Billy Boyle
For Debbie—
Once a dream,
come true.
Copyright © 2006 by James R. Benn
All rights reserved.
“G.I. Jive,” Words and music by Johnny Mercer
© 1943 (Renewed) Warner Bros. Music Corporation
Used by Permission; “I’m Getting Tired So I Can Sleep” by Irving Berlin,
© Copyright 1942 Irving Berlin, Inc., © Copyright Renewed by Irving
Berlin, International Copyright Secured All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by Permission.
Published by Soho Press, Inc.
853 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Benn, James R.
Billy Boyle: a World War Two Mystery / James R. Benn.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-56947-970-4
eISBN 978-1-56947-672-7
1. World War, 1939-1945—Underground movements—
Norway—Fiction. 2. Sabotage—Norway—History—20th century—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.E6644B55 2006
813’.6—dc22 2006042300
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
A S
TRAND
OF
C
ORPSES
I know a hall whose doors face North
on the Strand of Corpses far from the sun,
poison drips from lights in the roof;
that building is woven of backs of snakes.
There heavy streams must be waded through
by breakers of pledges and murderers.
The Edda: The Deluding of Gylfi
Norse Mythology, 13th Century A.D.
I typed the date under my name: Lieutenant William Boyle, August 6, 1942. I pulled the sheets out of the typewriter, separated out the carbon paper, and made two neat stacks. My official report. Everything that had happened during the last few weeks reduced to a neat summary: part confessional, part U.S. Army standard issue after action report. Most of it was even true.
I looked out the window near my desk. August. The only real evidence of that was the calendar on the wall. Outside the sky was gray, people carrying umbrellas and walking with that hurried step you put on when it’s chilly and you press your arms to your sides for extra warmth. August in London, inside the U.S. Army headquarters in Grosvenor Square, and it was cold. Lonely, too. Things had changed since I first walked in here back in June. A lot of things.
I reached for a red folder stamped “
TOP SECRET
.” It was filled with photos, orders, and maps, all marked with notations referred to in my report. One copy went in there. The folder would be taken by a clerk and filed away under lock and key. I doubted anyone would ever read it. The carbon copy would go to my boss, who would read it and then burn it. Top Secret. I looked out the window some more. People came and went. In and out of buildings, hurrying across the small park at the center of the square. There’s a war on, after all.
There’s a lot that’s not in the report. Some of it is unofficial, personal stuff. The things that set everything in motion aren’t set down. Events that took place years ago, before America was in the war and while I was wearing a blue uniform instead of khaki.
I can tell you the whole story, secrets and all, right from the beginning. Not the army version, which probably sounds more like a police report than it needs to, but the real McCoy.
But before I start explaining, maybe I should tell you how I ended up here, at U.S. Army HQ in London. I didn’t get here by choice, that’s for damn sure.
ONEOver the North Atlantic
June 1942
I
WANTED TO DIE
. No, actually I didn’t want to die. Or live. I just didn’t care. Dying would have been better than puking my guts out again in a bucket. Which wouldn’t have been so bad if the bucket hadn’t been inside a freezing Flying Fortress halfway between Iceland and England, trying to ride out a North Atlantic storm. And if there hadn’t been a war going on, and I hadn’t been headed right for it.
I wanted to reach for the bucket again but the floor dropped out from under me as the Fortress was pounded by powerful, howling storm winds that seemed to scream at the fuselage, clawing at the plane’s skin for a way inside. Canvas-covered crates bounced on each other, held down by knotted ropes and the weight of what they carried. I worried about being crushed to death before I ever got to England, my military career ended by a crate of beans or grenades or whatever was important enough to rate air transport. The waist gunner openings were closed up. Only a small Perspex window let in what little light there was among the gray clouds at twenty thousand feet. The noise from the storm and the four straining engines pounded in my head like a jackhammer orchestra. I prayed for the plane to steady itself and held on to the hard metal seat for dear life. All I could think about was the fact that, just two days before, I was fat, dumb, and happy, just about to graduate from Officer Candidate School, and ready to enjoy the delights of life as a staff officer at the War Department in Washington, D.C. I was all set. The fix was in. Now I was in a fix.
I never wanted to be in the army. I was happy as a cop on the beat in Boston, just like my dad and my uncles, and seldom even left South Boston, where the Boyle family lived and worked. I had been on the job for three years, and my dad and his brothers and their pals watched out for me. That’s how it works. The rich folks on Beacon Hill look out for their own and the Irish in Southie look out for theirs. I guess it’s like that all over the world, but I really don’t know. Or care. That’s the world’s problem.
My problem was that I had just made detective three days before Pearl Harbor. It was unusual for a kid in his early twenties to make the grade. The test they gave was pretty hard. While I can usually figure things out sooner or later, I’m no scholar. I would’ve had a hard time, but a few of the sheets from the test sort of found their way into my locker a couple of days before the exam. I managed to pass. My uncle Dan is on the promotions board, so with a little back-scratching with his buddies over a few pints of Guinness, I was in. That’s just the way it works. I’m not saying I’m proud of it, but it doesn’t mean I’m not a good cop either. It’s not a bad system, actually. The other guys know me and know they can depend on me. I’m not some stranger who got the job just because he’s smart enough to answer a bunch of questions on his own. That doesn’t mean squat when you need your partner to back you up. Three years walking the beat in Chinatown and around the harbor had taught me a lot, not to mention everything Dad tried to drum into my head. He’s a homicide detective, and he always made sure I got assigned to a crime scene when they needed some extra bluecoats for crowd control or knocking on doors. I worked a lot of overtime, saw a lot of dead bodies, and listened to Dad talk me through his routine. Sometimes it was obvious who the killer was, like after a knife fight between drunks. Other times, it wasn’t. Watching Dad figure things out was like watching an artist paint a picture. He used to say an investigation was a lot like art, just a blank canvas and a whole lot of different colors in little jars. All the clues were there, just like a painting was already in those little jars of paint. But you had to mix them together and put them on the canvas right, so it all made sense. Well, the only thing I can paint is a house, and sometimes I couldn’t see how Dad figured things out, even when he explained it all to me. But he would always go through it with me afterward, hoping some of it would stick.
Anyway, I was pretty disappointed to hear about Pearl Harbor. It was tough for those guys out there, but it also meant the draft board was going to come after me. The Boston PD had more cops than deferments, and we younger guys knew what was coming. I didn’t like it much, but it looked like Uncle Sam was going to ship me off to fight the Japs. Everybody was all worked up over the Japs, but it seemed to me that I had enough problems with the Chinese gangs down in Chinatown without taking on the rest of the Orient.
I thought maybe the military police would be a good choice, to stay in the game sort of. Dad nixed that idea right away. He’d hated the MPs he’d run into in France during the First World War and said no son of his would ever earn his keep busting poor enlisted men over a drink or the ladies. OK, that was that.
Uncle Dan didn’t want me to go at all. He and Dad went off to war in 1917 with their older brother, Frank. Frank got killed his first day at the front. It broke Grandma’s heart and I think Dad and Uncle Dan’s, too. I never really knew how hard it had hit them until one night over drinks at Kirby’s Bar, right after New Year’s, just a month after Pearl Harbor. I could tell they were working up to tell me something. It took a couple of Bushmills Irish whiskeys before they got around to it.
“If somebody comes after the Boyles, then it’s personal, and we all back each other up,” my dad started. “You know that, Billy. But this war, it’s no good for us. The Boyles have finally made it here. No one ever helped us, especially when Da couldn’t get work because ‘No Irish Need Apply.’ We’ve worked hard to build something for you here, and we’re not going to let this war with the Japs and Germans take it away from you. It’s not our war. No one attacked Boston or Ireland. So we’re going to find a way to keep you safe. We don’t want you to get killed, like Frank.”
“Especially not fighting for the fucking English, Billy, you remember that,” Uncle Dan chimed in. Like any good IRA man, he hated the English. It had galled him to fight on the same side as the English in his war, and he didn’t want me to do the same in mine. Unfortunately, their plan didn’t go any farther than deciding I shouldn’t get killed, which sounded fine to me. We drank some more, and went home. Dad got yelled at. I went to sleep.
In the morning we went to Mass. That always calmed Mom down, and she was nice to Dad as we walked home from church. That’s when she got the idea. Her second cousin, one of the Doud clan that had moved to Colorado, was married to a general who worked at the War Plans Division of the War Department in Washington, D.C. Maybe he’d give me some sort of job there. I’d seen him last at a family wedding a few years ago. Since he was an older guy I called him “Uncle.” Uncle Ike.
The Boyle family put the wheels into motion. Dad called our congressman, Teddy McCarrick, who owed him for certain favors granted during the election. Teddy was glad to oblige, knowing there was always another election around the corner. Not only did I get an immediate qualification for Officer Candidate School, but he called a week later and told Dad that my uncle had asked Army Personnel to assign me to his staff as soon as I graduated OCS. Well, all right! On my uncle’s staff in the nation’s capital, where the women outnumbered the men ten to one and I’d be an officer and a gentleman. Not bad for an Irish kid from Boston. A lot better than a grave in France, according to Uncle Dan.
We only forgot one thing. The part of OCS that stood for “School.” I did fine in basic training. I’d always played sports and kept in shape. I knew firearms, which is more than I can say about the other guys in boot camp. I figured it was more dangerous around the firing range there than anyplace I’d ever see in this war. But then we went to school. Never liked it, never will. It wasn’t the kind of school where you could bullshit your way out of trouble, like I’d done many times back home. They really expected you to learn this stuff: map reading, tactics, command, logistics. It gave me a headache. I kept hoping that I’d find the exam answers slipped under my door, but this wasn’t Boston, and the noncoms were all Southern boys. Not an Irish guy among them.