Len Deighton - XPD

Master Sergeant Vanelli looked up and nodded. He folded his stateside newspaper and laid it on the table with the sort of reverence that such rare documents were given at that time, but he did not get to his feet. Stein, without moving from his position on the upended box, looked the officer up and down from the factory-fresh steel helmet, and the pale skin unused to African sunshine, to the newly issued brown boots. ‘Take my advice, Lieutenant,’ said Stein. ‘You get your leggings and your pistol strapped on and paint your bar on the front of your helmet before you see the CO.’

‘Is that your advice?’ said Pitman coldly.

‘This is General Patton’s command: twenty-five-dollar fine for officers without their pistols; and officers without leggings pay fifteen bucks.’ Stein smiled and aimed a smack at a fly which had settled on his arm, but it flew away unharmed.

‘Which is the colonel’s tent?’ Pitman asked, pointedly addressing the sergeant instead of Stein.

‘The one with the rolled tent-sides,’ said Stein. ‘The colonel likes a draught, and don’t mind the sand.’

‘Is this man your mouthpiece, Sergeant?’ Pitman asked him.

‘I guess he is,’ said the sergeant, as though he hadn’t considered it before. ‘Charlie Stein kind of runs things for us up here.’

Lieutenant Pitman looked at the two men, wondering whether to complain about their unsoldierly manner, but decided that it would be an unwise move for a newly assigned officer. He ducked his head to go out of the tent just as Stein called, ‘And ten bucks if you are not wearing a tie.’

Pitman ignored him.

‘Cut the speed a little,’ said Stein. ‘This is no time to get a ticket for speeding.’ Pitman glanced at the fat, balding man sitting beside him. Who would have guessed that their lives and fortunes could have become so interdependent? Stein was twisted round awkwardly as he pushed his brown shoulder bag on to the rear seat. The documents he placed on the floor behind him, and from time to time he reached back to touch them and reassure himself that they were still there.

‘Sounds like it’s all over for the bank,’ said Stein, hoping to be contradicted. But Colonel Pitman didn’t argue the matter. ‘Sounds like they want us to be skinned alive,’ Stein added despondently. ‘You don’t want to spend the next ten years arguing your way through law courts, do you?’ He pressed the lighter button in the dashboard, just to check if it worked. ‘It’s a good car this,’ said Stein approvingly, stroking the leather.

‘I tried to get inter-bank loans,’ said Pitman. ‘But none of the big banks are willing to cover us. Maybe they are scared of Creditanstalt. Maybe they are sore because we didn’t syndicate the deal with them.’

‘And maybe they’ve been warned off by that bastard who set us up. Or Friedman or Dr Böttger or one of those other people in on the swindle.’

‘Going away will not help me,’ said Pitman sadly. He stopped at the intersection from which a road led to the French border and the south side of the lake. Instead he turned the other way.

‘Remember Petrucci? A little Sicilian kid… a machine-gunner from one of the B-column vehicles which was knocked out ahead of us?’

Colonel Pitman rubbed his face reflectively. He could not remember.

‘Delaney still sees him. He fixed me up with fake papers: Brazilian passport, driving licence, the whole works. He’d do the same for you, and we’ve got enough money here for both of us, Colonel. We’ll split it down the middle, you and me.’

‘It’s your savings, Charles. No, I couldn’t.’

‘What do I want with savings?’ said Stein. ‘How long have I got ahead of me? Ten years… Or, if I lose fifty pounds and stick with the nuts and natural yoghurt-twenty. So how much do we need? I got over two million bucks here, Colonel. Stop thinking about the dog faces from the battalion. They’re all OK, and they’d want you to say yes.’ But Pitman was lost in his own memories.

‘I’m not sorry,’ answered the colonel at last. ‘If I could go back to that night round the stove when we first talked about it… I’d do the same thing all over again.’

‘ Germany? You mean 1945? The night you came back from that blonde who worked in the mayor’s office?’

Pitman nodded, ‘Remember the rain? I thought it would never stop. I had the worst jeep in the battalion that night and I had to nurse it halfway across Germany.’

‘You said you were in her apartment,’ said Stein. ‘That was only three blocks from the town hall. What are you talking about, halfway across Germany?’

Pitman continued to drive in silence as he remembered that night in the final days of the war in Europe. There was no blonde; there was just the general. He would never tell Stein the truth; he would never tell anyone.

‘I know it’s a big disappointment for you, Pitman,’ the general had said, ‘but it’s the way the goddamn war is.’ The one-star general had modelled his appearance and behaviour upon General Patton, his commander. He did not have a pair of pearl-handled pistols at his waist-that would have been too obviously an imitation of his mentor-but he did keep his Colt.45 strapped on tight at all times and even here, miles away from the fighting, he kept his helmet on his head and a grenade clipped to his shoulder strap.

Outside it was raining, the sky streaked with pink and mauve, the last daylight almost gone. The endless convoys of supply trucks splashed through the mud in the dark pockmarked streets and crawled round piles of bricks and rubble, the result of a twenty-four-hour bombardment that had entombed half the German inhabitants in their cellars. ‘The war’s nearly over,’ said Pitman. ‘Ever since the Rhine you’ve been promising me a chance to fight.’

‘See those trucks out there?’ said the general, pointing with his cigar. ‘I’m trying to push half a million tons of material into position with quartermaster units that are nearly asleep on their feet. Some of those truck drivers have had no shut-eye for fifty-six hours, Pitman.’ Urgently, the general pushed some papers across his desk. ‘I’ve got medical officers yelling down the phone at me, I’m cannibalizing trucks so fast that I’m losing whole companies. My clerks are trying to sort “Dangerous Cargo” from “Valuable Cargo” and “Immediately Vital Cargo” from “Essential Cargo”… will you look at all this crap! Now you’re telling me I’ve got to let you go play soldiers in the front line. Well, I’m telling you no, Pitman. Have you got that?’

‘I’m a career officer, General. I need battle experience if I’m going to get any kind of promotion in the post-war army. We discussed it and you promised to help.’

‘You did all right, Pitman,’ said the general puffing on his cigar. ‘I made you a colonel and now you’ve got a battalion. That’s not bad.’

‘I want to fight, General. You said you’d make sure I had my chance.’

The general looked at him and blew smoke. Quietly he said, ‘You had your chance, Colonel. You had your chance at Kasserine, long before I was lucky enough to get over here. It was a big snafu, the way I read it; your guys took a powder and the Krauts just came rolling over our support areas. It’s not the kind of lousy performance that makes me want to send you forward.’

The bulbs in the desk lights flickered and went yellow and dim as the army engineers nursed the wrecked German power utilities. In the gloom the general’s cigar glowed very bright before he added, ‘Do you know, I still have to take a ribbing from some of these crummy Brits? “Remember Kasserine?” some Limey major says to me the other day. “They put us into the line when you Yanks folded.” He says it like it was a joke, of course. That’s the way the Brits always let you have the poison. It’s a joke… so I have to laugh with that bastard. But I don’t like it, Pitman, and when I hear about Kasserine I don’t like you.’