“Pretty poor,” Truman said. “If he wanted to do that, he would’ve done it by now, and made Mao do it, too. But there is a way to get a man who doesn’t want to do something to do it anyhow. If you keep hitting him, after a while he’ll do what you tell him to do to get you to stop. That’s how we finally made the Nazis and the Japs give up. Sooner or later, we’ll make Stalin quit, too.”
“Sooner or later, yes.” Arias waved at the crater that marked the ruination of one of the greatest engineering feats mankind had ever brought off. “But in the meantime, Mr. President, Stalin keeps hitting back. He is still trying to make you quit.”
“Well, it won’t work,” Truman snapped. “Korea won’t go all Red, and if Joe Stalin doesn’t like that, he can stick it in his pipe and smoke it. Western Europe won’t be all Red, either.”
“He’s hurt you-not just here, but in your own country,” Arias said.
“We’ve hurt him worse. We’ll go on doing it as long as we have to,” Truman answered. He fanned himself with his Panama hat. It was muggier than even a Missouri man who’d done time in Washington was used to. As an old haberdasher, he knew perfectly well that Panama hats came from Ecuador. He wore one anyhow; names counted, too. He went on, “In the last war, Admiral Halsey said the Japanese language would be spoken only in hell. Japan surrendered before we had to arrange that. If the Soviet Union doesn’t, Satan will get himself a lot of new Russian customers.”
Arnulfo Arias smiled. The expression slipped as he realized Truman meant it.
–
Wilf Davies walked into the Owl and Unicorn and said, “I’ll take a pint of your best bitter, Daisy, if you’d be so kind.”
“Well, I might have enough left to spare you one,” she said, and winked at the mechanic with the hook where his left hand should have been.
“Here now, you watch that!” Wilf exclaimed as she worked the tap. “Anybody sees you and tells my missus, she’ll think you’re tryin’ to lure me away from her.”
The pub had just opened. They were the only ones in the snug. Wilf often stopped in for an early pint. Nobody but the two of them could have seen the wink. Daisy said, “Who knows? I could do worse.”
“Don’t go puttin’ ideas in my head, dear,” he said as he set money on the bar. They weren’t likely to be practical ideas, not when he was happily married and old enough to be her father. Maybe he got them anyhow.
The worst of it was, she’d only been half kidding. Some of the RAF and USAF men who came into the Owl and Unicorn reckoned themselves God’s gift to womankind. They acted as if she ought to fall into their arms right there in the snug-never mind wasting time going upstairs to bed.
You couldn’t even tell those blighters anything that would dent their splendid opinion of themselves. The nicer ones would call you stuck-up if you did. The others would call you things that started with frigid bitch and went downhill from there.
Davies took a pull at the pint and smacked his lips. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s mighty good.” He drank again. “I’ve got a question for you, dear.”
“What kind of question?” Daisy felt a certain small alarm. Was he going to get difficult, after so long being not just a customer but a friend?
But what he asked was, “Do you know how long a metal part stays radioactive and how dangerous that is?”
She stared at him. “Why in God’s name d’you think I’d know something like that?”
“Well…” He looked sheepish, and stared down at his half-empty mug. “You’ve got those Yank officers comin’ in here all the time. I wondered if maybe one of ’em talked about it, or somethin’.” Embarrassment thickened his accent.
“Not a word,” she said. “Not a single, solitary word. Why would you care about a crazy thing like that, anyhow?” She suddenly pointed a forefinger at him. It wasn’t quite Balzac’s J’accuse! but it came close. “You’re getting auto parts out of Norwich!”
“Hush!” He held his own forefinger up to his lips. “I’ve done no such illegal thing-not so they can prove it, any road. But I have me some friends who have some friends who can lay their hands on this, that, or the other thing-the kind of stuff what’s hard to come by these days. I ask ’em no questions, and they tell me no lies.”
Daisy wondered how outraged she should be, and whether she should be outraged at all. Of course scavengers would sneak into Norwich, never mind the Army and Scotland Yard. Autos at the edge of the blast area were more likely to have survived, or at least to be salvageable, than their owners were. You couldn’t put a dead man’s kidney or spleen on the market. A dead Bentley’s pistons or mudguards were a different story.
“You might get yourself one of those Geiger counters,” Daisy said. “If a part makes it click too much, don’t buy it or don’t use it.”
“There’s a good notion!” He looked at her admiringly. “I don’t much fancy putting some gears in the gear train and poisoning my customers with ’em. There’s the sort of thing that gives your business a bad name.”
“Poisoning yourself whilst you’re working on the repairs, too,” Daisy said.
Wilf blinked. “Hadn’t thought of that. Should have, shouldn’t I?”
“I daresay!” she answered. Am I killing myself on the job here? would have been the first thing she worried about. She hoped it would, at any rate. She lit a cigarette.
The mechanic pushed more silver at her. “Have a half on me,” he said. “You might just have saved my bacon there.”
Daisy didn’t care for beer so early in the day. But Wilf meant it kindly; she knew that. She filled one of the smaller mugs at the tap. Savoring the bitter, she said, “This is a nice barrel, isn’t it?”
“You’re the publican, sweetheart, so what else are you going to say?” Wilf returned. She made a face at him. He drank again. “I’m not pouring it down the sink myself, you see.”
“You’d better not,” Daisy said, and then, “Would you like another?”
He shook his head. “I’d like one fine, but I’ve got work back at the garage. I have a pint, it means naught. I have two pints, I’m liable to be clumsy and stupid and make a hash of what should be simple.”
“Do what you need to do,” Daisy said. That was her own motto; she could hardly resent it when someone else felt the same way.
Bruce McNulty came into the pub that evening. It was a noisier, busier, livelier place that it had been earlier in the day. Even so, Daisy asked him about how long metal parts stayed radioactive.
“That’s a funny question,” the American flyer said.
“A friend wondered,” she told him.
“A friend?” he echoed, a certain edge to his voice.
“From in town,” Daisy said, nodding. Then she realized the edge had to be jealousy. She felt like clomping the Yank over the head with a pint mug. Taking a deep breath instead, she went on, “For one thing, Mr. McNulty, Wilf was born before the turn of the century and came back from the First World War with a hook doing duty for one hand. And for another thing, Mr. McNulty, even if he were our age and handsome as a film star, that would be none of your bloody business.” One more deep breath. “Am I plain enough, or shall I draw you pictures?”
He turned sunset red. She’d hit him too hard. Naturally, she saw that only after she’d gone and done it. “You’re pretty plain, all right,” he mumbled.
“Good,” she said. Maybe briskness would help. “Do you know the answer to my friend’s question, then? He wants to be able to use auto parts from, ah, around Norwich, but he doesn’t want to hurt himself or any of the people whose cars they go into.”
“Black-market parts. Stuff the buzzards bring home in their claws,” McNulty said. To Daisy, a buzzard was a hawk; to the Yank, it seemed to mean vulture. She nodded again anyhow. That was what Wilf was dealing in, sure enough. Bruce McNulty shrugged and spread his hands. “Afraid I can’t tell you-or even your friend.” His mouth quirked. “I just deliver the junk. I don’t know what all it does after it goes kablooie. How radioactive stuff gets, how long it stays that way”-he shrugged once more-“it’s not my department.”