The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [139]
The final line was trickiest of all to come up with, possibly because it was hard to write with fingers crossed.
WHAT IF TOKYO ROSE AND LORD HAW-HAW KNOW HOW TO COUNT.
"Don't you want me to put a question mark on this, sir?"
"It's not a question, soldier, it's a supposition. Just send it."
Nothing came back that day, no matter how much Ben hung around the wire room and mooched coffee and sprang alert every time a teletype bell went off. Come on, you TPWP SOBs. Answer. Call off the damned series. Or are you going to tell me and the couple of thousand newspaper editors watching for this byline you set me up with that eight dead heroes aren't enough?
The days after that, he sent Jones to check for a reply so many times that at last the corporal just gave him a funny look and started off before he could get the words out. Finally, at week's end, a wire room clerk stuck his face in the doorway and said there was a five-bell message waiting.
TPWP MINDFUL OF HAW-HAW AND TOKYO ROSE. FULLY INTEND ENEMY PROPAGANDA WILL NOT SCORE BIG ON SUPREME TEAM. SERIES WILL BE MODIFIED. DETAILS FOLLOW SOON.
Ben read and reread the sheet of wire copy for what it said and did not say. That damned "modify" again. The Tepee Weepy meaning of soon was also clear as mud. He plainly enough had their attention, though, with that dig about what the master propagandists in Berlin and Tokyo could do with the obliteration of any more of the team. So, okay, that does spook them and it's up to me to keep them spooked. Immediately he holed up in his office and went back to block-letter work.
MODIFY IS MIDDLE NAME HERE AT EAST BASE. HOW ABOUT WRAP-UP PIECE ON STAMPER AND EISMAN AS SURVIVORS?
Again, a last line onto that was the hard stunt. Before deciding whether to send all three, he had Jones bring him the regulations to see what it took to be court-martialed for insubordination. Not that much. He sucked in his cheeks and had the third sentence sent anyway. FIRST THEY MUST SURVIVE.
Tepee Weepy's response practically jumped out of the teletype, the bells chorusing before he had even turned around to leave the wire room.
WRAP-UP PIECE IS SHARED GOAL. YOU WILL GIVE IT SHINE AND SHADOW AT RIGHT TIME, RIGHT PLACE.
Ben waited expectantly for the clerk to pass him the next decoded sentences. The clerk shrugged and held up empty hands.
"That's it? It can't be, look again."
"I already did. That's all they wrote, sir."
Fuming, Ben stoked up on coffee and claimed a vacant desk there in the wire room. He jotted and wadded three versions before hitting on the one that upped the ante unmistakably enough.
UNSURE I CAN TOUGH IT OUT UNTIL RIGHT TIME, RIGHT PLACE. ILLNESS DISCUSSED WHEN COLONEL HERE MAY RECUR. DIAGNOSIS NOT SO HOT, DETAILS MIGHT HELP WITH CURE.
Get it, Colonel and your partners in manufacturing the news? I damn sure am sick of guys from the team turning into dead men whenever the sonofabitching war feels like it, whatever the odds are supposed to be. If you can't pull strings to save Jake's skin and Moxie's and for that matter mine, then kick me out with a dishonorable piece of paper for refusing orders, see if I goddamn care. I may be blackballed for life, but at least I'll be in one piece. He sent this message knowing he really was playing a thin hand now, but gambling that Tepee Weepy had its own stake in keeping him in the game.
ILLNESS UNDERSTOOD, the answer clattered back within minutes. PLAN IS TO HONOR STAMPER, EISMAN, YOU, AS SURVIVORS OF SUPREME TEAM SAGA. FEELING BETTER?
Hovering at the clerk's shoulder, he sent right back:
SOME. WAITING TO SEE WHAT MEDICINE IS INVOLVED.
The wait this time stretched his nerves to the sagging point. It was growing dark enough outside for the five bells of the TPWP wire machine to constitute a vesper serenade before the return message began coming in.
MANDATORY BURN THIS AFTER YOU READ.
I guess I have their attention. "Loan me your lighter and nab a clean butt can for a bonfire." The clerk sighed and complied.
The whacking teletype keys seemed to spell out the message with particular