1945 (17 page)

"Just before the strike, when security requirements no longer disallow it, all the officers and NCOs will be taken out to look at the model as well."

"Ach, what will they think of next," Karl said wonderingly. "But I'm still concerned about the weather, Otto. Only a fifty percent chance of clear skies, a one in four chance of rain and the distinct possibility of heavy gusting at ground level." Having spoken, with careful deliberation Karl opened and refilled his tankard.

"Karl, old friend, I am not the least bit concerned about the weather."

Karl looked at him quizzically.

"Why am I not worried?" Skorzeny asked. He pausec for a moment and the humor dropped from his face like
a
mask. "Because it doesn't matter. You go in no matter what! No. Matter. What. In the middle of a hurricane in the face of massed enemy fire, you and the men drop." 

He clapped Karl on the shoulder. "On the other hand, you will know what you are dropping into. The Americans love to hear about their weather. Their radio stations will supply you with updates all the way in. Plus, the navigational planes with each group, as well as all the transports, will be equipped with the new ground-targeting radar. Getting a fix on the targets will be dead easy. So stop worrying!" 

"You gave me the job of worrying—while you and that dumb ox go to America and have all the fun."

"Hans could not take over the operation if I fell. You know that, Karl. But he is a radio expert and the best barehanded fighter in my command. If you wanted to growl up to be a cowboy you should have pretended not to understand strategy. As it is, I need someone I can trust to lead the attack, and that is you."

"Thanks for the compliment, Otto, and the ulcers that go with it."

Skorzeny laughed. "Don't worry about your ulcers. Before they have had a chance to get really bad, we'll both be long dead."

Karl smiled one-sidedly at his boyhood friend. "When do you leave?"

"Right after morning inspection. We catch our ship at Bordeaux tomorrow night. It should dock in Charleston by April thirteen. You will get daily updates throughout. If we are captured, the Americans will think we are just part of an espionage team. Not that it matters from your point of view. Whatever happens, you go in as planned."

"Just you be careful over there in America. Your English still needs some work, you know. With that ugly face and your accent, open your mouth and they'll be on you like flies on ... honey."

"Mine English not so bad is," Otto replied slowly. Richer, over at the next table, turned and laughed.

"Like I said, you just be careful. Don't speak unless you must."

Otto smiled and nodded. "Yes, Mother. I will be a good little citizen of Poland." Slapping his friend on the shoulder he added, "Ach, I have always come back before. I will this time too."

March 30

Antietam Battlefield Park

Jim Martel got out of his '40 Studebaker, slammed the door and drew a deep breath of the icy wind whipping in from the west. A scattering of flurries promised worse to come. He walked hurriedly to the stone tower that stood alone and forlorn in the middle of an open field. Stopping at the entryway he turned and looked back the way he had come. There was only one other car parked beside the tower, and no one was in sight.

Turning again, he walked through the tower's open portal and started briskly up the stairs. Each time he passed one of the slit windows that were set at regular intervals on the stairway he caught glimpses of South Mountain to the east and Antietam Creek to the west. Reaching the top landing, he saw a broad-shouldered form leaning over the side of the observation deck, looking at the fields below. He walked over to him and came to attention.

"You're late." The man spoke without moving.

"Sorry, sir. I took the wrong turn back at Boonsboro."

The man turned and smiled.

Jim recognized him immediately. He had imagined a lot of possibilities. After all, the voice on the phone never identified himself, had simply arranged the meeting, given the directions, and then hung up. The fact that OSS chief Bill Donovan, "Wild Bill" as his friends called him, had driven an hour out of Washington to meet him loomed very large in his consciousness just now. 

Jim stayed at attention, not sure if Donovan was still officially in the military. Donovan smiled and motioned for him to stand at ease both literally and figuratively. "Cut the crap and have a drink. Damn, it's cold up here."

Uncorking a thermos bottle, he pulled an extra cup out of his pocket and poured out a cup of black coffee, handing it to Jim. Grateful for the warmth, Jim took a long sip. The] coffee was laden with sugar and what Jim suspected was an excellent whiskey, and doubtless as Irish as Donovan
's
seemingly open visage.

"You know, having this meeting was really just an excuse for me to come out here." Donovan nodded toward the open fields. "It's one of my favorite places. It's rich land] here, rich with the blood of patriots from North and South. "Did you know I was Colonel of the old 69th New York in the last war? There was more than one man in that unit whose daddy or granddad had fought with the original 69th, back when they were part of the Irish Brigade of the Army of the Potomac."

Donovan leaned over and pointed down at the sunken lane that ran at a right angle out from the base of the tower and snaked up to a low crest several hundred yards away. "This ground here, from that sunken road down below us up to the Miller cornfield"—he pointed to the north—"is the bloodiest square mile in America. The rebs were packed in that road down there in a battle-line three and four deep. It was a natural trench. The Bloody Lane it's j called now. Before the batde it had no name at all. The old 69th came charging in from over there." Donovan pointed off to the right. "By the time they'd gotten to within a hundred yards of Bloody Lane the fire was so fierce that the charge ground to a halt. Then Colonel Meagher, the brigade commander, stood up in his stirrups, screamed for the boys to charge, and galloped forward without looking to see if he was followed. Those glorious boys charged into a storm of bullets, screaming,
'Erin go bragh,
Erin go bragh ..." Donovan said the words as if calling out to the ghosts in the field below. "Erin go bragh...."

"They say half of the 88th New York, our sister regiment, went down with the first volley, the dead and dying laid out in a long straight line. Meagher's horse was shot in full gallop, and Meagher went down, knocked unconscious. The brigade was melting like ice tossed into boiling water. Finally the boys went to ground, keeping up a hot fire, and hung on till a relief column went over them and pressed the charge the rest of the way home."

Donovan fell silent for a moment as he looked out across the field, the icy snow hissing down around them.

"The survivors were pulled back from the line then, fewer than five hundred of the thousand or more who went in. And I'll tell you, James Martel, they formed up in columns of four, under fire, and marched from the field. They might not have taken that road, but they left like soldiers. Like
soldiers."

Smiling self deprecatingly at his display of emotion, Donovan uncorked the thermos and poured them both some more Irish coffee. He raised his cup in a toast to the fallen and downed it Under the spell, Jim followed suit.

"This was the bloodiest day in American history," Donovan said. "Worse than anything in the Argonne, and Christ knows it takes something for me to say that, because I was there. It was worse than Pearl, Iwo, or the day those thousand kamikazes hit the fleet off Tokyo, and I know you took part in that one. Twenty-three thousand American boys were killed or wounded on these fields in less than ten hours." He paused for a moment. "I'm afraid we'll see worse than that in the days to come."

For a moment Donovan stood lost in thought. Then suddenly all business, he turned and looked at Jim. "So tell me about yourself."

"Where shall I start, sir?"

"At the beginning. You. Your parents. Actually I'm quite interested in your upbringing. If you begin to bore me, I'll let you know."

Jim started back from before he was born. He talked briefly about the Mannheims and the Martels, then went on to the conflict between his parents after the war.

"That must have been very painful for you."

"I loved my mother. I used to pretend that I was her knight-errant, ready to protect her. You see, during the War Dad was gone for two years. I was not quite four when he left. Anti-German feelings were running high and Mom, well, Mom reached the point of refusing to speak English. Former friends shunned her like she had the plague."

"I'm not proud of how some things were handled back then," Donovan commented quietly.

"I used to get taunted and picked on a lot at school. That's when I learned to be a scrapper. When word came of the Armistice, and Grandda's suicide, she just locked herself away for weeks. Suddenly everyone else acted like it was time to forgive and forget, but Mom couldn't."

"Why did she marry your father, then?"

"Oh, about what you would expect. He was dashing, exciting. Her father had a fit over it, I'm told, though he offered no actual objections. Anyhow, recall that feelings toward Germany back before the war were actually rather positive, and the two of them never imagined there'd be a war to divide them like that." Martel mused for a moment, briefly shook his head, and continued.

"When Dad came home it was never the same. I realize now that Mom had withdrawn into something not very different from a situational psychosis with a good touch of paranoia. The fights were nearly constant until she died from diphtheria when I was seven."

"For a long time I blamed Dad for it. But as I got older I realized he loved her as much as I did. Maybe more. He never remarried, you know."

"I suppose all this explains your fascination with your mothers country, its culture and language."

"I guess so. It was rather a defiance, hanging on to something that was uniquely hers, though Dad never objected. To a degree I suspect that my clinging to her heritage kept her closer for him as well. Maybe that's why he encouraged my year in Germany and living with my mother's sister, Wilhelm's mother."

"And then home to Annapolis. Why the Navy?"

Jim shrugged. "Tradition. A Martel captained a ship in Napoleon's navy at Trafalgar. When the Emperor fell he fled to America and setded in North Carolina with some other French refugees, down on the Cape Fear River. His son, Dad's grandfather, was an officer in the Confederate Navy. My grandfather and dad were both Annapolis graduates. It was simply assumed that I wanted to continue the tradition. And I did. Since my German grandfather was a navy man too, an added benefit was that it was a way of carrying on family traditions from both sides. In most ways they pulled against each other. In this, though, they were one."

"I've seen your naval record. Admirable. Navy Cross, twenty-three kills, three tours of duty. America's Number-Seven Ace. How did you feel about combat, the killing?"

"I won't deny there was a thrill," Jim said quietly, The thrill of the hunt, the triumph when you broke away and saw the other guys plane going down in flames. Knowing it was one-on-one, and you were alive and the other guy wasn't. Do you have a problem with that, sir?'

"Wild Bill" ignored the question. "Did you hate them?'

"After Pearl, right up to Midway, I hated their guts. I couldn't wait to get them in my sights. But the night after Midway, it hit me. Or maybe the night after Midway I let it 
hit me, since after that there was no way we could lose."

Jim looked back out over the battlefield.

"I was escort for Wade McCloskeys flight of dive bombers. The Zeroes had no choice but to come after us if their fleet was going to live. I took down three that day.... Anyhow, that night all I could remember was seeing that third fighter explode. I'd never seen anything quite like it. Not from up close. It just lit up, not fifty yards in front of me. The pilot got out, but he was on fire. He kept slapping at the flames. His mouth was open in a scream I couldn't hear, except later in the nightmares. The only difference I could see between us was that he was a human torch falling three screaming miles to the sea and I was on my way back to base."

Martel paused for a moment. "They had to be stopped, stopped dead in their tracks, but hate is pointless. If you let hate get in the way, it will tear you up inside. At least that was how it was for me."

"And if we fight the Germans? Your cousin Wilhelm, half your family, your mother's blood will be on the other side."

"Willi would want me to win, even if it meant his own death."

"Could you kill him if you had to?"

"Knowing who he was? I doubt it. Don't ever ask that of me," Jim said quietly. "I would have no problem in a fight with the German military. Soldiers understand each other, and the necessities of war. As for the Nazis, especially the SS, I'd love to help bring them down. They have ruined my mother's beloved Fatherland. The world now sees the people who gave us Beethoven, Kant, and Goethe as a nation of monsters. As for Willi, I think he'd regard a victorious America as Germany's liberator."

"Your father and I both fought that other Germany."