Breakthroughs (39 page)

“Crowded kings,” Kimball remarked, and the veteran first mate nodded. Kimball and Coulter both knew perfectly well that before long they’d be eating beans and salt pork and stinking sauerkraut and drinking orange juice and lemon juice to hold scurvy at bay. As a cruise wore along, fresh-caught fish became a luxury. Dwelling on better times was more enjoyable.

“We’re full up on shells again, too, sir,” Coulter said. “Armorers haven’t come with the fish yet, though.”

“We’ll get ’em. We do most of our work with ’em these days,” Kimball said. “Too damn many ships with wireless. We need to sink ’em fast and sneaky.”

“Yes, sir.” Coulter nodded again. “Damnyankees keep pulling destroyers out of their hats, too, like magicians with rabbits. It’s getting so we can’t hardly take a shot at a freighter without dodging ash cans for the next week.”

“I know. I’m getting damn tired of it, too.” Kimball slapped Coulter on the back. “By the way they’re going at this resupply business, likely you’ve guessed we’ll be going out sooner than we reckoned when we got into Habana.”

Ben Coulter’s head went up and down once more. “Sure as hell did, sir. Reckon the Yankees must have done somethin’ nasty to the
Bonito
.”

“They sank her,” Kimball said bluntly, adding, “They thought she was the
Bonefish
; the Yankee papers are reporting us sunk.” That jerked a laugh out of the mate. Kimball went on, “The
Ericsson
got her—same destroyer that’s given us such a hard time. When we get back into our box on the map, Ben, I’m going to kill that bastard.”

“Oh, hell, yes,” Coulter said. “Can’t let the damnyankees own the whole damn ocean.”

“Can’t let ’em get past us, either,” Kimball said. “If they sit on England’s supply line, she’s out of the war. If England has to quit, we’ve lost, too, and so have the froggies.”

“Whole crew understands that, sir,” Coulter answered. Then he sighed. “Sure are a hell of a lot of Yankees tryin’ to get south of us these days when we’re cruising out there, though.”

Kimball didn’t reply. As far as he could see, the war was probably lost even if the U.S. Navy didn’t succeed in choking off England’s supply line to Argentina. It would take longer to lose if the British stayed in the fight, that was all.

He didn’t care. He had a job to do, and he was damn good at it. He had very little modesty, false or otherwise. He knew how good he was. He enjoyed doing what he was doing, too. As long as the CSA stayed in the fight, he’d do it as well as he could. And if the Yankees sank him…well, he’d already hurt the USA a lot worse than losing the
Bonefish
would hurt his own country.

When he got back to his quarters, a telegram was waiting. He wasted no time in tearing open the envelope. “If this here is from my ma,” he muttered, “I’m going to be disappointed as hell.”

But it wasn’t. Anne Colleton wrote,
GLAD THE YANKS ARE BAD FISHERMEN. LET ME KNOW NEXT TIME. MAYBE WE
’
LL MEET HALFWAY. ANNE.
No
love
, not from her. Not even a promise. Kimball had seen such fripperies were not her style. But a
maybe
from a woman like that was worth a lay from half a dozen of the ordinary sort. Kimball carefully tore the telegram into tiny pieces. He was smiling as he did it.

As it happened, Arthur McGregor wasn’t far from the farmhouse when two green-gray Fords turned off the road from Rosenfeld and onto the path that led to his home. He decided he wouldn’t go out to the fields after all, but turned and walked back.

The motorcars got there before he did. U.S. soldiers with bayoneted rifles piled out of one of them. More soldiers got out of the other. Instead of a Springfield in his hands, one of those men wore a pistol on his hip. Major Hannebrink was slim and quick-moving and dapper, easy to recognize from a long way off. McGregor scowled, but did not pick up his pace.

When he reached the knot of soldiers, he looked down at the American officer, who was several inches shorter than he. “You must think I’m a dangerous character,” he said slowly, “if you need to bring all these bullies along when you come to say hello.”

“I don’t know whether you’re a dangerous character or not,” Hannebrink answered coolly, “but I don’t believe in taking chances, and I do aim to find out one way or the other.”

“Barn first, sir, or the house?” one of the soldiers—a sergeant—asked.

McGregor’s eyes went to the farmhouse. Maude was watching from the kitchen window, Julia alongside her. Mary wasn’t tall enough to see out. If her mother and sister hadn’t already told her soldiers were here, though, she’d know soon enough, and then she’d call them everything she knew how to call them, and she knew a surprising amount.

“House,” Hannebrink answered. “Get the women out of there. We’ll turn it inside out, and then we’ll do the barn.” He drew the pistol and pointed it at McGregor. “This gentleman won’t be going in there to take out anything he doesn’t fancy us seeing.”

“Wasn’t going to do that anyway,” McGregor said stolidly. “You bastards have stuck your noses in there before, and you never found a thing, because there’s nothing to find. You won’t find anything this time, either—still nothing.” He’d told that lie so many times, it came out smooth as the truth, though he’d never been a man who lied easily before Alexander was marched up against a wall and shot.

If they found the explosives…
If they find them, it’s over,
he thought. He wasn’t ready for it to be over, not yet. He hadn’t taken nearly enough revenge yet. But the best way to keep from betraying himself was to act as if whether they found what they were looking for didn’t matter.

Out came Maude and Julia and Mary, under the Yanks’ guns. Sure enough, his younger daughter, the spitfire, was doing her best to scorch the soldiers. It didn’t work so well as she might have hoped; one or two of the Americans, instead of getting angry, were fighting laughter.

A couple of the men in green-gray stayed with Major Hannebrink to stand guard on McGregor and his family. The rest went back into the house. Occasional crashes from within said they were indeed turning the place inside out. Hannebrink might have thought Maude was calm. McGregor knew better. He set a hand on his wife’s shoulder to keep her from hurling herself at the American major. Julia looked furious, and made no effort at all to hide it.

After an hour or so, the sergeant came out and said, “Sir, the worst thing they’ve got in there is kerosene for the lamps.”

“It’s good for killing lice, too,” Mary said, looking right at Hannebrink.

His lips thinned; that got home. But he said only, “We’ll have a look in the barn, then.” He gestured with the .45 in his hand. “Come on, McGregor. You can watch and make sure we don’t steal anything.”

“You’ve already stolen more from me than you can ever give back,” he answered. He knew why Major Hannebrink wanted him along: in the hope that he’d give something away.

Hannebrink turned to the women. “You can go clean up now,” he said. “That should give you something to do for the rest of the day.”

In the barn, the U.S. soldiers methodically went through everything, climbing up into the loft to poke their bayonets into the hay in the hope of finding hidden dynamite and also searching all the animals’ stalls. They opened every crate. They dumped the drawers set into McGregor’s workbench out onto the ground and pawed over his chisels and drill bits and screwdrivers, his twine and his carpenter’s rule.

He wondered if he’d somehow made a mistake, if he’d put one of the bomb-building tools in among the others. The low-voiced curses of the men in green-gray said he hadn’t.

He glanced toward the old wagon wheel. There it lay, rust on the iron tire, half covered with straw. One of the soldiers strode around it to get at a box by the far wall. He used a pry bar to open the box, whose lid was nailed shut. Then he turned it upside down. A couple of horseshoes that had worn thin, a broken scythe blade, and some other scrap iron spilled out onto the ground with a series of clanks.

“Thanks,” McGregor said. “Forgot I had that junk lying around. I can do something with it, I expect.”

“Go to hell, you damn murdering Canuck,” the Yankee soldier snapped. He took a long step over the wagon wheel and glared into McGregor’s face.

McGregor neither moved back nor blinked. Evenly, he said, “You’re the people who know all about murdering.”

Before the soldier could reply, Major Hannebrink broke in: “Enough, Neugebauer.” The private in green-gray stiffened to obedient attention. Hannebrink went on, “We don’t know that McGregor here is a murderer. We’re trying to find out.” He turned to the farmer. “So far, we have no evidence, only a man who thinks he has a reason to be angry at us.”

“You had no evidence against my son, either,” McGregor said. Not lunging at the U.S. officer was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. “You didn’t need any. You shot him without it.”

“I had evidence I thought good,” Hannebrink said. “I did my duty to my country. I would do it again.”

“I believe
that
,” McGregor said. “I don’t know why you’re bothering with this rigmarole. If you need evidence against me, you can always plant it whenever you please. Then you’ll haul me off to jail and shoot me, same as you did with Alexander.”

Hannebrink exhaled through his nose. “If I have no evidence against you, I have no quarrel with you. If you aren’t the man who’s been planting bombs hither and yon through the countryside, I don’t want to waste my time on you. I want to catch the son of a bitch who is doing that and make him pay.”

He sounded sincere. But then, to be good at his job he needed to sound sincere. McGregor answered, “If I was crazy enough to make bombs, I wouldn’t plant ’em hither and yon through the countryside.” He pointed to Hannebrink. “I’d go after you.”

“One of those bombs almost did kill me,” the U.S. major said.

“Really?” McGregor was calm, casual, cool. “Too bad it missed. I’d buy a beer for the fellow who got you, and then I’d hit him over the head with my mug, for doing it before I could.”

“You ought to bring him in for sedition, sir,” said the private—Neugebauer—who’d stepped over and around McGregor’s bomb-making supplies.

Hannebrink shook his head. Raising his voice a little, he asked, “Anything here even a little out of the ordinary?”

“No, sir,” the soldiers answered, almost in chorus.

Hannebrink shook his head again. “Then I’ve got no reason to bring him in. He does have some reason not to be in love with me. That doesn’t worry me. I did what I thought was right, and I’ll live with it. Let’s go back to town, boys.”

When they walked out to their Fords, they discovered that each of them had a punctured inner tube. Cursing, the soldiers set about patching the punctures. McGregor wanted to smile. He didn’t. He was too worried. All the soldiers had been back at the barn, and…

Major Hannebrink folded his arms across his chest. “If these punctures turn out to be knife cuts, Mr. McGregor, I am not going to be pleased with your family, I warn you.”

Oh, Mary,
McGregor thought,
what have you done?
But then a soldier at the nearer motorcar said, “Sir, we got a nail in this one.”

“Don’t know what did this one, sir,” said Neugebauer, who was holding the inner tube from the other Ford, “but it looks like a hole, not a cut.”

“Anybody see anything?” Hannebrink asked. None of the U.S. soldiers answered. McGregor realized he hadn’t been breathing, and sucked in a long, ragged inhalation. The soldiers wouldn’t be thinking about a little girl. Even Hannebrink, who was professionally suspicious, wouldn’t be thinking about a little girl. Maude, maybe, but not Mary.

Hannebrink pursed his lips. “No evidence,” he said. “Maybe we picked up those punctures on the way over here. Maybe. It could have happened. Since I can’t prove it didn’t happen that way, I’m going to leave it alone. But if it ever happens here again, Mr. McGregor, someone is going to be very unhappy, and it won’t be me.”

“Why are you barking at me?” McGregor asked. “I was in the barn with you and your hooligans.” For once, he was telling the whole truth. It sounded no different from his lies.

Hannebrink didn’t answer. He waited while his men fixed the punctures, which they handled with practiced efficiency. Then all the Yank soldiers piled into the motorcars and drove off.

McGregor waited till they’d left his land. Then he walked into the house. His wife was furious. “They turned everything upside down and inside out, those dirty—” She hissed like a cat with its fur puffed out, then went on, “I wish I was a man, so I could say what I think.”

“Never mind,” McGregor said, which made Maude hiss again. Ignoring her, he went over to Mary. He knelt down and kissed her on the forehead. “This is for what you did, and for being clever enough to use a nail and not a knife.” Then he spanked her, hard enough to make her yelp in both surprise and pain. “And this is to remind you not to do it again, no matter how much you want to.”

His younger daughter stared. “How did you know it was me, Pa? You were inside the barn with the Yankees. You couldn’t see it.”

“How did I know? Because I’m your father, that’s how. This time, I’m proud of you, you little sneak. Some things you can only get away with once, though. This is one of them. Remember it.”