Dry Bones (18 page)

“Can I get you a cup of coffee?” A question he hadn’t been asked on his last visit.

“I was afraid you’d say tea.”

“We’re an American company.” She smiled. Teeth straight and white. “I can offer you good strong American coffee.”

“Maxwell House?”

She cocked her head with a quizzical tilt. “Is that the only kind you like?”

“A sentimental favorite. I’ll drink whatever you’ve got.”

“We keep a special supply of Horn and Hardart’s.”

“I like it black.”

“That’s how you’ll have it.” Her accent was American but without any discernible regional twang or accent, a radio voice, generic like her smile, the kind that could sell coffee or insurance or toothpaste.

She sashayed ahead on a nice set of gams accented by
open-toed high heels with ankle straps, Joan Crawford–style. The office was how he remembered it: file cabinets against the far wall; main space occupied by two rows of sturdy, identical desks, three to a row, each with an Underwood, a silent telephone, and its own pile of papers.

“You came at a good time. The staff will be at a conference all morning. Now if you follow me, I’ll get you set up.” He resisted pointing out that, coincidentally, the staff had been away at a conference during his visit just prior to D-Day. A newspaper was opened on the desk nearest the door, as it had been, he recalled, on his last visit. He glanced down. It was the previous day’s
New York Standard
.

She led him to the same small office as on his last visit. On the table against the wall were a telephone and electric teakettle. “No need for this.” She removed the teakettle. “I’ll be back in a flash.”

He sat at the table. He lit a cigarette and rested it on a black ceramic ashtray with white lettering:
THE STORK CLUB.

On the wall above was a calendar with the logo of Columbia Casualty & Life, woman holding aloft a torch, an obvious imitation of the figure used by the Columbia film studio, probably borrowed by whoever created this set. Next to it was a picture of the late President Roosevelt, black ribbon draped across the top. Been dead six months. In view of General Donovan’s summary dismissal by President Truman and his disbanding of the OSS, it wasn’t likely the new president’s picture would replace the old.

The presidential face wore a wan smile that couldn’t hide its weariness. Anybody earned the right to look that way, FDR had.
Nothing to fear but fear itself.
His most-remembered line. But he’d learned differently. Long list of things to fear. Enemies foreign and domestic. Slander. Betrayal. Cerebral hemorrhage. He gave as good as he got. And wore out in the process. His death came as a surprise, but shouldn’t have. Those sad, sagging, tired eyes: dead tired.

“Black, Captain, as you requested.” She returned with a mug of steaming coffee.

He took a sip. A taste of New York. “Perfect. Like it’s fresh from the Automat.”

“That’s Columbia Casualty & Life: ‘You can rely on us.’” She flashed another all-American smile. “Another minute, I’ll have your party on the line.” She closed the door softly behind her.

He lit a second cigarette from the first, rubbed the butt in the ashtray, and picked up the phone on the first ring.

“Captain Dunne, I have you connected.”

He vainly searched for her name—Rita, Eleanor, Marge. Of course, she’d never given it. Peace might have arrived, but this was one of those corners where wartime protocols survived. “Thank you, Miss,” he said.

“Go ahead, gentlemen.”

“Fin?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Turlough Bassante. I’m glad you made it through.”

Dunne held the phone away from his ear and looked at the receiver. Maybe the only other name that would have surprised him more was if the speaker had identified himself as President Roosevelt.

“Fin, you there?”

“Yeah.”

“I said I’m glad you made it through.”

He hesitated, unsure how to answer. “Bunde didn’t.”

“I know. But he was lucky. It was quick.”

“Quick and dead, if you call that luck.”

“What was your name for luck? ‘
Totiusque
,’ wasn’t it?”

“You’ve got a good memory.”

“Van Hull and you made it through. The odds were stacked against you. Operation Maxwell may not rank among the most famous of OSS exploits, but your determination to avoid capture
was remarkable. Among connoisseurs of clandestine operations it’s, as the French say, a
succès d’estime
.”

“Not so much luck as Van Hull. He’s the reason we survived. Either way, it’s over and done.” Dunne didn’t say what he felt:
Who cares about one small, stupid, unsuccessful mission in a war that had been filled with them? What comfort would Bunde’s parents get from the details of their son’s broken neck?

Bassante didn’t push the discussion of Operation Maxwell any further. “I hope I’m not interfering with your schedule.” He sounded as if he were on the other side of the wall, not the Atlantic.

“I don’t have a schedule. I’m treading water till we’re ordered home.”

“It’s disintegration, pure and simple. Disgraceful. There are aspects that are disturbing.” Bassante talked as though it were only a few hours and not ten months between this conversation and their last. He reported that General Donovan had recalled him to the States right after the German surrender in hopes of him helping put together a proposal for a peacetime version of the OSS acceptable to the new president.

The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.
Dunne was tempted to quote it. Just a college-educated version of Murphy’s Law. True yesterday, today, tomorrow. But he listened in silence as Bassante went off on a monologue about the confusion and disarray that followed the new president’s order to disband the OSS.

A skeleton staff at the newly formed Strategic Services Unit—the rump of the OSS, Bassante related—was doing its best to maintain a semblance of order and see to basic intelligence gathering but records were being lost. Nobody seemed in control. The skulduggery in Washington seemed endless.

Dunne lit a third cigarette from the second. Bassante’s blather was a red light. He was coming at it sideways, with a crab’s
indirection. But you played the game long enough, you knew what’s next: simple, subtle pitches delivered with Dizzy Dean’s finesse. He was being set up for another mission.

Bassante seemed to intuit what he was thinking. “In short, it’s a mess.”

“Sounds it.”

“I thought perhaps I could call on you for help.”

“In
Washington
?” Dunne lifted the cigarette from the ashtray, exhaled at the calendar’s horizontal rows, each beginning with a Sunday. The closest one was three days from now. A pitch worth swinging at: “Count me in. I can be there by Monday. Easy.”

“No. Over there. I’m coming back at the end of the week.”

“To London?”

“Nuremberg. The war crimes tribunal is set to open on the twentieth. I’ll be in London for two days.”

“Nuremberg?” He’d made known his availability. Swung and missed at a fastball down the middle.
Strike one.

“Technically, I wear two hats. In addition to my work with Strategic Services, I’m assisting with the prosecution at the International Military Tribunal. General Donovan arranged it. After he was invited aboard by Justice Jackson, he had me transferred to the Counterintelligence Corps and took me with him.”

The combination of the two men—both former U.S. attorneys general, Jackson, an associate justice of the Supreme Court, and Donovan, wartime head of the OSS—generated a good deal of publicity. But as far as Bassante was concerned, it was a star-crossed arrangement. Jackson wanted a knowledgeable, pliable assistant. The general was looking to lead the prosecution. Jackson envisioned a trial based on documentation so exhaustive and specific it would be irrefutable. Donovan wanted a Tom Dewey–type assault on Luciano and the mob, shredding low-life thugs to pieces on the witness stand, cutting deals with one to get him to rat on another.

“I was there when they tried to work out their differences,”
Bassante remembered. “‘This isn’t the Supreme Court,’ the general said. ‘This is about drama, not decorum.’

“Jackson wouldn’t be moved. ‘Maybe so,’ he said, ‘but I’m running the show, and I’m going to try the case by indisputable documentary evidence.’

“It came out that the general was also against indicting the German General Staff. Jackson cut off the conversation. He fired the general. Poor Donovan sputtered with rage, but next day, ashen and crestfallen, he seemed a spent volcano. He thought I’d leave with him. I told him I felt a duty to the International Military Tribunal. He said he understood. But we never understand when someone we trust lets us down.”

Dunne sympathized with Donovan’s wounded pride and personal disappointment, even betrayal, as well as Bassante’s sense of duty. Everyone has his motive. “That’s an uncomfortable situation to be in.”

“Dick Van Hull is part of this, too.”

“Van Hull?” His name hung in the air like a big, fat Dizzy Dean changeup.

“He’s in an uncomfortable situation of his own.”

Expect a fastball and a slow ball floats by.
Strike two.

“If you’re willing, Ginny has an envelope. The details are spelled out inside.”

“Ginny who?”

“Miss Thompson, the office manager.”

Not Rita, Eleanor, Marge, after all. But Ginny. Ginny Thompson, Miss American Efficiency, 1945. With the war over, her name was apparently no longer a secret.

“Don’t feel obligated, Fin.”

Don’t feel obligated.
Van Hull carried them through their mission in Slovakia. How could he be anything but obligated?

“Read it over and let Miss Thompson know. If you can’t, I’ll understand.”

A knuckleball.
Swing or let it pass:
Strike three.
Dunne ground the stub in the ashtray. Bassante wouldn’t understand anymore than Donovan.

On the calendar, above the muster of days, the exhausted (now deceased) president made a final attempt at a smile.

Nothing left to fear.

Nice try.

If only.

After he left, Dunne stopped at the same pub as he had in June ’44. This time, midday, the clientele was sparse. He ordered a pint. Two ex-Tommies (woolen khaki trousers gave away their former status) peeked over their shoulders. As ready for the Yanks to go home as the Yanks were eager to go, they attempted none of the friendly banter as when Americans were a much-welcomed novelty. The barman drew the pint without saying a word.

He sat by himself and sipped the beer. Warm as piss. The way the Brits liked it. Never got used to it. What American did? Instead of placing the manila envelope Miss Thompson had given him on the wet, unwiped bar, he rested it on his lap.

She’d clasped it against her purple blouse and thrust it forward with both hands, as though proffering a gift. “Take it with you. But it would be most appreciated if you got back with an answer by tomorrow.”

Annoyed at the skill with which Bassante had drawn him in, and already resentful at the idea of delaying his return home, Dunne intended the sharpness of his reply: “I can’t give an answer till I know the question.”

“I’m just relaying what I was told.” She advanced toward the door with a confident, purposeful sway, toenail polish visible through her open-toed shoes same shade as fingernails and blouse.
Purple majesty.
If coast-to-coast television ever became commonplace in U.S. living rooms, as the newspapers promised
it would, she’d be the country’s perfect hostess.
Miss America the Beautiful.

He went back to the bar, fetched a scotch, played with returning to the office of Columbia Casualty & Life, handing the unopened envelope to Miss Thompson, making his own declaration of independence:
I’ve served my time, done my duty, had enough of warm beer, cold rooms, dreary streets, the dead and the damaged, this ruined, grudge-ridden, self-destructive continent. Two wars’ worth, Miss Thompson. More than enough.

Dunne ripped it open. The handwriting was clear, neat, parochial-grammar-school precise, a style uniformly enforced in institutions of every size as though a tenet of the One True Church. Hail, holy penmanship.

He presumed Bassante had written it himself:

Dunne tucked it back into the envelope. The phone connection to the office of Columbia Causality & Life was supposedly secure—but not secure enough that Bassante felt comfortable using it to convey the information in the letter.