Robert Adams - The Memories of Milo Morai

“But how in God’s name did you wind up here, Emil? Or am I allowed to know?”

It was not until Schrader smiled that Milo realized that one of the younger man’s eyes was not his—a very good color match for the real, remaining one, but a prosthetic, nonetheless—and when he noticed that, he then noticed the faint, well-sanded facial scars, too. The poor little fucker had really had the course, it would seem.

“You’re one of the principal reasons I’m here, you know, Milo. After I was released from the hospital three months back, I was given orders to report to Fort Holabird immediately, not even given time for a convalescent leave to go back home to Kansas. When I got there, who should be waiting but that same son of a bitch tried to have me railroaded at Benning, Jay Jarvis. The fucker got me into his office and told me he was going to put me into a tedious, boring, dead-end job there and keep me at it forever, that I’d stay there until I had a long white beard unless I gave him, in writing, a confession that I’d been a Nazi sympathizer before the war and a Nazi agent during the war. He said that he could keep me from getting anything worse than a dishonorable discharge, but that he had to have that statement and that I wouldn’t get a dis-charge of any kind until I’d given him what he wanted.

“Well, hell, Milo, you know damned good and well that I’m just as stubborn as any other fucker and I would’ve seen hell freeze over solid before I’d’ve knuckled under to that peckerhead cocksucker. So I’ve just been sitting up there, marking time, counting paperclips and suchlike with Jarvis harassing me till he was blue in the face, and then you came along.

“So, after they’d shipped Jarvis off to the funny farm to do his OJT in paper-doll production, somebody went through his office files, found out I was there on post doing little or nothing and started looking for a slot for me to fill. They must’ve looked in my 201 and decided to make a translator or something like that of me, ’cause I was questioned at some length in German—Hochdeutsch, Plattdeutsch, Schweizer-deutsch, the works. A couple days later, they cut orders on me to come to something called Operation Newhaven. And I guess this hash up must be it, huh?”

Milo could but wonder at just why and how the Army had for so long retained Jarvis in a position of some power despite his long-proven lunacy. The arrogance of taking a highly decorated combat officer, fresh out of hospital, still showing the scars and cripplings of hard, faithful service, and employing mental torture on him in order to try to force him to confess to untruths about himself smacked more of the Axis countries or Russia than it did of the United States of America . Jay Jarvis’ friends must be very highly placed and powerful indeed to have managed to keep their boy out of a booby hatch for so long a time.

“So,” asked Schrader, “if this is Operation Newhaven, what does it do that’s so hush-hush they won’t even let you know where the hell it and you are, Milo?”

“You reported to the general?” Milo answered the question with questions. “What did he have to say to you about your duties here, Emil?”

Schrader shook his head. “That was the quickest I ever got to see any general officer—or any field-grade officer, for that matter, outside of actual combat—in my life. General Barstow was very nice, very friendly, he seemed honestly glad to have me here . . . and he did not say one fucking thing that told me anything about this Operation Newhaven at all, just warned me that I’d get fried on the wire or my ass shot off by the guards if I tried to get out without somebody’s say-so, said I’d learn more in due time, then he turned me over to a Captain Jonas. Sam chatted with me for a while, then turned me over to a Sergeant Quales, who took me to the back of the building, issued me an armload of civilian clothes and shoes, dumped them all in a brand-spanking-new foot locker and told me it would be brought to my quarters later. Then a Lieutenant Obrenovich took over and took me over to the BOQ and told me which rooms were already taken and which building to come to after I’d gotten my gear more or less squared away. And I repeat, what the hell is this Operation Newhaven, anyhow, Milo?”

Milo chuckled. “You have been told exactly as much as Barstow has told any of the rest of us, Emil, and we’ve been here two-three weeks, most of us, too. How did they get you down here from Holabird, car?”

Schrader shook his head once more. “Naw, Milo. They drove me to some little bitsy airfield and put me and my gear on a Piper Cub—you know, like they use to spot targets for the artillery—a two-seater and flown by an enlisted pilot who had about as much to say as a stuffed owl. We landed at an Air Corps place called Langley and me and my gear got put into the back of a half-ton GI panel truck with the back windows painted over—both sides of the fucking glass, too, for shit’s sake!—and a fucking plywood partition between the back and the front. When it finally stopped and they opened the back door, it was clear we was on an Army post, but don’t ask me where or which one, ’cause they stuck me and my stuff into the back of a three-quarter-ton weapons carrier, tied the back curtain down and took off. Felt like the fuckers were driving cross-country, part of the time, and when they stopped and told me I could get out, it was here, wherever here is.”

Four more of the Munich bunch filtered in—Hugo, Ned, Judy and Annemarie—in the same traveling party with a short section of WAAC’s under the command of a six-foot-tall Wagnerian blond sergeant named Hilda Stupsnasig. With his well-honed sense of humor, General Barstow immediately dubbed the WAAC sergeant “Brunhild,” but simply as an in-joke, since all the WAAGs were clerical personnel and as such would work in uniform in various capacities and offices.

At last, Barstow called a meeting of ten of his people—Milo, Buck, Betty, Hugo, Ned, Judy, Vasili and the three older civilian men—in the small conference room behind his office.

“All right, ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “Our work, what we all came here for, will be starting day after tomorrow. It’s going to be, in many ways, very much like what most of us here were doing in Munich, earlier this year. The difference is going to be that very few if any of the people we are going to be interviewing are DPs. On the contrary, almost all of them are going to be Germans, many of them having had ties of some sort to one of the armed services and/or to various Staatsbilden of the Third Reich, and even those few who will not be Germans will have worked closely with certain German projects which employed the others, the actual Germans.

“These three distinguished gentlemen”—he indicated the three civilians, seated side by side as always since their arrival, all puffing away at their pipes—“will be called Smith, Jones and Doe, and one of them will be a member of each of the three interrogation teams. Buck, you and Judy will be teamed with Doe. Hugo, you and Ned with Jones. You two teams will be dealing only with Germans.

“Milo, you and Betty and Vasili will, with Smith, handle all of the non-Germanic subjects. You, Milo, will also be in charge of all three teams, the facility and so forth. You’ll probably need an exec to take some of the load off. You can have any officer not presently in this room. Who do you want?”

“How about Emil Schrader, general?” replied Milo quickly. “He and I worked together years ago. I was a first sergeant and he was my field first; he’s a good man.”

Barstow nodded. “So be it. You’ve got him as of now. It’ll be up to you to brief him, though. He’s a good choice for this, too, come to think of it, Milo. He speaks excellent German and can be used to fill in on either Team One or Team Two in a pinch.