Mac wingate 7, p.16
Mac Wingate 7, page 16
Manganaro didn’t answer. The frontal approach seemed to have thrown him. Wingate prodded again. “Do you have Nazi sympathies? Do you hate us all so much—or was it simply the money they offered you?”
Still no answer. Finally Manganaro growled, “You punk! Christ, I oughta drop you now but I fell for the line you were handing out. I thought you were one of us. You came to me straight from Erikson and Erikson’s twenty-four carat. I never doubted you. Jesus—I even liked you. You were good, I’ll give you that. You fooled me—you fooled all of us. I never suspected that behind that crap about going to Greece to lead a commando raid there was a son of a bitch from the SS ...”
“What the Christ are you trying to tell me?” Wingate yelled. “We know who the spy is—who you trying to kid ...?”
“Sure we know,” Manganaro cried. “I should have known the minute you started strutting in that uniform Giuseppe handed you. I never seen a guy look more at home. Come on, you bastard, use the Schmeisser! I’m giving you more chance than you gave Tiny Hazlitt or that poor French guy.”
Wingate looked at him, judging him more by his voice and the general posture of his body than by his face. The dull red glow behind Wingate wasn’t sufficient to illuminate any facial expression of Manganaro’s. But there was something about the guy that compelled belief. Could Wingate be wrong? Were they both of them talking at cross-purposes—making accusations that they should have been directing elsewhere? Wingate clutched the Schmeisser for a moment, took another detailed look at Manganaro, and finally decided to back his earlier opinion of the guy. He let go his grip on the gun with his right hand and very slowly let it twist in his left hand, finishing muzzle up. He held the weapon out to Manganaro and said, “Let’s call this off, Brad. I figure we’re both wrong.”
Manganaro hesitated, suspecting a trap. Finally he put out a hand and took the weapon. “OK, so you admit it,” he said.
“Shit,” said Wingate, suddenly irritated that he’d ever suspected Manganaro. “I admit nothing. There’s nothing to admit. I’m telling you we both got it wrong. Here I was convinced you were the plant and all the time you were thinking the same of me. Well, it’s neither.”
“Then for Christ’s sake, who?” snapped Manganaro, taking a quick step toward Wingate.
“I hate to say it,” said Wingate. “It’s got to be the kid ...”
“You’re crazy!” Manganaro broke in. “He’s eleven! What the Christ would he know about spying?”
“I’m trying to figure it out,” said Wingate. “Maybe he knows nothing ...” The minute he’d said it he stopped. That could be the answer. The kid knew nothing about it—absolutely nothing at all. “Let me talk to him,” he said, excitement in his voice.
They turned back toward the others. Manganaro handed the Schmeisser back to Wingate. “Mac,” he said, “I’m sorry.”
“Hey, Brad, come on,” said Wingate, tapping Manganaro on the shoulder. “Never be sorry you’re suspicious. I’m not. If more guys were suspicious, they’d sure as hell live longer.”
Giuseppe was leading the mules out, the lead pair dragging the 37 millimeter behind them. Betty and Kenny were waiting to move with the fourth animal when Wingate came over to them. As they finally moved forward he moved with them.
“You OK with the bag, kid?” Wingate asked, tapping his elbow against the tote bag that Kenny had over his shoulder.
“Fine, Captain,” the boy said. There was a half-yawn in his voice. He’d stood up to the journey as well as any of them.
“I figure we ought to talk,” said Wingate, after a moment. The first outskirts of the city were already approaching. Once they hit those, talk might not be all that convenient. He put a hand on the kid’s shoulder and let Betty move ahead. “Listen, son,” he said, confidentially, moving forward again beside one of the unaccompanied mules. “I’ve got a problem. The Frenchman—the guy we had to leave back there—he told you which plane I was shipping on, right?”
“That’s right,” said the boy, alongside Wingate.
“But how did you know which airfield? How did you know I was going anywhere at all?”
“Well—from my Mam,” he said, using the northern English pronunciation. “My Mam told me.”
“Ah,” said Wingate. “Your Mom told you. I see.” He didn’t see at all. He didn’t know what the hell the kid was talking about. How did some kid’s mother, in some place he’d never been to in his life before, come to have an interest in Wingate? How could she let her son get tied up with him if she knew he was going on a mission? Didn’t she have any feelings for the boy—or were there reasons that made her overrule her motherly instincts? If so, they must be pretty important reasons.
They walked for a while in silence. They had reached the first signs of chaos now—some of the houses were in flames, others simply in ruins from artillery fire. There were refugees coming toward them along the track, but when they finally reached the main road most of the German armor had already gone through. The artillery barrage itself had now been switched to the coast road.
“So your Mom knew you were going to come with me?” asked Wingate. “You fibbed to me earlier?”
“Yes,” said Kenny, now beginning to struggle a little with his limping foot. “She knew I was going to see my Dad. I couldn’t stay at home, she knew that. I didn’t like my new uncle—the one who came to live with us. He was all right—I suppose. He brought chocolates for me and he gave me a present for my Dad.”
“Did he?” said Wingate, as casually as he could. “That was nice of him. What kind of a present—cigarettes, maybe? Some candy?”
“Oh, I didn’t open it,” the boy said. “It’s still wrapped up. I’ve got it in my bag, packed with my clothes so it doesn’t get damaged ...”
“Oh, God,” Wingate muttered. He meant the kid to hear him, though he wanted it to sound as if he was talking to himself. “I just hope it’s not contraband. The cops are right on the ball—” He left it to Kenny’s imagination. Then he said, “I guess we ought to sneak a look.”
“Well—I don’t know ...” Kenny said, reluctantly. “I don’t want my Dad to think I’ve been poking into things.”
“Tell you what,” said Wingate. “Let me take a look for you. You don’t have to know what’s inside. I won’t tell you if that’s what you want. But it would be kind of crazy to have the cops find it and lock you up. If it’s something they don’t allow into the country, we’ll let Giuseppe take care of it until we find your Dad. It’s OK for him—he’s Italian.”
The street ahead of them was closed. There was a barbed wire barricade across it. Beyond the barrier there was heavy small arms fire and a section of row houses was blazing, throwing great gouts of flame and billowing smoke into the night sky. Giuseppe pulled the lead team to the right and the whole train turned after him toward the harbor. It seemed to Wingate that the Italians had finally turned against the krauts. They were attacking the retreating Germans and hitting any resisting strongpoints. Neapolitans were fighting for Naples.
They moved deeper into the city and closer toward the waterfront for ten or fifteen minutes before Kenny made his final decision. Wingate didn’t press him. It had to be left to the kid now. Wingate didn’t need to open the package that Kenny was carrying. Not any longer. He already knew what it must contain.
Finally Kenny swung the tote bag off his shoulder and handed it to Wingate. “OK, Captain,” he said, a touch of resignation in his voice. “Take a look.”
The bag was full of things that only a kid could attach importance to—pocketknife, stub of pencil, half a dozen strips of Band-aid stuffed into the toe of a sock, a pocket atlas of the world. Halfway down the bag, Wingate felt the object he was looking for. It was the size of a cigar box and it was wrapped in stout brown paper and tied with string.
He called “Brad!” and went over to Manganaro, leaving Kenny with the mule.
Wingate and Manganaro walked into the flickering light of a burning building. Wingate snapped the string with his fingers and pulled back the paper. The box inside had a hinged lid and a simple brass hook fastener.
“Hold it,” said Manganaro as Wingate put a thumb on the fastener and flicked it open. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”
The thoughts that were going through Manganaro’s head had already been through Wingate’s. If some bastard in England was screwing the kid’s mother, he’d be doing himself a favor by packing off a bomb to Kenny’s Dad. There was a chance that when Wingate lifted that lid, the war would be over for him and Manganaro. But it was a risk he was prepared to take. The bomb theory was only one possibility. There was another—one that made a lot more sense.
“I know what I’m doing, Brad,” said Wingate, his voice full of self-confidence.
He lifted the lid. Inside there was a jumble of wires and flashlight batteries and miniaturized radio components.
“Jesus Christ!” Manganaro exclaimed, slapping his forehead dramatically. “A fucking transmitter! No wonder those bastards knew every move we made.”
“Any radio ham could have followed us, the minute the kid picked us up,” said Wingate.
“Let me have it,” said Manganaro, putting out his hand to take the box. “I’ll smash the goddamn thing right now!”
“Hold it, Brad,” said Wingate. “I figure we’ll just hang on to it—for the time being anyway.”
“Mac, you’re crazy!” Manganaro yelled. “It’s you they’re after, can’t you see that? As long as that thing’s following you around, you’ve got the whole Wehrmacht on your neck. For God’s sake, junk it!”
At first, Wingate had thought it was de Lille they were after. He was the one who could put the finger on Cesescu. But it wasn’t de Lille whom Kenny had asked for when he’d gotten on the plane. It was Wingate. But why Wingate? Why not somebody important—Montgomery, Ike, Churchill? He’d turned the speculations over and over in his mind ever since de Lille’s death and there was only one conclusion he’d come up with. However crazy it was—however personally flattering—the fact was that Wingate was giving them trouble in Berlin. He was enough of a thorn in the side of the Nazi High Command for them to put one of their top agents on to him. And the more he learned to live with that fact, the more he liked it. It was flattering to think there was a file on Goering’s desk with Wingate’s name on it. And it was damn well hilarious to picture Hitler at Berchtesgarden waiting for a phone call telling him that Wingate wouldn’t be bothering him anymore.
“Listen, Brad,” said Wingate, turning now and rejoining Giuseppe’s column. “This isn’t just a one-way device. It doesn’t just bring them to me—it can take me to them. It’s like an umbilical cord—it’s a link between us. As long as I hang on to this, I’m bound to meet up with the guy who planted it. In fact, from now on I’m one up on him. He doesn’t know that I know he’s tracking me. He’s going to lean heavily on the element of surprise—and surprise is one thing he doesn’t have anymore.”
He wrapped up the transmitter and retied the string.
“What about the kid?” asked Manganaro. “You going to let him carry it again?”
“I guess,” said Wingate. “It’s not him they’re after.”
“D’you figure he knew about it—what was inside?”
“He didn’t know,” said Wingate. “Take a look at him. Hey, Brad, come on—you and your goddamn Brooklyn imagination!”
Wingate caught up with Kenny and pushed the package back into his tote bag. “I guess it’s OK,” he said.
“Why did you show it to him?” Kenny asked, pointing back to where Manganaro was marching beside Betty.
“He’s Italian,” said Wingate. “He knows what the cops will allow and what they won’t. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” said Kenny. “That’s OK.” There was relief in his voice.
Wingate put out a hand and ruffled the kid’s hair. “You’re a good kid,” he said. “If you were my kid, I’d be real proud of you.” He wondered how different things might have been if the war hadn’t come along. Would he have married a girl in Madison if there’d been no Nazi party? Could he have settled down with someone in Brazil—raised a family in Rio? Come to that, could he have gotten tied up with someone like Betty Andrews—strong, capable, but every inch a woman? Well—time would tell.
Giuseppe had put out a scout a hundred yards ahead of them. The guy was standing by the wall of a demolished house now, illuminated by flames beyond him, waving them to a halt.
Giuseppe, still up front with the gun limber, came to a stop. He spoke for a couple of moments to the squat guy with him and the man ran forward toward the scout, dodging, crouching, taking advantage of every shred of cover in sight.
There was fighting going on around the next block. The rattle of a heavy machine gun was almost continuous. Grenades exploded and the occasional crump of 2-inch mortar bombs rattled the buildings. There was no Allied artillery fire. The town was being left as open a city as possible. But the closer they got to the waterfront, the more obvious were the signs of the heavy bombing that had taken place earlier. Acres of devastation lay across to their left. The road they were taking was almost intact by comparison.
The squat guy ran back to Giuseppe. After some time gesticulating, Giuseppe came back to Wingate.
“Brad!” called Wingate. He wanted Manganaro around in case there were difficulties of communication. It was clear there was some serious hang-up ahead.
“Tedeschi,” Giuseppe growled. “They block the road.”
“So let’s go around,” said Wingate, turning his face away from Giuseppe and grabbing a lungful of fresh air. Where the hell did this guy get his supply of garlic? It was endless. It was like trying to converse with a tear-gas cannister.
Giuseppe turned to Manganaro, threw up his arms, and rattled a blast of Neapolitan Italian at him.
“There is no way around,” said Manganaro to Wingate. “They’ve dug in a tank ahead. Around the corner there’s a strongpoint they’ve got manned.”
“Forget the tank,” said Wingate. “We can’t take on any armor. Let’s go take a look at this strongpoint.”
They moved forward, one behind the other and fifteen yards apart, Wingate checking the next piece of cover before dodging his way toward it. He moved from broken doorway to shattered column and from there to the heaped rubble that had once been a home. Each time he cleared one protection, Manganaro dashed up to claim it. They moved more slowly than the squat guy had moved. Wingate had had too much experience to take chances. It needed the bullet from a single sniper to finish the whole mission. Caution was more important than speed if Giuseppe was to see his daughter alive.
When they reached the scout, he was on his knees behind a wrecked personnel carrier. The vehicle had had its left track blown off and it lay among the rubble with a heavy list to one side. It was no place for a conference. It hid them from the tank, now silhouetted two hundred yards ahead against the burning city, but it offered no protection from its 75 millimeter if the krauts decided to use it. Wingate nodded to his left and they dropped into the basement of an abandoned wine store.
“Jeez,” said Manganaro, breathing deeply in the atmosphere of leaking alcohol and gun smoke. “Just like home.”
“So what’s the picture?” asked Wingate, talking to the scout through Manganaro. The tank was a Panther by the look of it. That meant three machine guns as well as the main cannon. They would need more than luck if they were going to cross the road in front of that.
The scout explained. The tank closed the road ahead. They could make a right at the next cross street, but fifty yards down a bunch of krauts had set up a strongpoint. One of the houses had been sliced off at second floor level by a bomb blast. They had put sandbags breast high around the rubble and set up an MG-34.
“What field of fire do they have?” Wingate asked. He was already trying to formulate a plan of approach.
“That’s the problem,” said Manganaro, translating. “Nothing’s left standing to the north or east of them. They’ve a clear view both ways. The only approach is down the street. We wouldn’t get five yards.”
“What about over the rooftops?” Wingate wanted to know.
“What rooftops?” the scout asked.
Wingate nodded. It was tough. It looked like a knee and elbow job—a long belly crawl in and out of the rubble, finishing with a grenade tossed into the firing slot. “Let’s go take a look,” he said at last.
Wingate sent the scout back to report on the position to Giuseppe. They had to stay under cover from that tank. They were finished if that 75-millimeter hit them. Then he left Manganaro behind the wrecked personnel carrier and wriggled his way across the street to the next corner. Very slowly he eased himself into a sitting position and allowed one eye to peer around the broken brickwork and take in the scene down the cross street. The scout had described the position perfectly. In the dim red glow of the burning city he could make out the strongpoint, a low hump of rubble and sandbags with nothing left standing beyond it. From the harbor in the far distance, ships lay blazing and plumes of smoke and flame soared into the air where the kraut demolition teams were destroying installations. When the city finally fell, it was hardly going to be worth having.
He turned over the possible approaches. The best would be to slide across the street to the cover of the far side, then work slowly through the rubble, never breaking the skyline. It wasn’t too tough a job. The tough part would be the last half dozen yards where there was no cover at all—an open piece of ground that had once been a little garden. He would have to sprint that, toss himself down clear of the gunner’s field of fire, and hit that slot with a single movement of the hand. There’d be no second chance. It meant making the final sprint with the pin already out of the grenade. If he fell and lost his grip on the damn thing ... He put the thought right out of his head.
