“It says here you bought the hat from Private Sewell. Where did he get it?” Vance removed his steady stare from fidgety Kelly and casually perused the file set before him. His lithe fingers nonchalantly turned the pages as he gazed down his nose at the reports. Vance spoke with even tones, measuring his speech more as if they were having a relaxed tea than a military interrogation.
Kelly blinked a few times, shrugged his skinny shoulders, and stuttered. “I… I dunno. Uh, Africa, I guess.”
Vance’s fingers touched the pencil-thin mustache over his lips, drawing attention to the faint but friendly smile. “Surely Private Sewell mentioned something about the hat’s provenance.” He noted Kelly’s perplexed expression-he wasn’t much more than a gawky farm boy who more than likely dropped out of school-and corrected himself. “Where the cap came from. Didn’t Sewell weave some fanciful tale bragging how he acquired the cap?”
Kelly made that exasperating shrug of his shoulders again.
“We could always send for Sergeant Mullen to refresh your memory.” Vance’s grin took a slightly menacing curve. Sergeant John Mullen of Moose Lake, Minnesota, took care of the heavy work during Kelly’s earlier interrogations with the Military Police. “But I don’t think Lieutenant Jackson would like that.” Vance’s assistant looked up, batted her eye lashes with a doleful look, and pouted her ruby red lips in a possibly mock frown, right on cue. Vance expected she’d reprimand him later for involving her in his mind games.
“No, ma’am,” Kelly drawled. He allowed himself a glance from the cap to Lieutenant Jackson with a bashful smile, then glared at Vance. “I told them before, more than once, dammit, that Sewell got the cap in a battle in North Africa.”
Vance’s lips maintained their sinister curve. He smoothed his mustache before reaching across and closing Kelly’s file. “Fine. Perhaps, then, you’d like to give us a firsthand demonstration of what happens when you wear that cap.”
All color drained from Kelly’s face. His hands gripped the chair, and his army uniform visibly trembled on his lanky frame. Vance thought a bit of drool leaked from Kelly’s quivering lips. He recalled the reports in the folder. Kelly’s unit occupied one of the sealed training camps in the south of England where troops waited to embark on the imminent invasion. Kelly’s friends found him twitching on the ground near his tent, eyes rolled into the back of his head, his mouth spitting foam and frenzied words that sounded like German… all while wearing the Afrika Korps cap.
“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” Vance asked in fluent German. “ Sind Sie Deutscher?”
Kelly controlled his tremors and shot Vance a befuddled look.
“Obviously not,” Vance answered. “Do you have any knowledge of the imminent invasion of Europe?”
“Huh?” Kelly shrugged. “Sure, everyone’s getting all ready for something big, but nobody knows exactly what or when. Come on, anyone looking around here knows something’s about to happen. Why else would American troops swarm all over southern England, doing invasion exercises and practice drills?”
“Well, then, I think we’re done for now. Sergeant!” Vance called. An army sergeant-not the bruiser from Kelly’s earlier interrogations-entered the dining room through one of the tall, double doors and stood at attention. “Escort Private Kelly to the room we’ve prepared-not a cell, Kelly, but a real room-and make sure he gets something decent to eat. As I recall, the kitchens here are as well-stocked as a Chicago steakhouse.”
Kelly didn’t budge. “When can I go back to my unit?”
“Oh, I doubt you’ll be returning to combat, though that should prove a relief,” Vance said with an understanding grin. “Not after all you’ve gone through. I’m sure they’ll put you on the next ship home. Oh, don’t worry about your patriotic duty. You’ve done your part, soldier, that’s for certain, and there’s no disgrace in what’s happened. If I’m right, you might have delivered to us a valuable weapon in the fight against fascism.”
Kelly pulled himself out of the chair and stumbled over to meet the sergeant, never taking his terrified eyes off Vance and the cap.
Vance knew Kelly wouldn’t really go home to Nebraska. He’d most likely enjoy a lengthy stay at St. Elizabeth’s, the hospital in Washington where the OSS and other government agencies sent “mentally ill” psychiatric patients-devoid of any right to habeas corpus-to languish in guarded isolation for the duration.
With all he’d seen, and would see, Vance wondered if he’d end up there himself before war’s end.
“Should I tell Colonel Donovan we have a spy on our hands?” Jackson asked, looking up from her notes.
“Of course not,” Vance replied. The head of OSS wanted straight answers, not conjecture, before he made any report to General Eisenhower. “Kelly’s just some country bumpkin from Nebraska. Doesn’t know a damn thing. Looking over his file, there’s no possible way the Germans could have recruited him either in America or during his service in Italy, and he seems to have no means of communicating any intelligence to them, certainly not from a sealed camp with rigorous security restrictions. Besides, Kelly wouldn’t know good intelligence if it came up and kicked him in the pants.
“But he knows about that cap.”
Vance stared a moment at the cap, brow furrowed with curiosity, his fingers caressing his mustache. The crumpled cloth sat there lifeless, the German eagle patch emblazoned on the front, a ghostly aura of dust settling around it on the veneered tabletop. The hat’s former owner obviously belonged to the German Afrika Korps, which had ranged across the deserts of North Africa until General Montgomery had begun beating him back from Egypt at el Alamien and Patton drove him from Morocco and Algeria in Operation Torch. Defeating Rommel there led to a swift invasion of Sicily and then Italy, but the Allies needed another foothold in Europe from which to strike at the heart of Nazi Germany.
Who was the Afrika Korps officer who wore that hat? By the worn marks midway along the fabric, Vance figured the fellow wore headphones a lot, meaning he served some function in communications, possibly with a wireless company or as a radioman with a mobile reconnaissance unit. His glance followed the trail of dried blood tracking up one side.
Soldiers always picked up souvenirs of their experiences, badges of courage proving they had participated in particular battles and had come away alive once more. Why was this cap special? Vance leaned forward, enthralled by the potential power of this simple, crumpled hat.
“Where do we go from here, sir?” Jackson asked, a glint of suspicion in her eyes.
Vance leaned back in his chair, the opulent dining room suddenly coming back into focus and diminishing the cap’s presence in his mind. He turned to Lieutenant Jackson with a charming smile. “Why don’t you contact our British cousins and track down this Sewell fellow. Kelly was with the First Infantry Division stationed near Poole on the southern coast of England. Follow his deployment to determine when it came in contact with any British units. Probably some element of that British army division stationed around Southampton. I want to know exactly when and where Sewell found that cap.”