Milo could but wonder at just why and how the Army had for so long retained Jarvis in a position of some power despite his long-proven lunacy. The arrogance of taking a highly decorated combat officer, fresh out of hospital, still showing the scars and cripplings of hard, faithful service, and employing mental torture on him in order to try to force him to confess to untruths about himself smacked more of the Axis countries or Russia than it did of the United States of America . Jay Jarvis’ friends must be very highly placed and powerful indeed to have managed to keep their boy out of a booby hatch for so long a time.
“So,” asked Schrader, “if this is Operation Newhaven, what does it do that’s so hush-hush they won’t even let you know where the hell it and you are, Milo?”
“You reported to the general?” Milo answered the question with questions. “What did he have to say to you about your duties here, Emil?”
Schrader shook his head. “That was the quickest I ever got to see any general officer—or any field-grade officer, for that matter, outside of actual combat—in my life. General Barstow was very nice, very friendly, he seemed honestly glad to have me here . . . and he did not say one fucking thing that told me anything about this Operation Newhaven at all, just warned me that I’d get fried on the wire or my ass shot off by the guards if I tried to get out without somebody’s say-so, said I’d learn more in due time, then he turned me over to a Captain Jonas. Sam chatted with me for a while, then turned me over to a Sergeant Quales, who took me to the back of the building, issued me an armload of civilian clothes and shoes, dumped them all in a brand-spanking-new foot locker and told me it would be brought to my quarters later. Then a Lieutenant Obrenovich took over and took me over to the BOQ and told me which rooms were already taken and which building to come to after I’d gotten my gear more or less squared away. And I repeat, what the hell is this Operation Newhaven, anyhow, Milo?”
Milo chuckled. “You have been told exactly as much as Barstow has told any of the rest of us, Emil, and we’ve been here two-three weeks, most of us, too. How did they get you down here from Holabird, car?”
Schrader shook his head once more. “Naw, Milo. They drove me to some little bitsy airfield and put me and my gear on a Piper Cub—you know, like they use to spot targets for the artillery—a two-seater and flown by an enlisted pilot who had about as much to say as a stuffed owl. We landed at an Air Corps place called Langley and me and my gear got put into the back of a half-ton GI panel truck with the back windows painted over—both sides of the fucking glass, too, for shit’s sake!—and a fucking plywood partition between the back and the front. When it finally stopped and they opened the back door, it was clear we was on an Army post, but don’t ask me where or which one, ’cause they stuck me and my stuff into the back of a three-quarter-ton weapons carrier, tied the back curtain down and took off. Felt like the fuckers were driving cross-country, part of the time, and when they stopped and told me I could get out, it was here, wherever here is.”
Four more of the Munich bunch filtered in—Hugo, Ned, Judy and Annemarie—in the same traveling party with a short section of WAAC’s under the command of a six-foot-tall Wagnerian blond sergeant named Hilda Stupsnasig. With his well-honed sense of humor, General Barstow immediately dubbed the WAAC sergeant “Brunhild,” but simply as an in-joke, since all the WAAGs were clerical personnel and as such would work in uniform in various capacities and offices.
At last, Barstow called a meeting of ten of his people—Milo, Buck, Betty, Hugo, Ned, Judy, Vasili and the three older civilian men—in the small conference room behind his office.
“All right, ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “Our work, what we all came here for, will be starting day after tomorrow. It’s going to be, in many ways, very much like what most of us here were doing in Munich, earlier this year. The difference is going to be that very few if any of the people we are going to be interviewing are DPs. On the contrary, almost all of them are going to be Germans, many of them having had ties of some sort to one of the armed services and/or to various Staatsbilden of the Third Reich, and even those few who will not be Germans will have worked closely with certain German projects which employed the others, the actual Germans.
“These three distinguished gentlemen”—he indicated the three civilians, seated side by side as always since their arrival, all puffing away at their pipes—“will be called Smith, Jones and Doe, and one of them will be a member of each of the three interrogation teams. Buck, you and Judy will be teamed with Doe. Hugo, you and Ned with Jones. You two teams will be dealing only with Germans.
“Milo, you and Betty and Vasili will, with Smith, handle all of the non-Germanic subjects. You, Milo, will also be in charge of all three teams, the facility and so forth. You’ll probably need an exec to take some of the load off. You can have any officer not presently in this room. Who do you want?”
“How about Emil Schrader, general?” replied Milo quickly. “He and I worked together years ago. I was a first sergeant and he was my field first; he’s a good man.”
Barstow nodded. “So be it. You’ve got him as of now. It’ll be up to you to brief him, though. He’s a good choice for this, too, come to think of it, Milo. He speaks excellent German and can be used to fill in on either Team One or Team Two in a pinch.
“You ten and Schrader had better go back to the BOQ and pack up. You’ll all be moving this afternoon to the small compound on the other side of the post; it’s that facility of which you will have charge, Milo. You’ll have our own Brunhild and four of her WAACs for your headquarters staff, plus Schrader, of course. There’s a small mess hall and hot food will be trucked in to you three times each day, but keeping the place and the trays clean will be up to you and your WAACs.
“This all is being done this way solely for the purpose of isolating you and your interviewees, of making damned certain that as few people here ever see them as possible. They’ll be brought into your compound in sealed transport and they’ll leave in exactly the same way. Under no circumstances are any of them to leave that compound at any time until you have finished with them.”
“Uhh, sir . ..“ said Betty hesitantly. “What about a medical emergency? What happens then?”
Barstow nodded once.“A very good point, Betty. In such a case, whatever the hour, you will ring me up and I will send or bring personnel appropriate to the situation you describe from the dispensary, out here.”
“What kind of billets are we drawing, sir?” asked the woman called Judy.
Barstow nodded again. “There’s an old CCC-type barrack building with a detached latrine that the WAACs will have, and another which will house your subjects. There is one three-bedroom bungalow that will be the billet of the three doctors and two-bedroom ones for the rest of you; how you pair off is your business.”
“Are we all going to be locked up day and night in that compound, too, general?” Hugo demanded in his thick Westphalian accent.
Barstow shook his head.“No, not at all, Hugo. Mjlo, Schrader and Sergeant Stupsnasig will have keys to the gate and to the control box for the fence power. The compound is designed more with the aim of keeping unauthorized people out of it than of keeping you all in. But, Hugo, and all the rest of you, too, hear me and hear me well. No one of you will have fire-arms, while the outside guards will have them, along with the orders to use them should any person try to go over or under or through the wire or the gate. This is no makework we’re doing here, it is an operation of earthshaking importance to the Army, the nation and the world.”