g's bicycle were capable of generating a different
alphabet for each one of its different states. So the state ([theta] = 0, C
= 0) would correspond to, say, this substitution alphabet:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Q G U W B I Y T F K V N D O H E P X L Z R C A S J M
but the state ([theta] = 180, C = 15) would correspond to this
(different) one:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
B O R I X V G Y P F J M T C Q N H A Z U K L D S E W
No two letters would be enciphered using the same substitution alphabet
until, that is, the bicycle worked its way back around to the initial state
([theta] = 0, C = 0) and began to repeat the cycle. This means that it is a
periodic polyalphabetic system. Now, if this machine had a short period, it
would repeat itself frequently, and would therefore be useful, as an
encryption system, only against kids in treehouses. The longer its period
(the more relative primeness is built into it) the less frequently it cycles
back to the same substitution alphabet, and the more secure it is.
The three wheel Enigma is just that type of system (i.e., periodic
polyalphabetic). Its wheels, like the drive train of Turing's bicycle,
embody cycles within cycles. Its period is 17,576, which means that the
substitution alphabet that enciphers the first letter of a message will not
be used again until the 17,577th letter is reached. But with Shark the
Germans have added a fourth wheel, bumping the period up to 456,976. The
wheels are set in a different, randomly chosen starting position at the
beginning of each message. Since the Germans' messages are never as long as
450,000 characters, the Enigma never reuses the same substitution alphabet
in the course of a given message, which is why the Germans think it's so
good.
A flight of transport planes goes over them, probably headed for the
aerodrome at Bedford. The planes make a weirdly musical diatonic hum, like
bagpipes playing two drones at once. This reminds Lawrence of yet another
phenomenon related to the bicycle wheel and the Enigma machine. "Do you know
why airplanes sound the way they do?" he says.
"No, come to think of it." Turing pulls his gas mask off again. His jaw
has gone a bit slack and his eyes are darting from side to side. Lawrence
has caught him out.
"I noticed it at Pearl. Airplane engines are rotary," Lawrence says.
"Consequently they must have an odd number of cylinders."
"How does that follow?"
"If the number were even, the cylinders would be directly opposed, a
hundred and eighty degrees apart, and it wouldn't work out mechanically."
"Why not?"
"I forgot. It just wouldn't work out."
Alan raises his eyebrows, clearly not convinced.
"Something to do with cranks," Waterhouse ventures, feeling a little
defensive.
"I don't know that I agree," Alan says.
"Just stipulate it think of it as a boundary condition," Waterhouse
says. But Alan is already hard at work, he suspects, mentally designing a
rotary aircraft engine with an even number of cylinders.
"Anyway, if you look at them, they all have an odd number of
cylinders," Lawrence continues. "So the exhaust noise combines with the
propeller noise to produce that two tone sound."
Alan climbs back onto his bicycle and they ride into the woods for some
distance without any more talking. Actually, they have not been talking so
much as mentioning certain ideas and then leaving the other to work through
the implications. This is a highly efficient way to communicate; it
eliminates much of the redundancy that Alan was complaining about in the
case of FDR and Churchill.
Waterhouse is thinking about cycles within cycles. He's already made up
his mind that human society is one of these cycles within cycles things
(1) and now he's trying to figure out whether it is like Turing's
bicycle (works fine for a while, then suddenly the chain falls off, hence
the occasional world war) or like an Enigma machine (grinds away
incomprehensibly for a long time, then suddenly the wheels line up like a
slot machine and everything is made plain in some sort of global epiphany
or, if you prefer, apocalypse) or just like a rotary airplane engine (runs
and runs and runs; nothing special happens; it just makes a lot of noise).
"It's somewhere around . . . here!" Alan says, and violently brakes to
a stop, just to chaff Lawrence, who has to turn his bicycle around, a chancy
trick on such a narrow lane, and loop back.
They lean their bicycles against trees and remove pieces of equipment
from the baskets: dry cells, electronic breadboards, poles, a trenching
tool, loops of wire. Alan looks about somewhat uncertainly and then strikes
off into the woods.
"I'm off to America soon, to work on this voice encryption problem at
Bell Labs," Alan says.
Lawrence laughs ruefully. "We're ships passing in the night, you and
I."
"We are passengers on ships passing in the night," Alan corrects him.
"It is no accident. They need you precisely because I am leaving. I've been
doing all of the 2701 work to this point."
"It's Detachment 2702 now," Lawrence says.
"Oh," Alan says, crestfallen. "You noticed."
"It was reckless of you, Alan."
"On the contrary!" Alan says. "What will Rudy think if he notices that,
of all the units and divisions and detachments in the Allied order of
battle, there is not a single one whose number happens to be the product of
two primes?"
"Well, that depends upon how common such numbers are compared to all of
the other numbers, and on how many other numbers in the range are going
unused . . ." Lawrence says, and begins to work out the first half of the
problem. "Riemann Zeta function again. That thing pops up everywhere."
"That's the spirit!" Alan says. "Simply take a rational and common
sense approach. They are really quite pathetic."
"Who?"
"Here," Alan says, slowing to a stop and looking around at the trees,
which to Lawrence look like all the other trees. "This looks familiar." He
sits down on the bole of a windfall and begins to unpack electrical gear
from his bag. Lawrence squats nearby and does the same. Lawrence does not
know how the device works it is Alan's invention and so he acts in the role
of surgical assistant, handing tools and supplies to the doctor as he puts
the device together. The doctor is talking the entire time, and so he
requests tools by staring at them fixedly and furrowing his brow.
"They are well, who do you suppose? The fools who use all of the
information that comes from Bletchley Park!"
"Alan!"
"Well, it is foolish! Like this Midway thing. That's a perfect example,
isn't it?"
"Well, I was happy that we won the battle," Lawrence says guardedly.
"Don't you think it's a bit odd, a bit striking, a bit noticeable, that
after all of Yamamoto's brilliant feints and deceptions and ruses, this
Nimitz fellow knew exactly where to go looking for him? Out of the entire
Pacific Ocean?"
"All right," Lawrence says, "I was appalled. I wrote a paper about it.
Probably the paper that got me into this mess with you."
"Well, it's no better with us Brits," Alan says.
"Really?"
"You would be horrified at what we've been up to in the Mediterranean.
It is a scandal. A crime.
"What have we been up to?" Lawrence asks. "I say 'we' rather than 'you'
because we are allies now."
"Yes, yes," Alan says impatiently. "So they claim." He paused for a
moment, tracing an electrical circuit with his finger, calculating
inductances in his head. Finally, he continues: "Well, we've been sinking
convoys, that's what. German convoys. We've been sinking them right and
left."
"Rommel's?"
"Yes, exactly. The Germans put fuel and tanks and ammunition on ships
in Naples and send them south. We go out and sink them. We sink nearly all
of them, because we have broken the Italian C38m cipher and we know when
they are leaving Naples. And lately we've been sinking just the very ones
that are most crucial to Rommel's efforts, because we have also broken his
Chaffinch cipher and we know which ones he is complaining loudest about not
having."
Turing snaps a toggle switch on his invention and a weird, looping
squeal comes from a dusty black paper cone lashed onto the breadboard with
twine. The cone is a speaker, apparently scavenged from a radio. There is a
broomstick with a loop of stiff wire dangling from the end, and a wire
running from that loop up the stick to the breadboard. He swings the
broomstick around until the loop is dangling, like a lasso, in front of
Lawrence's midsection. The speaker yelps.
"Good. It's picking up your belt buckle," Alan says.
He sets the contraption down in the leaves, gropes in several pockets,
and finally pulls out a scrap of paper on which several lines of text have
been written in block letters. Lawrence would recognize it anywhere: it is a
decrypt worksheet. "What's that, Alan?"
"I wrote out complete instructions and enciphered them, then hid them
under a bridge in a benzedrine container," Alan says. "Last week I went and
recovered the container and decyphered the instructions." He waves the paper
in the air.
"What encryption scheme did you use?"
"One of my own devising. You are welcome to take a crack at it, if you
like."
"What made you decide it was time to dig this stuff up?"
"It was nothing more than a hedge against invasion," Alan says.
"Clearly, we're not going to be invaded now, not with you chaps in the war."
"How much did you bury?"
"Two silver bars, Lawrence, each with a value of some hundred and
twenty five pounds. One of them should be very close to us." Alan stands up,
pulls a compass out of his pocket, turns to face magnetic north, and squares
his shoulders. Then he rotates a few degrees. "Can't remember whether I
allowed for declination," he mumbles. "Right! In any case. One hundred paces
north." And he strides off into the woods, followed by Lawrence, who has
been given the job of carrying the metal detector.
Just as Dr. Alan Turing can ride a bicycle and carry on a conversation
while mentally counting the revolutions of the pedals, he can count paces
and talk at the same time too. Unless he has lost count entirely, which
seems just as possible.
"If what you are saying is true," Lawrence says, "the jig must be up
already. Rudy must have figured out that we've broken their codes."
"An informal system has been in place, which might be thought of as a
precursor to Detachment 2701, or 2702 or whatever we are calling it," Alan
says. "When we want to sink a convoy, we send out an observation plane
first. It is ostensibly an observation plane. Of course, to observe is not
its real duty we already know exactly where the convoy is. Its real duty is
to be observed that is, to fly close enough to the convoy that it will be
noticed by the lookouts on the ships. The ships will then send out a radio
message to the effect that they have been sighted by an Allied observation
plane. Then, when we come round and sink them, the Germans will not find it
suspicious at least, not quite so monstrously suspicious that we knew
exactly where to go.
Alan stops, consults his compass, turns ninety degrees, and begins
pacing westwards.
"That strikes me as being a very ad hoc arrangement," Lawrence says.
"What is the likelihood that Allied observation planes, sent out purportedly
at random, will just happen to notice every single Axis convoy?"
"I've already calculated that probability, and I'll bet you one of my
silver bars that Rudy has done it too," Turing says. "It is a very small
probability."
"So I was right," Lawrence says, "we have to assume that the jig is
up."
"Perhaps not just yet," Alan says. "It has been touch and go. Last
week, we sank a convoy in the fog."
"In the fog?"
"It was foggy the whole way. The convoy could not possibly have been
observed. The imbeciles sank it anyway. Kesselring became suspicious, as
would anyone. So we ginned up a fake message in a cypher that we know the
Nazis have broken addressed to a fictitious agent in Naples. It
congratulated him on betraying that convoy to us. Ever since, the Gestapo
have been running rampant on the Naples waterfront, looking for the fellow."
"We dodged a bullet there, I'd say."
"Indeed." Alan stops abruptly, takes the metal detector from Lawrence,
and turns it on. He begins to walk slowly across a clearing, sweeping the
wire loop back and forth just above the ground. It keeps snagging on
branches and getting bent out of shape, necessitating frequent repairs, but
remains stubbornly silent the whole time, except when Alan, concerned that
it is no longer working, tests it on Lawrence's belt buckle.
"The whole business is delicate," Alan muses. "Some of our SLUs in
North Africa "
"SLUs?"
"Special Liaison Units. The intelligence officers who receive the Ultra
information from us, pass it on to field officers, and then make sure it is
destroyed. Some of them learned, from Ultra, that there was to be a German
air raid during lunch, so they took their helmets to the mess hall. When the
air raid came off as scheduled, everyone wanted to know why those SLUs had
known to bring their helmets."
"The entire business seems hopeless," Lawrence says. "How can the
Germans not realize?"
"It seems that way to us because we know everything and our channels of
communication are free from noise," Alan says. "The Germans have fewer, and
much noisier, channels. Unless we continue to do stunningly idiotic things
like sinking convoys in the fog, they will never receive any clear and
unmistakable indications that we have broken Enigma."
"It's funny you should mention Enigma," Lawrence says, "since that is
an extremely noisy channel from which we manage to extract vast amounts of
useful information."
"Precisely. Precisely why I am worried."
"Well, I'll do my best to spoof Rudy," Waterhouse says.
"You'll do fine. I'm worried about the men who are carrying out the
operations."
"Colonel Chattan seems pretty dependable," Waterhouse says, though
there's probably no point in continuing to reassure Alan. He's just in a
fretting mood. Once every two or three years, Waterhouse does something that
is socially deft, and now's the time: he changes the subject: "And
meanwhile, you'll be working it out so that Churchill and Roosevelt can have
secret telephone conversations?"
"In theory. I rather doubt that it's practical. Bell Labs has a system
that works by breaking the waveform down into several bands..." and then
Alan is off on the subject of telephone companies. He delivers a complete
dissertation on the subject of information theory as applied to the human
voice, and how that governs the way telephone systems work. It is a good
thing that Turing has such a large subject on which to expound, for the
woods are large, and it has become increasingly obvious to Lawrence that his
friend has no idea where the silver bars are buried.
Unburdened by any silver, the two friends ride home in darkness, which
comes surprisingly early this far north. They do not talk very much, for
Lawrence is still absorbing and digesting everything that Alan has disgorged
to him about Detachment 2702 and the convoys and Bell Labs and voice signal
redundancy. Every few minutes, a motorcycle whips past them, saddlebags
stuffed with encrypted message slips.
Chapter 17 ALOFT
Any way that livestock can travel, Bobby Shaftoe has too, boxcars, open
trucks, forced cross country marches. Military has now invented the airborne
equivalent of these in the form of the Plane of a Thousand Names: DC 3,
Skytrain, C 47, Dakota Transport, Gooney Bird. He'll survive. The exposed
aluminum ribs of the fuselage are trying to beat him to death, but as long
as he stays awake, he can fend them off.
The enlisted men are jammed into the other plane. Lieutenants Ethridge
and Root are in this one, along with PFC Gerald Hott and Sergeant Bobby
Shaftoe. Lieutenant Ethridge got dibs on all of the soft objects in the
plane and arranged them into a nest, up forward near the cockpit, and
strapped himself down. For a while he pretended to do paperwork. Then he
tried looking out the windows. Now he has fallen asleep and is snoring so
loudly that he is, no fooling, drowning out the engines.
Enoch Root has wedged himself into the back of the fuselage, where it
gets narrow, and is perusing two books at once. It strikes Shaftoe as
typical he supposes that the books say completely different things and that
the chaplain is deriving great pleasure from pitting them against each
other, like those guys who have a chessboard on a turntable so that they can
play against themselves. He supposes that when you live in a shack on a
mountain with a bunch of natives who don't speak any of your half dozen or
so languages, you have to learn to have arguments with yourself.
There's a row of small square windows on each side of the plane.
Shaftoe looks out to the right and sees mountains covered with snow and gets
scared shitless for a moment thinking maybe they've strayed into the Alps.
But off to the left, it still looks like the Mediterranean, and eventually
it gives way to Devil's Tower type outcroppings rising up out of stony
scrubland, and then after that it is just rocks and sand, or sand without
the rocks. Sand puckered here and there, for no particular reason, by
clutches of dunes. Damn it, they are still in Africa! You ought to be able
to see lions and giraffes and rhinos! Shaftoe goes forward to lodge a
complaint with the pilot and copilot. Maybe he can get a card game together.
Maybe the view out the front of the plane is something to write home about.
He is, on all counts, thrown back in stinging defeat. He sees
immediately that the project of finding a better view is doomed. There are
only three things in the whole universe: sand, sea, and sky. As a Marine, he
knows how boring the sea is. The other two are little better. There is a
line of clouds far ahead of them a front of some description. That's all
there is.
He gets a general notion of their flight plan before the chart is
snatched away and stashed out of his view. They seem to be attempting to fly
across Tunisia, which is kind of funny, because last time Shaftoe checked,
Tunisia was Nazi territory the anchor, in fact, of the Axis presence on the
African continent. Today's general flight plan seems to be that they'll cut
across the straits between Bizerta and Sicily, then head east to Malta.
All of Rommel's supplies and reinforcements come across those very
straits from Italy, and land at Tunis or Bizerta. From there, Rommel can
strike out east towards Egypt or west towards Morocco. In the several weeks
since the British Eighth Army kicked the crap out of him at El Alamein
(which is way, way over there in Egypt) he has been retreating westwards
back towards Tunis. In the few weeks since the Americans landed in Northwest
Africa, he's been fighting on a second front to his west. And Rommel has
been doing a damn good job of it, as far as Shaftoe can tell from listening
between the stentorian lines of the Movietone newsreels, so laden with
sinister cheer, whence the above facts were gleaned.
All this means that down below them, vast forces ought to be spread out
across the Sahara in readiness for combat. Perhaps there is even a battle
going on right now. But Shaftoe sees nothing. Just the occasional line of
yellow dust thrown up by a convoy, a dynamite fuse sputtering across the
desert.
So he talks to those flyboys. It's not until he notices them giving
each other looks that he realizes he's going on at great length. Those
Assassins must've killed their victims by talking them to death.
The card game, he realizes, is completely out of the question. These
flyboys don't want to talk. He practically has to dive in and grab the
control yoke to get them to say anything. And when they do, they sound
funny, and he realizes that these guys are not guys nor fellas. They are
blokes. Chaps. Mates. They are Brits.
The only other thing he notices about them, before he gives up and
slinks back into the cargo hold, is that they are fucking armed to the
teeth. Like they were expecting to have to kill twenty or thirty people on
their way from the airplane to the latrine and back. Bobby Shaftoe has met a
few of these paranoid types during his tour, and he doesn't like them very
much. That whole mindset reminds him too much of Guadalcanal.
He finds a place on the floor next to the body of PFC Gerald Hott and
stretches out. The teeny revolver in his waistband makes it impossible for
him to lie on his back, so he takes it out and pockets it. This only
transfers the center of discomfort to the Marine Raider stiletto holstered
invisibly between his shoulder blades. He realizes that he is going to have
to curl up on his side, which doesn't work because on one side he has a
standard issue Colt semiautomatic, which he doesn't trust, and on the other,
his own six shooter from home, which he does. So he has to find places to
stash those, along with the various ammo clips, speed loaders, and
maintenance supplies that go with them. The V 44 "Gung Ho" jungle clearing,
coconut splitting, and Nip decapitating knife, strapped to the outside of
his lower leg, also has to be removed, as does the derringer that he keeps
on the other leg for balance. The only thing that stays with him are the
grenades in his front pockets, since he doesn't plan to lie down on his
stomach.
They make their way around the headland just in time to avoid being
washed out to sea by the implacable tide. In front of them is a muddy tidal
flat, forming the floor of a box shaped cove. The walls of the box are
formed by the headland they've just gone round, another, depressingly
similar headland a few hundred yards along the shore, and a cliff rising
straight up out of the mudflats. Even if it were not covered with
relentlessly hostile tropical jungle, this cliff would seal off access to
the interior of Guadalcanal just because of its steepness. The Marines are
trapped in this little cove until the tide goes back out.
Which is more than enough time for the Nip machine gunner to kill them
all.
They all know the sound of the weapon by now and so they throw
themselves down to the mud instantly. Shaftoe takes a quick look around.
Marines lying on their backs or sides are probably dead, those on their
stomachs are probably alive. Most of them are on their stomachs. The
sergeant is conspicuously dead; the gunner aimed for him first.
The Nip or Nips have only one gun, but they seem to have all the
ammunition in the world the fruits of the Tokyo Express, which has been
coming down the Slot with impunity ever since Shaftoe and the rest of the
Marines landed early in August. The gunner rakes the mudflats leisurely,
zeroing in quickly on any Marine who tries to move.
Shaftoe gets up and runs towards the base of the cliff.
Finally, he can see the muzzle flashes from the Nip gun. This tells him
which way it's pointed. When the flashes are elongated it's pointed at
someone else, and it's safe to get up and run. When they become
foreshortened, it is swinging around to bear on Bobby Shaftoe He cuts it too
close. There is very bad pain in his lower right abdomen. His scream is
muffled by mud and silt as the weight of his web and helmet drive him face
first into the ground.
He loses consciousness for a while, perhaps. But it can't have been
that long. The firing continues, implying that the Marines are not all dead
yet. Shaftoe raises his head with difficulty, fighting the weight of the
helmet, and sees a log between him and the machine gun a piece of wave
burnished driftwood flung far up the beach by a storm.
He can run for it or not. He decides to run. It's only a few steps. He
realizes, halfway there, that he's going to make it. The adrenaline is
finally flowing; he lunges forward mightily and collapses in the shelter of
the big log. Half a dozen bullets thunk into the other side of it, and wet,
fibrous splinters shower down over him. The log is rotten.
Shaftoe has gotten himself into a bit of a hole, and cannot see forward
or back without exposing himself. He cannot see his fellow Marines, only
hear some of them screaming.
He risks a peek at the machine gun nest. It is well concealed by jungle
vegetation, but it is evidently built into a cave a good twenty feet above
the mudflat. He's not that far from the base of the cliff he might just
reach it with another sprint. But climbing up there is going to be murder.
The machine gun probably can't depress far enough to shoot down at him, but
they can roll grenades at him until the cows come home, or just pick him off
with small arms as he gropes for handholds.
It is, in other words, grenade launcher time. Shaftoe rolls onto his
back, extracts a flanged metal tube from his web gear, fits it onto the
muzzle of his ought three. He tries to clamp it down, but his fingers slip
on the bloody wing nut. Who's the pencil neck that decided to use a fucking
wing nut in this context? No point griping about it here and now. There is
actually blood all over the place, but he is not in pain. He drags his
fingers through the sand, gets them all gritty, tightens that wing nut down.
Out of its handy pouch comes one Mark II fragmentation grenade, a.k.a.
pineapple, and with a bit more groping he's got the Grenade Projection
Adapter, M1. He engages the former into the latter, yanks out the safety
pin, drops it, then slips the fully prepped and armed Grenade Projection
Adapter, Ml, with its fruity payload, over the tube of the grenade launcher.
Finally: he opens up one specially marked cartridge case, fumbles through
bent and ruptured Lucky Strikes, finds one brass cylinder, a round of
ammunition sans payload, crimped at the end but not endowed with an actual
bullet. Loads same into the Springfield's firing chamber.
He creeps along the log so that he can pop up and fire from an
unexpected location and perhaps not get his head chewed off by the machine
gun. Finally raises this Rube Goldberg device that his Springfield has
become, jams the butt into the sand (in grenade launcher mode the recoil
will break your collarbone), points it toward the foe, pulls the trigger.
Grenade Projection Adapter, M1 is gone with a terrible pow, trailing a damn
hardware store of now superfluous parts, like a soul discarding its corpse.
The pineapple is now soaring heavenward, even its pin and safety lever gone,
its chemical fuse aflame so that it even has a, whattayoucallit, an inner
light. Shaftoe's aim is true, and the grenade is heading where intended. He
thinks he's pretty damn smart until the grenade bounces back, tumbles down
the cliff, and blows up another rotten log. The Nips have anticipated Bobby
Shaftoe's little plan, and put up nets or chicken wire or something.
He lies on his back in the mud, looking up at the sky, saying the word
"fuck" over and over. The entire log throbs, and something akin to peat moss
showers down into his face as the bullets chew up the rotten wood. Bobby
Shaftoe says a prayer to the Almighty and prepares to mount a banzai charge.
Then the maddening sound of the machine gun stops, and is replaced by
the sound of a man screaming. His voice sounds unfamiliar. Shaftoe levers
himself up on his elbow and realizes that the screaming is coming from the
direction of the cave.
He looks up into the big, sky blue eyes of Enoch Root.
The chaplain has moved from his nook at the back of the plane and is
squatting next to one of the little windows, holding onto whatever he can.
Bobby Shaftoe, who has rolled uncomfortably onto his stomach, looks out a
window on the opposite side of the plane. He ought to see the sky, but
instead he sees a sand dune wheeling past. The sight makes him instantly
nauseated. He does not even consider sitting up.
Brilliant spots of light are streaking wildly around the inside of the
plane, like ball lightning, but and this is far from obvious at first they
are actually projected against the wall of the plane, like flashlight beams.
He back traces the beams, taking advantage of a light haze of vaporized
hydraulic fluid that has begun to accumulate in the air; and finds that they
originate in a series of small circular holes that some asshole has punched
through the skin of the plane while he was sleeping. The sun is shining
through these holes, always in the same direction of course; but the plane
is going every which way.
He realizes that he has actually been lying on the ceiling of the
airplane ever since he woke up, which explains why he was on his stomach.
When this dawns on him, he vomits.
The bright spots all vanish. Very, very reluctantly, Shaftoe risks a
glance out the window and sees only greyness.
He thinks he is on the floor now. He is next to the corpse, at any
rate, and the corpse was strapped down.
He lies there for several minutes, just breathing and thinking. Air
whistles through the holes in the fuselage, loud enough to split his head.
Someone some madman is up on his feet, moving about the plane. It is
not Root, who is in his little nook dealing with a number of facial
lacerations that he picked up during the aerobatics. Shaftoe looks up and
sees that the moving man is one of the British flyboys.
The Brit has yanked off his headgear to expose black hair and green
eyes. He's in his mid thirties, an old man. He has a knobby, utilitarian
face in which all of the various lumps, knobs and orifices seem to be there
for a reason, a face engineered by the same fellows who design grenade
launchers. It is a simple and reliable face, by no means handsome. He is
kneeling next to the corpse of Gerald Hott and is examining it minutely with
a flashlight. He is the very picture of concern; his bedside manner is
flawless.
Finally he slumps back against the ribbed wall of the fuselage. "Thank
god," he says, "he wasn't hit."
"Who wasn't?" Shaftoe says.
"This chap," the flyboy says, slapping the corpse.
"Aren't you going to check me?"
"No need to."
"Why not? I'm still alive. "
"You weren't hit," the flyboy says confidently. "If you'd been hit,
you'd look like Lieutenant Ethridge."
For the first time, Shaftoe hazards movement. He props himself up on
one elbow, and finds that the floor of the plane is slick and wet with red
fluid.
He had noticed a pink mist in the cabin, and supposed that it was
produced by a hydraulic fluid leak. But the hydraulic system now seems hunky
dory, and the stuff on the floor of the plane is not a petroleum product. It
is the same red fluid that figured so prominently in Shaftoe's nightmare. It
is streaming downhill from the direction of Lieutenant Ethridge's cozy nest,
and the Lieutenant is no longer snoring.
Shaftoe looks at what is left of Ethridge, which bears a striking
resemblance to what was lying around that butcher shop earlier today. He
does not wish to lose his composure in the presence of the British pilot,
and indeed, feels strangely calm. Maybe it's the clouds; cloudy days have
always had a calming effect on him.
"Holy cow," he finally says, "that Kraut twenty millimeter is some
thing else."
"Right," the flyboy says, "we've got to get spotted by a convoy and
then we'll proceed with the delivery."
Cryptic as it is, this is the most informative statement Bobby's ever
heard about the intentions of Detachment 2702. He gets up and follows the
pilot back to the cockpit, both of them stepping delicately around several
quivering giblets that were presumably flung out of Ethridge.
"You mean, by an allied convoy, right?" Shaftoe asks.
"An allied convoy?" the pilot asks mockingly. "Where the hell are we
going to find an allied convoy? This is Tunisia ."
"Well, then, what do you mean, we've got to get spotted by a convoy?
You mean we have to spot a convoy, right?"
"Very sorry," the flyboy says, "I'm busy."
When he turns back, he finds Lieutenant Enoch Root kneeling by a
relatively large piece of Ethridge, going through Ethridge's attache case.
Shaftoe cops a look of exaggerated moral outrage and points the finger of
blame.
"Look, Shaftoe," Root shouts, "I'm just following orders. Taking over
for him."
He pulls out a small bundle, all wrapped in thick, yellowish plastic
sheeting. He checks it over, then glances up reprovingly, one more time, at
Shaftoe.
"It was a fucking joke!" Shaftoe says. "Remember? When I thought those
guys were looting the corpses? On the beach?"
Root doesn't laugh. Either he's pissed off that Shaftoe successfully
bullshitted him, or he doesn't enjoy corpse looting humor. Root carries the
wrapped bundle back to that other body, the one in the wetsuit. He stuffs
the bundle inside the suit.
Then he squats by the body and ponders. He ponders for a long time.
Shaftoe kind of gets a kick out of watching Enoch ponder, which is like
watching an exotic dancer shake her tits.
The light changes again as they descend from the clouds. The sun is
setting, shining redly through the Saharan haze. Shaftoe looks out a window
and is startled to see that they are over the sea now. Below them is a
convoy of ships each making a neat white V in the dark water, each lit up on
one side by the red sun.
The airplane banks and makes a slow loop around the convoy. Shaftoe
hears distant pocking noises. Black flowers bloom and fade in the sky around
them. He realizes that the ships are trying to hit them with ack ack. Then
the plane ascends once more into the shelter of the clouds, and it gets
nearly dark.
He looks at Enoch Root for the first time in a while. Root is sitting
back in his little nook, reading by flashlight. A bundle of papers is open
on his lap. It is the plastic wrapped bundle that Root took out of
Ethridge's attache case and shoved into Gerald Hott's wetsuit. Shaftoe
figures that the encounter with convoy and ack ack finally pushed Root over
the edge, and that he yanked the bundle right back out again to have a look
at it.
Root glances up and locks eyes with Shaftoe. He does not seem nervous
or guilty. It is a strikingly calm and cool look.
Shaftoe holds his gaze for a long moment. If there were the slightest
trace of guilt or nervousness there, he would turn the chaplain in as a
German spy. But there isn't Enoch Root ain't working for the Germans. He
ain't working for the Allies either. He's working for a Higher Power.
Shaftoe nods imperceptibly, and Root's gaze softens.
"They're all dead, Bobby," he shouts. "Those islanders. The ones you
saw on the beach on Guadalcanal."
So that explains why Root is so touchy about corpse looting jokes.
"Sorry," Shaftoe says, moving aft so they don't have to scream at each
other. "How'd it happen?"
"After we got you back to my cabin, I transmitted a message to my
handlers in Brisbane," Root says. "Enciphered it using a special code. Told
them I'd picked up one Marine Raider, who looked like he might actually
live, and would someone please come round and collect him."
Shaftoe nods. He remembers that he'd heard lots of dots and dashes, but
he had been out of whack with fevers and morphine and whatever home remedies
Root had pulled out of his cigar box.
"Well, they responded," Root went on, "and said 'We can't go there, but
would you please take him to such and such place and rendezvous with some
other Marine Raiders.' Which, as you'll recall, is what we did."
"Yeah," Shaftoe says.
"So far so good. But when I got back to the cabin after handing you
over, the Nipponese had been through. Killed every islander they could find.
Burned the cabin. Burned everything. Set booby traps around the place that
nearly killed me. I just barely got out of the damn place alive."
Shaftoe nods, as only a guy who's seen the Nips in action can nod.
"Well they evacuated me to Brisbane where I started making a stink
about codes. That's the only way they could have found me obviously our
codes had been broken. And after I'd made enough of a stink, someone
apparently said, 'You're British, you're a priest, you're a medical doctor,
you can handle a rifle, you know Morse code, and most importantly of all,
you're a fucking pain in the ass so off you go!" And next thing I know, I'm
in that meat locker in Algiers."
Shaftoe glances away and nods. Root seems to get the message, which is
that Shaftoe doesn't know anything more than he does.
Eventually, Enoch Root wraps the bundle up again, just like it was
before. But he doesn't put it back in the attache case. He stuffs it into
Gerald Hott's wetsuit.
Later they emerge from the clouds again, close to a moonlit port, and
dip down very close to the ocean, going so slow that even Shaftoe, who knows
nothing about planes, senses they are about to stall. They open the side
door of the Dakota and, one two three NOW, throw the body of PFC Gerald Hott
out into the ocean. He makes what would be a big splash in the Oconomowoc
town pool, but in the ocean it doesn't come to much.
An hour or so later they land the same Gooney Bird on an airstrip in
the midst of a stunning aerial bombardment. They abandon the Skytrain at the
end of the airstrip, next to the other C 47, and run through darkness,
following the lead of the British pilots. Then they go down a stairway and
are underground in a bomb shelter, to be precise. They can feel the bombs
now but can't hear them.
"Welcome to Malta," someone says. Shaftoe looks around and sees that he
is surrounded by men in British and American uniforms. The Americans are
familiar it's the Marine Raider squad from Algiers, flown in on that other
Dakota. The Brits are unfamiliar, and Shaftoe pegs them as the SAS men that
those fellows in Washington were telling him about. The only thing they all
have in common is that each man, somewhere on his uniform, is wearing the
number 2702.
Chapter 18 NON DISCLOSURE
Avi shows up on time, idling his fairly good, but not disgustingly
ostentatious, Nipponese sports car gingerly up the steep road, which has
crazed into a loose mosaic of asphalt flagstones.
Randy watches from the second floor deck, staring fifty feet almost
straight down through the sunroof. Avi is clad in the trousers of a good
tropical weight business suit, a tailored white Sea Island cotton shirt,
dark ski goggles, and a wide brimmed canvas hat.
The house is a tall, isolated structure rising out of the middle of a
California grassland that slopes up from the Pacific, a few kilometers away.
Chilly air climbs up the slope, rising and falling in slow surges, like surf
on a beach. When Avi gets out of his car the first thing he does is pull on
his suit jacket.
He hauls two oversized laptop cases out of the tiny luggage compartment
in the car's nose, walks into the house without knocking (he has not been to
this particular house before, but he has been