The Bullet Garden

CHAPTER 42 Coach & Horses (II)

The man with the cracked face watched them emerge from her hotel. They walked slowly, as lovers do, shoulders rubbing, heads down, voices low and intimate; he seemed to loom over her, as if offering protection. He, particularly, looked exhausted; his fatigue could be read in the tentativeness of his gestures, the suggestion of infirmity in his step. The front had therefore been an ordeal for him.

This was all to the good, thought Mr. Raven. His reflexes would be slower, his attention less persistent, his energy much lower. In the aftermath, Mr. Raven would disappear into Mayfair’s alleys, find a tube station, and head back to his rooms in Limehouse, enjoying the imagery of the beautiful woman’s grief. He expected there might be a service for this Leets, as there had been for poor Mr. Hedgepath. He might attend, just to view from across the street the delicious ruin that afflicted her. How nice that would be!

He stayed well back, on the other side of the street, as they drifted, though not without destination. It was a certain pub not far away. They entered. A nice glass of stout for relaxation, perhaps something light to eat, then he’d walk her back to the hotel, and hence to his own hotel. That was where the intercept would take place. He’d scouted it already, worked the details in his head. He’d be beyond the big building, but not by much. Leets could only arrive on Grosvenor from one direction and would be spotted a block away.

Mr. Raven would time it perfectly. He was clever with details such as this. He’d walk toward him, head down, a dowdy little Englishman in bowler and absurd overcoat, and they’d pass on the sidewalk. Maybe a “Sir”/“Guv’nor” exchange in homage to the affinity of America for Britain would pass between them. One step past, he’d spin as the Mauser came out of his pocket, lurch forward to place it near the back of Leets’s head, and fire. Then it was another quick spin, a departure down an alley off Grosvenor and then into the greater maze of London. Job done, money earned, a victory for himself over the whole world in the sense of the world of the undamaged.

He headed for Leets’s hotel, the Connaught, to put himself in position well in advance of the action. It was always better to be early than late.

Since it was always OSS night at this particular pub, that’s where Leets took Millie. No Irish tribal gathering in the rear tonight, no waves of gossip riding the smoky air, just a lot of tired spies hoping for a brew and a plate of chips to drown their troubles before another tough four-hour day tomorrow, plotting, plotting, plotting. Oh So was only so so Social tonight.

Each had a warm brown phlegm the Brits comically called beer, fought its brackish thickness to get a bit of relaxing buzz going.

In the low light she looked, if anything, more beautiful. Those luminous eyes, generally closed off to the world, were alive with… sparkle? Glitter? Light? Something like that. How do lashes grow so long? How is skin so smooth? How is symmetry so geometrically precise? How are lips so… what? Red? Plump? Kissable? He didn’t know the word, if even there was one.

“Gosh, you look great tonight.”

“You look tired, Lieutenant. Blowing up tanks must be so fatiguing.”

He laughed.

“That was the major’s show. I was a supernumerary with a tommy gun.”

“It’s got the whole place abuzz. More heroics from Leets.”

“A kid got killed out of it. Nice little guy. Funny. Nobody tells that part. Or if they do, they say, ‘Hey, that’s war.’ But still — haven’t felt so blue since Basil caught it.”

“What I love, Jim,” she said, taking his hand in both of hers, “is that through all the ugly, you’ve stayed compassionate and sensitive. His death hurts you, which means the war hasn’t crushed you as it has so many.”

“I suppose,” he said.

“So tell me about Swagger. He’s the mystery man. Every girl in the office wants a date with him and he doesn’t go out, go to parties, go for walks. He’s just duty eight days a week.”

“With Earl it’s nine. On his off time, he reads technical intelligence reports on German tanks. Great soldier. The best. Smart as they come. The interesting thing is, he’s bilingual. Really.”

“French would be his second language? From Arkansas?”

“No, his second language is ‘NCO.’ In the Marine Corps, he was profane, gruff, tough, what you might call super-okie. Heavy southern accent. Enemy of grammar, but nevertheless unusually vivid in expression. Exactly the sort of sergeant warrior king any kid would follow up a hill. I had worries with how he’d fit in here on Society Hill.”

“And…?”

“And he fits like a glove. I’ve never heard him bust a verb or crack an ‘ain’t’ or an ‘it don’t.’ He stays not only with but a little ahead of every conversation. And the war, the sniper stuff — he can see into it. He figures out answers where nobody else even had questions.”

“You know, the colonel ordered an FBI check on him. He’s clean as they come. But here’s the odd thing: it examined his family, but it said of his father, Charles, ‘We have no information on this subject.’ I’ve seen a lot of FBI reports and I’ve never seen that before.”

“Hmm,” said Leets, calling for another glass of the brown beer-like sludge.

“We did get War Department records too,” she went on. “His father had three years of teachers college, so Earl grew up in a home where correct English was spoken. But then Charles went off to war. Not in 1917 but in 1914! He fought with the Canadian Army for three years. Then he transferred to ours, where he was highly decorated. Led trench raids, it was said; got out a major. He went on to become the sheriff of Polk County, Arkansas. Famous gunfighter. Died in 1941, shot in a meaningless robbery in some tiny town.”

“Maybe losing his dad to something stupid is why Earl never talks about his past, his family, his childhood, Arkansas. Hurts too much. The old man gets plugged in a heist after four years in the trenches? That’s a rough one.”

“I have a feeling it’s more complicated than that. Earl left home in 1931 to join the Marine Corps. Who knows why?”

“All I can say is, I’m glad he’s on our side.”

The food came, they nibbled, and then he could no longer stifle his yawns.

“You’ve got to get some shut-eye, Lieutenant.”

“I know.”

“The Tyne thing is tomorrow.”

“The major has made it certain I’m not a part of it. He’s got me out on errands.”

“Frank Tyne is a dog,” she said. “I wouldn’t trust him to run a lemonade stand. I couldn’t bear it if—”

“The major doesn’t seem worried. Maybe he’s got it figured out.”

“Frankly, I worry about Colonel Bruce. He’s a wonderful man, but a politician. He’ll go the way the breeze is blowing.”

They left, began a slow walk back to her hotel. This time, a little softened up by the stout, they drifted together, arms touching. Not much was said. Leets enjoyed her closeness, her smell, her face in profile, perfect and precise. He’d never seen such a beautiful woman.

Mr. Raven watched them standing close outside the hotel. Neither seemed in a hurry to depart, even though duties beckoned tomorrow. Would they kiss? He hoped. It would be a sort of l’envoi for the young officer, almost a movie scene, as much like the embrace of Mr. Taylor and Miss Leigh in Waterloo Bridge as could be imagined. These two might even be more attractive than the cinema performers. But where was the background music? Mr. Raven had to imagine that for himself, and he felt it surge through him, rather jolly as in the flickers.

Duty — his, not theirs — beckoned. It was time. He knew exactly the moment. He had timed it. It would take him four minutes through two alleys to get to Leets’s residence and another to find his selected post in the alleyway just past it where he could linger in the shadows, unseen. Leets, walking a less secretive path, would arrive in six.

All auspices were positive. No coppers, few cabs, now and then a soldier or two, winding home from a night at the bar, but nowhere in this little universe was observation, much less detailed memory, probable. It would be clean, the snap of the pistol so unexpected here among the trees and the august stone buildings that any who heard would immediately deny it, roll over, and try to get back to sleep.

He fondled the German pistol in his pocket. He was so ready for this.

“Oh, God,” he said, holding her, “how I dreamed of this in the mud, with the Krauts shooting.”

“You shouldn’t have been thinking of me, Jim. You should have been thinking about not getting killed.”

The taste of her lips, the feel of her thin yet taut muscularity, the softness of her breasts against him, his need to crush her to him, to make her part of him forever.

“Please, please, please,” she said, “tell me you’ll be careful. No more heroics. Let Swagger be the hero. You just take the notes.”

“I’m hoping there’s no more cowboy stuff. But you just never know how it’s going to happen. If—”

“Don’t say it.”

“All right. I was going to be so MGM-noble too. ‘Duty,’ all that stuff.”

“I just want Leets in bed with me for the rest of my life.”

“Won’t that be fun?”

“And how. Soon, darling. Now go home, go to bed. Big day tomorrow.”

“Too big a day. I’m actually going to the office. I can bunk on the sofa. That gets me about an hour’s extra sleep.”

“What a smart soldier,” she said.

CHAPTER 43 The Flap

With turbulence in the forecast, everyone was tight. No eye contact, no handshakes, no joshing or fake collegiality. Just the four, in the colonel’s office: Swagger, the colonel, Tyne, all in fresh Class As, freshly shaved, crisp as cornflakes. And Tyne’s pet congressman.

Mulrooney (N.Y., D., Fifth) looked like a crossbred fifty-five-year-old leprechaun and gigolo. Irish in face and dress, complete to black suit and tie, white shirt, dark but shaven jowls, eyebrows like black swallow’s wings, nose like a tiny ski jump, he was nevertheless rather handsome, even dashing. It was in a single harmony of dark Irish beauty. He had a big face like a movie dolt. His hair was sleek, wore its sheathing of pomade well, and boasted always-desirable tinges of gray at the temples. One could see why, if not movies, the next best thing would be politics.

“Millie, coffee, please,” said the colonel, shooing them to his circle of chairs at the fireplace, under the portrait of some wonder dog or other. “Now, gentlemen,” he said, “I do realize there is some contention here, but I’m a great believer in the ‘casual meeting.’ If we can chat in a friendly way over coffee on a beautiful London summer day, I’m sure we can work all this out.”

Millie brought a pot, steaming, and four cups on a tray. As she bent, asked about cream or sugar, she found the grace to turn to Swagger and mouth the words Good luck. He nodded.

“Sir,” said Tyne, “I’m just wanting to go on record here saying none of this is calculated as an attack on either Major Swagger or yourself. You’re both fine, exemplary officers with great records. I am only concerned with certain administrative tendencies that could attract undue attention in the middle, alas, of an election season. I know Tom Dewey and how he operates. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had spies in the building right now, rooting for anything that could be called ‘corruption’ or ‘mismanagement.’ They could be used in the fall against the President.”

“I wish we could keep politics at bay,” said the congressman. “But that’s only in a pretend world. Here in this one, as I’m sure you realize, Colonel, politics are everywhere. November will be upon us soon, and Thomas Dewey means to take over. You would know this, being of our breed yourself. House of Delegates, Maryland, Virginia. You would know it’s not possible to say, ‘Forget politics, win the war.’ To win the war, you have to win the politics.”

“Anything to add, Major Swagger?” asked Colonel Bruce.

“I don’t know or care anything about politics,” said Swagger. “Never have, never will.”

“Believe me, young man, you may not be interested in politics, but they are interested in you,” said the congressman. It was a treasured line, drawn from Trotsky, and everybody laughed except Swagger, whose face remained almost disinterested.

Tyne then launched into his tirade, since practiced and polished, somewhat condensed, but basically the same. “Special groups,” unaccountable budget overruns, blurred standards of success, morale crisis for others in the building, all of it leading to lessened efficiency.

“I can see Tom wanting to know why in a strategic global war we’re frittering away men, talent, and money on ridiculous enterprises like blowing up small bridges that will have almost no impact on the war,” said Mulrooney. “Or funding secret groups with no professional supervision, no endgame, no reliable gauge of their success, and increasing resentment from a rank and file held to more stringent standards.”

“Major Swagger?”

“I’m just doing the job as it was explained to me. As I understood it, they wanted me to be outside of all that. No politics. Just a hard sprint toward an end. I made the calls, right or wrong. It’s got nothing to do with anybody else.”

“I have to ask, then, Major,” said Congressman Mulrooney, “can you perhaps define or elucidate your progress so far? Can you, in other words, justify what’s been done?”

“No, sir. That just opens me up to sniping, second-guessing, the involvement of too many folks who want to stir the pot, too many bosses to please. It never works; it always hurts.”

That brought things to a momentary halt.

“Well,” said Mulrooney, “that’s the sort of attitude that could bring on a congressional inquiry, even a hearing. You would have to answer under subpoena. So you gain nothing—”

“Congressman Mulrooney,” said the colonel, “I’m sure we all want to avoid that. Tell us, what would you see as some gesture of responsibility that would have the effect of turning everyone’s eyes elsewhere?”

Glances flew between Mulrooney and Tyne, but Tyne was the lead dog on this adventure in barking.

“Sir, it’s my contention, and I’ve asked around quite a bit to support it, that as capable as Major Swagger is, he’s fallen under the sway of an underling, his staffer Lieutenant Leets. That is, First Lieutenant James Leets, transferred in from the 101st Airborne because of his fluent French. Leets is one of those careerists, shall we say, who sees the war as an opportunity to rise, not as a global conflict for survival to win.”

“Can you be more specific, Major?” asked Colonel Bruce.

Tyne unleashed his Leets smear. It was like sitting through the movie again. He added some new touches: he had supervised the Jeds and so he knew of what he was talking. Next, the day’s stall over the Bren guns, and he gave himself credit again for straightening that out.

He dispensed with the attack quickly: “It was a total catastrophe. Captain St. Florian, an able, even legendary British agent, was killed, along with perhaps dozens of French fighters. And while Casey did detonate charges at the bridge, they did not knock it down. German engineers quickly got it—”

“How quickly?” asked Colonel Bruce.

“Very quickly. Meaningless overall.”

“I don’t think SHAEF would agree.”

“Sir, let me show you.” The pièce de résistance. “I have obtained top secret Eighth Air Force recon photos that will document the supposed ‘destruction’ of this bridge.”

He opened his briefcase, took out several heavy sheets of paper rolls, unspooled them to display the imagery, and proceeded to point out that the bridge was indeed not flattened but only twisted and that a solid effort by the Organisation Todt had it up and permitting passage to the beach area within two working days. Swagger wondered how much it had cost him.

“But no Tigers?” said the colonel.

“No, sir, but Tigers are irrelevant. The Panzer IVs and the Panthers raised hell with our Shermans.”

“Major Swagger?”

“I have nothing to say. Wasn’t here for that. Wouldn’t know a thing about it.”

“Sir,” said Major Tyne, “the point is that Leets and his pals promoted his little misadventure into a major success here in 70 Grosvenor when it wasn’t. They have a clique thing going where each boosts the other. And that false reputation for success is what got him to Room 351 with its unlimited budget and its complete lack of accountability and its potential for being publicized as an OSS waste, directly attributable to the President. This photo”—he held up the picture of the twisted, droopy bridge, which did in fact look rather pathetic against all the other landscapes of vast ruin the war had produced—“could cost President Roosevelt the White House. That’s all I’m saying.”

“And your recommendation?”

“Well, certainly Lieutenant Leets has to go. Immediately if not sooner. Then the Room 351 operation should be moved from Special Projects to my own Operations team. I’ll be able to supervise directly all of Major Swagger’s findings and make the proper presentations to SHAEF when the time comes and—”

The phone rang.

“Dammit,” snapped Colonel Bruce. No one in history had ever seen him nonplussed before. “I told her,” he explained, rising, “no interruptions.”

He went to his desk, picked up.

“Millie, I thought I told you—” Whatever it was, it stopped him as cold as a bazooka rocket stops a tank. Then he blustered, “Can’t they wait? What is so important? What? Oh, God. The Army. All right, send them in. Let’s get this over with.”

He went to the door, explaining, “I apologize, gentlemen, but I’m told this is urgent SHAEF business: can’t wait. I’ll take care of it in just a second.” He opened the door.

There were four of them. They looked like the Notre Dame backfield outlined against a blue-gray November sky. Meat, lots of it, well distributed. Those brutality-inured faces, flat, almost phlegmatic, not registering much. The white caps, the white armbands, the white belts, the white holsters, the gray .45 automatics, the white lanyards, the white leggings, the black billy clubs. Every note sounded MP. Cheese it, the cops! A lieutenant, two sergeants, and a corporal.

“Sir, Lieutenant Green, 130th Military Police, attached to SHAEF. This is a felony arrest and I have to advise you that, during the performance of our duties, military protocol is temporarily suspended.”

“Lieutenant, what on earth—”

“Which one here is Tyne?”

The looks of the others identified Frank.

“I don’t—” he started.

Cops do not let perps dominate the transaction. That’s the point of being a cop.

“Mr. Tyne—”

“Major Tyne.”

“Mr. Tyne, you have been indicted by grand jury hearing on one count of felony murder committed against the person of one Reginald Bowie, known as ‘Hot Fingers,’ of Harlem, New York, 15 November 1935. You are hereby remanded to arrest and incarceration and will be transported immediately to the First Army stockade at Bushy Park until transportation can be arranged for your return.”

“But—”

“You are also hereby informed that all courtesies, protocols, special rights, and considerations due a major in the United States Army are considered rescinded. Please remove all signifiers of rank before we cuff you. You are as of now a prisoner.”

“Leo,” Tyne said, “this is outrageous. You can’t let them—”

Congressman Mulrooney rose to launch an eloquent and shaming defense of his ally. It lasted somewhere between one and four-tenths of a second before he brilliantly executed a 180 so graceful it’s still talked about today, riding and driven by the pure diesel of the four most powerful words in the English language: on the other hand.

“On the other hand, Frank,” he said smoothly, “I’m sure this can all be settled at some future date.” He added, “I wouldn’t want to interfere with the law.”

How swift the wind doth change; how swift the politician doth read, absorb, process, develop new policy, in the black blink of a smiling Irish eye upon what prevails.

“Prisoner Tyne,” said the lieutenant, “if you don’t get that shit off your uniform, my men will do it for you, and they won’t be gentle about it.”

CHAPTER 44 Childish Fantasies

After the brief stop at the Scotland Yard ballistics lab, where the twisted bullet remnants were dropped off for analysis, Outhwaithe said, “I say, what’s the driver’s name?”

“Sebastian.”

“And that thing on his arm?” He meant the double striped chevrons over the T.

“Tech five, meaning corporal in our army.”

“Excellent.” He leaned forward. “Corporal Sebastian, your boss here has decided to give you the afternoon off. Can you spend it wisely, rob no banks, cane no Irishmen or bobbies, nor be caught naked at Trafalgar Square?”

“I believe I can,” said Sebastian.

“He’s good at that,” said Leets.

“Excellent. Deposit us, please, at No. 5, Lancaster, Crouch End. Can you find it?”

“Near Archway, sir?”

“Indeed.”

And why wouldn’t Sebastian know London that well? He was king of it, after all.

In short order, he maneuvered the staff Ford through traffic to the North End and beyond, and located No. 5, Lancaster, which turned out to be a modest place of brick and wooden struts, undamaged as yet by doodle or four-hundred-pounder, called Ned’s Garage.

There, Ned himself brought out Tony’s car, which was a small dark green Morris sportster, a miniature thing that repeated the British design aesthetic of boxiness. One could say it looked like a steel essay arguing against the streamline. It was distilled and diluted from the twenties trope of the cube and thus presented an assembly of tinier cubes to the world, all in the career of adding as much wind resistance as possible. All angles, all fenders, all windshields, were squared up to the breeze. The “tyres” would have been square if possible, their spokes homage to the nineteenth century, and even the headlamps had the aspect of upside down teakettles welded to each fender. It was as aerodynamic as a coffin. Its canopy was down, the cockpit looking quite Sopwith Camel, and Ned had taken care to rub it to its highest green gloss.

“It’s a Tickford drophead coupe,” Tony said. “One of two hundred and fifty-one ever built. Got it for a song from a major off to Burma. It’s a dolly to drive. Care to take us to Oxford, chum?”

“Ah,” said Leets, “the left-hand driving will get us both squashed under a truck before we get out of town. I’ll just sit on the right and hold on to my hat.”

Off the boys went in the dashing toy car, which indeed, under Tony’s effortless expertise, snaked around curves, opened up wide on flats, all while ruffling hair and raising dust. It was, as they coursed through the rolling and soon enough Oxfordshire hills and greens, almost as if there were no war on, the sun bright, the sky cloudless and unmarked by Bf 109 or Spitfire contrails, and not a barrage balloon or a bomb crater in sight. One would have expected them to discuss poetry.

Outhwaithe had a mysterious fondness for Leets. You wouldn’t think his type would go for Yanks. They’d met at training at Milton Hall after Leets had been seconded from the 101st. He was by no means as unflappably insouciant as Basil but might have been called a fetal Basil. Give him time, and if he lived long enough (doubtful), he might even become the new Basil. However, as for now, he’d returned from his Jed foray — a nicely done job on a railway line south of Paris, keeping Jerry from shipping yet more armor to Normandy — to MI6, not SOE.

In time, the medieval university town arrived. Well, they arrived, but to them, so effortless was the motoring, it felt as if it had arrived to them. It lay before them, steeples and domes, rather mauve in the haze of pollen and agricultural dust. Entered, it had the aspect of an intaglio etching, so many and varied were the textures, particularly as one buzzed through town and on to the seat of learning, a collection of cathedrals to knowledge, one might say, though arranged horizontally rather than vertically. The Bodleian sandstone was everywhere, each building seeming to present a different degree of weathering to the world. Since it was summer, flower life had everywhere invaded and vanquished, curling and spiraling up the odd stairways, brightening the greens between or fronting the colleges and the quads, all of it so alive under the radiance of an Oxford summer sun that one half expected a meandering Dodgson to come out to enjoy the toasting rays. The chestnut was a-blossom, discordant to the cobbles, the cupolas, and the gables. Scholastic quiet? Hardly. Bells banging away, celebrating the passage of time, one supposed, or just that noise equated to life as only the living could make it and only the optimistic could want to make it. The crowd was mostly women now, however.

“The girls have taken over. Actually, the government has taken over and it’s largely girls now. Brasenose completely. Most of the other colleges are just office buildings, though bravely a few dons hold out against the deluge. Look quickly, you might spot an authentic undergraduate.”

There were a few as yet spared the rigors of desert, jungle, or bocage, all with that languid undergrad posture that suggested power and wealth inherited, adored or abjured as the case might be, who seemed to poke their way through the distaff mob.

“Squint and make all the clerks go away and it’s still beautiful, eh?” said Outhwaithe.

“Sure is,” said Leets, realizing that his own college, back in Evanston in the Midwest, had like so many others imitated the Oxonian cloistral hush, Gothic architecture, and vapors of both learning and yearning in its affect.

“Doomed, of course. Though the German bombs failed, the war in general will wipe it out. When we win, the common man takes over, doesn’t matter the system in the end. No more poofs and eccentric geniuses and barefoot poets. No wits like Oscar. No aristos plowing the town girls untouched by shame, decency, or law, then loudly proclaiming their innocence. All gone, all drowned. Surprised this much remains.”

Outhwaithe was, of course, addressing himself and required no answer from Leets, who in any case would not have had one.

Tony found a car park outside of the one called Balliol — this one vast like Xanadu, with gables and a central, if squared, tower proudly proclaiming the year 1282 and all that — parked, and led the American in.

“Leets, old man, look here. These lads can be snappish. They aspire to the worst expressions of English snobbery and will miss no chance to express it. He will be tart, dismissive, rather bored, and quite unwelcoming. And I don’t even know who he is yet!”

“I’ll be harmless,” said Leets.

“Nothing personal. He’s just playing a part these blokes have rehearsed for fifteen hundred or so years.”

It was dark, musty, the Middle Ages in personification. Knighthood might still be in flower here, but so was urination, as it smelled of uncouth plumbing. Outhwaithe knew the way and took them to a third floor that proclaimed itself the Department of Classics. Entering, they met a secretary who got a rather vague dean out of a nap, and he took them still deeper in the bowels to another room, which for all of it didn’t look all that different from a modern language department at Edina High in the suburbs of Minneapolis.

“Bowra’s our polymath. Wizard on languages. Speaks and reads ’em all,” said Dean Whatever. “So smart that many despise him. He’s cheesed off now because he felt he’d be elected Oxford Professor of Poetry, to go with his other little university trophies. But the Day-Lewis bunch outmaneuvered him, and that post stays vacant till after the war. He broods and curses and plots and dreams. So if he’s short, it’s an example of what politics — faculty or any sort — can do to a chap.”

Hence: Bowra. Tweedy, balding, fifties. Gravedigger face after a thousand or so holes and too many rotting corpses. Bad teeth, skin the color of parchment. Rather unsavory. No Mr. Chips. Mr. Chits, as if the world owed him and had not yet come clear.

“Professor Bowra, two chaps from Intelligence here. One’s even a Yank, that’s how important it is. Need some language help, something quite arcane. Can you have at the pitch?”

“I suppose one must,” Bowra allowed, his face a dispatch of extreme annoyance.

They sat, and without provocation the professor said, “I’d offer tea, but that would elongate the experience. I’m quite busy today avoiding work and prefer to get back to that important task. Please do rush sloppily on, as time is too precious to be wasted on anything except wasting time.”

“Excellent start,” said Tony. Then he endeavored to explain it all. Bowra nodded as if he even cared. Then he said, “All right, then, gentlemen, unveil the mystery word.”

Leets made a stab at it.

“Was that an expectoration, sir?” asked the professor. Good one! Oxford 1, Northwestern 0. Leets soldiered onward.

“I was trying for something that might be spelled N-e-j-d-z-n-i-k-i. Remember, the soldier heard it several times in German captivity, then waited a few weeks before telling my officer, who then told me. Obviously it’s eroded, in his memory, in the major’s, and then in mine, and it was never too clear to begin with.”

“Like a stone in a stream, worn smooth by the water’s passage,” said Professor Bowra. “But enough remains. Actually, it’s Czech.”

“Czech!” said Tony.

“Indeed. Sudetan Czech, almost certainly. Contested land between Germany and the Czechs, the Germans taking it over in the Anschluss of 1938. Its residents thus became, no matter how reluctantly, German citizens, obligated to German law, vulnerable to German conscript. Czech or not, these lads couldn’t say no to Nazi conscription. That’s how they end up in a German tank, in France, fighting Americans, barely speaking German at all.”

“Do you know the word, sir?” asked Leets.

“I do and I don’t. I will specify the word, but not the meaning, as Czech is a language in which word order is quite flexible and that flexibility frequently dictates meaning. So the word’s meaning might be useless without the sentence in which it was spoken. But one must do what one must. I will give you the word and many possible meanings. That is all I can do. It is up to you to carry it another step. I should think spies would find the game quite amusing. It’s rather like a code.”

“Men’s lives are at stake, sir,” said Leets, banking on midwestern literalism to carry the day. Bad move.

“But then it’s a war, and men’s lives are always at stake, are they not, young man?” was the swift response.

Leets surrendered. What else was there?

“Unfortunately.”

“Well, let us try and save some, shall we? Nejdzniki, the final i rendering it to the plural. Immediate meaning, then, ‘raiders.’ Metaphorical possibilities, depending on context. ‘Invaders,’ ‘road agents,’ ‘bandits,’ ‘highwaymen,’ ‘thieves,’ ‘pirates,’ ‘any random group of nasties,’ ‘brigands’—”

“They were joking,” said Leets. “They’d joke about something German that seemed particularly absurd to them.”

“Plausible, I suppose,” said the professor. “Not quite conclusive, though, may I offer another approach? ‘Raiders’: Accepting the literal, who would the Czechs see as raiders? Not the Nazis: too recent. Not the Huns: too ancient. You’d have to know of something in between in Czech history or more, its folklore. That is, its children’s tales. Perhaps there’s an aspect of raiders out of children’s stories that these very tough men would share and find amusing.”

Silence.

“Where on earth would we go for that?” asked Tony.

“I know just the chap for you,” said the professor. “He was in the trenches in the First War. The Somme, all that. Possibly it affected him. He’s quite brilliant. He’s also barking mad.”

CHAPTER 45 The Thin Man

What a good boy he was. Instead of spending the afternoon trolling for shopgirls in the pubs, Sebastian returned to duty at 351. He had to know the outcome of the Tyne drama.

“Uh,” said one of his informers, another T/5, “they took him out of here in handcuffs and a T-shirt about 1100. It’s said Colonel Bruce seemed quite happy in the canteen. Major Swagger, as usual, went back to 351 without a word.”

“Man, is he good,” said Sebastian.

“That seems to be the consensus,” said the fellow.

But if Sebastian expected gloating and celebrating, Swagger didn’t get the general order. Same dour concentration as he was looking through what appeared to be decrypts from some code-breaking operation of Brit origin.

“Sir,” Sebastian said, announcing his presence. “The lieutenant went on to Oxford by car with the British officer. He released me. Here I am.”

The major looked up.

“Okay, Sebastian. I’ve actually got something for you other than waxing the car. You used a word to me, to keep me from sending you to the 1st Ranger Battalion, remember? I’d never heard it before. Because I went to college at the University of Banana Wars. It wasn’t on the reading list.”

Sebastian knew right away.

“ ‘Realpolitik’?”

“That’s it. Define again, please.”

“Uh, the way it really is, as opposed to the way everybody thinks it is or everybody thinks it should be. For example: we are holy crusaders against evil. Realpolitik: we are just another batch of scramblers, hustlers, con men, consumed by grudges, petty politics, ambition, some of us really stupid, some of us—”

“Okay. Now, who would know about this stuff?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Who could look at a situation and give me a read on it from the angle of this ‘Realpolitik’?”

“I would say you, sir. Major Tyne comes against you, he ends up in handcuffs. That’s as Realpolitik as it gets.”

“Forget that.”

“May I ask, sir, what is this in regard to?”

“Sure you can ask. And just as sure, I’m not answering. It’s not for tech fives. Or even major generals — yet.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Back on point: In London, who? Where?”

Sebastian concentrated.

“Not in service. Not in spies? Journalism? Edward R. Murrow? William L. Shirer? Hem—”

“I think he’d have to be British. That is, to know the politics. Not parties, districts, that sort of thing, but, um, operating principles.”

“Culture.”

“I suppose.”

Sebastian came up with a name.

“Never heard of him.”

“On BBC. Lots of people hate him. Seems to call it straight. Not really the college type; he was a cop in Burma, went on the hobo in Paris and London, spent time in coal mines, always trying to write stuff. Finally managed to get it published. Now he’s well-known.”

“Call BBC. Say you’re me. Use your most polished voice. Get me in to see this guy. Tell him it’s for the war effort.”

They met at a pub not far from Broadcasting House, the odd ship-like building that was BBC headquarters that had made its port of call Marylebone, a few streets away. The pub bore the name the Lion & Unicorn, but inside it turned out to most resemble the Pub That Looks Like All the Other Pubs. Its banality was only bearable by virtue of its darkness and the power of its hooch.

Swagger entered, feeling completely out of place in such a dark English burrow, but a tall Englishman stood and gestured. He looked like a Brit variation on Abraham Lincoln, the string bean with the tragic face in tweeds so baggy he’d slept in them for sure, dark shirt, dark tie with stripes, a kind of rhapsody in brown-indigo. Cadaverous, 150 pounds dripping wet, fag hanging from mouth, its syrupy smoke drifting up into his smudge of mustache, cheekbones like bayonets, a shock of thatch hair. And of course he had a bad cough, a hack that sent tremors of damage through his scrawny, elongated frame. It spoke of heatless rooms, thin coats, an icy wind cutting everything, being down and out in cities of full and plenty. He looked like he’d gone native in his own country.

“Major, I’m Blair. That is, my real name. The radio name’s just a fraud.”

“Sir, I’m Swagger.”

“After the stick? I carried one in Burma.”

“Nobody knows. Old family name. A mystery. Anyhow, thanks so much for this, Mr. Blair.”

“Thanks so much for coming over and winning our war for us.”

“I’m the sort who finds that sort of thing fun.”

“As you so appear. Anyhow, politics? However may I assist you? Wait, do let me get us a jar.”

“Please,” said Swagger.

He himself lit a Camel, laid a couple of packs down on the table as an offering to new friend Blair, and looked up to see the man with two glasses filled to the brim with brown amber, about one-tenth of an inch of foam as surface flotsam.

“Ciggies?” said Blair, sitting. “So appreciated. Now, how can I be of aid?”

“I’ve got a situation where the sides aren’t clear. Not sure who represents who. As I apply myself to it, nothing makes sense. I was hoping you’d see something in it that might clarify it for me.”

“Fascinating.”

“It has to do with this thing called Realpolitik.”

“Hmmm,” said Blair. “Might have an idea or two. Realpolitik almost got me killed in Spain. But do proceed.”

“I’m trying to solve a problem but the only answer I can come up with makes no sense. It boils down to one problem: How do you win by doing harm to your own side? Is it possible?”

“Could you be more specific?”

“Suppose someone on our side is giving information to their side. Seems straight-up treason, for whatever reason. Maybe the traitor is crazy, maybe a lot of money has been paid, maybe he’s got a thing for secrets.”

“Wouldn’t an investigator figure that out?”

“Here’s the strange part: This person doesn’t consider himself doing wrong. He thinks it’s right. But what normal person could think giving dope to the Nazis was right unless they were cooked in Nazi cow shit for the past ten years and didn’t know better or were some kind of trained professional agent.”

“And those two possibilities are out?”

“Completely.”

“Now it’s coming clear,” said Blair. Deep puff, the orange of the oxygenated burn suffusing his prematurely aged face, the drifting penumbra of smoke obscuring it, but still his brow went scrunchy, his eyes went narrow, as he put full brain into fourth gear.

“All right,” he said. “Maybe there’s a third player on the board. A secret player.”

News to Swagger. Had no meaning in any part of his life. Couldn’t fix on it. Third player?

“I’m baffled, Mr. Blair,” he allowed.

“Here’s the dynamic. Your traitor hates the Nazis as much as anyone and would give nothing to them. However, this person’s alliances are not to you but to another anti-Nazi. A supposed ally of yours whom too many take to represent the hope of the world.”

No names, nothing spoken. But now Swagger grasped it.

“So you’re saying he gives it to this third party. And the third party…” He paused.

“The third party is the party of Realpolitik. It sees an advantage on forwarding the information to the Germans. That’s because it’s not looking at tomorrow or next year but at twenty years on. It knows that harm done to you in this war will reverberate far in the future and sees its own benefit in it.”

Swagger stewed, parsing, holding pieces up to the light, turning them, seeing how it played out.

“Here’s an example. I know it well, as it almost got me killed.”

Blair smiled. This was such fun for him. He liked this story. It explained so much.

“In 1936, there was a war in Spain. Straightforward thing: believers in democracy on one side, believers in authoritarian rule on the other. Stalin rushed to the aid of the Spanish republic, the democratic side, the ‘good’ side, with men and supplies. So one would say, ‘Hooray for Stalin for supporting the republic. What a good chap!’ And that’s what many vegetarian freethinkers and intellectual chrysanthemums and bad poets said.”

Swagger nodded.

“Stalin, as it turned out, didn’t give a rat’s shit for Spain. The only thing he cared about was the future of Russia, particularly of his enemies there, do you see?”

“I do.”

“He used the Spanish war to draw them out. Fools and dreamers — I count myself among them, maybe the biggest fool — they were drawn like flies to rot. But to his mind they were unreliable. They were too undisciplined and therefore too likely to be driven by passion over loyalty. He knew what would become of them, how they would turn out. At the same time, in Spain as in Russia, he was consolidating power over the secret police. He who controls the machine guns controls the present and thus the future. You see, here’s the brilliance of the bloody bastard: he saw his enemies of the future. He saw beyond tactics, beyond strategy. That’s Realpolitik for you. He knew that even if they weren’t guilty yet, they inevitably would be. So he destroyed them, his allies, those on his side, in all their foolish innocence, and as they faced the firing squads, they screamed, ‘But we are innocent!’ ‘Yes, but you will be guilty soon enough’ was the answer, followed by bullets.”

“They came after you?”

“I had a date with a wall. Nothing personal. Just by classification. Lefty dreamer, in a silly militia called POUM, which I joined carelessly, not caring what the initials stood for. Turned out to be ‘Party of Marxist Unification.’ It represented Trotsky’s dream of world revolution, not Stalin’s dream of revolution in one country. The Stalinists suppressed it, arrested all, shot them. Learned my lesson, did I. Just barely made it out, last train from Barcelona after the purge. I didn’t think ahead. You must.”

“So that means if I want to make sense of my situation, I ought to consider not the short-term effects but the long-term. The results twenty years down the road and what is necessary to achieve them.”

“Your talent for grasping the core is vivid and sure. I’m guessing you’re a splendid soldier.”

“I’m still around, if that’s anything.”

“That’s the fellow!” said Mr. Blair, interrupted briefly by a spasm that ripped him from lung to head. “I’ll now give you an adage to help you. When dealing with certain kinds of chaps, don’t think 1944, think 1984.”

CHAPTER 46 20 Northmoor

Tony slid the MG to the curb, killed its purring kitty-cat motor, and said to Leets, “They can be so trying. But are you ready for another Oxonian? If this boy’s been in the trenches, perhaps he’ll have a bit more humility to him.”

Wearily, Leets said, “Let’s give it a shot.”

“Good man! The brigade shall advance!”

They approached one more stately mansion. At least, mansion is what Leets would have called it, for it resembled those in both Edina and Paris: a gabled, shingled, chimneyed indulgence of home, it had to have at least six bedrooms and yet at the same time seemed to reflect the prototype English country bungalow of children’s books. Lawns lay about it so that no building interfered with its visage, and they were greened up to an emerald hue. Like many playthings of the rich and established, it was in fact rather childish in its straightforwardness, its symmetry expressed in units of window spread about harmoniously, like notes on a score. Vines engulfed its front, suggesting a permanence out of olden time.

“He’s a writer?” Leets said.

“So Bowra said. Of what, I don’t know. Hasn’t made the Sunday rags yet.”

They knocked, and Miss Marple answered, not that Leets had ever read Dame Agatha. She had what might be called character, wise eyes, and only a slightly crinkled face under a frost of hair. She was not the sort to slobber over strangers, even heroes in uniform. She knew enough of life to understand what bounders they could be.

“Madam, hullo,” said Tony. “Sorry to drop in unannounced—”

“Bowra rang up,” she said. “I’m Edith. Edie, if you prefer.”

“Ah, splendid, but as humble pilgrims to the shrine, we’ll stick with ‘ma’am.’ So you know we’re from the intelligence services and would like to borrow the professor’s brain. Wouldn’t be here unless it wasn’t rather sticky.”

“Yes, yes,” she said. “Tea’s on. I’ll get Ronnie. Hard to tear him away from his project. Silliest fool thing I ever heard of. If my mother — no matter, this way.”

She led them to a comfortable living room, furnished in pillows and books, and got them seated, then went to fetch Ronnie and tea, in that order.

He entered. No infantry bucko to him. Signal Corps, one would have thought, accurately. Gangly of body, boney of face, dressed as one would expect, in corduroy bags bagged out over brogues that looked equally as if they’d suffered a war or two, a blue shirt uncinched by tie, hair askew from much running of fingers through it in despair over the perfect adjective. Writer’s hair, Leets would have supposed, not knowing any writers.

“Hullo, hullo,” he sang out, “stay put, no need to stand, no ceremony at 20 Northmoor.”

But they stood anyway. “We stand for the Somme, sir,” said Leets.

“I just got in the way in that one. No heroics here. I am a man whose life was saved by a flea, so what do you expect?”

“A flea?” said Tony.

“Bit me, the little bugger, one of millions. This one gave me three bags full of trench fever. Six months in hospital. Then judged too feeble for battle. Spent the rest of the war supervising men who needed no supervision in loading crates on lorries in Sheffield.”

“Being at the Somme was enough,” said Leets. “And being there is far more important than leading bayonet charges into machine-gun fire.”

“How nicely said. American, young man?”

“I am, sir.”

“Yet you’ve spent time in Paris. I note a rogue Parisian vowel occasionally declaring itself.”

“Ten years. I was schooled there. I speak it quite fluently.”

“It helped him become a hero,” Tony said.

“He’s joking,” said Leets. “Like you, I was mostly in the way.”

The professor laughed.

“Do sit, I insist.”

Edie brought tea and some kind of biscuit thing that looked beyond the strength of anyone’s dentition. The Brits loaded up on lumps and cream, while Leets used the condiments more sparingly.

“We do apologize for interrupting your project,” said Tony. “Good of you to give us time.”

“Not sure if it’s a project or a monstrosity,” the professor said. “I wrote a children’s tale in ’37 and it was well received. I could not let it go. I decided on a follow-on. And yet, dark times have turned it dark itself. It seems to be full of battles, betrayals, secret weapons and missions. No child could stay with it and any adult would find it silly. It only has one natural reader, otherwise totally lacking an audience. That one would be me, and I already know how it ends!”

They laughed. Not stuffy, this one, nor arrogant. But neither ignorant.

“Now you have a riddle,” he said, “and you think a philologist and folklorist could help. That’s what the beastly Bowra said.”

“Something like that,” said Outhwaithe. “I would—”

“Please, Leftenant, let the American explain. I find his accent so delightful. Yours I hear every day. It’s mine, brummy/Oxford/public school/touch of military.”

“Yes, sir.”

Leets ran through it, hitting all the stations of the cross in his midwestern soda-water voice and occasional French twist of lemon.

“Minnesota,” said the professor.

“Yes, sir,” said Leets.

“I treasure accents. I’m the Henry Higgins of Oxford.”

They laughed.

“But this isn’t Shaw, this is war. All right, then. The riddle is: Whom would Czech soldiers refer to when they found humor in the word ‘raiders’ in reference, you believe, to another group among their own? Correctly surmised that the subgroup would differ from the group, hence ‘raiders’ would not be the Huns themselves.”

“That’s our thought.”

“Whom do the Czechs remember? They’ve had many raiders, you see: Germans, of course, Hungarians, Turks, even Russians, all trying to nick a bit of land off, here or there. Yet, possibly among the many, one has settled in the Czech imagination and lasted there through the generations. Do we have any descriptions of these Czechs? Handsome people, yes. I strolled through in 1911. If you can give me a description, perhaps it will help me understand, as one tends to note those who look like oneself and forget the others.”

“The G.I. was struck by the tank commander. He said — soldiers’ memories perhaps can’t be trusted, but this guy was pretty solid, I thought — he said he was large, thick crown of hair, blond, perhaps. The most amazing thing, he had a beard. A thick blond beard. So he’s a fellow who would go his own way. And he must be good at the tank business, because his German bosses have seen fit to leave him alone.”

“Blonds are not difficult to find in Czechoslovakia. Many of that complexion, complete to the pale skin, the blue eyes, the steely temperament, are to be found in the north reaches of the country. In some ways, it’s far more of Hitler’s nonsensical ‘Aryan fantasy’ than Germany. The dirty little beggar doesn’t seem to realize that Aryan is a language, not a gene group.”

“I doubt these boys spoke Aryan,” said Tony.

“Or had even heard of it. But, yes, I can answer your question. Your tank sergeant notes what reminds him of himself. He’s seen a batch of them doing something rather odd in German territory, so odd that it’s become part of the folklore of his own little troop.”

“We’re baffled.”

“That’s because you have no idea, nor does the world, of how successful this group of ‘raiders’ was in their heyday. They not only came and saw and conquered, they intermarried, even as far south and east as what is now Czechoslovakia. Hence the sergeant is one of them, and he was only noticing his kin. Do you see it yet?”

“No, sir.”

“Not merely did they visit as far south and east of Czechoslovakia but possibly as far to the west as America. They certainly had their innings in Great Britain as well. I know that because both of you bear their imprint. You two, a British and an American lieutenant, are blond, solid, and brave. Why, it’s all from the same source. You and the tank sergeant and the men you seek: you’re Vikings.”

CHAPTER 47 The New Friend

The little man with the cracked face was nothing if not indefatigable and he logged his many hours on watch. He was also cunning. He would not station himself at any location twice in a row. Rather, he rotated, cutting the chances of arousing curiosity by permanence, sometimes at 70 Grosvenor, sometimes at the man’s hotel, sometimes at the woman’s. And he changed wardrobes and hats as well. Sometimes a mac, sometimes a tweed balmacaan, sometimes a waterproof; up top, sometimes a bowler, sometimes a fedora, and sometimes a derby. He did or didn’t carry a brolly. But always he had a scarf (plaid, black, sometimes green, sometimes pale yellow) about the fissure that dominated his face and made it unforgettable, and always he had his little pistol. Sooner or later, by the odds, the American lieutenant would appear, the street would be empty, and the contract would be dispatched.

However, this night was proving particular. Indeed the young beauty emerged, though not with Lancelot but with another female, this one also in uniform. Tall, angular, American by that uniform but exotic as to face. He wondered who she might be and in what American department she might serve, but it didn’t really concern him, and knowing would mean nothing as far as ultimate ends were concerned.

Still, he pondered. He could not help it. Miss Fenwick, after all, was the major part of his life now. Perhaps the two women were office chums, perhaps the stranger a newcomer to the shop needing special counseling, perhaps an old friend from home, though the disparity in facial structure rendered that one unlikely. He tried to read body positions and found no symptom of affection, only banal professional distance. There seemed to be no attraction save via subjects being discussed, and that discussion was rather professional as well.

They walked, finding a place likely not to be full of drunken, sexually aroused soldiers, and settled in for a private chat in a dark corner. He waited from across the street, thinking perhaps Lieutenant Leets might join them. Not tonight. The two left after a bit and headed back to the hotel. It seemed odd to Mr. Raven that, of the two, it was the newcomer who seemed to dominate. It wasn’t just the height, or the ten-to-one ratio of her words to Miss Fenwick’s, but also a slight posture of control, of looming. Sexual? Doubtful. He had heard of such things even if he’d never witnessed them, but in their style of contact, no sexual information was conveyed. It was more of a governess instructing her charge, a teacher lecturing her student. Odd, what?

They disappeared into the hotel. Mr. Raven checked his watch: 10:30 British summer war time. Being diligent, he hastened via two alleys and a cut-through to the hotel that housed the American men and again set up a discreet watch, shifting his weight from foot to foot every few minutes to keep them from going to pins and needles. Tick-tock, tick-tock, it went faster if one didn’t think about time or comfort or circumstances.

What did Mr. Raven think of? Recent professional successes? How he got in this strange game? The three times in his life he had had sex, all with prostitutes, two women and a man? A dog he kept as a boy? The way his face had driven his father out? His mother’s despair? The poverty, the sense of exile as his face clearly marked him of a different species.

None of that. A neighbor, Mr. Garland, had taken him to Brighton Pier in 1923. He’d seen the vast onion of the Royal Pavilion, the West Pier jutting proudly into the blue water, the throngs of bathers, the open-air cafés. Mr. Garland bought him a lemonade. Mr. Garland was the only man in the world — or woman or child also — who seemed not to notice the magenta crevice that ran from septum to lip, the teeth it exposed, the drool it allowed, the blubber it brought to speech. It was as if, in Mr. Garland’s care, he was just another boy. Remarkable, so long ago. At the end of that summer — Raven’s best, with an actual pal — he was told that Mr. Garland had hung himself and overheard some neighbor women say the poor fellow had worked in hospital, in a ward for men who’d suffered facial wounds in the Great War. He’d grown used to the atrocities done to flesh by steel, and to him disfigurements were quite meaningless. He just took the young boy because he seemed so lonely and it was so little to do to bring an extra whisper of joy to the world. Alas, the terrible depression created by haunted eyes and ruined physiognomies had become too much to bear. With his death, of course, the Brighton excursions went away. But huzzah, then, to Mr. Garland and all like him who—

There he was, the American lieutenant. Getting out of a little car, one of those sporty things one saw around occasionally, a boxy little sprite of a car with an open cockpit and spoked tires. Seemed to be another lieutenant, this one English, at the wheel. The two men were friends. They had a last laugh, the American’s louder, and parted. The American turned and headed inside with an unprecedented bounce to his step.

There would be no killing tonight.

CHAPTER 48 SHAEF

Sebastian drove them to Bushy Park the next morning, scooting around the occasional closed streets where bombs had fallen, pressing hard across the Thames through Lambeth to find a southwestern tangent toward Teddington and then on to the place itself. Once 1,100 acres of green beauty, it was now home to a war town and even a short airstrip behind barbed wire and a full battalion of heavily armed MPs.

But in the interim after Lambeth, when traffic as well as Sebastian’s driving ceased to be a drama and the roads and land opened some, Leets had to use this first opportunity to ask a question.

“Sir,” he said, “I heard all about the, uh, disposition of Major Tyne—”

“We can drop in on him, Leets, if you want. He’s in the Bushy Park stockade, as I understand.”

“Actually, no, thanks. But could you tell me how you—”

“Oh, that? Yeah, I needed him out of our hair.”

“There must be a story.”

“A little one. In 1935, when Tyne was busy cracking colored folks in the head in Harlem, I happened to pull a new second lieutenant out of a burning hut in the middle of a firefight in Honduras. He was pleased at the outcome.”

“I’d say.”

“But he learned from that incident that maybe leading Marine infantry patrols in jungle fights against guerrillas for a big banana company wasn’t quite his cup of tea. So he left the Corps, went to law school, and from there joined the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Became a big racket buster for Tom Dewey. He kept in touch over the years. For some reason he thought I was some kind of hero.”

“I wonder why.”

“Yeah, yeah. So, anyway, I put through a radiotelegram to him, saying a certain ex — New York cop was giving me a rough time on a temporary duty assignment in London. He said he’d take care of it, no problem, because there’s always something in the files on a New York cop. He did, faster than I expected. That’s all there was to it.”

“Wow,” said Leets.

“I don’t like people thinking I was born yesterday. Tyne and his congressman thought they were cocks of the walk, but it turned out I had a bigger — well, you get the picture.”

“That is so smooth,” said Sebastian from the front.

“Keep your eye on the road, Sebastian,” said the major.

Entered after a laborious ordeal of identification at the gate off Sandy Lane, SHAEF HQ at Bushy Park resembled a western town from poverty row moviemakers: muddy, makeshift, low, rather shabby. It was a little less populated now, because another SHAEF had been set up on the invaded continent, and many had already moved there. So figure in a ghost-town look to this Old West: no lean-tos, exactly, but huts of cinder block and shingles, Quonsets of aluminum, some larger units that appeared to be all wooden. Gene Autry wasn’t around and no horses were tied at its hitching posts, but a few jeeps seemed to have been abandoned, quietly grazing at the mud and what little uncrushed grass remained. The sparse population was mostly young men with non-crucial office careers.

Sebastian found Building B, which differed from A and C in that it had eight windows instead of six, and left his passengers off.

“You stay here, Sebastian,” said the major, “in case we have to make a quick getaway.”

“Motor running, sir?”

“Not a bad idea.”

They reported to a tech at a desk, who promptly alerted a second lieutenant of the headquarters variety, who informed them there would be a slight delay — hurry up and wait, of course — until the cast was assembled. He led them to a canteen, got them coffee, and abandoned them amid tables full of huddled conspirators.

It wasn’t long, only two cups’ worth, before he fetched them and led them to a certain room unidentifiable from any other rooms, housing a conference table and a spew of chairs, and as common as aspirin. Normandy was planned here?

Well, maybe not. But something was, and they were joined by the same Colonel McBain and the brigadier from before.

“Gentlemen.”

“Sir,” each OSS officer said, initiating salutes only to be waved down.

“He’s landed,” said the colonel. “Should be just a few minutes. He’ll jeep over by himself. Believe me, he knows the way.”

“Sir,” asked Major Swagger, “may I—”

“No, you may not,” said the colonel. “On top of that, you are to make no report to anyone, including Colonel Bruce, of your attendance at this briefing, to say nothing of its contents. As far as anyone else is concerned, it didn’t happen.”

“You didn’t even dream it,” said the general, and at that moment the door opened and a thin but solid bald officer entered, dressed in the jacket he had invented and that was named after him. His tie and his shirt were the same color of OD that most would call “brown,” and though his accumulation of chest-displayed fruit salad was modest, the four asterisks on his epaulets seemed to weigh a ton each. His face, though immaculately shaven, didn’t look as if it had worn a smile in a decade. Wary. Weary. Maybe even sad, at all the death everywhere, every day, over and over. But still crisp and hungry to do his duty, which was to Finish the Fucking Thing.

Again, Swagger and Leets jumped to, and again were waved off.

“Please, gentlemen,” said the newcomer in a flat midwestern affect, as if he too had stepped out of a Republic western, this one set in Abilene, “no ceremony. Sit and report, that’s what you’re here for. I will listen. I may ask some questions. Smoke if you want. I certainly will.”

They sat, the SHAEF and First Army fellows up front, the marshal from Abilene a few chairs back. Death-mask face aside, he was rather athletic in body deportment, eyes blue as sky, but no sign of that famous smile. He had quickly plucked out a pack of Camels, plucked one out, and was enjoying it as if it were the only pleasure left in his very long day.

“Major?” said Colonel McBain, “you have the floor.”

Earl stood.

“Gentlemen, we can identify the means and the weapons of a special SS unit designated to kill American patrol leaders in near darkness in the Norman bocage,” he said. “In short order, I will have tactical suggestions, accompanied by my own request to lead the response in the bocage. Lieutenant Leets wants to go too, of course.”

This was news to Leets, although he sure as hell wanted to go. Of course the major had shared nothing of this with him: “I’ll tell you what you need to know when you need to know it.” Evidently, this was the time at last.

“The first thing you should know,” said Major Swagger, “is that you can forget the fighter pilot idea of mine. I sent Leets to talk to the Eighth’s leading Jug aces, and they shot that one down fast. But that freed us to pursue other directions, and we have concluded that while, yes, these men are of Waffen-SS — Das Reich, to be exact — and they even have a code name, which is Sturmgruppe Tausend, or Attack Group Tausend, not only aren’t they pilots but, more importantly, they aren’t German and they aren’t snipers.”

CHAPTER 49 Escape

Everything had to be planned and prepared. It was not in Sturmgruppe Tausend to improvise. Improvising was for amateurs. The morning after all had voted to follow Sturmbannführer Tausend’s plans, serious work began.

He sent the twins, as they were nicknamed — Matthias and Brendt — who were the youngest members of Sturmgruppe Tausend. Blond, remarkably similar, rather attractive in any sense of the word, they were both the sons of clients and friends of Brix, Brix being the Sturmbannführer’s nickname in his native tongue, as derived from his true name. Being not elder but second elder sons, they wanted to emulate their father’s success so that he might notice them instead of merely giving them large amounts of money to go away and not bother him. Like many second sons, they were earnest and reasonably effective at their tasks.

They departed that night on a southwestern azimuth, using their superior night vision to navigate landforms and wetlands that would have halted others. Each was heavily laden, and instead of their sniper rifles, they carried the new StG 44 with six banana clips in the 7.92 Short caliber, which offered them ideal compromise between long-range accuracy and short-range firepower. Since they were quite young, they also liked that the guns looked so science fiction — like. They seemed straight out of the Buck Rogers serials that had been making it to their town since 1934. But their hope was to avoid contact, either American or German.

Their job was twofold. First, to recon the route so that it could be accomplished at speed under light pack when the time came. Second, to cache foodstuffs to a destination certain to be off the main axis of the American attack, where they could rest unscathed and unnoticed until the next phase.

They more or less paralleled the front as they vectored diagonally across southeastern France. Three times they went to earth as patrols passed, all of them German. The Americans were still not up to night patrolling. So much the better. Some marshes were difficult and slowed progress but at least made tracking them impossible, though in neither army was it plausible that a tracker of any skill would have been available.

They made it about a third of the way across the Cotentin Peninsula the first night. They slept soundly, in a farmer’s otherwise untouched barn, because they knew that although the Americans were just a few miles away, between them and those Americans, Panzer Lehr, the great armored division, was in place. No American would visit them that night. The IVs and the Tigers precluded such a possibility, and Panzer Lehr, though depleted, would have to be attacked with at least a regiment-sized unit to make any headway.

But what lay beyond was less enticing. Between them and the last twenty miles to a coastal village called Lessay, the territory was controlled by the 2nd SS Division Das Reich. Though they themselves were nominally SS, they knew that line units of the Waffen corps were likely to be tough, salty, Russian-front veterans of the highest caliber, determination, and idealism. Moreover, they were the slaughterers of Oradour-sur-Glane, a village in Brittany they had wiped out in punishment for resistance activities on their trek to the bocage after D-Day. They had then hung 110 villagers in another village, Tulle, in retaliation for a bridge commandos had blown. They would, perforce, see obedience as an absolute and death as a mere technicality, nothing particularly profound. They could easily convince themselves that two fellows loaded with supplies and headed to the coast were deserters. A tree, a telephone pole — even a bridge — would do quite nicely in the application of justice to such criminals, no matter the double-lightning runes on their collar tabs. So the irony — not interesting to them, for they were not educated in the delights of irony — was that they had more to fear from the Germans than from the nearby Americans.

Using their night skills, the twins penetrated and passed through 2.SS, though not without a few tense moments when a patrol almost surprised them and then proceeded to pass within mere feet of their supine positions in the brush.

But they made it to Lessay, finding it picturesque and not quite on the coast but rather on a cove that emptied into the Channel. It was then no hard matter to find a barn to secure their loads beyond the eyes of anyone who wasn’t looking for them. Thus, when the night of flight came, Sturmgruppe Tausend would find ample stores of nourishment to succor them on their journey home.

They traveled the route in reverse to return. It was a fraught journey, as had been the first one, but they were certainly up to such challenges. They made it back to the jactstuga, the hunting lodge, at about four in the afternoon, negotiating the last miles in daylight on the assurance that the Americans would still be timid. They got there in time for the evening meal. Just in time for Sturmbannführer Tausend’s announcement.

“Perfect timing,” he said. “Word has just come. Tonight the Americans patrol en masse. They send ten groups into the bocage, all from the entity they call ‘Seven Corps.’ They need the latest information for their big attack. Instead of information, they will find bullets. Tonight we finish the job. Tomorrow we head home.”

CHAPTER 50 Theory

“Here’s how a sniper works,” said Swagger. “He finds a hide overlooking a field of fire. He ranges all the landmarks before him. If he’s got time, he walks the target area, counting steps, taking notes. If not, he relies on his own judgment, which is certain to be good. If he weren’t in a war, he’d dream of being a sniper. That’s who he is.

“He waits for the targets to come to him. He’s particular. He examines candidates through his scope. Officers first, NCOs next, machine gunners third, other snipers fourth, dogfaces last. Having made his pick, he settles in, gathers, calms, finds the position, makes the shot, follows through. He kills one, scatters the others. Now he waits. He knows some hero will rush to the fallen man. He takes that one. Result: fear, lack of aggression, collapse of morale, sense of victimization. Every man is in the crosshairs.

“The sniper withdraws. A good day’s work. They do it to us, we do it to them. They did it to the Russians, the Russians did it to them. The Japs and the Marine Corps: same dance. It’s how infantry wars are fought.”

He paused, lit another cigarette, and thought he had them. Maybe too much detail. But it was a story, and color and detail made it more real. They wanted more.

“Sturmgruppe Tausend does nothing like that. No hide, no range information, no preset escape routes. Everything’s fluid, based on where the patrol is going, which the sniper can’t know. But his lack of knowledge doesn’t deter him; that’s the game, the sport. That’s why he’s here. That’s what he loves.

“Instead, he lays up close to our lines, knowing where we’re likely going to cross into no-man’s-land on our patrolling. He’s usually right, because we do tend to do things the same way. He lies flat as the patrol passes him. Then he follows. His extraordinary eyesight lets him see well enough in the dark. Plus, we make noise, we leave sign. We wear helmets, we carry shovels and bayonets, which bang and clank. We shit and piss; there’s your smell. We smoke, throw away butts or packs, we eat our Baby Ruths and our K-ration meat loaf and toss it aside. We leave a track as wide as a highway. The sniper is never ahead of us; he’s behind us. It’s called stalking.

“His fieldcraft is superb. He knows how to move in total silence and he can freeze in a position and hold it for hours if he thinks eyes are coming his way. He doesn’t rattle the brush, he never coughs or sneezes, he never falls, and if by some joke of fate he slips or runs into thorns, he doesn’t curse. He is sealed up so deep, he’s hardly there.

“He knows to the second when dawn comes that day. He’s got a high-precision watch, wound and adjusted to inform him when that moment arrives. He’ll have a window of a few minutes in which, to his eyes and through his scope, he can see what nobody else can. Possibly he’s been close enough already to pick out the leader. More likely, he’s figured out the tells. The leader will stand first if the boys are resting, or he’ll be second in line if they’re moving. He’ll have a Thompson or a carbine, never a Garand. He’ll have a .45 in a holster and maybe a tanker jacket instead of ’41 field coat. He might have a bar on his helmet.

“The shooter makes his shot. He always shoots for the back of the head, because he knows the high-velocity round he’s using will go through and the bullet will never be found. Then he freezes as the patrol panics and dissolves. What he doesn’t do is equally a part of it. He doesn’t eject a shell for us to find. He doesn’t engage in a firefight. He doesn’t continue the stalk. He goes still and closes down, knowing that nobody will encounter him. When our fellows are gone, lost, captured, or whatever, then he makes his withdrawal, carefully rubbing out signs of his presence, carefully making sure not to have made boot prints or disturbed the shrubbery in which he’s hidden. He wants nobody tracking him and he knows exactly how a tracker’s mind works. Any questions?”

“You’re saying… not a sniper. So he’s a hunter. I see the difference,” said the general.

“Exactly, sir. But what kind of hunter, since we live in a world full of ’em? I’m one, Leets is one. And each of us, and everyone else, hunts different game in different ways, in different conditions, different seasons, different lands.”

He paused, waited, letting it hang in the air like the dense smoke.

“Consider the game. Big, loud, stupid, leaves sign everywhere. Crashes through the brush. But very dangerous. Can unleash massive firepower in an instant. Takes a brain shot — the leader — to bring him down. That’s the American infantry patrol, Normandy 1944. It’s also the elephant.”

A pause came to the world.

The general lit his fourth cigarette.

The other two officers blinked, swallowed, said nothing.

Even Leets, thinking himself beyond it, showed surprise.

“Did you see that coming, McBain?” the general asked.

“No, sir. Not in a million.”

“Please continue, Major Swagger.”

“Elephant hunters,” said Swagger. “Same tactics, same risks, same demands, same thrills. It goes even to the same shot. A Scottish big-game hunter developed his own methods a few decades ago. He studied elephant anatomy and learned that there was a passage to the brain through thinner parts of the skull from the rear, and it could be hit — superb marksmanship necessary, of course — with a high-velocity, flat-shooting round, it could penetrate and bring the beast down immediately. No need to face him with an eighteen-pound double bore like a Kynoch .577 Nitro Express. You could do it with a .275 Rigby, a smaller, lighter rifle, with a magazine for follow-up if necessary. It’s a discovery someone hunting the beasts for meat to feed a camp or to sell ivory would use, not something for rich safari guys guiding American millionaires.”

“Elephant hunters,” said the general. “And, sure, our guys are the elephants. I suppose you know which elephant hunters, correct, Major?”

“I do,” said Swagger. He turned to Leets.

“The bullet,” he said.

Leets opened the briefcase, took out the cellophane-wrapped twist of copper and lead, and handed it over. The officers passed it around.

When it came back to him, Swagger held it up.

“I won’t trouble you with the adventures we had recovering this thing and what it cost. But this is the round that killed Sergeant First Class Samuel Malfo on the night of June 19, 1944, in the 9th Division sector of Normandy. It went through the sergeant’s head, killing him instantly, but quite unusually deflected downward to the earth and turned up a couple weeks later, moved by rain into a puddle in the trench.

“We took it to the Scotland Yard forensics laboratory. They analyzed the metals and the proportions and concluded it could not have been any of the three common rounds of our campaign, the British .303, our own .30 Government, or the German 8-millimeter Mauser. The lead was of a much purer, higher quality. They could not get a caliber off it because it was, as you can see, so mangled as to preclude caliper measurement. But I asked them to predict, given the proportions available of the partial round, the weight of the total package. They came up with 140 grains, again lighter by considerable degree from English, American, or German service rounds.

“Who uses a 140-grain bullet, one much lighter than the standard weight? Well, the Italians. But their service rifle is basically junk and could never achieve this kind of accuracy. So there’s really only one answer: a certain army follows its own way and had picked a cartridge designated a 6.5 x 55-millimeter round all the way back in 1894. A long bullet for ballistic stability but light enough to be driven at high velocity for excellent accuracy and penetration. It has moderate to light recoil, so it can be fired in practice for weeks on end without damaging or dispiriting its shooters. It’s a widely used hunting cartridge, by the way, though with lead-tipped bullets, not the pure copper casing of this military round. Who are they?”

He tortured them with another pause.

“Let’s cross-check. From another source, we learned that some Czechoslovakian tankers in the area made jokes about the presence of nejdzniki, pardon my Czech, in the combat theater. The word means ‘raiders.’ Who would the Czechs call raiders? Look at Czech history for the answer and wonder why there are so many blonds in Czechoslovakia or here in Great Britain or in the American upper Midwest, Lieutenant Leets being a fine example. Same answer to the cartridge question: Vikings.

“That is, Swedes. The 6.5 x 55-millimeter cartridge, in its 140-grain, full-metal-jacket variant, is the Swedish military round, for the rifle they’ve used since 1894, maybe the best-made service bolt anywhere — the Swedish Mauser. They’re firing out of a Swedish Model 1941 sniper rifle, a tuned and improved ’96, with a German Ajack four-power scope. By all reports it is far and away the best sniper rifle in the world, far superior to the ones in our war.

“Adding it all together, you’ve got a small group of Swedish professional elephant hunters working the bocage against your people, doing damage far out of scale to their numbers. These are exceedingly capable men.”

“Major, any speculation on who is behind this?”

“Yes, sir. I believe they are led by a man calling himself, for military purposes, ‘Tausend.’ The other day, while Leets was at Oxford chasing down Vikings, among other errands, I went through piles of mysterious decrypts the Brits provided, at my request, looking for a bill of lading and shipping destination to which they attached no significance. I was looking for precision watches to the supply battalion of SS Das Reich. I found one, from February 1944, for fifteen Luftwaffe Fliegler chronographs. Model 1941. The Brits could make nothing of the destination, which was sub-notated ‘Sturmgruppe Tausend.’ The Brits had never heard of it, either before or since. The Germans, I’m told, name special units for their commanders, as in Skorzeny Gruppe for the Mussolini rescue at Grano Sasso d’Italia. So it seems fair to conclude the guy’s name is Tausend. Tausend meaning thousand. What’s the significance? He’s proud of it. It’s his best accomplishment. He’s one of few men in the world who’s killed over a thousand elephants.”

CHAPTER 51 The Chief

“Millie, would you come in for a while,” asked Colonel Bruce.

She jumped up, of course, pulling the door closed behind her, leaving a personal letter to Harry Hopkins, FDR’s closest advisor and good friend of the colonel, unfinished.

She was lovely all days, but this day she was incredibly lovely. Flaubert said, “Sometimes beauty strikes like a knife,” and that’s what was going on here. It just cut your throat.

She came, she sat. The older man — who was of course hopelessly in love with her, although it was well hidden behind that diplomat’s professional personality of discretion and understatement — took a look, finished up with a smile, and said, “You know, Millie, I have never and will never ask about your personal life.”

“Yes, sir. It’s appreciated. Not that it’s particularly interesting or remarkable.”

“I do, however, know from many sources that you’re seeing First Lieutenant Leets.”

“Jim is a very close friend, sir.”

“A fine officer, a fine young man. Medical school after the war — splendid. If it matters, and if I were your father, I would certainly encourage you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And, of course, I want you to know that I bought into none of that nonsense that Frank Tyne cooked up. We are well quit of him; I’m quite sure you’d agree.”

“Yes, sir. He bothered many of the young women with offers of nylons in exchange for dates. No one will miss him.”

“But I do have a certain concern, and though I’m hesitant, I feel I must probe something here. Again, no private details are requested or even sought by deflection.”

“I understand, sir.”

“I am concerned with Major Swagger. It seems to me that of late he’s resigned from our outfit. He’s gone over entirely to First Army G-2. I thought it passing strange that he insisted on his latest briefing being held at Bushy Park, not here at 70 Grosvenor.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Quite honestly, I’m a little put out over not being included on the briefing list, and if he files a report, I’m sure it’ll be anodyne. I do feel cut out. So my question for you is simply: Is something going on? Has Lieutenant Leets ever suggested there’s some problem with Major Swagger’s assignment to OSS?”

She took a deep breath.

“I only know, not from conversation but from observation, that Lieutenant Leets thinks very highly of the major. He believes furthermore that they are onto something and making excellent progress. But I also sense that Major Swagger is very tight with information. Jim doesn’t even know what the major thinks or is planning or what the schedule is. The major keeps it all in his head and has very emphatic ideas about how to proceed. I guarantee you that whatever Major Swagger tells the generals at Bushy Park, it will be the first time Jim has heard any of it.”

“I see,” said the colonel. He seemed troubled. That far-off stare signifying ships on the horizon, too far to identify. Then he looked back at her.

“It’s as if he doesn’t trust the office. This office. He thinks there are spies among us. Could that be possible?”

“Nazi spies?” she said.

“Well, who else would spy on us?”

CHAPTER 52 Building 9-King

They got in the car, Sebastian jacked the Ford into gear, and they began to creep toward the exit and the drive back to 70 Grosvenor. Leets was buttoned up solid. He looked like he’d just swallowed a doorknob.

“Don’t leave yet, Sebastian,” said the major.

Sebastian pulled over.

Silence floated through the car like a vapor.

Finally, Swagger said, “I get it, Leets. You’re pissed because everything I told them I was also telling you. You didn’t know about the watches, you didn’t know about the Swedes, you didn’t know about the M42 6.5 sniper rifle, you didn’t know about elephants. Fair enough.”

“Sir, it’s just that it’s hard to do what I’m supposed to do if I’m always a day late, a step behind. I could have told you about the brain shot on the elephant. I went on a safari with my father when I was fourteen, ten years ago, and I learned all about that stuff. It’s called the Bell shot, after the Scottish hunter who perfected it, another thousand-elephant guy: Karamojo Bell. Actually, Walter Bell.”

“Yeah, that would have helped,” said Swagger. “Little details like that help hold their interest.”

“Sebastian knows more than I do,” Leets went on. “I know he’s been acting as your agent behind my back, doing things I should do.”

“Leets, I have been in a military at war since 1931. I know how it operates and I know how to protect myself from stupidities, politics, and follies. I have to carry everything in my head and never commit it to reports or schedules or outside observation. I use the resources at my reach as best I can. Between us three, I think that 70 Grosvenor is a fucking sieve. The boss is charming as hell but as ineffectual as a clown. He just wants everybody happy. Here’s a way to fuck up an operation or a war: keep everybody happy. Do you get it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, let’s move on. I told them I’d have a plan in two days, but, yes, in fact I already have a very solid tactical operation in mind. Nobody gets to hear it until I decide, and then it has to happen fast, according to certain guidelines I will set up. Do you get that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any other questions, while I’m answering? Leets?”

“Only — what’s next, sir?”

“We have to find a guy. He would be a big-game hunter of the thirties, the Africa-Kenya safari part. I’m counting on you, because, yes, I know you were on safari. I need an elephant guy if possible, but maybe just big cat and plains if we can find him. I know most of the professional hunters are off playing soldiers with the King’s African Rifles. But we have to find a guy fast because we need to know about the Swedes. Maybe Mr. Bell.”

“Bell is retired to his estate in northern Scotland, as I understand it,” said Leets. “Anyway, he left Africa in 1921. No good for us. He’d only know hearsay and gossip.”

“Sir, if I may?” said Sebastian.

“Sure, kick in here, Sebastian. You’ll go to prison with us if this fails; you might as well put some money in the pot.”

“A guy who’s been there is very big on the posh party circuit here in London. The war is the best thing that ever happened to him. He’s a foreign correspondent, supposedly screwing the hottest of the girl correspondents, a busty little blonde from Life. Meanwhile, his real wife is in Normandy, doing a man’s work covering the real war.’ ”

“Skip the gossip, Sebastian.”

“Well, he’s been on safari. Written stories and books about it. ‘The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber,’ The Green Hills of Africa. He’s really a novelist, very famous guy. Big outdoor guy, boxes, hunts all over, fishes for marlin.”

“What’s his name?”

“Ernest Hemingway. His last bestseller was For Whom the Bell Tolls. He was in Spain. He was also blown up in Italy in 1918. Wrote about that too.”

“Never heard of him,” said Swagger. “Not sure I want to now.”

“He’d be perfect,” said Sebastian. “Don’t you agree, Lieutenant?”

“I have to say I do.”

Swagger made up his mind fast.

“Nope. Not interested.”

“Sir,” said Sebastian, “if—”

“I don’t want anybody who’s written books. He’ll tell the story but fix it as he’s going so that it’s better. That’s what they do. The simple, messy crap isn’t good enough for them; they’ve got to ‘fix’ it so things happen in a certain order. Plus, he’ll find a way to make the story about himself. We’d have to sift through the bullshit for weeks to get to the real stuff. We don’t have the time. Come on, Leets. Want to telegraph your father for advice?”

“That’s not a bad idea. My dad was a superb hunter and he did in fact know all the—”

And then it struck him. Wham, right in the forehead, sitting there in the backseat of the staff car on the muddy road out of Bushy Park.

“Okay, here’s something. See, these guys are all rich and they like nice things. One thing I remember from that trip is that everyone had a very nice rifle. I mean very nice. Mostly they had these huge double-barreled short-range cannons in calibers that began with a 4, maybe a 5. I even heard of a 6. Beautifully put together, regulated so that both barrels hit dead on at thirty yards, held to be charge distance. They were called ‘Best Guns.’ There’s about four or five makers in the world capable of turning out rifles of that beauty, power, and reliability, and they’re not cheap because they’re built by hand, one at a time. My dad had a Holland & Holland .470 Nitro Express that was a piece of art. He waited four years for it.”

“Like to see it sometime,” said Swagger. “But where are you taking us?”

“Most of those shops are in London. They all sent men out to Africa to hand-fit their clients to the gun. That’s what one hundred pounds for a rifle does for you. My thought: go to one of these places now, find the boss, he probably knows a lot of these guys. He might know of one or two in their fifties, too old for the war, who’re sitting it out in London. That would be our guy.”

“They must have a commo building here,” said Major Swagger. “We’ll go there, Leets, call your MI6 friend Outhwaithe, get him to pitch in, and get the Brits to open up to us American cowboys. Then we’ve got something. Where is this Holland & Holland?”

“That’s the funny part. London. The factory is northwest of Mayfair. About three miles from our office.”

CHAPTER 53 Nowhere

The world had emptied. Rather, his world had emptied. All the boys and girls had gone to bed, or at least to ground. Leets had not been back to the Connaught in two nights. He had vanished. The beautiful girl who was his paramour worked late, walked unerringly back to Claridge’s, and went up to her room straightaway. He never saw her new female friend again and began to worry if perhaps he’d dreamed of such a thing.

But worst of all, nobody had contacted him. With the unfortunate death of Mr. Hedgepath, he was sure that Mr. Hedgepath’s successor would reach out to him, if for no other reason than to maintain contact, to assure him that things were as they had been, that the job intended was still the job to be done. These things did change, he knew, depending on this, depending on that. That was the nature of the spies, and that was why he preferred straight business dealings with gamblers and gangsters and the occasional outraged husband. Their minds were so unsophisticated, their needs so urgent, that they only had one direction, which was straight ahead.

Not so clear with spies. Everything was fluid. Allegiances were always in flow, friendships came and went, loyalties were gossamer, the need to keep it all hushed sometimes generated ruthless disposal. Regimes changed, ministers changed, policies changed, all in a blinding flash of time, fast as a telegram from Europe. Codes were broken, arrests were made, confessions tortured out of suspects; all that came to bear or at least could bear weight on the mission as originally contracted. They hired you as an ally and in a trice you became an enemy.

He could only soldier on. After each night’s sentinel duty, he would check for the landlady’s notes and, no, there were never any messages for him. That being the case, he resolved to continue the course, finish the job, and collect the second part of his fee.

It was not easy. Engaged, he knew he was vulnerable. Sooner or later someone would notice a man so singular as he emerging from the Bond Street or Green Park tube stations or the No. 22 bus and begin walking an uncertain few blocks’ walk to Mayfair. Nobody would notice him casually, because, sensibly, each walk varied. He’d loop around Berkeley Square, he’d head over to Mayfair, then veer back down and enter from the north. He’d go to Piccadilly and come up through St. James’s Park. He never repeated himself within the week.

But, of course, the absence of pattern was pattern. If he were being watched by someone from the spies, the care with which he avoided repeating himself would be evidence of his conspiratorial intent, for no other reason would explain such wanderings, save adultery, and no one would ever confuse him for an adulterer.

It seemed even the weather had turned against him. All moisture had left the air, which meant no fog arose. Fog was his friend, and with his knowledge of the city he could penetrate and evade with almost magical ease. What a Ripper he would have made if his game had been cutting tarts!

And damn Jerry, he had by this late date given up dropping bombs on London. That meant the night was organized, quiet, observable, and that the coppers were all walking beats, looking for something to do. It would just be like one of them to note him using two routes to converge on the same spot, nick him, and find the little pistol. Nothing good could come of that one.

Then it happened. Just the littlest thing. But it arrived like a burst of sunlight from an occluded gray sky. He got home and found a note from Mrs. Pitchett-Crumpers.

“Call Brumley 2445,” it said.

CHAPTER 54 908 Harrow Road

Less than two miles northwest of 70 Grosvenor lay 908 Harrow Road, backing on a large cemetery whose rolling greenery in the bright July sun made the old building stand forth like a single black tooth. A structure from the century before, it thrust upward as a composition of squared-up brick fronted by windows that hadn’t admitted light since the queen died, dirty as the brick itself. Dickens could have toiled at the lathe in years gone by, for the firm had been around since 1835. One presumed a loading dock lay behind, but what lay in front was nothing to be noticed by any except those of the trade.

Outhwaithe had beaten them there. He lounged, smoking, on the fender of his little green toy car, but tossed the ciggie, drew up tight when Sebastian pulled in. He snapped to, saluted the major.

“Sir, Lieutenant Outhwaithe, at your service.”

Swagger threw a loose American salute back at him and said, “That’ll do it for ceremony, Lieutenant, but I will take you up on the service.”

“I believe I can accommodate, sir. I have made some calls. The chap is called Wilson, Robert Wilson. Spent the last forty-odd years in Kenya; in fact, he was there when it was still called British East Africa. He escorted your first President Roosevelt before the Great War, sir. Quite highly thought of among the professional hunters and has guided maharajahs, film stars, and even the odd famous novelist.”

“I take it there’s no hunting in Kenya now?”

“That’s right, sir. Most of the lads are off officering somewhere or other; the others have fallen back on work for the big coffee planters. Wilson was so highly admired that Holland & Holland offered him a job back here supervising their sniper rifle contract with the army.”

“Sounds like just the man. Let’s go.”

Outhwaithe led them to the door. Next to it, a much-weathered brass plaque still announced the names of Harris Holland, the uncle, and Henry Holland, the nephew, though you had to squint to read it.

Outhwaithe knocked, and in time a man — so bent and wrinkled, he might have worked on that lathe with a youthful Dickens — pulled the door inward and peeked out.

“Hullo. Lieutenant Outhwaithe of military intelligence, along with two others of the American department to see Mr. Wilson. I believe we are expected.”

“Yes, sir. Please do follow me now. Mind the steps, mind the machines on the darkened factory floor. We’re going into the long room.”

He led them through a dimmed factory floor haunted by ghostly apparitions, which would have been the tooling so important for turning out rifles among the world’s best and the world’s most expensive. Now they were shrouded and mute and gave a funereal aspect to the transit through.

A door then led to the “long room,” which by contrast was brightly lit, and at a long table five men were bent and working on what, it was clear to all present, was the British Lee-Enfield, No. 4 variation, with which the men of the empire now faced enemies across the globe. But this wasn’t just routine inspection and reassembly. This crew was hand-fitting machined parts back together after a filing to improve the fit or the trigger pull; applying a wooden cheek piece to support the shooter’s face and therefore eye at the same spot with regard to the scope; attaching a rather formidable optical mount to the piece (it looked like a tractor in fact, with two large screw heads that tightened it to the receiver so big as to resemble wheels, being mightily over-engineered as if from Victorian steel out of the Victorian imagination); and, as a final touch, laying a telescopic sight to the lower half rings of the scope mount, applying the upper half rings to enclose, then tightening all these components together with screws, screwdriver, and good English muscle. The scope itself looked rather Victorian as well: short, steel, mostly painted brass. It could cosh your jaw to splinters, properly launched. It was the famous (to some) No. 32, originally designed for the Vickers machine gun. Why that scope, ancient as it was? Because the Ministry of Defense must have had hundreds of them lying about, which is the way of ministries of defense.

In the back of the room, in a glass-walled cube of office, a man sat at a desk, clearly annoyed by the phone conversation that kept him anchored. As the old fellow brought them closer, the man on the phone nodded, waved, put up a finger to suggest this call was a major nuisance. They heard him say, “Yes, yes, Colonel, I fully agree, but to meet that deadline I… Yes, I suppose… Yes, sir, I’ll certainly see to it. Good day, sir.”

He stood and rushed out to meet them. A ruddy-looking man, with sandy hair and a stubby mustache, temples beginning to show silver. What you noticed was the color of a face baked in four decades’ worth of sun; however, being light complected, it had allowed itself to turn not brown but instead almost auburn.

“Hullo, so sorry about that: every bloody colonel wants his rifles now, you see. How are you? I’m Wilson.” He smiled, and that rearranged his face slightly, opening up the wrinkled crevices around his eyes, displaying their virgin whiteness. That meant he’d never smiled in the field over those four decades.

“Sir, I’m Outhwaithe. These are our American guests, Major Swagger, Lieutenant Leets, here to chat about elephant hunters.”

“Indeed, I’ll do my best. Happy to chip in. Tried to join the African Rifles but they told me I was too bloody infirm. Trampled by a buff some years back, and my hip’s never been the same.”

“We sympathize, sir,” said Outhwaithe. “All present, then, have been wounded in one sort of way or other in action.”

“May I suggest the tearoom? I’ve had it cleared and nobody will bother. The chaps here don’t really need me. I more or less take care of the bookkeeping and get yelled at by the various angry colonels on the phone and make sure every shipment is properly addressed.”

“Excellent,” said Major Swagger. “Please lead on.”

“I’ve had Mr. Laughlin brew up some tea. I know the Yanks prefer their coffee, but it’s hard to get in wartime.”

“Tea is fine,” said Swagger.

It was a green room, shabby-gentile, with worn leather sofas and armchairs and various heads of exotic beasts arranged to look down indifferently. It was, as are most man-only chambers, a mess, with old newspapers and half-full ashtrays everywhere. The stench of tobacco filled the air.

They arranged themselves, old Mr. Laughlin brought the tea, everyone fumbled and sweetened to taste, and then got to it.

“Please smoke if you care to, gentlemen. Everyone else here does. I’ll prepare a pipeful myself if nobody minds.”

Everyone except Leets broke out cigarettes and in seconds the room had the added appeal of the first battle of Ypres, when the Germans unleashed mustard gas.

“Lieutenant Leets,” said Swagger, “will you explain to Mr. Wilson why we’re bothering him?”

“Yes, sir.”

Leets went through it, synopsizing vigorously, stripping the narrative to its essentials: sniper kills targeting patrol leadership at early dawn, what appeared to be elephant-hunting tactics complete to the preferred Bell shot, superior fieldcraft amounting to seeming invisibility, silence and no trace or track, the inevitable stasis at the front, which had to be broken.

“I suppose if we were Russians or Japanese,” said Leets, “we’d just let our soldiers die and chalk it off to the cost of war. But it doesn’t work that way for us.”

“Nor should it,” said Wilson. “We learned that lesson the hard way in the first do with these fellows. But I believe you’ve left a lot of details out.”

“For a good reason,” said Swagger. “We’ve decided the best way to do this is to play a little game with you. Lacking those details, you will confront the issue in the abstract, rather than being influenced by them. The lieutenant will explain as acutely as possible the attributes of the fellow we believe developed, organized, and now leads this operation. We’ll see if you can ID him on traits alone.”

“Actually, I already know who it is. But do proceed, Lieutenant, as this is quite fascinating.”

“Okay,” Leets said. “Begin with the shooting. He is a superior marksman. No doubt about it; he — and most of his guys, though they are not as good, really — can hit a quarter-sized target through a scope in near darkness from two hundred yards out from a field position time after time after time. He doesn’t miss, and it doesn’t matter if you’re standing still or moving: if he fires you’re dead.”

Wilson enjoyed a mouthful of hot tobacco ingest, then expelled it, bringing the scent of cherry vanilla to the room. Swagger fought this aggression with a counter-blast of LS/MFT and the two vapors mingled and chemically mutated into something harsh yet sweet and simultaneously sweet yet harsh.

“Fieldcraft superb, as said,” continued Leets. “Plus, we infer leadership skills. He can get men to follow him. He has the gift of conviction and persuasion. We believe this makes him ‘charming,’ in some way, magnetic, big in personality and grandiosity.”

“When this chap and your Hemingway were together,” said Wilson, “it was like Barnum & Bailey or Gilbert and Sullivan, each trying to outdo the other in the role of happy king of all men.”

“If you know, should I continue?”

“Do, yes. I find this really fascinating.”

“The politics don’t matter. He knows how vile the Nazis are, what crap they spew. He’s beyond that. He just wants to do what he does best, for whatever reason. Maybe it offers freedom from his regrets. But now that the hunting is over, he’s turned to war. He went German, we think, because he had a connection. He could just as easily have ended up in this room, converting No. 4s to snipers.”

“It could be either Brix or Ernest, in fact, although their conditions are of different sorts. Ernest fears that he’s a coward. Who knows? Even I don’t. Even he doesn’t. But he at least has his art to consume him, though I believe he’ll eventually turn on himself, as he’s turned on everyone else. Brix has only his hunting.”

“Brix, then?” said Outhwaithe.

“Yes, quite. You couldn’t know his appetites, which are legendary, his sins, which are endless, and the rage he feels, which he expresses on you but means for himself. He was in love. Desperately, honestly, totally. But he couldn’t leave the oh-so-willing African girls and the bloody client wives alone. And thus he drove his wife away, to an Englishman and a divorce. I forgot to mention, he gave her syphilis. That’s why, under it all, he’s quite mad. Mad at himself, mad at you, mad at me — we were briefly partners — mad at the world, and simply mad.”

CHAPTER 55 Secret Mission

It wasn’t as if Sebastian was now off duty and could simply relax while the big boys did their business. He had a mission. It was time to go behind enemy lines.

He drove a mile south down Harrow Road, toward London’s center, and came at last to a pub called the King William IV. It had been there for centuries and from outside appeared not to have been refurbed since Lord Cardigan complained about the claret.

The young man parked on a side street, went to the trunk, opened it, peeled off his T/5 jacket, and slipped on another jacket, almost identical, except that it wore the oakleaf of a major and its rainbow of dillydangles on the chest indicated a heroic careen through war localities, with distinction at every front. He popped on an overseas cap, that little envelope of a cap known to everyone who’s ever seen it as a — well, never mind. It too announced a major, not a tech 5. Now he was fully costumed in the uniform of the enemy. Apprehension meant instant execution — well, probably not, but at least mild remonstrance from someone who frankly didn’t give a damn. Still, undercover is undercover.

He crossed Harrow, entered William IV’s hangout, a typically dark space with typical posters urging victory, observed all that was typical for any four-hundred-year-old beer joint and that which was not. Which was not included another American officer sitting at a table, pretending to enjoy a glass of the brown petroleum by-product the Brits call beer. Ugh.

Waves, typically American, smiles the same, handshakes even more so, then sit down.

A cankled maid from the J. Arthur Rank British Frump department approached, and he pointed to the disturbing tower of foamless, gelid aspic his countryman was drinking and reluctantly agreed to the same.

“Have you gotten used to their beer, Jack?” he asked his companion, Jack Middleton, Major, attached to OSS at Milton Hall, which trained and supplied all the hugger mugger stuff various commando types were charged with bringing off, including Jeds.

“This batch tastes like they at least pushed it through the filter down at the Shell refinery,” Jack said, “so I don’t think you could run a tank on it like most of the other.”

“Better not get too close to it with your cigarette. ‘Mystery Blast’ Kills 17 on Harrow Road,’ that sort of thing.”

“I don’t think it would explode,” said Jack, “but it might burp. Anyhow, got the you-know?”

“You know I’ve got the you-know. Do you have the you-know?”

“You know I have the you-know.”

The twelve-stone-five lass brought the glass. Sebastian steeled himself for a courtesy gulp, fearing anti-American riots would break out if he left it untouched.

It took its time allowing itself to move, but — finally propelled by the gravity of a tipped glass — an ounce or so passed into his fearful mouth. It tasted like the Battle of Culloden from the mud’s point of view.

“Yummy,” he said. “I might take another sip in the fifties, if we’re still here. Now, how about some nice fish shit? They do a great fish shit here.”

“Thanks, I’m saving room for my two hundred and forty-third consecutive pineapple upside down cake at the officers’ mess tonight.”

“Okay,” said Sebastian, mindful of the time, “maybe now we know no MPs are around, we could do the transfer.”

Jack kicked a briefcase over. Sebastian pretended to drop something, maybe a piece of beer, and bent over. Peering in, he saw exactly what he needed to see.

“Tell me how that stuff is going to win the war,” said Jack.

“I can’t. I don’t know.”

“Then tell me why the guy doesn’t just requisition it out of 70 Grosvenor supply? It’s not exactly a city-busting bomb. I’m sure they’ve got it.”

“He’s odd that way. Doesn’t want anybody to know what he’s up to.”

“So it’s as big a mystery as ‘Who the hell was William IV?’ and ‘Is Major Swagger really a major?’ ”

“Can’t answer the first one,” said Sebastian. “I never heard of him either. As for number two, here’s your answer.”

With his right hand, he pushed over a folded batch of bills. Hardly the crime of the century: a hundred bucks.

A few more ingestions of the, er, “beer,” and it was time to go. Again, it went smooth as syrup on nylon, and each went his merry way back to other duties.

But Sebastian couldn’t get over it.

What the fuck could Major Swagger want with ten one-ounce bottles of LePage glue and ten ordinary G.I.-issue Bulova wristwatches?

CHAPTER 56 Brix

“Minor Swedish aristocracy,” said Wilson. “Nine hundred fifty-third in succession for the crown, that was his joke. Some, not a lot, of family money. Natural hunter. Hunting father, grew up the in the north, amid rifles and heads on the wall. Had killed all his Swedish game by the age of twelve. Met Karen at eighteen, married her at twenty-one, went to Africa at twenty-two, supposedly to run a coffee plantation. That failed; he was no businessman.

“Odd thing here is that she herself was quite distinguished — not as a hunter, though she did, but as a writer. You may know her by her pen name, you may have heard of her books. In certain circles, highly regarded. In certain circles, he’s only her first husband, known as the ‘Mistake.’ So you have a strange combination of superb hunting skill, crushed romanticism, bitter, perhaps crippling, loss all hidden behind a convincing outer mask of joviality, collegiality, and damned fun. And everybody in the circle loved Brix.”

“The name is—” asked Leets.

“Yes, of course. Briks von Osterlund. Called Brix by all. Solid, strong, handsome, but not in that prissy film-star way. Handsome in solid, dependable ways. Flynn could never play him. Maybe Gary, though I’d have to see some lurking darkness in Gary.”

“Please proceed, Mr. Wilson,” said Swagger.

“Well, not much to tell. For a while, as a professional hunter, fantastically successful. Everyone in the client circle had to have a safari with Brix, then had to do gin fizzes with him at the Norfolk Hotel. Became used to being loved, admired, even adored — by both men and women. I do believe when they write the history of empires, they will leave out the true motivation. Not profit, not land, not power, but sexual license. Certain men — maybe all, but only certain have the means — yearn to escape the homeland’s propriety and are drawn to the edges, the frontiers, there to pretend at one thing while pursuing another.”

“So there was a lot of—” started Leets, to be interrupted by Wilson’s, “Yes. Quite.”

“Brix among the worst. It cost him gravely. It cost him Karen, for a few paltry orgasms with unworthy women. Hence, his epic regret. However, let me press on. Major, I suspect your real and only question would be: Is Brix capable of putting such a thing as you describe together? My answer, without qualm or remorse, is: Absolutely. He cannot sit in Stockholm and rot out in pain. Like any man of action, he is at his best when he has a mission. The stalk and kill would release him from memory. He must proceed. He cannot stultify. Action is life; inaction is death. And don’t forget, a certain infection is eating away at his brain, making it far more emotional, far less sensible. I saw a lot of that among the old African hands. And, of course, he had drinking problems already. Conceiving and engineering of this would save his life.”

“There are other hunters,” asked Swagger. “Do you have any thoughts on them?”

“You can see how his brand of capability, charm, and adventurousness would appeal to the young. I can give you the names of several of the younger Swedes, possibly sons of former clients, rich-second-son adventurers who came to be his boys, if you like.”

“Probably not necessary,” said Swagger.

“Have you solved the mystery of his rifle?” asked Wilson. “It would be a key here.”

“We believe it’s a Swedish Mauser sniper rifle; they call it a Model 41, 6.5x55. I’d put it the number one sniper rifle in the world, with apologies to your Enfield No. 4 (T).”

“The Swede is a superb cartridge, a superb rifle. When they are finally surplussed, many customs will be built on them. As for the cartridge, one cannot do better for thin-skinned animals.”

“I do have one basic question left,” Swagger said. “What are his flaws? What mistakes will he make? What can he be counted on to do wrong?”

“Have you hunted, Major? I’d bet you have.”

“I grew up with rifles and heads also. The heads were white-tail deer, occasional black bear, some big mountain cats. I went with my father every year to camp. I hope to take a son to the same camp when this is over and teach him the same lessons.”

“Then you know the hunter’s way, his patience, his need for boundaries and rules. Those make the chase ethical and meaningful. Those are so deep in us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Brix will play by those rules, in all except for one circumstance. It’s something only the Germans have a term for. Only the Germans, connoisseur of the grotesque, would have a word for. But I’ve seen it, I’ve had it, I’ve defeated it. I’m guessing you have as well. The term is Blut verrückt.”

He drew more cherry vanilla into his throat, then expelled it into pungent, moistened, clinging vapor. He thought the concept deserved such ceremony.

“Meaning ‘blood-crazy,’ ” he explained. “It happens. One shoots the animal, but it does not go down. It bolts. One must pursue into the brush, as honor demands. One follows, knowing that brush hunting is highly dangerous. At last a dribble of blood. Then another. Each is bigger until ‘dribble’ no longer applies. Finally it’s a puddle, a lake. You are elated. You have lived up to the standard of the one-shot kill. You are saved from your malfeasance, lifted from your purgatory, elated with your success. You see a clearing ahead and the blood leads you there. You know what you will find: the creature, dead. Or in the last stages of bleeding out, so that your coup de grâce is a necessary mercy. Boldly, confidently, you step into the clearing. Of course he is there. But not down. Men’s vanities preclude them from being realistic about how much blood circulates, especially in an elephant. He is no dying beast but the fully enraged bull, and he knows it’s you who’ve slain him. Now it’s his turn.”

“Had it happen with a cat once,” said Swagger. “I saw the big pool of blood and was sure I had him. I rushed in and there he was. I got him in mid-leap, feeling his breath. When he hit me, he was dead. You think this Brix is inclined to blood-craziness?”

“I’ve seen him fall prey to it more than he should. I have to say, it was my Holland .570 Nitro Express that saved him once. Had I not fired, perhaps we would not be here and all those boys would not be dead.”

“You had to fire,” said Swagger. “That’s the point, after all.”

“If you face him, perhaps knowing of Blut verrückt and his weakness for it will be of help. I do wish you luck,” said Wilson. “I’m sure you’re a capable man, but Brix is the best in the world.”

“No, sir,” said Leets. “Major Swagger is the best in the world.”

CHAPTER 57 Deceptions

Back in the car again, prowling through a fair London evening at twilight, Major Swagger said, “All right, Sebastian. You take Lieutenant Leets back to the hotel, then you drop me at the office. I want to belt out a draft on my tactical plan. Leets, see that girl of yours tonight. It might be a while before you get another chance.”

“Sir, she’s off with Colonel Bruce tonight at some shindig. I’d happily help on the draft.”

“No, I need you alert. Have a drink in the bar, get some sleep. You too, Sebastian. That’s an order.”

“Yes, sir,” said Leets.

After he was dropped, Swagger said to Sebastian, “You got the stuff from the Milton Hall guy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now forget everything I said to Leets. Drop me at the office. I’ve got a phone call to make. Then, I hope, you drive me to Bushy Park. I’ll be there all night. You’ll have to catch your shut-eye in the car. Or maybe they can find you a cot.”

“Yes, sir,” said Sebastian. “No problem, but… I have to ask: Is there some reason you’re not informing Lieutenant Leets that—”

“Yes,” said Swagger, “and if you needed to know, you’d know.”

“Yes, sir,” said the young man.

In his office, Swagger got a card out of his wallet with a phone number and made his call.

“Bushy Park Headquarters,” came the answer.

“First Army liaison, please,” he said.

“One moment, sir.”

It was close to ten, but he assumed they were running a twenty-four-hour shop: it was a war, after all, and it went on all the time. And they were.

“First Army, Sergeant Guthrie.”

“Guthrie, this is Major Swagger, Grosvenor Street. I need to speak to Colonel McBain as quickly as possible.”

“Sir, he’s—”

“Wherever he is, Guthrie, find him. He’ll want to take this call. I’m at London, Lincoln 5990. That’s a direct line, no need to go through the switchboard.”

“Yes, sir.”

It took ten minutes until the phone rang.

“Swagger,” he said.

“Yes, Major. McBain here.”

“Yes, sir. In about an hour, possibly two, I’m going to arrive. I would like a dictationist to take down the tactical plan I’m going to relate and hoping for you to move it up the chain ASAP. It has to go up fast for General Bradley’s approval so that it’ll come down fast. I looked at the long-term forecasts and I believe heavy weather is due on 22, 23, 24 July. I’d like to get this done quickly because in the rain everything is paralyzed, nothing happens, and I know we’re getting closer and closer to whatever big operation you have planned.”

“Good judgment, Swagger. Obviously the details are embargoed but indeed something of that nature is on the schedule, and it’s imperative that your operation precede it.”

“I should add, sir, that there are some things for your ears only that I don’t want on paper. Some contingencies have to be planned for on a security basis, and that whole initiative is defeated if the plans are put on paper and circulated to SHAEF and all others on the normal distribution routes.”

“There’s no such thing as too much security,” said the colonel.

CHAPTER 58 Wilson

Would this be the night? It felt like it.

Before him, Wilson had two tools. One was a half-full bottle of Haig Scotch — he’d already knocked back the first half — and the other was the Webley Mark IV .455 revolver his brother had carried at the Somme, only to die in 1924 of esophageal cancer. Funny, what? The German Empire killed twenty thousand that day, but it missed Captain James Morley Wilson. A cluster of insane cells, invisible to all except men with microscopes, does the job better eight years later. Jamie was philosophical. He said from the hospital bed where his wife and brother had come to support him, “I suppose one owes God a death, eh? He takes it when he wants it, nothing a chap can do. So do remember me around the campfires and do now and again take a taste of something stronger than water to conjure me, if only for the second, out of the night into which I have passed. That’s all one can ask.”

Jamie was the bravest man he’d ever known, and he’d known many brave men. He supposed he himself was among them, for the lions that had taken him down, the buffs that had stomped him, the crocs that had ripped slashes into his leg (thank God for the Webley that day!). Survived it all. And for what?

That was this evening’s question, to be answered in the depths of the bottle or the muzzle energy of the Webley. What has it all meant? He had reached the conclusion it had meant nothing: he was useless. Now, with a war, he had so much to contribute of skills and courage and shooting, to bring the hunting imperative to the battlefield, and inspire. Yet he could not. They would not let him. They laughed at him: old man, buggered hip, muttering about Africa, even getting retired officers to call in and vouch for him. He was officially useless. If this was the night he chose the Webley’s half-inch wad of lead, the Times would give him a paragraph. Some millionaires and their wives in New York or Mayfair or Hollywood or Baghdad would say, “I say, old Wilson did himself in. Imagine that! The fellow seemed so hardy on the last hunt. Just goes to show, you don’t know a damned thing, really, do you?” and return to their vodka tonics or martinis or whatever.

The job he had was meaningless. It gave H&H license to use his name and evoke the old Kenya in hopes that after the war, the hunting would return, and Robert Wilson — worked for H&H during the war, didn’t he, on their sniper rifles? Yes, good sport — would restore some luster to the sport and perhaps attract some of his formerly glamorous friends, on the illusion they’d still be glamorous.

Wilson knew what silliness that was. Most of the rich ones he cliented about were quite stupid. They had no idea what they were doing, no appreciation for the creatures they hunted. They were only there because going safari was one of the things a certain set had to do, out of the fashion of the thing, not the meaning, to show off immense disposable income, not courage or character.

This was another argument in favor of nothingness. Helping some dim cinema star or ancient banker’s idle son pot a lion did the lion, the only honorable participant in the ceremony, no good. In fact, all clients were Frances Macomber, fatuous shells with wet-loined, formerly beautiful wives who needed (both of them) to tell other meaningless swells at Cap d’Antibes. It had really just been a stunt for publicity, but its only true meaning was that Ernest’s father-in-law was rich.

So many years ago with President Teddy, it was different. Teddy was far and above the best of the Americans. Superb shot, unflinchingly brave, without complaint, the stamina of a plow horse, he shot his dreadful rifle brilliantly, the last out of loyalty to the American marque Winchester, which had produced a lever action behemoth of sharp corners and wretched angles and fearsome recoil in a far-too-powerful iteration called .405.

“Mr. President, I’d happily make loan of my .570 Nitro from H&H; it’s engineered in such a way as to not butcher you when you fire.”

“Thanks, Wilson, but one thing I mean to prove out here is the superiority of our American gun, even if it’s a fantasy. I’m sworn to Winchester and told Thomas Gray Bennett, the sahib of the firm, the same. So I’ll shoot the damned thing, no matter if my damned arm falls off and my damned shoulder turns the color of a grapefruit left for rot in the Florida sun for two damned weeks. Just have the boys bring something wet, warm, and soft, preferably not a woman, as I am married, to apply to my arm.”

So that one had some meaning. Was it the last? He searched but could only remember various degrees of Frances Macombers and would-be Hemingways among the Americans and even more piggish behaviors among the damned Feringhees. No, wait. Gary was fine. More cowboy than actor. Behaved, realized his good fortune, a disciplined shot, and a chap who got the code that Hemingway only blathered about.

He made another dent in the Scotch. It burned — it was a good burn — going down. The blur was commendable, the way everything fell from focus, as was the further distancing of cause from effect. This enabled him to pick up the gigantic revolver.

Not a good thing to play with a loaded revolver when one is mostly potted. Accidents that weren’t quite accidents had a way of happening. If he were to do it, he wanted to do it hard and real, not haphazardly, cajoling himself into oblivion and pretending to be surprised in the moment the bullet entered his brain.

The revolver was a stout British concoction, and its over-engineered Victorian solutions to problems others had solved far more elegantly gave it a particularly clumsy affect. It broke down the middle for access to the cylinder, and one then inserted six .455 cartridges, big as duck’s eggs they were, into the chambers. It was snapped shut.

To fire, one had to draw back the hammer until it clicked or draw back on the strength of one finger on the trigger, which was like pulling a rake through gravel. Could be done in haste, if Zulus or Huns were upon one, but most people preferred to use the off hand for setting the hammer first, perhaps enjoying the smoothness of the rearward draw of the spur and the satisfying click as it locked into place. Thus was the revolver made ready to fire.

He flicked a lever behind the cylinder, opened the revolver. Six yawning holes faced him. From a yellowish box at least ten years old he withdrew, one after another, six of the duck’s eggs and slid them in place. Again they found their position with a satisfying thump. He closed the thing. Satisfying click. His thumb went to hammer, drew it back. Solid, impressive click, perhaps a little vibration as it locked back.

Now it was lethal and volatile at once. The drama of the loaded and more-than-loaded, cocked gun sent a buzz through him. It would take but a moment to press it to his temple and, with the slightest pressure to the trigger, let the hammer fly. A hundredth of a second would remain in the short, unhappy life of Robert Wilson, professional hunter, failed brother, useless drunk; then the hammer would strike a primer, which would ignite the powder, which would produce a tidal wave of pressure and drive the bullet into the—

What was it?

A signal attempted to reach him from far off. What could it be? He could not die without knowing. He had to find the source of this last personal Nile. He uncocked the revolver, restoring the hammer to its supine situation, opened the thing, thereby ejecting (one magical touch of Webley’s otherwise thunderous clumsiness) all six deadly duck’s eggs from the chamber, three landing on the table, three on the floor.

What?

From where?

He looked at the bloody thing. What was it trying to tell him? Well, more Scotch, obviously. He obliged — obviously.

The revolver was broken almost totally in half, joined only at a certain low point by a hinge. It had been for all intents and purposes sundered. What was in that, what could it mean, what on earth…?

It was almost like a take-apart, a take-apart being a rifle that could itself be taken apart into two halves, unlatched and unscrewed, for the hunter’s convenience in travel or other possible applications. Why was this suddenly resonant to him?

Take-apart? Why in God’s name was he suddenly consumed with an image of a take-apart rifle.

And then he had it.

A salvation. A meaning.

CHAPTER 59 Flares

Gary was shaking him awake.

“Jesus, they’re here!” he was yelling. “They’re coming!”

Archer fought the fog of sleep and Gary disappeared, but they were still here. They were Germans.

The man shaking him was named Rossi. Archer was sleeping in a hole wrapped in a blanket, filthy, unshaven, basically miserable. It was dead fucking night, and the fatigue gurgled through every vein and artery in his body. He was hungry. He was cold. Then he figured it out.

He bolted upright, hearing the percussion of small-arms fire, most of it automatic, coming at him. Fuck fuck fuck fuck oh, fuck!

He grabbed the grease gun — somehow, he’d never quite gotten around to shipping it back to battalion — and rolled to the line.

He saw tracers floating in from a far hedgerow. They looked like New Year’s Eve streamers sheathed in pixie dust, separating into burning blimps as they approached. He saw bubbles, sparks, embers, pinwheels. He saw ghosts — apparitions, phantoms, miasmas, haunts, whatever — seeming to float through the field.

A mortar shell detonated behind him, then three more as the Germans diddled with the range, each blast turning his ears to ding-dong hell, each one releasing a devil wind of shock and grit.

He looked up and down the Dog Company line. No McKinney.

Then he remembered. McKinney sickbay, twisted ankle, needed to wrap it and stay off it for forty-eight. He looked for Blikowicz, the corporal, now in command, but saw him trying to assemble the BAR he had been cleaning. Who the fuck was in charge? The lieutenant was somewhere else, wherever, but not here. Were there other sergeants? He couldn’t remember. It was all messy in his mind, which was basically occupied with controlling the I-do-not-want-to-die panic.

“Shit, let’s get out of here!” someone screamed.

Mortar.

“There’s thousands of ’em!”

Mortar.

“Come on, for Christ’s sakes, retreat.”

Mortar.

“Get to your foxholes!” Archer heard someone yelling, amazed next to discover it was him. “Get the fuck up, get to your foxholes. Radio, call Battalion, ask for artillery. You guys, come the fuck ON!”

As if to lead by example, he threw himself at the lip of his own ragged hole, cranked the bolt on the grease gun, felt it snap to readiness, and fired a long burst. It bucked, it flashed, it spat empty shells, it rattled the leaves of the trees in which they’d dug their line of foxholes. Who knew if it hit anything but air, but it cleared his mind.

“O’Malley, get that gun in action,” he yelled to the machine-gun pit nearby on the left. “Have your assistant gunner get flares up! We need illumination now! God dammit, now, get off your ass.”

One by one, Dog Company’s reluctant warriors seemed to come to the firing line.

A flare popped finally, turning all to orange, wobbly surrealism as it descended, swinging, on its parachute. In its lurid glow it seemed the whole German army came at him. He fired again, saw targets go down.

“Come ON, god dammit.”

“I’m up,” said Blikowicz.

“Blik, take that gun down the line and set up. They may have run another squad down behind that hedgerow and it’s going to jump us.”

“On it, guy,” said Blik, and turned, pulling his gunner along.

Still, the Germans came.

Still, the mortars fell.

Still, the air was alive with the sound of extremely nasty hummingbirds with ARCHER written on every single one of them. Dust and atomized bark flew where they connected with the natural world. It got crazy.

Still, smoke drifted.

Still a flare popped, brighter this time.

“Open up. Come on, god dammit, lay down your fire. Throw a grenade.”

At that point, the machine gunner, O’Malley, joined the circus. He let off a long burst, traversing the meadow full of Germans. Counter-fire drifted at him, looping German tracer, ripsawing the dirt where they struck. Close, they ran across the American .30 position, shutting it down, but O’Malley was up and back on his gun. He hit a tight cluster of dark shapes, spinning them outward like pins after a meet-up with a bowler’s ball.

The Dogs had finally achieved some sort of coherent firebase. The smack of Garands, the snap of dink-ass carbines rolled like waves. A few yards down, Blik’s BAR found targets attempting to flank. Nobody stood up to Blik.

And then it was over.

Another flare.

Where had they gone? In this field, the sprawled or bunched bodies of Germans lay thick, like some dark, shapeless vegetable. Gun smoke hazed the air, smelling of sulfur and burning leaves. Shadows danced a crazy jitterbug and everything wobbled because the flare wobbled.

Someone next to him put a radio phone in his hands.

“Dog Two, this is White Six. Come in, Dog Two.”

“Dog Two,” Archer said.

“Sitrep, Dog Two.”

“They hit us in company strength. We managed to drive them back. I see bodies all over. We may have taken some casualties, not sure yet.”

“Dog Two, get your wounded to pickup point, keep the flares burning all night, stay on the line. We’ll come up with artillery fire mission if they come back.”

“Wilco, White Six.”

“Good job, Dog Two.”

He put the phone down.

“Casualties?” he cried.

“One dead, four wounded, two pretty bad.”

“Okay, four guys on stretcher crews, any four. Get the bad wounded back to the pickup point ASAP. Ambulance on the way.”

“Yes, sir,” said someone.

“Hey, College,” said the guy named Rossi, from some scary city in the east, “who the fuck put you in charge?”

“Your dago ass breathing air and not dirt puts him in charge,” said Blikowicz. “And if you don’t like it, come see me and we’ll discuss it.”

Blikowicz: 190 pounds of cast-iron coal miner from western Pennsylvania. Hands like hammers, arms like axles, full of guts to the eyebrows. Needless to say, nobody cared to discuss it.

CHAPTER 60 Questions

They sat in the colonel’s office. Late, so very late. Cigarette smoke, dead butts in an overflowing ashtray, dead mugs of coffee making rings on furniture. Two tired men trying to finish it up, desperate to finish it up.

The clerk typist sat in the next room, hoping he was done for the night. But for now, forgotten, he merely sat in the indifference of officers.

“All right, Major,” said the colonel, “I’ve gone through it, made some notes. I will now play devil’s advocate, as I’m sure General Bradley, or more likely certain ambitious members of his staff, will play with me when I present it.”

“Go ahead, sir,” said Swagger.

“First and most obvious, why go to all this trouble and deception? Seems easier to give a Mustang recon squadron the job of low-level photo missions over the Norman forests. Then interpretation officers could locate the site under the trees, particularly as you believe it to be between Saint-Gilles and Marigny, just beyond VII Corps sector. Next step: a squadron of B-17s each with eight five-hundred-pounders. Next step: a squadron of Jugs, each with eight .50s and twelve 2.5-inch rockets. Mission accomplished. Wouldn’t that be faster and more efficient?”

“In my opinion, sir, no, sir. I hate to keep repeating myself, but—”

“Go ahead, repeat away. Consider me an idiot who needs everything explained twice. I’d rather you think me an idiot than General Bradley.”

“Yes, sir. To repeat, these men have spent most of their lives and all of their imaginations hunting, and all of its skills are instinctive to them. They will camouflage so effectively that no Mustang jock is going to see them and no photo interp genius is going to pick them out. Instead, the planes will hit less well-camouflaged German field hospitals, kitchen units, logistics dumps, fuel tanks, the sort of auxiliary structure any army needs. You’ll destroy them, thinking you’ve accomplished something, and you’ve accomplished nothing except to alert the hunters that you’ve got an idea they’re there, so perhaps they change their tactics. Maybe they infiltrate our positions and take out a lot of field-grade officers. Maybe they form a murder squad and go after either Eisenhower or Bradley. Think what that does to troop morale, just when you need it for your big attack.”

The colonel sighed.

“Okay, good. Now, next, weapon choice. Our experience has been that our most effective weapon against the sniper has been the rifle grenade, then the bazooka. No direct hit or skilled marksmanship needed. You, against doctrine, plan to deploy the Browning automatic rifle.”

“Yes, sir. With tracer. Both the bazooka and the rifle grenade have crude aiming systems and it’ll still be quite dark. Both distance and even windage — both the rocket and the grenade, being slow movers, are prone to wind deflection — are factors best handled in full daylight, so it all adds up to mean I have no confidence in their ability to get on the target. A good BAR man can walk his tracers onto it in three shots and continue to fire for effect when he gets there. The assistant hands him a mag, he puts another twenty there. Might as well get out of the .30-caliber all that it offers, which is high accuracy, high velocity, high penetration. It’ll chew through any vegetation, even trees. Unless our bad guy is behind concrete, he’s going to get tagged in the swarm of .30s we lay on him.”

“Last, given the breadth of the problem, why launch from the VII Corps sector? Why not more men, go wider, bring in troops from VIII Corps?”

“I want to make it easy on them. No logistics, no travel, meaning no transportation. If we put ten patrols out over a narrow front into the no-man’s-land before VII Corps, we draw the hunters. There are only ten of them. They’ve never hit more than ten targets in a single night. So I’m putting together something that’s too tempting to resist. Hunters have a nose for the herd.”

“All right. Now, about this other stuff: the distribution, the speed, the—”

“It relates to certain realities in OSS, sir. I only want tactical plans going there via one source. Easier to control.”

“All right, you know it, it’s your call. I’m going to grab some shut-eye, then hop an L-4 and see the general personally. I hope to have your authorization by tomorrow by 1500. I’d stand ready to move.”

CHAPTER 61 The Rifle

“Matthias, Brendt. Clean your rifles as I clean mine.”

“Brix, we cleaned them before our journey and have not fired them since,” said Matthias — or was it Brendt? All these months, he still wasn’t sure.

“I don’t care. Clean again. You will engage tonight and you do not want to die because of a filthy rifle. If you die, it should be because of bad luck and enemy skill, not your own idiocy.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Watch me. Emulate me. I have all responsibilities on my shoulders: to you, to your fathers, to the others, to the Germans, to duty, to survival. Yet, amid that, I clean my rifle. Do you see? Do you understand? Come, join me, we shall have a little party here.”

Each had before him a Swedish Mauser Model 1896, though hand-selected for accuracy at the factory. It was a long, slender weapon, without the hulk of other rifles used by snipers most of the world over. It fired a bullet not of .308 or .312 or .324 dimension, as did the Garand and Springfield, the Enfield .303 and the Gewehr 98, but of .264. The physics to that reality meant that, its weight much reduced, it was propelled through the air much faster. The bullet was also, compared to them, quite long, which meant the barrel rifling grooves spun it more rigorously, which made it more accurate. At the same time, all things being equal, it had a much lighter recoil signature, so that no one feared it, dreaded shooting it, grew to hate it.

That was the cartridge, which, superb though it was, was nevertheless meaningless without a rifle with which to shoot. Hence the Mauser of 1896, said to be among the most ingenious of Herr Mauser’s many variations of bolt-actions over the years when the world was arming up for its first big dance. But it was also long and, in comparison to the sturdier conceits of the service rifle 1939 on, rather old-fashioned in appearance. Only the Russian weapon, the Mosin-Nagent, rivaled it as seeming to come from an entirely different design aesthetic as well as an earlier century.

Swedish steel, German design, German optics — four-power Ajack, probably the best in the war — it was a rifle that was clearly intended for marksmanship from behind cover and implicitly suggested the Swedish contentment with self and lack of ambition to invade others. It was designed to shoot enemy officers — Danes, Norwegians, Russians, Germans, whichever — at three hundred meters, and the long steel-cored bullet had been designed to penetrate the heavy wool layers that winter warfare would mandate, search out and puncture those juicy little bags full of blood in the dark interior of the body. The rifles having been constructed with loving care by the anal-retentives of the Carl Gustav Arsenal (in business since 1812), it was a superb instrument of long-range death, though not so much fun for climbing hills under fire.

As with all Mausers, the bolt slid out with the simple manipulation of a lever on the left of the receiver. No more disassembly required. The barrel was then reamed with cotton swabs soaked in solvent, which dissolved any residue from previous firings. The swab was replaced with a steel brush, any stubborn residue was vanquished, and another swab removed all traces. Bore: shiny bright. The rails of the bolt were then scabbed with a brush, again in search of residue. No worry of burrs or cracks, for the steel was too high in quality. A squirt of oil into the trigger mechanism distributed the lubricity of that unguent to all necessary surfaces. The bolt was slid back into place with that satisfying click so seductive to the people of the gun, and the weapon was ready to do any job its agent was capable of doing.

“All screws, make certain they’re tightened. Nothing can be loose. Check the elevation dial under the scope. Easy for it to slip, and then you have a miss. Check your notebooks to make certain it’s properly adjusted. Check the tape on the sling so you have no rattle. Do one hundred snap fires to make certain your trigger finger has recovered its discipline from the long time between shots. Do stretching exercises so that you are limber for the journey. Check your packs, make certain you have foodstuffs for a longer trip if something should preclude your return to the jactstuga. Say your prayers to our Lord and Savior. Swear allegiance to our fine king, Gustav V. Genuflect to the wonder of our extraordinary country. Sing hymns of praise to your fathers, who raised you in splendor and freedom and encouraged you to become what you became. Save a special thanks for the fine woman who birthed you and nursed you and to any siblings who came before or after you and in either case helped you to become what you became.”

The boys rolled eyes and shuffled to show their mild annoyance, slightly upset that they were still boys and not yet soldiers, but obeyed.

“Now, sleep,” commanded Brix. “It will be a busy night. And tomorrow, having done our job, we shall begin our return.”

CHAPTER 62 The Apex

The call wasn’t the one they’d been hoping for, not yet. It came at 1400 hours from Outhwaithe at MI6, for Leets, who then handed it to Swagger.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

“Ah, I’ve had a call from Mr. Wilson. He’s thought of something else and would most urgently like to see you.”

“It’s a little late, Lieutenant. We’re on standby for orders.”

“Actually, I suggested that he motor over. He’s now at Berkeley Square, two streets away. West bench. Perhaps you’ve time to meet him there. I know what this is about, and I do think it’s of merit.”

Swagger looked at his watch.

“Okay, I’ll head over there quickly. But we may get the call-out at any second.”

“Yes, sir.”

Swagger hung up. “Sebastian, if we get the nod before I get back, you and Leets pick me up. I’ll be at Berkeley Square with Mr. Wilson.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s Wilson. Needs to see me,” he told Leets. “Not sure why but should check it out.”

He covered the two streets to the square rapidly. London, mid July: maybe weather was incoming, but no sign of it yet. Sky blue and mild, a sweet breeze, some sway to every branch and leaf in sight, no damage visible on the way over, so it was like the old London, the London of All That, which the First War had said good-bye to. Swagger passed a bobby; a couple of American airmen; someone who had to have been either a Spitfire pilot, a dam buster, or an actor playing either; women, all attractive, though he’d exiled that part of his brain to China or possibly even Pluto until The War was over.

He entered the park, saw Wilson sitting alone on a bench down the walk, and noted the place otherwise to be empty. He walked over.

“Mr. Wilson.”

“Major, hullo, hullo, so glad you could join me,” Wilson said, rising. He was in a droopy tweed suit the color of the heather, and a bucket hat picked in its own tweed to clash riotously with the suit. A dingy plaid tie held an otherwise indifferent shirt together. “I do appreciate the pressures you’re under, but possibly I have some aid for you.”

When they both sat on the bench, under the splendid shade of a splendid plane tree, Swagger noted that a leather case, perhaps twelve inches by twenty-four, had been lifted to the man’s lap. By the burnish of it and the sparkle of the brass fittings, he suspected it was something at the higher end.

“I believe, or so I have inferred, you are going on a hunt after the sniper.”

“That seems to be the general direction,” said Swagger.

“Well, though I’ve witnessed the building of four thousand Enfield Ts, I’m not sold on it for that sort of work. It’s heavy, the screws can easily slip a bit, the telescope and mount were designed for a machine gun, and our .303 is not by nature any sort of target finder. Nor can I quite get on the Garand rifle thing your chaps have come up with.”

“It’s an abomination,” said Swagger. “I tried to find a scoped Springfield, but they’re mostly in Marine hands these days.”

“I thought, ‘If the major is bush-hunting Brix, who’s already got leverage on account of the accuracy of his weapon, why make things worse? Why not make them better? And, indeed, better is what Holland & Holland does quite well.”

He unbuttoned the case and lifted the lid. In two pieces, a bolt-action rifle lay in compartments well secured against a red velvet cushioning. The raised lid displayed three labels, the most prominent of which bore the heraldic imprint of the maker, its shop address at 98, New Bond Street, London, W.1., which actually was but a few streets away from where they sat under the Berkeley Square trees.

“We call it a take-apart. You see the convenience. Instead of wearing it on a sling about the shoulder, an impediment to fast movement in tight places and also in the way as you should surely have a Thompson along for closer matters, you can withdraw from your rucksack the stock and the action, fit them together by an ingenious hook action our chaps have invented. There, suddenly, from nowhere, you would have what I’m certain is the best stalking rifle in the world: light, handy, eerily accurate.”

Two red-yellow boxes of Kynoch ammunition were included in the box’s treasures, among the cleaning rod, a tin of oil, and some rags and patches. Swagger bent to read the information.

“We call it the .240 Apex,” said Wilson. “As a man of the rifle, you’ll appreciate it. In actual caliber, 245, in shell a flanged magnum, in bullet one hundred grains of soft-nose, in velocity around — I think this will please you — three thousand feet per second.”

“Wow,” said Swagger, indeed pleased.

“We came up with it in 1920 for thin-skinned African plains game. The heavier guns were difficult to snap-shoot well. Reports from Africa have been enthusiastic, and I have dropped and seen many drop an impala at range with just that rifle.”

“What’s the scope?”

“The scope is our own, extremely well-made from German glass and Birmingham steel. Four times magnification. As you can see it is already locked in place, hence no need to adjust each time in and out of the box. I’ve zeroed in on our range to my eye; perhaps in the field you’ll have time to dial it to yours. But it can put five in an inch at one hundred yards with the Kynoch.”

“Seems just about perfect.”

“This is what we call a Best Gun. Much care has been put into it by men who’ve been doing this sort of thing for half a century. Thus the wood is exhibition grade, with gorgeous figure running through it at high shine, the checkering perfect in execution, the metal highly polished, and every single piece hand-placed to assure perfect fit and function.”

Swagger’s eyes ate the thing up. He knew a fine rifle when he saw one, and with its mellow rhythms of blond woven through the wood, its precision of construction, and its perfect grace of design, he understood in a second he was seeing the extraordinary. As would any rifleman, he thought: I want to shoot it.

“Far from cheap at thirty-five pounds to the customer and he’s happy to wait a year for his to arrive. This is yours now, as my contribution to the war. My morale is not your responsibility, but the idea of pitching in with more than imprecations to king and country, plus checking shipping labels and dealing with the odd buggered-off lieutenant colonel, has great meaning to me.”

“Mr. Wilson, I’d happily accept this as a loan. In certain circumstances, including the one I’m headed into, it could be the absolutely right medicine. But only on the proviso that afterwards, if both it and I are still around, you let me return it.”

“That sir,” said the old hunter, “would be a privilege. This one is new, one of the last civilian orders the factory completed before the war. Its original owner, I’m afraid to say, has perished. North African desert, tanks. So it has been sitting in our gun vault since then, waiting for the war to end and a well-heeled American cinema star to appear. It has not yet been blooded.”

“I hear you,” said Swagger.

“Do blood it, please, Major.”

CHAPTER 63 Pisser

Mr. Raven waited. Nothing.

But he was not waiting for Leets and the girl. He was not in Mayfair. He was actually in the Cheltenham tube station, there by order of direction from a strange voice on the Brompton exchange.

The bloke had said: “Men’s loo, Cheltenham tube, red hat, between six and seven p.m. Urinal.” Then he hung up.

He had investigated the loo, to find it the usual slime hole caped in Anglican squalor, complete to the countervailingly nauseous odors of urine and those chemical cakes they place in the urinals to keep the smell from overwhelming but in actuality only magnifying it. Grotesque.

Seeing no red hat at any of the installations, he’d abandoned an in-room observation point for a bench outside, near the gigantic, endless moving stairway that took travelers up and down to street level. He sat, obsequious and uncharismatic, one of London’s endless accumulation of gray men with gray lives and gray pasts and gray futures. Nearby a news kiosk was still open and the leaderboard for the Mail announced, YANKS TANGLED IN VINES, over a four-column shot of a disgruntled G.I. crouched in some thick vegetation as, presumably, Jerry’s snipers owned the air above his head. He looked grim, bored, doomed.

You and me too, mate, thought Raven.

The seconds slithered by. At one time, a doodle went off somewhere far away. Hitler was still launching them, hoping, one presumed, for a lucky hit on Parliament or No. 10. Sirens followed, louder, then softer. It meant ten blokes and their missuses and kiddies had gone to vapors when the flat went up. A tragedy, of course, and all involved in the bomb flying should be hung. But at the same time Raven felt outrage fatigue. How angry can one be for how long before it wears thin? He thought he noted the same grim desperation in the faces of others as well, even on the BBC or in the rags. When was this fucking thing to be finished? How much longer? Whatever it is, tragedy or atrocity or royal crusade for all good and holy, it had much worn out its welcome.

Hello.

Yes, red hat, sock-like thing, chap wearing it along with a pale, back-belted jacket, all the rage ten years past, headed into the loo. At last. Raven hoisted his weary legs up, weaved through the beyond-early, not-yet-late crowd, entered, felt the smack of piss in the face. Ugh, so loathsome and filthy.

Man in red hat at urinal. One next to him on left open. Raven went to it, made play at unlimbering but actually did not, simply stood, awaiting. He felt the fellow’s eyes pass to him.

“Face, please, chum.”

Raven dipped head, reached up and for one second hooked the scarf, lowered it, and exposed the fissure that cleft his lip like a rip in the wall of the universe, then re-scarfed.

“No faking that, then,” said the chap.

The man with the cracked face had a moment of scalding anger, and into his brain popped the image of pulling the kukri and cutting this slithery snake hard and deep just for the brief pleasure of seeing him die in his own blood in puddles of stranger-piss. But he just clenched his teeth.

“The Yank has gone back to the front, they told me to tell you. He’ll be there for nobody knows how bloody long. You’d best steer clear of his digs, then, on the off chance some copper gets wind of you. They’ll tell you when he’s back and you’ve got to go hard and get it done.”

Raven nodded.

“Good fellow,” said the go-between. “Now, any chance you’d suck my bone for a quid?”

“None,” said Raven, took a quick look around, saw that the place had gone deserted, then cut him deep across the face with the knife, opening a long, lasting gash. Blood fell out of it like marbles rolling off a table. He went down into the piss with a splash.

Raven then unzipped and urinated on him, taking his time. If anyone came in, seeing the spectacle, they left in a split second.

“Do stay down or I’ll open you wide knob to nipple, you cunt wyrm,” Raven said, then put himself away, turned, and headed out to the moving stairs.