The Cartographer of No Man's Land: A Novel (33 page)

“You figure it out,” Angus said.

Publicover gave a short laugh and said, “Welcome home, MacGrath.”

S
IXTEEN

April 14
^th
, 1917

Vimy Ridge

Arras Sector, France

“ D
amn it!” Publicover said four days later on hearing Conlon’s news. He stomped around in a tight circle, shoving at the dirt with his boot. “Goddamn it. We had our fucking orders. March back to Château de Villers. Today.”

Orders had changed, Conlon said, and now they wouldn’t be replaced for another day. He had other news. Early numbers were coming in for the
17
th. Some
51
killed,
280
wounded. No telling how many of them survived. But their losses were much lighter than other regiments, some of which had a
70
percent casualty rate. A road was being built and small-gauge track laid. Supplies had begun to arrive. A new front was being established all along the eastern side of the ridge. Their sector had been quiet, but a working party, sent out to put barbed wire forward of the line, had not returned. Worse, it was rumored there was a howitzer hiding in the brush near where the party had fallen, ready for the Allied advance. Rushford had ordered Conlon to take a patrol out and bring back information.

“What information?” Angus asked.

“Find the heavy gun that HQ thinks is out there and, if possible, take out the machine gun that’s worrying our working parties. Seems you did such a good job of finding the colonel that Rushford wants you onboard. ‘Get that Lieutenant MacGrath. Good with maps. Uncanny sense of direction’ were his exact words.” Conlon gave Angus a nod and said, “Strangely, he wants me in it as well. Maybe wants to get rid of me, but that’s another story. Our dapper Rushford seems to be managing field command without Stokes. Our major problem is further up the chain of command—no plan for pursuit. It’s as if no one thought we’d actually take that ridge.” He shrugged. “Ah well. So the plan is we go out, gather what information we can on artillery. Find our way back and report in. And they’ll send out a larger patrol based on our intelligence. You in, Sam?”

Publicover spat on the ground. “Yeah. I’m in. Course I’m in.”

“Right. Now, help me scratch up a few men. Four will do.” He glanced at Angus’s leg wound.

“I’m fine,” Angus said. “I’m in.”

L
ATE THAT NIGHT
at the edge of the camp, Angus felt the exhilaration and exhaustion of surviving a gale at sea. He thought about Ebbin and “the grand sweep of history.” He was part of it. They both were. He was one with the company of men who had survived—the sheer luck of it. The blessing. The burden. He whispered a prayer for the men he’d lost, and for Roddy. He could hear Roddy’s booming laugh, felt the strength of his presence beside him. The grasses glittered with a thin coat of ice in the moonlight across the long unbroken plain before him. Just short days ago, the ridge behind him had been the point of existence, the alpha and the omega. Soon it would be but a memory. For time had not ceased. The war had not ended.
Like the icy plain before him, the war stretched out to a never-end
ing, unknown end. This he also considered, before heading back to his men.

A
T NINE O’CLOCK
the following evening, under a brilliant night sky, Angus and Keegan waited for the others at the rendezvous point on the edge of the camp. Conlon appeared from the shadows with Publicover and two others, introduced as Corporal Burwell, who spoke German, and Private Voles, a sniper. Behind them came another.

“Lance Corporal Havers,” Conlon said.

“
Havers?
” Angus stammered.

“Yes,
Havers.
The secret weapon. Remember? What’s the problem?” Publicover shot a look at Havers, who joined them and glanced at Angus with cool detachment and looked away.

“Surprised is all,” Angus whispered.

Publicover, agitated to start with, was even more so now. “Yeah, right. What’s going on here?” He looked from Angus to Havers.

Keegan knit his brows and did the same. “Sir, is this the—”

Angus flashed a look that silenced him.

Conlon pulled Angus out of earshot of the others. “You know something I don’t? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“No. It’s just . . . is he up to it?”

“What do you mean, is he up to it? This is
Havers
, the guy with no fear in him. Invincible. Survived Ypres, Courcelette, the massacre on that ridge three days ago. That’s why I took him.”

“Yeah, but maybe he’s got something to prove.”

“How’s that?”

“He’s got that reputation to live up to or a death wish or . . .”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“What’s going on, MacGrath?” Conlon’s words came out slowly. He put his head down, hands on his hips. “You see something I don’t?”

“No. It’s just— He makes me nervous. I mean, can we trust all that’s been said about him?”

“I have no reason not to trust it.” Conlon looked up. “Do I?”

“No sir.” Angus strapped on his helmet. There was no alternative except the truth, and it was far too late for that. He glanced back at Ebbin, standing erect, patiently waiting. He’d have to trust it was Havers they had with them. And trust that he himself would be able to believe it well enough to function.

“Do I?” Conlon repeated.

Angus shook his head.

“No reason. None that you know of . . .”

“No, damn it. None that I know of.”

“Okay then.” Conlon signaled the men, and they moved silently out into the still night beyond the camp.

L
OW TO THE
ground
, they crept through the tall grasses, sometimes on their stomachs, and froze every time a flare shot up, waiting for it to fade so they could breathe again and inch forward. After a while there were no more flares, which could mean the enemy had their own patrols out. Out where? was the question.

Angus brought up the rear, Ebbin right ahead of him. Ebbin or Havers, and he prayed it was the invincible Havers. He welcomed the fear that sliced thought to ribbons and forced him to focus on the ground—this stub of a tree to the left, this hillock to the right—each landmark catalogued in relation to the others in this, the new No Man’s Land. He prayed he would remember.

An hour and forty-five minutes later, they stole up to a rise, topped by a tangled thicket and a few spare trees and one thick-trunked oak that gave them fairly good cover. To the right in a gully below lay what appeared to be the dead Canadians from the working party, two leaning up against each other, one folded over at the waist, one staring up at the sky, his gloved hand on a tightly wound bolt of barbed wire.

In the field beyond the gully was a barn with a high stone foundation. Another massive oak stood guard beside it. In the quiet moonlight, everything was sharply defined in black and white. They could see the loft, doors open, facing them. The great barn doors below it were bolted shut. There was a low stone wall about four feet high some ten yards to the left, running parallel. Woods beside it wrapped around the open field behind the barn.

Angus took out his pad. In the light of the moon, he sketched the ground, made notes and put them away.

A German soldier came around from the back of the barn, looked up at the sky, arched his back and went back behind the barn. Far to the southeast, they could hear machine guns chattering. Then they heard voices.

Behind them.

Two enemy soldiers were coming up the very rise they were on. It was clear from their easy movement that they were unafraid, knew protection was nearby. Obviously in the barn, though maybe also in the woods. Conlon nodded at Publicover, who silently withdrew the Bowie. As if on cue, the moon slid behind a cloud. In seconds Publicover was on them, slitting the throat of the first and walking the other back up the rise with the knife to his neck. He forced the man down on his knees behind the thicket.

The soldier’s eyes were wide with horror, as were Burwell’s. Keegan took the man’s helmet off.

“
Kamerad
,” the terrified man whispered. Conlon told him to shut up, and told Burwell to tell the man he could save himself by telling them where the machine gun was, how many men were in the barn, the location of the howitzer—and, by the way, they were not his comrades. Burwell, panicky and breathing hard, smoothed his black mustache and glanced at Publicover. Publicover arched an eyebrow. Burwell knelt before the prisoner and did as he was told, whispering in halting German. The prisoner, a tall man, was shaking violently, the features of his long face gripped with fear. Publicover pulled the knife closer and straightened him up. The prisoner began to blurt something out.

“What’s he saying?” Conlon demanded.

“Uh. Wife, baby. He has a wife and baby, a new baby,” Burwell said. He turned to the soldier. His whispers took on a coaxing intimacy. He pointed up at Publicover and shook his head. The prisoner nodded vigorously and stuttered out answers. Six in the barn, manning the gun, but the gun was broken. They were trying to fix it.

“And the howitzer?”

“He doesn’t know anything about a howitzer.”

“Artillery of any kind?”

The prisoner shook his head wildly. Conlon came face-to-face with him. “Tell him he’s never going to see that wife and baby again if he doesn’t talk,” he said with quiet determination. “Tell him we’re going to leave him here with a guard. If he isn’t telling us the truth now, it’ll be over for him. He saw what happened to his pal. He’ll go down with us if he’s lying.”

Burwell pleaded with the soldier and sat back. “No sir. He says there isn’t any howitzer or anything else this part of the line. He says there are Prussian Guards about a mile off to the north and east, he
thinks
, but here, just the MG. In the loft. And it’s dead, broken.”

“He’s lying,” Publicover said.

“Yeah?” Conlon looked over at Publicover.

“Yeah. First off, why would they put a machine gun in the loft? It’s forty feet aboveground. They’d want it waist-high for the shots to be effective, not flying out over the men’s heads.”