Гарольд Роббинс - The Raiders

He was also promoted to captain. He was hospitalized first in Antwerp and then in Paris, finally at Walter Reed in Washington. He was at home for Christmas, at the hacienda outside Cordoba.

While he was away his grandfather had died. The hacienda seemed empty without him. Virgilio Escalante now invited him to share cigars and brandy after dinner. He took him into the town and treated him to the ministrations of the finest young puta Cordoba could offer. Bat accepted the gift. He returned to see the girl several times. She became a teacher for him.

At the end of his leave he went back to Walter Reed Hospital. The war was over, and he would be discharged as soon as the hospital granted him its final release. He took some time to inquire of Corporal Prizio. The young man had survived and was at home on a farm not far from Watkins Glen. He inquired of Jerry Rabin and learned that Ensign Jerome Rabin had been killed in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Captain — now Major — Grimes was in Japan, a professional soldier staying in the army. Sergeant Dave Amory was at home in Boston.

Bat applied to Harvard, to return and begin the rest of his education in the fall term of 1946.

The fall term began six months later. He had nothing to do for six months. He bought a car: a 1938 Cadillac. He drove up to Watkins Glen and visited Corporal Prizio. After that he drove on to Cambridge and began to look for a place to live. The returning GIs did not want to live in college dorms, and he didn't either. He began to look for an apartment.

He remembered that Sergeant Dave Amory lived in Boston. He called him, and they met for beer and sandwiches at a Cambridge pub.

He didn't raise the subject immediately, but after they'd finished a beer Bat said to Dave, "You saved my life."

"I did like hell," said Dave. "You were down. They wouldn't have wasted ammunition on you."

"Well then, they might have wasted it on you, while you exposed your ass running out there to get me."

Dave shook his head. "I had to run someplace. The other option was run on across the bridge, toward where the firing was hotter. Taking a minute to drag you behind a girder may have saved my life."

Dave Amory was as tall as Bat, and he was a great deal bulkier. His shoulders were broader than Bat's, his body was more solid, and his arms and legs were thicker. His broad, long-jawed face was more often solemn than jocular, but he had a submerged sense of humor that emerged in eccentric comments on just about anything. He was two years older than Bat and would begin his senior year in the fall. After that he would go to law school.

"What are you doing this summer, Dave?"

"Nothing. I'm drawing my fifty-two twenty. Sit around the VFW hall and soak up beer. I figure I'm entitled to a little time off before I pick myself up again."

Bat frowned at him. He lifted his chin. "You bored?" he asked.

Dave tipped his head to one side and drew one corner of his lower lip back between his teeth. He hesitated for a moment, then said, "Yeah, I guess I am. You know what it is."

"I sure do. It was a fuckin' nightmare, Dave, but nothing ever gets a man's juices flowing as strong. I doubt anything ever will. We have to admit it. God grant we never find anything again in our lives that — Well, it sure as hell wasn't boring. I wonder if everything for the rest of our lives will be boring ... by comparison."

"Are you absolutely sure you want to come back to Harvard?" Dave asked.

"No. But I've got to do something, and I don't know what else to do. Besides ... I don't want to disappoint my mother."

Dave chuckled. "As good a reason as any," he said. "What are you, Lieutenant? Twenty-one?"

"Not quite, but please don't call me Lieutenant."

"What you doing about boredom?" Dave asked. "Gettin' laid any?"

"When I was at home last winter, my stepfather set me up with a pretty little whore. I had a wonderful time with her, but —" He shrugged.

Dave nodded.

"When I was here in '42 and '43, my freshman roommate couldn't think of anything but what he called getting his wick dipped. He said he didn't want to die a virgin. Well, he ... didn't. He died, but he wasn't a virgin. God, what enthusiasm we had for it! My first. It wasn't very good, I know now, but —"

"It'll never be quite as good again," said Dave. "In another sense. When the mystery is gone out of a thing —"

"I was terrified of being shot," Bat interrupted. "Then I was hit. I got hit twice, you know. It's not the biggest thing in my life. It would have been if I'd been killed. It would have been if I'd been crippled."

"You had a punctured lung, didn't you? I saw the blood running out of your mouth."

"Lung was full of rib fragments," said Bat. "The Germans made good ammunition. The slugs went through cleanly. But not the bone fragments. Let's talk about something else."

"You looking for a roommate?" asked Dave.

"Sure."

"You have a car. So have I. That means we can look for a place outside Cambridge. Maybe Lexington. We can get more space for less money, and it'll only be a five- or six-mile drive."

"Deal," said Bat.

"Before we can live together, though, I've got to have the answer to a question. The story in the outfit used to be that you were a mysterious guy. We weren't even sure what your name is."

Bat faced Dave with a wry smile. "My name is Jonas Enrique Raúl Cord y Batista."

" Cord ! Jonas ... Jonas Cord!"

"My father. And my great-uncle is Fulgencio Batista."

"And you use the name Batista, not Cord?"

"Accident. Batista is the last name on the string, so people tend to call me Batista."

"Which would you rather?"

"I don't care."

"What does your father think?"

"I've never met him."

"Good enough. That was the last question."

They agreed to drive to Lexington the next day. That afternoon they rented the second floor of a big old white frame house. It was furnished, but they told the landlady they would rather store her furniture and buy new. They furnished their apartment — living room, two bedrooms, kitchen, and bath — and moved in.

Bat thought about contacting his father. Jonas Cord was constantly in the news. In the hospital in Antwerp, Bat had read newspaper stories about how his father had crashed a huge flying boat in the Pacific off San Diego and lost seventeen million dollars. Then, when Bat was in the hospital in Paris, a story appeared saying his father had remarried. Odd, he had remarried his ex-wife. Another news account said he was going to manufacture television sets, devices that would receive pictures the way radio received voices and music; and he was quoted as saying that millions of American families would own television sets within the next ten years. A busy man. He might not want to meet a son he didn't know he had.

In any case. Bat didn't want to meet him while he was a student. When he was somebody — doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief — maybe he would confront this peripatetic tycoon. He would confront him when he was established, and his father could not suppose he had come to beg for something. Putting the matter more simply, Bat didn't want to meet his father until he could, if he chose to, tell him to go to hell.

"TONI, TONI, TONI, TONI ... I LOVE YOU, Antonia Maxim. Will you marry me?"

Antonia Maxim — she pronounced her name Ahn-toe-NEE-a — glanced up into his eyes, a playful expression on her face. "You didn't even have to ask, Bat. You know I'll marry you. You know I love you. I've proved it, haven't I? It's been a whirlwind courtship, but you have to know I love you."

It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, in the fall, when many Harvardians and Radcliffe girls had gone to the football game. Dave had gone to the stadium — more as an accommodation to his friends than because he was interested in the game — so Bat and Toni were alone in the bright, spacious, comfortable living room of the second-floor apartment in the house at Lexington.