The Memories of Milo Morai

III

“How long ago did all of this happen, Milo, my love?” asked Djoolya aloud.

Closing off his memories for the moment, Milo thought, wrinkling up his forehead in concentration. “Above two hundred winters. Why?”

She chuckled and squeezed his thigh where he sat cross-legged beside her. “You’ve not changed a bit, that’s why. I can empathize with that woman, Beti, though I wonder too why she waited so long to have you. I wanted you the first time I ever saw you, wanted you on me, in me, your hands kneading my flesh. And it’s never changed over our years together, I still want you. She showed good taste, that Beti. But I’m sorry, let us back into your memories.”

Milo awakened to the insistent rattling of the door-knob, followed immediately by a soft, subdued knocking on the door itself. Cursing under his breath, he found the Zippo by feel, flicked it open, spun the wheel and looked at his watch by the light. It was 0545, a dark and unholy hour. Betty lay snuggled beside him, pressed closely on the narrow bunk; both were nude under the muslin sheets and GI blankets.

He shook her awake and whispered into her ear, “There’s someone at the door. When I turn on the light you grab your things and hotfoot it into the bathroom and close the door . . . but quietly. Hear me?”

He felt her nod in the darkness, then swung his legs out of bed with a somewhat louder curse as his bare soles came into contact with the ice-cold linoleum. Passing his extended arm back and forth in the stygian room, he finally found the chain, pulled it, and the bare bulb set in the ceiling blazed into life.

While Betty bundled her clothing and shoes into her arms and scurried into the private bath, Milo said just loudly enough for a person on the other side of the door to hear, “Hang on, let me get into my skivvies, at least. Who is it, anyway?”

An equally low-pitched voice came from the corridor. “It’s Barstow, Milo. Take your time, get decent, but I’ve got to speak to you before oh six hundred.”

When the bathroom door was shut, he padded over to the door, removed the chair from under the knob as quietly as possible, then unlocked and opened it to face a fully dressed General Barstow, who came in and said, “Shut it and lock it again, please.”

Spying the bottle and the canteen cup on the floor beside the bunk, he strode over, picked up them both and helped himself to a measure of the pale liquor. “Whew! Thank you, Milo. I needed that. Sam Jonas and I worked until after midnight trying to get the office and umpteen cases of files and records in some semblance of order. And no sooner did I get into my room here and start to unpack enough to go to bed than Padre came knocking on my door with some yarn about how you were a wanted felon from Chicago and he had caught you petting with Betty.”

Milo sighed, then said, “General, I was accused of fornication—which is a felony, they said, in Chicago—back well before the war. There was no trial; I left town. Yes, I had coupled with a woman who was well above the age of consent and knew exactly what she was doing. No, Betty and I were not petting when Padre came in here. We were sitting, sharing cigarettes and talking. That man has a very dirty mind, not to mention a big mouth.”

Barstow dragged over the chair and straddled it, resting his arms on its back, the canteen cup still in one hand, an unlit cigar in the other. Dipping the mouth end of the cigar into the contents of the cup, he swirled it around for a moment, then jammed it between his big teeth.

“Look, Milo, I don’t give a damn what my people do during their off-duty hours—drink, screw, read dirty books, write them, smoke hashish or opium, bugger little boys or pull the wings off flies—just so long as a good job of work is done for me and Uncle Sam during duty hours, see. I don’t like Padre, I never have and I doubt I ever will. I only keep the pinko faggot around to keep an eye on him, make certain he doesn’t get a promotion or any real power over normal people and because I enjoy verbally abusing him whenever I’m bored.

“I know that you and Betty spent the night together, so don’t bother trying to tell me a gentlemanly lie, huh? She’s not in her room and she’s not in the main latrine, either, she’s in your bath, Milo. I’m very glad that you thought enough of her to try to protect her, but there’s no need, never was, I approve. You both have had a damned hard war these last few years, and you’ll probably be good for each other for a while, even if this relationship never goes any farther than the occasional boff.

“But just thank your lucky stars, the both of you, that this has happened when and where it has—on a very small post, with a post commander who thinks a majority of the Army regs were drawn up by morons for cretins. You’ll likely get more flak from Padre and some measure of ribbing from the others, too; how you handle that is up to you, unless physical violence arises out of it, and then I’ll have to come down on you, so be warned. You and Betty are welcome to terrify Padre all you wish—and it won’t be hard, he scares easily—you can even hurt him a little, just so long as what you do to him leaves no marks and you don’t do it before witnesses.”

Removing the cigar from his mouth, he drained the cup and tossed it onto the rumpled bunk. After re-placing the cigar, he stood up and stepped over to the door. He unlocked it and then, with his hand on the knob, said, “One last thing, Milo. For Pete’s sake, don’t either of you make the cardinal error of screwing up a good love affair by getting married. I made that mistake once and I’ve regretted it ever since. If you don’t marry, you’ll both have good, warm memories of each other as long as you live; if you do, you’ll spend the rest of your lives trying to get the bad taste out of your mouths.”

Within the succeeding two weeks, a few more personnel were added to their thin ranks. The first three were clearly real civilians, all older men, who kept mostly to themselves, chatting in German in a way that suggested practice of a language for long unused. Then came a man that Milo had not seen since his days at Benning. Emil Schrader looked far older than Milo recalled him. He had a silver bar on each shoulder, a slight limp, and some very impressive ribbons and badges on his chest—Combat Infantry-man Badge, Airborne Wings, Purple Heart with no less than three oak-leaf clusters, Bronze Star, Silver Star and a Presidential Unit Citation.

As soon as the two were done pumping each other’s hands and back-slapping, Milo stood back and pointed at the collection. “What the hell, Emil, did you try to win the fucking war single-handed or something? No wonder they were so long giving me anything for a fucking souvenir of my fun-filled tour of Europe Beautiful—the bastards had given all of the available supply to you!

“But how in God’s name did you wind up here, Emil? Or am I allowed to know?”

It was not until Schrader smiled that Milo realized that one of the younger man’s eyes was not his—a very good color match for the real, remaining one, but a prosthetic, nonetheless—and when he noticed that, he then noticed the faint, well-sanded facial scars, too. The poor little fucker had really had the course, it would seem.

“You’re one of the principal reasons I’m here, you know, Milo. After I was released from the hospital three months back, I was given orders to report to Fort Holabird immediately, not even given time for a convalescent leave to go back home to Kansas. When I got there, who should be waiting but that same son of a bitch tried to have me railroaded at Benning, Jay Jarvis. The fucker got me into his office and told me he was going to put me into a tedious, boring, dead-end job there and keep me at it forever, that I’d stay there until I had a long white beard unless I gave him, in writing, a confession that I’d been a Nazi sympathizer before the war and a Nazi agent during the war. He said that he could keep me from getting anything worse than a dishonorable discharge, but that he had to have that statement and that I wouldn’t get a dis-charge of any kind until I’d given him what he wanted.

“Well, hell, Milo, you know damned good and well that I’m just as stubborn as any other fucker and I would’ve seen hell freeze over solid before I’d’ve knuckled under to that peckerhead cocksucker. So I’ve just been sitting up there, marking time, counting paperclips and suchlike with Jarvis harassing me till he was blue in the face, and then you came along.

“So, after they’d shipped Jarvis off to the funny farm to do his OJT in paper-doll production, somebody went through his office files, found out I was there on post doing little or nothing and started looking for a slot for me to fill. They must’ve looked in my 201 and decided to make a translator or something like that of me, ’cause I was questioned at some length in German—Hochdeutsch, Plattdeutsch, Schweizer-deutsch, the works. A couple days later, they cut orders on me to come to something called Operation Newhaven. And I guess this hash up must be it, huh?”

Milo could but wonder at just why and how the Army had for so long retained Jarvis in a position of some power despite his long-proven lunacy. The arrogance of taking a highly decorated combat officer, fresh out of hospital, still showing the scars and cripplings of hard, faithful service, and employing mental torture on him in order to try to force him to confess to untruths about himself smacked more of the Axis countries or Russia than it did of the United States of America . Jay Jarvis’ friends must be very highly placed and powerful indeed to have managed to keep their boy out of a booby hatch for so long a time.

“So,” asked Schrader, “if this is Operation Newhaven, what does it do that’s so hush-hush they won’t even let you know where the hell it and you are, Milo?”

“You reported to the general?” Milo answered the question with questions. “What did he have to say to you about your duties here, Emil?”

Schrader shook his head. “That was the quickest I ever got to see any general officer—or any field-grade officer, for that matter, outside of actual combat—in my life. General Barstow was very nice, very friendly, he seemed honestly glad to have me here . . . and he did not say one fucking thing that told me anything about this Operation Newhaven at all, just warned me that I’d get fried on the wire or my ass shot off by the guards if I tried to get out without somebody’s say-so, said I’d learn more in due time, then he turned me over to a Captain Jonas. Sam chatted with me for a while, then turned me over to a Sergeant Quales, who took me to the back of the building, issued me an armload of civilian clothes and shoes, dumped them all in a brand-spanking-new foot locker and told me it would be brought to my quarters later. Then a Lieutenant Obrenovich took over and took me over to the BOQ and told me which rooms were already taken and which building to come to after I’d gotten my gear more or less squared away. And I repeat, what the hell is this Operation Newhaven, anyhow, Milo?”

Milo chuckled. “You have been told exactly as much as Barstow has told any of the rest of us, Emil, and we’ve been here two-three weeks, most of us, too. How did they get you down here from Holabird, car?”

Schrader shook his head once more. “Naw, Milo. They drove me to some little bitsy airfield and put me and my gear on a Piper Cub—you know, like they use to spot targets for the artillery—a two-seater and flown by an enlisted pilot who had about as much to say as a stuffed owl. We landed at an Air Corps place called Langley and me and my gear got put into the back of a half-ton GI panel truck with the back windows painted over—both sides of the fucking glass, too, for shit’s sake!—and a fucking plywood partition between the back and the front. When it finally stopped and they opened the back door, it was clear we was on an Army post, but don’t ask me where or which one, ’cause they stuck me and my stuff into the back of a three-quarter-ton weapons carrier, tied the back curtain down and took off. Felt like the fuckers were driving cross-country, part of the time, and when they stopped and told me I could get out, it was here, wherever here is.”

Four more of the Munich bunch filtered in—Hugo, Ned, Judy and Annemarie—in the same traveling party with a short section of WAAC’s under the command of a six-foot-tall Wagnerian blond sergeant named Hilda Stupsnasig. With his well-honed sense of humor, General Barstow immediately dubbed the WAAC sergeant “Brunhild,” but simply as an in-joke, since all the WAAGs were clerical personnel and as such would work in uniform in various capacities and offices.

At last, Barstow called a meeting of ten of his people—Milo, Buck, Betty, Hugo, Ned, Judy, Vasili and the three older civilian men—in the small conference room behind his office.

“All right, ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “Our work, what we all came here for, will be starting day after tomorrow. It’s going to be, in many ways, very much like what most of us here were doing in Munich, earlier this year. The difference is going to be that very few if any of the people we are going to be interviewing are DPs. On the contrary, almost all of them are going to be Germans, many of them having had ties of some sort to one of the armed services and/or to various Staatsbilden of the Third Reich, and even those few who will not be Germans will have worked closely with certain German projects which employed the others, the actual Germans.

“These three distinguished gentlemen”—he indicated the three civilians, seated side by side as always since their arrival, all puffing away at their pipes—“will be called Smith, Jones and Doe, and one of them will be a member of each of the three interrogation teams. Buck, you and Judy will be teamed with Doe. Hugo, you and Ned with Jones. You two teams will be dealing only with Germans.

“Milo, you and Betty and Vasili will, with Smith, handle all of the non-Germanic subjects. You, Milo, will also be in charge of all three teams, the facility and so forth. You’ll probably need an exec to take some of the load off. You can have any officer not presently in this room. Who do you want?”

“How about Emil Schrader, general?” replied Milo quickly. “He and I worked together years ago. I was a first sergeant and he was my field first; he’s a good man.”

Barstow nodded. “So be it. You’ve got him as of now. It’ll be up to you to brief him, though. He’s a good choice for this, too, come to think of it, Milo. He speaks excellent German and can be used to fill in on either Team One or Team Two in a pinch.

“You ten and Schrader had better go back to the BOQ and pack up. You’ll all be moving this afternoon to the small compound on the other side of the post; it’s that facility of which you will have charge, Milo. You’ll have our own Brunhild and four of her WAACs for your headquarters staff, plus Schrader, of course. There’s a small mess hall and hot food will be trucked in to you three times each day, but keeping the place and the trays clean will be up to you and your WAACs.

“This all is being done this way solely for the purpose of isolating you and your interviewees, of making damned certain that as few people here ever see them as possible. They’ll be brought into your compound in sealed transport and they’ll leave in exactly the same way. Under no circumstances are any of them to leave that compound at any time until you have finished with them.”

“Uhh, sir . ..“ said Betty hesitantly. “What about a medical emergency? What happens then?”

Barstow nodded once.“A very good point, Betty. In such a case, whatever the hour, you will ring me up and I will send or bring personnel appropriate to the situation you describe from the dispensary, out here.”

“What kind of billets are we drawing, sir?” asked the woman called Judy.

Barstow nodded again. “There’s an old CCC-type barrack building with a detached latrine that the WAACs will have, and another which will house your subjects. There is one three-bedroom bungalow that will be the billet of the three doctors and two-bedroom ones for the rest of you; how you pair off is your business.”

“Are we all going to be locked up day and night in that compound, too, general?” Hugo demanded in his thick Westphalian accent.

Barstow shook his head.“No, not at all, Hugo. Mjlo, Schrader and Sergeant Stupsnasig will have keys to the gate and to the control box for the fence power. The compound is designed more with the aim of keeping unauthorized people out of it than of keeping you all in. But, Hugo, and all the rest of you, too, hear me and hear me well. No one of you will have fire-arms, while the outside guards will have them, along with the orders to use them should any person try to go over or under or through the wire or the gate. This is no makework we’re doing here, it is an operation of earthshaking importance to the Army, the nation and the world.”

Barstow’s voice had risen, become quite adamant, as he spoke the last sentence. Now he lowered his speaking voice. “There are going to be, as I said, similarities in the conduct of this operation to our previous operation in Munich, but there are going to be glaring dissimilarities, too. In Munich, one of our primary functions was that of finding out, of unmasking, former SS, members of the Nazi Party, bureaucrats, non-German collaborators and the like who were trying to pass themselves off as innocent, abused displaced persons.

“In this operation, on the other hand, it will not be up to any of the military interviewers to make value judgments on the interviewees. The doctors, alone, will make the decisions as to just how useful the individuals will be, and their decisions will be all based upon other things than the politics or the former military activities or affiliations of the subjects in question.

. “Those of you who were combat officers or active operatives with General Donovan may dislike some of our new subjects instantly, on first meeting, subconsciously recognizing them as the Enemy. But you all are just going to have to force your conscious to override your subconscious, for the old war is done and now a new one has begun for our nation, our way of life, and, like it or not, these subjects will be allies in this new war, potentially very valuable allies indeed, and they must at all times be treated as such, no matter how they may have behaved in the past, how they behave now or how you may feel about them and their past deeds, gutwise.”

“In other, plainer words, general,” said the man called Buck, dryly, “you are setting us up here to coddle and kowtow to a passel of Nazi and quisling war criminals, right? Men who would likely be, rightly be, shot or hung or at least imprisoned did they remain in Europe, right?”

Barstow shook his head. “You’re not very good at following orders, Buck, are you? Didn’t I just say that none of you are to make any value judgments based upon the supposed deeds or misdeeds of our incoming subjects? You’ve been with me for some time, and, frankly, I’d expected more professional conduct from you.

“I reiterate, ladies and gentlemen: the Second World War is over, done; the initial skirmishings of the new war are already commencing, but not easily visible yet. The subjects who are coming in to us have the potential, many of them, to be extremely valuable to us, to the United States of America and all other free people everywhere, to be of great help in thwarting or defeating the totalitarian aims of the new enemy.

“It has been said that the art of politics makes for exceedingly strange bedfellows. Well, the art of modern warfare makes for even stranger ones, I assure you all. Believe me, I was shocked, too—shocked to the very core of my being—when my superiors gave me this assignment and told me what my people and I would be doing on this Operation Newhaven, but as I already knew and knew well, the danger, the deadly peril, we all face whether or not we know it, I could immediately grasp the necessity of salving over old prejudices and accepting former enemies as respected allies if not as friends. You, Buck, and all the rest of you must follow my lead and do the same. If any of you feel that you cannot, for whatever reason or none, tell me now and I will replace you before any of the operation has started. Well . . . ?”

Milo and Betty wound up sharing a bungalow with Buck and Judy. Buck was a compact, wiry man a bit under average height, with thin, brown hair and gray eyes flecked with green. Always graceful, he was capable of moving as silently and as swiftly as a cat, in some of his ways reminding Milo of certain of the traits of Jethro Stiles. His English had aspects and sounds of Britain, but his Hochdeutsch and his French were both flawless and accentless.

Judy was a little taller than Buck. She was round-faced, rosy-cheeked, with thick hair of a chestnut hue. Her arms and legs were thick, but her body was well proportioned, her teeth white and even and her hazel eyes thick-lashed. In a dirndl, she would have looked the very picture, thought Milo, of a strong, healthy, happy Bavarian peasant woman. And her Hochdeutsch was sprinkled well with the accents and idioms of Bavaria and Westphalia.

Milo was certain that Buck and Judy were in love, but theirs was an easygoing, relaxed relationship, with little or no public traces of touchings to advertise their emotional attachment one to the other. Back in Germany, he had not known either of the two of them any better than he had then known Betty. Back in Germany, indeed, Milo had spent the most of his nonduty time alone—reading avidly of both English and German books, anything onto which he had been able to lay hands, sipping schnapps and whisky and cognac and wines, trying to wind down to near-normalcy after the long months of privation, squalor, combat, fear and sudden death. Now he was getting to know these coworkers as housemates and friends.

The work they all were doing with the mostly German interviewees had progressed smoothly to date, sixteen men having passed through their hands thus far—fourteen Germans, one Norwegian and one of Rumanian origin. The three doctors had passed on twelve of these men to whatever came after this Operation Newhaven. Barstow had mentioned in an oblique manner that those not passed on were to be speedily repatriated to whatever internment camps they had originally been plucked from and left to whatever fates their wartime activities had earned them from the victorious allies.

On a night when Milo and Betty and Buck and Judy sat in the parlor of the shared bungalows, chatting and drinking and smoking, three new subjects were occupying the tar-paper barrack, their screenings to begin in the morning. This was the smallest number to arrive to date, and all of this lot were German, or listed themselves as such. Earlier in this evening, the four house mates, along with Emil Schrader and Hugo, had listened for a while to the conversations of the three via the microphones well hidden in the subject barrack and latrine, now they and Schrader sat discussing what the three men had said and the thus-revealed personalities of the men, themselves.

“This Hizinger,” asked Milo, “what do you make of him, Emil?”

“Clearly the leader of this bunch. A born leader and accustomed to command, I’d say, too. He may well be a German intellectual, but he’s clearly not a civilian one; he walks like a soldier, he talks like a soldier and he behaves like a Prussian officer of the alte Garde. He puts me in mind of an SS Panzer officer we captured in southern France—hard as nails, tough-minded and so damned convinced that he was right that nothing would or could ever shake his beliefs. That Untersturmfuhrer was from the same part of Germany my own folks came from, too, and after I’d come to talk with him for a while I could almost’ve come to like him, but then he come to get ahold of a carbine, some-way, and shot Lieutenant Mallow and I had to blow his head off with my pistol. I think Hizinger over there is just the same kind of Nazi fanatic.”

Milo nodded and turned to the others. “Betty, Buck, Judy?”

“Emil is right,” said Betty, “Herr Hizinger has got Nazi and SS written all over him. He seems very intelligent, very voluble and well educated, very precise and methodical, but it’s clear that he was no civilian specialist at whatever our three scientists—Smith, Jones and Doe—are interested in; no, he was a military man, all the way, probably from birth. I’d give odds that his real name, his patronymic, has a ‘von’ preceding it, Milo.”

“Yes,” agreed Buck. “You know, what I think is that this Hizinger got wind of what was going on and thought he might have the ability to pass himself off as a scientist and thus escape Germany, Europe and his just deserts for whatever he may have done in service to Hitler, the Party and the Fatherland.”

While Betty and the others had been talking, Judy had just sat in silence, biting her lips and wringing her hands. Now she spoke. “Look, if anyone here in this room has real reasons for hating and despising the Nazis, it’s me. But there is this, too, to be considered and not ever forgotten. Not all Germans were Nazis, not all German soldiers were Nazis, not even all German officers were Nazis. There were even SS men who were not Nazis or even Germans, for that matter. Whether this Hizinger was a scientist or a soldier or both or neither, he deserves to be judged just as objectively as we judged all of the men who came before him and will come after him. If he is a Prussian—and I doubt that he is, he doesn’t have that accent—that is not at all his fault. Who has choice in where he is born?

“I do not in the least like this dirty business of listening to the conversations and private acts of our subjects without their knowledge or leave, Milo. Yes, I know, you are going to say that the general says that it is necessary to do such things for the good of the nation, but reflect, if you all will—this is precisely the excuse used by Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and every other dictator to legalize even the most heinous and unspeakable acts against individuals and groups.

“After this exchange, tonight, I suggest, in the pursuit of being fair and truly objective, that Herr Hizinger be turned over to Team Two. Let Hugo, Ned and Dr. Jones determine his true status-to-be.”

The next morning, Milo did turn Hizinger over to Hugo, giving the subject called Faber to Team One and the one called Gries to Team Three, with Emil Schrader filling in for him in his absence. He felt a need to confer with Barstow, not because of what Judy had said as much as because of the way she had said it, and also partially because of things not heard but felt, sensed.

Barstow ushered Milo back into the small window-less, soundproofed conference room, closed and locked the door, and offered Scotch and a cigar. When he had heard it all, he carefully nudged the ash from off the end of hispuro and raised his bushy eyebrows. “Milo, in any operations of the kinds I’ve been running, the chance of innocently harboring one or more jokers in the deck is a distinct possibility, but if we do have such here, I don’t think Judy is the one. I’m going to tell you why, but what I say is for your ears alone—you don’t repeat it to anyone, not even to Betty. Verstehen?

“Of course, you’ve noted how close Buck and Judy are? They’ve been together for a long time and through particular hell. They’re what is left of a team of three people, the third of whom was Judy’s husband. They were not really military, they worked for another group and worked in France for quite some time before D-Day and after, successfully passing themselves off as French.

“After the landings, as the Allied armies got closer, Judy’s husband must have gotten a little too cocksure. He stayed on the air long enough one night for the Germans to finally triangulate the location of his transmitter. When the Gestapo and Wehrmacht burst in, they caught both Judy and her husband, and very nearly Buck and a member of the underground.

“At that particular time, Milo, maquis units were shooting German soldiers in the countryside and underground types were doing the same thing in the very streets of Paris while the German Occupation Command was debating just how and when to start to demolish Paris as ordered by Hitler himself. The German forces at the front were fighting like hell and still getting pushed farther and farther back, day by day. In that aura of pessimism and facing the specter of approaching defeat, the Gestapo was become exceedingly vicious, frantic to obtain information that might help to briefly stave off or even slow down Armageddon.

“The things that were done first to Judy’s husband, then to Judy herself, were unprintable, unspeakable, almost unthinkable to any sane, normal human being. Townspeople said that their screams could be heard even through the five-foot-thick stone walls of the seventeenth-century building the Gestapo was using for a headquarters and prison in that area.

“By the time Buck had gotten together enough men and arms, ammo and explosives, to blast his way into that complex and, after killing a number of Germans, rescue them, Judy was the only one left alive, and she was in a bad way.

“Two days later, elements of the American Second Army liberated the town and Judy was flown to a hospital in England. Buck went back to England, too, but only long enough to be teamed up with some new people and gotten into still-occupied Elsass—Alsace, as the French call it. I understand that they did a bang-up job there, too. Buck was recommended to me when the München operation was first being planned at SHAEF, in England. When I offered him a slot, he told me flat out that he would only come with me if Judy came with him, and I’ve yet to have reason to regret that I took them both on.

“As you’ve accurately guessed, Judy is a German. Although her family were aristocrats, the Great War transformed them into what we Americans would call ‘genteel poor.’ In her teens, she met and married the son of a wealthy, titled English house while the young man was pursuing a course of study at one of the great German universities. Despite the unholy, sophisticated barbarities committed by Gestapo perverts upon her and her Sate husband, Judy still is proud to be a German, and in light of the truly stupendous fight that Germany put up against impossible odds—a little country of only some sixty million people, total, taking on half the world . . . and nearly winning!—I can’t blame her, I’d guess that her outburst last night was simply an upswelling surge of national pride, Milo, nothing more sinister than that.

“Sodon’t worry anymore about Judy, but still keep me informed of any odd or unusual things you notice in the conduct of any of the rest of the group over there.

“And as far as Hizinger is concerned, that’s not his name, of course. He was one of Erwin Rommel’s favorite young officers. He was ordered back to Germany despite his and Rommel’s objections in order to do the other thing he does well, which is said to be a certain realm of higher mathematics. It’s considered that if he does agree to work with us, he’ll be a real prize.”

Outside, in Barstow’s office, he pressed a bottle of Scotch and a handful of cigars on Milo, saying, “Don’t worry so much, major . You’re doing a splendid job. Operation Newhaven is progressing marvelously, and my superiors are very pleased. Didn’t I tell you, back in Germany, in Mlinchen, that if you stuck with me you’dhave a sky’s-the-limit future in the Army? By the way, I’ve already put in paperwork on your lieutenant colonelcy, Milo.”

But Milo did continue to worry. He felt a vague sense of unease. And he soon was to find that he had good reason.