The Man with the Iron Heart

German caption read Roosevelt sends kidnappers, gangsters, and convicts in his army.

Toby Benton read as much German as he read Choctaw. The pictures told their own story, though. “Nice to know they love us,” he said dryly.

“This is old stuff,” Lou said. “They printed it while the war was still going on-before FDR died.”

“Well, we’ll still get rid of it,” Benton said. “We’ll clean out all this crap, and that’ll be one bunker the bastards’ll never use again.”

“Sure it will. And that’ll leave-how many just like it?” Lou’d had this unhappy thought not long before. “A million? Nah, let’s look on the bright side-a million minus one.”

Benton gave him a quizzical look-not the first he’d got from the stolid noncom. “Would you sooner leave it here?”

“No, no.” Lou shook his head. “But I was hoping it’d give us a lead to more of the diehards, and it doesn’t look like it will. Shutting down places like this won’t put out the fire.”

“Neither will not shutting ’em down,” Sergeant Benton answered, and Lou couldn’t very well tell him he was wrong.

Congressman Jerry Duncan scrawled his signature on a letter commending a constituent for collecting a ton and a half of scrap aluminum. With the war over, people would find different things to do with their spare time and energy. They’d still need letters of commendation from their Congressmen, though. Jerry Duncan was morally certain of that.

Plump and smooth and well-manicured, he was morally certain of a good many things. Like most Republicans, he was morally certain four terms were too many for any one President, and especially for a Democrat. Well, God had taken care of that. Now that That Man wasn’t in the White House any more, 1948 looked a lot rosier for the GOP.

So did 1946. With any luck at all, his party would recapture at least one house of Congress for the first time since the Hoover administration. Duncan had just been getting his feet under him in his law practice in those days. Another world back then, one without Hitler, without the atom bomb, without FDR’s alphabet-soup agencies, without American boys stationed all over the world and trying to figure out what the hell was going on…

Well, people right here in Washington were trying to figure out what the hell was going on, too. Jerry Duncan knew damn well he was. So much had happened so fast since the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor. And even after V-E Day and V-J Day, things didn’t seem to have slowed down.

His secretary stuck her head into his inner office. “What’s up, Gladys?” Jerry asked, glad to escape his own thoughts.

“That woman from Anderson is here to see you, Congressman.”

“She is?” Duncan glanced at his wristwatch in surprise. “How’d it get to be three o’clock already?” He’d been doing this, that, and the other thing. By what he’d accomplished, it shouldn’t even have been lunchtime. Plenty of people lived their whole lives three steps behind where they should have been. He supposed he ought to be glad he didn’t get the feeling more often. But it still rattled him. He tried to pull himself together. “Well, tell her to come in.”

“Sure.” Gladys withdrew without closing the door all the way. He heard her say, “You can go in now.”

“Thank you.” The door opened again. Duncan got to his feet. The woman who came in was about as old as he was. She must’ve been hot stuff when she was younger. She wouldn’t have been bad now if she weren’t wearing black…and if the look on her face didn’t say hot stuff was the furthest thing from her mind. “Congressman Duncan?” she said. Automatically, Jerry nodded. She held out her hand. “I’m Diana McGraw.”

As automatically, Duncan shook it. Her grip was firm but cool. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. McGraw,” he said. “And I was very sorry to hear about your tragic loss. Please accept my sympathies. Too many boys are dead.”

Her nod was bitter and determined at the same time. “Yes. Too many boys are dead,” she agreed. “And for what, Congressman? For what? Why did Pat have to die, after the war was supposed to be over?”

Gladys came in with a tray. “Coffee?”

“Please.” Jerry was glad for the interruption. “Won’t you sit down, Mrs. McGraw?” he asked while Gladys poured two cups.

“Thank you.” She sat stiffly, as if her machinery needed oiling. Gladys put cream and sugar into Jerry’s cup, then looked a question at her. “Black is fine,” Mrs. McGraw said.

“Here you are, then.” The secretary set cup and saucer near the edge of Jerry’s desk, then went out again.

Without preamble, Diana McGraw said, “Do you know how many American soldiers besides my Pat have been killed since the Nazis said they surrendered?”

Congressman Duncan started to answer, but caught himself. “No, I don’t know, not exactly. The War Department hasn’t publicized the numbers, whatever they are.”

“It sure hasn’t,” Mrs. McGraw agreed with a sniper’s smile. “How many do you think, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Over a hundred-I’m sure of that,” Jerry said. “Some of the atrocities do get into the papers. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were twice that number, maybe even three times.”

She smiled that frightening smile again. It made Jerry Duncan want to dive for cover. “The true figure is at least a thousand dead. At least.” She seemed to repeat herself for emphasis. “That doesn’t count wounded. All since the so-called surrender.”

Cautiously, Jerry asked, “How do you know?” Do you really know? was what he meant. Still picking his words with care, he went on, “As I say, the War Department doesn’t go out of its way to talk about figures.”

“Would you, if you had to talk about figures like that?” Diana McGraw returned. “As for how I know, well, I have connections.” She held up a hasty hand. “Not political connections, not the kind you usually think about. But when Pat and Betsy were in school, I was in the PTA. I was Central Indiana vice-chairwoman for several years, as a matter of fact. I went to a couple of the national conventions. I know mothers all over the country. Ever since Pat…died, I’ve been on the phone. I’ve been sending wires. My friends have been asking questions where they live. That’s what they’ve found out, and I believe them.”

Jerry whistled softly. “I believe you,” he said, and meant it: she radiated conviction. “Over a thousand? Good Lord!”

“You have to understand,” she said. “If some German killed Pat in the Battle of the Bulge, I wouldn’t be here talking with you now. I’d be as sorry as I am, but not quite the same way. War is war, and things like that can happen. But we’re at peace now, or we’re supposed to be. Why did Pat have to die almost five months after the war was supposed to be over? Why have a thousand American kids died after it was supposed to be over?”

“That’s…a better question than I thought it would be when you made this appointment,” Jerry said slowly. Like a lot of Midwestern Republicans, he’d wanted nothing to do with the war in Europe when it broke out. He hadn’t called himself an isolationist, but he hadn’t been far from thinking that way, either.

Then Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Of course he voted for the declaration of war. He wanted to-he was as furious as anybody else. And if he hadn’t, his district would have tarred him and feathered him and ridden him out of Congress on a rail.

Hitler declared war on the USA. That saved him from wondering how he would have voted when Roosevelt asked for war against Germany. Maybe not knowing was just as well.

“What do you want me to do, Mrs. McGraw?” he asked.

“Get some answers,” she said at once. “Why are we still over there now that the war’s over? What are we doing over there that could possibly be worth a thousand lives? Why is the War Department trying to hush up everything that’s going on over there?”

Those were all good questions. Jerry Duncan said so. They were especially good questions for a Republican to ask, since they could hold a Democratic administration’s feet to the fire. “And what will you be doing yourself?” Jerry inquired.

“Me?” Diana McGraw sounded surprised he needed to ask. “I’m going to the papers and the radio stations. You can’t keep things secret forever, Congressman. You just can’t.”