A Mortal Terror (7 page)
I
GRABBED A
meal at the officer’s mess at the palace. Not the senior officer’s mess, which I had first mistakenly blundered into. I knew something was wrong when I saw the white tablecloths set with gold-trimmed porcelain and crystal glassware. GIs wearing white jackets carried trays of broiled steaks and other delicacies to tables graced by elderly colonels and generals who looked more like businessmen at a hotel than soldiers not far from the front. I’d backed up to the doorway, not wanting to draw attention to my silver lieutenant’s bars. I watched the diners, staff officers most likely, and wondered what they wrote home about. The atmosphere was muted, soft and swanky, the hefty clink of real silverware on porcelain somehow reassuring.
GI waiters crossed in front of me, taking orders, clearing dishes, pouring wine looted from only the best cellars. I saw one guy trip, a little stumble, losing his balance enough to send his load of plates crashing down. It was loud, the tile floor sending echoes of shattering sounds across the room. Heads rose from beefsteaks, irritated at the interruption. Turning to leave, I noticed another GI huddled in a corner, hidden from the diners by a sideboard that held glasses and dishware. He gripped the sideboard with one hand, pulling himself up, the other hand held over his heart. His face was white, his mouth open as he gulped in shallow breaths of air.
“You okay, buddy?” I asked as I took his elbow.
“Yeah … yes, sir, I’m fine. The noise, it surprised me, that’s all. I’m fine.” He stood, embarrassment flushing his face red. At least it gave him some color. He tossed me a weak smile and left, glancing around guiltily in case anyone else had noticed.
There were no fine tablecloths in the officer’s mess. The food was warm and filling, even if I had to serve myself, and I didn’t linger. But there was plenty of lingering in the room that served as the officer’s club. A bar was set up beneath a towering gold-relief sculpture of an angel holding a scroll, with two doorways twenty feet high on either side. The floor was inlaid marble, with plush carpets set out in the seating areas to keep the noise down, but that did little to drown out the chatter that rose from every corner of the room. It was a lively bunch, officers of all ranks, nationalities, and services, with a liberal sprinkling of WACs, ATS, and other females, some wearing decidedly civilian outfits. Those ladies were surrounded by senior officers, guys who wouldn’t be questioned about their choice of female companion.
I saw Einsmann and he nodded to an empty table at the far end of the room. I got a whiskey at the bar and joined him.
“How are things, Billy?”
“Better for some than others,” I said, raising my glass in a toast and glancing at the brigadier general with a woman who looked like a movie star on his arm.
“You got that right,” he said. “This war is a real racket for some guys.”
“I saw the senior officer’s mess upstairs. Talk about easy street.”
“I ate there a couple of times. Nice thing about being a reporter is that when the brass wants to butter you up, you eat well. You know the chef they got up there worked at the Ritz in New York?”
“He should’ve brought over his own waiters. Those GIs dressed up in white jackets are lucky they aren’t paid in tips.”
“Better than white coats,” Einsmann said with a sharp laugh.
“Why do you say that?”
“They’re all convalescents from the hospital. Bomb-happy, you know what I mean? They got the jitters all the time. Somebody figured it was a good job for them while they waited to go back up the line.”
“Interesting choice of occupation,” I said.
“How so?”
“Waiting hand and foot on senior brass, watching them devour steaks, knowing they’re the guys ordering you into the mountains, to live on K rations in a muddy hole. Must be great for morale.”
“I never thought about that. Could be a story in it, Billy.”
“Everybody’s got a story,” I said, not certain where Einsmann might be going with this. Some of those convalescent boys had had it tough, and I didn’t want an overeager newshound making it tougher. “Did you find out anything about what I told you?”
“Not much, Billy. Word is Galante was kicked upstairs, sent to the 32nd Station Hospital because he didn’t get along with a senior officer on the 3rd Division staff.”
“Galante was with the 3rd? That’s the same outfit Landry was from.”
“Yeah, but he was with the Medical Battalion. Unless Landry had been wounded, chances are he wouldn’t run into him. There are probably over twelve thousand guys in the 3rd Division right now, especially with all the replacements coming in.”
“Okay, so what was the problem?”
“Shell shock, or nervous exhaustion, whatever they’re calling it these days. Galante had his own ideas about treating it, and he clashed with a colonel named Schleck. Seems Schleck doesn’t buy the whole concept, and blames any GI’s failure of nerve on poor leadership.”
“Combat fatigue,” I said, recalling what I’d heard back in London. “They’re calling it combat fatigue now.”
“Yeah, well, there’s plenty of it going around, whatever the moniker. The boys in the 3rd Division have been at it since North Africa. I wrote a piece about them a month ago. They hit the beaches at French Morocco, then ten months later in Sicily. Then more landings at Salerno, fighting along the Volturno River and up to Cassino.They finally got pulled out of the line a couple of weeks ago.”
“Is that why they’re here, to rest and refit?”
“Who knows? Maybe the brass is fattening them up for the kill. Me, I don’t know how the infantry does it. It’s one thing to fight the Germans in this terrain. It’s another thing to live up in those mountains, with the rain, cold and knee-deep mud. But to do both at the same time? No wonder some guys go off their rocker.”
There wasn’t much to say about that. I tried to imagine what it was like, winter in the high Apennines; Germans dug in behind every ridgeline, trying to kill you while you worked at not freezing to death. Yeah, no wonder. I sipped my whiskey and tried not to think about the guys who were up there right now, dying. There were times to think, and times to drink. If you knew which to do when, you might stay sane. I took another sip, then slammed back the rest of the booze, waiting for the warmth in my belly to spread while visions of cold and wet GIs faded from my mind.
They didn’t. As Einsmann and I gabbed, about the war, the women in the room, the brass, all the usual bull, I knew they were out there. I’d been there too, not as high as in those mountains, but out in a foxhole with cold water pooled at the bottom, hot lead flying above, and the cries of the wounded all around. I could see it now, even as I watched Einsmann return with a couple of fresh glasses, and for a moment it felt like there was no time at all, but simply here and there, the bar and the mountains, and I could as easily be in one as the other. I must be tired, I thought, too much travel. We talked, and drank, and the noise of the conversations in the room rose into an incessant buzz as it grew more crowded. I could barely make out what Einsmann was saying and had to lean closer when I heard him mention ASTP.
“What did you say about ASTP?” My kid brother Danny was in the Army Specialized Training Program back home. He’d enlisted as soon as he was eighteen, and the army put him into ASTP after basic training. It was a program for kids with brains, sending them to college for advanced courses while keeping them in uniform. The idea was that they’d graduate as officers, keeping the army supplied with second lieutenants as the war went on. It was tailor-made for Danny; he was a bright kid in some ways, but he was too young to have any common sense about staying alive. A college campus was the safest place for him.
“Working on a story about it,” Einsmann said. “The army is pulling most of those kids out of college.”
“Why?”
“They’re short on infantry replacements. The brass figures it doesn’t make much sense to keep those boys in college when they need bodies now. They pulled over a hundred thousand of them out, about two-thirds of the program.”
“When did this happen?” I’d had a letter from Danny a month ago and he hadn’t mentioned a thing about it.
“Few weeks ago. There’s a transport landing in Naples tomorrow with the first batch for Italy. Most are going to the 3rd. I’m going down there to interview some of them. Then I’ll follow up in a few days when they’ve been assigned to their platoons. Ought to be interesting.”
“My kid brother is in ASTP, but I guess I would have heard if he’d been called up. I can imagine these veterans giving college boys a cozy welcome, especially since they’ve been sitting out the past few months on campus.” I hoped Danny wasn’t among this bunch. They’d have a hard time before they ever got to the front.
“I figure that’s what will make it interesting,” Einsmann said. “Word is some noncoms think the ASTPers will have a monopoly on promotions when they hand out new stripes. Especially the Southern boys.”
“Everything will probably smooth out once they get up on the line,” I said.
Yeah, it’ll be peachy up there, one big happy family united by butchery and misery.
I saw Major Kearns making his way through the crowd, with two
Carabinieri
officers in tow. They both wore dark-blue dress uniforms, with the flaming grenade emblem of the Italian national police on their service caps.
“Lieutenant Boyle,” Kearns said, after a nod of greeting to Einsmann. “This is
Capitano
Renzo Trevisi, and
Tenente
Luca Amatori. Capitano Trevisi is in charge of the local Carabinieri garrison.”
“Billy Boyle,” I said, standing to shake hands.
“Pleased to meet you,” Trevisi said in heavily accented but precise English. He looked to be about forty, with a thick, dark mustache, a slight paunch, and a friendly smile. “If I can be of any assistance, I am at your service. Major Kearns has told us of your investigations. I do not think there is any civilian involvement in this unfortunate matter, but please ask should you require anything.”
“Thank you, Capitano, I will.”
Trevisi spoke in Italian to his lieutenant, who had been silent during the exchange in English. I heard Galante and Landry’s names mentioned as he gestured to me. “Tenente Amatori will provide whatever you need if I am not available.
Buona sera
.”
“Interesting,” Einsmann said as they moved off.
“What?”
“I’ve never seen Italian officers here before, army or Carabinieri. I wonder what’s up?”
“Well, the Italians are on our side now. They have a combat group fighting near Cassino, and most of the Carabinieri are loyal to the new government. Stands to reason they’d show up at HQ sooner or later. Plus there have been two murders.”
“Yeah,” Einsmann said. “But the killings are an army matter. No way they’d let the locals in on that unless they needed them for something.”
“Well, not my problem,” I said as I watched Kearns and the two Italians huddled in conversation. Maybe it was somebody else’s problem, maybe not. I decided I had enough to worry about without adding Italian cops, and got back to the subject of Galante.
“This Colonel Schleck, who got Galante transferred out. Where do I find him?”
“Personnel section, 3rd Division HQ, over at San Felice.”
“I’m headed there tomorrow. I’ll see what he knows.”
“What can he tell you? I doubt he killed Galante because they disagreed about combat fatigue.”
“No, but if he had it in for Galante, he had to know him, right? You can’t have a beef with a guy and not get to know him, even if it’s only his weaknesses.”
“And Galante’s weakness might tell you about who killed him?”
“It’s all I have right now,” I said.
I finished my drink and made my way out of the room, passing a group of colonels and women in low-cut dresses. The colonels were flushed and loud, their lips smacking with drink and lust. The women laughed, a harsh, high laugh that echoed off the marble floor and stayed with me as I stood in the rain, looking toward the invisible mountains to the north, where men shivered, suffered, and bled.
S
AN
F
ELICE WAS
a fair-sized village, or at least had been before the fighting passed through. Now it was a fair-sized pile of rubble, with the few intact buildings housing the 3rd Division staff. In front of a burned-out church, a water pipe stuck up from the ground, a spray of water gushing into the air. Women and children with buckets were lined up, eager to haul the fresh water home. At the base of the pipe, a gleaming white stone arm lay on the ground, its fingers gracefully pointing to the sky. Debris and masonry cascaded from the buildings into the street, making it hard to tell where the outline of homes and shops had been, but it was obvious this had been the piazza, the center of the village. Now it was crammed with shattered stone, a line of black-clad women, and American military vehicles.
I found G-1, Personnel, on the ground floor of a two-story school that was missing its roof. Colonel Raymond Schleck was seated at a desk near a boarded-up window, a tin bucket catching drips of rainwater from the ceiling. Files were stacked in wooden boxes all around him, and two clerks at the other end of the room pecked at typewriters, making piles of forms in triplicate, some nearly a foot high. They had the grimly bored look of men who knew there was probably an easier way to do this job, but also understood it had to be done the army way.
“Colonel Schleck?”
“See one of my clerks, Lieutenant, I’m busy.” Schleck cranked a field telephone, barked a few quick questions into it, listened, and slammed it into its leather case without comment. He crossed off names on a list and consulted a personnel file. Without looking up, he spoke again. “You still here?”
“Yes sir. I need to speak with you about Captain Max Galante. I’m afraid one of your clerks won’t do.”
“And who the hell are you to tell me what won’t do?” Now I had his full attention. I showed him my orders. He gave them back, frowned, then waved in the general direction of a chair.
“You’ve heard Captain Galante was murdered?”