Grandhenri just stood there, trembling. ‘I’m telling you the truth!’ he said.
As the guard stepped forward into the cell, a short black object suddenly appeared in his hand, which had slid down through his sleeve. It was a ball of lead about the size of a man’s thumb, fitted with a metal spring that formed a handle, with the whole thing wrapped in horsehide. With a movement so slight it appeared almost gentle, the guard knocked Grandhenri in the temple with the leather-padded ball of lead. The tap from this weapon was so perfectly placed that the man just dropped to his knees and then fell forward onto his face. The guard emerged from the cell, locked the door again and turned to Carter. ‘The interview is over,’ he said. Then he walked back down the hallway.
By the time Carter had returned to Rocherath, Major Wharton was back from his inspection of the lines. He was sitting in the dining room, still wearing his gloves and a heavy woollen scarf around his neck. ‘Well?’ he asked Carter, setting the heels of his muddy boots upon the dining table.
‘I went to see the prisoner.’
‘Did he tell you anything?’
‘He said that death was coming.’
Wharton laughed. ‘You see? You were wasting your time.’
‘It sounded like he meant it.’
‘Of course he did!’ said Wharton. ‘For the past four years, that man has been living under German occupation and if he had tried the same stunt when they were around, he would have been shot days ago. But he didn’t think twice about stealing from us, even though we came to liberate his sorry ass. We’re all thieves here, Lieutenant. It is what time and circumstance have made us. Even you.’
‘I haven’t stolen anything.’
‘Of course you did!’ laughed Wharton. ‘You stole that blanket you slept in last night, and chances are it’s already been stolen from you. The rations you ate this morning were stolen from a depot back in Stavelot.’
‘Who stole them?’ asked Carter.
‘Nobody!’ exclaimed Wharton. ‘And that’s the beauty of it. Rations were simply requested for men who are no longer with us. Some of them have been dead for months. But we’re still picking up their rations so that we can get enough to eat. Is it a crime? Of course it is! Does everybody know what’s going on? Of course they do! Does anybody really care?’ Now Wharton stood, set his fists upon the table and leaned forward until he was towering over Carter. ‘Not when they’re sleeping in bunkers in the woods. Not when they haven’t been on leave in more than half a year. Not when they know that, for every soldier stuck here at the front, there are twenty back in France, or England or even in America, who have no idea what it’s like to get shot at by sixteen-year-old German kids who’ve never been taught how to play football or baseball, or how to dance with their girlfriends or to do anything you and I would think was normal for a teenage boy. All they know how to do is kill you. And they know how to die. And after you’ve been fighting them, all day every day, for so long you can’t remember what it’s like to do anything else, trust me son, you don’t lose too much sleep over a truckload of fuel, or a case of goddamned pork and beans.’
Carter sat there for a while in silence. ‘All right, Major Wharton,’ he said at last, ‘assuming that’s all true, what would you do now if you were me?’
The question seemed to catch Wharton by surprise. ‘Do you really want to know?’ he asked.
Carter held open his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘I’ll take whatever you’ve got.’
‘All right,’ said Wharton. ‘I guess I’d answer the question by saying that, from time to time, everybody gets handed jobs which seem like a good idea to whoever thought them up but which, when you actually put them into practice, have no hope at all of success. The problem is, the people who usually come up with the ideas aren’t interested in how you get it done. All they think about are the results, which leaves the poor bastard who’s been given the job, people like you and me, with no choice but to struggle with a task he knows will fail. So what you have to do is make it seem like you’re getting things done. You file a lot of paperwork. You disappear into dusty little corners where no one will come looking for you. You don’t ever tell them that it can’t be done. They’ll figure that out for themselves. Between that time and this, the best you can do is not get anyone killed, including yourself.’
…
The Minerva bar, where Carter was due to meet the quartermaster sergeant, was tucked away down a narrow street called Pliniusstrasse. Tall, steep-roofed buildings with scallop-fringed slates cast heavy shadows on all but a sliver of road. Several of the shopfronts were closed with metal shutters, even though it was the middle of the day.
But the Minerva was open. Dance music blared into the street. Inside, a heavily made-up woman, stripped to the waist and wearing a white silk skirt which came down almost to the floor, was performing what looked like some kind of flamenco dance. Several men sat around at tables that had green and white checked tablecloths, leering at the woman’s breasts.
A US Army soldier was leaning up against the bar, his back to the woman, tilting a glass of honey-coloured liquid back and forth. He wore a short jacket patched with his sergeant’s chevrons, a wound stripe at the bottom of his sleeve and three gold bars below them, to indicate a year and a half’s continuous overseas service. His hair was grey and his cheeks looked dry and pink. When Carter walked over to the sergeant, squinting as his eyes adjusted to the dark, the man slid the drink away, allowing him to see the cloverleaf tattooed on the top of his right hand. Then Carter knew for certain it was Galton.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ said the sergeant.
A moment later, Carter was back on the street and the nerve-jangling music was already fading from his ears.
‘What did you think of the dancing girl?’ asked Galton.
‘I didn’t really have time to pay attention,’ replied Carter.
‘That’s a pity,’ said Galton. ‘She’s got talent.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Oh, I know so. She’s my wife.’
Carter glanced at him. ‘Jesus,’ he said.
Galton laughed. ‘One thing you have to learn about this place, and by that I mean this whole godforsaken country, is that you’re either buying or you’re selling, and that absolutely everything is for sale. That’s why you came to see me, after all. It’s the only way people can survive. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either starving or already dead. Nobody wants it that way, and maybe it will change some day, but right now that’s the way it is.’
The two men walked along the road that ran beside the city’s botanical garden. Galton strode quickly, facing straight ahead, but his pale blue eyes shifting nervously as he noted everything in his path. At the entrance, Galton turned into the gardens and only then did his pace slacken. There were high brick walls around the gardens and Carter was surprised to see that, far from being filled with exotic plants and trees, the whole place had been converted into a giant vegetable patch. A man wearing a rubber apron and the long-brimmed, field-grey wool cap of a former Third Reich soldier was using a fire hose to water a small field that had been planted with lettuce.
At a bench on the far side of the lettuce field, Galton sat down and stretched his arms, suddenly relaxed. For now, Carter stayed on his feet.
The location for their meeting had been well chosen. No one could get near them without being noticed, and their voices would be drowned out to all but each other by the swish and patter of water raining down as the old soldier played the hose back and forth across the lettuce patch.
‘They didn’t tell me anything about you,’ said Galton, ‘except that we spoke the same language.’