Stephen Coonts - Combat

The conversation went dead for a moment. Then Frankie brought the coffee, brewed by invisible hands in a back room. It smelled like instant. But even that was a rare treasure in these parts. In the capital city, though, the war had brought wealth to a new class and you could get espresso, which was the new name for the Turkish coffee that had been brewed in the region for centuries. In the capital city, there were late-night cafes and discos, all smoke and loud Euro-pop, where young men with sleek black hair wore suits with padded shoulders, and the women, faces bitter as coffee grounds, wore short dresses and brutal high heels. Everybody had a deal in the works.

Daniela lit another cigarette before she drank. “Thank you. I think you are a gentleman. Perhaps you are married?”

Green smiled at the transparency of the question. These were direct times.

“No. Not married.”

“Then, perhaps, you are divorced?” She pronounced the last word with three syllables.

“Nope. Never married.”

“That is very strange, I think. And you are an officer?”

“Yes.” I am an officer. And, yes, it’s very strange. And I would have married Caroline, and she would have married me, and it was all very beautiful when she flew over to visit and we went to Italy, but it was not beautiful enough. Because she would not give up her career for me, and I would not leave the Army for her. And that was love at the end of the century.

“Why have you never been married?”

She leaned toward him, cigarette between the fingers of her closed fist, head leaned against her wrist. Green wished he could wash the makeup from her face. She was very pretty, maybe beautiful in the way it took a little while to see. It was sad because he sensed she had put on the makeup, which she would have hoarded, especially for him. She made him feel lonelier than he had felt in months.

“Just never found the right woman,” he said. “I’m a challenge.”

She was not having any of that. “Perhaps this woman will find you,” she said firmly. “I think you are a lucky man. You are looking to me like a lucky man.”

By local standards, Green figured, he was very lucky, indeed.

“You are living in the capital?” she said. She sipped her coffee with the daintiness of a cat.

“When I’m not on the road.”

“You have been there long?”

“Just over two months.”

“You will stay for a long time?”

“I’m on a six-month TDY.”

She put down the cup, which was chipped around the rim, and looked at him quizzically.

“It means I’m a loaner model. Only temporary. Six months.”

She thought about that. “Six months is very long sometimes. I think time is longer in the winter than in the summer. Do you have a girlfriend in the capital?”

Green wanted to be serious, but he could not help smiling.

“No girlfriend.”

“You do not think our girls are pretty?” Another cat-sip of coffee.

“Very pretty. But I haven’t had much time off.”

“I went to university there. If I lived there now, I would show you everything.”

He almost said, “Maybe you’ll get up there sometime,” but stopped himself. He did not want her to read it as an invitation. But he did not want her to leave the table, either.

“It seems like a pleasant city,” Green lied. With its obese Habsburg architecture, and its fierce grayness, and the leaden food. The people looked down as they walked, and only the whores and hustlers met your eyes.

“Do you know the cathedral?”

Green nodded. He had gone there, a dutiful tourist. The ornamentation had seemed squalid and fussy at the same time.

“I think it is beautiful,” she said.

“Are you religious?”

She laughed for the first time. If sound had color, her laugh would have been amber. “Oh, no,” she said. “Only the old people are religious now.”

“And the people who made the war?”

Her mouth began to twitch again. It was a slight movement, but he could tell that it shamed her. She did not laugh this time.

“They have no religion. For them it is only words. It is an excuse they make.”

“Would you like another coffee?”

She shook her head. “I think it is very expensive. One cup is enough, you see.”

“Daniela … what’s your last name? Your family name?”

“Kortach. And yours?”

“Green. Jeff Green. Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

She smiled and stared off to the side of his face. “Zelen. That is ‘green’ in our language. Zelen.”

He nodded. Really, he was the one who needed to practice his language skills. But he was tired. And the girl was lovely. And she did not seem to be a hooker. Just another soul washed up and stranded by the war.

You could not let yourself get too close. But it was difficult sometimes.

“I think I must go now,” she said. “It has become late. And this is not a good place for a woman. The people in the village … they are not open of mind like the city people. They think bad things.”

“You should go then.”

The words saddened her. He had only meant to be polite, but had said the wrong thing.

She touched her fingers to the side of her mouth. “How long will you stay in Melnica?”

“We go back tomorrow.”

She seemed to shrink into her sweater. As if he had slapped her and she was cowering under the threat of the next blow. He made her for a lonely girl desperate for any chance to get out. Suffocating here. With her memories of books and the greater world. Willing to risk her reputation for a slim chance of escape, in a place where reputation still mattered in a way it had not mattered for a century in his own country.

“Perhaps you will come again,” she said.

“Perhaps.”

“Then you will visit with me. To practice English.”

“Yes.”

“I hope very much that you will come again.”

She stood up. He stood, as well. Old manners. And the miseries of West Point, with its fascist etiquette.

She thrust out her hand to show she was a Western girl. He took it, and let go too soon. Afraid of himself, of doing something foolish. Even if she was a fairy-tale princess, he was in no position to play Prince Charming. A ghost of warmth remained in his grip.

She turned away and he called, “Daniela?”

But he only wanted to give her the rest of the pack of cigarettes to take along.

“I don’t smoke,” he explained.

Her eyelids fluttered. Too quickly. “I think that is good, not to smoke” she said, turning away again.

She didn’t just leave. She fled.

Crawley came over to the table and repossessed his seat. He looked at Green through the veil of smoke the woman had left behind.

“Don’t go native on me,” the NCO said.

The men at the bar laughed over their own little joke. You could hear the liquor level in their voices. Frankie came over to the table and stood before the two Americans. But he only looked at Green.

“You like her?”

“She’s a pretty girl,” Green said cautiously.

Frankie grunted. “She’s a fucking nutcase. They got her during the war. Gang bang.” He punched his fist rhythmically into his palm. “Twelve, fifteen of them.” He laughed. “Hell, maybe a hundred. They kept her up in the woods for a couple of days. Now she’s the town slut. Would’ve been better if they’d cut her throat.”

Green looked down at the tabletop. The last of the smoke curled and drifted.

“Hey,” Frankie said, “you want to fuck her? I’ll send her to your room. You can both fuck her. Won’t even cost nothing.”

“Life sucks, then you die,” Crawley said. He sat on his bed checking his 9mm. The oiled-paper blinds were drawn down as far as they would go. A light bulb hung from the ceiling. Commo gear and everything else that could be removed from the Jeep covered the floor between the old iron beds. “Those sausages are doing a number on my stomach. What the hell kind of peppers do they put in them?”