Everybody hit the dirt, and it seemed like everyone but Hayes made it to the ditch that ran at an angle across the meadow, more like it had been some kind of earthworks defense a few hundred years ago when they were fighting some other stupid war. Anyway they all got down behind it. The three guys from the ALIU were all lieutenants except for Cornwall, who was a captain, but none of the three of them knew shit about how to fight a fucking war, so they left it up to him because he was a sergeant and he’d also managed to keep from getting killed over here for the last few years and he didn’t think any of them had been here longer than since Christmas.
The sergeant looked up for a second to get his bearings and the Kraut with the SVT took another shot, knocking out a groove in the dirt about three inches to the left of his head. He got what he wanted, though-the lay of the land.
The farm looked more French than German: half a dozen buildings including a barrackslike barn probably used for cows, a big house-low, two stories, the thatched roof like a hat pulled low, heavy linteled window with the glass shot out long ago leaving black holes like dead eyes. All of this surrounded by a stone wall about five feet high and three feet wide and covered with half a dozen generations of blackberry and bramble-more effective than barbed wire. The wall ran off to the left and connected with the old abbey, two stories high like the farmhouse, the roof slate looking very dark in the light rain. The windows on the second floor of the abbey were very narrow and most of them were covered by wooden shutters. Some of them hung on one hinge, letting you look into the blackness beyond. Almost certainly where the firing had come from.
The sergeant got out the little pair of caramel-colored binoculars he’d traded a Canadian for and took a closer look at everything. They were on the upslope of the meadow that went down to the road so from where they were they could see over the wall and even over the roofs of the farm buildings. That’s when he started figuring something was different about this whole thing because behind the barracks-type building, the big low barn, he could see half a dozen of those three-tonner Opel Blitzes the Krauts used for just about everything. These ones were closed with canvas backs. They didn’t have any unit designations that the sergeant could see except for the bumper plate on the one closest to the edge of the building. The number plate had SS lightning bolts on it but the metal pennant plugged into the passenger side ferrule was orange, which meant they were feldjager-military police. Six three-ton trucks capable of carrying maybe a hundred men out in the middle of nowhere? It didn’t make any sense at all.
“What we got, Sarge?” It was Dormouse. He had snot running down both sides of his fat lips like a little kid and his eyes blinked all the time.
“Wipe your fucking nose, Dormouse.”
“Sure, Sarge.” He did, but his nose continued to run. “That Hayes who got hit?”
“Yeah, sniper in the old church place there-the abbey, I guess you’d call it.”
“What’s the fucking point of defending an old ruin? And if this is a bunch of Krauts on the run what are they doing with a sniper?”
“You ask too many questions, Dormouse. One of these days it’s going to get you in the shit. And wipe your nose again. You look fucking disgusting.”
The sergeant stared through the binoculars, looking at the trucks, wondering what the hell was inside them. It was a funny war now. Time was you picked up a gun and got moving and shot Germans and they shot back at you. Now it seemed like they were all in some kind of secret maze, looking for secrets and things that properly didn’t have a fuckin’ thing to do with fighting any war he’d ever heard of. He picked up the binoculars again and looked down at the farm. Military police?
19
Greyfriars Academy was located on the Sark River in the hilly, wooded countryside a dozen miles north of Greenwich, Connecticut. The closest civilization was the small crossroads village of Friardale on the way to Riverview and Toll Gate Pond. Passing through the village, Michael Valentine followed the signs to Oaklane and drove along beside a low fieldstone wall capped with wrought iron spikes to the main gates of the school. Directly ahead, down a slightly curving gravel drive lined with mature oaks, was the main building. It looked like a cross between a medieval church and a weathered, ivy-covered English country house. It was huge and looked very old.
“Like something out of a Harry Potter story,” Finn commented, staring through the windshield of Valentine’s rental as they went down the sun-dappled drive toward the school.
“More like Frank Richards,” murmured the older man.
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
They continued up the tree-lined drive. To the left there were half a dozen outbuildings, including a porter’s lodge, something big enough to be a swimming pool or a gymnasium and a small chapel complete with miniature bell tower. To the right was a baseball diamond, tennis courts and something that could have been a stable. Behind the main building and running back to the wall was an orchard, the stunted trees laid out in neat rows. In between everything there were winding paths, neatly trimmed lawns and a number of artfully placed flower beds. It was clearly a school for rich kids.
They parked in a small lot outside the main quadrangle. The lot was empty except for a burgundy-colored mid-nineties Taurus station wagon with one of its windshield wipers missing and an old, humpbacked Jaguar Mark II saloon in British racing green. The Taurus had a toddler-sized car seat in the back.
They left their rental car and stepped into the hot morning air. The sun was almost directly overhead and everything had a flat, baked, deserted look about it. A school in midsummer was like an abandoned husk until September. They entered the main quadrangle. Directly in front of them was a stone fountain topped by a large, classically draped figure of a woman with a tilted amphora on her shoulder, spilling water down into the granite pool below. It looked as though the figure had stood there spilling water for a hundred years, the pool never filling, the container on her shoulder never emptying. The burbling water was the only sound and movement in the place. They turned to the left and went up a set of wide stone stairs. Valentine pulled open one of the dark oak doors and they stepped into the cool interior of the school.
They found themselves in a large reception hall paneled in the same oak as the front doors. The floor was marble, laid out in alternating squares of light and dark. The ceiling was more coffered oak set in the center with a massive wrought iron chandelier. Finn expected to see suits of armor and crossed halberds ranged around the room but instead she saw dimly lit display cases filled with dusty trophies and old framed photographs. Just inside the doors there was a massive granite slab bolted to the wall, etched like a tombstone, which is what it was, in a sense. Picked out in gold, the inscription running along the top of the memorial said simply: 1916-1918-1941-1945. Below the dates were a dozen columns of names. Apparently for Greyfriars, history had stopped at the end of the second world war and paid no heed to the conflicts that had followed. Either that or they’d simply run out of space and the Greyfriars dead from Korea, Vietnam and Iraq were left to fend for themselves.
Finn and Valentine crossed the entry hall, following the seesaw sound of an old dot-matrix printer and the blurred clatter of fingers on a keyboard. Through the main hall they found a narrow corridor disappearing left and right, half paneled in oak, with ancient ochre-colored plaster above. A number of small rooms led off the corridor; only one had an open door. Valentine peeked in, tapping lightly on the doorframe. A small, plain woman was working away in front of a keyboard, her feet neatly tucked under her desk, her head erect and posture perfect. She wore glasses and had her hair drawn up into a loose untidy bun. She looked up at Valentine’s knock, eyes going wide behind the glasses. Valentine smiled.