Joe Steele (43 page)

Russians and Americans drank to that. No doubt the Japs would have, too, had any been invited. But this was a gathering of the victors, not the vanquished.

Trotsky seemed more easygoing than he had while discussing European affairs. When Joe Steele proposed a three-mile-wide demilitarized zone between the parts of Japan the great powers held, Trotsky waggled his hand as if to say it wasn't worth arguing about. “You took the Balkans seriously,” Joe Steele teased.

“Oh, yes.” Trotsky turned grave again. “The fight against Hitler was a struggle for survival. Another such fight in Europe would be, too.” He eyed the President before finishing, “But this over here? This was only a war.”

The longer Charlie thought about that, the more sense it made. A professor or a striped-pants diplomat would have said Japan didn't affect Russia's vital national interests the way Germany did. Trotsky got the message across saying what he said. He got his own cold-bloodedness across, too.

Joe Steele never mentioned uranium. Charlie didn't know how Rickover was doing with the project that had cost Albert Einstein—and, from small stories in the paper, several other prominent nuclear physicists, one here, one there, one now, one then—a discreetly untimely demise. Charlie
couldn't very well grab the President by the lapel and ask,
Say, how's that uranium bomb coming?
If Joe Steele wanted him to know, he'd know. If Joe Steele didn't, he'd find out with everybody else, or he'd never find out at all.

Of course, Leon Trotsky never mentioned uranium, either. Was that because he'd never heard of it? Or was it because he also had scientists and engineers slaving away? There was a fascinating riddle, especially after Charlie had tossed down enough toasts to get toasted.

He didn't ruin himself the way he had in the Iraqi city. Despite aspirins and Vitamin B12, though, he still felt it the next morning. He slouched toward coffee (mandatory) and breakfast (optional). As he left the Quonset hut he'd shared with Kagan, a trim young first lieutenant said, “Excuse me, Mr. Sullivan, sir, but there's a noncom who'd like to speak to you.”

“There is?” Charlie said in surprise.

There was. A lean, tough-looking sergeant who looked as if he'd been in the Army for a million years came up. Only when he cocked his head to one side did Charlie realize who he was. “Hey, kiddo! How the hell are ya?” Mike said.

Hangover forgotten, Charlie threw himself into his brother's arms. “Mike!” he blubbered through tears while the lieutenant gawped. “What in God's name are you doing here, Mike?”

“Well, the Japs couldn't kill me, not that they didn't try a time or two . . . dozen,” Mike answered. “But why I'm here in Hey-Sue-Whack-Your-Mama or whatever they call this rotten joint, I'm here on account of Joe Steele's gonna pin a medal on me for knowing that dead Jap was Hirohito. Is that funny, or what?”

“That,” said Charlie with deep sincerity, “is fucking ridiculous. Come on and have some breakfast with me. I bet we get better grub than you do.”

“I haven't groused since I left the encampment,” Mike said. “Long as there's enough, I take an even strain.”

But he went into the fancy mess hall with Charlie. He filled a tray, demolished what he'd taken, and went back for seconds. He disposed of those, too. While he was doing it, Joe Steele paused on his own way to the chow line.

“Ah, the brothers Sullivan,” he said. “Have any good stories about me
now, Mike? I wondered if you were that Sullivan. Now I know.” He couldn't have thought about Mike more than once in the nine years since his arrest . . . could he? Whether he had or not, he remembered everything, just the way Mikoian said he did.

“I'm that Sullivan, all right, sir. NY24601.” Mike recited his encampment number with quiet pride.

“Well, if you run into WY232 again, give him my regards, not that he'll appreciate them.” With a nod, Joe Steele went off to get some bacon and eggs and coffee.

Mike stared after him. “Christ!” he said hoarsely.

“What?” Charlie asked.

“He even knows who my best friend in the encampment was. He's a son of a bitch, but he's smarter than I thought he was, and I never pegged him for a dope.”

Leon Trotsky came in with two Red bodyguards and his interpreter. “Here's another smart SOB,” Charlie said in a low voice. “And between the two of 'em, they've got the whole world sewed up.”

“Ain't life grand?” Mike said. They both started to laugh.

Mike stayed in the Army after what they called peace came. All his other choices seemed worse. They made it plain to him that, as someone who'd served a stretch in an encampment, he could live legally only in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain states. What would he do there? Asking the question answered it. He'd starve, that was what.

Who would hire a reporter who'd got jugged for going after Joe Steele? No one in his right mind, even if the President had personally given him a Bronze Star with V for valor. The other trade he knew was lumberjack. He hadn't enjoyed doing it for the Jeebies enough to want to keep doing it on his own.

After a bit, he realized he'd also got good at one other thing. But how much demand for a button man was there in places like Denver or Salt Lake City or Albuquerque? Not enough, chances were, to support him in the style to which he'd like to become accustomed. And, as with cutting down trees, cutting down people was something he could do when he had to but not something he wanted for a career.

So he kept the uniform on. They promoted him to first sergeant—getting a medal from Joe Steele's own mitts carried weight with them. And they mustered him out of the punishment brigade and into an ordinary infantry unit. He felt a pang of regret when he took off the tunic he'd worn so long, the one with the P on the sleeve. Part of the regret came from
remembering how many guys he'd liked who'd worn that P with him weren't here to take it off. Getting rid of guys like that—guys like him—was what punishment brigades were all about. It just hadn't quite worked in his case.

He could have lied about his past and said he'd come from some other ordinary unit. When they cut his new orders, they even offered to give him a fictitious paper trail: probably one more consequence of getting the Bronze Star from Joe Steele. But he said, “Nah, don't bother.”

He was proud of his stretch in the punishment brigade. He was proud of the four oak-leaf clusters on the ribbon for his Purple Heart. He was proud of his stretch as a wrecker, too. A lot of the poor bastards in the encampments got their time because somebody sold them out. Not him. He'd earned a term as honestly as a man could.

And when he went to the brigade near the demilitarized zone, he found that the men there were in awe of what he'd lived through. He'd seen more hard fighting in more bad places than any four of them put together. Most of them wanted to go home as soon as they could and start reassembling the lives they'd had before they put on the uniform.

Mike had nothing left to reassemble back in the States. He'd liked seeing Charlie. But they'd gone their separate ways even before the knock on the door at one in the morning. Charlie'd come to terms with Joe Steele. Mike hadn't and couldn't. In the United States these days, no chasm gaped wider.

So Mike figured he was better off an ocean away from the United States. Now that he wasn't trying to kill the Japs, he discovered they could be interesting. They bowed low to the American conquerors whenever they walked past. A lot of soldiers accepted that as no less than their due. Mike wondered what would happen if he started bowing back.

Old men stared as if they couldn't believe their eyes. Younger men—often demobilized soldiers, plainly—also acted surprised, but a few of them grudged him a smile. And women of any age went into storms of giggles. He couldn't decide whether he was the funniest thing in the world or he embarrassed them.

They also giggled when he learned a few words of Japanese and trotted them out. He liked being able to ask for food and drink without going
through a big song and dance. Beer—
biru
—was easy. He learned the word for
delicious
, too, or thought he did. That set off more laughter than anything else he said. He wondered why till a Jap with bits of English explained
oishi
meant something lewd if you didn't say it just right. He did his best after that and used it a lot, because he liked Japanese food more than he'd thought he would.

He liked soaking in a Japanese bath, too. Other Americans ribbed him when he said so. “I like bathing by myself, thanks,” one of them told him.

“Hey, this beats the shit out of climbing into a tub full of disinfectant with a bunch of smelly scalps,” Mike answered. As far as he knew, the other soldier had never been within a hundred miles of an encampment. But the guy understood the slang. Joe Steele left his mark on America all kinds of ways.

He'd left his mark on Japan, too. Everyone was desperately poor. The Japs scrounged through the base's garbage without shame. Old tin cans, scraps of wood, and broken tools were all precious to them. So was cloth, because they had so little of their own.

Not surprisingly, a black market sprang up. Some things passed from the base to the natives in unofficial ways. Americans wound up owning little artworks that hadn't got ruined in the fighting. A village druggist rigged up a still that would have made a moonshiner proud during Prohibition. Mike had drunk plenty of worse white mule back in the States.

And, of course, some of the women paid for what they wanted in the oldest coin of all. If that bothered them, they showed it less than their counterparts in the West would have. It was, their attitude seemed to say, all part of a day's work. Mike liked that better than the hypocrisy he'd grown up with.

Some of the men resented the Americans for beating them. There were places in South Japan where soldiers had to travel in groups so they wouldn't get bushwhacked. The island of Shikoku was especially bad for that. It had been bypassed, not overrun and ground to sawdust. The Japs there hadn't been licked the way the ones on Kyushu and Honshu had.

Up here near the demilitarized zone, the locals gave the Americans far less grief. Bad as things were on this side of the Agano River, all the Japs
had to do was look over the border into North Japan to know they could have had it one hell of a lot worse.

The Americans were at least going through the motions of trying to get the Japs in their half of the prostrate country back on their feet. The Russians? They treated North Japan the way they treated East Germany: as a source for what they needed to rebuild their own ravaged land. Factories and mills got broken down and shipped by sea to Vladivostok for reconstruction somewhere in Russia. Farmers were herded together into agricultural collectives (Mike saw little difference between those and Joe Steele's community farms, but nobody asked him so he kept his mouth shut).

Anyone in North Japan who complained vanished—into a reeducation camp or into an unmarked grave. Of course, anyone in South Japan who complained could find himself in big trouble, too. But there was a difference. More people tried to flee from the north to the south than the other way round. When it came to voting with their feet, the Japs preferred the U.S. Army to the Red Army.

Days flowed by, one after another. Winter along the Agano was tougher than it had been in New York City—storms blew down from Siberia one after another. But it was a piece of cake next to what it had been like in the Montana Rockies. Mike laughed at the men who complained.

He laughed more than he had since before the Jeebies took him. Next to being a wrecker in a labor encampment, next to hitting beach after beach in a punishment brigade, this wasn't just good—this was wonderful. He hoped he'd remember how wonderful it was after he got more used to it.

*   *   *

F
or a little while after the war ended, Charlie had hoped real peace would take hold in the world. People had felt the same way after the First World War. They'd called it the War to End War. And they'd been all the more bitterly disappointed when history didn't come to an end with the Treaty of Versailles.

Having seen his hopes blasted once, Charlie was less surprised when they came a cropper again. Trotsky really believed in world revolution, or acted as if he did. Red regimes sprouted like toadstools in Eastern Europe. Italy and France bobbled and steamed like pots with the lids down too
tight. Korea and North Japan were good and Red, too. In China, Mao was ahead of Chiang on points, and looked to be getting ready to knock him out.

Before the war, J. Edgar Hoover's GBI had chased Nazis, Reds, and people who were neither but didn't like Joe Steele, all with about equal vigor. Now the Jeebies seemed intent on filling labor encampments with Reds. If you didn't hold your nose and run away when you heard Leon Trotsky's unholy name, you'd find out more about lodgepole pines than you ever wanted to know.

Charlie thought the USA would do better, both abroad and at home, if it looked at why so many people wanted to chuck out the governments they had and put in new ones, even if the new ones were Red. You could still think such things. J. Edgar Hoover had no mind-reading machines, though he might have been working on them. But if you opened your mouth . . .

He tried to imagine saying something like that to Vince Scriabin. How long would he stay free if he did? As long as the Jeebies took to get to his office after the Hammer called them. Or maybe Scriabin would just grab some White House guards and handle it himself.

That cheered Charlie up so much, he knocked off halfway through the afternoon and headed for the bar near the White House where John Nance Garner drank away his terms. Sure enough, the Vice President was there smoking a cigarette and working on a bourbon.

“Well, hell, it's Sullivan!” he said. “They let school out early today, Charlie boy?”

“Time off for bad behavior,” Charlie answered. He nodded to the bartender. “Let me have Wild Turkey over ice.”

“You got it, suh,” the Negro answered, and in a moment Charlie did. He sipped. This wasn't one of the bad days where he had to get smashed as fast as he could, but he needed a drink or three. At least a drink or three.

John Nance Garner watched him fortify himself. With a small shock, Charlie realized the Veep had to be close to eighty. Drinking and smoking were supposed to be bad for you, weren't they? He couldn't have proved it by Garner, who was still here and still had all his marbles, even if he wasn't what you'd call pretty.

“I expect the boss is gettin' ready for term number five,” Garner said.

“Hasn't he talked about it with you?” Charlie asked.

The Vice President guffawed. “You reckon I'd be tryin' to find out if I knew? The less Joe Steele's got to say to me, happier I am.”

“Shall I tell him you said so?”

“Shit, sonny, go ahead. It's nothin' he don't know already. You think he wants to talk to me? If he did, he'd do more of it—I'll tell you that.”

“Why—?” Charlie began, but he let the question die unasked.

“Why don't he dump me if he feels that way?” John Nance Garner answered the question whether Charlie asked it or not: “On account of I don't make waves. I don't make trouble. I do what he tells me to do, and I don't give him no back talk. He knows he don't got to worry about me while he's lookin' some other way. Japan cornholed him but good while he was makin' faces at Hitler an' Trotsky. I just sit there in the Senate or I sit here in the tavern. He can count on that, an' he knows it.”

It made sense—if you looked at it from Joe Steele's point of view, anyhow. Hitler's flunkies hadn't disobeyed him till the war was good and lost. Trotsky's henchmen were loyal or they were dead. Joe Steele needed people he could rely on, too. He didn't need much from the Vice President, but what he needed John Nance Garner delivered.

What does he need from me?
Charlie wondered.
Words.
The answer formed of itself. He'd given Joe Steele words, and the President had used the ones he wanted. But there was more to it than that. Putting Charlie in a White House office while Mike was in a labor encampment was the kind of thing that amused the President. It was a nasty sense of humor, but it was what Joe Steele had.

Charlie turned to the quiet man behind the bar. “Let me have another one, please.”

“I will do that, suh,” the barkeep said.

Wild Turkey was safer than thought. To keep from dwelling on Joe Steele's sense of humor, or the part of it that had bitten him, Charlie asked the Vice President, “What do you think of all the fuss about the Reds?”

“They're no bargain. Unless you're a Red yourself, you know that. Trotsky says he wants world revolution, but what he's really got in mind is
all those revolutions dancing to his tune,” Garner replied, which was safe enough. Then he added, “Now, J. Edgar Hoover, he's a nasty little pissant any way you look at him.”

I couldn't have put it better myself.
But Charlie lacked the nerve to come out and say so.

John Nance Garner must have seen the look on his face. The Veep laughed, coughed, and laughed some more. “They ain't gonna take me away,” he said. “You reckon Joe Steele don't know Hoover's a nasty little pissant? Don't make me laugh! 'Course he knows. But Hoover's
his
nasty little pissant, like a mean dog that'll lick the face of the fella who owns it. He don't got to fret about him any more'n he's got to fret about me.”

And what would the none too modest J. Edgar Hoover think of that? Charlie was curious, but not curious enough to find out. The less he had to do with the head of the GBI, the better off he'd be.

He bought some Sen-Sen on the way home that night, but it didn't help. Esther screwed up her face when she kissed him after he walked in. “How many did you have before you got here?” she asked.

“A few,” he said. “I'm okay.”

“Are you?” She didn't sound so sure. Jews were often harder on people who put it away than the Irish were.
Shikker iz a goy. The gentile is a drunk.
When you learned some Yiddish, you learned phrases like that. Esther when on, “You've been drinking more lately than I wish you were.”

“I'm okay,” Charlie said again. “Honest to Pete, I am. I'm holding the bottle. It isn't holding me.”