Corporal Benjamin has about a third of the place to himself. The SAS blokes keep calling him a lucky sod. He has his transmitter set up now, the tubes glowing warmly, and he has an unbelievable amount of paperwork. Most of it's old and fake, just like the cigarette butts. But after dinner, when the sun is down not only here but in London, he begins tapping out the Morse code.
Shaftoe knows Morse code, like everyone else in the place. As the guys and the blokes sit around the table, anteing up for what promises to be an all-night Hearts marathon, they keep one ear cocked towards Corporal Benjamin's keying. What they hear is gibberish. Shaftoe goes and looks over Benjamin's shoulder at one point, just to verify that he isn't crazy, and sees he's right:
XYHEL ANAOG GFQPL TWPKI AOEUT
and so on and so forth, for pages and pages.
The next morning they dig a latrine and then proceed to fill it halfway with a couple of barrels of genuine U.S. Mil. Spec. General Issue 100% pure certified Shit. As per Chattan's instructions, they pour the shit in a dollop at a time, throwing in handfuls of crumpled Italian newspapers after each dollop to make it look like it got there naturally. With the possible exception of being interviewed by Lieutenant Reagan, this is the worst nonviolent job Shaftoe has ever had to do in the service of his country. He gives everyone the rest of the day off, except for Corporal Benjamin, who stays up until two in the morning banging out random gibberish.
The next day they make the observation post look good. They take turns marching up there and back, up and back, up and back, wearing a trail into the ground, and they scatter some cigarette butts and beverage containers up there along with some general issue shit and general issue piss. Flanagan and Kuehl hump a footlocker up there and hide it in the lee of a volcanic rock. The locker contains books of silhouettes of various Italian and German naval and merchant ships, and similar spotter's guides for airplanes, as well as some binoculars, telescopes, and camera equipment, empty notepads, and pencils.
Even though Sergeant Bobby Shaftoe is for the most part running this show, he finds it uncannily difficult to arrange a moment alone with Lieutenant Enoch Root. Root has been avoiding him ever since their eventful flight on the Dakota. Finally, on about the fifth day, Shaftoe tricks him; he and a small contingent leave Root alone at the observation point, then Shaftoe doubles back and traps him there.
Root is startled to see Shaftoe come back, but he doesn't get particularly upset. He lights up an Italian cigarette and offers Shaftoe one. Shaftoe finds, irritatingly enough, that he is the nervous one. Root's as cool as always.
'Okay,' Shaftoe says, 'what did you see? When you looked through the papers we planted on the dead butcher-what did you see?'
'They were all written in German,' Root says.
'Shit!'
'Fortunately,' Root continues, 'I am somewhat familiar with the language.'
'Oh, yeah-your mom was a Kraut, right?'
'Yes, a medical missionary,' Root says, 'in case that helps dispel any of your preconceptions about Germans.'
'And your Dad was Dutch.'
'That is correct.'
'And they both ended up on Guadalcanal why?'
'To help those who were in need.'
'Oh, yeah.'
'I also learned some Italian along the way. There's a lot of it going around in the Church.'
'Fuck me,' Shaftoe exclaims.
'But my Italian is heavily informed by the Latin that my father insisted that I learn. So I would probably sound rather old-fashioned to the locals. In fact, I would probably sound like a seventeenth-century alchemist or something.'
'Could you sound like a priest? They'd eat that up.'
'If worse comes to worst,' Root allows, 'I will try hitting them with some God talk and we'll see what happens.'
They both puff on their cigarettes and look out across the large body of water before them, which Shaftoe has learned is called the Bay of Naples. 'Well anyway,' Shaftoe says, 'what did it say on those papers?'
'A lot of detailed information about military convoys between Palermo and Tunis. Evidently stolen from classified German sources,' Root says.
'Old convoys, or...'
'Convoys that were still in the future,' Root says calmly. Shaftoe finishes his cigarette, and does not speak for a while. Finally he says, 'Fuckin' weird.' He stands up and begins walking back towards the barn.
Chapter 25 THE CASTLE
Just as Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse detrains, some rakehell hits him full in the face with a turn of brackish ice water. The barrage continues as he walks a gauntlet of bucket-slinging ne'er-do-wells. But then he realizes no one's there. This is just an intrinsic quality of the local atmosphere, like fog in London.
The staircase that leads over the tracks to Utter Maurby Terminal is enclosed with roof and walls, forming a gigantic organ pipe that resonates with an infrasonic throb as it is pummeled by wind and water. As he walks into the lower end of the staircase, the storm is suddenly peeled away from his face and he is able to stand there for a moment and give this phenom the full appreciation it deserves.
Wind and water have been whipped into an essentially random froth by the storm. A microphone held up in the air would register only white noise-a complete absence of information. But when that noise strikes the long tube of the staircase, it drives a physical resonance that manifests itself in Waterhouse's brain as a low hum. The physics of the tube extract a coherent pattern from meaningless noise! If only Alan were here!
Waterhouse experiments by singing the harmonics of this low fundamental tone: octave, fifth, fourth, major third, and so on. Each one resonates in the staircase to a greater or lesser degree. It is the same series of notes made by a brass instrument. By hopping from one note to another, Waterhouse is able to play some passable bugle calls on the staircase. He does a pretty decent reveille.
'How lovely!'
He spins around. A woman is standing behind him, lugging a portmanteau the size of a hay bale. She is perhaps fifty years old, with the physique of a stove, and she had a nice new big-city permanent until a few seconds ago when she stepped out of the train. Salt water is running down her face and neck and disappearing beneath her sturdy frock of grey Qwghlm wool.
'Ma'am,' Waterhouse says. Then he busies himself with hauling her portmanteau up to the top of the stairs. This puts the two of them, and all of their luggage, on a narrow covered bridge that leads across the tracks and into the terminal building. The bridge has windows in it, and Waterhouse suffers a nauseating attack of vertigo as he looks through them, and through the half inch of rain and saltwater that is streaming down them at any given moment, towards the North Atlantic Ocean. This major body of water is only a stone's throw away and is trying vigorously to get much closer. This must be an optical illusion, but the tops of the waves appear to be level with the plane on which they're standing despite the fact that it's at least twenty feet off the ground. Each one of those waves must weigh as much as all of the freight trains in Great Britain combined, and they are rolling towards them relentlessly, simply hammering the living daylights out of the rocks. It all makes Waterhouse want to pitch a fit, fall down, and throw up. He plugs his ears.
'Are you a bandsman, then, I take it?' the lady enquires.
Waterhouse turns to look at her. Her gaze is darting back and forth around the front of his uniform, checking the insignia. Then she looks up into his face and gives him a grandmotherly smile.
Waterhouse realizes, in that instant, that this woman is a German spy. Holy cow!
'Only in peacetime, ma'am,' he says. 'The Navy has other uses, now, for men with good ears.'
'Oh!' she exclaims, 'you listen to things, do you?'
Waterhouse smiles. 'Ping! Ping!' he says, mimicking sonar.
