The First Wave (27 page)

I wandered back down the hall, feeling weak in the knees, went through the emergency entrance and checked the casualties stacked up there. No Kaz. I went through the treatment rooms, all filled with patients, doctors, and nurses. Everyone too busy or in too much in pain to notice me. I began to wonder if this was a dream. I seemed to be invisible when I was close to the worst casualties.Whenever I was outside the main treatment area, some nurse or orderly would stop and check me out. I didn’t know if I could convince the next one that I was okay. My head was swimming, and although the ringing was down to a reasonable volume, I was feeling more wobbly and I had to keep reminding myself what, or rather who, I was looking for.

Then I saw him. Kaz, on a gurney, being pushed down the hall. A nurse was doing the pushing. I tried to call to her, but I couldn’t get my voice to work. My yell came out as a croak, and my head rebelled against the effort. She turned a corner and disappeared down another hallway. I forced myself down the hall after her, stumbling against an orderly carrying a tray of instruments. He and the tray went down with a crash, the noise in my ears ratcheting up the ringing up even worse.

“Hey, those were sterile! Watch it!”

The floor seemed to tilt. I had to swing my arms to keep my balance. I knew I looked like a drunk but I had to catch up. I couldn’t hold onto the wall without stepping on the guys lined up alongside it. I focused on the floor in front of me, placing one foot in front of the other, turning the corner just in time to see the back of a nurse leave a patient’s room. She was headed down the hall away from me. Had she seen me? I couldn’t tell, but this time I managed to call her name out.

“Stop,” I called once, and heads turned. I couldn’t tell how loudly I’d said it with all the noise in my head, but I must’ve yelled pretty loud. Maybe she didn’t hear me because she disappeared, her green fatigues blending into a crowd of nurses, orderlies, and wounded. There were three doors on the right but I couldn’t remember which one she had walked out of. I looked in the first room, and it was full, three hospital beds and two gurneys crowded in together. I went into the middle room.

Kaz was there, lying on a gurney pushed next to two others. A young nurse was tending to a patient in one of the beds. She was trying to get him to take a pill and he was shaking his head back and forth, mumbling. The others were all asleep or unconscious, nicely cleaned up and bandaged. The sign on the door said Post-Op.

I went over to Kaz. He hadn’t been cleaned up, and it didn’t look like he had just been operated on.His breathing was harsh, small gasps followed by gulps for air. There was a fresh bandage on his arm, he had a black eye, a cut on his eyebrow, and a serious welt on his forehead. Other than that he looked okay. But why was he in Post-Op?

“Kaz,” I said. “Can you hear me?”

“What are you doing in here?” the nurse asked, glancing at me before she turned back to her patient. She put a pill in his mouth and held his chin as she lifted a glass of water to his lips.

“Just checking on my friend—”

“Out,” she said, pointing to the door. “I’ll take good care of him.”

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked. “Why is he here? In Post-Op I mean.”

That question delayed her for a second. She looked at me as she went to check the chart hanging on the end of the gurney.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “You look like you should be lying down.”

“Can’t disagree,” I said, trying to smile. “Will you just check his chart and tell me what’s wrong with him? His breathing doesn’t sound right.”

She seemed exasperated, but relented, putting a hand on Kaz’s chest. His uniform blouse and shirt were open, but not cut away like the others. She frowned as she read the chart. I checked the front pocket on his blouse where Kaz had kept the notebook. It was unbuttoned, and empty. I checked his other pockets. Nothing. It was gone.

“Probable concussion, X-Rayed, no visible fractures.No subdermal bleeding, re-dressed existing wound. Patient was conscious upon admission,” she said, summarizing the information on the chart.

“In other words, he was fine except for a bump on the head,” I said. She didn’t say anything. She checked his pulse.

“It’s weak,” she said.

“He has a bad heart,” I said.

“Billy,” Kaz said weakly. He half opened his eyes. “How are you?” He sounded almost giddy.

“Kaz,” I said, “what happened to you?”

“I feel much better now. . . .” I swear he smiled, then closed his eyes. I opened one with my fingers. His face swam back and forth in front of me. The ringing grew louder and the floor started shifting from under me again. I held onto the gurney with one hand, trying to get his face to hold still.

For just one second it did. I saw it, a tiny, contracted pupil, just like Jerome’s, only he had already been dead, and Kaz wasn’t. Other images popped up in my mind, Kaz in the jeep waiting to go back to the hotel the first time he was admitted here. Dunbar giving him the okay to leave. Rita kissing him goodbye. Gloria and Harding having a heart-to-heart before he got into the jeep for the drive back to the hotel. Jerome. Harry’s grandmother. Click, click. Things fell into place and I had to tell this nurse before the floor came up and whacked me.

“Nalorphine,” I said. Both hands were on the gurney now and my legs were shaking. “Nalorphine, now! Hurry!”

I turned to look at her and try to explain, but all I saw were her eyes; wide with a fear of me, a raving lunatic. I tried to step forward and tell her something but I couldn’t remember what. And why was I thinking about Harry’s grandmother? I couldn’t remember what was so important and then the goddamn bells drove everything else out of my head and all I felt was the gritty concrete floor slam into my cheekbone as someone picked up the floor and hit me with it.

CHAPTER
•
THIRTY-FOUR

IT WAS DARK WHEN I awoke. There was a light on a small table next to a window. A dark blackout curtain was drawn over the glass panes, the light from the gooseneck lamp lost in the black fabric. It was quiet. No bells rung. A figure was slumped in a chair next to the light, in shadow. I turned to my right and in the half darkness I could see two other beds with sleeping forms lying on them. I lay there, eyes adjusting to the darkness, trying to remember how I’d gotten here. The train. Bombers. The jeep. Ambulance. Kaz.

“Kaz!” I said out loud, and sat up as memory flooded into my waking mind.

“Billy, it’s all right,” said the form in the chair, getting up and limping over to me.

“Harry? Is that you?” He came closer and I saw that it was.Dressed in U.S. Army fatigues and sporting a .45 automatic in a holster. “Kaz, is he . . .”

“He is fine, sleeping right over there, thanks to you.”

“Where’s Major Harding?”

“Right here, Boyle,” said Harding as he sat up on the bed facing me and swung around. He had been sleeping with his boots and gun belt on, ready for anything. He spoke in a soft voice. “Lieutenant Kazimierz is fine. He’s in the last bed against the wall. I don’t know how you knew, but you were right. He’d been overdosed with morphine. They administered the antidote to him just in time. You nearly scared that poor nurse to death, but as soon as you fainted, she checked on him. Doc Perrini figures Kaz had about ten minutes left before it would’ve been too late.”

“Is he going to recover?” I had visions of paralysis, brain damage, all sorts of terrible things to add to the agonies Kaz already had to bear.

“According to the doctor, he has recovered. He’ll have a headache from that knock on the head, but that’s it. You were X-Rayed, too. You have a very slight fracture of the skull and a moderate concussion. You should be fine if you can avoid getting hit on the head for a while.”

“The penicillin shipment?”

“It’s safe, under heavy guard at the train station. No one is going to get within fifty yards of it and live.”

“Have you seen Diana?”

“Miss Seaton is fine. The young French girl Lieutenant Kazimierz hired is with her, and there’s a guard on their room. No need to worry, everything’s fine.”

It was too much good news, it just couldn’t be all true.

“Are we going to pick up Villard?” I asked.

“We’ll talk about that later,” Harding said. “Lieutenant Kazimierz was awake for a while, and said you had evidence Colonel Walton was involved in these murders?”

“I thought I did, sir, but now I think I was wrong. I need to talk to you about that.”

I didn’t know how to tell Harding what I had to say. Or what he would do when I told him. I changed the subject quickly to give myself a few minutes grace.

“What time is it anyway?” I asked.

“Just past five-thirty,” said Harry Dickinson, glancing at his watch. It was nice to hear a military type tell time the old fashioned way. He pulled the blackout curtain aside. The sky was lit up by a red dawn. “No need for this,” he said as he pulled the curtain aside.

“Harry, what are you doing here?”

“I heard you were causing trouble, and came to see you. Major Harding asked me to stay and stand guard with him. I was going stark raving mad sitting in a hospital bed so this seemed a nice alternative.”

“How’s the leg?”

“This little scratch? Just a through and through, as we say.”

I was glad to have Harry as a friend. I was glad they were all here, and I thought about nights back in Boston when Dad and Uncle Dan had something going and the house would fill with cops, all watching out for each other. It felt good to be part of something that brought men like these together. Part of it was suffering; I knew that much from Harry and Kaz, and I think Harding too. It was the possibility of death that made men look each other in the eye, grip shoulders, give a nod that said Yes, I will risk everything for you. Harry had that look in his eyes, and I returned it.

Harding opened the door and asked an orderly to bring in a pot of coffee and four cups. Daylight began to fill the room, so he turned out the lamp. Then he cranked up Kaz’s bed so Kaz was sitting up. His face was scratched and bruised, and he looked incredibly thin in the hospital pajamas. I wondered how much strain and abuse his body could take. I wondered the same about mine. Then Kaz opened his eyes.

“Billy! So glad to see you.” He looked around for his glasses and Harding picked them up from the nightstand, handing them to Kaz. Almost tenderly.

“Same here, buddy.” I sat up too and let my feet hang off the side of bed. It wasn’t too bad. I had on the same hospital pajamas as Kaz, and that reminded me: his clothes.

“Kaz, the notebook is gone,” I said.

“Major Harding has already asked some of the orderlies to go through the discarded clothing. They should find my jacket there.”

“No, you don’t understand. It wasn’t in your pocket. I searched for it while you were still wearing your jacket.”

There was silence in the room, and Kaz and Harding both looked at me, uncomprehending. The door opened and an orderly entered, a tray with a pot of coffee and cups in his hands.

“Here you go, Major.” He set it down on the table and left.

“Okay, Boyle, tell me what you know.” Harding handed me a cup of black coffee. I took a sip.

“I’ll start with a question. Did you tell Gloria Morgan where our quarters were located, the day we left here with Kaz?”

“Why?” Harding’s eyes narrowed and he didn’t look happy. I knew he didn’t like me poking around his personal life, or even knowing he had one.

“Just before we left, you and she were talking, outside the entrance to the hospital. Did you tell her where we were headed?”

“Boyle, she knows we’re attached to HQ at the Hotel St. George.”

“Yes, but not everyone attached to HQ is quartered there.” I saw the effect that had on Harding. It was the same thing that happened to me when Diana had brought it up. How could I have been so stupid?

“Yes, I told her. I said perhaps I could take her to dinner there one night.”

“What made you mention where we were quartered?”

He looked away from me.

“She asked.”

“Yesterday I saw a nurse wheel Kaz into the Post-Op room. He’d just been given an overdose of morphine. I think that nurse was Gloria Morgan.”

“Yes,” said Kaz, in open-mouthed amazement. “It was Miss Morgan who took care of me. She gave me a shot for the pain . . .”

“And didn’t mark it on your chart. Then stashed you away in a room where no one would notice. In the confusion, your death would’ve been chalked up to an undiagnosed brain injury. No autopsy, no questions, no notebook.”

“But why . . .” Harding asked, letting the question hang there. “Why?”

“Her motive? I have no idea. But it does tell us something.”

“What?” asked Kaz.

“She had a reason for stealing the notebook and trying to get rid of you. You said the code was virtually unbreakable without knowing what book they were using.”

“Dictionary code?” asked Harding.

“A variation, quite complex,” Kaz said, nodding. “Yes, it makes sense. The key book is here, otherwise why would she want the notebook?”

“Excuse me, but what are you two talking about?” Harry asked.

“It’s a long story, but coded messages have been sent between Blackpool, England, and Algiers, using neutral merchant ships. The code is based on duplicate copies of a certain book, and if you don’t know which book, then the code is totally secure.”

“So by stealing the codebook, she tipped you off that the book is here,” Harry said.

“Yeah. It was the most dangerous situation she could imagine. Both the book and the codebook, with coded messages, in the same place. That’s why she killed Jerome, and tried to kill us. Casselli was murdered because he got cold feet, or was too honest for this business.”

“What!” Harding slammed his coffee cup down, sending a splash of hot coffee up and onto his hand. He shook it off. “Explain yourself, Boyle!”

“I thought it was Walton, since he had the means and opportunity. Proximity to the Bessette crime family in Blackpool, direct involvement with medical supplies, access to the only telephone in the area so he could inform the shooter when we left him. But when I saw that Gloria had wheeled Kaz into that room to die, I remembered that you and she were talking that day. She knew what route we would have to take, too, and was in a position to make a call from Walton’s office. It would have been completely normal for her to be in there.”

“Anybody could’ve made that call, Boyle,” Harding said. “And what about accusing her of killing Jerome? What grounds do you have for that?”

“Harry’s grandmother,” I said.

“What?” all three of them exclaimed at the same time.

“It came to me when I realized Gloria had given Kaz an overdose. Harry told me how his grandmother hated hospitals and needles. When she was dying, her doctor gave her morphine in a liqueur. Alcohol actually increases the effect of the morphine.”

“So?” demanded Harding.

“Just before Jerome died, I came into his room and Gloria and he were drinking Crème de Menthe. The perfect liqueur to mask any taste, and liquid morphine is pretty tasteless to start with.”

“But you said they were both drinking it,” Harding said.

“Kaz, how do you feel right now?”

“My head hurts, but otherwise fine. A little tired, perhaps.”

“There you go, sir. She could give herself an injection of nalorphine as soon as she was alone, and she’s all set. She was just off duty, so it would have been normal for her to go to her room and rest.”

“Could she simply go to the hospital pharmacy and sign out an injection of nalorphine? They just don’t hand out drugs, even to head nurses!”

“Sorry, sir, but nalorphine was on the list of drugs stolen when Sergeant Casselli was killed.” That did it. Harding slumped in his chair. “I should have known,” he said.

“You couldn’t have known, sir,” I said. “There’s no way . . .”

“No,” he said in a low, strangled voice, “no. I mean I should have known she wasn’t really interested in me. She wasn’t back in the States, either, not really. But I—”

“You loved her,” said Kaz quietly. The room was silent. Harding let out a breath that sounded like it had been held since he hit the beach.

“Yes. All these years. I thought I was the luckiest man in the world to see her again, here, of all places.”

“We should go to Colonel Walton as soon as possible, Major, and tell him.”

But Harding didn’t move. He stared out the window at the rising sun, getting used to the idea of being in love with a murderess. He reached for a cigarette and held it between his fingers, rolling it back and forth. I could hear the white paper crinkle against the tobacco. Nobody said a word.

Two hours later we filed into Walton’s office. Since Kaz and I both had bandages on our heads, we looked like a parade of walking wounded after a battle. By contrast, Harding stood ramrod straight, with no expression on his face except the one the army issued him. Inside, I knew he was banged up worse than Kaz and I put together. Harry stood guard outside in the hallway, one hand on a cane and the other resting on his holstered automatic.Walton and Gloria were already in the office, seated at the conference table—or poker table—depending on what your priorities were.

“Good morning, gentlemen. Don’t you two look a sight! Baron, you’ve recovered from your accident?” Either she didn’t know why we were here or she was one hell of an actress. She flashed a smile at Harding. He nodded back, curtly. A look of surprise flashed across her face. Now she was on guard.

“Lieutenant Kazimierz,” Walton said, stumbling a little over the Polish name, “I want to apologize on behalf of the 21st General Hospital. It was chaos here yesterday, our first major influx of wounded, and we were hit from multiple directions. But that’s no excuse for putting a patient in jeopardy.”

Harding ignored Walton and looked straight at Gloria. “We know everything,” he said. I had to admire his self-control. He could’ve called HQ and had someone else confront her. He didn’t.

“Well, that’s great!” Gloria said. “Do tell us all about it.” She looked at Harding expectantly.

“We know about your connections to Jules Bessette in Blackpool. Scotland Yard has questioned him and he’s told them everything. We know about the letters, the code, how he set you up with his brother here in Algiers, and about how you tipped them off about the penicillin.”

“Me? You’re talking about
me
?” Gloria put her hand to her breast as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She was the picture of innocence. She was quite convincing. So was Harding as he lied about Scotland Yard. That was good.

“We know about Jerome.We know how you were hunting for the codebook. We know about the Crème de Menthe and the morphine. We know you had Casselli killed when he wouldn’t play along with you, and that you took the receipt for the orders concerning the second shipment of penicillin from him.”

“Sam, what are you talking about? Is this some kind of joke?” Now she turned on the charm, looking back and forth between Walton and Harding, eyelids fluttering, then looked as if she were about to cry. Walton seemed stunned.

“We know about you and Villard.”

Now
I
was stunned. Harding made this accusation with conviction. I guessed there was something in their past that caused him to make that leap. This time Gloria was silent. Harding kept on speaking, never taking his eyes from Gloria, tapping the table with his index finger as he made each point.

“We know you tried to kill Lieutenant Kazimierz in order to get the notebook from him, and to eliminate him in case he knew anything that might endanger you. He will testify that you gave him an injection, and there are witnesses. I have men searching your quarters now.We’ll search the entire hospital if we have to, and we’ll find the code book. We know that’s here too. And the nalorphine, and your private supply of morphine. It’s all here. We know everything,” he added, that last sentence as a quiet afterthought, the only evidence in anything he said of his pain.