"If you were really lucky, you would've been ordered to stay in port that day."
Harry grunted again, his slight grin offering the hope there might be something to really smile about someday He looked out the small round window behind his head. The sea was choppy and there were small white plumes riding the crests of a thousand waves below. I thought about Harry floating in a sea like that, all alone, and remembered something. What had been just a story now seemed very real and terrifying.
"My Uncle Dan had something like that happen to him," I said.
"Yes…?"
"He fought in the First World War, in France. His squad had crawled out on a night patrol in No Man's Land to cut wire. That night it was his turn as rear guard, to make sure a German patrol hadn't spotted them, to stay put in a shell hole while the rest of the squad crawled back to their trench."
I could see Uncle Dan out there now in a way I never could before, all alone and listening for any tell-tale sound in the darkness.
"He said the Germans sent up a flare, so he buried his head in the mud and didn't move a muscle. Then he heard the artillery start up. He heard the shells whistling overhead and felt the ground shake as they hit behind him. He couldn't tell how long it lasted, but it seemed to go on forever. When it stopped, he waited and waited, not moving a muscle. Then he started crawling back, heading the same way his squad had. He never found them, not a trace. They could have been blown to pieces, or been buried in the mud; he never knew. They were gone, and he was fine. Just gone."
Harry didn't look at me, or speak. We were quiet for a while.
"So it made sense to you, did it?" Harry said, not taking his gaze off the water below. "What?"
"Being sent because one old man died."
"It's about the only thing that does."
"Why? The pursuit of justice and all that rot?"
"Justice? What the hell do I know about justice? I'm not a lawyer politician, thank God. I don't know a damn thing about justice. Injustice, that's easier. You know injustice when you see it. That old man's dead body. Sergeant Casselli with his throat slit. And…"
I pointed to Diana.
"Look how easy it is to spot," I said. "Everything looks wrong, like some terrible hand from hell reached up and turned people's lives upside down, broke their hearts, ruined their dreams."
I realized my voice had risen; I was almost yelling. The waist gunners both were looking at me as if I was crazy, and maybe they had a point. I made a gesture with one hand that said, Never mind, I'm okay, just a little worked up. They went back to craning their necks.
"So you're here to set things right," Harry said.
"I know there's damn few dreams left in this war, Harry. The thing is, that's what makes murder so hard to take. War's going to take lives, we know that. So why let some bastard get away with murdering somebody who might otherwise have a chance?"
"It must be the pain, but I think you're actually making sense," Harry said, bracing his bad leg with both hands.
I shrugged. I was done explaining myself. But it bothered me, like when you walk by a picture hung crooked on the wall. It can bug you until you have to turn around and fix it. In my line of work, it just requires a little more effort to get things back in order.
I felt the Catalina start to lose altitude. Through the window across from me I could see the coast with Algiers harbor ahead.
"Almost there," I said to Harry. "How's the leg?"
"Starting to throb like the dickens. I almost wish I'd taken that dose of morphine Rodney offered."
"Why didn't you? It would have made the ride a lot more comfortable."
"I can't abide needles of any sort. I really am a coward at heart, you know. The thought of being stuck with one of those gives me nightmares. And I don't think much of hospitals, either."
"You'll love this one, then. This is the place the drugs were stolen from, where that supply sergeant was murdered and the kid overdosed on morphine."
"Thank you very much for that information," Harry said. "Now I have to worry about idiot doctors as well as needles. Don't they know how to measure doses?"
"I'm not really sure how that happened. But the good news is they do have some pretty nurses there," I said, trying to make up for worrying him.
"I'm all for pretty nurses, but I prefer to see them off duty and outside of a hospital. As far as I'm concerned, if you can walk into a hospital under your own power, don't. There are more chances of getting sick inside than outside."
"Well, you could probably hop into a hospital under your own power. Does that count?"
"Go ahead and have your laugh, Billy. But this is almost like a religion in my family. My grandmother had nothing to do with doctors all her life, after her mother went to hospital for an ache in her side and never set foot out of it. Alive anyway. And Grandmamma lived to be ninety-six, and was in good health until a few weeks before she died. I plan to do the same, if this war doesn't interfere."
"All right, I give up," I said. "I suppose she didn't like needles either."
"Not one bit," Harry said, and then smiled. "Actually, I think she's the one who instilled that fear in me when I was a child, always going on about doctors and their long needles. She was a very nice woman, but just a trifle touchy on the subject of medicine. She finally came down with some kind of cancer just after her ninety-fifth birthday. She allowed a doctor to come to the house, but after he diagnosed her she refused to go to hospital. She carried on just as she always had, until the pain and weakness were too much for her."
"So no needles, even at the end?"
"She wouldn't allow it. The doctor did give her morphine, mixed in with liquor, which helped. We stayed with her, Mother and I, until the end. I have to say it was a lot better than being in a sterile hospital."
"You won't have to worry about that in Algiers. Nothing is sterile there." I smiled and patted his shoulder. "I'm going to check on Diana."
"Billy, I'm sorry I punched you. You didn't deserve it. I… I mean I keep thinking, maybe there was something I could have done that would have changed things, that would have kept my crew alive. But I don't know. Sometimes it gets to be too much and then I explode. You were convenient, and I thought I could at least blame you for those deaths in Norway."
"I blame myself, Harry."
"But don't you see, they were all dead men already," he said, gripping my arm. "It was just a fortnight later that it happened, whatever it was. It didn't matter what you did, where you took us. They already had a date with death. We were already headed for that mine, or whatever it was, we just didn't know it. So what does it matter? I might as well blame the chap who wrote the orders for that patrol. Anyway, I'm sorry."
"Yeah, me too. I wish I never got you involved in that mission, but I wasn't thinking straight."
"You had to put things right. That makes some sense, more sense than waking up in the water wondering where all your chaps went. Now, go tend to that young lady before I do. She's quite beautiful, you know. I may hop over there any second."
He let go of my arm. It was strange that they each had a boat sink from under them. And then I thought that hanging around survivors like them wasn't such a bad idea. Maybe their luck would rub off, although from the shape they were both in, that kind of luck carried a steep price tag.
I knelt beside Diana, started to take her hand, then thought better of it.
"Diana, it's Billy," I whispered. "You're safe, and the plane is about to land in Algiers. Then we're going to a hospital. There will be privacy, clean sheets, and doctors and nurses to take care of you. And I'll be there. Major Harding and Kaz too. We'll be together and you'll be safe."