The First Wave (18 page)
“Lieutenant, you should see this,” Banville said, standing over the mattress.
“In a second,” I told him.
The box held writing paper, envelopes, stamps, and a couple of pens. I dumped the contents out. All blank, except for one page. It was the start of a letter, addressed to a Monsieur Baudouin in Algiers. It went on but the address was all I could make out. I turned to give it to Banville.
“Can you translate . . . ?” I stopped. He had pulled back the rough brown blanket that covered the mattress. I glimpsed a bit of blue fabric caught up in the folds of the blanket. There was no sheet. The mattress was stained rust red with dried blood, not a lot, just enough to show that someone had been beaten and left there. On the floor next to the mattress were a couple of small tubes. They looked familiar. I felt sick. My face went white-hot and my hands started trembling. It seemed I was watching myself, looking down on this other guy who was starting to fall apart.
“Solution of Morphine, one half Grain, Syrette.Warning: May Be Habit Forming,” I said, from memory. I didn’t need to read the label on the used-up tube.
Banville nodded and motioned with his thumb toward a big tin can, like those big tins of peas they use in the mess hall. It was empty, the label long gone, doing service as a trash can. Inside were a half-dozen empty syrettes. And a couple of used condoms.
I wanted to turn and run and keep going until I hit the boat, take off, and leave this goddamned country behind. Instead, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I opened them, turned around, and knelt down by the mattress. Now I knew what that other smell was. Not just sweat, but the musky smell of sex and fear. I shook the blanket until the piece of light blue fabric fell out. Sky blue, to match her eyes. A four-inch ragged strip with lace along the collar, delicate and feminine, but the dark splotches of dried blood were horrible and masculine, as were the ripped buttons and torn stitching. I laid it down gently on the floor, and tried to remember for certain if that was the blouse I had seen Diana wearing a few days ago. Nothing came to me, no image of her. Just him.
“Here,” I said, handing the unfinished letter to Banville. “Tell me what this says later. Now get out of here.”
“What do you mean? I can translate it now if you want.”
I went over to the table, gathered up the blank papers, and old newspapers and magazines, and threw them on top of the mattress. I grabbed the bottle of brandy and shook it out over the paper-strewn mattress.
“What the hell are you doing, sir?” asked Banville, his voice rising with every word. I could sense Rodney and Duxbury in the doorway, attracted by his tone of voice. I dropped the empty bottle, knelt down, and picked up the torn blouse. I brought it up to my nose to try to recapture her scent, to feel a connection with Diana. The ruined cloth gave back nothing but the dull metallic smell of dried blood and the thin feathery feel of torn stitching.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the matchbook. Le Bar Bleu.
“I told you to get out,” I repeated.
This time Banville did as he was told, pushing back the two commandos as well. I fumbled with the matchbook, finally pulling out a match. My hands weren’t shaking anymore, but everything felt slow and difficult. I wasn’t angry. I just knew what I had to do. Burn this fucking place to the ground.
I struck the match and threw it on the brandy-soaked papers. There was a small
whoosh
and crinkling of paper as the blue flames danced along the curled edges of newsprint, bills, and blank sheets of stationery. The blanket caught fire and I kicked it with my boot over to the window. The flames climbed up the curtains as the breeze fanned the fire and it began to eat at the peeling paint on the wall.
“Lieutenant!” Banville yelled, his hand on my shoulder pulling me back. I shrugged him off, holding the pale blue fabric in my hand for a second longer, before I dropped it in the flames.
I WALKED OUT OF the room with flames at my back. Smoke roiled along the ceiling and chased us to the stairs. Duxbury and Rodney clomped down the steps, their boots and combat gear adding noise and weight to their confused retreat. Banville was alongside me, his arm behind my back as if to prevent me from returning to that little room. He glanced down the stairs at Rodney who was looking up at us, eyes wide with fear and incomprehension.
“After you, sir,” Banville said, as if he were holding a door open at a fancy hotel, or maybe a sanatorium. The smoke was turning the air gray and the flames were starting to run along the dry wood beams of the ceiling. It was time to go.
“Sure.” I took the stairs slowly, trying to regain a sense of connection with the people and things around me. But all I cared about, all I could think about, was Diana. Diana in that room, and Villard. And how he was going to suffer. For what he’d done to her, and for how he was making me suffer now. For making me want to kill him even more than I wanted to be with Diana.
The air began to clear but I knew it wouldn’t last, that as soon as the fire burned along the roofline, it would spread down the walls, dropping embers that would eat at the floorboards, opening gaping, black charred holes that would suck up the fresh air and turn it into bright flames, devouring everything that just moments before had been solid, permanent, dependable. And leave a smoking ruined mass of rubble, one or two beams left, holding up nothing but air.
I reached the bottom and waited for Banville who was a couple of steps behind me. He walked by me, the air current created by his passage drawing a little puff of smoke behind him.
“Captain,” he bellowed as he turned the corner into the bar where we had left Harry. “We’ve got to leave, now.”
He seemed to be taking over, with one officer wounded and the other loony. Rodney and Duxbury trotted after him, knowing the voice of authority when they heard it. I trailed them into the bar. Banville was helping Harry up and Rodney was already at the door, scanning the street to see if it was more dangerous than remaining in a burning building.
“What’s going on? I smell smoke.” Harry looked to me, then Banville, who had hoisted Harry’s arm over his shoulder and was helping him hop towards the doorway.
“There’s a fire,” Banville answered, in a noncommittal tone. Harry shot a look over his shoulder at me. He locked onto my eyes and didn’t let up. I had to turn away.
“Why did you start it?” Harry asked.
I picked up my helmet and put it on. It felt solid, heavy, blessedly real. I felt like I was waking up from a nightmare although I hadn’t been asleep.
“It’s a long story.”
“Bloody hell.”
I could tell he wasn’t satisfied with my answer, but that was nothing new.We left the bar and walked into the street, the heat jumping off the white paving stones, a hot bright haze floating up to our eyeballs. The fire behind us was crackling and popping now, the smoke and sound attracting a crowd. Arabs chattered to each other, and a few Frenchmen pointed to the burning building, their arms waving wildly as they signaled to a vehicle coming down the street. It was an ancient fire truck, a hand-pump job that would’ve been an antique at the turn of the century.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said. No one disagreed, and as Banville helped Harry into the passenger seat of our jeep Rodney swiveled the .30 caliber machine gun toward the crowd. The barrel was tilted up toward the sky, but the message was clear. The crowd backed off. Duxbury pulled out as the fire truck rattled up behind us. They were starting to work the hand pump as we turned the corner, a dirty gray column of smoke marking the sky behind us.
“Which way to your boat, Captain?” Duxbury asked Harry.
“We’re not going back to the boat,” I said, before Harry could respond. “We’re going to the French Supply Depot.” I unfolded a map and pointed to a spot about three kilometers from where we were. “Here.”
“What’s so important about that depot?” Harry asked, wincing a bit as he held one hand over his bandaged leg. “Or that bar? Why did you set it on fire?”
“The depot is part of this investigation. It may be a rendezvous for smugglers.”
“I thought the bar was the rendezvous?”
“I was wrong.” I couldn’t say anything more. I looked at the buildings ahead of us, more whitewashed Arab houses, and palm trees lining the road, which had changed to hard-packed dirt after we left the French section of town. I moved around in my seat to get comfortable, and to avoid Harry’s eyes. Rodney, Banville, and I were crammed in the rear of the jeep, and Rodney took up a lot of room with the .30 caliber on its swivel. I didn’t want to explain; I just wanted to get my hands on Villard.
“Who was that girl?” Harry asked. He wouldn’t let up.
“Which girl?”
“The one you raced through fire to reach, when you thought she might get hit. Remember her?”
“Yeah. She’s connected with this.”
“You know her.”
“Yeah.”
We came to an intersection, and Duxbury stopped for an Arab leading a couple of donkeys weighed down with packs. He crossed in front of us slowly, the donkeys clip-clopping along and the flap of the Arab’s sandals keeping time. Slow time. He didn’t even look at us, as if jeeps, machine guns, and soldiers were merely part of the scenery. One of the donkeys lifted his tail and dropped a load as he passed. Kind of a salute.
Harry raised his hand before Duxbury could take off.
“Wait,” he said, waving his hand to ward off the gathering flies. The donkey shit was putting out an all-points bulletin, and a few curious incomers buzzed us before diving into the feast.
“I’m senior officer here,” Harry said, “and—”
“At sea,” I said. “You’re senior at sea, but now we’re on land and this is a U.S. Army operation. You know the orders.”
“I’ve been thinking about those orders. They looked as good as the phony ones you gave me in Scotland.”
“But you checked with Headquarters, right? And they verified them?”
“Yes,” Harry admitted, “they did, but these chaps don’t know what you’re capable of. I don’t trust you, Billy. There’s something decidedly odd about that girl and you.”
“Let’s find us some shade,” said Duxbury, and gunned the jeep through the intersection, down a narrow lane that ran alongside railroad tracks. Houses and buildings thinned out here, and Duxbury pulled over into a grove of palm trees and green shrubbery. He faced me and kind of squinted as if to see me more clearly.
“Keep a sharp eye, Rodney,” he said. “Now sirs, why don’t you explain, real simple like, so’s I can understand, what this is all about? Rodney and me, we’ll take you where you need to go, if it’s all on the up and up. If not, then maybe we’ll just take you back to our CO and let ’im sort things out.”
I climbed out of the cramped back seat, took my helmet off and poured water from my canteen over my head. It was hot. My head was hot and it still ached. I didn’t want to face a bunch of questions from some tight-assed English officer and end up cooling my heels while Villard took Diana to some other place, some other room. I tried to calm down, feeling the water soak into my shirt, mingling with the sweat that dripped down my neck, spreading a warm dampness across my chest. I took a breath.
“Captain Dickinson and I met in England, Scotland, actually. I used forged orders to hitch a ride on his MTB to Norway. But these orders are legit,” I said, pulling the folded papers from inside my shirt. They were limp with my sweat.
“Two men died on that trip,” Harry said. His statement hung in the air. Rodney and Duxbury were exchanging looks that seemed to say, There’s two of us, too.
“Forging official orders ain’t an easy thing. ’ow’d you do it?” asked Duxbury.
“I didn’t have to forge the whole thing. I had a set of orders from British headquarters giving me authority to investigate a murder. They ran for several pages, instructing all units to render aid as required. I just pulled one page and substituted another in its place.”
“So what you handed me was real, except for one page?” asked Harry.
“Yeah. It was another guy’s idea. He said that if the front and back looked real, no one would question the contents.”
“And the Captain ’ere checked out your orders for this mission, you said?” Duxbury asked me. I didn’t reply. Something was eating at me. Something I had just said reminded me of something I had seen. Orders. False orders hidden within real ones. Front and back. What was it?
“Lieutenant?” Duxbury said.
“Yeah, yeah. He checked them out. Right, Harry?”
“Yes, but there’s something strange going on,” Harry said to Duxbury, pointing his finger at me. “How did he know the girl at the bar, the one that French policeman was dragging out the back door?”
“She’s English,” I said.
“That right? The Vichy copper got ’imself an English girl?” Duxbury’s face took on a questioning, threatening look.
“There’s more to it than one English girl,” said Banville, leaning in from the back seat. “That letter you found in the upstairs room, addressed to Monsieur Baudouin. It was a ransom note.”
My mind was struggling to keep up with all the ideas flying around. Ransom letter. Okay, Villard is holding the kids hostage, trying to make some francs on the side by getting their families to pay up. But which one of them had no family to pay up? Diana, since her false identity probably didn’t include actual parents in Algeria. There was nowhere to send a ransom letter for her.
“The letters!” I blurted out.
“What bloody letters?” Harry said.
“The letters I saw in Bessette’s office. There was a letter to Jules Bessette, Blackpool, England on his desk. It was addressed and sealed, but not stamped.”
“Has the heat gotten to you? Or are you still concussed?” Harry asked.
“No, no, listen, listen! Bessette is a captain at French Army HQ. I broke into his office a few nights ago, don’t ask how. He had letters on his desk. One was addressed to a Mademoiselle Bessette in Marseilles, another to Jules Bessette in England.”
“So, he keeps in touch with his family,” Harry said.
Everything came together in my head and I tried to assemble my thoughts. But they were all jumbled up.
“It was talking about orders that made everything click. About hiding something within something else. I remember that the letter to Jules Bessette wasn’t stamped. That’s because the Bessette family has another way of getting letters to England. Bypassing the censors. Bessette is corrupt, and so is the entire family. They run the docks and operate a smuggling operation from here to Portugal: people, drugs, whatever has value. I couldn’t figure out how they geared up so fast to grab the morphine and penicillin, but they were told about the arrival of the drugs by letters smuggled to them on neutral steamers, just like they smuggled in anything else.”
“Slow down a bit, Lieutenant,” Banville said. “What does this have to do with the ransom letter you found upstairs?”
“Nothing and everything,” I said. They all seemed slow and stupid. “When you mentioned the letter it all fell into place. Villard and Bessette are in this together, aided by someone who knew about the penicillin coming to Algiers, someone on our side. Bessette supplied the information, which reached him via his smuggling operation from his contacts in England. His brother Jules lives in Blackpool, which is where the U.S. Army hospital now in Algiers was based. Jules got the lowdown from someone there, then passed it on via their smuggling route. That’s why there was no stamp on the envelope. Some sailor just walks off the ship when it docks in England, licks a stamp, and mails it there. No censors to worry about. On the return route, they use the same method.” I took a breath and looked at the four of them. Furrowed brows, sideways glances, but I could see they were trying to think it through.
“Then ’ow does this English girl fit in?” Duxbury asked.
I supposed there was no reason why they couldn’t know about Diana. They were Royal Commandos.
“She’s SOE, sent down here to help organize the revolt against the Vichy regime. They failed and she was taken prisoner with those French kids. Villard is working all the angles, so he’s extorting the families for a payoff to release their sons and daughters. Only she . . .Diana . . . doesn’t have any family here.”
“So he found another use for her,” Banville said. No one else had seen the room. “He used morphine on her and raped her.”
The words were cold and hard. I wasn’t ready to hear them said out loud. I shied away from the jeep and the eyes looking at me. My guts twisted and I felt dizzy, like I was about to faint. I grabbed the trunk of a palm tree and steadied myself.
“Do you mean to tell me that this damn Frog is stealing drugs from our ’ospitals and using them on a brave English girl and then ’avin’ ’is bleedin’ way with ’er?” Duxbury’s voice rose with each word, as if he could hardly believe what he had heard.
I nodded. I couldn’t speak.
“Then what the bloody hell are we waiting for?” Rodney asked, his hands clenched tightly on the machine gun.
“Get in, Billy,” Harry said, in a sad voice. “We’re still on land, this is your show.”
I doused my head with water again, washing away the tears I prayed they hadn’t seen. I got in, put on my helmet, and checked the clip in my Thompson as Duxbury gunned the jeep out of the palm grove and into the fading heat of the day.