We passed the warehouse where SOE had a packing station for parachute containers, and drove on to the edge of the airfield, where a dirt road led to a villa, perched on a small hilltop overlooking an inlet. It was surrounded by cypress and palm trees, the breeze off the Adriatic Sea producing a calm rustling sound at odds with the grimness of the enterprise.
I was puzzled as to why we were here. I’d expected to be taken to the nearest provost marshal’s office, or at least to a US Army facility. But a British outfit? The same SOE station I’d been haunting for the past week? It didn’t add up. If there were news about Diana, they wouldn’t send American MPs out to find me; they knew I was bound to show up sooner rather than later. Which of my friends in high places did the grumpy sergeant mean? For the first time, I felt uneasy. I figured I could talk my way out of the desertion charge; although that was perhaps technically correct, it was an overstatement. I was still in uniform, out in the open at the last place my orders had sent me. Not counting the orders to London, that is. But being delivered by American MPs to a British SOE unit got my hackles up. It meant somebody wanted me, and the last time the Brits wanted me, I got shot, along with a few other people. None of us enjoyed it.
“Wait here,” the sergeant said as he got out and spoke to a guard at the door. British Army uniform, no markings.
“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” I asked the driver. He was a young kid, a private, nineteen years old at most.
“Not a clue, Lieutenant. But I know one thing for sure. Sarge ain’t as tough as he makes out. He gave that kid a spanking, then sent him on his way with Hershey’s bars and Spam.”
“That qualifies as both cruel and unusual punishment. So why bring me here? Don’t you guys have your own hoosegow?”
“Yeah. We use an old carabinieri station. Kinda bombed out, but the cells still lock.”
“How come we didn’t go there?”
“Because Sarge said to go here. That’s how things work in the army. You should stop talking now.”
“Hey, I’m a fellow cop, don’t sweat it. At least back home I was. Detective, Boston PD. You looking to get into police work after the war?”
“Maybe. Can you beat prisoners who won’t shut up in Boston?”
I was beginning to irritate the kid, but I didn’t have much time. Sarge was signing some paperwork with an officer who’d appeared in the doorway.
“Senseless. But we frown on turning our collars over to the feds, and we’d never give up one of ours to foreigners.”
“These guys are our allies.”
“You Irish by any chance?” I asked, going for the long shot.
“One quarter, on my grandpappy’s side. The other three quarters are glad to get rid of you. Good luck, Lieutenant. I truly have no idea why we’re here.”
Sarge walked up and motioned me out of the jeep, his jaw clenched. My detective skills told me he was steamed, at me, at the Brits, at whoever ordered him to deliver a shavetail to a secret headquarters, no questions asked. They sped off, spitting gravel, before I had a chance to say, “Call me Billy. Everyone does.”
CHAPTER THREE
“Andrew Croft,” said a British captain, grinning and shaking my hand as if I were a welcome houseguest. “Follow me, Lieutenant Boyle,” he said, pronouncing it left-tenant in the odd British way.
Croft was tall, with a strong, dimpled jaw, thick blond hair, and a weathered look to his face. A guy used to the hard life, not a paper-pusher. His uniform was bleached-out khaki, as nondescript as the guard’s had been. But his had the look of being worn in the salt air and hot sun, and I wondered if I were being shanghaied for some against-all-odds mission. At the end of the hall, French doors opened to a balcony overlooking the Adriatic. It was impressive. Clear blue water to the horizon, waves throwing foam at the rocks below. Maybe it was going to be tea and crumpets, not death-defying odds.
“Not the worst digs possible,” Croft said with a sly smile. “You know what the regular army chaps call SOE? ‘Stately ’Omes of England,’ since we seem to find the choicest estates to bed down in. Coffee is on its way. You do want coffee, don’t you?”
“Sure I do. And that quip is hilarious. But what I really want is for you to tell me what the hell I’m doing here. Then we’ll have some joe and swap jokes.”
“Don’t we all?” Croft said. “I haven’t a clue myself. Orders came from the top to wait for you and a Yank courier from Naples. All will be made clear, one hopes. Ah, coffee.”
A silver coffee service was set down between two chairs on the veranda by a corporal wearing a revolver and a long knife on his belt, and a scar across his forehead.
“What unit is this?” I asked. It felt more like a pirate’s lair than a British Army headquarters.
“They call us Force 226,” Croft said as he poured. A breeze came up off the water, blowing his thick blond hair back. “We do a bit of business everywhere, from Corsica to Crete and points in between.”
“Just how high up did those orders come from?” I asked.
“The very top.” Croft sipped his coffee and leaned back in the chair, letting the sun wash his face.
“As in Kim Philby?”
Croft raised one eyebrow at the mention of Philby. “Best not to name names, even among friends,” he said. “There’s no reason to let on you are that close to those in exalted circles. Could get you killed if some bloke repeats it.”
“Almost has,” I said. Kim Philby was with the British Secret Intelligence Service, head of MI6’s Mediterranean Section. We’d worked together before, done each other a favor or two, and I thought we were even. Maybe I was wrong. “When is the courier due in?”
“He’s here now, finishing breakfast in the kitchen. I thought it would be good for us to chat first, get to know each other.”
“Why? Are we going on a trip together? Someplace exotic, with explosives?”
“I’ve no idea, Lieutenant Boyle. But if we are, I’d like to know the sort of man I’m traveling with.”
“I’m an unhappy man, Captain Croft. I’d rather be somewhere else right now, with someone else. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can go back to being miserable.” I drank my coffee and inhaled the sea air. I felt guilty, with Diana in a Gestapo cell while I sat in the sun, powerless to help her. Or too late.
“You do have the look of a man who needs to do something,” Croft said, turning his blue eyes on me. “Anything but sit here far from the shooting war, I’d dare say. Restless. Haunted, perhaps. Why?”
“Everyone’s got a story,” I said. “Mine is too complicated to tell.”
“Ah, a woman,” Croft said, smiling.
I felt like taking a swing at him, but he couldn’t know it wasn’t a laughing matter. It wasn’t that the course of true love never did run smoothly; it was more like its path was marked by torture, death, and finality. Croft was sharp, and likable, but I saw no percentage in giving anything more away. So I drank his coffee and let him think he had me figured out.
“Here’s our man now,” Croft said, as the sound of heavy footsteps echoed in the tiled hallway. “Not the highest-ranking confidential courier I’ve ever seen, but certainly the largest.”
It couldn’t be, I thought, as I put together the visit to the kitchen, the heavy footsteps, and the comment about rank and size. But damned if it wasn’t Staff Sergeant Mike Miecznikowski himself. Or Big Mike, as everyone from privates to generals called him.
“Hey, Billy,” Big Mike said, raising his hand in the least possible semblance of a salute.
“When did they let you out?” I asked, ignoring the salute and giving him a slap on the back. No mean feat when you took into account Big Mike’s shoulders. He looked like a cross between a linebacker and a lumberjack, stuffed into the largest olive-drab getup Uncle Sam had in stock.