Sentimental Journey (5 page)

Earlier in the year in conjunction with Special Services, he had been involved in a rescue mission for three important diplomats from a detention camp in Nazi-occupied
Poland
. While he was there, he stole a code book, two Panzer tanks—one that was towing a Messerschmitt—a German fuel truck stocked full, four prisoners of his own, and Generalmajor Ernst Weber’s wallet, his PO8
Lüger
, and his Knight’s Cross.

According to the latest scuttlebutt, information and German machinery weren’t all J.R. had recently commandeered. It was rumored Adele Langdon, the base commander’s pretty young wife, was with the captain at his place in Newport for a very long and clandestine weekend hot enough to melt the seams in her last pair of stockings.

But of course this was only gossip. Gossip seemed to chase after the Cassidy men, the same way women did.

But on this bright morning, J.R. wasn’t concerned with gossip as he drove along in the warm sunlight in his
Auburn
with its tan top crushed down and the wind blowing carelessly past him. He made a left turn and came up to the gates of his base. He paused long enough to toss a bottle of single-malt scotch to the corporal at the guardhouse; then he put his foot to the pedal and sped off, swerving around two lumbering troop trucks, a tall pyramid of rusted gasoline barrels, and a crusty old Army bus unloading a group of recruits so green you could put French dressing on them and serve them up in the mess hall.

J.R. spun the steering wheel in a hard right. The speedster fishtailed under a magic motion of 150 hp and 4000 rpm, then whipped like blue lightning between two Quonset huts. The rear whitewalls sent a spit of gravel through one hut’s open transom windows and up over the edge of the corrugated tin roof, where they sounded like machine gun fire.

Less than a minute later the car skidded to a stop in front of the Officer’s Club, a small wooden wing attached to the “T,” a long, sterile building that housed the officers’ quarters and sat between an old sea wall and the camp bakery. In the middle of the night, when the salty breeze off
Narragansett Bay
came in, it carried the scent of baking bread dough to the nose of every man who left his window open. By dawn you would wake up craving cinnamon raisin bread with your coffee and nigh on hungry enough to eat a whole loaf all by yourself.

J.R. hopped over the car’s low-slung door. He tossed the silver keys in the air, then pocketed them with a jangle and took off his hat. He drove a quick hand through his hair a couple of times, then rubbed the heel of his fist over the twin silver bars on his cap and set it back on his head at a cocked angle. He jogged up the wooden steps in the loose-legged way he did everything: walking, running, or dancing the lindy at the Starlight Room. He shoved open the door and headed straight for the bar.

The long and lazy sweet notes of Glenn Miller’s “Tuxedo Junction” swung from the radio in the corner where a group of young Gene Krupa wanna-bes were jiving and drumming on a nearby tabletop. A few feet away, a lieutenant sat in a wooden chair balanced carelessly on its two back legs, his feet propped against an Army-green wall. He nursed a foamy beer while staring at a swell pinup of Rita Hayworth in black lace so skimpy you could see all the full curves of her.

“Hey, man! Look at this!”

J.R. turned, knowing that whatever “this” was, it wasn’t Rita.

His buddy
Mich
was crossing the room, waving something in one hand. “
Michigan
” Mark Roberts was from
Detroit
, and he must have been born in a bookie joint. That crazy cat would bet on anything from the number of flies in the latrine to which brunette lost her virginity after the Junior League canteen dance on Friday the 13th.

Mich
stopped waving and shoved a piece of cardboard under J.R.’s nose.

J.R. glanced at it. It was a baseball pool, for the Series, which was weeks away. He laughed. “You don’t think this is a little early?”

“Nah. I’m giving five to one odds if you place your bet now.”

J.R. stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a handful of silver dollars left over from a good night at a poker hall. “I’ll take
Detroit
.” He dropped the money on the counter behind them.

Mich
grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. He turned toward the room. “Now
here’s
a man who knows a sure thing!”

There were moans and groans from everyone who’d had to listen to
Mich
and his love of the Detroit Tigers.

“To hell with you, Roberts. I’ll take the Cubs!”

“The Cubs? Who you kidding, Jawolski? It’s gonna be the Yankees! No one else can beat ’
em
.”

“We’re
gonna
skin those Tigers of yours. When
Boston
’s through with ’
em
, they’ll be nothing but a rug for us to rest our ruby red socks on . . .

The club grew noisier, each man talking up his home ball team with the same sense of loyalty and patriotism that made these men join up, ready to show Hitler a thing or two for bombing England, for swarming on Europe and its people like a carnivore, for actually thinking Americans would stand by passively while his U-boats canvassed their Atlantic shores. The
U.S.
might not be in the war yet, but Americans didn’t scare easily.

J.R. rested his arms on the smudged brass rail of the bar. Soon the baseball banter had died down, replaced by quiet talk and the whiskey-soft tones of Ella Fitzgerald singing about a brown-and-yellow basket. Jonesy began to whistle along as he dropped two olives in a highball glass, set it on a cocktail napkin that was stamped with the U.S. Army insignia. He slid that drink toward J.R.

“Thanks.” J.R. took a swig, then cupped the cool, damp glass in two hands and stared at the milky flecks in the ice cubes, his mind on everything, and on nothing. He was just reaching for the olives when the door swung open and a corporal from Colonel Langdon’s office came inside.

The room grew tellingly quiet as the kid walked up to J.R. and gave a quick salute.

J.R. used the toothpick with the olives to stir the drink, never taking his eyes off the kid.

“Captain Cassidy, sir, the colonel wants to see you. He said on the double, sir.”

J.R. didn’t say anything. It was obvious from the quiet around him that the gossip about Langdon’s wife had spread fast. He dropped the toothpick and raised the glass to his mouth, then took a long, slow drink and licked his lips. He leaned back slightly, crossing his feet as he rested his elbows on the counter behind him, the drink still in one tanned hand.

The aide was rocking from one foot to the other, looking like a little kid in trouble.

What the hell . . . J.R. figured it wasn’t the kid’s fault that he was assigned to the biggest horse’s ass in the Army. He took another drink and straightened, then used his glass to gesture toward the door. “After you, Corporal.”

The kid was out the door in an instant. J.R. glanced over at
Mich
, who looked worried. J.R. shrugged, took a swig of his cocktail, then moseyed out the door, his drink still in his hand.

Once outside, he jogged down the steps and walked over to a brand-new vehicle—a prototype Ford GP with a white star freshly painted on its Army-green door. He crawled into the shotgun seat, his drink still in one hand. The melting ice cubes rattled as he settled his long legs past the emergency fire extinguisher and out onto the riveted floorboard. He slung an arm over the back of the seat and turned to the kid, who had his finger on the starter, but was just sitting there, his other arm resting on the steering wheel as he eyed J.R.’s vodka with an uncomfortable look.

“You gonna take that drink with you, sir?”

J.R. looked at the drink. “I sure am. Do you have a problem with that, Corporal ?”

“No, sir. But . . . ” He swallowed his words.

“Go on.”

“You know how the colonel feels about protocol, sir.”

“Yes, I do. But I have a feeling I’ll be needing this drink.” He swallowed a mouthful of clear, smooth vodka, leaned back against the seat cushion, and gestured toward the road with his highball glass. “Let’s go, Corporal. Our commander awaits.”

The kid pushed the starter, jammed into gear, and the jeep took off toward headquarters, with J.R. sucking on an olive.

“SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME”

Camp headquarters was in a clapboard building with a green roof and thin, vein like cracks in its many layers of government-issue white paint. There was a hollow sound to the front steps when your shoes hit them, and the railing had splintered wood on its underside that stuck into your palm if you made the mistake of using the damn thing.

The tall, narrow front door was painted the color of a boiled lobster. Someone once joked that the door was a warning—the first sign of all the red tape you’d have to put up with if you ever wanted to get anything done.

The camp commander, Colonel Langdon, wasn’t from that old school of officers who’d been commissioned on the battlefield in the trenches of Belgium and France during World War I, the ones who’d worn gas masks that made them look like bottle-eyed elephants as they dodged mortar shells and faced the snarling teeth of German machine guns firing thirty rounds per minute. Those were the men who had learned initiative and leadership the hard way.

But not Langdon. He was a rule man. A by-the-book officer. He had used the rule book to earn his way to a colonel’s silver eagle, and by God, he was going to run his little piece of the Army by that same book, whether it made sense or not.

J.R. believed that Langdon was one of those officers who could easily send the men under his command to their deaths while following his damned book. He had all the flexibility of a cement block, a cunning ability to lay claim to the successes of those he commanded— which accounted for his rank—and a need for supreme power that made him all too dangerous. He was a man who talked the game of fighting, but hadn’t done much of it.

Langdon had made it clear early on that he did not like J.R. After being reassigned last spring from Special Services, J.R. had driven into camp and reported to the colonel. Langdon had thumbed through J.R.’s impressive file, then tossed it on his desk and said, “I don’t like your reputation, Captain. Or your tactics. While you are serving under me, you
will
play by the rules. You
will
follow instructions to the letter. You
will
do exactly as I tell you. Is that understood?”

J.R. had understood; his success was a threat to Langdon.

General Marshall had thought he’d been giving J.R. a break when he came back from his assignment in
Poland
. The general had stationed him to a base close to home. J.R. had grown up in
Newport
, where his family owned an English Tudor mansion on
Ocean Drive
— one of those ostentatiously gilded fifty-room summer “cottages” with a dozen chimneys on the roof and a thousand rhododendron bushes in the garden. He’d spent his idyllic youth sailing in the Sound or walking on narrow white beaches, where more starfish washed ashore than pebbles. During summers home from West Point, he’d played baseball with his buddies at Cardines Field, drunk cold beer and eaten fried oysters in pubs with names like the
Tides In
and
Blue Moon Saloon,
places where you could sit on a red leather barstool and look down on Sayer’s Wharf and the old New York Yacht Club, and whenever a door opened you breathed in a little bit of the Atlantic.