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by
Herman Wouk
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May 28, 2012 - February 19, 2021
The second time Victor Henry brought Pamela to the apartment, Fearing remarked, catching Pug alone for a moment in the hallway, “Aren’t you the sly one, Reverend Henry? She’s small, but saucy.” “She’s the daughter of a guy I know.” “Of course. Talky Tudsbury. Old pal of mine, too.” “Yes. That’s who she is. Her fiance’s an RAF pilot missing in action.” Fearing’s big knobby face lit in an innocent smile. “Just so. She might enjoy a little consolation.”
“Just asking. What do you hear from Rhoda?” “She misses me, New York stinks, she’s bored, and the weather is unbearably hot.” “Situation normal. Good old Rhoda.”
Once, early in September, when they were having a drink in her apartment and joking about this, Pug said, “ ‘Lechery, lechery—still wars and lechery—nothing else holds fashion.’ ”
The Fat Boy’s big try was not making much of a dent after all. Only along the burning Thames embankment was there a look of damage. So it seemed, in the view from Pamela’s balcony of the first all-out Valhalla attack.
Victor Henry said, “Pam, I honestly don’t think I was born to be shot down over Berlin in a British bomber. I’ll see you when I get back.” He telephoned Tillet, while the girl stared at him with wide angry eyes. “Ass!” she said. “Ass!”
33
Bare lamps in the ceiling blazed up. The bomber crews blinked and shifted in their chairs. Rolled up, the screen uncovered a green-and-brown map of Europe, and over it a sign in large red block letters: IT IS BETTER TO KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT AND LET PEOPLE THINK YOU’RE A FOOL, THAN TO OPEN IT AND REMOVE ALL DOUBT.
Pug opened the box and took out a roll of toilet paper. He glanced around at the expectant white amused faces. “I’m touched. But I don’t think I’ll be needing this, inasmuch as I’m already scared shitless.”
A mass of orange and red balls lazily left the ground and floated up directly at F for Freddie. They came faster. They burst all around, a shower of fire, a barrage of explosions. Pug felt a hard thump, heard the motor change sound, heard a fearful whistling. Icy air blasted at him. Fragments rattled all over the plane, and F for Freddie heeled over in a curving dive. Victor Henry believed that he was going to die. The plane shrieked and horribly shuddered, diving steeply. Both pilots were shouting now, not in panic but to make themselves heard, and through the frail plexiglass bubble Henry
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“It may be close at that, Admiral. We’re having a bit of trouble holding altitude. How’s your French?”
34
PAMELA had remained in London.
Her parents had been divorced before she was fourteen. Her mother had remarried, made a new life, and shut her out. Alistair Tudsbury had deposited her in schools while he travelled. She had grown up well-mannered, attractive, but almost wild, and had had several love affairs before she was out of her teens.
She had never met a man quite like Commander Henry: remote, taciturn, apparently an old-fashioned narrow professional, yet incisive and engaging. She had found him attractive from the start, and had come to like him more and more. Aboard ship, such attractions take on an unreal intensity, but usually fade fast on dry land. For Pamela the feeling had only grown stronger on seeing him again in Berlin. There she had sensed that Pug was beginning to like her, too. But the start of the war had broken their contact, except for the momentary encounter in Washington.
In wartime, as on board ship, relationships deepen fast. Nothing had yet happened between them. He had awkwardly put an arm around her while watching the German bombers come in; that was all. But Pamela now thought that, whatever the views and scruples of this very married man, she could go to bed with him if she pleased, and when she pleased.
Pamela didn’t in the least believe in Victor Henry’s morality. She thought it was a crust of cramping nonsense that stopped her from giving the lonely man and herself pleasure. But that was how he was. She was determined above all things not to upset or repel him; rather, to let matters take their course.
“What the Sam Hill!” he said. “Where and how did you get all this?” The salads, the bowl of fruit, the long bread, and the bottle of red wine made an attractive clutter on the small table. She was humming in the kitchen. She said, entering with steaks on two plates, “Oh, I’m a London alley cat, I know where to forage. Sit down and get at this. The oven’s really not very good, but I’ve done my best.”
He reached out and took her slim wrist. Her skin felt as sweet to his blunt fingers as her lips had felt on his mouth. “Pam, I’ve developed a high regard for a London alley cat, myself.” “I’m glad. I should be sorry to think that my great passion was totally unrequited. If you’ll unhand me, I’ll serve your strawberry tart and coffee. It’s getting on for six. Captain Vance was most insistent that you be at the embassy by six-thirty.”
What a world! What an idiocy in these Europeans to dump fire and explosives on each other’s habitations, built with such hard work! All things were washed clean, or at least he was seeing them with a child’s clear inquisitive eye—a shiny automobile, a shop-window dummy, a box of red geraniums on a windowsill. He noticed that the sidewalk gave off tiny sparkles in the late sunlight. The American flag fluttering from the second story of the embassy struck Pug with a pang of pride. Its red, white, and blue seemed so rich, its slow waving so full of majesty, that a sixty-piece orchestra might have
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Nothing like this had happened to him in twenty-five years, and he had not expected it ever to happen again, so recognizing it had taken him this long. Nothing could be simpler. He had fallen in love.
Blinker Vance brought the four men to a quiet second-floor conference room panelled in cherry wood. He left. They sat themselves at one end of a long polished table lined with twenty chairs upholstered in blue leather. Admiral Benton took the head, with the two generals on either side of him and Pug below the younger-looking one.
“These gentlemen and I have been waiting for you to get back from that blamed fool excursion. This is General Anderson, and General Fitzgerald here is Army Air Corps.” Benton glanced at the others. “Well, shall we get at it?”
“So this man Vance told us,” put in Anderson. “Well, they’ll fill ’em. Now, Captain Henry, you’ve been an observer here, and you’ve been sending optimistic reports to the President recommending all-out assistance.” “Not wholly optimistic, sir, but recommending full assistance, yes.” “Possibly you’re a bit out of touch with what’s happening on the other side of the water. So let me read you something. It’s from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a red-hot New Deal paper.” He took out his wallet, unfolded a neatly cut newspaper clipping, and intoned through his nose: “ ‘Mr. Roosevelt today committed
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After a silence, Admiral Benton said mildly, folding his hands over his stomach, “Well, Pug, I’ve told these gentlemen that I know you, and that any dope you put out is reliable. We’ve got a big responsibility. We’ve been handed one hell of a hot potato. So get down to the short hairs. What makes you think the British will keep fighting, after the way the French folded? No horseshit now.” “All right, Admiral.” To begin with, Victor Henry said, the British had made better use than the French of the time between the wars. He described their scientific advances, the strength and disposition of
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“Now wait, Pug, this RDF you’re so hot on,” Benton interposed, “that’s nothing but radar, isn’t it? We’ve got radar. You were with me aboard the New York for the tests.” “We haven’t got this kind of radar, sir.” Victor Henry described in detail the cavity magnetron. The senior officers began glancing at each other. He added, “And they’ve even started installing the stuff in their night fighters.” General Fitzgerald sat straight up. “Airborne radar? What about the weight problem?” “They’ve licked it.” “Then they’ve developed something new.” “They have, General.”
“Very well. Suppose they do hold out? Suppose Hitler doesn’t invade? What’s their future? What’s their plan? What can they do against a man who controls all Europe?” “Well, I can give you the official line,” Victor Henry said. “I’ve heard it often enough. Hold him back in 1940. Pass him in air power in 1941, with British and American production. Shoot the Luftwaffe out of the skies in 1942 and 1943. Bomb their cities and factories to bits if they don’t surrender. Invade and conquer in 1944.”
“General, I’ve just been out pounding Germany from the air. Twenty-four bombers went on the mission. Fifteen returned. Of those, four didn’t bomb the right target. Navigation was off, they had operational troubles, there were German decoy fires, and so forth. Two didn’t bomb any target. They got lost, wandered around in the dark, then dropped their bombs in the ocean and homed back on the BBC. In one mission they lost a third of the attacking force.”
“How do you think it’s going to go?” General Anderson said brusquely to Henry. “Sir, I think sooner or later a couple of million men will have to land in France and fight the German army.”
VICTOR HENRY DETACHED TEMPORARY DUTY LONDON X RETURN BERLIN UNTIL RELIEVED ON OR ABOUT 1 NOVEMBER X THEREUPON DETACHED TO PROCEED WASHINGTON HIGHEST AIR PRIORITY X REPORT BUPERS FOR FURTHER REASSIGNMENT X
The President’s hasty pencilled scrawl was on a yellow legal sheet this time.
Pug— Your bracing reports have been a grand tonic that I needed. The war news has been so bad, and now the Republicans have gone and put up a fine candidate in Wendell Willkie! Come November, you just might be working for a new boss. Then you can slip the chain and get out to sea! Ha ha! Thank you especially for alerting us on their advanced radar. The British are sending over a scientific mission in September, with all their “wizard war” stuff, as Churchill calls it. We’ll be very sure to follow that up! There’s something heartwarming about Churchill’s interest in landing craft, isn’t there?
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“Our paths will cross again.” “Oh, no doubt. But I firmly believe that Ted’s alive and is coming back. I may well be a wife next time we meet. And that will be far more proper and easy all around. All the same, today was one of the happiest of my life, and that’s unchangeable now.” Victor Henry was finding it difficult to go on talking. The sad, kind tones of this young voice he loved were choking his throat; and there were no words available to his rusty tongue to tell Pamela what he felt. “I’ll never forget, Pamela,” he said awkwardly, clearing his throat. “I’ll never forget one minute of
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Rhoda had slept with Dr. Kirby on the trip to Connecticut. That was the shadowy and unpleasant thing Pug half discerned. Proverbially the cuckold is the last to know his disgrace; no suspicion crossed his mind, though Rhoda’s words were incautious and revealing.
35
Göring had long ago announced that if a single British bomb ever fell on Berlin, the German people could call him Meyer. The evidence of Meyer’s shortcomings was off limits.
The Germans had balled themselves into one tight fist. The little tramp had his “one Reich, one people, one leader,” that he had so long screeched for. Victor Henry, a man of discipline, understood and admired the stiff obedient efficiency of these people, but their mindless shutting out of facts disgusted him. It was not only stupid, not only shameless; it was bad war-making. The “estimate of the situation”—a phrase borrowed by the Navy from Prussian military doctrine—had to start from the facts.
“He finishes in December, if they don’t throw him out sooner.” Again the laugh. “They won’t. Briny is actually very surefooted, you know. I’ll be back by December. Please write and tell him that. Maybe a letter from you will get through.” “It will. I’ll write today.”
Dr. Meusse put in, “We are sinking ships now at a rate we never reached until the best months of 1917. Do you know that?” “I know that,” said Captain Henry. “And as I said to Ernst the other day, that’s when we came in.” The silence on the terrace lasted a long time. Then Wolf Stöller said, “And that is the world tragedy that must not occur now, Victor—Germany and America, the two great anti-Bolshevik powers, going to war. The only victor will be Stalin.”
These three old comrades were mightily fond of intellectual talk, and kept pressing on Henry books from Stöller’s library that came up in conversation. He tried to read them at bedtime. After fifteen minutes, night after night, he fell into deep restful slumber. Germany’s strange literature usually had that effect on Victor Henry. He had long since given up trying to understand the fantastic seriousness with which Germans took themselves, their “world-historical” position, and every twist and turn of their murky history since Charlemagne. From a military standpoint, all this river of ink about
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Uniformed Wehrmacht officers, at a table apart, glanced with contempt at the civilians and gave the scurrying waiters curt commands. Otherwise it was business as usual under the New Order, except for the absence of Jews. The Jews had been the busiest travellers in Europe, but on this train none were to be seen. In the Berlin-Lille express, the Third Reich looked a good bet to last a thousand years, by right of natural superiority and the ability to run things. Trains headed the other way, jammed with cheerful young troops, gave Victor Henry his first solid hint that the invasion—if it had ever
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General Jagow held up a long skinny hand in a long gray glove as Pug started to protest. “I am not a Nazi. I came into the Luftwaffe from the army. Don’t ever think anti-Semitism is a German problem. All over Europe the attitude toward the Jews is exactly the same. The Führer has been realistic in spelling it out, that’s all. Some of his Party followers have committed silly excesses. But you can’t indict a whole people for the crudeness of a few. Those American Jews around Roosevelt make the same mistake that our Nazi fanatics do.”
“If we can be of further service in the matter of Flight Lieutenant Gallard, let us know,” Jagow said, stripping off a glove to offer a damp cold hand. “Auf Wiedersehen, Captain Henry. If I have been of any small service, all I ask is this. Wherever duty takes you, remember there are two sides to the war, and that on both sides there are men of honor.”
“Now, Victor—and remember this is under four eyes—we do have such friends. Not many. A few. Patriotic Americans, who see the realities of the war instead of the propaganda of the Jews—and of Churchill, who is just an adventurous megalomaniac and has never been anything else. We hope you’ll be another such friend.”
“Victor, Hermann Göring has established in Switzerland some anonymous, untraceable bank accounts. His resources are enormous. These bank accounts, after the war, will be the rewards of Germany’s honorable friends, who have said the right word in the right place for her when it mattered. It is nothing like espionage, where you pay some sneaking wretch for papers or information he hands over. This is simple gratitude among men of honor, a sharing of benefits in the day of victory. If our friends want the accounts, they will be there. If they don’t—” Stöller shrugged and sat back. “I’ve said my
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“That’s interesting,” he said. “Extremely interesting.” After a measurable pause he went on, “Well! First, please tell me, if you can, what made you, or General Jagow, or Field Marshal Göring, think that I might be receptive to this approach. That’s highly important to me, and to this whole matter, I assure you.”
“As for me, I know your exquisite wife is a very sympathetic and friendly woman. My guess is that she has always reflected your real feelings, more than your correct words. I trust I’m right.”
Victor Henry nodded. “I see. That’s a clear answer, Herr Stöller. Here’s mine, under four eyes. Please tell Field Marshal Göring, for me, to stick his Swiss bank account up his fat ass.”
“I’m an officer in the United States Navy. Unless I misunderstood you, or you want to withdraw it”—Victor Henry’s voice hardened almost to a bark—“you’ve asked me, in his name, to commit treason for money.”
“See here, old top,” Stöller said gently, “we Germans are at war, surrounded by foes. If the United States is ever in such a situation—and history takes strange turns—you may one day make an approach like this to a man you respect, and find it as difficult as I have. I think your response has been naïve and wrong. Your phrasing was coarse. Still, the spiritual quality was there. It was an honorable reaction. I have absolutely no hard feelings. I trust you have none. I place a high value on your goodwill, Victor. And we did have good times at Abendruh, didn’t we?”
The first new thought that came to him was that, with his grossly insulting words and acts, he might have murdered Ted Gallard.
