Once an Eagle (65 page)

He bent double and crouched behind his desk so fast that Damon started, flung open a drawer and hauling out a bulging manila folder and two pamphlets dumped them on his desk. “Here: memorize everything in those. I mean
commit to memory.
”

“Yes, sir.”

“You haven't got all the time in the world. Oh, wait—you better have one of these. Fenn Five Thousand.” He pulled a fat little blue-bound dictionary from the shelf behind him and tossed that on the rest of the heap. Collapsing in his chair he watched the Captain gather up the books and folders and fit them under his arm. “Damon.”

“Yes, Colonel?”

The Monk's face was all at once somber and homely. “Damon, they're fighting a very new and very different kind of war up there. And they're winning …” He yanked at the tuft of hair. “They haven't got a pot to piss in—and they're winning! Not everywhere. But here and there. They've got five Japanese divisions tied up out there. If what I hear—if I can believe only
half
of what I hear, it's one of the most important things that has happened in the conduct of war in this century.” He grinned then, his jaw extended like a shark's, and came up out of his chair again, slamming his hands on the desk. “The how and the why, Damon! The
how
and the
why
…”

So he had drawn two pairs of field shoes, broken them in and dubbed them, dug up the lightest-weight sleeping bag he could find and a sheepskin-lined coat; he'd bought a tough little copper teakettle to boil his water, got out his old mess gear and a folding canvas washbasin; he'd gone over to the dispensary and drawn iodine, quinine, bismuth, paregoric, aspirin and a roll of adhesive tape. He'd sat up till all hours, reading and rereading, memorizing place names, peoples, customs, and the hen-scratch avalanche of characters, writing them over and over until they were etched into the walls of his brain. He was going to China. He was going to the far end of the world, and he was going to be prepared …

He had reckoned without Tommy.

“But, Sam—” She had stared at him for a moment, her mouth working; then she shook her head rapidly. “You're joking,” she faltered. “No—you're really joking …”

“No,” he answered, “it's the truth.”

“
China!
—but you're due for a change of station in six months—we can
leave
this filthy, miserable steam bath. We can go
home!
…”

He shifted his feet. “Well … you can go stateside if you want.”

“Don't use that term!” she cried. “It's vulgar and hateful…” She had just returned from a shopping expedition to the Quiapo markets, and her blouse—a delicate teal—was stuck in places to her shoulders and breasts. “Did you put in for this?” she demanded.

“No. No—he asked for me. Metcalfe.”

“That
idiot
…”

“He's not an idiot.”

She laughed harshly, an indrawn gasping. “Oh no no, of course not—he's another misunderstood Galahad. Like you.”

“Tommy, look—”

“You agreed. You told him you'd go.” He nodded. “Just like that. Without a thought for me, or the children, or anything else …
China,
” she hissed between her teeth. “As if the Philippines weren't insane enough … What about Donny now?”

“Donny?”

“Yes, Donny—we've been over it enough. Or have you only pretended to be listening? That school up at Baguio is a farce, it isn't going to prepare him for college. He needs a year or two in a decent preparatory school back home—you know that just as well as I do …”

“Well, you could take him back—”

“Oh, that's ridiculous!” All at once she whirled around, hands on her hips, and faced him. “It's just that you
want
to go—for the adventure of it. Isn't it? Well, isn't it?”

“—No,” he said, after the briefest of pauses, “of course not—look, it isn't going to be exactly a picnic, you know … ”

But that hesitation had betrayed him. Her eyes flared, she came toward him with a kind of threatful intensity, her head lowered, looking sweaty and gaunt and unlovely; and for an instant he thought, She's not herself, she's sick; it's all this heat—

“—We've got a new song,” she was saying tightly, her eyes blank and glaring. “A new song, did you know? It's called ‘How About Me.' Yes. Me.
You
may find it the essence of delight to go traipsing footloose and fancy-free through the pagodas and joss houses while I'm stuck here on this baking hot rock—no!” she shouted. “No! Enough—I've had enough …”

“Honey,” he remonstrated, “Josefina's in the—”

“Good! Let her hear! Let her hear about the American Army man on vacation—”

“It's not a va—”

“—vagabonding around that miserable, stinking country while the whole rest of the world—the dull, dumb, sensible part, I mean—goes on making something of itself … No!” she cried in a voice abandoned to grief and rage. “All—I've had all of this stupid, willful, selfish lunacy I'm going to take—all of it! I'm through!”

He had seized her by the shoulders, was shaking her with slow, rhythmic purpose. “It just so happens this is not a lark,” he was saying tightly, “and I don't expect it to be one—as a matter of fact I'm going where hardly anybody's gone before … I'm going because it may—just possibly may—be the most important thing I'll ever do in my whole life. Because somebody's got to do it, and I'm stupid enough to flatter myself I'll do a better job than most … Now you get hold of yourself, Tommy.”

She was gazing up at him, her eyes wide with fear. “…
Where
are you going?” she breathed.

“The North. Shansi.”

“But—that's the
Reds
… they're cutthroats and bandits, they're just rabble—Joe Cullen said they've slaughtered whole—”

“Joe Cullen never went a mile north of Hankow.”

“They'll kill you,” she cried softly. “They'll kill you just for your clothes and papers …”

“Maybe they will … But I don't think so.”

She stared at him a moment longer, raised one arm and flung it down in a gesture of angry despair. “Oh, Sam! Oh, I just can't stand it! I just can't stand it—!”

“Tommy, listen—”

“No!”

“Listen to me—”

“No—oh, I can't bear it, what you've let them do to you!” And she broke out of his arms and ran into the bedroom.

He stood there, sweating lightly, hands at his sides, gazing after her. In the kitchen Josefina was dicing something on the cutting board, the knife rapping sharply on the hard wood, while she sang “La Paloma.”

They had made it up—at least partly. At Cavite with the Metcalfes and the rest of the little party there to see him off, she was lighthearted and steady, the good army wife; but the smile she gave him as he kissed her and started down the ramp to the clipper was the saddest he'd ever seen. He was selfish, he was betraying her and the kids; was he? He didn't think so; but he knew with a soft sinking in his heart that things would never be quite the same between them.

The journey had taken weeks—there were times he thought he would never get there, inching his way across China, curving west and north in a slow arc around the Japanese advance. He was nearly crushed to death in a train ride to Chinkiang; a dilapidated, perilously listing steamer choked with more refugees carried him to Hwaining; he chipped in with a Persian sales representative and a free-lance pilot from Ashtabula, Ohio, in an ancient Chandler whose top was gone, and whose driver, a nervous little Chinese who said he was a correspondent for a Nanking paper but who acted suspiciously like a deserter, was dangerously unmechanical and almost suicidally nearsighted. At Kweichow he secured transportation on a cart, then on a hammerheaded pony that would buck like a goat for no discernible reason; and finally wound up on foot. He'd felt as though he were slipping backward through time, gliding back along the chain of man's painful mechanical progress, returning to elementals. When he had reached Liuhsien at last in the company of his guide and two students from Hankow, and saw a man coming toward him in the horizon blue uniform of the private soldier, he had felt it was only fitting that he arrive on foot. An infantryman was what he was …

It was quiet in the cave-room now. Lin Tso-han was sitting on the ruined, fireless k'ang, studying the map and rocking gently back and forth, humming. Catching Damon's eye he smiled quickly. “Well, we shall see,” he said in excellent French. “What do you think of my plan of battle, Ts'an Tsan?”

Damon went over and sat down beside him and they talked for a few minutes. Yes, he'd got it correctly: it was to seize the medical supplies that had been brought in several days before. A raid. He pointed to the defile two or three li below Wu T'ai. “Why not ambush the supporting column here?”

Lin smiled. “Oh, they are too strong for that.”

“But”—he chose his words carefully—“it's the most effective way to win a war: the destruction of the enemy forces in the field.”

“Clausewitz,” Lin said, and his eyebrows went up and down. “It is one way—a very good way. I wish we could do it. But in this particular case, you see, it is more important to have those supplies. You have no idea how much they are needed.”

Damon said nothing; over the past six weeks, moving through the camps and makeshift hospitals and shattered towns, he had come to have a very good idea indeed. He pointed to the map again. “What if the column arrives sooner than you think?”

“Then the attack is abandoned. But the reports we have are very reassuring.”

“What if the garrison in Wu T'ai is stronger than you think?”

“That is unlikely, too.”

“But what if that farmer was wrong?”

Lin shrugged. “Then someone else would have come to us with a different report. No one has.” He paused. “The people are our eyes and ears, Ts'an Tsan. Our intelligence corps, our quartermaster, our communications network, our medical-aid men. And on occasion they even form our mobile reserve.”

“They must have to be able to run like hell, then,” Damon murmured in English. Lin did not know English, but he must have divined the retort because he grinned suddenly and his eyebrows went up and down twice.

“What if Captain F'eng Po-chou fails to lure the Japanese out?” Damon persisted.

“Then we abandon the entire operation. We only attack if we are certain of superiority.” With a trace of pedantry he stated: “Never fight a losing battle, Ts'an Tsan: that is guerrilla warfare.”

“But—what if it just sort of turns
into
a losing battle, Colonel?”

“Then we disperse.”

“Disperse?”

Lin spread his thin, bony fingers. “Break up, melt away. No force exists. Then we reassemble at T'eng-shi. That is all planned for. A detailed plan of retreat, all possible alternatives—that is the most necessary part.”

Of all the crazy ways to fight a war, Damon thought; of all the zany, ass-backward strategies. But it seemed to be working … He put his finger on the map again. “What if that relieving column has cavalry, and they get here before you have completed the operation?”

“Then we break off and disperse.”

“I see.” Damon paused, watching the other man. “But suppose—just suppose the Japanese commander down there is very, very clever. Suppose he sorties all right—but the detachment is under orders to pursue Captain F'eng only as far as the pass, here, and then circle back on the double, just as you're making your assault here?”

Lin said slowly, “That would be very clever of him, very clever indeed.”

“Yes, and then the column coming up from Changhsien fools all your scouts and patrols and reaches here at the same time?”

Lin's face became very smooth and homely and hard. “Then we will sell ourselves dearly, and die like men.” His eyes fell on the boy who was still diligently writing on the smooth earth floor. “You must understand, Ts'an Tsan. Our tactics are the tactics of the weak. The Japanese have artillery, they have planes and tanks and endless ammunition. We have nothing but some old weapons and our legs. And the people.” His eyes glinted all at once. “But in the end that is everything. You have read
War and Peace,
of course?” Damon nodded. “Do you remember when Kutuzov learns that the French are continuing to advance on Moscow—do you remember how he falls on his knees and thanks God? That is it, precisely,” he repeated, in his oddly tuneful French. “Let them come on, all of them. Let them wade in deeper and deeper, into the still, dark ocean of Shansi, Honan, Hupeh. And soon they will sink beneath the surface where they cannot breathe … But we can, Ts'an Tsan. The people are our hope and our mainstay, the water through which we guerrillas swim—and where the foreigner drowns.”

A soldier came in and spoke rapidly to Lin, who nodded. “Now we wait,” he said to Damon, and began to fold the tattered map with meticulous care. Sitting back against the wall with his feet drawn up and his arms locked around his knees, he smiled at the American, and sighed. “The hardest part. Waiting … It would be nice to have a fire, wouldn't it?”

“Yes,” Damon answered. Nice—it would be heaven on a breakfast tray. He passed his eyes over the men crowded into the cave-room; two were asleep, several were cleaning their weapons, some were conversing in low voices; a few looked back at him with that bright, interested glance he'd come to associate with the Chinese. There seemed to be no bitching or despondency that he could see—there was certainly nothing insubordinate about them at all. He shivered, an uncontrollable spasm, forced himself to relax; rolled his shoulders and chafed his hands and neck. He had a sense of foreboding about the coming action: it seemed unnecessary, hazardous, full of pitfalls and absurd, childish stratagems. Down there in that village was a detachment of superbly equipped soldiers, the well-disciplined members of a tough, aggressive army that had never been defeated, that was able to move at will through this vast, desolate landscape. When General K'ung Chunsho back at Chengteh had asked him what he wanted to see, he'd answered readily enough that he wanted to observe guerrilla operations at close hand—specifically examples of the short-attack, extreme mobility. But now, six weeks and four hundred miles later, he didn't feel like such a fire-eater. He wasn't twenty-two anymore, he was thirty-nine; he was tired and hungry, he hadn't entirely recovered from a bout of dysentery, and worst of all was this relentless cold, which seemed to seep into his vitals deeper each day, sapping his will, his clarity.