“AT EASE, BOYLE.”
Major Thomas Thornton had been at a desk too long. He had soft, pudgy cheeks and red-rimmed eyes with dark bags beneath them. He wore a mustache, which suited him, and had his black hair slicked back with too much Brylcreem, which didn’t. His ashtray was already half full of ground-out butts, and he shifted uncomfortably in his chair as he read through my orders, spitting a bit of stray tobacco onto his desk, where it landed, a tiny brown speck lost amid a pile of requisitions, files, manuals, and all the tools of a division’s executive officer. In the corner behind him, three cases of Jameson Irish whiskey were neatly stacked. Liquor was also a tool of the trade, bartering and smoothing the way for whatever your commanding officer needed.
“Ike and the British chief of staff? Jesus Christ, Boyle, you move in exalted circles. Are you any good? Can you find my BARs?”
“I don’t exactly move in those circles, Major. I just go where they tell me.”
“Sit down, sit down,” Thornton said, as if that was something I should have taken for granted. He waved his hand toward a chair and I pulled it up to his desk. “I want my goddamn BARs back, Boyle.”
“Yes, sir. Can you fill me in on what you’ve come up with? I have the police report from the RUC and an initial report from the provost marshal but nothing from this command.”
“Listen, Boyle, do you have any idea what kind of workload an XO has? I don’t have time for reports in triplicate. I’m spending every wak- ing moment getting this division ready for combat. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out we’re positioned for the invasion, whenever and wherever that comes.”
“Probably right, sir. All the divisions that were here in ’42 ended up in Operation Torch.”
“Goddamn right. While they were invading North Africa we were pulling occupation duty in Iceland. Iceland, Boyle! You know why they call it Iceland?”
“Because it’s cold?”
“Cold and dark, and too much damned ice. Except in the summer, when it’s light twenty-four hours a day so you can’t sleep. I was sent there in 1941 with the first units of this division. I’ve been pushing paper and freezing my ass for two years, and I don’t intend to keep it up for the rest of the war. Iceland makes Ireland look like Miami Beach.”
“The BARs, sir?”
“OK, OK. Sorry to unload on you. The project to build up our weapons companies was all mine, and now these fucking Irish have gone and screwed it up. Goddamn it!” He threw down his pencil like a knife; the lead broke and left a piece stuck in a stack of papers. His face was red and a vein pulsed in his forehead.
“You know, sir, I saw plenty of division staff in North Africa. They were all pretty close to the front. It won’t be like you’re missing out on anything if you stay in this job,” I said, trying to ease Thornton’s frustration. He seemed to be banking on his ideas about added firepower to get him out from behind his desk.
“Thanks, Boyle.” He brushed the piece of lead from the papers and then neatened up the stack, glanced at it, and put it away in a desk drawer. He seemed to lose track of the conversation and looked at me quizzically.
“The investigation?”
“OK, OK. Between butting heads with Heck and everything else I have to do, I haven’t had much time for playing detective. You know about Jenkins, right?”
“Andrew Jenkins, head of the local Red Hands, and he supplies the base with produce, right?”
“Right. He buys stuff from all the farmers in the area and sells it to the army. Potatoes, whatever the hell they grow around here. Whiskey, ham, fresh eggs, all sorts of stuff for the officers’ messes.”
“Besides his truck being used, do you have any evidence of his involvement?”
“Evidence? No. Except that I know he’d do anything to hit the IRA. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I can tell,” Thornton said, as he tapped the broken pencil on his desk. “I can tell when a man wants something, something larger than himself. Something grand. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes, I do. I’ve seen it,” I said, knowing what he meant. Combat, glory, promotion. “It’s not grand at all. But you won’t believe me until you’ve seen it yourself.”
“Why?” For the first time in our conversation, Thornton seemed to relax and actually listen, genuinely curious about what I had to say.
“Because I wouldn’t have.”
“Yeah, that’s the hell of it, isn’t it?”
“Sure is.”
Thornton looked at the broken pencil for a while, then sighed and tossed it into the wastepaper basket. He drummed his fingers on his desk, his frustrated energy keeping his body moving even while seated. I sat, the visions of that thing, the unknowable, the unimaginable, flowing through my mind. It wasn’t grand at all, I had told the truth about that. It was gruesome and dirty, painful and demeaning, but at times—especially when you realized you were alive and had cheated death—there was something grand
about
it, something around the edges, in the light of explosions in the distance, the loud thuds of artillery, the rush of adrenaline, the eerie calm in the midst of a fight when time slowed and everything crackled with crystal clarity. There was grandness in the confusion I felt then, the feeling of wishing I could erase it all from my mind while knowing that it was the most significant, important, otherworldly thing I’d ever experienced. Sometimes I wondered if there was something holy in it all, as if I could almost see the best of creation in the midst of the worst of it.
“There’s one more thing,” he said. “Mahoney—the dead guy with the money in his hand? Well, I’d seen him before. He looked a bit different then, with his brains all inside his skull, but I saw him drinking in a pub in Annalong, a little south of here.”
“When was this?”
“The Sunday before the theft. I had to get out of here for a while, so I drove down the coast road and ended up in Annalong. There’s a place, the Harbor Bar, right on the water, where I stopped and got something to eat and had a few pints. I noticed him because he was arguing with someone—quietly, but you could tell it was heated by the way they strained to keep their voices down.”
“Would you know the other man if you saw him?”
“No, his back was to me, and he had a cap on. But as soon as I saw the red hair on the corpse, I recognized him. Bright orange, like a carrot. That was Mahoney.”
“OK, that’s something.”
“I told Heck and Inspector Carrick about it, you can check with them.”
“Yeah, I will. Anything else you remember?”
“Nope. Now tell me what you need to find my BARs.”
“Transport. I’ll need a jeep. And if I need some muscle, can I call on your MPs? I met Burnham and Patterson yesterday. They seem pretty capable.”
“They’re good men. I’ll let them know you may be in touch. But go through me. I need to be kept up to date. Check in with me every day.” He scribbled out an order for a jeep and a pass to all 5th Division installations and handed them to me. “Motor pool is out and to the left. Follow the lane through the trees, about a quarter mile. Need a ride?”
“No, sir. But one more thing. Can you tell me who received the radio dispatch about my arrival?”
“I never saw one. Northern Ireland Command told me to expect you any day now but I never heard when or how you were coming.”
“Then I’d like to start at your Signals Company, talk to whoever was on duty yesterday.”
“Is there a problem?”
“No, strictly routine.”
He eyed me for a few seconds, then lifted his telephone and made a call.
Ten minutes later I was in a Quonset hut crammed with radios and noisy with the static and tinny crackling sounds of communications gear. A technical sergeant named Lasner leafed through clipboards of dispatch sheets, all the documentation for signals sent and received. Below his sergeant’s stripes were two service stripes, meaning he’d been in more than six years. A regular, and it showed in everything from the shine on his boots to the gleaming brass Signal Corps emblem on his tunic’s lapels. There were six clipboards, all neatly arranged on a table with wire baskets where the forms were deposited when received.
“Nothing here with your name on it, Lieutenant Boyle,” he said as he finished with the last clipboard.
“It wasn’t for me, Sarge.”
“I understand that, Lieutenant. I mean there are no messages here that include your name. Anywhere.”
“Got it. Looks like you run a tight ship.”
“Yes, sir. Anything else, Lieutenant?” I could tell he was eager to get rid of me but then again most noncoms would be eager to get a second louie out of their hair, especially if he was from another outfit and was making extra work for them.
“Are all these receipts for messages received? If a message came into Northern Ireland Command HQ to be passed on to you, would they have the same kind of documents?”
“They ought to. And sent, as well. But if I don’t have a record of it coming in, they didn’t send it.”
“I can believe it, Sarge. Everything looks fine on your end.”
“Is there a problem, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“You know Captain Heck, the provost marshal?”
“Know of him,” Lasner said, his tone carefully neutral.
“I think he intercepted a message meant for Major Thornton about my arrival here. Sound likely to you?”
“From what I hear, he’d be careful to cover his tracks. Not that I’m accusing the provost marshal of anything.”
“That would mean he had someone working for him at HQ.”
“Let’s just say I’ve heard Heck will do you a favor if you find yourself at the wrong end of an MP’s nightstick. Only problem is, once he’s got you over a barrel, the favors have to keep coming.”
“So he’ll withhold charges for a price?”
“He doesn’t take money, if that’s what you mean. He’s always looking for an angle, so he’d rather have information. He’s smart, Lieutenant. Watch yourself around him.”
“You’re not the first to warn me. If that’s his game, and he’s so slick, how can you be certain it wasn’t one of your men here who killed the message to Thornton and gave it to Heck?”
“I know my men. I trained them all, and they know what would happen if they pulled something like that.” There was a hard look in his eyes, a combination of resentment that I’d asked the question and fury at the thought of such betrayal.
“How about your captain?”
“I couldn’t imagine it. Besides, he doesn’t spend a lot of time here.”
“He lets you run the show?”
“The captain wisely delegates responsibility. I think he’s been in Belfast for the last few days.”
“Doing what?”
“Whatever it is that officers do while the work gets done, Lieutenant.”
“Understood, Sarge. One more question, though. You know anything about the BARs stolen from the depot at Ballykinler?”
“Only that Major Thornton is mightily pissed off about it. Heck has been nosing around asking a lot of questions too, looking through stacks of shipping receipts, bills of lading, making himself a real pain. Every time he shows up, it takes us a day to put the place back together. You investigating that?”
“Yeah. And I’m not working for Heck, to answer your next question. Any rumors about who was in on the heist?”
“A million of them, but I won’t waste your time. Hang on, there is something here.” He flipped back through the message receipts until he found what he was looking for. “I guess it’s OK to give you this, since Major Thornton said I should help you out. Or did he already tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“Here. This message came in yesterday morning from some inspector from the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Local flatfoots investigating the heist. Inspector Carrick asked the major for service records for Sergeant Peter Brennan.” He handed me a copy of the message form.
“Who’s that?”
“Pete’s a buck sergeant at the Ballykinler Depot.”
“You know him? What kind of guy is he?”
“We’re not pals but he seems OK. He’s been with us about six months now.”
“Thanks, Sarge, you’ve been a big help. Can I have this?”
“Sure. I’ve got another, we do them in triplicate.”
“God bless army paperwork.”
“So who do you work for, Lieutenant, if you’re not part of the provost marshal’s office?”
“I’m here at the request of the British.”
“Well, you know what they say. It takes a thief.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“That the English are pretty savvy, sending an Irishman. Boyle— that’s Irish, right?”
“We’re not all thieves, Sergeant,” I said in my best stern disciplinarian officer’s voice.
“Sorry, sir. No offense intended. It’s just a saying.”
It takes a thief to catch a thief. I never believed that saying. In my book, it took a cop to catch a thief, and that’s what I was. A cop on loan, courtesy of my Uncle Ike, who even now might be writing love notes to the beautiful Kay Summersby. Another Irish thief, this one out to steal a general’s heart. Or was it an inside job?
I THOUGHT ABOUT asking Thornton why he hadn’t mentioned the request for Brennan’s files. If Brennan was a suspect in the eyes of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, I shouldn’t waste a minute before I talked to him. I could always find Thornton later, but if an Ulster cop was interested in a guy named Brennan, then I figured I had better get to him first.
I drove the jeep out of the headquarters camp, splashing through water in muddy potholes as shafts of sunlight split the gray clouds drifting out over the Irish Sea. Thick, green grass grew along the sides of the boreen on the wooded hillside, which descended to the main road running along the coastline. The wet ground smelled fertile, the warmth drawing out odors of loam, pine, and sheep dung as a breeze from the sea salted the air. Gray stone cottages dotted emerald fields encompassed by stone walls, every rock the same uniform color and size, as if they came out of the ground ready-made for building fences and thick cottage walls. I squinted my eyes against the welcome sun as I caught the smell of smoke from a house close to the narrow road. It wasn’t wood smoke, I was sure. It was more of a musty, green leaf smell, and I realized it must be peat. There wasn’t a tree thicker than my arm in sight, and except for the small pine forest I’d left, there had hardly been any trees anywhere I’d passed. Another reminder that even though this country looked and felt familiar, far more familiar than North Africa or Sicily, it was still a foreign land, a land of strange habits and ancient hatreds, a place my ancestors had come from and of which I knew little but fables and stories.
Brennan was an Irish name, a Catholic name. Not that there weren’t Irish Protestants, and a few who weren’t pro-British—the IRA even had some Protestant members—but historically, the Irish were Catholic, and religion had been a weapon used against them for hundreds of years. The only reason any Protestant was in Ireland now was because the English had sent them here generations ago, to rule the land by taking it away from the natives, who all happened to be Catholic. The British had called them papists, and passed laws eliminating all rights to land and life. Those laws were now gone but the memory of them hung in the air that every Protestant and Catholic on this island breathed, reminding them of the wars, wrongs, and oppressions their people had borne. So a Brennan suspected by a Carrick of any crime here could expect little sympathy and less justice. The RUC wouldn’t have jurisdiction on a U.S. Army base, but if Brennan was a suspect and went into town for a drink at the wrong local pub, he could disappear out the back door faster than you could say Red Hand.
The road to Ballykinler took me back through the town of Newcastle, past the railroad station at the edge of town, as its brick clock tower chimed eleven. I turned inland, skirting the bay where I’d landed in the seaplane, then headed through the small village of Clough, where I saw the Lug o’ the Tub Pub, the joint where Grady O’Brick spent most evenings, and where I hoped to have a chat with the old man tonight. From Clough, the land rose up, a small plateau with views of the Mourne Mountains across the bay to the south and the Irish Sea to the east. The U.S. Army depot was at the highest point, a flat, windswept stretch of land enclosed in barbed wire. Thornton’s pass got me in without a question, and I followed signs for the Ordnance Depot, navigating through muddy lanes between rows of long barracks buildings. GIs were everywhere, doing calisthenics and close order drill, whitewashing rocks to serve as path markers, all the usual chickenshit routine of army life.
The Ordnance Depot was at the center of the camp, surrounded by its own barbed wire fence. Two guards stood at this gate; they scrutinized my papers much more carefully than the guards at the main gate had. I looked at the fence; the wood posts were new, fresh cut. The earth was still turned over where the postholes had been dug. Somebody had learned something from all this.
“Go on in, sir,” a corporal said after he checked my ID against my face. “The lieutenant is expecting you.”
“Is he?” I said, and drove to a small parking area at the end of a long wooden building. It was sturdier than the others, built on a stone foundation, and twice as wide. At the far end was a loading dock and room for trucks to back up. Easy access, or at least it had been.
“Lieutenant Boyle?” The voice came from the doorway, where a tall, thin fellow wearing the silver bars of a first lieutenant stood, slightly stooped to fit within the door frame.
“That’s me,” I said as I got out of the jeep. “I heard you were expecting me.”
“Major Thornton is eager to have this mess cleared up,” he said as he held the door open for me.
“I know. He wants his BARs back, Lieutenant . . . ?”
“Jacobson, Saul Jacobson. Come on in.”
I followed him into his office through a room of small desks, big filing cabinets, and four clerks running between them, beating on typewriters and stacking forms. He shut the door behind me, not that the plywood divider would do much for privacy. His desk was a table stacked with papers, bearing in and out baskets and two telephones. Half a dozen clipboards, marked with dates, hung on the wall behind him.
“How long have you been in charge here, Lieutenant Jacobson?”
“Call me Saul, OK? We’re just a couple of lieutenants here, aren’t we?”
“Sure. I’m Billy. You’re a first lieutenant, though. I didn’t know if you were a stickler for the formalities of rank.” He didn’t seem to be. His face was friendly and open, his dark eyes darting at the documents on his desk, then to me, giving me his attention while still drawn to his tasks.
“Hardly. These are brand-new,” he said, tapping his silver bars with his long fingers. “Got promoted when Thornton transferred me here. I was a lowly second louie like you, personnel officer for the regiment. Then they lifted the BARs, and suddenly there was an opening here.”
“Where’s the previous officer in charge?”
“Beats me. Busted to private, shipped out. Italy, some say. Others say back to the States. Hard to say which is worse.”
“It is? Why?” I asked.
“Stan Hayes was a good man.
Is
a good man, I should say. It would break his heart to have come this far and not get into the fight.”
“It might do worse to his heart if he’s in it. Italy is pretty rough.”
“You know for a fact?”
“I’ve been there,” I said, and let the silence fill in the gap between us. Personally, I hoped Private Stan Hayes was peeling potatoes stateside somewhere, where he could grow to be an old man reminiscing about how he’d missed the big show. But I knew it was probably eating at him, and he’d be thinking his life was over, when in fact it had likely been saved.
“In any case,” Saul said, glancing through the papers on his desk, “he’s gone.” He picked up a folder, then put it down. His hands were smooth and clean, his nails filed evenly. He might have been a year or two younger than me but he’d probably look a lot older real quick after dodging bullets and shrapnel.
“Yeah, just what I like to find when I’m investigating a week-old crime. One of the key people whisked out of the country.”
“No one thought he had anything to do with it,” Saul said.
“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t know something or that he hadn’t noticed something odd before the theft, something he might not even have realized. Now I’ll have to go back to Italy or stateside to find him. One is undesirable, the other impossible.”
“All I can tell you is that he thought he was being made the scapegoat, being blamed for lax security. You and I know that responsibility goes higher than a lieutenant’s rank.”
“It doesn’t reach too high either, from my experience. I’m sure everyone from the rank of major on up was glad to see him gone.”
“You mean Major Thornton?”
“You tell me,” I said.
“No, I don’t see it that way. Thornton’s not that kind of guy.”
“You said it was Thornton who transferred you here.”
“And promoted me, yeah, but that’s not why I said that.”
“OK, OK,” I said. “No offense meant, just asking questions.”
“I guess that’s your job. It is, isn’t it? Thornton said you were sent by the Allied High Command.” Saul sounded impressed, which was good, since I wanted his cooperation.
“Yes. The British especially are nervous about the IRA working with the Germans. This arms theft could mean something is in the works.”
“Let me know what I can do to help.”
“First tell me if you’ve heard or seen anything outside the ordinary. Any rumors about who was involved, scuttlebutt of any kind?”
“Of every kind,” he said. “That the people who took the BARs were German agents, for one. That two GIs were found shot in Downpatrick and .30 caliber shell casings were found nearby. That an RUC car was shot up in Banbridge, that a farmer outside of Clough was seen shooting rabbits with a BAR, that a German sub came into the bay and landed commandos. You want more?”
“No. I suppose there’s nothing to any of those rumors?”
“Well, I can’t say for certain it wasn’t German agents who broke in here. As for the rest, I’m pretty sure not.”
“OK. Show me around, then I’d like to talk to Sergeant Brennan. I assume he’s still here?”
“Pete? Yeah. He’s one of our best ordnance guys. He’s hasn’t been here long, but he’s a hard worker. Doesn’t mix with the other men much. He does his job and spends a lot of time down on the beach, staring at the waves.”
“The base goes all the way to the coast?”
“Yeah. The locals call the beach Tyrella. Nice stretch of sand. Our fences go down to the water but the beach is open to personnel.”
“Is that where the German sub was sighted?”
“No, that was in Newcastle Harbor, after a few pints, I think. Come on, I’ll show you around and we’ll see if we can find Brennan.”
“Why is he such a loner, do you suppose?” I asked as I followed Saul out of his office.
“Couldn’t say. He does his job, so I don’t see any reason to force him to be chummy with the guys.”
“Is he fresh from the States or another unit here in Ireland?”
“Neither. He was wounded in Italy, at Salerno. After he recovered, they sent him here.”
I followed Saul out of the building, wondering what had happened to Brennan at Salerno, but knowing that the details didn’t matter. Salerno had happened. In his fresh-faced world, through no real fault of his own, Saul couldn’t make the connection. God bless him for it then. His time would come.
“This was all one big parking area,” he said, gesturing at the fence in front of the building. “Any vehicle could drive right up to the depot.”
“Was the fence your idea?”
“Yes, and the guards as well. We also locked a side door. Now the only way in is through the office, which is in clear sight of the guards. And we have one guard on the loading dock at all times.”
“What about before, when Stan was in charge?” I asked as I followed Saul to the other end of the building, about thirty yards.
“Hey, it wasn’t Stan’s fault! No one gave it a second thought; the depot is right in the middle of a military base, for crying out loud. We have most of the 11th Regiment here, we’re surrounded by GIs.”
“OK, I get the point. Just tell me what the procedures were.”
“No fence, no guards. Pretty much anyone could enter the building, although any locals would have been stopped. To draw any supplies, you’d need a signed requisition. We have men on duty around the clock, in the arms storage areas and ordnance repair shop.”
We entered through the loading dock, which opened into a wide area for temporary storage of items coming in and out of the building. Behind it, through a narrow hallway, was the ordnance repair shop. Workbenches ran along each wall, and every type of small arms imaginable was stacked everywhere, in various stages of disassembly. Rifles, machine guns, and mortars, along with pistols hung from their trigger guards from hooks on the wall. Two GIs in oil-stained coveralls greeted the lieutenant and went back to their work.
“Brennan around?” he asked.
“Said he was goin’ to the beach coupla hours ago,” one of them said. “He got that MG42 workin’ ’fore he took off.”
“Why do you have a German machine gun?” I asked.
“Familiarization,” Saul answered. “Another one of Thornton’s ideas. We have some British weapons as well, and we run everyone through a familiarization course, so they can recognize the sound of each weapon, and understand basic operation.”
“Believe me, you don’t need a course to recognize one of these,” I said, laying my hand on the smooth black metal, so dark it almost absorbed the light around it. It felt cold, as cold as a corpse. “It fires so fast you can’t even hear the individual shots. It sounds like ripping cloth, one long, long piece of fabric being torn. Or a chain saw, some people say. The Germans call it the Bonesaw, with good reason.”
I closed my eyes and heard it, and jerked my hand away as if the gun barrel were smoking hot. I saw Saul and the two GIs staring at me, and I couldn’t escape the sensation of a spray of blood against my face. I knew it wasn’t happening. But it had happened, the last time I heard the Bonesaw at work.
“Come on,” I said to Saul, sorry that they’d caught a glimpse of things to come, and desperately trying not to rub the blood from my face. I took some deep breaths and walked away from the MG42.
Saul led me into the cellar. Boxes of ammunition were stacked chest-high around us, and crates of M1 carbines stood along the walls. A bright red sign proclaimed NO SMOKING next to a poster cautioning that careless talk costs lives. Or BARs. Another, more faded poster looked like a leftover from the last war. John Bull, his big belly tucked into a union jack vest, standing in front of a line of British soldiers, asking, WHO’S ABSENT, IS IT YOU?
“They came down these steps, right to where the BARs were,” Saul said.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“It had been raining all day. Stan told me there were muddy boot prints from the loading dock, straight to the cellar and right to the crated BARs. Besides the ammo, they didn’t take anything else.”
“It must have been tempting but they had to get out fast and hide the stuff,” I said, half to myself. “How long do you think it took them?”