The Corp - Counterattack Part 53

"That's why we're going to jump Koffler in to join him."

"Koffler doesn't know a Zero from a Packard," Howard said. "If something happens to your man Reeves, Commander, what you're going to have is a perfectly functioning radio station from which we'll get no intelligence because Koffler won't know what to send."

"Granted," Feldt said. "So what?"

"So what you need is a team. Send two people in. The other one should be someone who can identify j.a.panese aircraft and s.h.i.+ps as well as your man Reeves. If something should happen to Reeves, that man could possibly keep the station operating. At least better than someone who was in high school this time last year."

"I don't have anybody to spare at the moment," Feldt said.

"I grant your point. Reeves should have a replacement. I'll work on it."

"The time to send him in is now," Howard argued. "You said that getting planes is difficult. You might not be able to get another; and even if you could, it seems to me the j.a.panese would sense that something important was going on in that area."

"Commander Feldt says he doesn't have anyone to send," Banning said curtly.

"I was in the First Defense Battalion at Pearl," Howard said. "In addition to my other duties, I taught j.a.panese aircraft and vessel recognition."

"Fascinating," Commander Feldt said, softly.

"You're not a parachutist," Banning said.

"Neither was Steve Koffler, this time last year," Howard argued.

"Ed," Feldt said softly, "I was given a briefing on agent infiltration by an insufferably smug British Special Operations Executive officer. He told me, among other things, that their experience parachuting people into France has been that they lost more people training them to use parachutes than they did jumping virtually untrained people on actual operations. Consequently, as a rule of thumb, they no longer subject agents going in to the risks of injury parachute training raises."

Banning looked between the two of them, but said nothing.

"What worries me about this is why Joe wants to go," Feldt said. He looked directly at Howard. "Why do you want to do this?"

"I don't want to do it," Howard said after a moment. "I think somebody has to do it. Of the people available to us, I seem to have the best qualifications."

"Are you married? Children?" Feldt asked.

"I have a ... fiancee," Joe said. It was, he realized, the first time he had ever used the word.

"The decision, of course, is Major Banning's," Commander Feldt said formally.

Banning met Howard's eyes for a moment.

"I think it might be better if Joe and I went to Melbourne," Banning said finally, evenly. "I don't know, but maybe Joe and Koffler will need some equipment I don't know about. If there is, it would more likely be available in Melbourne to a major than to a lieutenant."

"Your other ranks seem to do remarkably well getting things from depots," Feldt said. "But of course you're right. I'll arrange with Deane to have you two flown down there in the morning."

He reached for the Scotch bottle and topped off everyone's gla.s.s.

"And of course, Melbourne's the best place to get the shots."

"Shots?"

"Immunizations."

"The Marine Corps has given me shots against every disease known to Western man," Howard said.

"I don't really think, Joe, that your medical people have a h.e.l.l of a lot of experience with the sort of thing you're going to find on Buka," Feldt said. "And since Major Banning and I have decided to indulge you in this little escapade, it behooves you to take your shots like a good little boy."

"Aye, aye, Sir," Howard said.

"Cheers," Feldt said, raising his gla.s.s.

(Six) Two Creeks Station Wagga Wagga, New South Wales 6 June 1942 It had been called a memorial service, but what it really had been, Daphne Farnsworth realized, was a regular funeral missing only the body. There had even been an empty, flag-covered casket in the aisle of St. Paul's Church. The Reverend Mr. Bartholomew Frederick, his World War I Australian-New Zealand Army Corps ribbons pinned to his vestments, had delivered a eulogy that had been at least as much a recitation of the virtues of Australian military prowess and courage generally as it had been a recounting of the virtues of the late Sergeant John Andrew Farnsworth.

And before and after, before even she had gotten home, the neighbors had gone through the ritual of visiting the bereaved. In the event, Daphne Farnsworth only barely counted as one of the bereaved. The visitors had "called on" John's parents at the big house, instead of at John's and her house. Their house had been more or less closed up, of course, and his parents' house was larger; but she suspected that the roasts and the ca.s.seroles and the clove-studded hams and potato salad would have been delivered to the big house even if she hadn't joined the Navy.

She was both shamed and confused by her reaction to the offerings of sympathy. They annoyed her. And she resented all the people, too. She was either being a genuine b.i.t.c.h, she decided, or-as she had heard at least a half-dozen people whisper softly to her in-laws-she was still in shock and had not really accepted her loss. That would come later.

She had been annoyed at that, too. They didn't know what the h.e.l.l they were talking: about. She had accepted her loss. She knew that John was never coming back, even, for Christ's sake, in a casket when the war was over. She knew, with a horrible empty feeling in her heart and belly, that she would never again feel John's muscular arms around her, or have him inside her.

She was angry with him, too-the decisive proof that she was a cold-hearted b.i.t.c.h. He didn't have to go. He had gotten himself killed over there for the sole reason that he had wanted to go over there, answering some obscene and ludicrous male hunger to go off and kill something . . . without considering at all the price she was going to have to pay.

And their childlessness-a question John had decided for all time by enlisting and getting himself killed-had been a subject of some conversation by those who had come to call to express their sympathy. The males, gathered in the sitting room, drinking, and the women in the kitchen, fussing with all the food, seemed to be divided more or less equally into two groups: those who thought it a pity there wasn't a baby, preferably a male baby, to carry on the name; and those who considered it a manifestation of G.o.d's wise compa.s.sion that he had not left poor Daphne with a fatherless child to add to her burden.

Daphne had started drinking early in the morning, when she awoke in their bed and cried with the knowledge that John would never again share it with her. She had tossed down a shot of straight gin before she'd left their bed for her bath.

And she'd had another little taste just before they'd gotten in the cars to go to St. Paul's for the service. And she had had three since they had returned from church, timing them carefully. John had once told her that if you took only one drink an hour, you could never get drunk; the body burned off spirits at the rate of a drink an hour. She believed that.

As if she needed another one! There was one more proof that she was a b.i.t.c.h, because she knew that what she really wanted to do was get really drunk. She had been really drunk only three times in her life, the last time the day after she had returned here after watching John's s.h.i.+p move away from the pier in Melbourne.

She could not do that today, of course. It would disgrace her-not that that seemed important. But it would hurt her family, especially her mother and John's mother, if she let the side down by doing something like that, when she was expected to be the grieving, virtuous young widow.

She left the crowd of people in the big house to walk to her own house. She did that because she had to visit the loo, and there was actually a line before the loo in the big house.

She just happened to notice the car coming across the bridge over the Murrumbidgee River. It made the sharp right onto their property.

Still somebody else coming? I really don't want one more expression of sympathy, one more man to tell me, "Steady on, girl," or one more woman to tell me, "The Lord works in mysterious ways. You must now put your trust in the Lord."

There's no one behind the wheel.

Of course not. It's an American car, a Studebaker like the Americans at The Elms have.

What is an American car doing coming here?

Oh, my G.o.d, it's him. It can't be. But it is.

What in the name of G.o.d is Steve Koffler doing here?

She cut across the field and got to the Studebaker a moment after Steve Koffler had parked it at the end of a long row of cars, got out, and opened the rear door.

The first thought she had was unkind. When she saw his glistening paratrooper boots, sharply creased trousers, and the tightly woven fabric of his tunic and compared it with the rough, blanketlike material John's uniform had been cut from, and his rough, hobnailed boots, she was annoyed: b.l.o.o.d.y American Marines, they all look like officers.

He got whatever he was looking for from the backseat of the Studebaker, then stood erect and turned around and saw her.

"h.e.l.lo," he said, startled, and somewhat shy.

"What are you doing here?"

"Lieutenant Donnelly told me about your husband," Steve said, holding out what he had taken from the backseat: a bouquet of flowers, a tissue-wrapped square box, and a brown sack, obviously containing a bottle.

"What are you doing here?" Daphne repeated.

"I didn't know what you're supposed to do in Australia," he said, "to show you're sorry."

"What is all that?"

"Flowers, candy, and whiskey," Steve said. "Is that all right?"

"It's unnecessary," Daphne snapped, and was sorry. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to tell you how sorry I am about your husband getting killed," Steve said.

"And you drove all the way out here to do that?"

"It's only two hundred and eighty-six miles," he said. "I just checked. And that includes me getting lost twice."

It never even entered his stupid American mind that he might be intruding here; he wanted to come, so he just got in his sodding car and came!

"I really don't know what to say to you," she said.

"You don't have to say anything," he said. "I just wanted you to know I'm sorry."

Is that it? Or did you maybe think that now that I'm a widow, you could just jump into my bed?

What the h.e.l.l is the matter with me? He's just stupid and sweet. Except that I know he's not really as stupid as I first thought Naive and sweet, rather than stupid, "That's very kind of you, Steve, I'm sure. Thank you very much."

Steve Koffler relaxed visibly.

"It's OK. I wanted to do it."

But my mother is not going to understand this. Or John's mother. Or anybody. They're going to suspect that this boy and I are... what? Something we shouldn't be. That that is absurd won't matter. That's what they're going to think.

And I can't just send him packing, either. Not only would that be cruel of me, but by now everyone has seen the car and will be wondering who it is. What the h.e.l.l am I going to do?

"I suppose you must think I'm terrible," Daphne Farnsworth said to Steve Koffler as the Studebaker turned onto the bridge over the Murrumbidgee River, "lying to my family like that."

"No. I understand," he replied, turning his head to look at her.

"Well, I feel rotten about it," she said. "But I just couldn't take any more. I was going to scream."

After quickly but carefully coaching Steve in the story, she had led him up to the big house and introduced him to her family. She had told them that her officer, Lieutenant Donnelly, had learned that the American Marines were sending a car to the Wagga Wagga airfield. The lieutenant had arranged with a Marine officer to have Steve, the driver, whom she referred to as "Corporal Koffler," stop by the station and offer her a ride back to Melbourne. Her "death leave" was up the next day anyway. It would save her catching a very early train, and a long and uncomfortable ride.

It sounded credible, and she was reasonably sure that no one had questioned the story. They had been effusive in their thanks to Steve for doing her a good turn. All of which, of course, had made her feel even worse.

"I'm just glad I decided to come," Steve Koffler said.

They rode in silence for a long time, while Daphne wallowed in her new perception of herself as someone with a previously unsuspected capacity for lying and all-around deceit, the proof of which was that she felt an enormous sense of relief at being able to get away from people who shared her grief and would, quite literally, do anything in the world for her.

Steve Koffler broke the silence as they reached the outskirts of w.a.n.garatta, fifty miles back into Victoria.

"Would it be all right if I looked for someplace I could get something to eat? I could eat a horse."

"You mean you haven't eaten?"

He nodded.

"You should have said something at the station," she said. "There was all kinds of food . . ."

He shrugged.

"On condition that you let me pay," Daphne said. "I really do appreciate the ride."

"I've got money," he said.

"I pay, or you go hungry."

He smiled at her shyly.

As he wolfed down an enormous meal of steak and eggs, Daphne asked, "Tell me about your family, Steve. And your girl."

"There's not much to tell about my family. My mother and father are divorced. I live with her and her husband. And I don't have a girl."

"I thought Marines were supposed to have a girl in every port."

"That's what they say," he said. "I know a bunch of girls, of course, but there's no one special. I've been too busy, I suppose, to have a steady girl."

He's lying. That was bravado. He's afraid of women. Then why did he drive all the way out to Wagga Wagga? For the reason he gave. He felt really sorry for me. Whatever this boy is, he is no Don Juan. He's just a sweet kid.

When they were back on the road, she found herself pursuing the subject, wondering why it was important.

"There must have been one girl that. . . stood out. . . from all the others?"

From his reaction to the question, she sensed that there had not only been a girl in Steve Koffler's life, but that it had not been a satisfactory relations.h.i.+p. "Who was she, Steve?" Why am I doing this? What do I really care? Over the next hour and a half, Daphne drew from Steve, one small detail after another, the story of Dianne Marshall Norman. By the time she was sure she had separated fact from fantasy and had a.s.sembled what she felt was probably the true sequence of events, she had worked up what she told herself was a big-sister-like dislike for Diane Marshall Norman and a genuine feeling of sympathy for Steve.

Women can be such b.i.t.c.hes, she thought, getting what they want and not caring a whit how much they hurt a nice kid like Steve Koffler.