W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps 03 - Counterattack

Mrs. Cavendish followed him in in a moment, and laid a newspaper on the table. Right behind her was a maid, a plain woman maybe thirty years old, wearing a black dress with a little white apron in front. She smiled at Steve, then went to one of the cabinets in the room, and took out a woven place mat and silver and set it up in front of him.

"What would you like for breakfast?" Mrs. Cavendish asked. "Ham and eggs? There’s kippers."

Steve had no idea what a kipper was.

"Ham and eggs would be fine," he said. "Over easy."

"We have tomato and pineapple juice."

"Tomato juice would be fine," Steve said.

"The tea’s brewing," Mrs. Cavendish said. "It’ll just be a moment."

She and the maid left the room. Steve unfolded the newspaper. It was The Times of Victoria. The pages were bigger than those of the Newark Evening News, but there weren’t very many of them. He flipped through it, looking in vain for comics, and then returned to the first page.

There were two big headlines:rommel nears tobruk andnazi tanks approach Leningrad. There was a picture of a burning German tank, and a map of North Africa with wide, curving arrows drawn on it.

Steve wondered why there wasn’t anything in the newspaper about the Japs being about to invade Australia.

He went through the newspaper, mostly reading the advertisements for strange brands of toothpaste, used motorcars, and something called Bovril. He wondered what Bovril was, whether you ate it, or drank it, or washed your mouth out with it, or what.

The maid delivered his ham and eggs, cold toast in a little rack, tomato juice, and a tub of sour orange marmalade. He had just about finished eating when the maid came in the breakfast room.

"Telephone for you, Sir," she said, and pointed to a telephone sitting on a sideboard.

The telephone was strange. There was sort of a cup over the mouthpiece, and the wire that ran from the base to the handset was much thinner than the one on American phones; it looked more like a couple of pieces of string twisted together than like a regular wire.

"Corporal Koffler, Sir," Steve said.

"Good morning, Corporal," a cheerful voice said. "Lieutenant Donnelly here." He pronounced it "leftenant," so Steve knew he was an Australian. "Yes, Sir?"

"I’m the Air Transport Officer, Naval Station, Melbourne. We have two things for you. Actually, I mean to say, two shipments. There’s several crates, priority air shipment, and we’ve been alerted that several of your people are scheduled to arrive about noon."

"Yes, Sir."

"Your Captain Pickering said to send the crates out there by lorry, and that you’ll meet the aircraft. Any problems with that?"

"No, Sir," Steve said, an automatic reflex. Then he blurted, "Sir, I’m not sure if I can find . . . where the plane will be. Or how to get back out here."

Lieutenant Donnelly chuckled. "Well, you’ll be able to find your way about soon enough, I’m sure. In the meantime, I’ll just send a map, with the route marked, out there with the lorry driver. Do you think that will handle it?"

"Yes, Sir. Thank you."

"The lorry should be there within the hour. Thank you, Corporal."

"Thank you, Sir."

Steve hung up and went looking for Mrs. Cavendish. He was going to need some place to store the crates, whatever they contained. She showed him a three-car garage behind the house, now empty, that was just what he was looking for. There were sturdy metal doors which could be locked, and there were no windows.

The truck arrived forty-five minutes later. Steve, who had been looking out his bedroom window for it, saw that it said "Ford" on the radiator, but it was unlike any Ford Steve had ever seen. There were three people in the cab, all in uniform, and all female.

They all wore the same kind of caps, something like a Marine cap, except the visor wasn’t leather. They wore the caps perched straight on top of their hair, and Steve thought they all looked kind of cute, like girls dressed up in men’s uniforms. Two of them wore gray coveralls. The third, who looked like she was in charge, wore a tunic and a shirt and tie and a skirt, with really ugly stockings.

"Corporal Koffler?" she said, smiling at him and offering her hand. "I’m Petty Officer Farnsworth."

"Hi," Steve said. She was, he guessed, in her early twenties. He couldn’t really tell what the rest of her looked like in the nearly shapeless uniform and those ugly cotton stockings, but her face was fine. She had light hazel eyes and freckles.

"Good day," the other two women said. In Australia that came out something like "G’die," which took some getting used to. One of them looked like she was about seventeen, and the other one looked old enough to be the first one’s mother. Neither of them, Steve immediately decided, had the class of Petty Officer Farnsworth.

"How are you?" Steve said, and walked over and shook hands with them.

"After we unload your crates," Petty Officer Farnsworth said, "Lieutenant Donnelly said I was to ask if you would like me to wait around and drive into Melbourne with you, to show you the way."

"Great!" Steve said.

"Where would you like the crates?"

"Let’s see what they are," Steve said, and walked to the back of the truck. He saw three wooden crates, none of them as large as a footlocker. He couldn’t tell what they contained, and there was nothing stenciled on them to identify them.

Petty Officer Farnsworth, who had followed him, handed him a manila envelope. "The shipping documents," she said.

He tore the envelope open. The U.S. Army Signal Center, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, had shipped, on AAAA Air Priority, by authority of the Chief Signal Officer, U.S. Army, to the Commanding Officer, USMC Special Detachment 14, Melbourne, Australia:

1 EA SET, TRANSCEIVER, RADIO, HALLICRAFTERS MODEL 23C, W/48 CRYSTALS

1 EA ANTENNA SET, RADIO TRANSMISSION, PORTABLE, 55-FOOT W/CABLES A GUY WIRES

1 EA GENERATOR, ELECTRICAL, FOOT AND HAND POWERED, 6 AND 12 VOLT DC

"Wow!" Steve said. He knew all about the Hallicrafters 23C, had studied carefully all of its specifications in the American Amateur Radio Relay League magazine, but he’d never seen one before.

"Am I permitted to ask what they are?" Petty Officer Farnsworth asked.

"Just about the best shortwave radio there is," Steve said.

"Lieutenant Donnelly said that I wasn’t to ask questions," Petty Officer Farnsworth said, "about what you’re doing out here."

"You didn’t. You just asked what was in the boxes. There’s nothing secret about that."

She smiled at him.

Nice teeth. Nice smile.

"Where would you like them?"

"Around in back," Steve said. "I’ll show you."

When the crates had been unloaded, Petty Officer Farnsworth sent the truck back into Melbourne.

"It will take us no more than forty-five minutes to get to the quay," she said. "Which means we should leave here at eleven-fifteen. It’s now quarter past nine. Where can I pass two hours out of your way, where I will see nothing I’m not supposed to see?"

"I don’t have anything to do. And there’s nothing out here for you to see. Would you like a cup of coffee?"

"Tea?"

"Oh, sure."

"That would be very nice, Corporal," Petty Officer Farnsworth said.

Steve took her into the breakfast room, sat her down, and then went into the kitchen and asked for tea. They waited for several minutes in an awkward silence until one of the maids delivered a tea tray, complete to toast and cookies.

"Where are you from in America?" Petty Officer Farnsworth asked.

"Where the radios come from. New Jersey. How about you?"

"I’m from Wagga Wagga, in New South Wales."

"Wagga Wagga?" he asked, smiling.

"I think that’s an Aborigine name."