Rhineland Inheritance (12 page)

“I guess it might, sir.”

“You guess.” Beecham snorted. “Are you trying to steal my doctors, son?”

“Nossir, nothing like that. They just asked if they could help out.”

“I'll bet.” He studied the paper a moment longer, then scrawled his signature and thrust it forward. “Have Miss Anders try to sell the idea to the local Red Cross. But if they kick up a fuss, tell Stores I said it was okay.”

“Yessir. Thank you, sir.”

“And Burnes.”

“Sir?”

“Don't bother me again. Not today. Not this week. Not for a month or so. Not if you value your hide. It's time for you and your sidekick to vanish from my sight.”

“We'll make like the wind, sir,” Jake promised.

“That'll be the day,” Colonel Beecham said. “Oh, one more thing. Do either of you know anything about how Colonel Connors' jeep received a complimentary paint job last night?”

Jake found it difficult to keep his gaze straight, his voice level. Very difficult. “Nossir.”

“Canary yellow, if I understand it correctly.”

“News to me, sir.”

“The perpetrators apparently attached a feather-duster to the rear bumper.” Colonel Beecham found it necessary to frown fiercely over the news. “They painted large chickens in flight on either door. And wrote ‘Property of the Chicken Colonel' across the front.”

“Can't imagine who would do such a thing,” Jake replied.

“Funny,” Beecham said in a low voice. “I could come up with several dozen names right off the top of my head. Which is exactly what I told Connors when he called me this morning and accused you two of doing the dirty deed.”

To that Jake made no reply.

“All right, make yourselves scarce.” Beecham dropped his eyes back to his papers. “Permanently.”

Once back in the hallway, Pierre observed, “Our colonel is looking weary.”

“Exhausted,” Jake replied. “Utterly exhausted.”

“We must try not to bother him further,” Servais said.

“I'll explain the situation to Sally,” Jake offered.

Pierre smiled. “Come, my friend. Let us go and tell her together. I no longer feel I can trust you alone with her.”

But it was Sally who found them, a wide-eyed, fearful Sally who ran up and cried breathlessly, “You've both got to come with me at once.”

“What's wrong?”

Sally had already turned on her heel and headed for the door. “There's no time to lose!” she called back. “Hurry!”

She asked them to stop by the hospital for a fourth passenger, Dr. Harry Weaver. The young man came racing down the stairs as soon as the jeep pulled up, black bag in hand. “I'm due in surgery in two hours,” he said, climbing on board. “We'll have to hurry.”

“Would somebody mind telling me what's going on?” Jake asked.

“To the chocolate factory,” Sally cried. “Step on it!”

Pierre was sufficiently caught up in the urgency to throw caution to the winds. Conversation was impossible. All three passengers were kept busy simply trying to stay in the bouncing jeep.

They pulled up in front of the gang's ruined building to find Chaplain Fox waiting by the door. He waved them to a stop, his customary smile gone, his eyes grave with concern. As soon as the doctor alighted, Fox took one arm and led him forward, leaving the others to find their own way.

The stench hit Jake before he was over the entrance plank. The odor was so strong it was a physical shock. He forced himself onward, reached the doorway to the gang's single room, then stopped.

The doctor bent over an inert body. Jake immediately recognized Karl, the young leader. The boy moaned softly, struggling to move. He was restrained by the chaplain, who leaned over him, murmuring gently in his ear. Beside Karl, two bodies were stretched out, another boy and a girl. The
smell from them, too, was a solid force, so strong it was difficult to breathe in the room.

“What is it?” Jake managed.

“It's just as I feared,” the doctor replied, rocking back on his haunches. “We have been receiving reports from other regions, but this is the first confirmed case in this area. It's not surprising, of course. It tends to attack the young, the weak, the unprotected.”

“What does,” Jake demanded.

The doctor gave a sigh of resignation. “Cholera. Also known as the plague.”

Chapter Ten

There was never enough time. There was never enough of anything. Jake moved in a constant, wearying blur, his mind always filled with all that remained undone.

No one assigned him the duty. Jake did not question how or why he shouldered these tasks. He simply did what was required. He had to. It was only later that he wondered at his unquestioning response to a call he had never heard. Not with his mind, anyway.

The first crisis arrived soon after they loaded the four inert youngsters into the jeep, and he and the doctor careened off to the local Red Cross clinic. The chaplain, Sally, and Servais stayed behind, heading off in different directions to do a rapid survey of the other gang hideouts.

Jake and Harry Weaver were met at the hospital by another staunch member of the No Brigade, a large doctor in starched whites. “Just a minute there, Captain,” he said sternly as they came rushing up the stairs with Karl and another of the boys in their arms. “Where on earth do you think you're going?”

“This boy needs medical attention,” Jake snapped. “There are two more in the same condition out in the jeep. Could you ask two of your staff to give us a hand?”

“Not so fast, not so fast.” The doctor moved to block Jake's forward progress. “Where are these kids' papers?”

“They have no papers.”

“Then this is out of the question,” the doctor insisted. “This clinic is specifically designated to assist the citizens of this town only. And only those citizens whose papers are in order. As it is, my staff and I are stretched to the limit. The absolute limit. You will simply have to cart this boy and his friends off elsewhere.”

“Wait,” Harry Weaver began. “I am—”

“Hold it, Harry,” Jake said, his voice ominously low. “Let me handle this one.”

As gently as he could, Jake lowered Karl's limp body to the floor. He then turned, grabbed the clinic doctor by his lapels, lifted him clear off the floor, and in two swift steps slammed him up against the side wall.

“Now look here,” the doctor said, his voice up two full octaves.

“No, Doc,” Jake snarled back, his face a scarce three inches from the doctor's nose. “You look real good. You search that small mind of yours and make dead certain there's not some other clause you might have missed.” He slammed the heavy man back against the wall like an oversized puppet. The doctor let out a high-pitched squeak. “You better
hope
there's something you've forgotten, Doc.” Another slam. Another squeak. “That is, unless you'd like me to show you just how thin you can be stretched.”

The doctor drew a breath with difficulty and managed to gasp, “Well, now, I think we might be able to do something.”

Jake let the man drop, and wiped his hands on his coat. “Four beds,” he commanded. “More when we need them. Or I'll be back.”

“Really, Captain,” the doctor said, collecting himself. “There's no need for threats.”

“That was no threat, Doc” Jake replied, stooping down to lift Karl up again. “That was nothing but cold hard fact. Now let's see those beds.”

Death became his enemy, shortages his greatest foe. Jake fought with the same single-minded purpose that had brought him and his men through other earlier battles. He fought with all that he had at his disposal, accepting help from whichever quarter it might come. He fought with the desperate determination of a commander who knew that preserving the lives of his men was his most sacred responsibility.

The chaplain, Sally Anders, and Pierre Servais were Jake's
chief lieutenants. But there was never any question of who was in charge. There was no time to question it. Nor was there any need. Jake simply shouldered the burden and charged.

The change was mirrored in others. Children who had never learned to obey anyone or anything were gradually coming to follow instructions instantly and to the letter. At least they did so when the commands came from Jake. Pierre, since he spoke no German, became supplies driver and chauffeur extraordinaire.

Chambers that had harbored sick children were swept and scrubbed for the first time since the war's end. Proper latrines were dug. The chaplain took over the rubble heap next door to the créche; with the help of some of the children he cleared a space, erected a shelter, and started an indoor-outdoor kitchen where the gangs could come and sit on dry ground and eat a decent hot meal at least once a day.

And of course, all of this meant that Jake had to scrounge for even more supplies.

Help began arriving from the strangest sources. Mornings would often begin to the sound of growling truck motors, staffed by men he did now know, coming from bases as far away as Stuttgart and Heilbronn, sent by officers he had never met. Each frantic day he would pass soldiers, speak with them, issue orders, alert them to a new outbreak or a point of urgent need, then hurry on, only to wonder afterward who he had just addressed.

Perhaps the greatest surprise was when the big-bellied, cigar-chewing Sergeant Morrows turned up at Jake's quarters late one evening. “What say, Captain.”

“Sergeant.” Jake assumed the sergeant was bringing a reprimand from the colonel for having shirked his duties, but he was too tired to care. He scrubbed a fatigue-numbed face with his towel, and slumped down on his bed.

The sergeant scuffed his boots on the doorjamb and said, “Quite a little operation you've got going here.”

Jake closed his eyes with a long, deep sigh. The problem
with such nights was that while his body begged for sleep, his mind had lost its ability to slow down.

“Me and the boys, well, we've been talking.” Morrows seemed to be finding his speech hard going, but he plugged on. “See, the thing is, sir, my specialty in the war was sort of being able to find things.”

Jake rolled his head on the pillow and opened one eye.

“Not steal, you understand. Nothing like that. Just sort of find them. And, well, like I said, me and the boys were just talking, and—”

“Disinfectant,” Jake said.

“We, ah, what was that, sir?”

“We need disinfectant,” Jake repeated. “Urgently. Gallons of it. Enough to scrub down the floors and walls of maybe a hundred rooms.”

“Disinfectant. Right.” From a pocket the sergeant produced a grubby envelope and a two-inch stub of a pencil. “Twenty gallons ought to do it? How about brushes and buckets?”

“Transport,” Jake said wearily to the ceiling. “We're having problems getting the kids to the hospital, and the doctors to the kids, and the kids to the feeding center, and supplies everywhere.”

“Don't see much problem there,” Morrows said, scribbling busily. “One of my buddies runs the mechanics over at the motor pool. Either the commander lets them have some time off or he'll have to try to drive around on four flat tires.”

“And drivers,” Jake said. “And more strong backs. And building materials. We've got to make these rooms where they're living dry. And warm.”

“Blankets and bedding too, right?” Morrows seemed undaunted by the growing list. “How about more clothes?”

“And food,” Jake said. “Those kids eat more than a brigade coming out of battle. There's never enough food.”

“You leave it with me, Captain. And get yourself some rest. You look done in.” Morrows closed the door and stomped off.

Jake closed his eyes, sighed again, and rolled over on his side. Maybe tonight would be different.

Just when it appeared that they were almost on top of the most urgent needs, Jake was blindsided once again. And from the most unexpected direction.

He stopped by the kitchen to make certain Chaplain Fox had enough food and fuel for the day, before working through the Matterhorn of paper work accumulating on his desk. But while Jake was talking to the chaplain, a voice behind him said,
“Entschuldigen Sie mir, bitte, Herr Kapitän.”

Jake turned to find a woman wrapped in rags. A young girl stood by her feet, clutching onto her skirt, and peering fearfully up at Jake. Another child was in the woman's arms, a boy of perhaps four or five. Painfully thin. And inert. Jake did not need to look closer. Not anymore. The smell lingering around the boy was all the information he needed.

“You must take him to the Red Cross center,” Jake told the woman. “Immediately.”

“Please, Herr Kapitän,” she said, her eyes brimming with tears. “My name is Friedrichs. I am a poor woman. My husband was a Nazi. SS. They see me and read my papers and they spit on me. But my boy, my only boy, he is sick. He is dying. Please, please, I beg you, a poor weak woman who has nothing and no one. I hear what you do for the children. All the city hears. Please help me, Captain. Save my boy from death.”

Jake started to turn to the chaplain, only to be stopped by the most unexpected of sounds. Under his breath, the chaplain was singing.
Singing.
Jake sighed and shook his head. He reached for the boy.

“I will do what I can,” Jake told her.

At that the woman broke down completely.

“You and your daughter must stay and eat with us,” he said. “And we will try to find some warmer clothes for you.” Jake started for the jeep. “And disinfectant for your home.
You must take care that you and the other children do not also become ill.”

After that, the sad little lines began to form each day long before Jake arrived. The women refused to speak with anyone save the captain. They would relinquish their children to no one but the captain. Jake began to arrive at the feeding station earlier and earlier, knowing that even an hour in the fierce winter weather would be enough to doom the weakest of the children. And still they were there before he arrived.