The Man with the Iron Heart (44 page)

Before he could say anything more, he heard something outside. A shout—and a shout in English, at that. He hadn’t heard any gunshots or explosions beforehand, but how much did that prove? Any time people—for the shout had definitely come from more than one throat—in occupied Germany started yelling in English, something had hit the fan somewhere.

“Son of a bitch!” Major Frank’s mouth thinned to a pale, furious line. He must have understood the shout, where Lou hadn’t. “Those stupid bastards! Boy, are they gonna catch it!”

“Huh?” Lou said brilliantly.

Howard Frank didn’t answer. He didn’t need to, because the shout rang out again, louder and closer this time. Lou made it out with no trouble at all.

“We want to go home!” The roar was ragged but unmistakable. A moment later, here it came once more, louder still:
“We want to go home!”

“Oh, good God!” Lou said. If that wasn’t mutiny…

Major Frank jumped to his feet and hurried to the window in his office. Lou followed more sedately. With corset and cane, he couldn’t hurry, but he wished he could now.

And here they came, around the corner toward the command center. There might have been fifty or sixty of them. Most were privates, but Lou saw several corporals and at least one sergeant.
“We want to go home!”
they bawled again.

Quite a few of them carried picket signs, as if they were on strike against, say, an auto-parts factory. And damned if some of the signs didn’t say
UNFAIR!
Others said
WHY ARE WE HERE?
and demanded
HOW COME WE’RE DYING AFTER THE SURRENDER?

“We want to go home!”
the unhappy soldiers yelled one more time.

They’d attracted MPs the way a magnet attracted iron filings. But, once attracted, the snowdrops stood around trying to figure out what to do next. They had billy clubs on their belts. Some carried grease guns, others Tommy guns. But the soldiers they confronted weren’t rioting. They were demonstrating. Both went against orders, but you couldn’t beat demonstrators or shoot them…could you? Lou imagined the headlines if the MPs tried. By the unhappy look on the military policemen’s faces, they were imagining the headlines, too.

“We want to go home!”
Some of the GIs probably had struck at auto-parts plants or the like. The line they formed in front of the command center seemed highly practiced. They chanted in rough unison. The picket signs bobbed up and down.
“We want to go home!”

“What are they gonna do?” Lou asked hoarsely, meaning not the demonstrating soldiers but the MPs and the top brass.

Major Frank understood him perfectly. “I don’t know,” he answered. “They’ve gotta do something. If they don’t, the nuts are running the loony bin.”

“Yeah.” Lou nodded. That was one way to put it, all right. Another way was that, if the brass and the MPs didn’t do something, and do it pretty goddamn quick, the U.S. Army in Germany wouldn’t be an army any more. It would be a mob.

The door to the command center opened. An officer came out and said something to the GIs marching in front of the place. They stopped chanting long enough to listen to whatever he came out with. When he stopped, they hesitated, but not for long.

“We want to go home!”

It rocked him back on his heels. Maybe he’d thought he would get them arguing among themselves, or something. No such luck. They were more united and more determined than he’d figured. It wasn’t the first time the powers that be had underestimated the rank and file.

When the officer spoke again, the soldiers quieted long enough to hear him out. Then they gave forth with their much louder counterblast.

“We want to go home!”

Okay. You asked for it.
The officer didn’t say that, but Lou read it in every line of his body. He gestured to the MPs. They waded in with their billy clubs; just about all of them, by then, had slung their submachine guns. Some of the demonstrating soldiers tried to resist. They used the handles on their picket signs to hit back at the military police.

But, while the ordinary soldiers had shown pretty good discipline for protesters, they couldn’t match the well-trained military policemen. The MPs grabbed and handcuffed as many GIs as they could, clobbering them whenever they thought they needed to. Some of the soldiers who threw away their picket signs ran and escaped. The others were quickly overcome.

“How long in the stockade d’you think they’ll earn?” Lou asked as the demonstration came to pieces before his eyes.

“Depends on what they charge ’em with,” Major Frank said. “If it’s making a mutiny, that’s not the stockade. That’s Leavenworth—if they’re lucky.”

“Urk,” Lou said. “You can draw the death penalty for making a mutiny, can’t you?”

“Don’t ask me. I’ve got nothing to do with the judge advocate’s office, and I’m damn glad I don’t.” Having denied everything, Frank pontificated anyway: “But I think you can, at least during wartime.”

“Is this wartime?” Lou asked. “I mean, yeah, the Nazis surrendered and all, but what’s the shooting about if it’s not?”

“Those guys can figure that out, too.” Having pontificated, Frank started denying again. “Only thing I know is, we’ve got a mess on our hands.”

“Yeah, like we didn’t before. I wish,” Lou said.

“Okay. We’ve got a bigger mess on our hands now,” Major Frank said. “There. You happier?”

“No. I’d be happier if Heydrich was dead. I’d be a hell of a lot happier if I was going home,” Lou said. “Only difference between me and those dumb assholes is, I know better than to lay my neck on the block.”

“If we kill Heydrich, maybe we do get to go home,” Frank said.

“If Congress kills the budget, maybe we get to go home any which way,” Lou said. Howard Frank frowned but didn’t try to contradict him. Lou wished he would have.

“Well, boys, here I am again,” Harry Truman said. One eyebrow quirked up toward where his hairline had been once upon a time. “You’ve got to have more fun talking with me than you do with Joe Martin. My God! That man makes oatmeal look like it’s made out of chili peppers.”

Along with the rest of the press corps, Tom Schmidt chuckled. Truman knew what he was talking about, all right. Joe Martin wasn’t the most exciting man God ever made. All the same…“How does it feel to be working with a Republican House and Senate?” somebody called.

“I’m going to do something a good Democrat probably shouldn’t: I’m going to quote Abraham Lincoln,” President Truman replied. “He said he was like the boy who’d got a licking—he was too big to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh.”

More chuckles. FDR would never have told a cornpone story like that—Tom was sure of it. But FDR was a year and a half gone: more than that now. Truman was on his own. By all appearances, he was in over his head, too. He was the only one who didn’t seem to think so.

“What will you do if Congress passes a bill cutting off funds for U.S. soldiers in Germany?” another reporter asked.

“Veto it,” Truman said calmly. “And they know I will.”

“What if they override?” the man pressed.

“They haven’t got the votes,” the President said. “Even with a few Democrats who can’t see their nose in front of their face, they haven’t got ’em. So let them try.” He sounded like a tough little terrier. Roosevelt would have stuck out his chin, but Roosevelt had more of a chin to stick out than round-faced Truman. Roosevelt never had to deal with a Republican Congress, either. Maybe he’d picked the right time to die, or he probably would have.

“What about the soldiers’ strikes in Germany, sir?” Tom asked when Truman nodded at him.

“What about ’em?” the President said. “Some of our boys drank some bad schnapps, if you want to know what I think.”

“A little more than that going on, isn’t there?” Tom said. “Marches, picket signs, petitions? Sounds like more than drunken foolishness to me.”

“Oh, it’s foolishness, all right.” Truman’s eyes flashed behind his spectacles. He wasn’t FDR—not even close—but in his own way he was also nobody you wanted to mess with. He’d make you sorry if you tried. Eyes still snapping, he went on, “You know what would’ve happened if American boys tried that kind of nonsense in 1918?”

“Tell us,” Tom urged, along with two other reporters.

“I will tell you, by God. They would’ve got drumhead courts-martial, they would’ve got blindfolds and cigarettes—miserable French Gitanes, that tasted like horse manure—and
pow!
That would’ve been that. Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

“Can we quote you, Mr. President?” someone asked. Tom swore under his breath; he’d intended to quote Truman any which way.

But the President nodded again. “Go right ahead. The Army’s not a factory. You don’t have the right to strike against the United States of America. Anybody who thinks he does doesn’t think very well. He’s going to be sorry pretty darn quick. That’s just the way things are, and that’s how they’ll stay.”

“So do you think we ought to shoot these strikers?” Tom asked. “Do you think the Communists got to them, or maybe the Nazis?”

“I don’t know who got to them. I don’t know if anybody did,” Truman said. “All that will come out in the courts-martial. I’m sure the military judges will do what the evidence suggests.”

“What will you do if some of the soldiers get sentenced to death?” Somebody else beat Tom to the question, which pissed him off. “Will you let the sentence be carried out, or will you commute it?”

“I’m not going to judge anyone in advance,” Truman answered. “I don’t have all the evidence in front of me now. I’ll see what the courts-martial decide and how they decide it. Then I’ll do some deciding of my own.”

A reasonable response—to Tom, no friend of the administration, too reasonable to be of much use. Well, he could turn the story however he needed it to go. Another reporter asked a question about the civil war in China. Truman said he hoped Chiang Kai-shek’s forces would do better. That wasn’t useful, either. Who didn’t hope Chiang’s soldiers would do better? Getting them to do better was the problem.

Then the questions turned to domestic policy, and Tom almost stopped listening. As far as the
Tribune
was concerned, he was there to hold Truman’s feet to the fire about Germany. Westbrook Pegler had been tearing the Democrats a new one on domestic issues for years.

At last, Truman said, “That’s all for today, boys.”

“Bye-bye, donkey,” one of the reporters said as they trooped out of the press room. “The elephant’s gonna be living here as soon as the voters send Harry T. back to Missouri.”

“Dewey? Taft? Stassen? Who do you figure?” Tom asked.

“Whoever makes the most noise about bringing the boys back,” the other reporter answered. “Right now, I’d put my two bucks on Taft, but it’s early days yet. They aren’t even around the first turn.”

“Yeah.” Tom nodded. Then he grinned. “I think I’ve got the lead for my next column.” He wrote it down so he wouldn’t lose it.

I
F YOU HAD TO BE ANYWHERE IN
J
ANUARY,
L
OS
A
NGELES WAS A PRETTY
good place to be. The sun beamed down from a bright blue sky. It was over seventy. Lawns were still green. Flowers bloomed. Every now and then, Diana McGraw saw a butterfly. Birds chirped as if it were spring. Diana even spotted a hummingbird at some of the flowers in front of Union Station.

“My God!” she said to the man who’d organized this protest rally. “Why does anybody live anywhere else?”

“Beats me,” Sam Yorty answered. The California Assemblyman was a Democrat. Not only that, he’d served in the Army Air Force during the war. That made him a doubly terrific catch for Mothers Against the Madness in Germany. He went on, “I was born in the Midwest myself, but the only way they’ll get me out of California again is feet first.”

“What if they send you to Washington?” Diana asked. “Would you go there?”

“If the voters send me to Washington, I’d have to go,” Yorty said. “You’ve got to listen to them.” He might not just listen—he might do some talking of his own. And if he did, they might well listen to him. He was pushing forty, with a handsome face, a fine head of curly hair, and a wry, almost impish sense of humor. “Truman isn’t listening,” he added, “and look what’s happening to him.”

“Not just to him. To the country,” Diana said.

“Sure. I know.” Assemblyman Yorty nodded. “More and more people know. More and more people want to do something about it. We were going to hold this rally in the Angelus Temple, but—”

“In the what?” Diana broke in. Then the name rang a bell, and not one she cared for. “Isn’t that where Aimee Semple McPherson—?”

Sam Yorty nodded again. “She started it, but she’s gone, remember—she died during the war. Anyway, the place only holds 5,300 people. That’s not enough. So we’ve moved things to Gilmore Field.”

“Where’s that?” Diana asked. Unlike the Angelus Temple, she’d never heard of it.

“In Hollywood. It’s a ballpark—the Stars play there. Pacific Coast League,” Yorty said. Diana nodded. The Indianapolis Indians of the American Association were the Hoosier heroes. Yorty went on, “Anyway, we can put 13,000 people in there. That ought to do the job.”

“I hope so,” Diana said. “I never dreamt when I started out that so many people would get behind me.”

“I’m only sorry you had to start out,” Yorty said. He remembered about Pat, then. Not everybody did, even though Diana talked about her son almost every time she spoke.

Gilmore Field was on Beverly Boulevard. It wasn’t that far up and over from her downtown hotel. The rally organizers got Diana earlier than she thought they needed to. When she saw the traffic, she understood. This was a big city, even if it all looked like suburbs.

Picketers marched outside Gilmore Field’s grandstand. Cops kept them from going any farther, and from mixing it up with the people filing into the ballpark.
“Heil
Hitler!” the picketers yelled at Diana, and
“Heil
Heydrich!” and “Communist!” and all the other endearments she’d heard from one coast to the other by now.

The cheers she got when she went out onto the field warmed her. So did the weather, which was still perfect. From what the locals said, you couldn’t count on that in January, even in Los Angeles. But God or the weatherman or somebody was smiling on the rally.

Before Diana got to talk, Sam Yorty burned some time introducing celebrities who agreed with her. She’d never imagined she would meet an actor like Ronald Reagan, but there he was, waving up at the people in the stands and blistering Truman in three well-spoken minutes. Several other performers did the same.

“And now,” Yorty said at last, “the lady who started this ball rolling! Let’s hear it for Mrs.—Diana—McGraw!”

Diana got another hand, louder this time. If those picketers were still out there, this one was loud enough to make them grind their teeth. “Thank you very much,” she said into the microphone between second base and the pitcher’s mound. “I think I’ve already been upstaged, but that’s okay. We’re all on the same side here today, right?”

“That’s right!” The cry rolled down on her from all around the single-decked grandstand. She felt as if she’d hit a pennant-winning grand slam in the bottom of the ninth on the last day of the season.

“My son Pat would be proud of you,” she said. “He went to Europe to fight to keep us free. He helped win the war—or he thought he did. But after everybody said it was over, he got killed. And for what? For nothing! That’s all these poor kids who get murdered every day in Germany are dying for. For nothing! Because Harry Truman’s too pigheaded to bring them home, that’s why. There’s no other reason at all!”

Was this what a ballplayer heard when he did something special and won a big game? If it was, it was worth playing for all by itself. Any money the player raked in after that seemed only a bonus.

“Germany can’t hurt the United States any more. We knocked it flat. Even if we hadn’t, we’ve got France and England and the ocean in between,” Diana went on. “And we’ve got the atom bomb, and the Germans all know it. If they even think about making trouble, we can knock them even flatter. Anybody with his eyes open can see that, right? Too bad the President of the United States keeps his shut!”

More cheers. Diana knew they were as much for what she was saying—for what
needed
saying—as for her ideas. She hardly cared. They were as warming as the bright California sun. It was snowing back home. Did it ever snow here?

“Congress is heading our way. Maybe that will push Truman in the right direction. Maybe. But how many more American boys will get blown up on occupation duty that doesn’t need doing before the President sees the light? Too many! Even one more would be too many!”

“That’s right!”
If anything, the roar from the packed seats was even louder than it had been before. Diana finished her speech. She waved and flashed a two-finger V for Victory as she stepped away from the mike.

Sam Yorty wrapped things up: “Remember to give, folks, if you haven’t given already. Changing people’s minds costs money. I wish it didn’t, but it does. Please be generous. Show you support our cause.”

They did, with everything from nickels to twenty-and even fifty-dollar bills. Quite a few silver dollars ended up in the donation buckets. The government hadn’t minted them since 1933, but they still circulated out West. Diana had seen that on other trips across the Rockies. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a big silver cartwheel in her hand back in Anderson. Probably not since before the war.

“I think we did a heck of a job,” Yorty said. When Diana saw what they’d taken in, she wouldn’t have dreamt of arguing with him.

“T
HE MOTHERFUCKERS WERE ORDERED TO SURRENDER ALL THEIR
munitions, dammit!” The Red Army lieutenant colonel was almost comically outraged.

Vladimir Bokov looked down his nose at him—not easy, not when the Red Army was several centimeters taller, but he managed. “And you’re all of a sudden surprised because the Fascists didn’t, Comrade? They’ve had mortars and antitank rockets all along. When they figured out something new to do with artillery shells, of course it figured they’d start pulling those out of their dicks, too.”

“Well, why don’t you miserable bluecaps stop them, then?” the lieutenant colonel shouted. “What the hell good are you if you can’t do something like that?”

“What was your name again, Comrade?” Bokov asked softly.

A question like that from an NKVD man should have turned the Red Army officer to gelatin. It didn’t, which made him either very brave or very stupid. “Kuznetsov. Boris Aleksandrovich Kuznetsov,” he growled. “If you have to blame me, go ahead. Even a camp’s a better bet than going down some of these German roads.”

Maybe that proved he didn’t know much about camps. On the other hand, the way things were these days, maybe it didn’t. That possibility worried Bokov. He said, “We’re not the only ones with the problem. The Americans have it, too. By the way they squawk, they have it worse.”