Hamilton, Donald - Novel 01 (20 page)

     
Mr. Hahn leaned back in his chair, smoking
peacefully. "She is still a little upset. The walk will do her good."
Then he said, "After a while you become used to guns, young man, if you
live in a nation that is at war...." He lifted his hand as Branch stirred.
"Oh, you Americans have been manufacturing war, you have been exporting
it, you have been reading about it in the newspapers, but you have not been at
war. Only relatively few of you have been at war. You," he said,
"playing at being a naval officer in a blue uniform, what do you know
about war? Have you ever seen a man killed? Do you know what it is like to be
shot at? Have you lived in a hole and starved and watched people you loved
starving? What do you know about war, Lieutenant?"

     
Branch sucked his lips together about the
stem of his pipe. "Yes
,.
" he said slowly,
"I guess you learn more about it when you get licked, all right."

     
He watched the chinless man stiffen and
rise abruptly, and he rose to his feet. "Pretty soon well be hearing all
about how you guys won the damned war," he said. "And so help me, if
you pull that damned popgun I'll shove it up your ass or die trying."

     
Wondering a little at himself, he stared
at the man standing on the far side of the table, and calculated what would
occur if the table should be tipped abruptly; then it all drained out of him,
and he said, "Sorry, I guess I'm kind of on edge," and brushed his
hand across his eyes in a conscious gesture of weariness.

     
Mr. Hahn relaxed and smiled and touched
his mustache with the edge of his forefinger. "I still maintain that what
I said was true," he said softly.

     
"Oh, God, yes," said Branch.
"It probably is."

     
"It was not a good idea," the
chinless man said, smiling.
"That about the table.
lt
would not have
worked." His thin mouth smiled with the superiority of a man who knew all
about this sort of thing. A man who had come through a dozen encounters of this
sort unharmed or at least alive. "You would most certainly have died,
trying," he said.

     
Branch said, "You haven't got a drink
around the place, have you?" It was no use having them mad at him, or wary
of him. It was stupid to have answered back.

     
Mr. Hahn came around the table and took
his arm. "So early?" he jeered.

     
From the davenport in front of the dead
fireplace which still radiated a measure of heat they heard the woman leave
without saying good-bye. Mr. Hahn looked at the sunlight on the porch.

     
'What do you think of the weather, Mr.
Branch?" He laughed at his own threadbare effort at distraction. "I
am really interested. It will be cold out there?"

     
"Cold and wet," Branch said,
"if this wind doesn't die soon."

     
"Fortunately the boat has a cabin. So
you will be the only one getting wet."

     
"Fine," Branch said, grinning,
"I'll just run her on the nearest beach and beat it while you're still
trying to figure out what happened, down in the cabin." Mr. Hahn laughed.
"Oh, I will stand sheltered in the doorway and watch you battle the
elements."

     
"Going down won't
he
so bad," Branch said, "But coming back will be a lulu...." He
turned at a sound and saw Paul
Laflin
come in from
the porch. Mr. Hahn, beside Branch, finished his drink in a long swallow and
rose and went to meet the younger man; and the two of them talked momentarily
in French. Mr. Hahn laughed, and the two of them glanced at Branch; and Mr.
Hahn went out.

     
Paul
Laflin
came
lazily across the room and gathered up the bottle and Mr.
Haim's
empty glass on his way to the chair by the fireplace. His clothes were still
dirty from the previous night and there was fresh mud on his shoes. His jaw was
black with
a stubble
of beard. Lying back in the
chair, his legs crossed, he held the bottle and glass above him and poured
himself a generous portion and set the bottle on the floor.

     
"Water?"
Branch asked. The big man turned his head inquiringly.

     
"Do you want some water in it?"
Branch gestured at the pitcher.

     
Paul
Laflin
sat
up and poured the contents of the glass down his throat, coughed, and
shuddered. "No, thank you," he said. "I certainly don't want to
have to taste this pig-urine."

     
"Oh, it's not so bad," Branch
said.

     
"Whisky is a drink for
barbarians," the big man said.

     
"I suppose you drink something
esoteric, like absinthe, when you're home," Branch said, surprised and
displeased to find
himself
hating the man. After all,
he thought, it's not his fault, he had an invitation. And it was hard enough to
maintain the precarious balance of his position without hating anybody. He
could see the eyes, close-set in the wide face, watching him lazily.

     
"Well," demanded Paul
Laflin
abruptly, sitting up again, "Well, why didn't
you?"

     
"Escape?" said Branch.
" Or
tell Madame? She would not have believed me if I'd
told her. She slapped my face when I even hinted you might have gone off
together. She would have thought I was lying to make trouble."

     
The big man nursed his glass in his hand,
looked at it, and hung it arrow-straight at Branch's head. Branch leaned to one
side and the glass whined by with a hollow wavering sound and smashed against
the wall far behind him, the pieces
ricochetting
out
onto the floor. Almost a minute had passed before the last one was silent. Paul
Laflin
came to his feet.

     
"I was to come back and find the
story ready for me," he said harshly.
"The window.
She had escaped while you were sleeping. And I would not dare to point out that
you had been wide awake when we left, because that would be to admit ... It was
a clever plan, Mr. Lieutenant. I suppose you really are a lieutenant?
In the Intelligence?
Or are you even a naval officer at all?
Was your so accidental meeting with her quite as accidental ...
"

     
"You're making a lot out of the fact
that I fell asleep," Branch said calmly.

     
"A
confederate?"
Paul
Laflin
murmured.
"She to escape, if possible, to warn him or to get another boat, while you
remained to sabotage.... You come here to help her, but you do not help her.
You do not move when I beat her up. You make no protest when she goes away with
me; and then you open a window and, in God's name!
you
do not even escape!" he spat into the dead fireplace. "What kind of a
game are you playing, Mr. Lieutenant?"

     
Branch looked up at him. "What the
hell would you do?" he demanded, "if you walked into a trap like this
and found the girl you'd done it for didn't give a damn about anything except
her own skin?"

     
"And the window?" the big man
sneered. "It was to help me, no doubt?"

     
"Go to hell," Branch said.
"A guy your age who doesn't have the sense to wipe the lipstick off his
face
.. .
"

     
The big man leaned down and shook him.
Branch kicked, shoved, and jumped up as the other staggered back.

     
"All right, beat me up," he
panted. "Beat me up and see if I'll run your goddamned boat for you, you
babyfaced
ape. People slapping me and pushing me around and
throwing things...." He crouched and moved forward. "Come on,"
he whispered, "come on, you're big enough. See if you can make me do it.
Just because she was yellow and talked....
Burn my feet for
me.
Twist my arm. Get Andy Gump with his gun to shoot me....
A bunch of slap-happy morons trying to act like big-time Nazis.
I bet the Gestapo got a kick out of you twerps. I bet they laughed themselves
silly hearing you
squeal
. If one of them walked into
the room right now you'd get down on your belly and crawl, wouldn't you?
ACHTUNGI" He laughed as Paul
Laflin
winced.

     
Paul
Laflin
laughed abruptly and turned away and went to the chair. Sitting down, he
retrieved the bottle and put it to his mouth, shuddering as the stuff went
down.

     
"So you fell asleep," he said
genially. "You were awake when we left. I saw you watching.

     
"Yes, goddamn it," Branch said
sullenly. "I got the window open and then I figured I'd better wait until
you'd had a chance to get clear so I wouldn't run into you. The next thing I
knew they were shining a light on me and wanting to know where everyone was. I
never was so damned disgusted in my life.

     
Paul
Laflin
took
another drink from the bottle. He held the bottle up and shook it, shivered,
and put the bottle away on the floor. "It stinks," he said. "So
you fell asleep." He looked at Branch and began to laugh.

     
"What's so goddamned funny?"
Branch demanded. "God, put a sock in it. You looked funny yourself when I
kicked you in the head, you bastard. The big man stopped laughing.

     
"Who's a bastard?"

     
"You're a bastard, you bastard,"
Branch said. "You're all a bunch of bastards." The balance was very
exact. If you went too far they would beat you or shoot you; but if you were
nice to them they would think you were planning something: you could not afford
to be nice to them.

     
"A bunch of crazy bastards," he
said. "You don't like us, eh?"

     
"Listen," said Branch,
"from now on I do all my graphs freehand so I don't have to use a French
curve."

     
The big man laughed uproariously.
"There is something I have been
wanting
to ask
you, Mr. Lieutenant," he said when he was through laughing.

     
"What?"

     
"It is this," the big man said,
"I am just curious. Why do you not have any ribbons on your uniform? I
thought all Americans had ribbons on their uniforms."

     
"I haven't got around to getting mine
yet," Branch said stiffly.

     
"But you do have some? You are
entitled to wear some, for what you do in
Chicago
?"

     
"Yes," said Branch.
"Two."

     
"Ah," said Paul
Laflin
, satisfied. "Two. Two medals for sitting behind
a desk. Wonderful!" He looked up as Madame
Faubel
entered the room behind Branch, who did not turn his head to look at her.

     
The woman came wearily to the davenport.
"Yes," she said. "Get drunk, Paul. Drink it all up."

     
The large young man rose and carried the
bottle to the table at the end of the davenport, and slapped the cork into it.
Then, leaving the bottle, he went out without speaking. His footsteps receded
along the porch. Madame
Faubel
, having watched him
out of sight, swept off her hat and sat down.

     
"Where is Georges?"

     
"I don't know," Branch said.
"He went out."

     
"
Constance
is all right," she
said. "The Duval has not yet tried to get her clothes."

     
He glanced at his watch and was startled
to find that it read not yet
nine o'clock
in the morning. He could
feel the woman watching him; they were all of them on watch, waiting for him to
betray himself, suspicious of him, contemptuous of him, hating him, and perhaps
a little afraid of him. If there had been any alternative they would have got
rid of him already, but they were practical people, and there was no alternative
available to them, and they could only study him for the fourteen hours that
remained. Study him, watch him, prod him, and harass him, waiting for a flaw to
develop in his attitude, waiting for the balance to tilt, waiting for a
sufficient reason to warrant a major change of plan.

     
"Is
Constance
feeling better?"
Branch asked politely.

     
"Yes, much better. She slept
well." The woman smiled. "You like her? I could have her come with
us.
To guarantee us against monkey-business with the
boat."
She stopped smiling. "I noticed a discrepancy in your
figures, Lieutenant," she said, rising to take the rolled-up chart from
the mantelpiece. "You gave the distance as forty miles. It is only
thirty-three."