Ian Slater - World in Flames

Brentwood bent over the chart, carefully circling the six stations he would have to maintain in the Arctic deep, ready on a moment’s notice, should the occasion ever arise, to attack one or all of the more than forty-five Russian navy, army, and air force bases on Kola Peninsula — from the ice-free ports of Polyarnyy and Murmansk in the west as far east as Amderma on the Kara Sea and Uelen on Siberia’s edge that looked out on the Bering Sea, less than a hundred miles from Alaska and only eleven hundred miles from Unalaska, where his sister, Lana, was stationed.

As commander of all U.S. forces in Europe Gen. Douglas Freeman left Brussels with four F-18 fighters escorting him on the first leg of his circuitous ten-thousand-mile journey to Korea via a U.S. stopover where he would secretly consult with the president at Camp David, Freeman’s look-alike, seconded from the Fifth Canadian Army’s entertainment battalion, left the icy barrens of Newfoundland for the flight across the pole to Brussels’ NATO headquarters.

David Brentwood and Lili were in the Brussels gallery, admiring the Rubens, which, along with other masterpieces, had been relegated to a rather poky basement of the museum because of the possibility of Soviet rocket salvos.

He admired Lili’s knowledge of Rubens and other painters — Caravaggio, Bernini, Berckhuide, and Hals — he’d never heard of. Her mention of them made him feel “provincial,” as his sister, Lana, and probably Melissa would have teasingly called him. He even felt prudish in front of Rubens’s voluptuous women, whereas Lili talked about them at a deeper level with such affection and knowledge of detail that it was clear she had been nurtured by such paintings and felt a need for them, as much a part of her life as baseball was to him. His older brother, Robert, had written home in much the same vein about his fiancée, Rosemary, who taught Shakespeare.

It made David feel slightly inferior to Lili, despite the fact that he was older. But she had none of the pomposity of some of the self-proclaimed aficionados of art who flaunted their disdain for the neophyte.

He tried to understand the paintings, but at heart displayed more curiosity about how they were done than what they depicted. But Lili put him at ease, telling him he shouldn’t even try to explain them. “It is better to feel them, David,” she advised, happy with the joy of showing her handsome young American the best of her culture. “Do you feel them?” she asked.

He thought for a moment. “I suppose so. They look warm—”

“Yes!” she said triumphantly, squeezing his hand in delight. “Rubens always makes it come alive so.” She glanced about the basement gallery. “Of course, they are not in a very nice setting, and the light is not good.”

“It’s fine,” David assured her. “Makes them seem cozier.”

She didn’t understand the word. He explained by pulling her closer to him, to the stern disapproval of the security guard, and David felt the happiest he’d been since — he couldn’t remember when. He told Lili. She said nothing, putting her head on his shoulder as they sat in silence on the bench in front of a Vermeer, each lost in one another until reluctantly David reminded her they must soon head for the train station.

“If only we could stay,” she said, sighing. “Forever.”

“We will,” he said. Perhaps, he thought, remembering his mother’s time-honored adage, God did work in mysterious ways. Perhaps Lili would take away the pain of losing Melissa.

“A penny for your thoughts?” said Lili, looking up at him.

“What — oh. I was thinking we’d better be going or the mad sergeant will have me down as AWOL.” David stood up, searching for change in his pocket. “Which reminds me, I forgot to make that call. There a phone somewhere?”

“You can call from the station.”

“All right.”

As he waited for the British captain to answer, David realized that any line in NATO HQ might well be tapped by anyone from NATO’s own intelligence to a SPETS undercover operative, and so he spoke to the British captain in deliberately vague terms about hearing news from a sergeant that perhaps HQ Brussels should know about.

“Oh?” said the captain, his tone clearly one of interest. “Then I think perhaps you’d better give us a verbal if you don’t mind. Don’t worry about your train. We’ll lay on a driver to fetch you from the station and you can catch up with the train around Ezemaal. It has to stop at a few places to pick up more wounded anyway.”

“I thought the line had been cut,” replied David. “By SPETS or—”

“Yes, it was, but our erstwhile Belgian Railway chaps have put it right again. Don’t worry, Lieutenant — I promise you you’ll catch up with your girl.” David looked unhappily out of the phone booth at Lili. “Okay,” he told the captain. “But can you send your driver right away?”

As he left the phone booth, David saw the sergeant, rheumy-eyed, looking as if he was drunk, giving Lili a flower, a single red rose. Where the hell had he got that? David walked up and, nodding curtly to the sergeant, turned to Lili and told her HQ wanted to see him again. “Oh no—” she said, the disappointment in her eyes making him wish his conscience had never prompted him to make the call about the sergeant’s big mouth being a walking security risk.

“I won’t be long,” David assured her.

“Been a naughty boy?” said the sergeant, his breath reeking of beer. How the hell the man had become a military policeman, David couldn’t fathom, and no longer cared much if he showed his disapproval of the sergeant’s behavior. The Englishman’s eyes narrowed. “What’s up with you, Yank? Look like you’ve lost your virginity.”

“I have to report back to HQ.”

“Joining it, are you?”

“Joining what?” David parried.

“Bloody ‘ush-’ush brigade?” spat out the sergeant.

David turned to Lili. “You okay?”

“Course she’ll be okay, you bloody twit!” said the sergeant, lifting his head so fast as he spoke, he almost lost his balance. “She’ll have a bloody trainful of wounded coming south from Hasselt. She’ll have her hands full, mate.” He winked lewdly at Brentwood. “If you get my meaning!”

“For two bits I’d punch you out,” said David, taking a step forward.

“Bloody try!” snarled the sergeant. “C’mon, bloody try.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Don’t say—”the sergeant slurred contemptuously. “ ‘S’at a fact, Yank? And what’re you?”

Ignoring him, David turned back to Lili. “Won’t be long,” he said, taking her hand for a moment, squeezing it reassuringly. She was holding the rose limply by her side in her left hand. Where in the hell, David wondered again, did the crazy sergeant manage to find a rose in the middle of winter — in a war? The sergeant no doubt knew the black market in the Belgian capital.

“See you at Ezemaal,” he told Lili, and gave her a peck on the cheek.

As he walked down the platform toward the entrance, he passed a long line of Belgian reserve medical corps moving collapsed their hospital bunks into the first four carriages, French reinforcements and an American engineer company bound for the front being informed that they’d have to vacate the first four cars and move back to the rear of the train to leave enough room for the wounded who would be coming down from Hasselt.

When David turned at the entrance, he looked back in Lili’s direction, but she’d disappeared among the troops.

The sergeant slouched into the phone booth, noisily inserting francs into the slot. The voice on the other end was friendly, almost desperately chipper “Hello, Captain Smythe here.”