Joe Steele

XVII

Mike approached the encampment’s administration building with trepidation. No, dammit, I’m a writer. Forget the fancy talk, he thought. I’m approaching that place with fear. Like any wrecker, he had good reason to stay as far away from the administration building as he could. It was full of Jeebies, and nobody in his right mind wanted anything to do with those bastards.

Snow crunched under his boots. The air he breathed in stung his nostrils. He breathed out fog. It was goddamn cold. It was dark, too. The encampment lay on about the latitude of Bangor, Maine-far to the north of the New York City cycles he was used to. When winter neared, night slammed down early and stayed late.

Not surprisingly, the administration building lay next to the punishment block. The GBI men needed to keep an eye on the luckless fools they jugged. Also not surprisingly, the administration building, unlike the rest of the encampment (well, except for the searchlights in the guard towers), had electricity. A gasoline-powered generator inside chugged away. It sounded like a distant truck engine idling rough.

A guard in a fur hat frowned and hefted his Tommy gun when Mike came inside the circle of light the bulb above the entryway threw into the darkness all around. “Who are you? What do you want?” the Jeebie asked, his voice harsh and suspicious.

“Sullivan, Michael, NY24601, sir. Barracks Seventeen.” Mike identified himself the way a wrecker should. He exhaled more vapor before he went on, “I want to ask permission to join the Army, sir.”

“Oh, Jesus! Another one!” But the guard didn’t tell Mike to get lost, the way he would have before the Japs hit Pearl Harbor. The United States was at war now. A wrecker who volunteered for the Army wouldn’t necessarily have it easier than one who served out his stretch inside an encampment. All kinds of bad things could happen to you in these places, sure. But unless you ran away or the guards were feeling uncommonly mean, they weren’t likely to shoot you. Japanese and German soldiers might prove less considerate.

“Yes, sir.” Mike stood there and waited. He didn’t come any closer. Doing that before the guard said he could might make the SOB decide he was dangerous. He didn’t want that. Oh, no.

After a few seconds, the Jeebie gestured toward the door with his Tommy gun. “Well, come on, then,” he said gruffly. His breath smoked, too. “They’re putting together some kind of asshole list in there. You wanna stick your name on it, you can. Guy you wanna see is Lopatynski. Room 127-turn left when you get inside and go halfway down the hall.”

“Thank you, sir!” Mike knew most of that from other wreckers, men who already had their names on the list. But you had to keep the guards buttered up. They’d make you pay if you didn’t. Sometimes they’d make you pay even if you did.

The Jeebie patted him down before letting him inside. He had a knife, one made from part of a big can of corn and patiently sharpened on granite. Most wreckers had them. They used them as tools more than as weapons. He’d made sure to stash his in his miserable sawdust-stuffed mattress before coming here, though. No matter how common they were, they were also against the rules.

Bright lights and heat clobbered him inside the building. He unbuttoned his jacket, something he hadn’t done since early fall except for the weekly scrub in disinfectant soap. Wreckers shivered through about eight months of the year. Not the Jeebies. They had it soft.

Aloysius Lopatynski was a warrant officer. Not a sergeant. Not a lieutenant. Betwixt and between. He had a specialty that made him useful, but not enough general wonderfulness for them to turn him into a full-fledged officer. He was typing some sort of report-respectably fast-when Mike stood in the doorway to room 127 and waited to be noticed.

He didn’t have to wait long. Lopatynski looked up and said, “Who are you? What do you need?” Not What do you want? — an interesting variant, especially from a Jeebie.

“Sullivan, Michael, NY24601, sir. Barracks Seventeen.” Mike went through the ritual again. Then he said, “Jonesy outside told me you were the one to see about joining the Army.”

“Right now, no one from any encampment is joining the Army. No wrecker, I mean-several guards here have enlisted,” the warrant officer said. “What I am doing is putting together a list of people who may be interested in volunteering if and when that’s permitted.”

“Okay, that’s what I need, then.” Mike gave his information to Lopatynski once more. The Jeebie entered it on that list. Then Mike said, “My stretch is five to ten. I got here in 1937, so they could be turning me loose in a few months.”

“You were an early bird, weren’t you?” Lopatynski remarked.

“Well, kinda,” Mike answered with a certain pride. He wasn’t an early bird next to somebody like John Dennison, but far more wreckers had come in after him than before. He went on, “If they do turn me loose next summer, can I go straight into the Army then?”

“That’s an interesting question. I’m not sure of the answer. Of course, you also don’t know if they’ll turn you loose at the short end of your stretch. But if they release you while the war is still going on. . I don’t know what your obligation would be. I don’t know if you can volunteer, either. You can try, and find out what happens.”

“All right. I’ll do that when I get the chance. If I get the chance.” Mike hesitated before adding, “Thanks.” He said it to the guards all the time. It didn’t mean much to them, though; he was just another wrecker trying to keep the screws sweet. Saying it when he did mean it came harder.

“You’re welcome,” Lopatynski said. “Now you’d better hustle to your barracks. I know it’s cold out there.”

Not cold in here, Mike thought. But he didn’t come out with the sarcastic crack. As far as he could tell, Lopatynski just didn’t want him freezing. He gave back a brusque nod and walked away. Getting reminded that even a GBI man could be a decent human being was one of the more disturbing things that had happened to him lately.

* * *

The U.S. Army and Navy had known for years that they might have to fight Japan. Like other armed forces the world around, they made plans against the day. Anyone, even generals or admirals, could see that the Philippines, American-ruled but close to the potential enemy, were an area the Japs would try to overrun as soon as they could.

Holding the entire island chain wasn’t practical or even possible, not with the relatively small American garrison and the larger but less trained native Philippine forces. The plan, then, was for most of the Americans and as many locals as could join them to hole up on the Bataan Peninsula and hang on for as long as they could.

By holding out there, they denied the Japs the use of Manila’s fine harbor. And, if everything went according to plan, they might still be holding out when the Pacific Fleet steamed west from Hawaii and met the Imperial Japanese Navy in a sea battle that would make Jutland look as if it were fought in a bathtub by toy boats.

But things didn’t go according to plan. The Pacific Fleet wouldn’t be coming. Too much of it lay at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. The soldiers holed up on the Bataan Peninsula could still deny Manila’s harbor to Japan. Nobody was coming to their rescue, though. Sooner or later, they would have to throw in the towel.

Meanwhile, they fought bravely, Americans and Filipinos alike. They held back the Japanese week after week, month after month. They took a moniker that they wore with a kind of upside-down pride-the Battling Bastards of Bataan. A reporter wrote a limerick about them, one of the few good clean ones:

“We’re the Battling Bastards of Bataan,

No Mama, no Papa, no Uncle Sam,

No aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no nieces,

No pills, no planes, no artillery pieces,

And nobody gives a damn!”

That last line, as Charlie knew all too well, wasn’t true. Joe Steele did give a damn about the men fighting in the Philippines, and about what losing the islands would mean. But there was a difference between giving a damn and being able to do anything about it.

The difference got underscored in the middle of February, when England surrendered Singapore to the Japs. Wanting to hang on was one thing. Being able to was another. Joe Steele started sending Douglas MacArthur messages urging him to leave Bataan and come back to Washington for consultation about his next assignment.

Charlie polished up the President’s messages and smoothed them as much as he could. Joe Steele was angry at the distant general, and it showed in anything that came from his pen. Despite the smoothing, MacArthur remained cagey. One of his replies read I wish to share the fate of the garrison. I know the situation here in the Philippines and unless the right moment is chosen for this delicate operation, a sudden collapse might occur.

“He doesn’t want to come back,” Charlie said to Lazar Kagan after that one came in.

Kagan looked at him, expressionless as usual. “Would you?” Remembering what had happened to Short and Kimmel, Charlie had to shake his head.

Finally, Joe Steele stopped dickering and ordered MacArthur to leave Bataan, go to Australia, and from Australia come to Washington as quickly as he could. MacArthur still hesitated. Joe Steele had George Marshall send a cable to the U.S. commander in the Philippines, reminding him that refusing to obey orders was a court-martial offense.

That did the trick. A PT boat plucked MacArthur, his family, and his entourage off the peninsula and took them to the island of Mindanao, which was also in the process of falling to the Japs. Three B-17s came up from Australia and landed on a dirt strip to take the general and his companions to safety.

A roundabout air route got MacArthur to Honolulu. He dropped a wreath into the oily water of Pearl Harbor before flying on to San Diego. Soldiers, sailors, Marines, and civilians there gave him a hero’s welcome and put him on a cross-country train. He made speeches at half the stops, sounding more like a political campaigner than a military man.

Spring had already sprung by the time he got to Washington. Along with Vince Scriabin and Stas Mikoian, Charlie was at Union Station, not far from the Capitol, when the train pulled in.

A platoon of soldiers waited on the platform with them. There were no ordinary civilians around, nor any reporters. “I hope this isn’t too ugly,” Charlie said to Mikoian as the train rolled to a stop.

“So do I,” the Armenian answered, “but it will be.”

Scriabin waved such worries away. “He won’t get anything he doesn’t have coming to him,” the Hammer said. Like Joe Steele, he never seemed afflicted by doubt.

A door in the side of one of the Pullman cars opened. A colored porter set down a contraption with three wooden steps to ease getting down from the train to the platform. Then the Negro stepped back, and Douglas MacArthur stood in the metal doorway.

He was tall and thin and craggy. His uniform hung loosely on him. By the way he looked around, he was expecting at least a brass band and maybe a ticker-tape parade. The corncob pipe jerked in his mouth when he saw he wouldn’t get them. He eyed the soldiers. They weren’t pointing their weapons his way, but they looked as if they could any second now.

“What kind of welcoming committee is this?” he asked, sounding like a man who didn’t really want the answer.

A spruce young captain stepped toward him out of the ranks. “You are Douglas MacArthur?” he asked in turn, his voice formal. He didn’t give MacArthur his rank. He didn’t say sir. He didn’t salute.

“You know damn well I am, sonny,” MacArthur said roughly. “Who the hell are you?”

“I am Captain Lawrence Livermore,” the young officer said. “You are under arrest. The charge is failure to defend the Philippine Islands properly, in that the bombers under your command were caught on the ground and destroyed by Japanese aircraft a full day after fighting began in Hawaii. The charge includes negligence and dereliction of duty. I am ordered to bring you before the military tribunal that will judge your case.”

MacArthur stared at him. “Fuck you. You hear me? Fuck you, you little prick! Fuck your goddamn military tribunal. They’re going to shoot me-that’s what you’re saying. Oh, and fuck Joe Steele, too, up the asshole with a cactus.”

Whoever’d chosen Captain Livermore had chosen him not least because he didn’t rattle. He didn’t even redden when MacArthur swore at him. He just turned back to his men and nodded. Their front rank dropped to one knee as they aimed their rifles at the suddenly disgraced general. The men behind them aimed at him, too, over their heads.

“Either you come with us quietly,” Livermore said, “or we’ll need to hose down this platform before we can use it again.”

No one had ever claimed MacArthur lacked courage. His right hand flashed to his belt. But he remembered with the motion only half made that he wasn’t wearing a sidearm. His hand fell back to his thigh. He looked up at the roof-and at the heavens beyond it-and said, like Charles Coughlin before him, “‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’”

“You aren’t Him,” Captain Livermore said. “Last chance. Come before the tribunal. . or don’t come before the tribunal.”

Charlie thought MacArthur would make them kill him right there in the train station. But MacArthur’s shoulders slumped. “I’ll go to your damned tribunal,” he said. “You can shoot me. Just leave my family alone, you hear?”

They took him away. Captain Livermore didn’t say anything about what would happen to his family.

The tribunal was brief and to the point. Had those planes been on the ground a day after Pearl Harbor? Had the Japs bombed them and wrecked them before they could get airborne? Not much doubt about either question.

MacArthur didn’t bother appealing to Joe Steele. When you’d suggested buggery by cactus, you couldn’t expect much sympathy. From what Charlie heard, MacArthur died well.

Joe Steele went on the radio the day after the execution. “I know this may seem hard. I know it may seem cruel,” he said. “If you tell me Douglas MacArthur was a brave man, I will agree with you. But he made the same kind of stupid mistake General Short and Admiral Kimmel did. Theirs cost us the disaster at Pearl Harbor. His has gone a long way toward costing us the Philippines. We will not win every battle. I understand that. But we should not lose battles because we are stupider than our enemies. That kind of failure will not be tolerated. And that is why Douglas MacArthur is dead.”

Listening to the speech with his very pregnant wife, Charlie wondered how things would have gone if Joe Steele had paid less attention to Hitler, who couldn’t reach American fighting men, and more to Tojo, who could-and had. Charlie was sure of one thing: nobody would haul Joe Steele up in front of a tribunal to judge him for his mistakes.

No, he was sure of something else, too. He couldn’t say such a thing to anybody, not even to Esther. Keeping your mouth shut seemed to be one of the hardest things anybody could do. He did it.

* * *

One of the expectant fathers in the waiting room paced up and down, hands clasped behind his back, as if he’d escaped from an animated cartoon. Charlie wanted to trip him every time he went by. He didn’t. He pretended to read a magazine. He smoked cigarette after cigarette. In the delivery room, Esther was going through all the horrible things a woman had to go through to have a baby. He was stuck out here, waiting.

A doctor walked into the room. All the men stared at him. Behind his mask, he could have been anybody’s obstetrician. He said, “Mr. Lefebvre?” Everybody except the pacing guy slumped.

He at least stopped. “It’s Le-fehv,” he said; the doctor’d pronounced it Le-fever. “How’s Millie doing?”

“Your wife is fine, Mr. Le-fehv,” the doctor said. “If you want to come with me, you can see them now. Congratulations!”

Lefebvre went with him. The other men in the waiting room went back to waiting. At least he wasn’t pacing back and forth any more. Ten minutes later, the door opened again, but it was only another worried-looking dad-to-be. An hour went by. Another doctor came in. “Mr. Sullivan?”

Charlie jumped to his feet. “That’s me!” You couldn’t mess up Sullivan.

“It’s a boy, Mr. Sullivan-eight pounds on the nose. Mazel tov!” The doctor wasn’t Irish.

“Thanks.” Charlie had White Owls in his jacket pocket. He gave the doctor one and tossed one to each man in the waiting room. Churchill smoked cigars, but he’d cut out his tongue after a White Owl, or maybe before. Too bad, Charlie thought. He’d bought some Havanas, too, but he figured he’d save those for when he went back to the White House.

“Come with me, and you can visit with your wife and your new son,” the doctor said.

Esther looked as trampled as she had the first time, even though this labor had moved a little faster. The baby was a funny color, and his head was a weird shape. That didn’t alarm Charlie; Sarah had looked the same way. He kissed Esther’s sweaty forehead. “How are you?” he said.

She shook her head. “Did you get the license number of that truck?”

He looked at the baby again. “He’s a big boy.”

“He sure felt big coming out!” Esther said. She stroked the little bits of fine hair splayed across the top of the baby’s head. “Patrick David Sullivan.” He was named for Charlie’s father’s father and her mother’s father.

“When they throw me out of here, I’ll go call Mrs. Triandos and let her know she can tell Sarah she’s got a new baby brother.” The family across the hall, who had two little kids of their own, were tending to Sarah till Charlie got back.

Patrick-or would he be Pat? — started yelling. It was one of those what-the-devil’s-going-on? cries newborns let out. The world was a confusing enough place after you’d lived in it for a while. When you’d just arrived, you had no idea what was happening, or why.

“Here. Shut up and have some milk.” Esther put the baby on her breast. He might not know much yet, but he knew how to go after the good stuff. Esther had nursed Sarah for a year. She planned to do it again. No matter what the baby-food companies said, it was simpler and cheaper than bottles and formula.

“A son,” Charlie said dreamily. It wasn’t that Sarah wasn’t wonderful. She was. But boys and girls were different, dammit. They’d do different things. They’d think different ways. If not for the differences between boys and girls, this old world wouldn’t have much point, would it?

“After you call Irene, you need to tell our families,” Esther said.

“I was thinking I’d wait till I got home to do that. It’d be a lot cheaper than doing it from a phone booth.”

“Oh.” Esther thought about it, then nodded. “Well, okay. That makes sense. You can let the White House know, too.” She laughed. “When I married you, I never thought I’d say anything like that after I had a baby.”

“Life isn’t what you think you’re gonna get,” Charlie said. “Life is what happens to you while you’re looking out for what you think you’re gonna get.”

“That sounds good. Does it mean anything?” Esther yawned. “I’m so beat up, I don’t care if it means anything or not. Go call Mrs. Triandos. If Junior here lets me, I’m gonna sleep for a week. After I eat something, I mean. I’m starved. Having a kid is hard work. They don’t call it labor for nothing. You’d better believe they don’t.”

Looking at her, all pale and exhausted, Charlie didn’t see how he could do anything but believe her. He kissed her again, and kissed Patrick David Sullivan, too. New babies had a fresh-baked smell that wasn’t like anything else in the world. Charlie’d been sad when Sarah lost it and started smelling like an ordinary little kid. Now here it was again, the odor that said something new had been added to the world.

There were phone booths (Charlie wondered why they weren’t phone beeth, which said something about how tired he was) in the lobby downstairs. He called Irene Triandos. She squealed when he gave her the news. Then she called Sarah to the telephone.

“Daddy?” Sarah said.

“Hi, sweetie. You’ve got a new little brother. Mommy had a baby boy.”

“It’s a boy! It’s a brother!” Sarah told Mrs. Triandos, who already knew.

Talking on the phone with little kids was always an adventure. When Sarah started paying attention to the voice in her ear once more, Charlie asked her, “Do you remember what we were gonna name the baby if it was a boy?”

“’Course I do, silly! Patrick David Sullivan!”

“That’s right. So you’ve got a little brother named Patrick.”

“Patrick brother! Brother Patrick!” Sarah was still kind of hazy about how those things worked. Pretty soon, though, she’d discover that one of the things younger brothers were for was driving older siblings nuts. Charlie was a younger brother. He’d been good at it. He was sure Patrick would follow in his footsteps.

* * *

Just as winter nights in Montana seemed to stretch like saltwater taffy, nights in summer were hardly there at all. That was how it felt to Mike, anyhow. The sun disappeared behind the Rockies. Next thing you knew, it was coming up again on the other side of the sky.

He realized with a small shock, or maybe not such a small one, how used he was getting to the rhythms of the sun here, and to the rhythms of encampment life. This was where he’d been, this was what he’d done, for the past five years. He’d served his stretch. It felt that way to him, anyhow. Yeah, the administrative law judge had slapped him with five to ten, but weren’t five years of this enough for anybody?

Some people with stretches like his got out after five. He’d seen it happen. The Jeebies gave them clothes without numbers and twenty bucks, then put them on a bus to Livingston, usually with orders to stay inside the Rocky Mountain and Midwestern states. He didn’t know what would happen if you went back to, say, New Hampshire and they caught you there. You’d probably get another term, a longer one.

They didn’t seem about to turn him loose. John Dennison hadn’t gone anywhere, either. Dennison dealt with the encampment better than anyone else Mike had ever seen, himself included. Whatever happened, it rolled off his back. He had the measure of the place. He didn’t like it-who could? — but he dealt with it.

And just because some people got out, that didn’t mean others didn’t come in. These days, the labor encampments were full of Japanese-American scalps. Joe Steele had ordered everyone of Japanese descent on the U.S. mainland seized. Women had encampments, too. Those were probably also loaded with black-haired, almond-eyed people. The Jeebies here came down extra hard on the Japs. They blamed them for starting the war. Why not? Plainly, Joe Steele did, too. Mike wondered how many Japanese would get turned loose, or if any ever would.

He also wondered if he ever would. Curiosity made him brave the administration building again. He told himself the worst they could do was say no. How was he worse off if they did? (Actually, the worst they could do was beat the crap out of him and stick him in a punishment cell for a few weeks, but he preferred not to dwell on such things.)

A sergeant pulled his file and examined it. “Well, your record’s not too bad, and you put in your enlistment request pretty early,” the man said. “That’s one more point for you. Let’s see what Captain Blair thinks.”

“Okay. Let’s.” Mike figured he hadn’t struck out, anyhow. Whether he was just getting in deeper, he’d have to find out.

Captain Blair had a patch over his right eye socket. Mike guessed that made him a Great War veteran-no, with a new war in town, now they were calling it World War I. He bent low over the papers to examine them, which meant his remaining eye was nearsighted. Then he looked up at Mike.

“Normally, you’d serve your full ten. At least your full ten,” he said. “Sergeant Sanders didn’t notice some of the coding in here. But there is a way for you to get out of the encampment, if you want to.”

“Tell me,” Mike said.

“We can take you to Livingston-straight to the recruiting station there. You can volunteer to serve for the duration of the war. Your service will be in what’s called a punishment brigade. It will have men from the encampments and disgraced officers trying to get their good name back. It will go in wherever things are hottest. It will keep doing that as long as the war lasts. If you live, you’ll be released then. If you don’t, well, so it goes.”

“Oh,” Mike said, and then, “You don’t pull any punches, do you?”

“You can’t say you didn’t know the score before you played the game,” Blair answered. “You can take your chances-and they aren’t too good.” He touched the patch to emphasize that. “Or you can stay here a long time. You must have ticked off somebody with clout.”

“I ticked off Joe Steele,” Mike said proudly.

“I hear all kinds of bullshit from wreckers. You, I almost believe. So what’ll it be?”

John Dennison would have stayed. Dennison was staying. Mike didn’t want to let another five years go by here, or another ten. He’d look up and find he’d worked here longer than he had for the Post. He wouldn’t be able to imagine a life beyond the barbed wire and the chopping details, let alone live one. They’d try their best to kill him if he joined the Army? They were killing him here, only in slow motion.

“Take me to Livingston,” he said.

“You’ll go in the morning, after roll call and breakfast,” Captain Blair said. “Believe it or not, I wish you the best of luck. I tried to get back on active military duty, but they wouldn’t take me. The limeys used Admiral Nelson even though he was shy an eye and an arm. These are modern times, though. I don’t cut the mustard for the real war. I’m stuck here.”

Making war on Americans instead, Mike thought. But he didn’t say it. Blair had been square with him, as square as anybody could be. What he did say was “Thank you.” It felt as unnatural as it had when he’d said it to Lopatynski the winter before.

* * *

Charlie got a card from Mike announcing he’d joined the Army. The hardest part is, I have to learn a new number for myself, his brother wrote. I’ve been NY24601 a long time. But I’m someone else these days.

He didn’t know whether the card was good news or bad news. Mike hadn’t gone overseas the last time around. He’d worked in a munitions plant instead. At the labor encampment, he was reasonably safe. In the Army, he wouldn’t be. On the other hand, the powers that be were more likely to let him out of the Army than to release him from the encampment.

Out in the wider world, the war ground on. Charlie remembered Admiral Spruance from his days on one of Joe Steele’s military tribunals. He hadn’t been an admiral then. Now, his ships smashed the Japs near Midway: one more place Charlie’d never heard of till it got splashed all over the newspapers.

In Russia, the Germans couldn’t attack along the whole vast front, the way they had the year before. They pushed forward in the south and hung on in the center and north. Plainly, the drive was aimed at the Caucasus and the oilfields there. Oil had always been a problem for the Germans-they didn’t have enough. If they could grab the Russians’ fields, they’d help themselves and hurt the Reds at the same time.

Rostov-on-the-Don fell. The Germans had taken it in 1941, too, but the Red Army drove them out then. Now they hung on to it and even advanced. Trotsky sent his faltering troops an order: not one step back! Order or no order, the Russians kept retreating.

The Nazis couldn’t just roll into the Caucasus. That would leave them with a long, unprotected northern flank. They had to take more of southern Russia. There was a city on the Volga that, in the days before the Revolution, had been called Tsaritsyn. The Reds couldn’t leave it with a reactionary name like that. Now it was Trotskygrad: Trotsky’s town.

Something like 40,000 people died when the Luftwaffe hammered it from the skies. Panzers and foot soldiers stormed across the steppe toward the shattered city. They stormed into it. But the Russians defended Trotskygrad block by block, factory by factory, house by house, room by room. Getting in, Hitler discovered, was much easier than clearing the Reds out.

Hitler had thought he would knock Russia out of the war in a hurry. Well, General Marshall had thought the same thing. Nobody was right all the time. Now the Führer had a much bigger war on his hands than he’d wanted. He had a much bigger war than he could fight by himself, in fact. Romanians and Hungarians and Italians and Slovaks and even a division of Spaniards joined the Wehrmacht in Russia.

Wehrmacht soldiers, though, had better gear and better training than their allies. (That the Hungarians and Romanians hated each other worse than either hated the Russians didn’t help.) That fall, the Red Army sliced through Hitler’s foreign flunkies in two places and cut off the big German force still grinding away in Trotskygrad.

Even Joe Steele said, “I commend the Russian Army’s endurance and bravery. This stroke has dealt the Nazis a heavy blow.”

Vince Scriabin’s comment to Charlie was more cynical: “I wonder how many generals Trotsky shot before the Red Army started doing things right. More than we have here-I guarantee you that.”

“You’ve got to be right,” Charlie said-if he told Scriabin he was wrong, he’d get shot himself, or at least end up in a labor encampment. He wasn’t saying anything he didn’t believe. Trotsky might have been even more ruthless than Joe Steele, and he’d held on to the reins longer. Charlie added, “I wonder how many Hitler’s gonna shoot now that the Germans aren’t doing so hot.”

He actually got a smile out of Scriabin. “I like that!” the Hammer said. “I really like that! So will the boss. And I’ll tell him you said it, too. I won’t steal it from you.”

“I wasn’t worried about it.” Again, Charlie told the truth. If Scriabin did steal his nice line, what could he do? Nothing. Luckily, he had sense enough to see as much.

“When the boss asked you to come to the White House, I wasn’t sure you’d work out here,” Scriabin said. A sentence like that carried any number of possibilities for disaster. Scriabin had the authority to act on his doubts. Who would miss a reporter-turned-speechwriter? Well, Esther would. Who with any power, though? The question answered itself. But the Hammer went on, “You’ve done all right since you got here. Maybe I was judging you by your brother.”

“Glad I could be useful.” Charlie left it right there. He didn’t tell Scriabin that Mike had gone from that labor encampment to the Army. Scriabin could find out in seconds if he decided to. If he didn’t feel like finding out. . Mike was bound to be better off.

“Useful. Yes.” Scriabin bobbed his head on his thin neck and hurried away. If Charlie was any judge, Joe Steele’s aide had embarrassed himself by acting somewhat like a human being.

A few days later, American troops under Omar Bradley-another man who’d sat on a tribunal or two-landed in North Africa with the British. They didn’t trap the Germans retreating out of Egypt through Libya so neatly as they planned. Grimly, the Nazis hung on in Tunisia.

So things weren’t perfect. In his forties now, Charlie didn’t expect or even much hope for perfection. Things could have been worse. For a middle-aged man, that would do.