The Hunting Trip (8 page)

“It's in my service record, First Sergeant.”

First Sergeant Dumbrowski checked Phil's service record. After doing so, he said, “First of all, Administrator Williams, please accept my apologies for my having questioned your claim of marksmanship excellence, and in suggesting you were a grass head.

“Second, please accept this advice in the spirit in which it is offered. Keep this remarkable talent of yours to yourself. It may turn out to be a very useful arrow in your quiver of self-defense arrows in the future. And you may well need a full quiver of such arrows. I could not help but overhear Colonel O'Reilly refer to you as a teenaged Protestant sexual deviate. His detractors don't call him ‘Bad Bill O'Reilly' without cause. Enough said?”

“Yes, First Sergeant. Thank you.”

“Come with me, Williams. I'll show you to your room, and then we'll get you started on your ROTPIP.”

[ TWO ]

O
ver the next two weeks, both through the ROTPIP program and simply by living in what the Army called his barracks, Phil learned a great deal about Berlin generally, and the XXXIIIrd CIC Detachment specifically.

For one thing, the barracks was like no other Phil had lived in elsewhere in the Army.

At Fort Dix, he lived in a two-story wooden barracks that had been constructed in 1940 with an expected life of three years. There, each “squad bay”—one on each floor—had accommodated thirty double-decker bunks. At one end of the barracks was the room with toilets and showers, which the Army called the “latrine.”

Phil, having studied Latin for three years at six different schools, knew the term “latrine” was derived from the Latin word
latrina
, a contraction of
lavatrina
, from
lavare
, which meant to wash. But no one else in his basic training company had ever heard the word before donning a uniform.

Although the Fort Dix latrine had indeed offered facilities to wash—eight shower heads mounted eighteen inches apart on one wall and eight sinks on the other, it also had offered facilities for the 120 men it served as a disposal point for the fluids and solids for which the soldier's bodies had no further use. This was accomplished through eight water closets placed so close together that defecators had no trouble sharing a copy of a magazine during the 180 seconds allotted to them twice a day to do their business.

The barracks and latrines at Fort Holabird had similarly been constructed to last only three years—and this was long before any of the current inhabitants had been born. The differences then were that the bunks on each floor were single bunks, which meant that only sixty
men were competing for occupancy of the water closets, rather than 120, which further meant that the occupancy time allotted could be, and had been, upped to 240 seconds, or four minutes, twice daily.

The floors of the Holabird barracks and latrine were not nearly as sparkling as those at Dix. Not that they were dirty, but nothing can make a floor sparkle more than 120 men attacking it with toothbrushes and lye soap on a twice daily basis, as was the practice at Fort Dix.

The room to which he had been assigned on his first day in Berlin was larger than his room in his mother's house, larger than any room to which he ever had been assigned in any boarding school, and about twice the size of the closet his father insisted on calling “Phil's Room” in the Williams apartment at 590 Park Avenue.

It had a bath with a tub, a stall shower, a double-sink, an enclosed water closet, and next to the water closet another porcelain device through which water flowed in all directions, including straight up into the air, the purpose of which Phil could not imagine.

Inasmuch as he was a junior administrator—in point of fact,
the
junior administrator—he was no doubt going to be forced to share the bath with another junior administrator. Only the more senior administrators (and of course CIC special agents) were given private accommodations.

He met the other junior administrator that same day. He came into Phil's room from their shared bathroom.

He was a slight young man—even smaller than Colonel O'Reilly—whose skin was reddish brown in color. He was wearing horn-rimmed glasses and tennis whites.

“Gott im Himmel!”
the young man proclaimed. “
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
Holden
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
Caulfield in the
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
flesh!”

“Excuse me?”

“You're unfamiliar with the protagonist of J. D. Salinger's opus
Catcher in the Rye
?”

He spoke with what Phil thought sounded like a Harvard accent, that is, as if through his nose with his teeth clenched.

“I've read it. What's that got to do with me?”

“Let me put it to you this way, Holden. If I were producing a motion picture of Mr. Salinger's novel, and had asked one of the better casting agencies to send me someone for the lead role, and they sent me you, I would think the Lord God himself was beaming on my project.”

The young man put out his hand.

“I am Administrator G. Lincoln Rutherford, Holden. In addition to having to share the bathroom with you for God only knows how
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
long, I will be your guide through the ROTPIP program. You may call me ‘G. Lincoln' and you already know what I'm going to call you.”

“I don't think I like the idea of being called ‘Holden.' My name is Phil.”

“Well, as we sergeants are permitted to say to corporals, too
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
bad. That's the way your
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
ball has bounced.”

“I understand.”

“Good. Now give me a few minutes to shower, Holden, and to dress, and we will begin your ROTPIP training by dining, at your expense . . . You have some money, presumably?”

Phil nodded.

“. . . At the agency mess. They do a very nice steak tartare.”

“What's the agency?”

“Holden, the depth of your ignorance is amazing,” G. Lincoln said, and went back into their shared bath.

[ THREE ]

F
ifteen minutes later, G. Lincoln reappeared dressed much like Phil, in a white button-down-collar shirt, a striped necktie, a tweed jacket, gray trousers, and loafers. Phil's father had an identical necktie, which identified him to other alumni of Harvard College, and Phil wondered again if G. Lincoln was similarly connected with Harvard College.

G. Lincoln loaded him into one of the Volkswagens—this one pale green and carrying a license plate with the
US of AMERICA
legend—and drove him out of the compound onto Beerenstrasse.

After winding their way through the streets of Zehlendorf for perhaps ten minutes, they turned off the street and were stopped by a policeman at a striped pole barrier. Phil saw a sign:

What the hell?
Phil wondered, and then corrected himself:
What the heck?

The striped pole barrier was raised and G. Lincoln drove past it. They came to a large two-story building before which were parked a number of automobiles on which were mounted the same variety of license plates there had been on the fleet of Volkswagens at the CIC barracks.

But only one of the automobiles parked there before a sign reading Automobiles Only! was a Volkswagen. The other vehicles were BMWs (two), Mercedes-Benzes (four), Chevrolet Suburban Carryalls (two), and a Fiat, a Buick, and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle with sidecar.

Phil wondered if the latter could be properly classified as an automobile, but then from his studies of Latin, recalled the word came from the ancient Greek word
autós
, meaning self, and the Latin
mobilis
, meaning movable, and thus meant a vehicle that moves itself. A motorcycle, Phil decided, thus did qualify as an automobile.

“Let's go, Holden,” G. Lincoln said, “and, once inside, speak only when spoken to and don't ask any questions.”

Then he took Phil's arm and led him into the building, down a corridor therein, and ultimately through a door.

Phil found himself in a room that anywhere but in a building dedicated to the purposes of a Gospel Tract Foundation would have been called a “bar” or “saloon.” There was a wooden bar behind which was arrayed an impressive selection of bottled intoxicants, and in front of it a half-dozen very attractive females on stools showed a good bit of upper thigh as they sipped what in Jack & Charley's establishment at 21 West Fifty-second Street would be called martinis. There were eight or so men at the bar, all wearing suits and ties, most of them ogling the lady drinkers.

Phil and G. Lincoln took seats at the bar. G. Lincoln was kind enough to order for the both of them. “A double Famous Pheasant, two ice cubes, water on the side, and a Coca-Cola. Run a tab.”

Before the drinks could be served they were joined by an Asian gentleman who looked like a midget sumo wrestler in a suit.

“How goes it, Geronimo?” he asked. “How's everything in the ol' teepee?”

“
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
you, Fu Manchu,” G. Lincoln replied.

“Who is this boy?” the minuscule Asian gentleman asked, pointing
to Phil. “And more to the point, what's he doing in here with the adults?”

When he pointed, his suit jacket opened to the point where Phil could see something he recognized as the butt of a 1911A1 Colt semiautomatic pistol. He naturally wondered what a man so armed was doing in the German-American Gospel Tract Foundation building.

“He is a newcomer, freshly arrived to labor beside us doing the Lord's work.”

“Praise God! As He knows, we need all the help we can get. Unless, of course, you are pulling my leg, as you have a lamentable
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
tendency to try to do.”

“I am not. With the Almighty as my witness, this is CIC Administrator Philip Wallingford Williams the Third . . .”

At least he didn't call me Holden!

“. . . who prefers to be called Holden,” G. Lincoln concluded.

“Well, I'll be a
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
monkey's
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
uncle!” the Asian gentleman declared. “Looking at you, I never would have guessed you might be one of us. How old are you, Holden?”

“Seventeen, sir.”

“Well, my boy, don't let anyone look down on you because you are young. That's First Timothy, Chapter four, Verse twelve, so you can take it to the bank. But on the other hand, I can't help but wonder how ol' J.C. Three is going to react when he sees who has been sent to assist us.”

“I suspect the PL is going to keep Holden hidden from ol' J.C. Three as much as possible,” G. Lincoln said.

“One never really knows what the PL will do, does one?” the diminutive Asian gentleman observed. “Especially if he's had a couple of belts of Old Bushmills.”

Curiosity overwhelmed Phil, and he disobeyed G. Lincoln's order not to ask questions.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“Ah, the innocence of youth!” the Asian gentleman said. “Old Bushmills, my son, is the modern version of what Saint Patrick and his fellow monks called
aqua vitae
, which means—”

“Water of Life,” Phil interrupted. “I know my Latin. What I want to know is who is the PL and who is ol' J.C. Three?”

“Geronimo, when had you planned to bring Holden up to speed on those matters?”

“Now is as good a time as any, I suppose,” G. Lincoln said. “But why don't we let Holden buy us a libation before we get started?”

“Every once in a great while, Geronimo, you do make a good suggestion.”

The waiter was summoned. G. Lincoln ordered “another just like this” and after being advised what that meant, the overweight Asian said, “That will do nicely for me, too.”

Whereupon the waiter turned to Phil and asked, “And for you, sir?”

“Holden,” the midget sumo wrestler then quoted, “‘My son, if sinners entice you, do not give in to them.' Proverbs one:ten.”

“I'll bear that in mind,” Phil replied. “I will have the same, please, bartender. By the same I mean a double Famous Pheasant, two ice cubes, water on the side.”

“Didn't you hear the scripture Fu Manchu just quoted?” G. Lincoln demanded indignantly.

“I did, and the next time someone I'm given proof is a sinner tries to entice me, I'll have another Coca-Cola. Got it, Geronimo?”

“‘Whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble,'” Fu Manchu quoted, “Proverbs—”

“Twenty-one, Verse twenty-three,” Phil interrupted.

“You know Holy Scripture?” Fu Manchu asked incredulously.

“Wouldn't you say that's self-evident, Fu Manchu?” Phil countered.

It was in fact the only scripture that Phil had ever committed to
memory. It had been burned indelibly therein as a result of his having written Proverbs 21:23 fifteen hundred times on a blackboard as punishment for his having suggested to a fifteen-year-old upperclassman at the Bordentown Military Academy that he “go
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
himself” when the latter told him to “Give me another fifty,” by which he meant that Phil should perform fifty additional repetitions of the push-up exercise in addition to the fifty repetitions Phil had just finished.

“Holden, I may be forced to reassess my initial assessment of you, which frankly isn't very flattering,” Fu Manchu said.

The bartender delivered the drinks.

“Bottoms up!” Fu Manchu cried, and downed his.

When G. Lincoln tossed his drink down, Phil decided he had no choice but to do the same.

—

The next morning,
Phil was forced to conclude that tossing down a drink had not been wise, as from that point onward, he could remember only bits and smidgens of what happened later.