North Reich (51 page)

Alicia was dismayed at the thought of Tom again leaving Washington.
 
Even though she’d been shot at by Canadian Nazis and bombed by the Luftwaffe, she still thought it was much safer in Washington than in Patton’s headquarters where the war was being fought on a daily basis.

Her work as a courier from the intelligence experts at Camp Washington hadn’t changed.
 
Now, however, she and Tom had found a small, cramped, two room second floor flat in a house run by Mrs. Kosnik, the woman who had lost her son.
 
She’d been living on the first floor and had been keeping the upper floor vacant for when her son came home.
 
Obviously this was not going to happen so she decided to rent it to Alicia, a woman she considered a friend.

She had gone to visit relatives in Ohio and, even though grieving, was thrilled to have someone look after her house.
 
Alicia and Tom were equally thrilled to have a place they could live in privacy in a town that was exploding with new arrivals and where housing was at an expensive premium.
 
Nor could Tom pull rank.
 
Downing had laughingly said that there were a quarter of a million lieutenant colonels within a three block area of the Pentagon.

      
The fact that they were within a couple of miles of the Pentagon was a further blessing.
 
Rationing of many items was in full swing and it was getting more and more difficult for the average person to get gasoline, and almost impossible to get tires as production of both cars and rubber for civilian purposes was severely curtailed.
 
As military personnel, they could gas up military vehicles and they did get more gas for their civilian cars.
 
Alicia hadn’t owned a car, while Tom’s was a 1938 Buick, which he cheerfully admitted was a tank.
 
She thought it was large enough that they could have lived in it if they hadn’t found Mrs. K’s flat.
 
As an additional bonus, Mrs. K’s place had a garage and most of the time the car was locked away.
 
Like most people, they either took the bus or walked.
 

      
Now there were long lines outside grocery stores.
 
This was nothing new.
 
The Depression was too recent a memory.
 
Long lines of people waiting for food handouts had been normal only a few years earlier.
 
Nobody was going hungry, but there were limits, especially regarding beef.
 
Again as military personnel, their food allowance was larger than others and they always had the option of eating at the Pentagon or Fort Meade.
 
Sometimes she felt guilty about that, but it quickly passed.
 
She and Tom were serving their country, both had been shot at and injured, and both were working for military pay while some civilians were making obscene amounts of money.
 
Her father had told her of factory workers making more than ten thousand dollars a year.
 

      
She laughed.
 
Between the two of them they weren’t making anywhere near ten grand a year.
 
Ain’t civilian life grand, she thought?

The federal minimum wage was thirty cents an hour and a prudent person could live on that if he or she didn’t live in an expensive area.
 
Inflation was beginning to run about ten percent, which might just end that idea.

      
Alicia and Tom were privy to enough information to understand the horrors people were enduring in other parts of the world; thus, neither had any patience for whiners and complainers.
 

      
She had gotten out of work early so she could cook a special dinner for the two of them.
 
He would be leaving Washington tomorrow.
 
As she walked up the path to the house, she saw that a light was on in the upstairs living room.
 
Tom was home first.

      
She opened the door and trotted upstairs, pleased that they’d have more time together.

      
“Hey,” yelled Tom, “I think dinner’s going to be late.”

      
“Why?” she asked as she entered the bedroom.
 
“Oh.”

      
Tom stood at the side of the bed.
 
He was naked and he had a bottle of wine in each hand.

      
“Who needs dinner,” she said happily as she began to undress.

Tinker smiled affably at the surly German guard.
 
After a cursory look at his identification, Tinker was admitted to the headquarters of the German military establishment in Toronto.
 
He entered through the back door, of course.
 
He was a janitor.

      
He went to the cleaning closet where he got a broom, bucket and mop, and put them all in his push cart.
 
He had the entire third floor to clean.
 
With the tools of his trade, he was almost invisible.
 
Nobody noticed cleaning people, waiters, or servants unless they did something to attract attention, and the Germans were no exception.

      
He entered the office next to Neumann’s and closed the door. It belonged to a Gestapo officer who was out inspecting the prison camps north of the city.
 
Tinker knew that because he’d read the man’s schedule.
 
There was shouting going on in Neumann’s office.
 
If he was very still and listened intently, he could make out the words.
 
Neumann was talking, no yelling, at the head of the Black Shirts, Jed Munro.
 
The fact of their raid on the restaurant and the subsequent gunfight that cost the life of Wally Munro was all over Toronto.
 
The civilian population was outraged at both the Black Shirts and their bed partners, the Gestapo.

      
Tinker smiled as he heard Munro called a fucking idiot.
 
Jed must have been a little drunk because he yelled back.
 
What he said didn’t make much sense, but the gist of it was that Neumann wasn’t Jed’s father.
 
No, thought Tinker, Jed’s father was a swine.

      
Jed was clearly not at all upset at the uproar and anger he had caused.
 
He yelled that Neumann should have let them do much more, that they couldn’t enforce the laws of the Reich without breaking heads and spilling blood.
 
Jed raged that he’d lost two brothers to the cause and that gave him privileges.
 
Neumann vehemently disagreed, causing Munro to storm out.
 
Tinker continued cleaning the office.
 
When he left, all was quiet and well.
 

      
When his shift was finished, he left the building and went to a bar a couple of blocks away.
 
He drank a beer, a Molson’s, and went out the back door.
 
A few buildings down the alley he went into a warehouse, where Detective Sam Lambert waited.

      
“Well?”

      
“I may have found a new career,” Tinker said.
 
“When this war is over I’m going to become a private detective who doubles as a janitor.”

      
“Please don’t tell me you’ll clean up.”

      
Tinker laughed, “Wouldn’t think of it.”

      
He proceeded to give Lambert all he knew and focused on the argument between Munro and Neumann.

      
“The fight was ugly and I think it’ll be a long time before they talk nice to each other.
 
I think it’s nice that our two enemies aren’t talking.”

      
Lambert agreed, but not entirely.
 
While it was pleasant to think of their enemies dividing among themselves, there was also the fact that Neumann and his Gestapo actually functioned as a kind of restraining influence on the Black Shirts.
 
If they wouldn’t obey Neumann, what would they do now?”

Chapter Eighteen

Tom ducked as another German artillery round landed uncomfortably close to his position.
 
It shook the ground and sent dirt clattering down on his helmet.
 
In Tom’s opinion, Patton had again gotten far too close to the front.
 
The general had not agreed.
 
He felt it was his duty to show his troops that their commander was not afraid.
 
Their small convoy of jeeps had headed out towards the front lines when all hell had broken loose as German artillery pounded the American lines.

      
Tom tried to make his body smaller still as more shells hit around him.
 
There was no doubting Patton’s personal courage.
 
He had proven that several times in the First World War.
 
His litany of medals included the Distinguished Service Cross with one Oak Leaf Cluster, the Distinguished Service Medal with two Oak Leaf Clusters, the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and, of course, the Purple Heart.
 
It was proof that you don’t pick up that many medals without getting hurt.

Tom wondered if the men really were inspired by Patton’s being close to the front, or if they felt that he was drawing attention and enemy fire on them.

      
Tom had arrived at Patton’s Ontario headquarters by plane the preceding afternoon.
 
He’d had an immediate conference with Patton who’d accepted the report with a laugh.

      
“Tell me, colonel, did anyone in their right mind think that Guderian wouldn’t attack me?
 
Hell, he hasn’t any choice.
 
If he just sits there and allows my army to get stronger, which is happening every day, we’ll attack him ourselves and run right over his Nazi ass.
 
No, he has no choice but to try his luck by hitting us first.
 
You can go back to Lucian and say thanks, but we are ready for anything the Germans can throw at us.”

      
Tom had decided to stay the night and now regretted that decision.
 
The Germans had launched a massive attack on a twenty mile front just north of Lake Erie.
 
Even though Patton had planned a defense in depth, it was clear that there had been a number of penetrations, and some were several miles deep.
 
It was also rumored that German infiltrators were operating behind American lines.
 
There were other rumors that some Germans or Canadian Black Shirts were wearing American uniforms.
 
It was scary enough that Tom wondered if he could pick up a Canadian accent if he heard one.

      
What worried Tom even more was that he’d lost contact with Patton’s vehicles when the bombardment began.
 
He had no idea whether the general was safe and sound or had been blown to pieces by an enemy shell.
 
It then occurred to him that he might not make it back to the relative safety of American lines.
 
He might be killed or even taken prisoner.

      
“Tank,” someone yelled.
 

Tom peered over the lip of the depression in the ground where he and a score of others had taken shelter several hours earlier.
 
Jesus, he thought.
 
Not only was there one tank, but he could see the dim shapes of at least five more.
 
He got a clearer view when a shell burst and momentarily illuminated the area.
 
He identified them as Panzer III tanks.
 
Although not as good as the Panzer IV tanks, they weighed in at twenty five tons and had an upgraded 50mm main gun, along with three machine guns.
 
This was a lot more than he had to fight with, which was absolutely nothing.

      
Someone in the lead tank must have spotted motion in the ditch.
 
Its machine guns opened fire, spraying the top of their hole.
 
The German wasn’t going to bother to use his main gun.
 
It wouldn’t be necessary.
 
They’d been trapped without any weapons heavier than their rifles and some grenades and the .45 Tom carried.

      
“What do we do, colonel?” asked a terrified buck sergeant.
 
The young man was the next ranking soldier in their hideaway.

      
How the hell do I know, Tom thought.
 
“We hope he passes us by as unimportant,” he said, trying to sound confident.

      
The sound of the tank got louder as it clanked its way closer.
 
A moment later the green metal monster was perched on the edge of the depression.
 
Tom didn’t think the driver or commander could see them very well, but that didn’t matter.
 
The tank lurched down into the depression and began to spray the men in it with machine gun fire as they screamed and tried to run away.
 
Tom watched in horror as a GI was shot in the leg and then run over by the tank and squashed like a bug.
 
I’m going to die, he thought as he tried to fight off panic.