Len Deighton - XPD

Pitman said nothing. There was nothing to say.

‘Now you get back to your battalion HQ and keep your trucks moving. I’m due at army for a conference in two hours’ time, and by then I’m going to have every last lousy truck in this man’s army loaded and rolling.’

Colonel Pitman got back to his battalion HQ at midnight. The heavy rain found its way through the canvas roof and ill-fitting side-flaps of his jeep, so that his short overcoat was soaking wet as he leant over the pot-bellied stove and warmed himself. ‘Am I supposed to be the commanding officer of this lousy battalion?’ he complained rhetorically to his orderly room corporal. ‘So why do I get the worst jeep in the battalion?’

‘You have trouble, Colonel?’ Stein asked.

‘That’s one of the jeeps from that detached company we took over,’ said Pitman. ‘All those vehicles are unreliable. Make sure you don’t give me one of those again. Got it?’

‘You been with the general, sir?’

‘I’ve been in bed with that blonde chick we saw this morning in the mayor’s office. Why do you think I asked you for a bottle of scotch?’

‘For the general maybe,’ said Stein. He was pouring boiling water on to coffee grounds and the aroma emerged suddenly. ‘You took a bottle for the general last week when you went to see him, I thought maybe you were trying to get detached for a spell with those armoured division guys we fixed up with extra gas and rations.’

‘Do you read all my private correspondence, Corporal Stein?’

‘I sure do, Colonel. I figure that’s what you need me for. You want some of this coffee?’

‘Yes, I do… with sugar and cream.’

Stein put the steaming coffee before his colonel. It was in an antique porcelain cup discovered in the wreckage. Colonel Pitman sniffed at the coffee and drank some.

Stein watched him with close interest. ‘So you weren’t with the general tonight?’

‘I was laying that little blonde number in a top back room in one of those apartment houses near the delousing centre.’

‘It’s not like you, Colonel,’ said Stein with polite interest

‘Well, from now on it’s going to be like me,’ said Colonel Pitman. ‘From now on I’m going to keep the army in perspective, and I’m going to start counting off the days, like you do, Corporal.’

‘You’re not going to stay in the army, Colonel?’

‘You show me a way to get out of the army tonight, Corporal, and I’d take it.’

‘I might be able to do something like that,’ said Stein, ‘And I might be able to show you how to take enough dough to retire with.’

‘What are you talking about, Stein?’

‘Not Uncle Sam’s money, Colonel; Nazi gold stashed not far from here. Looks like we are going to get the job of hauling it to Frankfurt.’

‘Gold?’

‘Millions and millions of bucks, Colonel. This lousy war is just about over. I was sitting here on my own tonight, and I was thinking about Aram and the old days back in North Africa… and I began to wonder about something. Could I just run over this idea with you, Colonel? In strictest confidence… ’

Colonel Pitman sat down on a packing case near the stove. His coat was steaming as the heat penetrated his damp uniform, ‘You sure could, Corporal. I’ve never been in a better mood to listen to any proposition that comes my way.’

‘The boys always trusted you, Colonel,’ said Stein.

Pitman’s memories faded as he reminded himself that this was 1979 and half a lifetime had passed since the day they made that fateful decision. ‘No one ever wanted to vote you out of office.’

‘I’m proud of that,’ admitted Pitman. ‘1952 was the toughest year… three of the boys died in as many months.’

‘Tricky Richards, Corporal Arbenz who had the car accident and Moose Menzies. Yes, I remember,’ said Stein. ‘Yeah, that was a real bad year.’

‘I paid out the families without having any proper authority from the syndicate,’ said Colonel Pitman. ‘It was complicated. We were deeply committed to fixed-interest investments.’

‘You did wonders, Colonel.’

‘I’ve always tried to be fair,’ said Pitman, He stopped at a traffic light ‘I was never a great financial brain, or very good at administration. You know that I was never much of a soldier… ’

‘Come on, Colonel! You… ’

‘No. We’re getting too old to go on deceiving ourselves. I was not much of an officer. It was you and Master Sergeant Vanelli who kept us going. Did I tell you that Vanelli died?’

‘Yes, Colonel, you did.’

‘You kept us going. You understood the men better than I ever did.’

‘We were all too gung-ho,’ said Stein.

‘I was a hot-head trying to get the Congressional Medal of Honour in my first hour of combat. Major Carson realized that, he warned me against myself.’

‘You nearly made it, Colonel.’

Pitman allowed himself a faint smile. ‘Yep, I nearly did. Chuck. The trouble was, I wiped out half the company in the attempt.’

‘It’s time you forgot all that, Colonel. You did what seemed best at the time.’

‘Some fine men died that day, Corporal.’ Colonel Pitman’s eyes half closed as he relived the worst and the best moments of his life. ‘Your brother and Major Carson. Arias who tried to get back to the machine-gun. Kaplan and Klein-next-door neighbours who signed on together and stayed together right until the end. Sergeant Scott, who didn’t know how to drive that damned truck but wouldn’t get out of the driver’s seat. Sergeant Packer who said he’d shoot the last man to go forward… ’

‘And then trod on the S mine,’ said Stein.

‘Heroes,’ said Pitman.

‘Not heroes,’ said Stein calmly. ‘Not cowards, Colonel. Not cowards the way that the newspapers and the Limeys and the brass wanted to pretend they were. But not heroes either. It’s time to face up to that, Colonel.’

‘We were raw troops. Even during our combat training we didn’t have more than half a dozen men on the training staff who’d ever heard a shot fired in anger. What chance did we stand against those German veterans?’

‘We ran,’ said Stein softly. ‘We ran, Colonel.’

‘It was politics. Washington wanted Americans in action and wanted them commanded by Eisenhower. It was all part of the political plan to put Eisenhower into the job of Supreme Commander Europe in time for D-day. Without some American blood spilt the Limeys would have got Montgomery into that Supreme Commander slot.’

‘Ike did a good job,’ said Stein. He could not share the colonel’s bitterness. ‘With that son of a bitch Monty in command we’d still be there, waiting to start the invasion.’

‘Why did they wait so long before bringing Georgie Patton in to command the corps?’ said the colonel. ‘The shame of that damned week still remains with me. I remember it every day. Can you understand that, Corporal?’ It was Corporal now, and Pitman’s voice had that shrill ring to it that Stein had not heard for nearly four decades.

‘The top brass were right,’ said Colonel Pitman. ‘I cursed them every day for years, but they were right. We would never have had the guts to go into battle again. We were write-offs… ’

‘Retreads,’ Stein corrected him. ‘OK, so we were humiliated-tankers dumped into a redeployment depot, then relegated to the quartermaster corps-but we did what had to be done. We gave a few years of our lives, and fought the war that put the Nazis out of business.’

‘It was all I ever wanted,’ said Pitman softly. ‘That commission in a first-class unit with men I liked and respected. It broke my heart to see them driving those damned trucks.’

‘And what about after the war?’ Stein said consolingly. ‘We wouldn’t have got a few million bucks in bullion if we’d stayed with those tank destroyers.’