The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [157]
Maybe it'll all sort out okay after the war. But that's too far away to think about.
He pinched the bridge of skin between his eyes waiting for the worst of the thought to pass: if there is an after. Then he blinked back into reading the last of the letter.
I suppose I could tell you I miss you something awful. But too much truth is maybe not a good idea, given the situation. You are always going to be a part of me, despite the gold string on my finger that ties me to Dan. I couldn't Dear John him while he was out in the Pacific, and I can't do it to you while you're over there. I think of you more than is healthy, and I just want you to know I regret not one damn thing of our time together.
It is getting late, and it's snowing like sixty—the O Club windowsills look like igloo territory—and I have to get back to the apartment. Now all this is off my chest—no wisecrack about that sort of thing, you—and on its way to wherever you've ended up. Take care, Ben—I don't need another hole in my life.
Hugs and tickles,
Cass
Back and forth, he walked the narrow confines of bunker room, holding the letter as if memorizing it. For all his skills at what was said between the lines, supposition resisted him here as he read the sentences over and over.
In her feisty Cass way she wished him well, and maybe cast a major wish beyond that, but nothing under the ink had really changed, had it?
There still was Dan Standish.
There still was the war.
And the creeping shadow of fear, always there, that oblivion was not through with the Supreme Team yet.
Even so, he felt distinctly better about life with lines from Cass in his hand even if they led to nowhere.
He figured he must be misunderstanding something.
In the dining bunker he found Maurice poking a fork at chipped beef on overtoasted toast. By a grave misjudgment of joint command, the British had been put in charge of the food and the Americans in charge of the beer. "Saved you a spot," Maurice indicated across the table, "although you may not thank me when you taste this. No bad news from home, I hope, arriving in the fashion it did?"
"Good enough. No news would have been bad news." With the ghost of a grin Ben let the allusion hang in the direction of his host and censor.
"Ah, well, spoken like a journalist. Other than that," Maurice took a sip of tea or coffee, whichever it was, "still passing the time working on the hemstitch of your straitjacket?"
"You nailed it, Maurice," Ben responded with his first outright laugh in days. He couldn't help it, he liked the company of this man who talked as some people sing.
"I do have some allowable news, just between thee and me and the cocotte clock," Maurice brought out. "Intelligence estimates, to flatter them with that, indicate the Huns may be giving up on buzz bombs. It has been most of a week since that last batch. And no matter how many they've sent, they haven't managed to cripple the port at all. Hitler's rocket men may be out of business for lack of results—the German high command putting all that fuel into keeping the rest of its military machine alive, the thinking is."
"The lights aren't blinking and the ground isn't shaking," Ben said gratefully, "so I hoped something like that was happening."
"Absence of anything in the air at the moment may be the intelligence wizards' full evidence too," Maurice offered his own airy speculation. "We shall have to see." Furrowing his brow and on up into the bald outskirts, he stated: "I have been thinking. As things now stand, it might be possible to get out and about a bit, if that would help with your TPWP matter?"
Ben tossed his fork into the gluey meal, ready to go that minute. "Christ, yes. It'd put legs under the piece."
"We need to be quite cautious," came the voice of prudence across the table. "But the Antwerp outskirts have been less dangerous than the city proper. If there's an all clear in the morning, we might judiciously explore some area of interest to you." Maurice sent