell thought it might have been the captain.

Grove was stretched out on the sand a dozen feet away. “Damn things are iron coffins,” he said, gasping at the odor of burning flesh.

Contrell started to get up. “Did any of them get out?”

“Not a one. Stay down! They’re coming this way.”

“God!” It was a prayer on Contrell’s lips. “What’ll we do?”

“Just don’t move. I’ll get us out of this somehow.”

Two of the enemy tanks remained in the distance, while the third one — basking in its kill — moved closer. Two German soldiers were riding on its rear, and they hopped down to run ahead. One carried a rifle, the other what looked like a machine pistol to Contrell. He tensed his body for the expected shots, his face nearly buried in the sand.

The German tank commander appeared in the turret and shouted something. The soldier with the machine pistol turned — and suddenly Willy Grove was on his feet. His carbine chattered like a machine gun, cutting down the German from behind. With his left hand he hurled a grenade in the direction of the tank, then threw himself at the second German before the man could bring up his rifle.

The grenade exploded near enough to knock the officer out of action, and Contrell moved. He ran in a crouch to the German vehicle, aware that Grove was right behind him. “I got ’em both,” Willy shouted. “Stay down!” He pulled the dying officer from the top of the tank and fired a burst with his carbine into the interior. He clambered up, swinging the .50-caliber machine gun around.

“Hold it!” Contrell shouted. “They’re surrendering!”

They were indeed. The crews of the other two tanks were leaving their vehicles, coming forward across the sand, arms held high.

“Guess they had enough war,” Grove said, training the machine gun on them.

“Haven’t we all?”

Grove waited until the eight men were within a hundred feet, then his finger tightened on the trigger and a burst of sudden bullets sprayed the area. The Germans looked startled, tried to turn and run, and died like that, on their feet.

“What the hell did you do that for?” Contrell shouted, climbing up to Grove’s side. “They were surrendering!”

“Maybe. Maybe not. They might have had grenades hidden under their arms or something. Can’t take chances.”

“Are you nuts or something, Grove?”

“I’m alive, that’s the important thing.” Grove jumped down, hitting the sand with an easy, sure movement. “We tell the right kind of story, boy, and well both end up with medals.”

“You killed them!”

“That’s what you do in war,” Grove said sadly. “You kill them and collect the medals.”

30 November 1950

Korea was a land of hills and ridges, a country poor for farming and impossible for fighting. Captain Contrell had viewed it for the first time with a mixture of resignation and despair, picturing in his mind only the ease with which an entire company of his men could be obliterated without a chance by an army more familiar with the land.

Now, as November ended with the easy victories of autumn turning to the bitter ashes of winter, he had reason to remember those first impressions. The Chinese had entered the war, and every hour fresh reports came from all around the valley of the Chongchon, indicating that their numbers could be counted not in the thousands but in the hundreds of thousands. The word on everyone’s mind, but on no one’s lips, was “retreat.”

“They’ll drive us into the sea, Captain,” one of his sergeants told Contrell.

“Enough of that talk. Get the men together in case we have to pull out fast. Check Hill 314.”

The hills were so numerous and anonymous that they’d been numbered according to their height. They were only places to die, and one looked much like another to the men at the guns.

Some tanks, muddy and caked with frost, rolled through the morning mists, heading back. Contrell stepped in front of the leading vehicle and waved it down. He saw now that it was actually a Boffers twin 40-mm. self-propelled mount, an antiaircraft weapon that was being effectively used as infantry support. From a distance in the mist it had looked like a tank, and for all practical purposes it was one.

“What the hell’s wrong, Captain?” a voice shouted down at him.

“Can you carry some men back with you?”

The officer jumped down, and something in the movement brought back to Contrell a sudden memory of a desert scene eight years earlier. “Willy Grove! I’ll be damned!”

Grove blinked quickly, seeming to focus his eyes, and Contrell saw from the collar insignia that he was now a major. “Well, Contrell, wasn’t it? Good to see you again.”

“It’s a long way from Africa, Willy.”

“Damn sight colder, I know that. Thought you were getting out after the war.”

“I was out for three weeks and couldn’t stand it. I guess this army life gets to you after a while. How are things up ahead?”

Grove twisted his face into a grimace. “If they were any damned good, you think we’d be heading this way?”

“You’re going back through the Pass?”

“It’s the only route left. I hear the Chinese have got it just about cut off too.”

“Can we ride on top your vehicles?”

Grove gave a short chuckle. “Sure. You can catch the grenades and toss them back.” He patted the .45 at his side as if it were his wallet. “Climb aboard.”

Contrell issued a sharp order to his sergeant and waited until most of his few scattered forces had found handholds on the vehicles. Then he climbed aboard Major Grove’s “tank” himself. Already in the morning’s distance they could hear the insane bugle calls that usually meant another Chinese advance. “The trap is closing,” he said.

Grove nodded. “It’s like I told you once before. The fighting never stops. Never figured back then that we’d be fighting the Chinese, though.”

“You don’t like fighting Chinese?”

The major shrugged. “Makes no difference. They die just like anyone else. Easier, when they’re high on that stuff they smoke.”

The column rolled into the Pass, the only route that remained open to the south. But almost at once they realized that the hills and wooded stretches on either side of the roads were filled with the waiting enemy. Contrell looked back and saw his sergeant topple over to the ground, cut through the middle by a burst from a hidden machine gun. Ahead of them, a truckload of troops was stalled across the road, afire. Grove lifted himself up for a better view.

“Can we get around them?” Contrell asked, breathing hard.

“Around them or through them.”

“They’re South Koreans.”

Those still alive and able to run were scrambling off the burning truck, running toward Grove’s vehicle. “Get off!” Grove shouted. “Keep back!” He reached down and shoved one of the South Koreans over backward, into the roadside dust. When another clambered aboard in his place, Grove carefully took out his .45 pistol and put a bullet through the man’s head.

Contrell watched it all as if he were seeing an old movie unwinding after years of forgotten decay. I’ve been here before, he thought, thinking in the same breath of the medals they’d shared after the North African episode.

“They were South Koreans, Willy,” he said quietly, his mouth close to the major’s ear.

“What the hell do I care? They think I’m running a damned bus service?”

Nothing more was said about it until they’d rumbled south into the midst of the retreating American army. Contrell wondered where it would all stop, the retreat. At the sea, or Tokyo — or California?

They took time for a smoke, and Contrell said, “You didn’t have to kill that Gook, Willy.”

“No? What was I supposed to do, let them all climb aboard and get us all killed? Go on, report it if you want to. I know my military law and I know my moral law. It’s like the overcrowded lifeboat.”

“I think you just like to kill.”

“What soldier doesn’t?”

“Me.”

“Hell! Then what’d you re-up for? Fun and games?”

“I thought I might do something to keep the world at peace.”

“Only way to keep the world at peace is to kill all the troublemakers.”

“That Gook back there was a troublemaker?”

“To me he was. Just then.”

“But you enjoyed it. I could almost see it in your face. It was like North Africa all over again.”

Major Grove turned away, averting his face. “I got a medal for North Africa, buddy. It helped me become a major.”

Contrell nodded sadly. “They do give medals for killing. And I guess sometimes they don’t ask for too many details.”

Someone called an order and Grove stubbed out the cigarette. “Come on, boy. Don’t brood over it. We’re moving on.”

Contrell nodded and followed him. Once, just once, he looked back the way they’d come...

24 August 1961

Major Contrell had been in Berlin only three hours when he heard Willy Grove’s name mentioned in a barside conversation at the Officers’ Club. The speaker was a slightly drunk captain who liked to sound as if he’d been defending Berlin from the Russians single-handed since the war.

“Grove,” he said with a little bit of awe in his voice. “Colonel Willoughby McSwing Grove. That’s his name! They say he’ll make general before the year is out. If you coulda seen the way he stood up to those Russians last week, if you coulda seen it!”

“I’d heard he was in Berlin,” Contrell said noncommittally. “I know him from the old days.”

“Korea?”

Contrell nodded. “And North Africa nearly twenty years ago. When we were all a lot younger.”

“I didn’t know he fought in World War II.”

“That was before we were officers.”

The captain snorted. “It’s hard to imagine old Grove before he was an officer. You shoulda seen him last week — he stood there, watching them put up that damned wall, and pretty soon he walked right up to the line. This Russian officer was there too, and they stood like that, only inches apart, just like they were daring each other to make a move. Pretty soon the Russian turned his back and walked away, and damned if old Grove didn’t take out his .45! We all thought for a minute he was going to blast that Commie down in his track, and I think we’d all have been with him if he did. You know, you go through this business long enough — this building up and relaxing of tensions — and after a while you just wish somebody like Colonel Grove would pull a trigger or push a button and get us down to the business once and for all.”

“The business of killing?”

“What else is there, for a soldier?”

Contrell downed his drink without answering. Instead, he asked, “Where is Grove staying? Is he married now?”

“If he is, there’s no sign of a wife. He lives in the BOQ over at the air base.”

“Thanks.” Contrell laid a wrinkled bill on the bar. “The drinks were on me. I enjoyed our conversation.”

He found Colonel Grove after another hour’s searching, not at his quarters but at the office overlooking the main thoroughfare of West Berlin. His hair was a bit whiter, his manner a bit more brisk, but it was still the same Willy Grove. A man in his forties. A soldier.

“Contrell! Welcome to Berlin! I heard you were being assigned here.”

They shook hands like old friends, and Contrell said, “I understand you’ve got the situation pretty well in hand over here.”

“I did have until they started building that damned wall last week. I almost shot a Russian officer.”

“I heard. Why didn’t you?”

Colonel Grove smiled. “You know me better than to expect lies, Major. We’ve been through some things together. You’re the one who always said I had a weakness for killing.”

“Weakness isn’t exactly the word for it.”

“Well, whatever. Anyway, you probably know better than anyone else my feelings at that moment. But I kept them under control. There’s talk of making me a general, boy, and I’m keeping my nose clean these days. No controversy.”

“And I’m still a major. Guess I don’t live right.”

“You don’t have the killer instinct, Contrell. Never did have it.”

Major Contrell lit a cigarette, very carefully. “I don’t think a soldier needs to have a killer instinct these days, Willy. But then, we’ve been debating this same question for nearly twenty years now, off and on.”

“Haven’t we, though.” Willy Grove smiled. “I’m sorry I don’t have somebody I can kill for you this time.”

“What would you have ever done in civilian life, Willy?”

“I don’t know. Never thought about it much.”

“A hundred years ago you’d have been a Western gunman probably. Or forty years ago, a Chicago bootlegger with a tommy gun. Now there’s just the army left to you.”

Grove’s smile hardened, but he didn’t lose it. Instead, he rose from behind the desk and walked over to the window. Looking down at the busy street, he said, “Maybe you’re right, I really don’t know. I do know that I’ve killed fifty-two men so far in my lifetime, which is a pretty good average. Most of them I looked right in the eye before I shot them. A few others got it in the back, like that Russian nearly did last week.”

“You could have started a war.”

“Yes. And some day perhaps I will. If I had the power to...” He let the sentence go unfinished.

“They’re not all like you,” Contrell said. “Thank God.”

“But I have enough of them on my side. Enough of them who know that army means war and war means death. You can’t escape it, no matter how hard you try.”

He looked at the white-haired colonel and remembered the captain he’d spoken with in the bar earlier that afternoon. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps he was the one who was wrong. Had he wasted away his whole life pursuing an impossible dream of an army without war or killing?

“I’ll still do it my way,” he said.

“Good luck, Major.”

A week later Contrell heard that a Russian guard had been killed at the wall in an exchange of gunfire with West Berlin police. One story had it that an American officer had fired the fatal shot personally, but Contrell was unable to verify this rumor.

5 April 1969

It was the day before Easter in Washington, a city expectant under a warm spring sun. The corridors of the Pentagon were more deserted than usual for a Saturday, and only in one office on the west side was there any activity. General Willoughby McSwing Grove, newly appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was moving into his suite of offices.

Colonel Contrell found him bent over a desk drawer, distributing the contents of a bulging brief case to their proper places. He looked up, a bit surprised, at his Saturday visitor. “Well... Contrell, isn’t it? Haven’t seen you in years. Colonel? You’re coming along.”

“Not as fast as you, General.”

Grove smiled a bit, accepting the comment as a sort of congratulation. “I’m at the top now. Good place to be for a man of my age. The hair’s all white, but I feel good. Do I look the same, Colonel?”

“I’d know you anywhere, General.”

“There’s a lot to be done, a damned lot. I’ve waited and worked all my life for this spot, and now I’ve got it. Our new President has promised me free reins in dealing with the international situation.”

“I thought he would,” Contrell said quietly. “Do you have any plans yet?”

“I’ve had plans all my life.” He wheeled around in his swivel chair and stared hard out the window at the distant city. “I’m going to show them what an army is for.”

Colonel Contrell cleared his throat. “You know, Willy, it took the better part of a lifetime, but you finally convinced me that killing can be necessary at times.”

“Well, I’m pleased to know that you’ve come around to...” General Grove started to turn back in his chair and Contrell shot him once in the left temple.

For a time after he’d done it, Contrell stood staring at the body, hardly aware that the weight of the gun had slipped from his fingers. There was only one thought that crowded all the others from his mind. How would he ever explain it all at the court-martial?