Robert Adams - A Man Called Milo Morai

Jethro entered Milo’s office and carefully closed and latched the door one morning. “Milo,” he began in a low, guarded tone, almost a whisper, “something damned strange is going on concerning you. Have you made any application for OCS or for a transfer out of the unit without telling me about it?”

“Of course not, Jethro,” was Milo’s prompt reply. “Why?”

Lieutenant Stiles shook his head slowly. “Why? I don’t know why, anything, Milo. But I just received an order to hold you ready here to be picked up and transported to an interview with an officer that I happen to know is connected with division CID … probably G-2, too, if not Army Counterintelligence. I can’t imagine why a man like that would want to interview a noncom of a training company. Can you?”

Milo disliked Major Jay Jarvis from first laying eyes upon him. The man was short, skinny and pasty-white, save for his petulant, liver-colored lips, a multitude of facial pimples and muddy-brown eyes. He was of early middle years, balding and had chewed his nails to the quick, and his class-A uniform hung on his bony figure like a sack. His hands never stayed still for an instant, always playing with one of the profusion of stiletto-sharp pencils, a cold pipe which had strewn ashes from end to end of the GI desk, a stack of manuals and pamphlets, a higher stack of assorted papers and personnel files, the knot of his tie or the soggy handkerchief with which he dabbed at a dripping beak of a nose.

When Milo had been coldly ushered into the office by the armed second lieutenant and buck sergeant who had escorted him here from B Company, the door had been closed—and locked—behind him, leaving him to salute and report to this strange officer.

The major looked up at him, but would not look him in the eyes. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” he demanded in an atrocious accent.

“]a, Herr Major. Ich spreche Deutsch,” he replied aloud, adding, to himself, “And one hell of a lot better than you do, you sourpussed bastard.”

“You speak it well, too,” said the officer grudgingly. “As well as a native, I’d say. Moray, you’re being considered for a commission, but we need to know more about you, more than this”—he flicked a personnel file with the nailless fingers of one soft hand—“so-called 201 file of yours gives us. Where did you learn your German, Moray?”

Milo sighed silently. Here it starts again after all this time. “Sir, I don’t know how or when or where I learned any of the languages I speak. I have been an amnesiac since the mid-thirties. My very earliest memory is of waking up in a hospital in Chicago, having been found clubbed down and robbed in an alley.”

The major smiled coldly, showing uneven, scummy teeth. “Sergeant, am I really expected to believe that hooey? Please credit the Army of the United States of America with some small degree of intelligence. No, I am not one of your Sturmbannfuhrers , Moray, or whatever your real name is, but I can sniff out a phony just as quickly as they can, mister! Can you offer me a single, solitary shred of proof that you are who and what you say you are? You’d better be able to, mister, because since we arrested Sergeant Emil Schrader, you’re—”

“For the love of God, major, why did you- arrest Emil?” Milo interrupted, and military protocol be damned.

Anger smoldered briefly in the officer’s lackluster eyes and his mouth started to snap a reprimand at Milo’s interruption. But then the anger died away without a wisp of smoke and he shrugged and replied, “Because he’s a Nazi spy, Moray, that’s why, as if you didn’t know it all along. You’ve been heard time and again conferring with him in German. Those who heard you didn’t understand what you two were saying, but they did recognize the langauge when they heard it, you see.

“You and Schrader identified the men we planted in B Company immediately, didn’t you? I know that’s why you began talking in code, right? Still in German, but in code.”

“Major Jarvis,” said Milo, “I find it difficult to credit any of this. You think, truly, that Schrader and I are Nazi spies? That you might entertain some questions about my background is perhaps understandable, all things considered. But Emil Schrader’s background is completely documented from year one. He was born in Kansas; his family still lives and farms there. His parents came from Germany sometime back before the Great War, but all of their children are Americans, born.”

Jarvis nodded. “And Emil Schrader, his parents and all of his brothers and sisters saw fit to become members of the German-American Bund, as coy a nest of traitors and spies as this country ever has produced. His father, Franz Schrader, is high on the Kansas councils of these homegrown Nazi-lovers.”

In grim tones, Milo stated, “So you think that simply because Emil and his family joined and participated in an ethnic group, did so long before any American considered the Germans to be our enemies, he is a spy. Major, don’t you think that if the Nazis really wanted to use that poor dimwitted boy for a spy they’d at least put him someplace of more importance to the nation and the war effort than in a noncom slot in a basic training company? If you types are going after everyone who has some German in this division, you’re going to have your hands full and you’ll need to enlarge the post stockade to lock them all up.

“In addition to German and English, major, I speak Russian. Does that make me a Bolshevik? I speak Italian. Does that make me a Fascist? I speak Spanish. Does that make me a Falangist?”

Jarvis began to squirm in his chair. “Okay, Moray, okay. If you are what you say you are, I … we … are going to need some proof, some hard facts in corroboration.” He stood up. “You sit down at this desk and write me out a complete history of your life … well, of as much of it as you can remember. I want names, titles, dates, places, everything, Take all the time you need; you’re relieved of all your other duties until this is done with, understand? But tell it all, Moray. If we catch you in a lie, that’s it—you’ll go to jail with Schrader. Better get to it, sergeant.”

During the nearly forty days it took the authorities to run down and check out the persons whose names he had given in his handwritten account, Milo was allowed to carry on his work in B Company almost as normal. He was, of course, restricted in his movements; his pass had been lifted and he could not leave the post for any reason. Moreover, he was dead certain that he was under constant surveillance and that his quarters were being searched about once each week.

Not having been told not to do so, he had early on discussed the entire matter with Jethro, whose immediate reply had been, “Bullshit, Milo. You’re no spy and neither is Schrader, for that matter. I’ll see what I can do, and I’ll get in touch with James, too. But you play along with the silly bastards, at this point. It would seem that the lunatics have taken over the asylum.”

So Milo just sweated it out, doing his hard job as well as he could, breaking in a replacement field first and waiting for the other shoe to fall. He was in the field when the same armed duo sought him out, relieved him of his empty pistol and nudged him into their three-quarter-ton command car, then drove back to the division headquarters.

The file before Major Jarvis still was marked “Moray, Milo (n.m.i.),” but it was now much fatter and there were two other fat files of differing colors under it. When Milo had gone through the formalities, there was dead silence save for the tapping of a pencil point on the major’s still-scummy teeth.

At length, the officer spoke. “Moray, I could almost believe that I was right about you to begin with, but if I believed that, I’d have to also believe that some damned big people are also involved with you, both niilitary and civilian. So all I can say now is that, mister, you have some friends in some damned important jobs and places —two military medical officers, one of them a Navy captain, and a very well-connected JAG officer, to name but three of a lengthy list.