1901


CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

PATRICKMAHAN LOUNGEDcomfortably on a folding chair in front of his command tent—a larger structure than a regular tent that combined sleeping quarters and office—and tried to enjoy the relative cool of the morning. The camp was just beginning to stir, and he felt it appropriate that his brigade see their commanding officer up and ready well before they were. It also gave him some quiet time to enjoy a cup of coffee, read, and think. His staff understood this need and worked to ensure it. That growing staff was now headed by Lt. Col. Jonathan Harris, late of the Connecticut Militia, who had recently been invited by Patrick to be his chief of staff. Patrick had run into him at MacArthur’s headquarters and remembered the diligent way the then major had led his men after the disaster under Colonel Blaney. Or was it Haney? It seemed so long ago. When his own militia unit disbanded, Harris was left without a position. An owner of a prosperous shoe factory, Harris knew how to organize and manage.

One of the first instructions Harris issued was that the general was not to be disturbed during this time of day unless a large portion of the German army was directly behind the general’s tent.

Handing the general a fresh cup of coffee did not constitute an interruption, and Patrick took the new cup of steaming brew from a grinning mess attendant, then went back to his newspaper. With the military situation relatively stable, it was possible to get the news in a surprisingly up-to-date fashion. What he was reading this fine morning was theNew York Herald , although the edition was printed in Boston and contained a lot of news local to that town. With New York City occupied, no local news was emanating from there.

A major story bemoaned the fact that food rationing might be imposed as a result of the war and warned people not to hoard. Great, thought Patrick, there is nothing like warning people not to do something as a certain means to motivate them to do it.

Another story referred to the growing number of sailors getting into fights and being generally disruptive. The story implied that there were many more sailors in town than before. Patrick shook his head. An intelligence agent with even a minimal intellect could infer that something was afoot and that ships were being stationed in Boston Harbor. The same article stated that certain areas of the coast were out-of-bounds to civilians because of military construction. Why not just send the Germans a letter stating that coastal forts were being built?

Yet another article hinted at an army training camp being built outside Springfield, Massachusetts, about eighty miles from Boston. Construction jobs, it said, might be available. Well, people have to eat, and there were enough refugees available to provide a labor force. Patrick knew that most wars resulted in economic prosperity for many of those not actually being shot at, but this war was not normal. For one thing, the refugees had overwhelmed the charitable resources of many locales and were unable to find work. Worse, some were underbidding the local labor force, which was causing bad feelings and some violent confrontations. An article in an earlier paper noted an upsurge in militant unionism as a result. Also, the closure of New York harbor was causing transportation problems, although other ports were trying to take up the slack and at a profit. Yes, he thought, there were many areas of the country and industries that were making a killing, but not too many in the immediate vicinity. Unless, of course, you counted the liquor merchants and the whores.

Baseball was still being played. Boston had beaten Hartford by one run. Hartford? Games were going on under the shadow of the German guns. Well, thank God, he thought, someone has a firm grip on what’s important and what’s not. It would be nice to get home to Detroit and see a game. He wondered whether Trina liked baseball.

He flipped to the editorial page and read a column exhorting the State Department to get more aid from foreign governments. The writer clearly had no idea what aid the British and, to a lesser extent, the French had been providing to the large but awkward American army.

Another impassioned writer wondered where the navy was. It was inconceivable, the writer said, that the same navy that had humbled the British in 1812 and whipped the Spanish in 1898 would hide and act cowardly in 1901 against the Germans. Patrick wondered where the writer had learned his history. We hadn’t humbled the British in 1812, we merely sunk a handful of the ships in their vast navy; as to the Spanish, well, they were so totally inept and poorly led, it was no contest. No, the German navy would be something else entirely.

The letters to the editor were interesting. One writer groused that the entire theater season would be lost if this war wasn’t over soon. TheHerald staff must have had fun printing that one. Another complained about the number of beggars and refugees in the streets. He offered no solution, just complaints.

More seriously, several writers decried what they perceived as inaction by the army. Why didn’t the army drive out the invader and restore things to normal? Good question. One particularly poignant letter concerned a son who’d been killed at Danbury and questioned whether it was all worth it.

Another writer said that this was God’s punishment upon us for being so greedy. We had no need or right to lands beyond our shores. Give them up, he said. People should not have to die for Puerto Rico. He alluded to a speech given just a few days prior by William Jennings Bryan in which the orator had said much the same thing.

A woman writer opined that there would have been no war if women had been able to vote. Patrick grinned and determined to clip the letter for Trina.

The letters and articles, taken in aggregate, showed frustration and pride. There was pride that the United States had not been humbled further by a great European power, but there was frustration that the war had not been decided, one way or the other. It was almost as if it would be better to take action and lose than to wait and win. When he read letters like these, he understood the pressure on the political leaders to move before they were ready. It was hard to sympathize with Theodore Roosevelt or the late McKinley, but he did understand a little better.

The first clue that something was wrong was the sound of distant angry shouting. Patrick rose quickly from his chair and looked for the source. One of the many patrols was likely returning and there must have been trouble. Lieutenant Colonel Harris, his face flushed, ran over.

“General, a patrol got cut up.”

Patrick nodded. It was always tragic, but it happened. The war between the lines was a deadly one. “Continue, Colonel.”

Harris wiped his sweaty brow. “Damnit, it was the one with the British officer and Heinz. Somebody said Heinz is dead.”

To Ludwig Weber, New York City evoked thoughts of what ancient Rome must have looked like in the Dark Ages. Although being in the city was immensely depressing, he felt himself privileged to have seen what could only be described as living ruins. In normal times, several million people lived in New York, but now the population was probably less than a tenth of that. No one knew precisely, of course; any figure was someone’s guess.

The streets of Manhattan were virtually deserted. Almost anyone moving about was either a German or one of the relatively few Americans who’d chosen to stay and collaborate with them. These people were very suspect and were trusted little by the occupying army. There were very few locals about in this area of town. Weber had been warned that the slums and tenements of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where so many of the immigrants had once lived, were still occupied and potentially dangerous because of the large number of criminals and social deviants who lurked there. Stay away was the warning. Virtually all of the immigrant Germans had fled, but there were still some Jews, and everyone said they were thieves. Some Italians remained in the Bowery, and other nationalities were scattered about. Most of them had no reason to love Germans.

What a joyous leave. The 4th Rifles had marched from their encampment and headed toward the city, all the while watching every brush and shrub in case some red savages were lurking there. Fear of the Indians had kept all but the bravest and most foolish in their tents at night. Guards were doubled and latrines moved closer to the living quarters. This made it safer to relieve oneself, but it also made camp life a more noxious experience.

It was sweetly ironic that Kessel had been required to stay behind with a few others and protect the camp. Apparently Captain Walter feared a repeat of Kessel’s earlier looting escapade if he were turned loose in New York. Kessel said nothing. His eyes said everything. They were filled with hate.

Fortunately, no one in the 4th had been murdered by the savages, but everyone knew of others who had. Sometimes Ludwig felt that the stories of the Indians were like the stories old people told about bogeymen in order to scare children out of their wits. Only these bogeymen were real. The Indians scalped, mutilated, skinned, and sometimes left men dying and castrated with their penises in their mouths. Germans could stand up to an enemy in the field, but not as well to shadows in the night. Morale was dipping. There were other problems as well. Horses were being lamed and supplies burned by American irregular troops. Just a few days ago one of the bridges over the Harlem River had been blown up. No one had been caught, but there was agreement that this act of sabotage was not the work of Indians.

Even more interesting than the sabotage was the sudden proliferation of pamphlets and signs offering help and amnesty to any German soldiers who deserted their units and surrendered. They would not, the documents said, be repatriated against their will. America was the land of opportunity, and they would be helped, even given money, to begin a new life somewhere, anywhere, in this huge land. It was very seductive. All the notices were in fluent German.

This was the second of their three days in the great city, or what had once been a great city. Ludwig, as befitted a schoolteacher, took his friends on a tour of the many places he’d seen as a boy. The Statue of Liberty was off-limits and Ellis Island was being used as a naval barracks, but that left many others such as Grant’s Tomb, Madison Square Garden, Wall Street, Broadway, and the Brooklyn Bridge, which everyone cheerfully tried to sell to Ulli, who laughed hugely at himself. How could anyone dislike the clod? It was, Ludwig thought, one of the few truly pleasurable moments of the trip.

Ludwig had wanted to take in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but it was closed. When he pursued the matter, he was informed that the treasures were being shipped back to Germany as advance reparations for the war. He could only shake his head in puzzlement.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment, aside from the desolation in the city and the ruins plainly visible across the river in Brooklyn, was Central Park. Once it had been a wonderful place for a child to romp. Then came the war and it had housed thousands of American prisoners until they’d been moved to more secure quarters in warehouses. The park had been thoroughly ruined. The fact that the Germans were not at all interested in landscaping and maintaining it didn’t help either. It looked like a jungle in the making, and too much like the overgrown fields in Connecticut and on Long Island.

Madison Square Garden and Carnegie Hall were empty, although a concert for officers only was scheduled for Carnegie. Would Captain Walter be there? Music by Wagner and Beethoven was to be played by the army band. Probably better than nothing. Of the churches, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral was surprisingly small in comparison with the great churches of Europe. Ludwig felt that it paled in comparison with the cathedral in Köln. Besides, it was Catholic. Only the unfinished Saint John the Divine showed potential.

The most intriguing sight was the view of Jersey City across the Hudson. There was an unofficial truce between the Germans and Americans in which neither fired across the river at the other. As a result of this live-and-let-live approach, Ludwig was able to borrow a telescope and watch Americans at work and play. Some of them had telescopes and were doubtless looking at him. He did not give in to the childish urge to wave. Sandbagged fortifications and people in uniform were a grim reminder that there was a war on, unofficial truce or not.

Worse, no one had obtained sex yet. The army operated some beer halls, in which cold and virtually free brew was available, but no brothels. Someone at the top must have gotten religion. Ludwig had heard it was the kaiser’s wife, the Kaiserine Dona, who was known as a prude, who’d stopped the idea of official whorehouses. Or else they were all afraid of the clap. Ludwig had never been to a whore and had no intention of starting, but others, like poor Ulli, bemoaned their fate as celibates. In a burst of insight, Ludwig realized that, far from being sexually active as he liked to brag, Ulli had probably never had a woman.

Ludwig glanced at the sky. It was early evening and their instructions were to be back in their quarters by dark. Although the army controlled the town, it was still considered dangerous.

The sound of loud laughter and running footsteps brought him back to reality. It was two of the younger men, the brothers Klaus and Hans Schuler, all giggling and red-faced. A few moments before, Ludwig had seen them with Ulli. Now where the hell was poor, dumb Ulli?

“He’s getting fucked,” said one, laughing. The other nodded, giggling too much to speak.

Ludwig, as corporal, was their leader. The Schuler brothers were the intellectual equal of Ulli. Sergeant Major Gunther had once commented acidly that they didn’t have one full brain among the three of them. They were, however, cheerful and friendly, fit companions for each other. “He’s getting what? Where the hell did he find someone who’d screw him in this forlorn place?”

They waved. “A couple of blocks back. This woman, young and not too bad if you like them scrawny, came up and asked if we wanted to fuck her. She was white too,” he added, as if that gave her greater status.

“Just like that?”

They nodded. “Just that simple. She said she’d do it for one American dollar each. None of us had any dollars, but Ulli got her to agree for some of our money. She offered to take us all on, but Ulli said he was gonna keep her busy and we should come back in about an hour.”

Ludwig laughed. “My God, she’s probably giving him six different kinds of clap.”

“Nah, she’s clean. Ulli made her lift her dress and show him her crotch before he’d go with her.” Hans snickered. “He got so close I thought he was gonna put his nose right up her pussy.”

They all doubled over in laughter. Ulli was so horny, yet so naive and particular. “Well,” Ludwig chuckled, “we better go back and wait for him. We can’t have him wandering off alone in this town. The poor fool’ll get lost and we’ll get blamed.”

The small group of German soldiers walked casually to where they’d last seen Ulli. The area was empty. Where the hell had he gone?

“Ulli!” Ludwig yelled. Nothing. He hollered again, as did the others. It created a din, and one of the German military police walked over and asked what the matter was. Upon being told, he asked where the woman had come from, and one of the Schulers pointed to an alley. Grimly, the soldier pulled his revolver and moved slowly into the grimy passageway, littered with refuse of all kinds. Ludwig and the others followed, all suddenly aware that they were unarmed in a hostile land and that the shadows of the alley conveyed a sense of menace.

The alley turned a corner and, now thoroughly frightened, they followed. The policeman gasped, then paused and pointed. A pair of bare feet jutted from behind a barrel. Not wanting to see but knowing they had to, they moved closer. It was Ulli. He was naked and his crotch was a bloody mess. His throat had been cut. His penis was in his mouth.

Richmond Hobson watched as the train rolled slowly into the huge warehouse and dock complex on Newark Bay. When it finally stopped, the guards dropped nimbly to the ground. They were all wearing civilian clothes instead of their customary uniforms. Hobson had wanted no uniforms to attract attention to the unidentifiable, canvas-draped shapes on the flatcars.

As he walked along the train, the guards acknowledged him and moved away. Richmond Pearson Hobson had a reputation as a very different and difficult man. At thirty-one, Hobson was the youngest officer in the U.S. Navy to achieve the rank of captain. It was the result of an incredibly brave action in which he had tried to sink a coal ship, theMerrimac , in Santiago harbor during the war with Spain. If he had been successful, the Spanish fleet would have been unable to sortie. But he hadn’t been successful. Although theMerrimac had indeed sunk, he failed to block the channel and, worse, wound up as a prisoner.

It was more than ironic that he had been promoted and lionized in the press for achieving nothing. The attempt was a failure and it galled him.

Undeniably brave, Hobson was also highly intelligent, some said brilliant. He had graduated at the head of his class at Annapolis and was thought to have a magnificent future ahead of him. His specialty was naval architecture. Of course, no one could yet give him command of the fleet, but now he had been given responsibility for hurting the Germans in some manner, and that was good.

A righteous man, Hobson neither drank nor swore. He had a stern and handsome look that made women turn and stare. He was not a womanizer and scarcely noticed their existence.

A small, bearded man in a dark suit and a derby hat walked up to him. “Satisfied, Captain?” Unlike the guards, who were military men in civilian clothes, this man was very much a civilian and unawed by Hobson’s rank.

“Not until the Germans are gone, Mr. Holland. One more trainload and my men will be ready for action. They are getting nervous. Idleness does not suit them with the enemy in sight. How about your crew?” he asked, thinking of the strange vessel that bobbed helplessly alongside the dock.

“They will be ready, Captain, and they will perform well, as will my little creation.”

“Good,” Hobson said. “Just what I expected.” The two men strode outside and stood in the soft rain staring at the covered shapes in the water. To a casual observer, they looked like small craft that were out of service. There were many such covered craft in the harbor and these went totally unnoticed among them.

“Mr. Holland, do you know what I did today?”

“Can’t imagine.”

Hobson chuckled, an act that surprised the other man, since Hobson rarely smiled, much less laughed. “I took a carriage over to the East River near Hoboken and looked at the enemy through my telescope. And do you know what I saw?”

“No.”

“John, I saw German officers looking through their own telescopes at me! Their presence on American soil made me ill. They must be driven off and made to pay.”

Hobson glanced down into the water at the small boats that were his command and smiled grimly, which caused the other man to shudder. “And very soon, Mr. Holland, we shall come to collect.”

The scene at the field hospital was one of organized confusion. Several of the colored soldiers from the 10th Cavalry loitered around the tents, wondering fearfully about their comrades. Patrick pulled back the tent flap and entered. Ian Gordon, dirty and bloodied, tried to rise from his chair. Patrick pushed him down. “Ian, how badly are you hurt?”

“Mainly my pride. Except for some bruises and minor cuts, the bulk of this blood belongs to others.”

“Heinz?”

Gordon nodded grimly. “Sad to say, yes. He’s badly wounded. Possibly dying. Damnit, we did all we could to bring him and the others back.”

“I know.” At least the boy was still alive. Better this was a skirmish, not a great battle. Thus the doctors could give Heinz proper attention, and not be overwhelmed by the numbers of hurt and maimed, as had happened in the past.

Gordon continued. “He got shot in both the arm and the leg. The leg wound seems fairly simple, but his arm is all ripped up. We just stuffed a rag into the leg hole, but we had to use a tourniquet on the arm to stop the bleeding. There were bones sticking out too. Thank God he was unconscious most of the time. I just hope he hasn’t lost too much blood. Tourniquet or not, he just wouldn’t stop bleeding. The doctors have him now and are operating on him. They say it might be hours before they know whether he will make it.”

Patrick forced himself to think beyond Heinz. “How many others?”

“One of the 10th dead, and two wounded. The wounded were able to walk back under their own power.”

One dead and three wounded out of a patrol that normally consisted of ten men and had been augmented to twelve by the addition of Heinz and Ian. Not good numbers. “Okay, what happened?”

Bad luck, Ian explained, just poor, dumb, bad luck. It had been organized as a two-day, two-night patrol by the 10th Cavalry, entirely on foot. They’d made it to within sight of the German defenses in one day and settled in to observe. They spent that night and the next day in safety, but discomfort. “Damn mosquitoes were bigger than some birds we have in England. It rained, of course. It was impossible to brew tea.”

They were on their way back the second night when they’d blundered into a German patrol. “One minute we were moving along in the dark, trying not to step on each other, and the next we were clawing and stabbing at shapes in the night. It was so sudden, so awful.”

Ian added that there had been little time for gunplay, and few shots had been fired. The accident of fate had brought both patrols within arm’s length of each other before bullets could be chambered and safeties removed. For what seemed an eternity, they fought with hands, clubbed with rifles, and stabbed with hunting knives. Finally the Germans fled, leaving several dead comrades. As they distanced themselves from the Americans, a few got their weapons ready and fired. It was then that Heinz had been hit.

“If it’s any consolation, we killed three of the bastards, and others must be wounded. We almost got a prisoner, but he slipped away in the confusion. I guess we had too much on our minds to keep proper track of him.”

Patrick sighed. No, it was not really much consolation, although it would have been interesting to have a fresh prisoner. “Well, at least you saw the German lines. What are your thoughts?”

“Of Byzantium.” He smiled slightly at Patrick’s puzzlement. “Surely you remember Byzantium and its fabled triple walls. Didn’t you get to Istanbul during your European trip?”

“No, Ian, I managed to miss Istanbul. But I do understand your analogy.” Byzantium had been the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire for about a thousand years until its fall in 1453. During that long time, its triple walls were the stuff of fable and legend. Huge and high, incredible works of man, they encompassed the city and protected it from barbarian invaders, many of whom could only stand in awe at the massive constructions. It was not until the advent of gunpowder and the siege guns brought by the attacking Turks that the walls were finally breached and the city was conquered. The result was the end of the Eastern Roman Empire and the city of Byzantium. After a period of looting, it was renamed Istanbul. The walls, even in ruin, are impressive to this day. If Ian was comparing the German fortifications to Byzantium, then he had truly been impressed. “Are they that good, Ian?”

“Yes, I’m afraid they are. They have spent a huge amount of effort building fortifications that run solidly from the Sound to the boggy ground about twenty miles north. Unless you have some secret advantage like the Turkish artillery, the American army I’ve seen will not be able to penetrate them. Sorry.”

Patrick shrugged. “I’m not too surprised. The near miss at Danbury must have put the fear of God into them.”

“So why haven’t you built as sturdily as well? The American lines are nothing in comparison with theirs—just some trenches and some barbed wire.”

“Good point. The fact of the matter is we don’t want them to fear our forts so much that they won’t come out. You’re right, we can’t take them. Their forts are not really impregnable—nothing ever is—but the price we’d pay to take them would be just too horrible. The Germans must come out of their defenses and fight us. MacArthur’s plan is to tempt them with several lines of defenses, but not any one as formidable as theirs. He hopes to entice them to come out. Then, pray God, we can defeat them, no matter how good they are.”

Patrick stood. “If you can, stay here and let me know about Heinz. I’d like to stay, but there is the rest of the brigade to take care of.”

Ian nodded sadly. “I know. There’s a war on.”

To Patrick’s relief, Trina was not nearly as upset as he had feared she would be when he finally summoned the nerve to confront her at her cottage. “Then Heinz will live?” she asked, her face pale. Once again the war had struck someone she knew.

“Yes, he should live. As Ian suspected, the leg wound was minor, although he will limp for a long while. It was the arm and the loss of blood that were the major problems. The arm was disinfected and the bones were set. He will probably lose some use of it because of the way the bones were broken and the muscles were shredded, but, barring infection, he will keep it. We will know for certain in a couple of days.”

“What about the blood loss?”

“He’s getting transfusions.”

She paled. “But those are so dangerous. I’ve heard that many people die from them, and for no apparent reason.”

Patrick smiled. “Well, you learn something every day. The doctor treating Heinz is a civilian and a correspondent of another doctor, a Karl Landsteiner, who recently discovered that several different blood types exist and a person can receive a transfusion only from others with a compatible type. He checked and found people with the same blood type as Heinz—type O, I believe—and started providing him with blood.”

“Fascinating. And invented by a German?”

“No. Landsteiner’s an Austrian living in the United States.”

Trina folded her hands on her lap and nodded her head. “Good. Much better an Austrian than a German.”

He thought of saying that she sounded more like Molly than Katrina Schuyler, but he deferred to discretion. The thought of moving blood safely from one person to another was intriguing. What if blood could be taken in advance and stored until needed, not only for military purposes but for other problems and disasters as well? The army doctor—what the hell was his name?—said they were working on it. He also reiterated how lucky Heinz had been that he’d been wounded during a period of low activity. Along with the time to treat him, there was the matter of sanitation. Both the doctor and the operating room were clean. Although the idea of doctors and attendants washing up before operating was widely popular, it was not universally held to be advantageous. And after a battle, the press of numbers often precluded sanitation, good intentions or not.

Patrick left Trina with the burden of informing Molly about Heinz. Thus he was not surprised when Trina showed up at his command tent a few hours later.

“How’s Molly taking it?” he asked.

“Badly at first. She screamed like the day we first saw her. It took a while, but I finally got her somewhat calmed down. I left her at the hospital on the way over here. Heinz is out of surgery but still unconscious. It helped to know that he will make it.” Patrick nodded. Ian had kept him informed.

“He will likely make it, Trina,” he corrected gently. “Nothing’s certain with these things.” He remembered so many who’d died from wounds and infection long after receiving medical treatment.

“I know. That’s why we’re starting to make arrangements to get him back home so we can care for him properly. I’m sure you know a hospital’s no place for a man to get well. You will help us get him out as soon as possible, won’t you?”

“Can you handle his care?”

“I could not. But I’m confident Molly can. She had to help both her brother and her father through convalescences, and she has some experience treating infections. Her father died from gangrene after cutting himself in his meat shop.” She shuddered. “Yet another awful experience for the child, but what she learned then will be useful now. Please don’t forget that a battle could occur at any moment and result in a flood of patients to the hospital, and that could be tragic for Heinz’s recovery. No, I think Heinz will be all right with us. Agreed?”

Patrick remembered his stay in various places as the result of wounds and malaria. “Yes.”

“And, of course, we don’t want Molly to risk losing the baby.”

“Then it’s true? She is pregnant? Funny, but I kind of thought you weren’t certain the last time we spoke of it. Might’ve even been teasing me.”

“Yes,” she sighed, “the girl is truly pregnant. Soon to be great with child. The eager youngsters have gone and created themselves a family. We shall have to get them married before anything else happens. Then we can ship them to Ohio where they’ll be safe.”

Patrick agreed, although with the caveat that it might be a while before Heinz could be sent back to Cincinnati. He reminded her that Heinz had volunteered for the duration of the war and might not want to go home just yet. If the wound healed properly, he could be returned to some duty. The decision would be Heinz’s, not theirs. He would certainly be able to serve. Even with a bad left arm—was he right- or left-handed?—there was a place for his mind, if not his body. Thank God he wanted to be a lawyer and not a doctor.

“Now, brave General Mahan, please tell me—just what on earth was he doing out near the Germans in the first place? Aren’t staff people supposed to perform their assignments in the rear of these armies? And please don’t insult me by saying he was only doing his duty. I know that. I have kept from being angry with the thought that you probably didn’t even know he was out on that patrol.”

It was true; he hadn’t known. “When Colonel Gordon said he wished to go as an observer with an upcoming patrol, I had no objections. Since Heinz was impressed with the British colonel, he’d volunteered to ‘see him off.’ When they got to the jump-off point, Heinz said it wasn’t right for the only officer in the patrol to be a Brit, and he suggested that he should go along to ‘help out as liaison.’ Colonel Harris thought this was a good idea and agreed. Although I take full responsibility, I have to admit I knew nothing about it.”

“What would you have done if you had?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

They had been sitting in chairs facing each other. Trina arose and stood over him for a moment, studying his upturned face. Then she settled quietly and easily onto his lap. “Just hold me for a moment,” she said as his arms went around her. “It was so easy to forget that you were preparing for war. Without casualties I could block out the fact that you and others, like Heinz and Colonel Harris, could be killed at any time.” A shudder ran through her body. “Imagine, I was starting to think of you as a vast collection of overgrown schoolboys on a camping trip.”

He held her, stroking her back with a gentleness he didn’t know he had, and hoping no one would walk in on them. “Sometimes I forget too.”

“Just hold me for a few more minutes. Then go back to commanding your precious damned army and leave me to figure out how I’m going to care for a pregnant sixteen-year-old and a huge lout with a broken arm.”