The Hunt

The crowd in the Killarney Rose was rowdy with victory, yelling, cheering, jitterbugging in the aisles to a Count Basie record in the jukebox they could hardly hear. It was like New Year’s Eve. Somebody stood up on the bar and started counting

“One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . .

“Yer out!” the gang yelled. Then somebody else struck up a chorus of “Yankee Doodle” and everybody joined in.

Beerbohm and Keegan sat sideways in the back booth, singing, laughing, reveling in this instant of national retaliation.

“What a sweet moment,” said Keegan. “You know, for a little while there I felt . . . I felt

He paused, trying to find the right word.

“Like you got even?” Beerbohm offered.

“Is that all it’s about, Ned? Getting even?”

“Look at it this way,” Beerbohm said. “Hate is very fashionable these days. The Germans hate the Jews, the Italians hate the Africans, the Japs hate the Chinese, the Fascists hate the Commies and the Spanish hate each other. What I mean is, I’m not knocking it. Getting even helps. When you get rid of all the superfluous stuff, then you can zero in on what’s really hurting you. Someday you’ll be able to deal with that, too.”

“I guess I never thought about it in those terms before.”

“Look at it this way. Father Coughlin is finished. Huey Long’s dead. The Bund is about to be outlawed. Louis has just destroyed Schmeling. Take heart, pal, that’s a lot of little ‘get evens.’”

“Not enough.”

“You want the big kill, right. Fantasy time—Hitler in your sights.”

“How come you got so wise?”

“I got old,” Beerbohm said and smiled.

Keegan smiled too and said, “Well, it’s been one helluva night, let’s not spoil it.”

A young man in knickers and a cap sheepishly entered the bar, stared wide-eyed at the party, edged his way to the corner of the bar. He cupped his hands and yelled to Tiny who nodded and pointed to the booth. Completely intimidated, the lad scurried down through the crowd staring straight ahead.

“M-m-mister Beerbohm,” he stammered.

Ned looked up and smiled.

“Hi, Shorty, what’re you doing in here?”

“Mr. MacGregor on the night desk asked me to run this over to you.” He handed Beerbohm an envelope.

“Thanks, kid. Shorty, this is Mr. Keegan. He owns the joint. Shorty here’s one of our primo copy boys.” He tore open the envelope, took out a sheet of paper.

“How long have you been with the paper?” Keegan asked.

“Almost a year, sir.”

“Tell you what, go over there and tell Tiny, the big bartender, to give you a hamburger and a soda, on the house.”

“Gee, thanks!”

“Sure.”

The boy rushed off and Keegan turned back to Beerbohm. The editor’s face was suddenly drawn and bloodless.

“What the hell happened to you, Ned?” Keegan said. “You look like World War Two just started.”

“Almost as bad,” Beerbohm said and slid a cablegram across the table. Keegan knew before he read it. He knew what it was going to say. He had feared this telegram for four years.

“I’m sorry as hell to be the one to show you that,” Beerbohm said.

The cable was simple and to the point:

BERT RUDMAN KILLED NOON TODAY DURING BOMBING RAID ON ALICANTE. RUDMAN WITH THE FIFTH VICTORY DIVISION. ATTACKED BY GERMAN DIVE BOMBERS. KILLED INSTANTLY. MORE FOLLOWS. PLEASE ADVISE RE REMAINS. MANNERLY, MADRID BUREAU CHIEF.

Keegan stared at it for several minutes, reading and rereading it, hoping perhaps he was missing something in the sparse message. His throat began to ache and the old anger welled up in him again.

“Goddamn them,” he said in a cracked voice. “Goddamn those miserable bastards.” He slammed his fist on the table.

“I’m awful damn sorry, kid,” said Beerbohm. “I know how close you two were.”

Keegan was silent for a minute or two and then he shook his head. “No you don’t,” he said, and there was misery in every syllable. “We haven’t been close at all since I left Europe.”

“I just thought. . .“ Beerbohm said with surprise.

“That he was my best friend? He was. He was one of those people who make life a little sweeter for you, who care about you.”

He stopped and took a deep breath, trying to control the hurt. He began to babble, about Rudman and Jenny and that summer in Paris. About von Meister and Conrad Weil and the dirty little hunchback, Vierhaus. About friendship and betrayal and the dumb things we sometimes do and never undo.

“I’m not sure I ever told him how really good I thought he was. Used to kid him all the time . . . fact is, he had more guts than anybody I ever knew. Just kept . . . going back for more. It had to happen sooner or later. Ironic, isn’t it? He probably wrote more about what’s really going on in Germany than anyone alive and a goddamn German plane kills him in Spain.”

He paused for a moment and took several deep breaths.

“Can I keep this?” Keegan asked, holding up the cable.

Beerbohm nodded.

“I don’t feel very sociable right now,” Keegan said.

Keegan sat for a long time staring off toward the front of the bar. His chest hurt and his throat hurt. Faced with the sudden death of his friend, he wished desperately for just five minutes to tell Bert how much his friendship had really meant to him. How much he had missed him these last few years. How much he admired his talent and courage and insight. How much he had learned about love and devotion from him and from Jenny.

Too late. Too late for anything. He folded the cable several times and stuck it in his pocket. “I’m sorry, pal,” he said to nobody. “I’m so sorry.”

Finally he got up, walked across to Fifth Avenue and up past St. Patrick’s. Then he crossed over to Third Avenue and wandered back down, thinking about his two best friends. Beerbohm was right, he wanted to hurt somebody, to get even. But who was there to hurt? He picked up the News at a corner stand. Bob Considine’s story was on the front page.

“Listen to this, buddy,” it began, “for it comes from a guy whose palms are still wet, whose throat is dry and whose jaw is still agape from the utter shock of watching Joe Louis knock out Max Schmeling

Christ, he thought, what am I doing reading about a prizefight? He threw the paper in a trash can and went back to the Rose, seeking the security of his back booth. But the joy of the crowd was more than he could handle and he went up to his apartment. He got a bottle of champagne from the walk-in refrigerator, took three tulip glasses from the cabinet, went into the living room and took a scrapbook from the bookcase. He sat down on the sofa, popped the cork and poured three glasses. Keegan clinked his glass against theirs.

“Salud,” he said.

He had started the scrapbook when Rudman went to Ethiopia, carefully pasting each dispatch in its pages. He had planned to give it to Bert as a peace offering when he finally returned from the wars. He started turning the pages, stopping occasionally to reread a particularly poignant or significant story.

Mussolini Invades Ethiopia;

Bombers Attack Civilians

by

Bert Rudman

ADOWA, ETHIOPIA, Oct. 3, 1935. The barefoot tribes of Haile Selassie, Lion of Judah, Emperor of Ethiopia, direct descendant of the kings of the Ras Tafari, and Prince of the ancient tribes of the Nile, were attacked today by the tanks, bombers and booted legions of Benito Mussolini, the barber turned Dictator of Italy. In what may very well be an Apocalyptic vision of modern warfare, bombs and incendiaries shrieked down from the night sky on helpless civilians. In the chaos that followed, great fires swept the city and the confused and wounded raced through the blazing city like mice in a maze

And less than six months later

Ethiopia Falls in Italy’s

Slaughter of the Innocents

by

Bert Rudman

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA, Feb. 2, 1936. The Lion of Judah has been caged and tamed by the Roman Legions of Dictator Mussolini. But in winning this victory, Italy has fouled its own house .

By the summer of 1936, the civil war in Spain had become a reality and Rudman was in the thick of it, where he would stay almost continuously until he died.

Death Rains on Spain’s Capital

As Fascists Declare War

by

Bert Rudman

MADRID, SPAIN, July 22, 1936. Spain finally erupted into Civil War last night as the Fascist Rebels of General Francisco Franco attacked this stronghold of the Loyalist . .

Innocents Die by Thousands in

Brutal Fascist Reprisal Raid

by

Bert Rudman

GUERNICA, SPAIN, Apr. 27, 1937.. German dive bombers and fighter planes without warning swept out of the skies over this Basque city today, strafing and bombing schools, hospitals, farmhouses and the marketplace and killing thousands of innocent people.

His work was a devastating mosaic of a world gone mad. It was as if a great cloak of darkness had been draped over Europe and down into Africa. And as the darkness spread, Dachau was lost in its core, a mere spot in the center of the growing fascist empire.

Triumphant Hitler Marches into

Austria as Crowds Cheer

by

Bert Rudman

VIENNA, AUSTRIA, Mar. 14, 1938. Adolf Hitler, who left this Austrian city as a penniless yos.ith, returned in triumph today and claimed this nation as his own.

To cries of “Heil, Hitler” and “Sieg Heil,” the dictator drove through the streets of this city as crowds cheered and threw flowers in his path . .

And even more ominously . .

Germany Readies Several

New Concentration Camps

by

Bert Rudman

BERLIN, AUG. 7, 1938. The Nazis have opened three new concentration camps in Germany and have several others under construction, according to confidential sources

Keegan was struck by the fact that his estranged friend was the harbinger of his own personal despair. With each story, Jenny’s plight seemed more desperate. Was she still alive? Had she been tortured, brutalized, in that infamous Nazi cesspool?

There was one story, late in the book, that particularly touched Keegan. Laced with sadness, it had a foreboding sense of doom between every line. It was written as if Rudman had seen the future and knew his string was running out.

A Quiet New Year’s Dinner

in Barcelona

by

Bert Rudman

BARCELONA, SPAIN, Jan. 1, 1938. A few of us American correspondents got together tonight for a traditional New Year’s Eve party at our favorite bistro.

It is now only a bombed-out hole on the ground littered with the rubble of war. Around us in this beleaguered city, the smell of death hangs heavy in the air.

But we brought a lantern, some cheese and a bottle of wine and sat on broken chairs and at midnight we sang “Auld Lang Syne.” We wept for fallen friends on both sides of this bitter struggle and talked about home and family and friends we have not seen for a very long time.

As we sat there, escaping for the moment from this dreadful war I could not escape the realization that if Franco and his hordes succeed in winning this civil war, France will be trapped between Germany and a new Fascist stronghold. Thus Spain may have the nefarious distinction of being the final dress rehearsal for World War II. . .

Francis Keegan stared at the book, no longer reading, his mind tumbling through time, when the doorbell rang. He tried to ignore it, hoping whoever it was would go away. But the bell was persistent and finally he got up and answered it.

Vanessa Bromley was standing in the doorway.