Mac wingate 7, p.20
Mac Wingate 7, page 20
“That’s the difference between us,” she added, lightly. “I’m doing my damnedest to avoid playing the woman. Be seeing you, Mac.”
She reached up to him, gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, then turned to the door on the far side of the lobby. In a moment she had disappeared into the night outside.
The sergeant came out of the office and spoke to Manganaro. Manganaro got to his feet and said a few words to the nun, waiting with the convent kids. They were more settled now, sitting around on blankets on the bare floor, eating candy that a couple of GIs had handed out. Giuseppe’s daughter had gone to sleep and was lying curled up with a folded army greatcoat under her head. The nun got down on her knees and explained to them in Italian exactly where they were going and what she wanted them to do.
“We’ve got a truck, sir, waiting out front right now,” said the sergeant. “It won’t be all that comfortable for the kids, but it’s transport. It’ll take them to the old Italian barracks in Castellammare. They’ll get a meal there, and I guess they could do with some sleep.”
Manganaro nodded. “Fine,” he said. “Fine.”
The kids were on their feet again, obediently folding blankets and stacking them against the lobby wall. The nun came over to Manganaro and poured out a flood of thanks in Italian, but Manganaro put up his hands and shook his head. “Our pleasure, Sister, believe me.”
Wingate had picked up Giuseppe’s daughter. She yawned as she came out of her sleep and he whispered to her, “Your Dad’s a brave man, you ought to remember that. Whatever happens—you remember that, huh? And until you see him again, I want you to be brave too.” She didn’t understand a word he said and he knew it, but she smiled a tired little smile and that was good enough for him. She had understood the feeling behind what he was saying, and that was the main thing. He put her down and she walked over to the nun and took hold of her hand. She turned once and gave a little wave as a GI led the flock of kids outside to the truck. At least, thought Wingate, he’d kept his promise to Giuseppe.
Kenny Fields looked exhausted, but he refused to go to bed. “I want to see my Dad first,” he said. “If he’s around.”
“Let me find out,” said Wingate. He turned to the sergeant and asked, “Anywhere the kid can get a Coke?”
“There’s a bar in the basement, sir,” said the sergeant. “Anderson!” he called to one of the GIs standing by the big mahogany reception desk. “Take this young guy down for a drink. They won’t let him in by himself.”
“Hey, Kenny,” Wingate called, as the boy moved after the GI. “Does your Dad smoke?”
“He smokes cigarettes,” the boy said, turning to face Wingate. “Gold Leaf. Why?”
Wingate shrugged. “Oh,” he said. “I figured it would be nice if you could turn up with a couple of packets for him. Let me see what I can do. And Kenny—why don’t you leave that tote bag here? I’ll keep an eye on it. It’ll be quite safe.”
The boy hesitated. It was suddenly important to Wingate that he get his hands on the bag, but he didn’t want to press it. Finally Kenny nodded. He took the bag off his shoulder and propped it up against the reception desk to Wingate’s left, then turned and followed the GI downstairs.
Wingate turned quickly to the sergeant, the minute the kid was out of sight. “Gold-Leaf—you ever heard of them?”
“Sure, they’re British. Christ knows where we’d find any at this time of night.”
“Then get me anything you’ve got—a couple of cartons.” The sergeant disappeared and Wingate picked up the tote bag, put it on the reception desk and opened it. He groped inside and finally took out the transmitter. He opened the box, ripped out the batteries and wiring, and dropped them in the metal trash can behind the desk.
“It’s not going to function like that, Mac,” said Manganaro, craning over the desk to see where the device had landed.
“I don’t want it to function,” said Wingate, coiling the string that he had taken from around the parcel and putting it beside the paper wrapping. “If they’ve still been monitoring us, they know where we are by now. But what’s the point of letting the kid and his Dad discover the kind of shit that woman back in England is? What good would it do?”
“Jesus,” said Manganaro. “You’re a Christian, Mac.”
“Not really,” said Wingate. “More an Ojibway.”
The sergeant brought Luckies. “The best I could do,” he said.
“So long as they’re cigarettes,” said Wingate, ripping the cartons open and letting the individual packs fall on to the reception desk. “Things are pretty tight in England right now. He’ll understand that his wife couldn’t be too choosy.” He stacked twelve packs into the transmitter box and closed the lid, then rewrapped and restrung it. The kid would never know the difference. He put the package back where it had been in the tote bag and stood the bag by the desk again. He pushed six of the remaining packs toward the sergeant and kept the other two to give to the kid. “Yours, Sergeant,” he said. He took a bill out of his pocket and gave it to the sergeant. “Thanks,” he said. “Anything left over, put it in the mess funds.”
The British Intelligence officer came across to them, his mouth a fraction open, a look of mild puzzlement on his face. “You mentioned the old country,” he said. “Something about a plane. Your name Wingate by any chance—Captain Wingate?”
Wingate nodded. “We ran into fighters,” he said. “The pilot had to put us down north of Naples.”
“Ah!” the major exclaimed, his face lightening with a broad smile. “Then you made it! Thank God for that. I’ve a message from a Colonel Erikson—that mean anything to you?”
Wingate looked at Manganaro. Manganaro grinned. “Yep,” admitted Wingate. “That means something to me.” He wasn’t prepared to say out loud exactly what it meant. He’d half hoped that he could sneak a couple of days in Naples before Erikson caught up with him again.
“Good show!” exclaimed the I.O. His enthusiasm was irrepressible. Simply watching him drained Wingate’s flagging energy. “He wants you to meet him in Malta. I’m laying on a jeep. Stay the rest of the night here by all means, if you’d prefer, but there’s a Beaufighter going in that direction around 0500 hours—we could squeeze you into that.”
Wingate gave the choice a couple of seconds’ consideration, then said, “I guess I’d better take it. If I missed a couple minutes of this war, Erikson would never forgive me.”
“Well, that’s first-rate,” the I.O. exclaimed. He turned to Manganaro, leaning with his right elbow on the reception desk, and asked, “What about you, Lieutenant?”
Manganaro shrugged. “What’s wrong with Malta?” he said. “Warm sea, plenty of sun, nice girls. Nobody’s expecting me anywhere else.”
“What about the kid’s father?” Wingate asked.
The I.O.’s face dropped its smile and he made a couple of nervous passes at his mustache with the back of his hand. “You were right,” he said at last. “He did come ashore with General Clark. But he got hit in the legs a week ago with one of those bloody antipersonnel things. He was on the beach like that until yesterday morning. He’s in a field station in Salerno. They don’t want to move him at the moment. He’s got a temperature and he’s still in shock. But they expect he can fly home in a week or so. He’ll be all right in time, but there’s shrapnel to be removed and he needs some good nursing.”
Wingate wondered if there was any way of keeping it from Kenny, but he knew there wasn’t. The kid had come a long way and been through a lot to see his Dad. He had a right to see him now, and he had a right to see the way he was—wounded and just out of action. The guy was a soldier and it wasn’t fair to hide the implications of that from his son just because the kid was a kid.
“Any chance of that car going through Salerno before it drops us at the airstrip?” asked Wingate. “I feel responsible for the boy. I’d like to see it through to the end.”
“I don’t see why not,” said the I.O., after a moment’s consideration. “To be honest, I wouldn’t know what to do with a young boy around here ...” He stopped suddenly in midsentence and a surprised expression came over his face. He had his back to the desk and he was looking over Wingate’s shoulder. Wingate turned around. Kenny was coming back up the stairs from the basement. He was alone and he looked puzzled and confused.
Wingate went over to him. The minute Kenny saw him he ran toward him. “I—don’t understand,” he cried. He seemed on the verge of tears, not from pain but more from sheer shock and incomprehension. “Down there,” he burst out, pointing behind him to the stairs leading to the basement. “Uncle Charley’s down there! What’s he doing here?”
“Hold it, Kenny,” said Wingate. “You’re tired. You’ve been through a lot. What Uncle Charley?”
“Uncle Charley!” the boy insisted, his voice shrill with emotion. “Mr. Rose. The man who lives with us. Who’s—friendly with my Mam ...”
“In England?” Wingate asked. “The one who gave you the present for your Dad ...?”
“Yes!” cried the boy. “What’s he doing down there?”
It was pretty clear to Wingate why the bastard was here. Quite suddenly the last piece of the jigsaw had slotted into place. It all made sense. Whoever this bastard Charley Rose was, he’d gotten to the kid through his mother and he’d gotten to Wingate through the kid. No wonder he was out of England. Why should he stay in that damp climate any longer, now that he’d done what he had set out to do? There was just one flaw in his scheme: so far it hadn’t succeeded. Right this minute, Wingate was very much alive.
“He’s changed!” the boy babbled on. “He’s all different somehow. But I know it’s Uncle Charley ...”
Wingate put a hand on top of Kenny’s head and mussed his hair. “That’s OK,” he said. He didn’t want to show too much sympathy, because he didn’t want the kid breaking down altogether. “Brad,” he called.
Manganaro came over and Wingate said coolly, “Kenny thinks he’s seen the guy who gave him the present for his Dad. Downstairs. Thought we might take a look.” He patted the pistol in his belt and looked at Manganaro. Manganaro nodded. “Do me a favor, Brad,” Wingate went on, handing the Schmeisser he was still carrying to Manganaro. “Check this in the office. No point in scaring anybody.”
They went downstairs, one on either side of the kid. The smell of smoke and liquor rose up to meet them, and the sound of soft music put out by one of the armed forces’ stations operating further south. The ambience took him right back to the beginning of the whole mission—that dive in the north of England; Rita and the guys at the bar; Tiny Hazlitt, Jack Cowan, that poor bastard Ed McGrady. It did the same to Manganaro. As they turned the bend in the stairs and saw the pall of smoke, the tables, the cross-section of Allied uniforms from half the nations on earth, Manganaro muttered, “Something strike you as familiar, Mac? Like you’ve seen it all before?”
Wingate nodded, but he didn’t speak. What he’d been looking for was here, he knew it instinctively. This is where de Lille had been headed, too, though the poor bastard had died without knowing it. If any guy wanted to set up an espionage operation in Italy, what better place than here where all the action was? It had access to the sea and U-boats on one side, and on the other a million places to hide in the high Apennines. His discovery excited him. Somewhere among the tables a man was waiting for him: a man who had hooked into him in the north of England, monitored his movement through France and down the length of Italy, and somehow gotten to the final meeting place ahead of him. A man who had already tried to kill him half a dozen times.
They stood for a moment in the shadow of a supporting concrete column halfway down the final flight of stairs. Wingate said, quietly, “Don’t point, Kenny. But give me some idea of where you saw Uncle Charley.”
“He’s still there!” Kenny breathed, excitement making his voice shaky. He didn’t point, but he couldn’t help nodding in the direction he meant. “Sitting at the bar. There! Right in the middle!”
The bar was twenty feet long and there were nine or ten people sitting at it. In the middle, a man sat by himself in Air Corps uniform, hunched over a large glass of liquor. To his right, there was a girl with dark hair wearing a civilian dress and talking to her was a Frenchman in battle dress with the insignia of a capitaine on his epaulettes.
“The big man with his back to us?” Wingate asked. “Sitting by himself?”
“No!” said Kenny, irritated that he hadn’t made himself clear. “Next to the woman—the woman with black hair, the one in the dress.”
“Got you,” said Manganaro, quietly. He could only see the guy in profile, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen him before. He was dark-haired and clean-shaven and he seemed to be throwing a very smooth line to the chick.
“Kenny,” said Wingate, taking the boy by both shoulders and moving him behind the column and out of sight of the bar. “Do me a favor. I want to surprise him. If we’re going to see your Dad, I guess Uncle Charley would like to know. But if he sees you, it won’t be any surprise. OK?”
Kenny bit his lip, but finally he nodded and said, “OK. I’ll be upstairs. Just—don’t go without me.”
“No way,” said Wingate. “You’ll be with us when we move.” Kenny turned and walked slowly back up the stairs and turned out of sight.
“Let’s go down there,” said Wingate, moving on.
“You going over to him?” Manganaro asked, right hand on the butt of his pistol.
“No,” said Wingate. “Let’s take a seat. Wait for the son of a bitch to come to us.”
They walked slowly across the floor, weaving their way among the tables. There was little noise beyond the soft croon of big band music in the background and the low murmur of sleepy conversation. The guys were tired and a couple of drinks had made them drowsy rather than drunk and wild. They had just fought their way up from Calabria, or struggled out of the beachhead, and they hadn’t the strength for any rowdy celebration. The girls who had come in to join them from the streets outside, sat around bored, toying with glasses of watered local vino, occasionally soliciting for cigarettes or bars of chocolate.
Manganaro sat down heavily on the far side of the room, back to the wall. Wingate dropped beside him. Only when his ass touched the metal seat of the chair did he realize how tired he was. It wouldn’t be long now before he could forget the war. Once they were airborne for Malta he could sleep. But for the moment there was one final job that had to be done.
A girl in her mid-teens flashed an overworked smile at them and brought beer on a little cracked tray. It was warm and very heavy on salt. By the taste of it, some bastard was trying to drum up the thirst business and make what he could from the piss while the troops were around. It made Wingate mad to think of all the leeches who grew fat on war.
Manganaro had forced half the glass of beer down his dry gullet when he leaned back and muttered. “Do you see what I see, Mac?”
“I got you,” murmured Wingate, arms folded, lips barely moving.
The black-haired girl with the Frenchman had gotten up from the bar and was moving casually across to them. She came right up to the table and smiled a broad, disarming smile. “Why, you are new, you poor boys,” she said, her English heavy with Italian rhythms. “And you are airman! I find airmen—irresistible!”
She took the chair opposite them and sat down uninvited.
“Really?” said Manganaro. “I don’t find it all that tough.”
“Anything we can do for you?” asked Wingate. He was looking at her, still lolling back in his chair, but his attention was all on the Frenchman. The guy had turned on his barstool and was watching them full-face. The shock of recognition was so sudden that Wingate had to make a deliberate muscular effort not to react openly to it. His mind began to race.
“You can buy me a drink,” the girl crooned, her voice laced with a dozen inviting implications.
Wingate tossed a coin on the table. “Sure,” he said, casually. “If you’re thirsty—be my guest.”
A look of intense anger flashed momentarily in the girl’s eyes, and was gone. She was used to suppressing her feelings in the struggle for existence. She’d done it with the Tedeschi, she could do it with the Yanks and the British and the Poles. She’d do it with the Eskimos if it ever became necessary. She put up a hand to call a waitress, but Manganaro hooked a foot around the leg of her chair and pulled it sharply toward him. The chair tilted backward. The girl made a quick attempt to grab the table to maintain her balance, missed, and fell to the floor.
She lay on her back for a moment glaring up at Manganaro. There was no attempt to hide her feelings now. She was consumed with controlled fury. She got slowly to her feet, tossed back her long hair with a hand, then grabbed Manganaro’s beer glass and flung the remains of his drink in his face. She turned and stalked defiantly back to the bar.
There were laughs from some of the nearer tables and Wingate found it impossible to suppress a grin. “You sure can handle women, Brad,” he muttered.
“To hell with women,” growled Manganaro, mopping the beer off his face and jacket. “It’s not the woman who got to me—don’t you recognize the bastard at the bar? No wonder the kid thought he’d changed. He’s shaved his beard and dyed his hair black. He’s taken off that civilian suit and put on this French goonskin. But it’s the same guy! The one you had the fight with in that English barroom. He was passing himself off as Danish Intelligence. He had a blond beard then and blond hair and he was with that girl Rita. He called himself Rasmussen, but he’s a kraut and I’d know the son of a bitch anywhere!”
Wingate put a hand on his arm to calm him. As he did so, his mind was delving deep into the past. He remembered the uneasy feeling he’d had the last time he’d seen Rasmussen, a feeling that something about the guy was all too familiar to him. It was coming back to him now, tied up with his student days back in Madison, Wisconsin, in the mid-thirties, the days when Professor Bernhardt had fanned Wingate’s innate anti-Nazi sentiments into a cool fire.
