Robert Adams - A Man Called Milo Morai

Milo smiled in return, saying with only a bare touch of sarcasm, “The colonel’s wish must be my command, sir.”

“Can the shit, Milo, and let’s get in the fucking car before I remember who and what I now am and bring you up on charges of gross insubordination.” Jethro chuckled, leading the way out of the crowded lobby.

The Lincoln V-12 coupe was shiny and looked to be brand-new. Jethro was an accomplished driver, and he handled the long, heavy vehicle with ease. Nonetheless, before they had finally crossed the Potomac into the peaceful-looking Virginia countryside, Milo had concluded that his nation’s capital was never going to be an easy or safe place to drive large numbers of motor vehicles with any degree of rapidity; the circles and spokelike avenues leading off them had no doubt been elegant in an age of horse-drawn carriages, but they were fast becoming deathtraps with their burdens of far faster, far more numerous, far less biddable automobiles, taxis, trucks and the like, many of them apparently operated by suicidal or homicidal maniacs.

“How in the name of God can you get enough gas to drive this thing, Jethro?” demanded Milo. “I’ll bet that that engine drinks as much gas, mile for mile, as a deuce-and-a-half, at least. Or doesn’t rationing apply to field-grade officers?”

Jethro laughed. “Oh, yes, rationing applies to me, too, at least for my private vehicle when I’m not using it for Army business. But, my dear Milo, there is in this land of the free and home of the brave a thriving sub rosa market for such things as foods and liquors. These markets sell for only cash, no coupons necessary, just so long as the buyer is willing to pay substantially more than said items are actually worth. One also can buy any quantities of ration coupons from these same sources, and this is how I can continue to drive this fine, but always horrendously thirsty, automobile.”

“You, a high-ranking officer of the Army of the United States of America, are dealing on the black market? Buying gas-rationing coupons that in all likelihood are counterfeits?” said Milo in mock horror. “Colonel Stiles, sir, I am frankly appalled!”

The heavy car ate away at the miles, and they drove into Loudon County, passing a sterling-silver flask of a fine cognac back and forth between them. At a turnoff from the main road onto a narrower, graveled one, Jethro pulled off onto a grassy shoulder beneath the spreading branches of a stand of stately, massive old oaks. Beside the car, skirting the road shoulder ahead, was a freshly painted white wooden fence some five feet high, and beyond the section of it immediately to his right, away in the distance across acres of grassy meadow, Milo could barely discern a scattering of animals that looked to be horses or cattle.

After taking a long pull from the quart flask, Jethro said, “Milo, my good old friend, you are about to be made privy to a secret known by no one else with the sole exception of Colonel James Lewis. I’ll not ask for or expect any avowals that you’ll not betray my trust in you, for did I not trust you implicitly, you’d not be here this day.

“Milo, forgive me, please, but I have not been completely candid with you in the years since I first met you. I am married, Milo, and you are about to meet my wife, Martihe Stiles, as well as my two children, Per and Gabrielle.

“Before you ask the obvious, Milo, no, it has not been an easy life for her, but she understands me, my self-imposed exile and penance, she loves me deeply, and our children bind us one to the other despite my lengthy absences and necessarily brief returns. She is much younger than I am. I have known her for much of her life, you see, for she is the daughter of two old and very dear friends from my first days in Europe, years ago.

“I first bought this farm as a place for her to rear our children, before ever there were any to rear. It is fortunate that I happened to buy this particular farm, in this particular place, for now, with my necessary trips to Washington every so often, I am able to spend more time with her and them than ever before.” He chuckled. “So much so, that now it would appear that Martine will be bringing forth a new little brother or sister for them in about six months’ time.”

Jethro’s pretty young wife was not the only surprise awaiting him in the rambling, gracious brick house nestled among its bounteous gardens fringed by a profusion of outbuildings with rolling meadows stretching out on every hand.

While a servant drove the Lincoln away, the petite blond woman first greeted her husband with an embrace and unabashed kisses. Even after bearing two children, so slender and fine-boned was she that her three-month pregnancy was already obvious, but her face radiated her soul-deep happiness and her blue eyes glowed with love each time she looked at the graying officer.

She welcomed Milo in a cultured French tinged with both Parisian and the Swiss dialect, beckoned over another servant to take his bag, then herself ushered him into her home. There, in the comfortably furnished and lavishly decorated parlor to the left of the entrance foyer, four wing chairs faced a huge hearth on which a log fire was laid but not yet lit behind a pierced-brass screen. Two of these chairs were occupied.

Rank and increased responsibilities had not made an easily obvious change in one line or hair of James Lewis’ appearance. His new pinks and blouse fitted him like a glove, as his uniform always had for as long as Milo had known the man; the silver eagles on his shoulders did not look at all out of place on the sometime first sergeant, and the row of campaign and award ribbons affixed over the breast pocket of that selfsame blouse told at a casual glance that here stood not just another new-made civilian-soldier. But even as he pumped Lewis’ big, hard hand, Milo was reeling numbly in shock at sight of the other guest in Jethro’s home.

Dr. Sam Osterreich’s uniform was the dark blue of the Navy, the sleeves of his blouse encircled with the four wide, gold stripes indicating the rank of Navy captain, the full equivalent of James Lewis’ rank.

Later, as the four men sipped wine and talked, the story came out. “You see, Milo,” said Lewis, “back when I was twistin’ tails to get that pissant shithead Jarvis from off of your ass, I come to find out you had been in a hospital in Chicago back in the late thirties and the doctor what had done first took care of you was just then a major at Dix, up in Jersey. When I got in touch with him, he said he’d do all he could for you because he knowed fuckin’ well you wasn’t no Nazi because of how you’d got in a lot of trouble when you got on the shitlist of some Nazi Bund priest in Chicago and that that was how you come to join the Army to start out with.

“But, besides that, he put me in touch with Sam here, who’s still at Bethesda like he was then, and has some kinda pull—believe you me he has!—more’n you can shake a fuckin’ stick at, too. It was him, almos’ all him, what got your balls outen that crack, Milo, and give that dumb shitface Jarvis a comeuppance he had just been a-beggin’ for for a fuckin’ long time. Afore it was done, some first-class, fuckin’ remain’s had been done on him, too, a coupla fuckin’ new assholes worth, I tell you. ‘Cause of you and whatall he was tryin’ to do to railroad you, Doc Sam, here, he not only was able to get you bailed outen the shit, but he got poor Schrader and two, three other guys from our division off the fuckin’ hook, too. Like old maids sees burglars under ever’ bed and in ever’ closet, thishere fuckin’ scabsucker Jarvis was seein’ fuckin’ Nazis ever’ place he come to look; if a soldier could talk German good, to that fuckin’ Jarvis, it meant he was a Nazi spy. The brass-balled fucker even had the gumption to ask me , flat out, if the real reason I was stickin’ up for you wasn’t because my mama’s maiden name was Gertrude Bauer. And he damned fuckin’ near got hisself busted down a whole helluva lot further than he did, too, when he asked Colonel Kessler if he’d been borned in this country and how long ago was the last time he was in Europe. Milo, that fuckin’ li’l bastard’s mouth’s gonna dig him a fuckin’ grave!”