The Man with the Iron Heart

William L. Shirer asked the same question Diana McGraw would have: “Isn’t that a severe security breach?”

“Sure,” Weissberg answered, which took Diana by surprise. “We slipped up, and we paid for it. We have to hope we don’t do it again, that’s all.”

“Who was responsible for protecting the Palace of Justice?” Shirer asked. “And what’s happened to him since the bombing?”

“Sir, I don’t have the answer to either of those questions,” Weissberg replied. “You gotta remember, I’m just a lieutenant. I see little pieces of the picture, not the whole thing. You’d do better asking General Eisenhower or somebody like that.”

“For the record, I have asked General Eisenhower’s headquarters,” Shirer said. “Spokesmen there declined to comment. They claimed that anything they said might damage an officer’s career. What do you think of that?”

Weissberg ducked again: “If they aren’t going to say anything about it, you can’t really expect me to, can you?”

“Never hurts to try,” Shirer answered easily. “Thank you for your time, Lieutenant Weissberg.”

“Sure,” Weissberg said. William L. Shirer went off the air. The commercial this time was for a brand of cigarettes that, in Ed’s memorable phrase, tasted like it came out of a camel’s rear end.

Diana was steaming. “You see how things go?” she demanded of her husband. “Do you see? They know who was supposed to take care of that building. They know he was asleep at the switch. But will they say so? Don’t hold your breath! Will anything happen to him because he was asleep at the switch? Don’t stay up late waiting for that, either.”

“Army always takes care of its own,” Ed said.

“Two hundred dead,” Diana said one more time. “They aren’t just sweeping dirt under a rug. They’re shoveling it onto graves. That’s wrong.” That’s wrong, dammit! was what she wanted to say, but the habits of her whole adult life with Ed suppressed the swear word.

“You’re doing everything you know how to do,” Ed said. “You’re in the papers. You’re on the radio, for cryin’ out loud. Me, I couldn’t get in the newspaper if I robbed a bank. That suits me fine, too.”

“It suited me fine-till Pat got murdered,” Diana answered. “But this craziness won’t stop till we make it stop. If I have to get my name in the paper to do that, I will.”

“Babe, I’m not arguin’ with you,” her husband said. You’d better not, not about this, Diana thought. That wasn’t fair, though, and she knew it. Ed had backed her play as much as was in him to do. It wasn’t his fault that she was the more outgoing one in the family.

And speaking of outgoing, or going generally…“I’ll need to make another trip to Washington,” she said.

He grunted. “Can we afford it?” he asked. A reasonable question: he’d always brought in the money, while Diana figured out how to spend it. The arrangement worked well for them, but it meant she had a better notion of what was in the checkbook and the savings account than he did.

She nodded briskly. “Not to worry. We could swing it by ourselves, but we won’t have to. We’ve got donations coming in like you wouldn’t believe. I’ve started…oh, I guess you’d call it a business account. Mothers Against the Madness in Germany, I’m calling it.”

Ed grunted again. “What’ll it do to our taxes? And can the government use it to come after us if we don’t keep everything straight? They got Al Capone on a tax rap when they couldn’t nail him for anything else, remember. If they sent him to Alcatraz, they can sure take a whack at us.”

“They wouldn’t do that,” Diana answered with the sublime confidence of one sure of the righteousness of her cause. On a more practical note, she added, “And I’ve talked to a bookkeeper. He says he knows how to keep everything straight.”

“Okay. I hope he knows what he’s talking about,” Ed said. “From what I hear at the plant, tax law is pretty much whatever the government wants it to be.”

“I asked around. Abe is supposed to be the best in town, bar none,” Diana said.

“You got Abe Jacoby?”

“I sure did,” she said, not without pride.

“How about that?” Ed sounded relieved. “If a smart sheeny like him can’t keep us outa trouble, nobody can. Those people know money like they invented it. Maybe they did-wouldn’t surprise me one bit.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Diana said. “He doesn’t work cheap-”

Ed guffawed. “There’s a hot headline!”

“Yeah, I know.” Diana laughed, too, a little sheepishly. “But, like I said, the money’s there. And he’s charging less than he might have, too.”

“How come? You bat the baby blues at him?” Ed winked to show he was kidding.

“I did no such thing!” Actually, Diana thought Abe was kind of good-looking, which made her sound stuffier than she would have otherwise. “He’s got a nephew in Munich, and he wants to help make sure Sheldon stays safe.”

“Gotcha. That sure makes sense. Blood’s thicker than water. I guess sometimes it’s thicker than money, too.”

“Let’s hope so,” Diana said. “I won’t be the only one going to Washington, either. If we can get into the papers all over the country for picketing in front of the Indiana state Capitol, think what’ll happen after we picket in front of the White House.”

“They’ll arrest you, that’s what,” Ed predicted.

“No, they won’t, not if we stay peaceful-and we will,” Diana said. “That chowderhead jumped our people in Indianapolis. We didn’t start any brawls. We won’t in Washington, either. But Truman has to know we won’t put up with stalling around in Germany.”

“Well, you’ve got that right.” Ed paused a moment, thinking. “Make sure you tell the papers and the radio before you go. That way, they can be there ready to get the story and the photos-the papers can get the photos, I mean.”

“I understood you.” Diana walked over to him, bent down, and gave him a kiss. “And I’ve already talked to the Indianapolis papers, and to the ones in Washington, and to the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times. If you want a story to go all over the country, those last two are the papers to aim for. I haven’t got hold of NBC and CBS yet, but I will.”

“Attagirl! I might’ve know you were a jump ahead of me.” Ed chuckled. “Truman doesn’t know what he’s up against, poor sap. When you start something, you don’t stop till you get it done.”

Maybe he was kidding again, maybe not. Diana didn’t care. “This needs doing, darn it,” she said, and Ed didn’t try to tell her she was wrong-not that she would have listened if he had.

Whenthe jeep carrying Tom Schmidt came to the first checkpoint on the outskirts of Munich, the dogface behind the wheel let out a sigh of relief and lit up a Lucky. “Made it through Injun country one more time,” he said.

“Is that what you guys call it?” The reporter took out a little notebook bound with a spiral wire and wrote it down.

“You betcha, Charlie.” The GI, who answered impartially to Mel or to Horseface, nodded emphatically. “Liable to be some asshole behind a tree, behind a rock, hiding inside any old ruined house or barn-and there sure are enough of ’em.” The cigarette jerked as he spoke.

He wasn’t wrong. Munich and its suburbs had taken sixty-six air raids during the war. The estimate was that it held something like 9,000,000 cubic yards of rubble. And the rubble still held bodies-nobody knew how many. But even in this chilly weather the stink of dead meat hung in the air.

The guards at the checkpoint weren’t delighted to see them. One made Mel pop the hood. Another got down on his stomach and slid a long-handled mirror under the jeep. Tom’s papers got examined with a jeweler’s loupe. “Do you do this to everybody?” Tom asked the MP going over them.

“Sure do,” the noncom answered. “Goddamn krauts can get our uniforms. Stealing a jeep’s easy as pie. And they’re damn good forgers.”

“You must spend a lot of time doing it, then,” Tom said.

“Yes, sir,” the MP said. “Better than letting some bastard through with a bomb, though. They caught a guy a couple of days ago at another checkpoint.”