British to express dismay at so many of the local population in their occupied territories. It seemed to me the Brits never met a foreigner they liked or a foreign land they didn't.
CHAPTER FOUR
I had fifteen minutes to find Diana and tell her I was leaving. It wasn't the best timing, in view of the fight we'd had. A few minutes was not going to be long enough to convince her to give up the SOE while I went off on a mission, but I had to think of a way to get through to her. I went over what Kay had said as I hurried to Diana's room. Don't let your pride kill what the two of you have. Don't be a fool. But who was the fool here? Me, trying to keep Diana from death and torture? Or Kay, driving Uncle Ike around and clasping his secret scribbles to her breast? Or maybe it was Diana, risking death again after all she had been through and all she had lost.
Diana had gone with the British Expeditionary Force to France in 1940 as a member of the FANY, working at headquarters as a switchboard operator. But the German Blitzkrieg had turned rear areas into front lines, and soon she was part of the retreat to Dunkirk and found herself caring for wounded soldiers crammed onto the deck of a British destroyer. When the Stukas came, dive-bombing and strafing the ship, she'd watched the stretcher cases slide into the cold channel waters as the destroyer capsized. Everywhere around her, men died, the waves cresting with corpses, while she survived, unhurt. She'd been rescued and made it back to England, visions of death haunting her dreams, driving the guilt deep inside her.
Then she lost her sister, Daphne. Daphne had befriended me when I first showed up at U.S. Army headquarters in London, and had been killed when she'd gotten too close to the murderer of a Norwegian official. After that, Diana was determined to go to war as an SOE agent, telling everyone she had to do her duty. But I knew there was more to it; she had to tempt death, and find out if she truly deserved to live. When she was finally sent on a mission, it was betrayed before it began, and she was picked up in Algiers by the Vichy French police. Fascist police. It hadn't been pretty. She'd been drugged, beaten, and raped. It wasn't the clean confrontation with death that she had sought. It was dirty, sordid, horrible, painful, and demeaning. I couldn't let her go through that again. I couldn't go through it again.
I knocked on her door. No answer. I called to her, rattled the door handle. Silence. I looked at my watch. Ten minutes. I ran to my room down the hall and threw my kit together, shaving gear, soap, and comb wrapped into a hotel towel and stuffed in my field bag with one good spare shirt and a few other articles of clothing. There was just enough room for a bottle of Bushmills Irish whiskey, half empty, and a paperback book I'd been reading, also about half done. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. It was a murder mystery about a detective working for a general. Seemed right up my alley.
I buckled on my web belt with the. 45 automatic snug in its holster. I patted the pouches for the extra clips and did a quick check around the room. I had my razor, toothbrush, clean shirt, booze, book, automatic, and ammo. Everything I needed for a long trip to Belfast. Five minutes to go.
I began to write Diana a note, then realized I didn't know what to say. I wasn't sure about anything. Not her, myself, or where the war might take us. After seeing Kay's note from Uncle Ike, I wasn't sure whom I could trust or if trust even mattered anymore. Maybe I was a fool. I thought about saying I was sorry but I wasn't. I looked at my watch. Five minutes. I wrote fast.
Diana- I've been called away. Ask the general for details. I can't say anything. May be gone for a while. Let's start over when I get back. Stay safe.
Billy
I'm no Raymond Chandler, that's for sure. I thought 'stay safe' was good, though. It might mean stay safe at headquarters or it could mean be safe on your SOE mission. I slipped it under her door, and then wished I'd signed it Love, Billy. I was a fool. Too late for love-that summed up the day so far. I stood in the hallway, waiting for a sound to come from within the room. It was quiet, so at least she wasn't inside, ignoring me.
Two minutes. I had to go. Where had all my fine Irish words gone when I needed them? No wonder they called it the gift of gab; mine had deserted me. I could blather the whole day and into the night but when it came to putting a few words on paper for the woman I loved, I was lost, tongue-tied, reduced to a few trite lines.
I cursed myself as I ran through the lobby and out through the pink sandstone arches. Cypress trees shaded the walkway, lending swatches of green to the dusty pinks, beiges, and browns covering the landscape. I glanced back at the hotel, wondering if Diana had opened her door and found my note. Perhaps she was looking out a window and watching me leave, pack slung over my back. Part of me was glad to be going, I was ashamed to admit. It was a way out of my troubles. Not the best way but there was no denying it: I was off to another part of the world, and whatever was going to happen would happen without me. It might be the best thing for Diana and me, I told myself. Like I'd said in the note, when I got back, we could start over. And what if she wasn't around when I got back? Well, I had a long plane ride to figure that one out. I felt the same about Uncle Ike and Kay. Now that I knew something was going on between them, I was secretly relieved that Major Cosgrove had showed up to rescue me from these crosscurrents of passion and deception.
I didn't like the way things had turned out on this little side trip to the Holy Land. It was supposed to have been fun, a break from the routine of war: the paperwork, the waiting, the moments of terror, the lousy food, and more sudden terror. Instead, the people I loved were acting in ways I didn't understand, moving away from me, shifting and changing the few precious things I had counted on. Damned if it didn't feel good to leave that hotel behind me.
A British Army corporal gave me one of their backhanded salutes that always made me think they were slapping their foreheads. I gave him a snappy one in return and tossed him my pack. He opened the door of the staff car and I got in back, next to Subaltern O'Brien. She was fanning herself with a file folder marked SECRET in bold red letters.
'Am I in that file?' I asked.
'Not this one, Lieutenant Boyle,' she said as the driver sped off, scattering pedestrians and the odd donkey with an utter disregard for civilians. As we turned onto the main road, I caught a last glimpse of the old walled city, the New Gate with its narrow archway into the Christian Quarter fading from view as we picked up speed.
'What are you doing here anyway?' I asked her.
'Finishing your briefing,' she said as she thumbed through the papers in the file.
'No, I mean serving with the British. You're Irish.'
'So are you,' she said.
'It's not the same. My country is at war, yours isn't. And you're part of MI-5, the same people who go after the IRA in Northern Ireland.'
'Which is exactly what you have been assigned to do, courtesy of General Eisenhower.'
'You know what I mean,' I said. 'I don't think anyone ordered you to join the ATS, much less become part of MI-5.' At that, she shrugged, silently granting the point, as she finally looked up from her file.
'Are you one of those Irish-Americans who romanticize the brave lads of the IRA, raising pints to them in your Boston bars and crying great rivers of tears when 'Danny Boy' plays? Do the pipes call to you, Billy Boyle, from glen to glen and down the mountainside? I think they must, even in Boston. But you never answer them, do you? You send your money and your guns, you sons of Eire, but not yourselves, so you never see the agony you cause as you keep open the great wounds of our nation. Well, now the pipes have called and you must answer. You must.'
'It's not like that,' I said, after I had recovered from the quiet force of her words. 'It sounds like you don't like Irish-Americans very much.'
'I'm sure there are some fine ones. One, I even admire very much. Now here's what we know about the theft-'
'Wait, who is it you admire?'
'Never mind, it's nothing to do with this. Now listen.'
She went through the file, reviewing the details. The U.S. Army base at Ballykinler regularly received supplies from local farmers and shops. On the night of the raid, a truck loaded with cabbages and rutabagas had been admitted at the gate. Two men, the driver and a helper, had carried the food to the kitchen and then made an unscheduled stop at the arms depot. Fifty Browning Automatic Rifles, newly delivered, and more than two hundred
