Coast, though,” she said. “We have to make sure no enemy can ever strike at us at home. Not ever! When I was in Europe, I saw for myself how horrible that was.”
People applauded her then. But they sat on their hands when she talked about helping England now that she was back in the fight against Germany. Carbondale wasn’t the ideal place for that line, even if she realized as much half a minute later than she should have. What had Vernon Vaughan said? The town was full of Irish and Welsh. And why had their ancestors crossed the ocean? To get out from under their English landlords and overlords.
Time to ad-lib, then. “You may not love England,” she said, “but if you think Hitler’s a better bargain, I’m here to tell you you’re out of your ever-loving minds. If you get on England’s bad side, she’ll break you if she can. If you get on Hitler’s bad side, he’ll kill you-and as many of your friends and neighbors as he can catch, to make sure they don’t get any nasty ideas like freedom on their own.”
That drew a little handclapping, but not much. Peggy went back to laying into Japan. Sooner or later, she expected, there would be a reckoning with the Nazis. But it would probably have to be later. People like the ones in the Rotarian hall here showed why FDR couldn’t go and declare war on Germany. If old Adolf had declared war on America, now…
Well, it hadn’t happened. The best thing the USA could do now against the evil day was strengthen herself as much as she could. If that meant whipping up hatred against the Japs, okay, she’d whip it up. We were fighting them, after all. And we weren’t doing any too well against them right this minute, either.
“Show your hearts with the red, white, and blue!” she finished. “Everybody talks about being a patriot, but patriotism takes more than talk. Put your money where your mouth is, folks. You can’t fight a war with nothing but talk. I wish you could, but you can’t. It takes cash, too.”
She hadn’t expected much. This wasn’t a big city, or even a medium-sized one. And Welshmen, at least, had almost the same kind of name for stinginess as Jews.
But she did great. The bonds the men of Carbondale bought wouldn’t mature for years. Washington could spend the greenbacks they forked over right now. Both sides seemed to think it was a good bargain.
Afterward, Mr. Vaughan took her to dinner at an Italian place down the street. The tablecloths were red and white checks. There was a poster of a Venetian gondolier on one wall, and of the Leaning Tower of Pisa on another. Despite the cliches, the spaghetti and meatballs were fine. Peggy could see the cook. He looked more like a mick than a wop, but he knew what he was doing.
And he had the advantage of American abundance. With plenty of food and plenty of fuel, if you screwed up the food it was your own damn fault, not that of your ingredients the way it might be in screwed-up Europe.
As they ate and drank red wine, Vaughan did his best to put a move on her. Peggy pretended not to notice. He wasn’t her type-not even close. Still and all, getting noticed that way felt good. It reminded her she was alive. It wasn’t that Herb never acted interested. Even so…
“Well…” The druggist put a fin on the table, which made him an extravagant tipper. He climbed to his feet. “Let me walk you back to the hotel.”
“Thanks.” Two glasses of ordinary Chianti didn’t make Peggy susceptible. She was more amused that he kept pitching than anything else.
She had no trouble shedding him in the hotel lobby. That behind the front desk stood a large, strong-jawed maiden lady who plainly disapproved of everything enjoyable under the sun only made it easier.
Up in her room all by herself, she pulled out a mystery story and read till she got sleepy. What with the wine and all that filling food, it didn’t take long. Vernon Vaughan wouldn’t have had much fun with her even if he had got past the dragon downstairs-not unless he enjoyed necrophilia, he wouldn’t.
He was there to take her back to the station the next morning. “Sorry if I got out of line last night,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Peggy told him. “I’m heading home, that’s all.”
So she was. And before long she’d look forward to getting out into the boondocks again. How smart had she been to ignore him, then? That she could wonder said not everything in Philadelphia was the way she wished it would be.
Chapter 24
Narvik again. Julius Lemp was not a happy man. Namsos would have been better. Wilhelmshaven would have been wonderful. But it was Narvik, so the U-30 could get back up to the Barents Sea as soon as possible. More fuel for the diesels, more eels for the tubes, more food for the crew, and away they’d go again.
He’d already complained to the powers that be here about Narvik’s shortcomings as a liberty port. His crew had already tried to take the place apart-and they weren’t the only gang of U-boat sailors to join the rising against authority.
Predictably, authority didn’t forget. When the U-30 tied up, she was greeted at the pier by a squad of shore patrolmen, all of them wearing Stahlhelms and all of them carrying Schmeissers.
“Well, this is a fine crock of herrings,” Lemp growled at the chief petty officer in charge of the squad. “You’d think we’d put in at Aberdeen by mistake.” He shook his head. “No, by God! The Royal Navy’d give us a better hello than this, to hell with me if it wouldn’t.”
The steel helmet’s beetling brim only made the CPO’s features seem even more wooden than they would have otherwise. He saluted stiffly. “Sir, I have my orders,” he said. “No one is going to tear Narvik up again-that’s what the people here have in mind.”
Daylight was already leaking out of the sky, though it was only midafternoon. Before long, arctic night would fall: Narvik lay north of the Arctic Circle. “Disgraceful,” Lemp snarled.
“Sir, if you didn’t lead such a pack of hooligans, there wouldn’t be a problem,” the shore patrolman answered in a gruff monotone.
“If this place weren’t a morgue-” But Lemp could see this was an argument he’d lose. The shore patrol didn’t just have the firepower. The bastards had the backing of the bigger bastards here, the ones with all the gold stripes on their sleeves.
His crewmen had been glaring at their natural foes. They reminded him of cats snarling at sheep dogs. Then one of them tipped him a wink. Did that mean they’d stay out of trouble or that they’d dive into it headfirst? Lemp didn’t know, not for sure, but he was afraid he could guess.
He let the shore patrolmen lead the U-boat sailors off to whatever passed for fun in Narvik. Then the mechanics fell on his submarine. He was glad to see them. Unlike either the high command or the shore patrol, they seemed to be on the same side as the men who actually did the fighting.
He thought about staying away from the officers’ club in sympathy for the way his men were being treated. He didn’t think about it long, though. The alternative was staying cooped up in his tiny, curtained-off cabin in the stinking, claustrophobic pressure hull.
He did make a point of repairing to the club in his grimy working togs instead of putting on a proper uniform. No one there said a word about it, though. The shorebound officers were evidently used to U-boat skippers’ eccentric ways.
Those shorebound men did let him know that plans actually were in the works for an officers’ brothel, and one ratings could patronize as well. That plans were in the works didn’t mean the brothels were working yet. Lemp thought that was a damn shame. He was a few years older than the men he commanded. He didn’t burn quite so hot as most of them. But that didn’t mean he didn’t burn at all. Oh, no-nowhere close. He would have welcomed a grapple with a nice, warm girl, even if it was purely a business transaction.
Since he couldn’t screw, he drank. He’d got to the bottom of his third stiff schnapps, hoping they would improve his attitude. All they succeeded in doing was making him dizzy. They were strong, and he was tired; they hit him hard. Only later did he stop and wonder what would happen when the U-30’s ratings started drinking. That was when he remembered the one sailor’s wink. As such things have a way of being, that was also just exactly too late.
A burst of submachine-gun fire brought silence smashing down in the officers’ club. A moment later, another burst rang out. “Good God!” somebody said. “Have the Royal Marines landed, or what?”
There was a cheerful thought. If English raiders were swooping down on Narvik, they could do a hell of a lot
