made sense to check out what Andrews had gone looking for. I passed a supply depot, but didn't see a telltale antenna. A hundred yards on, a hand-painted sign reading TWENTY-SIXTH RGT. MOTOR VEHICLE MAINTENANCE pointed to the left. I took it, following a wide, rough road of crushed stone and hard-packed dust, to an assembly of tents grouped under ancient gnarled, thick-trunked olive trees. Their shade was sparse but, supplemented by camouflage netting, provided defense against the sun, not to mention the Luftwaffe.
Trucks of all sizes, in various stages of dismemberment or repair littered the landscape. Thick logs had been set up in tripods, lashed together with heavy chains, to yank motors out of vehicles by greased pulleys. But what interested me was sticking up through the netting: a single antenna. I parked the jeep in the shade and ducked under the low-hanging net. The radio rested on a couple of empty crates in a tent half tied above to the trees to give full protection from the sun and the rain, if it ever came. A GI in an oil-stained shirt, his sergeant's stripes barely visible through the grime, sat in front of it, headphones on, writing intently with the stub of a pencil.
'OK, got it. Baker Seven out.' I waited while he continued to scribble, stopping once to lick the tip of the pencil. He finished with a sigh and took the headphones off.
'Sarge, could I use your radio for a minute?'
'Jeez,' he said, standing up as the chair fell over backward. 'Don't sneak up on a guy like that. Lieutenant.'
'Hey, sorry. I just need to radio my CO. Only take a minute.'
He ripped off the top sheet of the pad he'd been writing on, and lifted the chair. 'Knock yourself out, sir.'
I sat at the SCR-510, a vehicle radio that had obviously been removed from a disabled jeep or tank. I set it for Harding's frequency and began to transmit.
'White Bishop, this is White Rook. Over.'
Static blasted my eardrums. I tried again and heard a faint voice acknowledge.
'White Rook, this is-' Static again. I repeated my call sign and as I waited, picked up the pencil and began doodling on the pad. I drew Kilroy, then began filling in his face. I repeated the call sign again. 'White Rook, this is White Bishop One. Come in.' I recognized Harding's voice. As I held the pencil poised to write down a message, I could see the faint outline of a word beneath my drawing. I rubbed the pencil lightly over the pad.
'White Bishop One, this is White Rook. Do you have location of White Knight?' That was Kaz and Harry. Then I saw a name appear. 'Boyle' showed clearly where the motor pool sergeant had written his message on the top sheet, along with the words 'report' and 'hold.'
'Scoglitti, on the coast, southeast of Gela. Do you read? Over.'
'Understood, White Bishop. Keep destination top secret. From all. Do you read? Over.'
'Not surprised, White Rook. Out.'
I changed the frequency and took the top sheet with me. I looked for the sergeant but didn't see him anywhere. Maybe he didn't waste much time on radio orders from MPs or AMGOT. I didn't go straight to the jeep. Instead, I walked around inside the netting, staying behind vehicles and supplies so I could get a good view of the road. I wanted to be sure there were no surprises waiting out there. I edged behind a deuce-and-a-half truck with the hood open and heard voices, the slap of cards, and laughter. Nowhere left to go, I walked around the truck and gave them a friendly grin.
'Hey, fellas, at ease,' I said, as the first of the four mechanics spotted me. 'I'm looking for your sergeant.' They sat on crates around a broken table, its two missing legs supported by a stack of K rations.
'He went to the mess tent to fix himself a sandwich. That way,' one of them said.
'All the Spam you want-help yourself, Lieutenant,' another said, as the others laughed at his wit.
'Raise you ten,' the first guy said, heeding my 'at ease' and doing everything he could to comply. Then I noticed the pot. It was a stack of ten-dollar bills higher than a fist.
'How much is in that pot?' I asked, trying not to sound like an officer. 'I usually play for nickels.'
'Nothing, Lieutenant. Here, have one.'
I took the ten-spot. It looked real, until I turned it over. On the back was a German eagle grasping a swastika and a message in Italian.
'Are they all the same?' I asked.
'Yeah, same serial number on all of them. We found a bunch blowing around in the field over there, then a whole box of the damn things.'
'Anybody know what it says?' I asked, my curiosity keeping me there when I should have been driving off.
'Tony, tell the lieutenant what you figured out. Tony speaks the lingo pretty well,' one of the players said proudly.
'Well, there's a whole bunch of stuff about how we killed plenty of women and children bombing Sicily. And bombed a hospital ship. Then about how all Italians should hate the Americans and the English for that, and that the blood of innocent victims cries out for revenge. Stuff like that.'
'We do any of that stuff, Lieutenant?' the youngest of the card-players asked me.
'Can I keep this?' I asked.
'Sure,' Tony said. 'We play for nickels too. That's what each one's worth to us, in the game anyway. Otherwise they're only good for the latrine. Easier to play with paper, even if it's funny money.'
The kid still wanted an answer.
'That's propaganda. Don't take it seriously.'
'Sure. That's what I thought, sir. Thanks.'
'Call.'
I left as Tony won the pot with three jacks. I didn't know about any hospital ships, but I figured a fair share of the bombs we dropped on Sicily killed civilians, without regard to age or sex. Maybe Mussolini was right, that blood alone moves the wheels of history, but I didn't see any reason for a kid who didn't shave regularly to worry about that before he went to sleep each night. A little lie to soothe the conscience seemed right.
I folded the phony bill and walked the long way back around the tent to my jeep, in the opposite direction from the mess tent. I figured there was only so much Spam a guy could eat before he realized he should have asked me my name. I stepped around guy-wires supporting the radio antenna as a wrecked truck caught my attention. It had been dumped in back, in an open area where olive trees had been cut down. It was a charred hulk, bullet holes visible in the cab and frame, showing it had been shot up and then burned. Could this have been the truck Andrews had been caught in? Lots of vehicles had been shot up and burned, but this was the road to Vittoria, so it would make sense. I looked at my jeep, then back at the wreck. Another few minutes couldn't hurt.
I trotted over and looked inside the cab. The windows were gone, shot out or broken in the crash. Inside, it smelled like death and burned rubber. Bullet holes in the door left jagged edges that tore at my pants. My hands came away black with soot, and I headed for the back of the truck. The metal supports for the canvas covering were bent and broken. I hoisted myself up on what was left of the truck bed and tried to comprehend what I was looking at. A pile of charred cans could have been anything. Spam, peaches, who knows what. A faint dark outline showed on the charred floor. About the size of a body. Bodily fluids and burning fat always left their mark. It made it more likely that this had been Andrews's truck. I scuffed through the debris, wondering what a clue would look like after all this.
A flicker of white caught my eye. I pushed aside a blackened pile of something and saw more white. I kneeled and picked it up. Paper. Charred paper. Small pieces fluttered from my hand, none larger than my thumb. It had been a roll of paper, far larger than what I saw here now. The innermost layer of a roll of blank paper, protected from the fire, crumbled at my touch.
Paper. I took the folded fake ten-dollar bill and placed two of the larger pieces inside it, then carefully put it in my shirt pocket and buttoned it. This had been Andrews's truck, I was sure of it. Big rolls of paper could mean only one thing. For Andrews, though, all it had meant was that his luck had run out. Legs or the Luftwaffe? It didn't matter. Dead was dead, and I had to move.
I decided to walk straight to the jeep. There was no unusual activity in the motor pool, and I needed to put some miles between me and this place. Sooner or later someone would figure out it had been Boyle who'd stopped by. And maybe sooner, if anyone had been monitoring Harding's frequency. If they had been, then they knew Vittoria was my destination and might be waiting for me there. But I had to have a next move. That was easy to figure. Get things out in the open, in a place where the odds were in my favor. I thought about Kaz, great in spirit
