“Scored last night,” Dante said with pride of conquest
“Little show girl?”
“A living testimony that English women are not cold in bed. Who in the hell libeled them in the first place? Some Irishman?”
Sean was indulgent. Dante was his own age, twenty-eight, but England was his first real experience with life. He had gone from a truck farm in the Napa Valley to the University of San Francisco to an almost too brilliant law career. There was little doubt of Dante Arosa’s ability as a counter-intelligence officer on duty, or his somewhat juvenile behavior off duty. Tall, thin young men shouldn’t smoke cigars, Sean thought. Dante doesn’t clamp the cigar in one side of his mouth solidly. It sort of hangs limply from the front of his teeth.
As they ran alongside Kensington Gardens the traffic thickened. Dante continued his testimony to British womanhood.
“By the way, don’t blow the horn.”
“Huh?”
“When you pick me up. One, park jeep. Two, emerge. Three, walk to door. Four, ring bell.”
Dante shrugged. He didn’t like Nan Milford. It was broads like her who gave the English women their bad reputations. Where does she get this Virgin Mary routine? She’s just another married broad shacking up behind her husband’s back no matter what kind of icing Sean puts on it.
They sank into quietness. Everything was different about London, these days. Everything but the weather. The long, harrowing nights in the bomb shelters were over. The tension had eased. The bombers were going in the other direction these days. There was an air of victory everywhere. People were looking toward the end of the war and it was evident in everyone’s voice and step.
“Sean.”
“Yes?”
“How far has this thing gone with you and Nan?”
“I wish I knew.”
“I’ll ring the bell.”
Dante Arosa cut the jeep abruptly in the middle of the block. Cars before him screeched to a halt and pedestrians scattered. He beelined for a spike fence that blocked a short, dead-end street named Queen Mother’s Gate. Dante hit the brakes, bringing the tormented vehicle to a halt before the terrified sentry. The sentry saluted half-heartedly and waved them through past the sign on the gatepost which read: MISSION, MILITARY GOVERNMENT, UNITED STATES ARMY.
The abbreviated, enclosed street held a half-dozen buildings set about a wide central courtyard. On one side were officers’ quarters, enlisted barracks, administration, dispensary, mess hall. Across the courtyard stood two large three-storied block-granite buildings housing the offices and conference rooms of SPECIAL MISSION, MILITARY GOVERNMENT.
From the instant they passed through the gate toward the motor pool the problems of life and love in London were done. Dante and Sean walked crisply in step toward the first of the Mission office buildings.
The directory in the anteroom read:
Room 101: Civil Administration of German Cities
Room 102: German Legal Codes
Room 103: Public Health
Room 104: Banking System
Room 105: Displaced Persons/Refugees
Conference Hall A/B/C: Identification of German Cities. Aerial Recon.
Room 106: Lab.
Room 201: Counter-Intelligence, Leading Nazis
Room 202: Counter-Intelligence, Secondary Nazis
Rooms 203/204/205: Eradication of Nazism
Room 206: Military Government Orders/Rulings/Manual
Conference Halls E/F: Identification of Nazis-Nazi Organizations
Third Floor: Document Center
Off the anteroom they entered the officer of the day’s office and signed in, were passed through the locked portal to the inner core of quiet bustle. A second security desk, manned by a sergeant, blocked the hallway.
“Morning,” Dante said, leaning over signing the register.
“Morning, sir.”
“Morning,” Sean said.
“Morning, Captain O’Sullivan. General Hansen wants you in his office at ten hundred. And frankly, sir... Eric the Red has the storm flag up.”
Chapter Two
BRIGADIER GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON Hansen balanced his specs on the end of his nose. He was short, hefty, had a few sprigs of gray hair so that the addition of a pillow under his jacket could have given him the appearance of kindly Kris Kringle. Other men wore glasses but he wore specs. His face was as mobile and expressive as a Punch and Judy puppet. This bubble of gentleness was deceptive for in an instant a stream of oaths could tell one why he was identified as Eric the Red.
He drummed his stubby fingers on the desk top and from time to time a particularly annoying word would growl from his throat as he read ...
CONFIDENTIAL REPORT: Requested for the eye’s only use of Brig. Gen. A. J. Hansen.
SUBJECT: Cohabitation; Nan Milford/Capt Sean O’Sullivan.
Mrs. Nan Milford. Age 35. Wife of G. Donald Milford, Major, British Army. Major Milford was captured during the German invasion of Crete in 1941. Has been a prisoner of war three years at Officer’s Lager 22; Westheim, Germany.
Before war Milford was a highly successful director of Morsby Ltd., one of Britain’s leading publishing houses. Member of board of directors of a dozen lesser companies. Rated moderately wealthy. Blue blood on both sides of family. Before the war the Milfords were considered congenially married. They associated themselves with London society, art, cultural and charity affairs. Members, Church of England.
Two children: Pamela, age 10. Roland, age 12. Children are living at home of paternal grandmother in Plimlington East where they were evacuated during the heavy bombing of London.
Since husband’s internment, Nan Milford has worked as a volunteer in the London Section of the International Red Cross, Prisoner of War Division.
Approximately seven months ago she met O’Sullivan who was then conducting a G-5 study on Prisoner of War Camps. In this connection he spent much time with her on official duty gathering specific Red Cross data.
O’Sullivan and Mrs. Milford have engaged in cohabitation for approx. six months. In the beginning they were extremely cautious about their rendezvous and kept away from outside social activities together. However secrecy appears diminishing. For the last two months cohabitation has occurred regularly in the fashionable Milford flat on Bayswater Road, London, W.2.
Single copy this report produced. Other records destroyed as requested.
Thos. Hanley, Major, Counter-Intelligence.
“Piss,” said Hansen as he slid the report into the top drawer of his desk.
He paced the room. He did not know if he were more angry with Sean or with himself. A. J. Hansen did not like to guess wrong about people. That annoyed him. He had selected Sean for the Special Mission over several hundred experts, all older, with more experience and sounder judgment.
Why did I pick him? There was that first creeping doubt of an error in sizing the man up. Why? Because he doesn’t back down from me ... maybe. Because any kid who loves his parents and brothers and takes care of them at the expense of his personal happiness would love his country that way too.
The general pouted some more back at his desk. Even when Sean lost his brother in North Africa he pulled himself together. Women! Goddamned women. These two have nothing in common outside the bedroom. She’s seven years older and they come from different social, economic, and religious worlds.
Hell, nothing wrong with a stray piece. But like the report said—cohabitate—and forget them.
Sean’s got to get rid of that woman.
The general’s orderly, a gangly acne-marked corporal from Kentucky, announced Sean’s arrival.
“Sit down, O’Sullivan.”
Hansen picked up a document Sean recognized as a study he had completed the day before. TOP SECRET, PREROGATIVES OF MILITARY GOVERNMENT COMMANDERS IN GERMANY.