Death's Door (2 page)

“I have orders to return to London at the end of the week. Getting the Polish Corps supplied and coordinated with Eighth
Army is nearly complete,” Kaz said. “I am sorry I haven’t been around to help you. Too much paperwork and meetings. All terribly boring.”

“Nothing you could have done,” I said. I’d spent every day, every hour, trying to get information about Diana—from the SOE, MI6, even Allied Command at Caserta—but had come up empty all around.

“What about you, Billy? Have you heard from Colonel Harding?” Harding was our immediate boss in General Eisenhower’s headquarters.

“Yes, I have,” I said, pulling a thick wad of documents from my jacket pocket. “Orders to return to London two days after we found out about Diana. Orders to proceed to the airfield at Brindisi for priority transportation to London. Inquiries demanding to know my location. And today, orders for me to return immediately or face court-martial for desertion.”

“Billy, you have to leave. You can’t ignore orders from Supreme Headquarters.”

“Oh yeah?” I held the papers up over my head and let them go. The wind lifted them and carried them out over the harbor, where they fell like tears into the sea.

CHAPTER TWO

T
HEY FOUND ME
the next morning. I’d hoped that I might have a day or two of grace, but Brindisi was full of Brits and not many Yanks, so I knew my chances were slim. There were no pretty girls to distract them this time, and I was in a part of town that wasn’t known for officers’ quarters.

I’d left the billet Kaz and I had been assigned a couple of days ago and gotten a cheap hotel room on the Via Cittadella, between a bordello and a bombed-out haberdashery. I’d met some of the officers from SOE when I was on official business, just before we got the news about Diana, and I simply kept showing up, carrying orders I had no intention of obeying, and asking everyone from the clerks on up if they had any further news of Diana. The orders had come from Colonel Harding in London, but no one at SOE in Brindisi knew what they were about, or that I was absent without leave. They were the left hand that didn’t know what the right was doing.

But the snowdrops knew. They were waiting by my jeep, outside the hotel entrance. It was one of the few US Army vehicles in this part of town. One of the only vehicles, period. It probably was a dumb move to park it next to a whorehouse, but I had paid the concierge to keep his eyes peeled and to chase the
scugnizzi
away when they got too close. I could see some of them now, eyeing the military police from behind piles of rubble. Street kids, orphans most of them, a common sight in any Italian city that had been bombed
or shelled. They were grimy, always hungry, and clothed in rags that had once been uniforms, impossible to tell from which side. One of the MPs glanced in their direction and they vanished into the rubble as if invisible.

“You got me dead to rights, boys,” I said, flashing my friendliest grin. “What’d I do?”

“You Lieutenant Boyle?” the sergeant asked, his white gloves, helmet, and leggings sparkling in the morning sun.

“Call me Billy, Sarge, everyone does.”

“Let’s go for a ride, Lieutenant. Someone wants to see you.” He hitched his thumb in the direction of the passenger’s seat. No pat down, no handcuffs. A good sign.

“What about my jeep?” I asked.

“Be right behind us,” he said, and snapped his fingers. One of the MPs took my jeep, and the sergeant climbed in behind me. He was a big guy, square-jawed with a deep, growling voice. He needed a shave, which probably meant he’d been up all night looking for me, or throwing drunks into the stockade. Whichever it was, it hadn’t put him in a good mood.

“Where we going?” I asked, as I buttoned the collar of my trench coat and held onto my garrison cap.

“You should be going to the stockade, like all the other deserters, but you seem to have friends in high places.”

“Hey, I didn’t desert, Sarge. I’m only a little late heading back to London.”

“Everybody’s got an excuse, Lieutenant. I’ve heard ’em all.”

“Don’t bet on it. You going to tell me where we’re headed?”

“Nope.”

“Aren’t you going to take my weapon? Put the cuffs on? Shackle me or something?”

“Only if you’re planning on shooting all of us, and I don’t think you have what it takes. No need to cuff you either; me and my billy club can take care of a dozen wiseass lieutenants any day of the week. I do have a dirty rag back here though, and I will gag you with it if you don’t shut up.”

I got the message. I sat back and enjoyed the view as we circled the harbor, heading north. It was the same route I’d taken to the SOE station, past the rusting hulk of a bombed-out freighter in the harbor, the barbed-wire fence surrounding the ammo bunkers, and the open pit where army dump trucks deposited mounds of Uncle Sam’s garbage every day. Dozens of women and
scugnizzi
sorted through it, the luckiest of them wearing discarded combat boots—German jackboots, GI combat boots, British ammo boots—some of them reaching up to the knees of the smaller kids. They looked up warily as we passed, ready to scatter, but went back to their scavenging when the MPs paid them no mind.

“Those kids will steal anything,” the sergeant said. I took this as an invitation to converse.

“Most are orphans,” I said. “If either of their parents are alive, they were probably taken by the Germans as forced labor. It’s a hard life for a kid, all alone, home destroyed, no one to look after them. Hard to blame them for snitching K rations when they can.”

“Bunch of them tried to steal a truckload of liquor,” he said. “The kid driving had blocks of wood strapped to his feet so he could reach the pedals. They’re thieves, plain and simple.”

“What did you do with him? Break his legs?”

“Shut up before I get that rag out, Lieutenant. We’re almost there.” He tapped the driver on the shoulder and pointed to the access road for the airfield. He showed his orders to the Royal Air Force guard at the gate and was waved through. We drove past Halifax four-engine bombers, painted flat black, with the RAF roundel on the fuselage and not much else in the way of markings. Same with the Lysanders, the rugged single-engine craft used for quick landings behind enemy lines. These were the aircraft of 148 Squadron, assigned to the SOE for the work of delivering arms, agents, and saboteurs behind the lines. It was all night work, which was why the aircraft were on the ground, under camouflage netting, waiting for the sky to become as dark as their airframes.

We passed the warehouse where SOE had a packing station for parachute containers, and drove on to the edge of the airfield, where
a dirt road led to a villa, perched on a small hilltop overlooking an inlet. It was surrounded by cypress and palm trees, the breeze off the Adriatic Sea producing a calm rustling sound at odds with the grimness of the enterprise.

I was puzzled as to why we were here. I’d expected to be taken to the nearest provost marshal’s office, or at least to a US Army facility. But a British outfit? The same SOE station I’d been haunting for the past week? It didn’t add up. If there were news about Diana, they wouldn’t send American MPs out to find me; they knew I was bound to show up sooner rather than later. Which of my friends in high places did the grumpy sergeant mean? For the first time, I felt uneasy. I figured I could talk my way out of the desertion charge; although that was perhaps technically correct, it was an overstatement. I was still in uniform, out in the open at the last place my orders had sent me. Not counting the orders to London, that is. But being delivered by American MPs to a British SOE unit got my hackles up. It meant somebody wanted me, and the last time the Brits wanted me, I got shot, along with a few other people. None of us enjoyed it.

“Wait here,” the sergeant said as he got out and spoke to a guard at the door. British Army uniform, no markings.

“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” I asked the driver. He was a young kid, a private, nineteen years old at most.

“Not a clue, Lieutenant. But I know one thing for sure. Sarge ain’t as tough as he makes out. He gave that kid a spanking, then sent him on his way with Hershey’s bars and Spam.”

“That qualifies as both cruel and unusual punishment. So why bring me here? Don’t you guys have your own hoosegow?”

“Yeah. We use an old
carabinieri
station. Kinda bombed out, but the cells still lock.”

“How come we didn’t go there?”

“Because Sarge said to go here. That’s how things work in the army. You should stop talking now.”

“Hey, I’m a fellow cop, don’t sweat it. At least back home I was. Detective, Boston PD. You looking to get into police work after the war?”

“Maybe. Can you beat prisoners who won’t shut up in Boston?”

I was beginning to irritate the kid, but I didn’t have much time. Sarge was signing some paperwork with an officer who’d appeared in the doorway.

“Senseless. But we frown on turning our collars over to the feds, and we’d never give up one of ours to foreigners.”

“These guys are our allies.”

“You Irish by any chance?” I asked, going for the long shot.

“One quarter, on my grandpappy’s side. The other three quarters are glad to get rid of you. Good luck, Lieutenant. I truly have no idea why we’re here.”

Sarge walked up and motioned me out of the jeep, his jaw clenched. My detective skills told me he was steamed, at me, at the Brits, at whoever ordered him to deliver a shavetail to a secret headquarters, no questions asked. They sped off, spitting gravel, before I had a chance to say, “Call me Billy. Everyone does.”

CHAPTER THREE

“A
NDREW
C
ROFT
,”
SAID
a British captain, grinning and shaking my hand as if I were a welcome houseguest. “Follow me, Lieutenant Boyle,” he said, pronouncing it
left-tenant
in the odd British way.

Croft was tall, with a strong, dimpled jaw, thick blond hair, and a weathered look to his face. A guy used to the hard life, not a paper-pusher. His uniform was bleached-out khaki, as nondescript as the guard’s had been. But his had the look of being worn in the salt air and hot sun, and I wondered if I were being shanghaied for some against-all-odds mission. At the end of the hall, French doors opened to a balcony overlooking the Adriatic. It was impressive. Clear blue water to the horizon, waves throwing foam at the rocks below. Maybe it was going to be tea and crumpets, not death-defying odds.

“Not the worst digs possible,” Croft said with a sly smile. “You know what the regular army chaps call SOE? ‘Stately ’Omes of England,’ since we seem to find the choicest estates to bed down in. Coffee is on its way. You do want coffee, don’t you?”

“Sure I do. And that quip is hilarious. But what I really want is for you to tell me what the hell I’m doing here. Then we’ll have some joe and swap jokes.”

“Don’t we all?” Croft said. “I haven’t a clue myself. Orders came from the top to wait for you and a Yank courier from Naples. All will be made clear, one hopes. Ah, coffee.”

A silver coffee service was set down between two chairs on the veranda by a corporal wearing a revolver and a long knife on his belt, and a scar across his forehead.

“What unit is this?” I asked. It felt more like a pirate’s lair than a British Army headquarters.

“They call us Force 226,” Croft said as he poured. A breeze came up off the water, blowing his thick blond hair back. “We do a bit of business everywhere, from Corsica to Crete and points in between.”

“Just how high up did those orders come from?” I asked.

“The very top.” Croft sipped his coffee and leaned back in the chair, letting the sun wash his face.

“As in Kim Philby?”

Croft raised one eyebrow at the mention of Philby. “Best not to name names, even among friends,” he said. “There’s no reason to let on you are that close to those in exalted circles. Could get you killed if some bloke repeats it.”

“Almost has,” I said. Kim Philby was with the British Secret Intelligence Service, head of MI6’s Mediterranean Section. We’d worked together before, done each other a favor or two, and I thought we were even. Maybe I was wrong. “When is the courier due in?”

“He’s here now, finishing breakfast in the kitchen. I thought it would be good for us to chat first, get to know each other.”

“Why? Are we going on a trip together? Someplace exotic, with explosives?”

“I’ve no idea, Lieutenant Boyle. But if we are, I’d like to know the sort of man I’m traveling with.”

“I’m an unhappy man, Captain Croft. I’d rather be somewhere else right now, with someone else. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can go back to being miserable.” I drank my coffee and inhaled the sea air. I felt guilty, with Diana in a Gestapo cell while I sat in the sun, powerless to help her. Or too late.

“You do have the look of a man who needs to
do
something,” Croft said, turning his blue eyes on me. “Anything but sit here far from the shooting war, I’d dare say. Restless. Haunted, perhaps. Why?”

“Everyone’s got a story,” I said. “Mine is too complicated to tell.”

“Ah, a woman,” Croft said, smiling.

I felt like taking a swing at him, but he couldn’t know it wasn’t a laughing matter. It wasn’t that the course of true love never did run smoothly; it was more like its path was marked by torture, death, and finality. Croft was sharp, and likable, but I saw no percentage in giving anything more away. So I drank his coffee and let him think he had me figured out.

“Here’s our man now,” Croft said, as the sound of heavy footsteps echoed in the tiled hallway. “Not the highest-ranking confidential courier I’ve ever seen, but certainly the largest.”

It couldn’t be, I thought, as I put together the visit to the kitchen, the heavy footsteps, and the comment about rank and size. But damned if it wasn’t Staff Sergeant Mike Miecznikowski himself. Or Big Mike, as everyone from privates to generals called him.

“Hey, Billy,” Big Mike said, raising his hand in the least possible semblance of a salute.