Casualties of War: The Advocate Trilgy Page 8

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  American engineers had gone down into the cellars under Grosvenor Square, knocked down turn-of-the-century walls, dug and tunneled through London’s ancient earth, and interlocked the various chambers in a subterranean complex protected against both Goering’s bombs and prying domestic eyes by yards of soil, and old stone walls reinforced with brand-new concrete. Each day those labyrinthine corridors and chambers filled with the dull stutter of stone drills and cement mixers at work behind noise-dampening drapes. Each and every day, the maze of partitions, filing cabinets, desks and tables, drafting boards and map easels expanded along with the war effort.

  It was a place peopled by shadows. The shadows sat wreathed in cigarette smoke and hunched over lowered desk lamps and glowing light tables studying photographs, maps, teletypes, ticker tapes, diagrams, telegrams, predictions, calculations, estimations, and all forms and vehicles of information and analysis, then glided from one pool of darkness to another.

  Harry’s guide deposited him at a small, windowed cubicle, its windows blanked by drawn blinds, before disappearing back into the gloom, leaving him in the care of a bulldog-faced sergeant stationed at a desk in front of the cubicle’s closed door; an appropriate Cerberus for such Stygian surroundings.

  “Major Voss? Major Van Damm will be with you in a moment, sir.”

  Harry saw no place to sit and the sergeant offered no chair. Harry fidgeted like a man waiting for a bus. His eyes drifted to a youthful captain, the gnawed stub of a pencil tucked behind his ear, dancing a set of calipers across the scroll-like map overwhelming his desk.

  The sergeant cleared his throat theatrically, reminding Harry that this was a place where wandering eyes required a signed authorization. Harry nodded an apology and stepped back to the sergeant’s desk.

  From somewhere behind him — he dared not turn to see and risk another growling rebuke from the sergeant — he picked out fragments of conversation. He heard a voice — still with an adolescent crack — try to coax a WAC into an evening at dinner. Harry smiled; even in that eternal underground gloaming, with half the world in flames, some things went on as always.

  The cubicle door swung open and a cloud of stinging cigar smoke rolled out followed by a blue-faced captain gasping for breath. The captain vanished off into the darkness; the sergeant nodded at Harry. “He’s all yours, Major.”

  The brightness of the cubicle was painful after the dimness outside, and equally distressing was the smell: stale air; old food and coffee; sweat; cheap cigars.

  I had seen Major Christian Van Damm at several briefings for the press pools. Even in public and on his best behavior, Van Damm was still prone to that cocky impudence of so many young Americans, an undisguised disdain for the protocols and diplomacies that made the simple unnecessarily complex, and an irritating impatience for any intellect moving slower than his own quicksilver pace. Van Damm, in the privacy of his sanctum sanctorum below the venerable Georgian buildings of Grosvenor Square, sole ruler over his spectral kingdom, allowed his eccentricities full rein.

  At Harry’s entrance, the major barely hoisted himself to his feet from behind a desk that had disappeared beneath a mass of paper flowing uninterruptedly onto and across the floor, and then up onto caster-mounted cork-boards covered by layers of maps. Van Damm shook Harry’s hand, gestured at him to shut the door, and crashed back into his chair, a preposterously huge, wing-backed affair, its plush padding covered with a faded pattern of twining leaves. Harry guessed it had been liberated from one of the stately residences aboveground.

  “Welcome to G-2, Major.” Van Damm punctuated his greeting with a forceful puff on the cigar stub clamped in his tobacco-stained teeth.

  Harry smiled a hello, tiptoeing round piles of photographs to the office’s only other chair; strictly government issue and not nearly as comfortable as Van Damm’s.

  “First time down here? What do you think of our little operation?”

  “A bit spooky.” Having had time to let his eyes adjust to the cubicle’s glare, Harry could see that the major was not much older than Ricks or Grassi, though his pasty pallor had thrown Harry’s initial estimate higher.

  Van Damm chuckled, proudly flashing his stained teeth. “Spooky. That’s a good word for it.”

  “And not so little.”

  “A growing concern, Major, a growing concern. We’re not even settled in here and now they tell us to start reconning some territory out in Kingston. Ike wants to move the whole shebang out there with him. He’s got this philosophy against the brass getting too settled. We also serve who pack and move, I guess. I imagine your visit’s got something to do with that little do down on the coast yesterday.”

  Harry looked pained. “Tell me,” he asked, “is there anybody who doesn’t know about this mess?”

  “This is G-2,Voss. Intelligence. The Spy Brigade. What the hell kinda spies would we be if we didn’t even know what was goin’ on in our own backyard, huh? Don’t worry. It’s also our job to keep secrets. ’Course, that’s not Operations’ job. Keeping secrets.”

  “They know, too?”

  “And Communications, the Provost — well, that would figure, right? — and Transport — ”

  Harry groaned.

  “Frankly, I’d be surprised if by tomorrow, all of Wing staff didn’t know! You talk to my boy Dell yet?”

  “Captain Dell? Not yet. I’m supposed to meet with him later — ”

  “He’s got those debriefing reports, and those gun films were turned over to Ryan. Some droop named Bennett — he your man?”

  “Bennett belongs to General Halverson, but I asked him to — ”

  “Well, Bennett was moping around here yesterday trying to get hold of that stuff but I sent ’im packing. I didn’t like his puss. I had Dell hand it all straight to Ryan. Now, Major Voss,” Van Damm said, “what can I do you for?”

  Harry fumbled with his briefcase for his notes and pencil and pad. “I suppose we could start by talking about the 351st.”

  “You’ve got the — hey, is this smoke bothering you?” Van Damm switched on a small desk fan seemingly oblivious to the commotion it created among the papers on his desk. He seemed oblivious as well to the fact that the lazily whirling blades had no place to send the thick cloud of smoke and merely circulated it about the room. “I was saying — you’ve got the wrong boy. I can tell you that they — the 351st — they were the last of Halverson’s groups to be activated, back in May or June, I think. I can tell you they were his ace group. They were on that last Essen raid, got themselves a unit citation for that one, and I can tell you they earned it, too. And that is about all I can tell you. You need to talk to Dell. He’s a good kid. Bright.”

  Harry repressed another smile. It was odd hearing someone as young as Van Damm refer to another presumed adult as a “kid.”

  “Dell worked with them directly,” Van Damm continued. “He was Johnny On the Spot, on a regular basis.”

  “I gather you’re saying, then, that you didn’t deal with the group?”

  “Me? Nah, not directly. On an occasional basis. And then only with senior staff.”

  “Senior staff. Major Markham?”

  “Markham, Frank Adams, that adjutant what’s-his-face-Corksca-something — ”

  “Wait a minute. Who’s this Frank — ”

  “Lieutenant Colonel Frank Adams. Commanding officer.”

  “Commanding...? I thought Markham — ”

  “Oh, no, no, no. Markham was the air exec, the number two man. Adams ran the show. Markham was the heir apparent.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was a lot of good talk floating around about Frank Adams. The 351st was an A-Number-One group ’cause Adams was a crack CO, on top of which Adams and Halverson were buddy-buddy from back before they invented the wheel. Grapevine had it that Adams was being groomed for a slot at Wing HQ, maybe even go bird colonel and get the Wing when Halverson moved up. The way Halverson talked up Adams was the same way Adams talked
up Markham. If Adams moved up...” Van Damm finished with an eloquent shrug.

  “I get the picture. Where’s this Colonel Adams been through all this?”

  Van Damm removed his cigar and stared at the glowing tip. “I imagine his box should be home by now.”

  “His box?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Oh.”

  Van Damm sighed. “So, Markham got the group anyway. Hit Halverson pretty hard, about Adams. I think the whole thing unhinged him a little bit, at least in my opinion.”

  “What whole thing?”

  “Frank Adams and the group going up in one big flash. The bombing. What was it, last week? You heard about that, didn’t you? About Donophan being hit?”

  “Right, OK. So that’s when Colonel Adams was killed?”

  “He had plenty of company. Killed and wounded, Donophan lost eighty to eighty-five percent of their combat effectives — ” Van Damm snapped his fingers. “Got pasted six ways to Sunday.”

  Harry nodded and wiped at his eyes. The smoke was making him tear. He pointed at the fan. “Do we really need this?”

  Van Damm smiled and leaned forward to flick off the fan.

  Harry flipped back through his notes. “You, um, said something about Colonel Halverson — ”

  “It’s General Halverson. Got his star just a coupla days before the 351st got hit. How’s that for your tragic ironies!”

  “ — about Halverson becoming ‘unhinged’ — ”

  “The man loses his bestest group and his bestest buddy in one big boom. You blame him?”

  “No, but what exactly did you mean by — ”

  “What I meant was that the next day — the very next morning — I’ve got the general on the blower, practically foaming at the mouth, bending my ear about what he called ‘reactive strikes.’ Do you believe that?” Van Damm shook his head, still not believing it himself. “Not with his other groups, mind you, but with the 351st! What was left of it.”

  Van Damm’s cigar was dead. He weighed relighting it, seemed to decide the stub wasn’t worth it, moved some papers uncovering an old cup of coffee serving as an ashtray, and dropped it in.

  “So, I tell the general,” Van Damm went on, “I says, Look, I’m senior staff, I’m chief Intelligence officer, I’ve got an obligation to point out that I don’t think Markham’s playing with all fifty-two cards, OK?” He began rooting through his desk drawers. “The krauts gut Markham’s group and now he’s talking ‘bout going back over there and messing up their brilliantine a little bit? That’s what it came down to. Hey, Voss; want one?”

  To Harry’s dismay, Van Damm produced a fresh cigar from one of his desk drawers. Harry shook his head politely but vigorously. Van Damm shrugged, then carefully began peeling the cellophane off the cigar.

  “Tampa Nuggets,” he rhapsodized. “Nobody makes a cheap cigar like the good ol’ U.S. of A. I have my wife send ’em over. Helps kill the stink down here.” He bit the tip off the cigar, spat it out on the floor, then touched a match to the end, basking in the fresh, blue haze. “Hell, last time I had a shower was the last time it rained; went outside and strolled around in it for a few minutes. You’d be surprised how little the brass comes down here to bother me.”

  “I don’t think I — ”

  “Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah, so the general says to me, he says, Fine, you fulfilled your filial obligations, Van Damm, you said your piece, now shuddup and do what I tell you. Or words to that effect. Well, Voss, the boss may not be always right, but the boss is always the boss.”

  “What was it he told you to do?”

  “He wanted targets.”

  “And you gave him this fuel depot in Belgium — ”

  “I gave him what he wanted: a shopping list. He wanted a spread of easy-to-hit stuff, low-priority targets, highly vulnerable, well within fighter range. I gave him six targets.”

  “Could I see that target information?”

  Van Damm nodded and barked an order into his intercom.

  “The general picked the fuel depot out of those six?” Harry asked. “The place in Belgium?”

  “Him. Or Markham. The orders came to me from Halverson, but I don’t know whose hands are dirty with what.”

  “You didn’t approve of the target choice?”

  “I thought the whole mission was a stupid idea! Look, we don’t have much experience in this ‘fighter sweep’ business. We’ve been doing a lot of talking about it, but so far the fighters have been pretty much relegated to bomber-escort duty But the first time we let our fighters loose at something on the ground, I’d want to do it when we’ve got a more definite air superiority and do it with something more than five lousy planes! You want there to be enough so that if things go bad, they can at least protect themselves, fight their way out. And five of ’em ain’t enough, especially without air superiority.”

  “You explained all this to General — ”

  Van Damm rocked in his chair with the unhappy smugness of a proven Cassandra. “About half a second after he told me what he was up to. Emphatically. But, hey, look, I get paid to give opinions; nobody gets paid to take ’em. And now he’s out three more pilots, right? If the brass hats want to throw people away like that, that’s jake with me, but if you ask me, I think everybody who touched this thing — from Halverson on down — should be strung up by his tender parts for letting that thing go ahead.”

  “If it was clearly such a bad idea, why do you think Halverson — ”

  “I dunno!” Van Damm jabbed the red tip of his Tampa Nugget at Harry for emphasis. “I tell ya, I think he just went a little flak-happy over this thing! All Halverson wanted to hear from me was target recommendations, and did I think Markham’s plan would bring the boys home.”

  “Was it sound? The plan?”

  “Actually, it wasn’t bad as far as it went.” Van Damm’s intercom buzzed and he stood. “C’mon, it’s visual-aids time. I’m gonna give you a crash course in being a member of the Spy Brigade. I hope you brought your decoder ring with you.”

  Harry took his pad and pencil with him as he followed Van Damm out into the comparatively fresh air of the cellar maze.

  The desk sergeant outside held up a fistful of folders to Van Damm. The latter riffled through them, extracted one, and told the sergeant to leave the rest on Harry’s chair. Then, with a follow-me nod to Harry, Van Damm steamed off into the dark, his cigar leaving a trail of locomotive puffs behind. They stopped near a group of officers staring bleary-eyed into photographs laid out on a bank of light tables. Van Damm tapped one of the officers atop his head. He was a lieutenant, and even in the harsh glare of the light table Harry could see large bags under his watery eyes, the ghostly pale skin. He wondered if Van Damm or any of his minions saw much sunlight.

  “You could use a break, Bennie,” Van Damm said.

  “Oh, does it show?” the lieutenant said dryly.

  “I need a detail map, Bennie. The Channel, covering southeast England, northwest France, western Belgium.”

  Off Bennie went.

  “And see if you can find where that blackboard walked off to.” Van Damm pulled up a stool and plopped Harry on it near the light table. He moved the photos that Bennie had been studying out of the way, then drew another set from the file he’d carried with him, setting them out on the iridescent glass.

  “Here’s what it’s all about,” Van Damm said.

  The composition and scale of each photograph was different, but the subject of each was the same: a cross-hatched blob indicating the boundaries and streets of a residential area. There weren’t that many crosshatches, which Harry guessed made it a fairly small town. Not far from the town was some sort of construction site.

  “Your first Spy Brigade lesson,” Van Damm began, setting a magnifier over the photographs. “Aerial photographic interpretation.”

  Harry leaned forward and squinted through the glass. He was treated to the sight of a mountain-sized pencil point as Van Damm pointed his way
through the grainy image. “This up here, this is the town of Helsvagen. Sits on the crossroads between Ghent and Brussels. One of those little jerkwater farm towns out in the middle of nowhere. Just outside the southwest side of town, this is the fuel dump. Most of these pictures were taken back in ’40 by the RAF when they were doing recon on Jerry’s prep for an invasion of the islands. This fuel dump was one of a bunch of satellite stations supplying the Ghent/Brussels sector. The krauts figured spreading their gas around in these small dumps was safer than putting it all in one basket. They were just building this at the time. You can see them digging foundations. Here’s some heavy earth-moving stuff, bulldozers or something. Here’s another RAF picture from about two years ago. You can see the finished product.”

  Van Damm’s pencil point traced a neat rectangle that had replaced the construction site. “Here’s the perimeter fence.” Inside the rectangle were two circles — “Fuel storage tanks” — and several little rectangles along the fence closest to the town — “Barracks, admin building, motor pool.”

  “That’s the most recent picture you have?”

  “This place is so low on the priority list nobody’s seen fit to risk an air-recon crew for better pictures. We’ve gotten some intelligence on the place from time to time and, apparently, it hasn’t changed much since these pictures were taken. If anything, the krauts have stripped out some of the manpower and heavy AA guns the way they’ve stripped everyplace else along the Western Wall to feed the Russian front.”

  Lieutenant Bennie had returned with the requested map and a large chalkboard on wheels.

  “You want some java or something, Voss? No? Bennie, get me a cup, wouldja? Thanks.”

  Harry looked up from the magnifier and rubbed his eyes. “And this place fit the bill for what Halverson and Markham wanted?”

  “It was an easy reach for a P-47, and it didn’t look like there was much there in the way of AA defense. And, it’s just plain easy to hit. I could’ve hung a Boy Scout from a box kite and sent him in there with a book of matches and knocked that place out.”