Armageddon (2 page)

Sean’s large brown eyes searched the room and then outside into the mist, looking for nothing. “When my parents emigrated to America all they had was their hands, their backs and their hearts. My father worked harder than the Lord meant any man to work. I can hardly remember when he didn’t have two jobs ... longshoreman by day, watchman by night, cable-car driver by day, janitor by night, hod carrier, ditchdigger, bouncer. And Mom spent most of her life washing dishes and scrubbing floors in places like this. It makes me want to hurt you sometimes and all the other Mrs. G. Donald Milfords whose toilets were cleaned by my mother.”

She squeezed his hand tightly to let him know she understood.

“My father always said he didn’t come from the old country to raise three Irish cops for the San Francisco police force. His obsession was to put his sons through college. Work now, reward in heaven.”

“He must be a remarkable man.”

“Yes, he is,” Sean answered, “but one day his back gave out and his heart almost gave out too. It was up to mother to keep us alive. Up to me to get through college. I didn’t quit. I made it through. Know how? Picking up ten and twenty bucks fighting preliminaries in little clubs around the Bay Area. One of them in San Francisco was called the Bucket of Blood. I was a good boxer, Nan. I didn’t want to get hit in the face and have to explain the cuts and bruises to my mother. I fought under the name of Herskowitz, the Battling Yid. How’s that? So, the Lord was good. I got through Cal and I went to my mother one day and said, Mom, you don’t have to scrub Mrs. G. Donald Milford’s floors any more. I’ll take care of you.”

“Sean ... I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what? I’d made it and I was going to get my brothers through. We’re just a black Irish family which hangs together. One day I broke my hand in the ring and got this,” he said, pointing to the thin white-lined scar over his left eye, “and then my mother knew. From then on I became Schoolboy O’Sullivan the Fighting Prof. Mom nearly died every time I got into the ring.” Sean slumped. “So here we are, the brothers O’Sullivan. Tim’s up there flying and Liam is in a grave in North Africa. I wanted to get married, had a girl I loved, but my family came first and she wouldn’t wait.” He dumped an oversized spoon of mulberry marmalade over the muffin to smother the burned taste. “Nan. You’re one lousy cook.”

She muttered something about the impossibility of getting domestic help. The rest of the meal was in silence. Sean rolled down his sleeves, buttoned them, and fixed his tie and slipped into his jacket. The quiet became uneasy. Every time they said good-by now there was an averting of eyes. The feel of the wet cold clouds from outside had come into the room and engulfed them.

Nan knew that the God who ruled Sean O’Sullivan was pushing him to the end of their affair. “There are so many unsaid things,” she whispered.

“Our whole relationship is unsaid, Nan. That photograph of your husband who cannot protest. Your children in the country who remain hidden. The words we never say when we are making love. Six beautiful months of unsaid things.”

“They’re going to be said now, aren’t they, Sean?”

“Kind of looks like it.”

A jeep horn sounded from the street below. Beep, be, beep, beep. Nan reacted. “Must he blow that horn and announce your departures to the entire West End of London?”

Sean buttoned his jacket and put on his cap. At this moment she always turned genteel, holding her cheek up for the departing bus as she did for G. Donald Milford. Instead she found herself tight against him. He let her go and she reeled back and watched him disappear down the hall.

Sean hopped into the jeep alongside Second Lieutenant Dante Arosa, who gunned the vehicle away on the fog-wettened pavement.

“Scored last night,” Dante said with pride of conquest

“Little show girl?”

“A living testimony that English women are not cold in bed. Who in the hell libeled them in the first place? Some Irishman?”

Sean was indulgent. Dante was his own age, twenty-eight, but England was his first real experience with life. He had gone from a truck farm in the Napa Valley to the University of San Francisco to an almost too brilliant law career. There was little doubt of Dante Arosa’s ability as a counter-intelligence officer on duty, or his somewhat juvenile behavior off duty. Tall, thin young men shouldn’t smoke cigars, Sean thought. Dante doesn’t clamp the cigar in one side of his mouth solidly. It sort of hangs limply from the front of his teeth.

As they ran alongside Kensington Gardens the traffic thickened. Dante continued his testimony to British womanhood.

“By the way, don’t blow the horn.”

“Huh?”

“When you pick me up. One, park jeep. Two, emerge. Three, walk to door. Four, ring bell.”

Dante shrugged. He didn’t like Nan Milford. It was broads like her who gave the English women their bad reputations. Where does she get this Virgin Mary routine? She’s just another married broad shacking up behind her husband’s back no matter what kind of icing Sean puts on it.

They sank into quietness. Everything was different about London, these days. Everything but the weather. The long, harrowing nights in the bomb shelters were over. The tension had eased. The bombers were going in the other direction these days. There was an air of victory everywhere. People were looking toward the end of the war and it was evident in everyone’s voice and step.

“Sean.”

“Yes?”

“How far has this thing gone with you and Nan?”

“I wish I knew.”

“I’ll ring the bell.”

Dante Arosa cut the jeep abruptly in the middle of the block. Cars before him screeched to a halt and pedestrians scattered. He beelined for a spike fence that blocked a short, dead-end street named Queen Mother’s Gate. Dante hit the brakes, bringing the tormented vehicle to a halt before the terrified sentry. The sentry saluted half-heartedly and waved them through past the sign on the gatepost which read:
MISSION, MILITARY GOVERNMENT, UNITED STATES ARMY
.

The abbreviated, enclosed street held a half-dozen buildings set about a wide central courtyard. On one side were officers’ quarters, enlisted barracks, administration, dispensary, mess hall. Across the courtyard stood two large three-storied block-granite buildings housing the offices and conference rooms of
SPECIAL MISSION, MILITARY GOVERNMENT
.

From the instant they passed through the gate toward the motor pool the problems of life and love in London were done. Dante and Sean walked crisply in step toward the first of the Mission office buildings.

The directory in the anteroom read:

Room 101: Civil Administration of German Cities

Room 102: German Legal Codes

Room 103: Public Health

Room 104: Banking System

Room 105: Displaced Persons/Refugees

Conference Hall A/B/C: Identification of German Cities. Aerial Recon.

Room 106: Lab.

Room 201: Counter-Intelligence, Leading Nazis

Room 202: Counter-Intelligence, Secondary Nazis

Rooms 203/204/205: Eradication of Nazism

Room 206: Military Government Orders/Rulings/Manual

Conference Halls E/F: Identification of Nazis-Nazi Organizations

Third Floor: Document Center

Off the anteroom they entered the officer of the day’s office and signed in, were passed through the locked portal to the inner core of quiet bustle. A second security desk, manned by a sergeant, blocked the hallway.

“Morning,” Dante said, leaning over signing the register.

“Morning, sir.”

“Morning,” Sean said.

“Morning, Captain O’Sullivan. General Hansen wants you in his office at ten hundred. And frankly, sir... Eric the Red has the storm flag up.”

Chapter Two

B
RIGADIER
G
ENERAL
A
NDREW
J
ACKSON
Hansen balanced his specs on the end of his nose. He was short, hefty, had a few sprigs of gray hair so that the addition of a pillow under his jacket could have given him the appearance of kindly Kris Kringle. Other men wore glasses but he wore specs. His face was as mobile and expressive as a Punch and Judy puppet. This bubble of gentleness was deceptive for in an instant a stream of oaths could tell one why he was identified as Eric the Red.

He drummed his stubby fingers on the desk top and from time to time a particularly annoying word would growl from his throat as he read ...

CONFIDENTIAL REPORT:
Requested for the eye’s only use of Brig. Gen. A. J. Hansen.

SUBJECT:
Cohabitation; Nan Milford/Capt Sean O’Sullivan.

Mrs. Nan Milford. Age 35. Wife of G. Donald Milford, Major, British Army. Major Milford was captured during the German invasion of Crete in 1941. Has been a prisoner of war three years at Officer’s Lager 22; Westheim, Germany.

Before war Milford was a highly successful director of Morsby Ltd., one of Britain’s leading publishing houses. Member of board of directors of a dozen lesser companies. Rated moderately wealthy. Blue blood on both sides of family. Before the war the Milfords were considered congenially married. They associated themselves with London society, art, cultural and charity affairs. Members, Church of England.

Two children: Pamela, age 10. Roland, age 12. Children are living at home of paternal grandmother in Plimlington East where they were evacuated during the heavy bombing of London.

Since husband’s internment, Nan Milford has worked as a volunteer in the London Section of the International Red Cross, Prisoner of War Division.

Approximately seven months ago she met O’Sullivan who was then conducting a G-5 study on Prisoner of War Camps. In this connection he spent much time with her on official duty gathering specific Red Cross data.

O’Sullivan and Mrs. Milford have engaged in cohabitation for approx. six months. In the beginning they were extremely cautious about their rendezvous and kept away from outside social activities together. However secrecy appears diminishing. For the last two months cohabitation has occurred regularly in the fashionable Milford flat on Bayswater Road, London, W.2.

Single copy this report produced. Other records destroyed as requested.

Thos. Hanley, Major, Counter-Intelligence.

“Piss,” said Hansen as he slid the report into the top drawer of his desk.

He paced the room. He did not know if he were more angry with Sean or with himself. A. J. Hansen did not like to guess wrong about people. That annoyed him. He had selected Sean for the Special Mission over several hundred experts, all older, with more experience and sounder judgment.

Why did I pick him? There was that first creeping doubt of an error in sizing the man up. Why? Because he doesn’t back down from me ... maybe. Because any kid who loves his parents and brothers and takes care of them at the expense of his personal happiness would love his country that way too.

The general pouted some more back at his desk. Even when Sean lost his brother in North Africa he pulled himself together. Women! Goddamned women. These two have nothing in common outside the bedroom. She’s seven years older and they come from different social, economic, and religious worlds.

Hell, nothing wrong with a stray piece. But like the report said—cohabitate—and forget them.

Sean’s got to get rid of
that
woman.

The general’s orderly, a gangly acne-marked corporal from Kentucky, announced Sean’s arrival.

“Sit down, O’Sullivan.”

Hansen picked up a document Sean recognized as a study he had completed the day before.
TOP SECRET, PREROGATIVES OF MILITARY GOVERNMENT COMMANDERS IN GERMANY
.

“This report was two weeks late.”

“Lot more involved than I figured.”

“What? The report?” Hansen thumbed through the pages, playing for fifteen seconds of tension-building silence, “You’ve got a real rod on against the Germans.”

“If the General will be specific.”

“The General will be specific,” he aped. He adjusted his specs for reading. “This choice morsel is on page fourteen, paragraph sixty-two. I quote Captain Sean O’Sullivan. ‘In the event the orders of the local military commander are not carried out by the civilian population, the commander is empowered to seize hostages from the German civilian population and execute them at his discretion until his will is enforced.’ ” Hansen closed the report and snatched off his specs. “That’s a hell of a thing for an American boy to write.”

“I didn’t know our function is to spread Americanism in Germany.”

“Nor is it to continue Nazism. Now by hostages, Captain O’Sullivan, I take it you mean to define between Nazis and non-Nazis.”

“If the General will tell me if the bullet that killed my brother came from a Nazi rifle or a non-Nazi rifle.”

“So in judging all Germans as being the same, you mean to take hostages who are two, three, or four years old.”

Sean balked. “Well ... perhaps we should limit hostages to Nazis.”

“There are fifteen million Nazis in Germany,” Hansen pressed.

“We’ll have room for them when we open their concentration camps!”

“Sit down, lad, and don’t get your Irish up on me. I want the explanation of the hostage paragraph.”

Sean unclenched his fists and sunk into his seat once again. Eric the Red meant business. “In my following comment I said it would never be necessary to use hostages because the Germans are orderly people and will respond to whoever represents authority. You know damned well, General, I’ve said over and over they won’t conduct guerrilla resistance. Quote Churchill. The Germans are at your throat or your feet. They’ll be at our feet when we finish with them.”

“Then why did you find it necessary to put this hostage thing in?”

“Because they’ve got their own little special missions sitting in Berlin writing their version of the same manual. You know their versions? All Germans, get under American protection at all costs where kindly GI’s will supply you with cigarettes, chocolate, and short memories. We have to put that hostage rule into the record just to let them know it’s there.”