isn't he here? If you've broken this big case, why aren't the MPs taking me away in irons?' Thornton was finally adding it up. He was right. All I had was a story. If he'd gotten rid of all the evidence, except for what Brennan had squirreled away, then I'd have a hard time making it stick.
'How come you lied to me about wanting a combat command?'
'I do.'
'Ordnance officer at Corps HQ is not exactly in the line of fire.'
'Get the hell out, Boyle.'
'OK,' I said, thinking over my options. I should just walk away, forget about Thornton, and get on with the investigation. 'Mind if I take this?' I pointed to the whiskey.
'If it gets you out of here, then with my compliments. No reason you can't share in the wealth. Maybe you're not as dumb as you look after all.'
'Could be,' I said, lifting the case. 'We'll see.'
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I stopped at the communications center, gave Lasner a bottle of Bushmills, and said I needed to use a telephone in private. He put the bottle in his desk drawer, me in a small office down the hall, and shut the door without asking a question. I put in a call to Captain Hiram Heck, and held the receiver away from my ear until he calmed down enough to listen. I managed to get a few words in, got a grunt in return that I interpreted as agreement, and winced as he slammed the phone down, his way of saying goodbye.
It was about sixty miles to Brownlow House in Lurgan, according to the directions Lasner gave me. I could tell I'd gone up a notch in his estimation of me as a rookie second lieutenant when he took the time to walk me out to the jeep, going over the route he'd marked on a map to lead me to Corps Headquarters.
'In the center of Newcastle you'll see a sign for Castlewellan Road. Take that; it goes to a town of the same name. You'll cross the Dublin Road in Castlewellan, then take the Ballyward Road to the village of Ballyward,' he said, pointing out the towns. The next one was Katesbridge.
'Let me guess. Then I take the Katesbridge Road?'
'Yeah, but you have to watch out. They also name the roads from the other direction, so this same roadway becomes the Castlewellan Road again, once you get to Banbridge. Then you're almost there. After Banbridge, take the Lurgan Road.'
'To Lurgan.'
'Right. In the town center there are signs for Corps HQ. Brownlow House is a huge place, a manor house, I'd guess you call it. Hard to miss anyway; it's the biggest thing in town.'
'OK, thanks, Sarge,' I said as I took down the canvas top to the jeep. I saw him glance in the back at the case of whiskey.
'You have a whole case of Bushmills,' he said, a slight petulant tone creeping into his voice. I guess one bottle seemed like a lot when he thought that was all I had to give.
'Less one, Sarge. Sorry, I need these. I'm not even keeping any for myself.'
'Well, OK, Lieutenant, if you say so. I haven't seen that much quality hooch in one place since I've been here. Good liquor doesn't seem to make its way down the chain of command.'
'Ain't that the way of the world?' I waved as I drove off, glad that Lasner seemed cheered by the thought that he had one more bottle than I'd end up with. He was right about all the good stuff going to the higher ranks, and I was too low on the rank scale to disagree with him. Lieutenants were a dime a dozen and didn't get much of a cut; the valuables went up to captains, majors, colonels, and generals. Stuff like scotch, whiskey, fleece-lined leather coats meant for bomber crews, penicillin, these things all flowed in a supply line from the States to bases all over the world on their way to the front. At each stop, the freight got lighter and guys like Heck sported jump boots and other gear they needed to make themselves feel like they were real soldiers.
Booze was one thing, especially here when we were practically in the backyard of the Bushmills distillery. But cold-weather gear, cigarettes, morphine, I'd seen it all pilfered at rear-area supply depots, and it made me sick. I had no desire to hack another foxhole out of the hardpacked Italian ground, but if I did, I'd want to be warm once I climbed into it. If I was wounded, I didn't want to run out of morphine syrettes because a quartermaster had a habit or a connection in Belfast, London, or Algiers who was offering top dollar.
Everyone's a thief, I told myself, enjoying the sun on my face as I drove through the pines, down the hill to Newcastle. From the cop on the beat who takes an apple from the greengrocer to the government that takes a cut out of your paycheck. It's simply a matter of how much harm you cause when you take what isn't yours. I didn't know where the line was, the place where the harm was serious, but I knew enough to stay on the side of it that let me sleep at night.
I found Castlewellan Road in Newcastle and quickly left the town behind, as homes and shops gave way to neatly squared-off fields, their stone walls and thin lines of trees corralling masses of sheep, all quietly eating, their heads down to the ground, intent on nothing but the green stalks in front of them. Fattening up for the hard winter, as were the GIs at Ballykinler and bases like it everywhere in Great Britain, North Africa, and Italy. Those who had been based here before them had gone ashore in North Africa when I did, and now a lot of them were dead, more wounded, some prisoners, and others, like Pete Brennan, alive by no grace they could understand. Me, I wasn't that deep a thinker. I was glad to be alive and I was as ready to thank God for the favor as a carved wooden pig. I had no idea if God played a part in deciding who was going to die on the battlefield or in the parlor of an RUC policeman's house. Not too long ago, a guy next to me on a ridgeline in Sicily had taken a bullet to the forehead. If that was how God spent his time, I'd take my chances with Pig.
I slowed as I drove through Castlewellan, sharing the wide roadway with trucks, motorbikes, and farmers' carts drawn by sturdy horses. In the town center the road was lined with large, old chestnut trees, hanging onto the last of their greenery before the harsh cold took hold and pulled it down. I passed a Celtic stone cross set in the middle of an intersection and a series of shops in whitewashed stone buildings. Henry Devlin, Spirits and Grocer. Bustard's Shoes and Boots. Shilliday Hardware. For the first time since I'd landed, I felt as if I was in Ireland. Not the Republic but the island of Ireland, away from the war, the British, and the IRA. The names, the streets, shops, and people all felt comfortable to me, like a pair of old boots I might have bought years ago at Bustard's.
I resisted the urge to find a pub and have an early lunch and chat with the regulars. I felt that if I did, I might not ever leave. Strange that in this alien place of my childhood nightmares, where Orangemen lurked to lop off the heads of young Catholic boys, I should feel as if I were driving home, maybe from a Sunday outing to Weymouth, coming back through Dorchester and seeing the familiar shops and stores drift past my window, as Dad waved to the town cop directing traffic, his white gloves moving in gleaming arcs toward Southie.
The ground rose west of Castlewellan, the rock-enclosed patches of land tilting themselves upward on either side of the road, a damp chill blowing around me as I pulled my cap down tight. The sun was bright but not warm, the November air cooling the rays that cast shadows at my back, as if the sunlight itself were a lie.
This wasn't the hot warmth of Jerusalem, it was the shining light of my ancestors' homeland, and I shivered in it, thinking of Diana, wondering if sweat was still running in rivulets between her breasts, or if she too had been sent to serve under a different sun, and if she was warmed or chilled under it. Too soon, I told myself. It's too soon. She'd have to be briefed and made ready. Outfitted with the right clothes, all with European labels, that sort of thing. They can't produce that stuff overnight, can they? I ached to have those moments in Jerusalem back, to say the right things to her. I didn't know what they might be, but I knew I hadn't said them. I couldn't have; I was only thinking of myself, how her choices affected me. I felt like a bum.
Thinking about Diana started me worrying about her, and that made me drive faster. I took a curve too quickly and had to brake hard to keep from drifting off the road. I downshifted and took a deep breath. OK, relax, I told myself. Think about something else. BARs. Think about BARs.
Before I could, I had to brake again, this time for a slow-moving wagon coming my way, pulled by two thick- hoofed horses clip-clopping along, their load of manure destined for some farmer's field. Lucky him. I tried not to breathe as we passed on the narrow road. Except for that stretch through Castlewellan, I hadn't seen a wide road anywhere since I'd gotten here. The roads of Northern Ireland-and I expect those of the Republic as well-had not been built for the volume of army traffic they were seeing these days.
