Robert Adams - The Memories of Milo Morai

“And you then telephoned General Barstow with the message, love?” she said, continuing her long, slow, steady brush strokes.

“I tried to, but he was somewhere off post—the girl didn’t seem to have any idea when he might be back or where Sam Jonas might be, either. So I guess now it’ll have to be morning before I get the info to him and he gets into personal touch with Smith. After that, you know the drill well enough; they’ll fuck around with papers and bureaucratic shit for one or two days before the transport finally comes to take this lot to wherever they go from here.”

Laying down the brush and turning about to face him, she said, “Good. I will be very glad to see these three go. Valuable scientist or not, this man Gries nauseates me. He never ceases to voice his complaints over the loss of his beautiful estate in the Sandland, the lands and the buildings and the loot from all over Europe with which the main house had been furnished and decorated. The way he goes on with complaint after complaint, one would think that Germany had won, rather than lost, the war.”

Milo stopped his buffing and nodded. “I know what you mean. I’ve heard Gries carry on about his unfair losses. But that damned Faber is the one who gets to me. He’s lodged a formal complaint after almost every meal he’s eaten here—he apparently expectshaute cuisine and vintage wines out of an Army messhall. Of the lot, I find that haughty, arrogant bastard Hizinger the easiest to stomach, oddly enough.”

She nodded back to him. “I know. That man is dead certain that Hitler is not dead, despite all evidence to the contrary. He makes it abundantly clear that he only is marking time, staying alive long enough to greet and participate in the reborn Dritten Deutschen Reich. Even so, he is more admirable a man than that Gries.”

“Milo, I’m just as sorry as hell, but I don’t know where the general went, where he is now or when he’ll be back. He sent me over to Fort Useless yesterday, and while I was gone he took off, no note, no message, no nothing. I think he’s trying his level best to worry me into an early grave, that’s what I think. But look, if Judy is as sick as you say, I’ll have the dispensary send the meat wagon in there and get her to the doc out here; where she goes from there’ll have to be up to him. Neither you nor Buck know what might’ve caused her to start upchucking and running a fever? Something she ate, maybe?”

Milo sighed. “Sam, we all ate the same breakfast. She’s the only one who got sick. It could be flu, it could be a virus, it could be some kind of internal problem, hell, it could even be poison, I admit. But if it is, how come nobody else ate it? She can’t hold even water down, and with the diarrhea, too, she’s going to be dangerously dehydrated in a very short time. I have some few hard-earned medical skills, but administering IV fluids is definitely not one of them, so you’d better get that ambulance in here on the double and get her to somebody who can keep her going.”

Back at the bungalow, Buck asked anxiously, “Well, Milo, what’s the general say?”

“The general’s still not there, not anywhere on the post,” said Milo. “But I did talk to Sam Jonas and he’s going to send an ambulance from the dispensary to take her back there.”

“Thank God for that, at least, Milo, but she needs a real hospital. She’s terribly ill—a mere dispensary isn’t going to have the facilities to properly care for her.”

Milo looked down at the feverish woman, wrapped in a cocoon of GI blankets, her pale face running sweat, hugged up against herself and with her teeth chattering. “Buck, anybody could see that she’s in a bad way. Once that surgeon at the dispensary examines her, you know damned well that she’ll be on the way to the hospital over at Useless or somewhere. I just pray that whatever she’s come down with isn’t contagious. That would be all we’d need, in here.”

“And I’ve got to go with her, Milo,” said Buck in a no-nonsense tone. “Are you and Sam Jonas going to try to give me flak for that?”

“I’m sure as hell not,” declared Milo. “I don’t think that the general would, either. He’s very fond of her . . . and you, too. As for Sam, well, if there’s any flak from him, I’ll do the catching of it, Buck. You get cracking and pack what you think the two of you will need in hospital. I’m going back to headquarters and try to type you out an authorization to leave before the meat wagon gets here.”

“God bless you, mon ami,“said Buck humbly. “You are truly a good and caring man.” Suddenly he grabbed Milo’s hand and kissed the back of it, tears sparkling unshed in his eyes.

Back at headquarters, Emil Schrader was nowhere to be found, and Milo cursed silently; a typist he was not. Cranking the field telephone that connected the various buildings in the small compound, he rang up the WAAC barracks.

A near-baritone voice answered, “WAAC quarters. Staff Sergeant Stupsnasig speaking, sir.”

“Sergeant, this is Major Moray. I’m at my office and I need a fast typist, on the double. Can do?”

Milo was surprised at just how fast and accurate a typist the tall, beefy woman was. Her hands, bigger than his own and looking to have been intended for effortlessly crushing granite boulders into powder, handled the Underwood with consummate ease and quickly had the form properly filled out and ready for his signature. He was just signing it when Betty and Hugo strolled in, the two Germans, Hizinger and Gries, with them.

Immediately, Milo detected the air of something being wrong, felt his nape hairs prickle up and an inward sense of deep foreboding. But just then the gate guard unlocked the gate and the boxy field ambulance rolled through into the small compound. Outside the bungalow, Buck waved with both arms, and as the ambulance veered in his direction, he stepped back inside to reemerge with the blanket-swathed form of Judy in his arms, carrying her easily, tenderly.

When the vehicle backed up to the front of the bungalow, a medic hopped out and helped Buck arrange Judy in one of the litters. Then, with the rear doors still flapping open, the ambulance made for the headquarters building to pick up Buck’s egress pass.

At the point of two silenced, small-caliber pistols held by Betty and Hugo, Sergeant Stupsnasig had typed and Milo had signed four more passes. Milo was in a state of stunned shock, still barely able to comprehend Betty’s duplicity—so warm and loving, even more so than usual only short hours past, now so cold and detached and deadly of demeanor.

The brawny Hugo jerked Buck out of the ambulance with one hand and slammed the side of the silenced pistol against his head with the other. He took a grip on the blankets wrapped around Judy, but then let her go as the two Germans came out of the headquarters building to level his pistol on them while Betty, who had brought them out, turned and reentered, briefly.

“Give me the key to the telephone that connects to Barstow’s office, Milo. Give it to me immediately or I’ll kill you both, here and now.”

Milo eased up in his chair, fished a keyring out of his pocket and dropped it on the desktop. “What the hell is your game, Betty ... if that’s really your name? Those passes will get you out of this compound, but just how do you propose to get out of the main one?”

Picking up the keyring, she half smiled. “We shall crash through the gate, of course, in the ambulance. Why else do you think that I poisoned Judy than to get us an ambulance driver in here?”

He shook his head. “You’ll all be fried. That gate has enough voltage in it to—”

“Please, Milo, spare me. No, we will get through safely enough. The tires of the ambulance are rubber and therefore the vehicle will not be grounded. Hugo explained it all to me.”