The War That Came Early: Coup d'Etat (56 page)

He thought about crawling over and getting the enemy sniper’s rifle. It would be a good weapon to bring back.
Not while it’s light
out
, he thought. Somebody might be watching. After darkness would be time enough. You had to be patient if you were going to play this game.

ANOTHER TRIP
out of town to raise funds for the war effort—and, on the side, for the Democratic Party. Peggy Druce was more relieved than not to get out of Philadelphia. She never would have felt that way before she went to Europe.

It wasn’t her fault.
She understood that. It wasn’t Herb’s fault, either. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was just one of the things that happened when two people, even two people who loved each other a lot, got separated from each other for years at a time.

Maybe things would get better pretty soon. Peggy kept hoping so.
She had no doubt Herb did, too. Till they did … Sometimes, she was just more comfortable when
she didn’t feel that mild awkwardness, that slight constraint, while she was in the same room as her husband.

Carbondale was north and east of Scranton, not very far from the border with New York. It was exactly what its name declared it to be: a coal town, one of perhaps 20,000 people. Most of them were Welsh and Irish—the primarily Slavic mining towns lay farther west. As their ancestors had
since the early nineteenth century, the breadwinners went down under the ground to grub out anthracite.

US Highway 6, the main drag, twisted like a snake with a bellyache. What Peggy could see of where people actually lived looked to be on the grim side. Even so, the man who met her at the train station—a plump druggist named Vernon Vaughan—had his own small-scale civic pride.

“Carbondale’s
come through the Depression better than a lot of places,” he declared, watery sunlight glinting off the silver rims of his bifocals. “The mines always stayed open. They had to cut back some, but they didn’t shut down. Most people had some money most of the time. That meant the merchants didn’t go under, either.”

“Good for you,” Peggy said, and she meant it. Plenty of towns Carbondale’s size,
all across the country, might as well have closed up shop for good after the market crashed in 1929. Since she was here on business, she felt she had to add, “I hope that means you’ll reach for your wallets when it comes time to buy your war bonds.”

“Well, I figure we will.” Vaughan’s double chin wobbled when he nodded. “People here are proud to be Americans. They work hard, sure, but they know
they’re better off than they would be if Great-Grandpa stayed in the old country. The Irish, now, they got out ’cause Great-Grandpa was starving. My folks didn’t have it quite so bad, not from the stories I’ve heard, anyway. But I went Over There in 1918, and I was proud to do it.”

“Good for you,” Peggy said again. “My husband was the same way.” She didn’t tell him that she and Herb had lived
more than comfortably enough even when the country hurt worst. She didn’t tell him she’d had enough money to stay in Europe for a couple of years, either. The way things worked out, she wished she’d never boarded the liner to begin with.

“There you go,” Vaughan said. “Let me grab your overnight bag there, and I’ll take you to your hotel. It’s only two, three blocks away. And the Rotarians’ hall
where you’ll talk is right next door.”

“That all sounds great,” Peggy said, again most sincerely. Some places were better organized, some not so well. Vernon Vaughan seemed to have things under control.

The hotel would never make anyone forget the Ritz Carlton. But it would do. She’d stayed in plenty of worse places on the other side of the Atlantic: she didn’t have to trot down the hall to
the bathroom, for instance. And she wouldn’t have to scramble for the shelter when air-raid sirens started shrieking.

She talked about that when she went next door to speak. “They’re still having air-raid alerts on the West Coast, though,” she said. “We have to make sure no enemy can ever strike at us at home. Not ever! When I was in Europe, I saw for myself how horrible that was.”

People applauded
her then. But they sat on their hands when she talked about helping England now that she was back in the fight against Germany. Carbondale wasn’t the ideal place for that line, even if she realized as much half a minute later than she should have. What had Vernon Vaughan said? The town was full of Irish and Welsh. And why had their ancestors crossed the ocean? To get out from under their English
landlords and overlords.

Time to ad-lib, then. “You may not love England,” she said, “but if you think Hitler’s a better bargain, I’m here to tell you you’re out of your ever-loving minds. If you get on England’s bad side, she’ll break you if she can. If you get on Hitler’s bad side, he’ll kill you—and as many of your friends and neighbors as he can catch, to make sure they don’t get any nasty
ideas like freedom on their own.”

That drew a little handclapping, but not much. Peggy went back to laying into Japan. Sooner or later, she expected, there
would
be a reckoning with the Nazis. But it would probably have to be later. People like the ones in the Rotarian hall here showed why FDR couldn’t go and declare war on Germany. If old Adolf had declared war on America, now …

Well, it hadn’t
happened. The best thing the USA could do now against the evil day was strengthen herself as much as she could. If that
meant whipping up hatred against the Japs, okay, she’d whip it up. We were fighting them, after all. And we weren’t doing any too well against them right this minute, either.

“Show your hearts with the red, white, and blue!” she finished. “Everybody talks about being a patriot,
but patriotism takes more than talk. Put your money where your mouth is, folks. You can’t fight a war with nothing but talk. I wish you could, but you can’t. It takes cash, too.”

She hadn’t expected much. This wasn’t a big city, or even a medium-sized one. And Welshmen, at least, had almost the same kind of name for stinginess as Jews.

But she did great. The bonds the men of Carbondale bought
wouldn’t mature for years. Washington could spend the greenbacks they forked over right now. Both sides seemed to think it was a good bargain.

Afterward, Mr. Vaughan took her to dinner at an Italian place down the street. The tablecloths were red and white checks. There was a poster of a Venetian gondolier on one wall, and of the Leaning Tower of Pisa on another. Despite the clichés, the spaghetti
and meatballs were fine. Peggy could see the cook. He looked more like a mick than a wop, but he knew what he was doing.

And he had the advantage of American abundance. With plenty of food and plenty of fuel, if you screwed up the food it was your own damn fault, not that of your ingredients the way it might be in screwed-up Europe.

As they ate and drank red wine, Vaughan did his best to put
a move on her. Peggy pretended not to notice. He wasn’t her type—not even close. Still and all, getting noticed that way felt good. It reminded her she was alive. It wasn’t that Herb never acted interested. Even so …

“Well …” The druggist put a fin on the table, which made him an extravagant tipper. He climbed to his feet. “Let me walk you back to the hotel.”

“Thanks.” Two glasses of ordinary
Chianti didn’t make Peggy susceptible. She was more amused that he kept pitching than anything else.

She had no trouble shedding him in the hotel lobby. That behind the front desk stood a large, strong-jawed maiden lady who plainly disapproved of everything enjoyable under the sun only made it easier.

Up in her room all by herself, she pulled out a mystery story and read till she got sleepy.
What with the wine and all that filling food, it didn’t take long. Vernon Vaughan wouldn’t have had much fun with her even if he had got past the dragon downstairs—not unless he enjoyed necrophilia, he wouldn’t.

He was there to take her back to the station the next morning. “Sorry if I got out of line last night,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it,” Peggy told him. “I’m heading home, that’s all.”

So she was. And before long she’d look forward to getting out into the boondocks again. How smart had she been to ignore him, then? That she could wonder said not everything in Philadelphia was the way she wished it would be.

Chapter 24

N
arvik again. Julius Lemp was not a happy man. Namsos would have been better. Wilhelmshaven would have been wonderful. But it was Narvik, so the U-30 could get back up to the Barents Sea as soon as possible. More fuel for the diesels, more eels for the tubes, more food for the crew, and away they’d go again.

He’d already complained to the powers that be here about Narvik’s shortcomings as a liberty port. His crew had already tried to take the place apart—and they weren’t the only gang of U-boat sailors to join the rising against authority.

Predictably, authority didn’t forget. When the U-30 tied up, she was greeted at the pier by a squad of shore patrolmen, all of them wearing
Stahlhelms
and all
of them carrying Schmeissers.

“Well, this is a fine crock of herrings,” Lemp growled at the chief petty officer in charge of the squad. “You’d think we’d put in at Aberdeen by mistake.” He shook his head. “No, by God! The Royal Navy’d give us a better hello than this, to hell with me if it wouldn’t.”

The steel helmet’s beetling brim only made the CPO’s features seem even more wooden than they
would have otherwise. He saluted stiffly.
“Sir, I have my orders,” he said. “No one is going to tear Narvik up again—that’s what the people here have in mind.”

Daylight was already leaking out of the sky, though it was only midafternoon. Before long, arctic night would fall: Narvik lay north of the Arctic Circle. “Disgraceful,” Lemp snarled.

“Sir, if you didn’t lead such a pack of hooligans,
there wouldn’t be a problem,” the shore patrolman answered in a gruff monotone.

“If this place weren’t a morgue—” But Lemp could see this was an argument he’d lose. The shore patrol didn’t just have the firepower. The bastards had the backing of the bigger bastards here, the ones with all the gold stripes on their sleeves.

His crewmen had been glaring at their natural foes. They reminded him
of cats snarling at sheep dogs. Then one of them tipped him a wink. Did that mean they’d stay out of trouble or that they’d dive into it headfirst? Lemp didn’t know, not for sure, but he was afraid he could guess.

He let the shore patrolmen lead the U-boat sailors off to whatever passed for fun in Narvik. Then the mechanics fell on his submarine. He was glad to see them. Unlike either the high
command or the shore patrol, they seemed to be on the same side as the men who actually did the fighting.

He thought about staying away from the officers’ club in sympathy for the way his men were being treated. He didn’t think about it long, though. The alternative was staying cooped up in his tiny, curtained-off cabin in the stinking, claustrophobic pressure hull.

He did make a point of repairing
to the club in his grimy working togs instead of putting on a proper uniform. No one there said a word about it, though. The shorebound officers were evidently used to U-boat skippers’ eccentric ways.

Those shorebound men did let him know that plans actually were in the works for an officers’ brothel, and one ratings could patronize as well. That plans were in the works didn’t mean the brothels
were working yet. Lemp thought that was a damn shame. He was a few years older than the men he commanded. He didn’t burn quite so hot as most of them. But that didn’t mean he didn’t burn at all. Oh, no—nowhere
close. He would have welcomed a grapple with a nice, warm girl, even if it was purely a business transaction.

Since he couldn’t screw, he drank. He’d got to the bottom of his third stiff
schnapps, hoping they would improve his attitude. All they succeeded in doing was making him dizzy. They were strong, and he was tired; they hit him hard. Only later did he stop and wonder what would happen when the U-30’s ratings started drinking. That was when he remembered the one sailor’s wink. As such things have a way of being, that was also just exactly too late.

A burst of submachine-gun
fire brought silence smashing down in the officers’ club. A moment later, another burst rang out. “Good God!” somebody said. “Have the Royal Marines landed, or what?”

There
was a cheerful thought. If English raiders were swooping down on Narvik, they could do a hell of a lot of damage. Most of the German forces here belonged to the
Kriegsmarine
. The only reason they were here at all was to go
after convoys bound for Russia. Shore patrolmen wouldn’t stand much of a chance against cold-blooded professionals.

One of those shore patrolmen rushed into the officers’ club. He looked around wildly before his gaze fixed on Lemp. “Come quick,” he shouted, “before those maniacs of yours tear this whole base to shreds!”

Just what it deserves
, Lemp thought. The words almost came out—such were
the dangers of three strong drinks. But he managed to stifle them. Instead, he said, “If they had more ways to blow off steam without getting in trouble, they’d do that. They wouldn’t brawl.”