Pop was talking a lot, again. It wore on my brain. And Yamamoto’s plane had been shot down a month before we’d hit Attu. But at least now I had something else to think about.
“You mean we need a supply of Japs?” I said.
Now Pop smiled his thin smile. “I mean that a lieutenant colonel in the Intelligence Section did a stupid thing. He wasn’t even supposed to be near the fighting. But that banzai charge came awfully close. So in rage or fear, he forgot his job and ordered you to destroy a military intelligence asset. That’s an act that could negatively affect his chances for promotion.” Pop pointed at me again. “If anyone happened to testify to it.”
I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to make the pain at the base of my skull go away.
“I don’t understand how anything you just said adds up to anything we saw today,” I told him.
Now Pop pointed past me, toward the door. “That’s why there’s more to find out, and that’s why I need you to help me with it. There was one other man on the mountain with us this morning. And since you and he were freezing and fighting on Attu while I was elsewhere, I think he might be more willing to part with any answers if you’re present.”
That made some sense. The Cutthroat hadn’t liked me, but he might respect me more than Pop.
Still, there was one thing that I knew Pop had left out in all his talk. “What about the eagle?” I asked.
Pop bared his false teeth.
“That’s the key,” he said. “That’s why we have to talk with the Scout again. Remember what he said about magic and power? Well, he also said that he told those same stories to officers on Attu.” He went past me to the door. “Now, will you come along?”
I turned to go with him, then hesitated.
“Wait a minute.” I was still trying to clear my head. “Are you saying the colonel believes in Eskimo magic?”
Pop held up his hands. “I have no idea. But magic and religion are based on symbols, which can be powerful as hell. And I know the lieutenant colonel does believe in that. After all, there’s one symbol that he very much wants for his own.”
I was still confused by most of what Pop had said. But this one part, I suddenly understood.
A full colonel was called a “bird colonel.”
Because a full colonel’s insignia was an eagle.
I went with Pop.
XI
THE 179TH STATION HOSPITAL WASN’T JUST ONE BUILDING. IT WAS A COMPLEX of Quonset huts and frame buildings, and it even had an underground bunker. When Olivia de Havilland had come to Adak in March, she had spent an entire day there, visiting the sick and wounded. There were a few hundred patients on any given day.
But all we needed to do was find the Cutthroat. So I waited outside the main building while Pop went in and charmed whomever he needed to charm to find out what he wanted to know. I was beginning to realize that there were some things, even in the Army, that superseded rank.
When Pop came out again, his hands in his jacket pockets, he tilted his head and started walking around back. I followed him to three Quonset huts behind the main building. He stopped at the lean-to of the first hut and looked one way and then the other as I joined him. There were a few G.I.’s trudging along nearby with no apparent purpose. Maybe, I thought, they were just trying to look busy so they wouldn’t be sent to the South Pacific.
“Do you see anyone you know?” Pop asked. “Anyone who might tell the lieutenant colonel we’re here?”
I tried to take a good look. But the usual gray light was dimming as evening came on, making all the soldiers appear gray as well.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “But everyone’s starting to look alike to me.”
Pop gave me an annoyed glance. “You sound like the Scout,” he said. He stepped away, moved quickly to the center Quonset, and slipped into its lean-to. I followed. Then he barged into the hut without knocking.
The Cutthroat was in a small open space in the center of the hut, surrounded by shelves packed with boxes and cans. He was sitting on the edge of a cot under a single lightbulb that hung from the ceiling, leaning over a battered coffeepot on a G.I. pocket stove. The smell was not only of coffee, but of old beef stew, seaweed, and mud. My still-knotted stomach lurched.
The Cutthroat looked up, and his slick dark hair gleamed. “You guys.” He didn’t sound surprised. “Did you bring my beers?”
Pop and I stepped farther inside, and I closed the door behind us. There were two folding stools set up on our side of the pocket stove.
“I’ll bring your beers tomorrow.” Pop went to the right-hand stool and sat down. “In the meantime, I want you to know that both the private and I are doing our best to live up to this morning’s agreements. For one thing, we haven’t mentioned your presence on Mount Moffett to anyone else.”
“I believe you,” the Cutthroat said.
“But we have a problem,” Pop continued. “So we may not be able to keep that confidence much longer. There’s a lieutenant colonel who’s trying to use that Navy man’s death to make our lives hell.”
The Cutthroat looked back down at his brew. “Yeah, I know.” He rubbed his right thigh. “Goddamn, my leg is hurting tonight. I better not climb any more mountains for a while.”
I sat down on the left-hand stool. The fumes from the stuff bubbling in the coffeepot were intense.
“What do you mean, you know?” I asked. “How could you know that?”
The Cutthroat glanced up at me. “Because I wasn’t sure I trusted you guys. So I followed you. You didn’t drive fast. I was outside the back wall of the newspaper hut when you got your asses chewed. I couldn’t hear it all, but I got most of it. He’s got it in for both of you. And I recognized his voice.”
Pop’s eyebrows rose. “That was quite stealthy of you.”
The Cutthroat snorted. “I’ve snuck up on Japs in machine gun nests, and they knew I was coming. Buncha desk soldiers who don’t expect me ain’t a challenge.”
“Nevertheless,” Pop said. “I respect a man who can shadow that well. Especially if I’m the one he’s shadowing.”
The Cutthroat reached to a shelf behind him and brought down three tin cups. “You guys want coffee before you start bothering me with more questions?”
“Is that what that is?” I asked.
The Cutthroat gave me a look almost as dark as he’d given me in the ulax. “You need to work on your fucking manners.”
Pop and I both accepted cups, and the Cutthroat poured thick, black liquid into both of them. It was something else that reminded me of what Pop had coughed up that morning.
Then the Cutthroat poured a cup for himself and set the pot back down on the pocket stove. He took a swig and smiled.
“That’s good,” he said. “This stuff will help you think better.”
Pop took a swig as well, and I took a tentative sip of mine. It didn’t taste as bad as it smelled, so I drank a little more. There was a hint of rotted undergrowth. But at least it was hot.
“Thank you,” Pop said. He took a long belt. “But now I’m going to bother you, as you suspected. How did you recognize the lieutenant colonel’s voice?”
The Cutthroat blew into his cup, and steam rose up around his face. “Because I’ve heard it before. On Attu, he was one of the shitheads who wouldn’t listen to our scouting reports. But he loved our colorful stories. Here on Adak, I’ve been bringing him and his officer pals booze and coffee while they play poker right here in this hut. And when they get good and drunk, they want me to tell more stories. Like I said, you people can’t get enough of that noble-savage crap.”
“Do those poker pals include a Navy commander?” Pop asked.
“I guess that’s what he is,” the Cutthroat said. “He and the lieutenant colonel set up yesterday’s boxing matches. They made a bet on the Army-Navy one.” He pointed at me. “The lieutenant colonel bet on this guy.”