"Sir?" MacMillan said.
"For the time being," General Waterford said, "you can be my flying aide-de-camp. I"ll be losing my senior-aide before long, anyway. You can be my aide and fly me-around. How does that sound?"
"Whatever the General decides, sir."
"It"s settled then," Waterford said. "Davis, see to his orders, and then see that he"s settled down in quarters, will you?" He shook MacMillan"s hand again. "In a couple of days, when you"re settled, Mrs. Waterford and I would like to have you and Mrs. MacMillan for dinner. Just family, Mac. Bobby feels that way about you, and I"m sure we will."
Some time later, a friend in the office of the chief of staff told Davis that Waterford had written a letter to the War Department, urging the special promotion of Lieutenant MacMillan to captain, stating that in his present a.s.signment he had "demonstrated an ability to perform in a staff capacity very nearly as well as his record indicates, he can perform in ground combat." MacMillan"s "ability to perform in a staff capacity," Lieutenant Davis somewhat bitterly thought, Was not quite what it sounded like on paper. MacMillan was-an ace scrounger. If the Cla.s.s Six (wine, beer, and spirits) weekly ration for-the division included one case of really good scotch and really good bourbon, it appeared in the general"s mess and in his quarters.
When Mrs. Waterford gave a buffet dinner for senior officers and their ladies, it contained roast wild boar and venison, even if that meant a squad of soldiers had to be sent into the Tanaus Mountains with orders not to return until they had boar and deer in the back of their weapons carriers. MacMillan turned up a Hungarian bookmaker in a displaced persons" camp and put him to work turning out handmade tanker"s boots for the senior officers and shoes for their wives. He even found a deserted railway car once owned by some n.a.z.i bigwig, and put fifteen people to work turning it into a private "rolling command post" for General Waterford. Waterford was permitted to roll into Berlin to visit an old cla.s.smate with all the splendor of Reichsmarschall Goring. He rolled around Hesse in a Horche that had once belonged to Rommel. MacMillan found it, and arranged for it to be put into like-new order.
There was nothing whatever Davis could do but nurse his ill feelings in private. Among other things, Mrs. Waterford"s golf partner and crony was Mrs. Roxanne MacMillan. MacMillan had moved in, and he was squeezed out. He didn"t like it, but there was nothing whatever he could do about it.
The only one who had been able to resist him at all was Major Robert Robbins, the division aviation officer. Robbins was that rare avis, a West Pointer who was also an army aviator.
And he knew how to play the game. By constantly reminding the general that a general should have a field-grade officer to fly him about, rather than a lowly lieutenant, and by subtly reminding the general that Lieutenant MacMillan was fresh from flight school, where he had been flying since 1941, he had remained the general"s personal pilot of Occupation.
(Three) The Frankfurt am Main C emnitz Autobahn Near Bad Hersfeld, Germany 10 May 1946 The highway winds its way through pine forests and fields, its two double lanes often so. far apart that one cannot be seen from the other. When there is no traffic, as there was none today, there. is a pleasant feeling of being suspended in time and s.p.a.ce.
The car was a Chevrolet, a brand new one, dark blue, which had been shipped as parts from the States and a.s.sembled at a General Motors truck factory in Belgium. It bore the license plates-carried on personal automobiles of soldiers of the Army and a smaller plate identifying its owner as an enlisted man.
The driver was a hulking, square-faced man in his late forties, his hair so closely cropped that a six-inch scar on his scalp was clearly visible. There were four rows of ribbons above his breast pocket, and an Expert Combat Infantry Badge. On his sleeves there were the chevrons-three up and three down, individual stripes of felt sewn on a woolen background-of a master sergeant. On one sleeve were nine diagonal felt stripes, each signifying three years of service, and on the other were six-inch-long golden stripes, each signifying six months of overseas service during World War II.
Beside him on the front seat was a slight, gray-haired woman of about his age. She was wearing a skirt and a blouse and an unb.u.t.toned sweater. Her only jewelry was a well-worn golden wedding band and a wrist.w.a.tch. From time to time, she took a cigarette from her purse. Whenever she did, without taking his eyes from the road, the master sergeant produced a Ronson lighter and held it out for her. The back seat of the four-door sedan was jammed full of wooden boxes and paper bags. The ends of cigarette cartons, soap powder boxes, and other grocery items could be seen, as could bloodstained packages of meat.
All of a sudden, when they came around a curve on the highway, two soldiers stepped into ~the road and signaled for the car to pull over. They wore varnished helmet liners with Constabulary insignia painted on their sides and leather Sam Brown belts; and they were armed with .45 Colt pistols.
"Oh, G.o.dd.a.m.nit!" the master sergeant said, when he realized they had been bagged by a Constabulary speed trap. Then, glancing in embarra.s.sment at the woman beside him, he said, "Sorry."
"It"s all right, Tom," the woman said.
He braked the Chevrolet and pulled to the shoulder of the road.
One of the two Constabulary troopers walked to the car.
The master sergeant rolled down the window.
"Got you good, Sergeant," the Constabulary trooper said.
"Sixty-eight miles per hour." The speed limit Was fifty miles per hour and strictly enforced.
"Now what?" the master sergeant asked.
"Pull it over there, and report to the lieutenant," the Constabulary trooper said, pointing to a nearly hidden dirt road.
Twenty yards up it three jeeps and a three-quarter-ton weapons carrier were parked, and a canvas fly had been erected over a field desk.
The master sergeant nodded, rolled up the window, and started up the road.
"I"m sorry about this."
"It couldn"t be helped," the woman replied.
"What do you think I should do?" he asked.
"Pay the two dollars," she said, and laughed.
He stopped the car, pulled on the parking brake, then took his overseas cap from the seat, put it on his head, and got out of the car. As he walked to the fly-shielded field desk, he tugged the hem of his Ike jacket down over his trousers.
The lieutenant, the woman noticed, took his sweet time in making himself available to receive the sergeant; but he finally walked behind the desk, sat down on a folding chair, and permitted the sergeant to salute and report as ordered.
She saw him handing over his driver"s license and the vehicle registration. Then the lieutenant swaggered over to the car.
"You German, lady?" he asked.
"No" the woman said. "I"m American."
"What have you got in the back?" the lieutenant demanded, and then, without waiting for a reply, jerked open the back door.
"Jesus Christ," he said. Look at this. What were you planning to do, open a store?"
"Hey, lieutenant!" the master sergeant called.
"What did you say? What did you say, Sergeant? Did I hear you say "Hey" to me?"
"Excuse me, sir," the master sergeant said. "No disrespect intended."
"You just stand where you are, come to attention, and stay there until ordered otherwise, clear?" The master sergeant looked at the woman. She made a slight gesture to him, warning him to keep his temper. The master sergeant came to attention.
"Just what do you think you"re doing, Lieutenant?" the woman asked.
"What I think I"m doing, lady, is stopping your little black market operation."
"I wasn"t aware that it was illegal to have commissary goods in a personal automobile," she said, reasonably.
"Who you trying to kid, lady?" the lieutenant said. "You got enough G.o.dd.a.m.ned goodies in there to start a store."
"They"re intended as a gift," she said.
"And pigs have wings," he said. He called to the troopers standing under the fly, and pointed out two of them. "You guys start unloading this car," he ordered. "I want a complete inventory."
"You are charging us with black-marketing?" the woman asked.
"That"s right," he said.
"Arresting us?"
"You got it," he said.
"May I make a telephone call?" she asked.
"No, you can"t make a telephone call," he said. "You and your husband are under arrest. Understand?"
"I understand that when you"re arrested, you are permitted a telephone call," she said. "I"m politely asking you to make that call."
He looked at her for a long moment before he replied. "Who you want to call?"
"Does it matter?"
"OK," he said. "Come on." He walked ahead of her to the table, on which sat a field telephone. She saw that the Constab corporal, a pleasant-faced young kid, was embarra.s.sed by the lieutenant"s behavior. "Get the switchboard for her," the lieutenant ordered. The kid cranked the field phone.
"Ma"am," he said, "this is the 14th Constab switchboard."
"You know how to work a field phone?" the lieutenant said.
"You got to push the b.u.t.terfly switch to talk."
"Thank you," she said. She took the handset and depressed the b.u.t.terfly switch. "Patch me through to Jailer Six Six," she said.
The lieutenant looked at her with interest. Jailer Six was the Constabulary"s provost marshal. Jailer Six Six, he decided, was probably the provost marshal sergeant. This guy had six stripes; it was therefore logical to conclude that he was an old buddy of the provost marshal sergeant. The Old Soldier Network. Well, she was wasting her time.
"Oh, Charley," she said to the telephone, "I"m so glad I caught you in."
Charley, whoever Charley was, said something the lieutenant couldn"t hear. Then the woman went on: "Charley, Tom and I just got ourselves arrested. No, I"m not kidding. About ten miles out of Bad Hersfeld. Speeding, and I"m afraid we"re guilty of that. But also for black-marketing, and I plead absolutely innocent to that charge,"
"Yes, there"s an officer here," she said. She handed the telephone to the lieutenant.
"Lieutenant Corte," he said, sharply.
"Lieutenant," the voice at the other end of the line said, "the correct manner of answering a military telephone, unless you know that the caller is junior to you, is to append the term "sir" after your name."
Christ, she knows some officer.
"Yes, sir," he said. "I beg your pardon, sir."
"Let me get this straight, Lieutenant. I have been given to understand that you have arrested Master Sergeant Thomas, T. Dawson and charged him with speeding?"
"Yes, sir. Sixty-eight miles per hour in a fifty mile per hour zone."
"Are you aware, Lieutenant, that Master Sergeant Dawson is the sergeant major of the Constabulary?"
"No, sir, I was not. But with all respect, sir, the sergeant was speeding and admits as much."
"You"ve also, charged him with black-marketing, is that correct?"
"Yes, sir. Him and his wife. Their car is loaded down with enough commissary and PX stuff to start a store."
"His wife, did you say?"
"Yes, sir. The lady who called you."
"The lady who called me, Lieutenant," the voice said, "is not Mrs.. Dawson. She is Mrs. Marjorie Waterford. Mrs. Peterson K. Waterford."
Lieutenant Corte"s face went white, but he said nothing.
"Lieutenant, on my authority as provost marshal of the Constabulary, you may permit Master Sergeant Dawson and Mrs. Waterford to proceed on their own recognizance," the provost marshal said. "Yon will forward, by the most expeditious means, the report of this incident to Constabulary headquarters, marked for my personal attention. Do you understand an that?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then please let me speak to Mrs. Waterford again; lieutenant," the provost marshal said.
Lieutenant Corte heard: "Oh, I didn"t mind so much for myself, Charley, but what he did to Tom was inexcusable. I"ve never seen an officer talk to a senior noncom the way this one did to Tom as long as I"ve been around the service."
When she hung up, she turned to face Lieutenant Cortec "I presume we are free to go, Lieutenant?"
"Yes, ma"am," Corte said. "Mrs. Waterford, if I, had any idea you were the general"s wife."
"You miss the point, Lieutenant," Marjorie Waterford said. "A gentleman would have been just as courteous to a sergeant"s wife as he would be to a general"s lady."
"Ma"am?"
"You may legally be an officer," she said. "But I fear that you are not a gentleman, Lieutenant." She waited for a reply.
There was none.
"Good afternoon, Lieutenant," she said. She turned and thanked the corporal who had cranked the field phone for her, and then she went and got back in the car.
When they were on the autobahn again, Master Sergeant Dawson took his eyes from the road a moment and looked at her.
"You gonna tell the boss about that jerk, Miss Marjorie?"
"I"ve been thinking about that, Tom," she said. "And I don"t think so. Fear of the unknown is worse than having the ax fall. I think it will be better to just let him think about it."
He chuckled. "Maybe you"re right," he said. "But that wasn"t right, what he did."
"I think he"ll think twice before he acts like that again," she said.
"That he will," the master sergeant said chuckling. They drove into Bad HersfeJg close to the dividing line between the American and Russian zones of occupation, and finally stopped in front of a four-story, walk-up apartment building.
With their arms loaded with bags and boxes, they climbed four flights of stairs and knocked at the gla.s.s window of a door.
A tall, gaunt, gray-haired man in a worn, patched sweater opened it.
"h.e.l.lo, Gunther," Mrs. Waterford said. "You remember Sergeant Dawson, of course?"
"Nice to see the general again, Sir," Master Sergeant Dawson said.
"Marjorie, your generosity shames me," the general said.