PART III

Chapter 7.

STEWART: BEAR LEACH

Northumberland Manor occupied a large campus in West Hartford, a collection of white clapboard buildings containing various facilities for the elderly, everything from independent housing to hospice, and the several other stages in between as decline rolls downhill to death. Arriving early, I awaited Justice Barrington Leach, my father's long-ago lawyer, in the front room of the Manor's nursing home. With its wall-to-wall robin's-egg carpeting and nice Ethan Allen furnishings, the place presented itself as far superior to the usual holding tank for the barely living.

Given everything it had taken to get to Leach, including passing myself off as a lately orphaned only child, I sat there with high expectations. Leach, after all, was a longtime legal hotshot, whose skills had somehow allowed him to erase his trial loss and persuade General Teedle to revoke my father's conviction and prison sentence. Thus, I couldn't help being disappointed when a nurse's aide pushed the old man into the room. Overall, Justice Leach gave the physical impression of a fallen leaf crisped down to its veins. His spotty bald head listed, barely rising above the back of his wheelchair, and the hose from an oxygen tank was holstered in his nose. He had been so whittled by age that his sturdy Donegal tweed suit, perhaps older than I am, was puddled around him, and his skin had begun to acquire a whitish translucence which signaled that even the wrapper was giving out.

Yet none of that mattered once he started talking. Leach's voice wobbled, just like his long hands on which the fingers were knobbed from arthritis, but his mind moved along quickly. He remained fully connected to this world. To say Barrington Leach still took great joy in life would be not only hackneyed, but probably inaccurate. The Justice's wife and his only child, a daughter, were both dead of breast cancer. His three adult grandkids lived in California, where they had been raised, and he had resisted their heartsore efforts to move him from Hartford. As a result he was largely alone here, and he suffered from Parkinson's, among several other ailments. I doubt he found life either comfortable or amusing most of the time.

But none of this inhibited his intense curiosity about human beings. He was a gentle wit, and full of a generous acceptance for people's foibles as well as reverent wonder at our triumphs. I come easily to envy, but with Barrington Leach, when I mused, as I always did, about why I couldn't be more like him, it was with pure admiration. He was inspiring.

My first order of business with Leach was to set the record straight, not about my mother and sister, naturally, but rather about what to call me. He had written to me as "Mr. Dubin," but in 1970, I had reverted to the name my grandfather had brought from Russia and have been known as Stewart Dubinsky throughout my adult life. The story of that change, too involved to repeat here now, made a fairly poignant introduction to my relations with my father. Leach asked several searching questions before going on to inquiries about my work, my parents, and the course of my father's life. He was so precise, and cautious in a way, that I feared at first that he knew I'd lied about Mom, but it turned out he had something else in mind.

"You know, Stewart, I think you mean to honor your father's memory, but I would be remiss if I didn't issue a caveat. If you go forward, you could very well discover things that a loyal son might not enjoy finding out. I've always believed there is great wisdom in the saying that one must be careful what to wish for."

I assured him I had reflected about this. After hanging around courtrooms for a couple of decades, I knew that the odds were that my father had been convicted of a serious crime for a reason.

"Well, that's a good start," Leach said. "But the particulars are always worse than the general idea. And that assumes you even have a general idea. You may find, Stewart, you've been running headlong with blinders."

I told him I was resolute. Whatever happened, I wanted to know.

"Well, that's one problem," said Leach.

"What are the others, Justice?"

"Bear' is fine." I was never sure if the nickname had to do with his physique as a young man--he was anything but bearlike now--or, more likely, was merely a convenient shortening of his given name, adopted in an era when being 'Bare' would have been too risque. "I confess that I've spent quite a bit of time, Stewart, since you contacted me, wondering what call I have to tell you any of this. I feel a good deal of fondness for David, even today. He was a fine young man, articulate, thoughtful. And it was his wish not to speak about this with anyone, a wish he apparently maintained throughout his life.

Furthermore, wholly aside from personal loyalties, I was his attorney, bound by law to keep his secrets.

"On the other hand, I have things of your father's, Stewart, a document of his, as I've mentioned, that belongs to you as his heir. I have no right to withhold it from you, and therefore, as to the matters disclosed there, I believe I am free to speak. That, at any rate, will be my defense when the disbarment proceedings begin." He had a prominent cataract in one eye, large enough to be clearly visible, but it could not obscure the light that always arose there with a joke. "But you and I must reach an understanding to start. I can't go beyond the compass of what's written. You'll find me able to answer most of your questions, but not all. Understood?"

I readily agreed. We both took a breath then before I asked what seemed like the logical first question, how Leach had been assigned my father's case.

"It was roundabout," he answered. "Throughout the war, I had been in the sanctuary of Eisenhower's headquarters, first in Bushy Park outside London, and then later in 1944 at Versailles. These days, I'd be referred to as a 'policy maker.' I had been the District Attorney here in Hartford and certainly knew my way around a courtroom, but my exposure to court-martials was limited to reviewing a few trial records that came up to Eisenhower for final decision, hanging cases most of them. However, your father's commanding officer, Halley Maples, knew my older brother at Princeton, and Maples made a personal appeal to my superiors to appoint me as defense counsel. I had very little choice, not that I ever regretted it, although your father as a client came with his share of challenges." That remark was punctuated with a craggy laugh.

At ninety-six, Bear Leach had been what we call an old man for a long time, at least twenty years, and he had grown practiced with some of the privileges and demands of age. He had been asked about his memories of one thing or another so often that, as I sometimes joked with him, his memoirs were essentially composed in his head. He spoke in flowing paragraphs. As we grew friendlier over the next several months, I brought him a tape recorder in the hope he would use it to preserve prominent stories of his life. But he was too humble to think he'd been much more than a minor figure, and the project didn't interest him. He was, as he always said, a trial lawyer. He preferred a live audience, which I was only too happy to provide.

"It was late April 1945 when I first came to Regensburg, Germany, to meet your father. Officers facing court-martial were traditionally held under house arrest pending trial, and your father was in the Regensburg Castle, where the Third Army was now permanently headquartered. This was a massive Schloss occupied for centuries by the Thurn and Taxis family, a palace as Americans think of palaces, occupying several city blocks. Its interior was somewhat baroque, with pillars of colored marble, Roman arches with lovely inlaid mosaics, and classical statuary. I walked nearly twenty minutes through the castle before getting to your father, who was restricted to a suite the size of this sitting room, perhaps larger, and full of marvelous antiques. In this splendor your father was going to remain jailed until the Army got around to shooting him. If you have a taste for irony, you can't do better than the United States military, let me tell you that." Leach smiled then in his way, a gesture restricted by age and disease, so that his jaw slid to the side.

"Your father was an impeccable man, nearly six feet as I recall, and the very image of an officer and a gentleman. He had a perfectly trimmed line mustache above his lip, like the film star William Powell, whom he resembled. From my initial sight of him, the notion that David Dubin had actually engaged in any willful disobedience of his orders, as was charged, seemed preposterous. But establishing that proved one of the most difficult propositions of my career.

"Because?"

"Because the man insisted on pleading guilty. Nothing unusual in that, of course. There are persons charged with crimes who understand they've done wrong. But your father would not explain anything beyond that. Any questions about the events leading up to his apparent decision to release Major Martin were met only with his declaration that it served no point to elaborate. He was very courteous about it, but absolutely adamant. It was a bit like representing Bartleby the Scrivener, except your father said solely 'I am guilty,' rather than 'I would prefer not to,' in response to any request for more information. I was forced to investigate the matter entirely without his cooperation. I learned quite a bit about your father's wartime experiences, but next to nothing about what had gone on between Martin and him.

"Eventually, I had an inspiration and suggested to your father that if what had transpired was so difficult to speak about, he at least ought to make an effort to write it all down, while matters were fresh. If he chose not to show the resulting document to me, so be it, but in the event he changed his mind, I would have a convenient means of briefing myself. He did not warm to the proposal when I made it, but, of course, he had little to do with his days. He enjoyed reading--he soon had me bringing him novels by the armful--but I took it that he, like many other soldiers, had been an inveterate writer of letters and that that outlet was no longer very rewarding for him. As I recollect, he had disappointed his fiancee, and had then horrified his family with the news of his current predicament. Apparently, producing a written account of what had led to these charges provided an agreeable substitute, and after his initial reluctance, he took up the task with ardor. Whenever I visited him in quarters he was chopping away on a little Remington typewriting machine which sat on a Louis XIV desk, yet another priceless antique, that wobbled with his pounding. About a month along, during a visit, I pointed to the sheaf of pages stacked at his elbow. It was over an inch by now.

"That's getting to be quite a magnum opus,' I said. 'Are you considering showing any of it to me?' I had been waiting for him to reveal the material in his own time, but with the hearing coming closer, I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to assimilate what clearly was turning into an imposing volume, especially if it opened up new avenues for investigation.

"Some days I think yes, Colonel,' he said to me, `and some days I think no.'

"And why "no"?'

"I don't believe it's going to help me.'

"Because I'd think poorly of you? Or accept your judgment of your guilt? You know well enough, Dubin, that nothing would prevent me from making a defense for you.' .

"I do. Reading this, Colonel, might satisfy your curiosity. And it will prove I'm right to plead guilty. But it won't change the result. Or make things any easier for you. More the opposite.'

"In weaker moments, I sometimes considered sneaking in and stealing the pages, but he was right that it was his ship to sink. But I kept after him about letting me see it. Each time he seemed to give full consideration to my points, and then, after due reflection, rejected them. And so we went to trial. David tendered a plea of guilty at the start. The trial judge advocate, the prosecutor, had agreed to drop the most serious charge in exchange, but he still went on to prove his case, which was commonplace in serious court-martials. This, of course, was a decided contrast to the usual criminal matter, where a guilty plea avoids a trial, and I couldn't quite accommodate myself to the difference. I cross-examined with a fury, because none of the accounts were consistent in any way with a soldier who would willfully abandon his duties. Very often, I retired for the night, thinking how well I had done, only to recall that my client had already conceded the validity of the charges.

"The Manual for Courts-Martial at that time--and now, for all I know--gave the accused the right to make an uncross-examined statement to the panel, immediately preceding closing arguments. The night before the hearing came to an end, I made my last effort to get your father to share his written account, urging him to consider submitting his memoir, or portions of it, to the court. My heart leaped when he came to the proceedings the next morning with what I judged to be the manuscript under his arm in two portfolios, but he kept them to himself. He made a brief statement to the court, saying simply that in releasing Martin he had meant no harm to the United States, whose service remained the greatest honor of his life. Only when the evidence was closed did he turn the folders over to me. It was meant as a generosity on his part, I think, to repay me for my efforts on his behalf, so that I could accept the result with peace of mind. He told me to read it all, if that was what I liked, and when I was done to return it to him. He said forthrightly that he was then going to set fire to the whole thing.

"Even at that stage, I remained hopeful that I'd find something recorded there that I might use to reopen the case. The court was recessed on Sunday. I spent the whole day reading, morning to night, and finished only instants before I arrived for court at eight a. M. on Monday,"

"And what did it say?" I was like a child listening to campfire tales, who wanted only to know what children always do: the end of the story.

Bear gave a dry laugh in response.

"Well, Stewart, there aren't many tales worth telling that can be boiled down to a sentence or two, are there?"

"But did you use it?"

Most assuredly not."

"Because?"

"Because your father was right. He was a good lawyer. A very good lawyer. And his judgment was correct. If the court-martial members knew the whole tale, it would only have made matters worse. Possibly far worse."

"How so?"

"There were many complications," he said, many concerns. As I say, I was fond of your father. That's not just prattle. But a trial lawyer learns to be cold-blooded about the facts. And I looked at this as trial lawyers do, the best case that could be made and the worst, and I realized that nothing good was going to come from revealing this to the court. Your father's cause, in fact, could have been gravely prejudiced."

"You're not being very specific, Justice. What was so bad?"

Bear Leach, not often short of words, took a second to fiddle with his vintage necktie, swinging like a pendant from the collar of his old shirt, which, these days, gapped a good two inches from his wattled neck.

"When I read your father's account, I realized he had been the beneficiary of an assumption that the trial judge advocate might well regard as ill founded, once the underlying facts were better known."

I tumbled my hand forward. "You're being delicate, Justice."

"Well, it requires delicacy, Stewart, no doubt of that. I'm speaking to a son about his father."

"So you warned me. I want to know."

Leach went through the extended effort it required to reposition the oxygen in his nose.

"Stewart, your father was charged with willfully suffering a prisoner to escape. The evidence, in sum, was that Robert Martin had last been seen by several troops of the 406th Armored Cavalry in your father's custody. Your father admitted he had allowed Martin to go, freed him from his manacles and leg irons and saw him out of the bivouac. The escape charge took it for granted that Martin had fled from there. But what your father had written suggested a far more disturbing possibility, one whose likelihood was enhanced, at least in my mind, by your father's rigorous silence."

"-What possibility?"

"Now, Stewart, let me caution that this was merely a thought."

"Please, Bear. What possibility?"

Leach finally brought himself to a small nod. "That your father," he said, "had murdered Robert Martin."

Chapter 8.

DAVID: TEEM'S SECRETS

By the time Biddy and I had returned to the 18th from the Comtesse de Lemolland's, we found no one in General Teedle's tent. The MP outside said that both orderlies were off duty, and Teedle was surveying battalions. With time, I wandered down to the enlisted men's area again. The bombing at the Comtesse's had revived my curiosity about Billy Bonner's remark that I was investigating the wrong man.

The skies had closed in once more, leaving no chance for further air traffic. Freed from blackout restrictions, the men had built fires and were enjoying themselves amid the usual barroom atmosphere. Somebody had run Armed Forces Radio through a loudspeaker. Harry James was on Command Performance, and I stopped to listen as he blew his way majestically through "Cherry." It suddenly hit me how much I missed music, for which I'd once felt a yearning as keen as hunger. These days, that longing was dampened under piles of law books and by the frantic concentration required for seven-day weeks in court. Closing my eyes, for just one second, I caught the sure feel of Grace's waist beneath my hand while we were dancing.

I ran across Biddy unexpectedly. He was standing back with his camera, taking snaps of four men playing cards by lantern in a mess tent. They'd come inside to keep the invasion currency they were gambling with, French francs that had been printed in the U. S., from blowing off in the wind. Each man was straddling an empty cartridge case, while they used a crate emptied of bazooka rounds for a table.

"Jesus God almighty," one said. "Play a fucking card, won't you, Mickey. You're gonna be dead this time next month, and still wondering what you should have led for trump.), "Mortenson, don't talk like that."

"You think the Krauts are listenin?"

"No, but it's kind of like you're putting the evil , eye on me.

"Oh, shut your damn swill hole, Krautbait, will you, and play a card."

"Don't be a sorehead, Witkins."

"Yeah, take a bite of this."

"Several soldiers in line in front of me for that pleasure."

"Fuckin Mickey still ain't recovered from striking out with that Frenchy. Only because half the platoon had some ass with her and she still wouldn't come across for him."

"Half the platoon are doggone liars. That girl was a nice girl. I just wanted to buy her a Coke." "Coke ain't what you wanted her to swallow." "Geez, Mort, what kind of pervert are you?"

"Listen, kiddo, these French girls use their mouths.), "Not on me. That's strictly perverted."

"Would youse guys shut the fuck up. It's gonna be fuckin reveille by the time this slowpoke plays a card."

I enjoyed Tony Eisley, but there was none of this raw camaraderie among JAG Department officers. Not that I shared in it here. Twenty-nine was old to most of these boys, and the presence of an officer was unsettling, even resented. My visits to the enlisted men's quarters reminded me of coming home to DuSable from Easton, when neighbors asked about the "college man" in a tone that was not altogether admiring. I was going to make money, they thought. I was going to move away from there, and them. In the enlisted ranks these days, there were a fair number of college boys because early this year Congress had put an end to the Army Specialized Training Program that had sent recruits to college classes full-time. On the other end, a few enlisted men from the premobilization Army had been commissioned. For the most part, though, you might as well have put up signs over the enlisted men's and the officers' sides of camp that said POOR and RICH. I had not figured out yet why the Army thought discipline or any other military purpose was advanced by these disparities. Yet I knew, much as I had in basic, that here I was among the real soldiers. The generals' names might be remembered by historians, but it was these men who would fight the true war.

Emerging from the tent, I wandered for some time before I caught sight of Billy Bonner around a fire with several other soldiers, each of them holding a dark bottle of wine. Bonner clearly regarded me as the law and stopped with his arm in midair, causing two or three of his buddies to turn away, until I said, At ease."

We strolled off a few paces and I explained to Bonner that Teedle appeared to be gone.

"Oh, he'll be back. General likes his nights in his own tent." One of Bonner's smart-aleck looks accompanied the remark.

"Bonner, you don't seem to hold the General in high esteem."

"No, sir," he said. "He's as good a brass hat as this Army's got."

"But?"

Bonner shook his head and rolled his lips into his mouth, but I was persistent tonight. After quite a bit of cajoling, he finally motioned me farther from his companions.

"You didn't hear this here," said Bonner. He lifted the wine bottle again to stick his courage. "The bastard's a nelly."

"I'm sorry?"

"Teedle's a fruit, damn it.), "In what way?"

"In that way. Jesus, Lieutenant, don't you know what a queer is?"

"Good Lord, Bonner." I told him that if he wasn't potted, I'd have had the MPs take him off.

"Just remember you said that, Lieutenant. That's the reason no one does anything about him." "About what?"

"I already told you. The man's a homo. You know, the General, he's got his billet right there in his tent. Makes like it's so he can work around the clock. But that's not why. Damn bugger gets himself rip-roaring--worse than normal--and then sends Frank for this enlisted man or that. Always some boy who looks like he rolled out from under a hay bale, too, strapping kids from the country, blond-haired. I'm dismissed when they get there. Now and then, I come back in the morning, those poor boys are still around. Some, God save them, they're sleeping like lambs. But there must have been a few to put up a fight, 'cause the General, he's had some damage on him, a shiner once that wouldn't go away for a week. I'll tell you, Lieutenant, I've been there, and two or three of those boys come out--there isn't a thing those Krauts could do to them that would be worse. His own damn CO. You can just see how bewildered these kids are. They don't know nothin anymore.,, I wasn't sure I'd ever heard a more revolting story.

"Why, the bloody bastard," I said. "And haven't you brought this to the attention of an officer?"

"Well, I'm talking to you, Lieutenant. General Patton hasn't come by to chew the cud lately. But who's to say I didn't make this up? None of these boys care to discuss it, not the ones who like it, and especially not the ones who don't. I thought that the fellow who socked the General in the eye, soldier named Lang, I figured he might have a word to say, but his sergeant wouldn't even hear about it. Wasn't getting his private in a swearing match with that star, not about something like this, not in this man's Army. But maybe you fellas can loosen tongues. I don't know boo about Captain Martin," Bonner said. "But I'd say if Teedle wants a court-martial so bad, get started with him."

At 0730, when I came by, General Teedle was in his tent, speaking with his G-3 Major Michaels. As the operations officer, Michaels would not have had much to do lately, but today he had laid out several large battle maps on the General's desk. This was work, planning combat movements moment by moment, sequence by sequence, in which I'd excelled in infantry officer training at Fort Benning. At this stage, before the bullets flew, it was an exercise of pure intellect, a cross between chess and playing with tin soldiers, but the deadly reality of these decisions was manifest in the intensity of both men. Seeing them, it was obvious that new stores of fuel and ammo were finally on the way. The 18th's R & R was going to end shortly.

As I waited between the tent flaps, I found myself turning over Bonner's accusation while I scrutinized Teedle, with his cock-robin posture and his rosy drunkard's hue. The very notion of the General's conduct had wrenched me awake several times during the night. Eventually, I'd settled back to the practical problem of what to do. Because I liked Billy Bonner, I'd taken him at his word. But God only knew all the reasons he might be lying. Finally, near 4:00 in the morning, I resolved that I would simply wait for a private moment with Colonel Maples and pass the word to him. Sometimes the Army's long chain of command was not all bad. If a problem was big enough, you could hand it to somebody else.

Even so, I had no confidence that I wouldn't break into a visible sweat when Teedle was finally ready to see me. I was only grateful that Bonner was not yet on duty so I wasn't obliged to meet his eye.

"So how was Charming Bob?" Teedle asked me, when I saluted before his desk. "Charming, eh? Did he entertain you like visiting royalty?"

More or less."

"Have his girlfriend flirt with you, too? She's as clever as Martin, you know. She's batted her eyes at several folks I've sent down there. Anything that works, with those two." Bonner's remarks had been enough that my mind hadn't worked its way back very often to Gita Lodz. Nonetheless, Teedle had his intended effect of deflating me a bit, by revealing that I was not the first of his emissaries on whom Mademoiselle Lodz had 'settled her candid look and told them, one way or the other, how interesting they were. On the other hand, I was hardly surprised that a woman who'd raise her skirt for a debater's point wasn't shy around other men. For whatever reason, though, I felt some need to stick up for her.

"I wouldn't say she batted her eyes, General."

That surprises me, Dubin, handsome young fellow like you." He gave me a wry look, chin lowered. Under the circumstances, Teedle's assessment nearly -made me jump.

"I'm engaged, sir," I finally blurted.

"Good for you," he said, then asked what Martin had to say for himself. I had wondered how I was going to question General Teedle about Martin's claims--I had no right to demand answers from a general. But Teedle was far too voluble for that to prove a problem.

"That's horse hockey," he responded, when I explained that Martin said OSS had returned him from London late last month with directions to proceed into Germany. Showing Teedle Martin's papers stopped the General cold.

"I'll be a son of a bitch," he said, as he looked them over. "First I heard of this, I admit. All I know is that two weeks ago OSS told me I was finally free to send him packing. I'd asked several times before. I can't tell you why they changed their minds."

"General, the only way to resolve this is to get written confirmation from OSS about whether they have or haven't given Martin other orders."

"Written?" Teedle frumped around in his chair. "Christ, so that's the game! What an operator this prick is. The Army has never been any match for a good operator, Dubin, and Martin's one of the best. OSS isn't going to put anything on paper about Special Operations and send it near the front. Soldiers are taken prisoner, Dubin, but spies are shot. Martin knows all that. Messages from OSS are coded radio transmissions and 'DAR." Destroy after reading. The General thought for a moment. "All right. I'll take care of this."

He made a note. It would have been better practice for Colonel Maples or me to communicate with OSS, rather than Teedle, the complainant, but the General didn't seem in any mood to hear about further legal technicalities.

"What else?" said Teedle. "Let's hear all Martin's folderol now, so I can deal with it at once. I'm sure he had a few choice words for me."

I described the bombing. Teedle, to his credit, asked first about casualties.

"I'd heard something about that," Teedle said then. "General Roy from i9th TAC sent a signal yesterday evening. Says he had a squadron that lost its bearings and might have dropped on our troops. He was damn apologetic. If I'd known it was Martin, I'd have sent back a thank-you note."

"Yes, sir, well, I was there, too."

Teedle shot me a look riddled with irony. I could not have understood much about being a general, this look said, if I expected him to be concerned about that. He called out to Frank to have his staff JAG expedite the Comtesse's damage claims.

"So now what mud was Martin slinging? That I have control of the Army Air Corps and arranged to bomb him?"

"He allowed how it was possible."

Teedle answered with a crude laugh. "There are plenty at my rank, Dubin, who wouldn't bother with a Rule Thirty-five investigation when they had an insubordinate officer. They'd send Martin out personally to scout a hilltop guarded by a full German company and never lose a wink. But if that was my idea, I wouldn't have bothered going to HQ, would I?"

"Quite right, sir."

"Oh, don't give me that 'quite right' horseshit. If you don't believe me, say so."

"I think you're making sense, General." I did, too, but Teedle seemed far too complex to expect all his actions to line up with reason. Having a minute to think, I didn't understand why General Roy had apologized to Teedle. The 26th Infantry, not Teedle's unit, was under Roy's bombs. Unless Roy forgot they had changed positions. Which was possible, too.

"Any other calumnies Martin spread to which you'd like a response?"

"May I speak freely, sir?"

"You just accused me of trying to bomb one of my officers. I think you're doing a pretty fair job of it already, Dubin, but help yourself."

I knew better than to debate Teedle by pointing out what had been said previously and by whom. He was amusing himself with the verbal fencing, knowing he had rank on his side. For all his bluster, though, I didn't have the sense that Teedle was baiting me to be cruel, so much as test me. He was an unusual man. Forthright. Opinionated. Harsh. It did not stretch credulity, watching his mobile face, the way he veered between imperiousness and collegiality, and the frankness with which he dared you to dislike him, to think that Teedle's peculiarities extended to far darker realms, as Bonner maintained. But not necessarily to cruelty. Cruelty was a part of human nature, I suspect he would say. We were all mean. But he was no meaner than most.

"Sir, he says your desire to get rid of him is all about the fact that you think he's a Communist."

When he heard that, Teedle put his feet up on his footlocker beside him, while he smiled and stroked his chin. It was the first time I'd seen him pause to reflect, much as Martin had shied away from the same subject. All the while, he tossed his head and the little bit of red steel wool on top of it, with what appeared to be admiration. He could never anticipate Martin. That seemed to be the meaning.

"Well, first of all, Dubin, I don't think Martin's a Communist. I know he's a Communist. He was a party member in Paris when he went off to fight in Spain. That's one of the reasons OSS wanted him in the first place. Because of his influence with the Communist unions.

"But put that aside. I'm not charging the man with disagreeable politics. I'm charging him with insubordination and endangering other troops. Even in Russia, despite calling me Comrade General, if I told , him to get on his knees and kiss my ass, it's same as here, he'd have to do it."

Until that remark, I'd almost put Bonner out of my mind.

"Now whether his political background is the reason OSS agreed with me that it's time to send Martin elsewhere, nobody's said that, but frankly it's a pretty fair guess, and it makes sense. Stars and Stripes and the newsreels don't tell you everything our precious Russian allies are up to, Dubin. Do you know anything about what happened in Poland in August?"

I hadn't heard much and Teedle enjoyed filling me in. With the Soviet Army on their border, thousands of Polish patriots in Warsaw had risen up against the Nazis. Many on our side, Teedle said, believed that Stalin had encouraged the Home Army to think that the Soviets would storm into Poland and join them in expelling the Nazis. But the Russians held their ground. In fact, Stalin wouldn't even allow the Allies to assist the Poles by dropping arms and supplies. Instead the Home Army was crushed. Thousands were executed, shot on the spot or locked in buildings which were then set ablaze, while the Nazis leveled Warsaw's city center.

"And why, you might ask," said Teedle, "why would the Soviets do that? Why would the Russians not help the Polish resistance, since it could very well diminish their own losses in retaking Poland? Any ideas?"

Nothing came to me.

"Because, Dubin, a patriot who resists Nazi occupation is just as likely to resist the Soviets. Stalin got the Nazis to do his dirty work in Poland. At that point the Supreme Command, Roosevelt, Churchill, they all knew with absolute certainty what we are in for. Stalin might as well have let his air force put it in skywriting. They aim to conquer and occupy eastern Europe. They want to substitute Soviet rule for Nazi rule. And you're damn right, we don't need anybody operating in advance of our troops who might take the Soviets' side. Martin has many friends in the ranks of the Soviet Army: He fought for at least three different Soviet generals in Spain. And I'll wager a good sum that he'll give their orders a lot more heed than he's given mine. So yes, the fact that he's a Communist, that concerns me. It concerns me a good deal. Especially since he won't follow fucking orders. But if he weren't insubordinate, I wouldn't care if he went to sleep each night in red pajamas."

The General leaned forward with his fists on his desk. "Now, man to man, Dubin, tell me the truth, does that bother you? Because listening, I thought this asshole's complaint that I'm after him because of what he thinks about political matters--I had the impression that cut some ice with you."

I took my time, but I knew I wasn't going to back down from General Teedle. It wasn't required.

"General, there are a lot of Socialists who are loyal to the United States. And hate Stalin." Two of them happened to live in an apartment in Kindle County and had raised me. I didn't say that, as usual. Who I was and where I came from was my own secret. But Teedle was perspicacious enough to sense I spoke from experience.

"And are you one of them, Dubin? Is that what you're saying? Are you a loyal American Socialist?"

"I'm a loyal American, sir. I don't agree with the Socialists all the way. My problem with Socialists, sir, is that I've met quite a few who don't strike me as idealists. They hate the rich, because they envy them." Of course, socialism and how to react to it were topics of unending contemplation for me throughout high school and college. Easton had brought me into contact with many of the people my parents reviled, and Grace herself might belong in that category, even though she largely shunned her family's privileges. Between the two of us, one of our enduring discussions was about whether we were Socialists. There was so much that went wrong in the world that came down to being poor. But I never felt comfortable with the socialist morality of my parents, by which they were entitled to want more, while the rich were obliged to want less.

"Interesting, Dubin, very interesting." I had no doubt Teedle meant that. He flipped a pencil in the air and caught it. "You and I are polar opposites here. What I have against the Commies is what you seem to want more of. I dislike them, Dubin, because they're fools. Fools. Hapless idealists who want to believe that humans are inclined to share and think first about others, when that's never going to be the case. Never.

"And because they don't see us as we are, Dubin, don't see how brutal and selfish we are, because of that, Dubin, they think we can do without God. That's why I truly dislike them. Because they believe mankind can be good without His assistance. And once we go down that road, Dubin, we're lost. Utterly lost. Because we. need God, Dubin. Every man out here needs God. And not to save his soul or keep him safe, Dubin, none of that guff Do you know why we need God, why we must have Him, Dubin? Do you?"

"No, sir," I said. I was no surer of God than of socialism, but it was one of those moments when Teedle was on the boil again, full of a locomotive fury that forbade me to get in his way.

"Well, I'll tell you, Dubin. Why we need God. Why I need God. To forgive us," he said then, and with the words his anger almost instantly subsided to sadness. His tiny eyes were liquid and morose, and any doubts I'd had about Bonner vanished. "Because when this is over, this war, that's what we'll need, all of us who have done what war requires and, worse, what war permits, that's what we'll need, in order to be able to live the rest of our lives."

Teedle went for his canteen for the first time since I'd been there. When he lowered it, he dragged the back of his hand along his lips like a tough in a beer hall, but his little birdie eyes rimmed in pink remained on me, full of his sorry knowledge of the excesses of war and the bleak mystery of a God who, before forgiving, allowed those things to occur in the first place.

Chapter 9.

FURTHER ORDERS

In the two weeks following our return to Nancy, it became clear that the pace of the war was again quickening. Stores of gasoline had finally been received. Other field supplies--tents, blankets, jackets, two-burner stoves--remained short, but the General staff had swapped ten thousand gallons of no. io motor oil with the Seventh Army for an equal amount of diesel fuel, and it was a good bet that Patton's push into Germany would start whenever it arrived.

Yet even with the changed atmosphere, life in Nancy still seemed as relaxed as a summer resort, compared to my three days near the front. As Colonel Maples had anticipated, I had relished the excitement, and even felt some awkward satisfaction about surviving a bombing, never mind that it had been inflicted by our own forces. On the whole, my encounters with Teedle and Martin and Gita Lodz were probably the first moments since I had enlisted that fulfilled some of my hopes.

On November 3 an orderly appeared in court to tell me that Colonel Maples wanted me when we finished for the day. As soon as Klike promised to dispense with justice, I went upstairs, where the Colonel showed me documents that had been pouched from the i8th Armored Division. Teedle had ordered me to deliver them to Robert Martin.

HEADQUARTERS, 18TH ARMORED DIVISION

APO 403, U. S. ARMY

EXTRACT

1. Major Robert P. Martin, 04264192, is relieved of duty with this Division at once and assigned to Central Base Station, London, England. WP w/o delay reporting upon arrival to CO thereat for duty. Govt. T is authorized.

EDCMR: 1 November 1944

BY ORDER OF BRIGADIER GENERAL

TEEDLE

Official:

James Camello

Major AC

Ass't Adjutant cc:

Colonel Bryant Winters U. S. Army