The Valhalla Exchange

He leaned on the bar, head down. There was a long, long moment in which I couldn't think of a thing to say, but waited, my stomach hollow with excitement. When he finally raised his head, he was calm again.

'You know what's so strange, O'Hagan? So bloody incredible? I kept it to myself all these years. Never mentioned it to a soul until now.'

2

It began, if it may be said to have begun anywhere, on the morning of Wednesday, 25 April 1945, a few miles north of Innsbruck.

When Jack Howard emerged from the truck at the rear of the column just after first light, it was bitterly cold, a powdering of dry snow on the ground, for the valley in which they had halted for the night was high in the Bavarian Alps, although he couldn't see much of the mountains because of the heavy clinging mist which had settled among the trees. It reminded him too much of the Ardennes for comfort. He stamped his feet to induce a little warmth and lit a cigarette.

Sergeant Hoover had started a wood fire, and the men, only five of them now, crouched beside it. Anderson, O'Grady, Garland and Finebaum who'd once played clarinet with Glenn Miller and never let anyone forget it. Just now he was on his face trying to blow fresh life into the flames. He was the first to notice Howard.

'Heh, the captain's up and he don't look too good.'

'Why don't you try a mirror?' Garland inquired. 'You think you look like a daisy or something?'

'Stinkweed — that's the only flower he ever resembled,' O'Grady said.

'That's it, hotshot,' Finebaum told him. 'You're out. From here on in you find your own beans.' He turned to Hoover. 'I ask you, Sarge. I appeal to your better nature. Is that the best these mothers can offer after all I've done for them?'

'That's a truly lousy act, Finebaum, did I ever tell you that?' Hoover poured coffee into an aluminium cup. 'You're going to need plenty of practice, boy, if you're ever going to get back into vaudeville.'

'Well, I'll tell you,' Finebaum said. 'I've had kind of a special problem lately. I ran out of audience. Most of them died on me.'

Hoover took the coffee across to the truck and gave it to Howard without a word. Somewhere thunder rumbled on the horizon.

'Eighty-eights?' the captain said.

Hoover nodded. 'Don't they ever give up? It don't make any kind of sense to me. Every time we turn on the radio they tell us this war's as good as finished.'

'Maybe they forgot to tell the Germans.'

'That makes sense. Any chance of submitting it through channels?'

Howard shook his head. 'It wouldn't do any good, Harry. Those krauts don't intend to give in until they get you. That's what it's all about.'

Hoover grunted. 'Those mothers better be quick or they're going to miss out, that's all I can say. You want to eat now? We still got plenty of K-rations and Finebaum traded some smokes last night for half a dozen cans of beans from some of those Limey tank guys up the column.'

'The coffee's just fine, Harry,' Howard said. 'Maybe later.'

The sergeant moved back to the fire and Howard paced up and down beside the truck, stamping his feet and clutching the hot cup tightly in mittened fingers. He was twenty-three years of age, young to be a captain of Rangers, but that was the circumstances of war. He wore a crumpled Mackinaw coat, woolknit muffler at his throat and a knitted cap. There were times when he could have passed for nineteen, but this was not one of them, not with the four-day growth of dark beard on his chin, the sunken eyes.

But once he had been nineteen, an Ohio farmer's son with some pretensions to being a poet and the desire to write for a living which had sent him to Columbia to study journalism. That was a long time ago — before the flood. Before the further circumstances of war which had brought him to his present situation in charge of the reconnaissance element for a column of the British 7th Armoured Division, probing into Bavaria towards Berchtesgaden.

Hoover squatted beside the fire. Finebaum passed him a plate of beans. 'The captain not eating?'

'Not right now.'

'Jesus,' Finebaum said. 'What kind of way is that to carry on?'

'Respect, Finebaum.' Hoover prodded him with his knife. 'Just a little more respect when you speak about him.'

'Sure, I respect him,' Finebaum said. 'I respect him like crazy and I know how you and he went in at Salerno together and how those Krauts jumped you outside Anzio with those machine guns flat zeroed in and took out three-quarters of the battalion and how our gracious captain saved the rest. So he's God's gift to soldiery; so he should eat occasionally. He ain't swallowed more than a couple of mouthfuls since Sunday.'

'Sunday he lost nine men,' Hoover said. 'Maybe you're forgetting.'

'Those guys are dead — so they're dead — right? He don't keep his strength up, he might lose a few more, including me. I mean, look at him! He's got so skinny, that stinking coat he wears is two sizes too big for him. He looks like some fresh kid in his first year at college.'

'I know,' Hoover said. 'The kind they give the Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster to.'

The others laughed and Finebaum managed to look injured. 'Okay — okay. I've come this far. I just figure it would look kind of silly to die now.'

'Everybody dies,' Hoover said. 'Sooner or later. Even you.'

'Okay — but not here. Not now. I mean, after surviving D-Day, Omaha, St-Lo, the Ardennes and a few interesting stopoffs in between, it would look kind of stupid to buy it here, playing wet-nurse to a bunch of Limeys.'

'We've been on the same side for nearly four years now,' Hoover said. 'Or hadn't you noticed?'

'How can I help it with guys going around dressed like that?' Finebaum nodded to where the commanding officer of the column, a lieutenant-colonel named Denning, was approaching, his adjutant at his side. They were Highlanders and wore rather dashing Glengarry bonnets.

'Morning, Howard,' Denning said as he got close. 'Damn cold night. Winter's hung on late up here this year.'

'I guess so, Colonel.'

'Let's have a look at the map, Miller.' The adjutant spread it against the side of the truck and the colonel ran a finger along the centre. 'Here's Innsbruck and here we are. Another five miles to the head of this valley and we hit a junction with the main road to Salzburg. We could have trouble there, wouldn't you say so?'

'Very possibly, Colonel.'

'Good. We'll move out in thirty minutes. I suggest you take the lead and send your other jeep on ahead to scout out the land.'

'As you say, sir.'

Denning and the adjutant moved away and Howard turned to Hoover and the rest of the men who had all edged in close enough to hear. 'You got that, Harry?'

'I think so, sir.'

'Good. You take Finebaum and O'Grady. Garland and Anderson stay with me. Report in over your radio every five minutes without fail. Now get moving.'

As they swung into action, Finebaum said plaintively, 'Holy Mary, Mother of God, I'm only a Jewish boy, but pray for us sinners in the hour of our need.'

* * *

On the radio, the news was good. The Russians had finally encircled Berlin and had made contact with American troops on the Elbe River seventy-five miles south of the capital, cutting Germany in half.

'The only way in and out of Berlin now is by air, sir,' Anderson said to Howard. 'They can't keep going any longer — they've got to give in. It's the only logical thing to do.'

'Oh, I don't know,' Howard said. 'I'd say that if your name was Hitler or Goebbels or Himmler and the only prospect offered was a short trial and a long rope, you might think it worth while to go down, taking as many of the other side with you as you possibly could.'

Anderson, who had the wheel, looked worried, as well he might, for unlike Garland he was married with two children, a girl of five and a boy aged six. He gripped the wheel so tightly that the knuckles on his hands turned white.