“No, thank you.” Jaeger glanced at his watch. “You obviously want to tell me something, Brecht. So you’d better get on with it.”
“Do you know how Geldman died, colonel?”
“There was no reason for anyone to make a report of the matter to me.”
“Didn’t you try to find out what happened? I understood you were friends.”
“For a time we were students together in Dresden.”
“Ah, that lovely city. It was at your father’s school that you were classmates, I’ve been told.”
“That’s quite true.” Jaeger stood and walked under the lindens, pressing the stem of his pipe into the back of his hand and remembering in shifting images the prize books in his father’s classroom at graduation, the look of the river and wooded parks in Dresden, and some words from The Death of Comet Rilke... “Mother, be proud, I carry the flag, I carry the flag.”
The captain strolled beside him, the reflections from the snowy limbs of the trees touching the braid on their uniforms. As if sensing Jaeger’s thoughts he said, “A pity there is no longer time for such loyalties, colonel.”
It was obvious he intended to say more, but Jaeger heard a stir in the dark courtyard and saw with relief that the meeting at Adlerhorst was over, the generals filing through the bunker’s blackout curtains.
“Another time, Brecht,” Jaeger said, and walked quickly to join General Kroll, feeling the wind searing the sweat on the backs of his hands.
Chapter Four
December 13, 1944. Eastern Belgium. Wednesday, 0600 Hours.
First Lieutenant Whitter arrived at Section Eight’s gun position as first light was beginning to spread across the valley. The heavy-weather front was holding; fogs and snow continued to produce visibility-zero conditions throughout the Ardennes.
Whitter was accompanied by a corporal from the battery motor pool, Cleve Haskell, and his junior officer. Second Lieutenant Donald Longworth, a career soldier with nine years in the regular Army.
Lieutenant Bart Whitter had been in the Army three years. A vertical white stripe was painted on the front of his helmet, and the silver single bars of his rank were clipped to the epaulets on his field overcoat. He was short and stocky, with light brown hair and a fair complexion that had reddened and peeled painfully in the battalion’s basic training at Camp Stewart near Hinesville, Georgia. Although born and raised in the Deep South in Mobile, Alabama, Lieutenant Whitter never tanned, even when he smeared himself with cocoa butter. Still, he had always been proud of his pink and sensitive skin; in a state whose white majorities applied visual litmus paper tests to everyone as a matter of course, Whitter had decided early in life that it was no asset to tan darkly or display a tolerance for strong sunlight.
The lieutenant was twenty-nine. He believed in the customs and traditions of the service, military courtesy and discipline, and in RHIP — initials embodying the army concept that “rank has its privileges.” Whitter enjoyed rolling the letters on his tongue and lips, seeming to taste them there like warm molasses, and in his native accent they came drawling out as, “Ah, Aich, Ah, Pee.”
His father was a county sheriff whose family had been planters and soldiers before the Civil War. Whitter was fond of quoting his father. “Pappy believed in full bellies for them that worked and did right, and full prisons for them ’at din’t. He tol’ me, ‘Pessimists say prisons are only half-full. Optimists know they just half-empty.’ ”
Some of Whitter’s plantation mannerisms were employed for what he obviously hoped would be a humorous effect. His accent was not always consistent; it tended toward canebrake darky rhythms and resonances when he was in a frivolous or good-old-boy mood and was also pronounced when he spoke of more serious matters such as the value of regular church attendance and personal hygiene and white virginity. When he was impatient or angry, the accent tended to disappear.
Whitter climbed down now from the jeep and returned Docker’s salute. “All your men okay, sergeant?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And how about supplies? Got plenty of ammo and gasoline?”
“We’re in good shape, lieutenant.”
“Then I’d like to know why in hell you stopped here. My last orders to you were to continue moving east.” Whitter stared at the cannon and machine guns, which were masked with camouflage netting. “Now it looks like you bedded down for the fucking duration. How come?”
When Docker explained why he had decided to stop, Whitter said, “You got your wind up because some old Belgian fart wouldn’t take Army money? Shit, you should know better. These people don’t know what they want anymore. Used to be every whore and bartender wanted Invasion loot. Now you’re spooked ’cause an old fool wants Belgian money that don’t even make good craphouse paper.”
“I didn’t see any point in taking a chance,” Docker said.
“Well, sometimes that makes sense. And sometimes it sure as hell don’t. Now fall your section in.”
Docker gave the orders to Larkin and accompanied Whitter and Lieutenant Longworth on an inspection of the gun position. When they had completed the tour, Larkin had formed the section into two columns in front of the trucks.
Whitter looked them over. “All right, men, I know it’s snowing, and colder than a witch’s tit, but we still got to try to look like soldiers. Let’s dress down and get to attention now.”
Corporal Larkin slowly spit on the ground and looked with eloquent blankness at the low, drifting fogs.
“You heard the lieutenant, goddamn it,” he said. “Try to remember there’s a fucking war on. Drop your cocks and grab your socks and try to look like soldiers. You want a fucking example, look at Haskell here. There’s some spit and polish for you.”
Corporal Haskell was built widely and massively, with sloping shoulders and a bulging stomach that looked like blubber but was actually hard as a tree trunk. His fatigue uniforms were usually oil-stained from his work at the motor pool and he seldom shaved more than twice a week, a dispensation from Captain Grant because of a persistent rash that mottled the skin under his heavy whiskers.
When Larkin pointed at him and said, “Just look at the fine figure of the corporal there,” Spinelli and Tubby Gruber looked at the ground and tried to suppress their laughter.
Haskell stared at Larkin, tight little grin bunching rubbery cheeks around his eyes.
“Jesus, you’re a real clown,” he said. “I guess Fred Allen and them other funny guys pay you hush money to keep you off the radio.”
Docker knew that Haskell was no one for Larkin to antagonize; Haskell could be violent, brutal, and a streak in him relished it.
“At ease,” Docker said to the section. “Settle down now.”
The men dressed right and came to attention. Whitter was puzzled and relieved; something had been starting between Haskell and that sarcastic son of a bitch Larkin, and Docker had put a stop to it with just a few words.
“All right, let’s get this I and E bullshit over with,” the lieutenant said. “For your Information and Education, you’re up to your ass in snow and shit somewhere in Belgium. I hope that don’t come as no big surprise. We just got word at Battalion that our B-29S are flying daylight raids for the first time and pounding the honorable shit out of Tokyo. In Italy — our boys there just rammed a big firecracker up Mussolini’s ass and they’re holding a match to the fuse right this minute.”
Whitter grinned at the men, encouraging them, for the moment, to forget his silver bars and the wall of rank between them, to relax and join him in a bit of soldier-to-soldier camaraderie. The men declined the invitation; their faces remained impassive and their eyes stared through him.