Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

Tell me why, Lord. Why? I would usually add, if it is Your will, but I’ve seen too many things and now I need to know.

“Why?”

“Are you asking the Lord or me?” Deacon says.

“Whoever has an answer,” Frangie says. “You look around this place and you have to think, wow, look what human beings can make. Look at all this beauty. And that same creature builds Tiger tanks.”

“War is sin,” Deacon says.

“Tell that to Adolf,” Manning says, wandering back from examining an alcove.

“‘Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also,’” Deacon recites. “That’s what Jesus had to say.”

“Uh-huh,” Manning says. “I got a quotation too. It’s like this: Mess with me, and I will pay it back tenfold. If you start trouble, I will sure as hell finish it. That’s not the Bible, that’s me.”

Deacon tilts his head to look up at her. “Would you shoot a German, Manning?”

“Yes. I would,” Manning says.

“And you, Doc?”

Frangie has no quick answer to that question, so Deacon reframes it. “Let’s say you got a soldier, wounded, and a Kraut soldier pops up and he’s going to kill that man. Would you shoot the German dead?”

Frangie squirms under the close examination of her two companions. Both of them are so sure of their answers. She is not.

“I don’t know, Deac. I guess if that ever happens, I’ll just have to see.”

“It’s all in my report, Colonel,” Rainy says to Herkemeier.

Herkemeier has her report. She’s spent two days preparing it and typing it out. They look at each other from across a metal desk that has been stuffed into a corner of a room in one of the government buildings taken over by the US Army in Paris. Behind them is cheerful chaos: civilian employees carry boxes of folders and wheel filing cabinets into place; Signal Corps soldiers string phone lines; military and civilian typists clack away at their machines; officers rush to and fro looking down at clipboards.

There is, Rainy thinks, a lot more chaos in war than a civilian might imagine. No one writes histories of the men and women who organized this moveable feast of mayhem, but somehow those anonymous folks eventually create order.

“I’ve read your report, Lieutenant,” Herkemeier says, not concealing his irritation. He calls her “Lieutenant” the way an annoyed parent might use a child’s full name. “I am asking now about you. Rainy Schulterman. The woman. You.”

“Me?” Rainy shrugs. “I’m feeling fine, sir.”

Herkemeier sighs. “Come on, Rainy. You don’t have to do that with me.”

It’s Rainy now, not Lieutenant, she observes. He wants her to open up, and, she concedes, he has that right. He is her superior officer, and he has a valid interest in knowing her state of mind. But Rainy is not merely a keeper of secrets because she’s in intelligence, it is her core nature to give up as little as possible.

Give him something.

“I failed in my primary mission,” she says. “I feel . . . disappointed . . . by that.”

For a minute she half believes Herkemeier is going to throw her report at her. Then his expression softens and he shakes his head in a mix of irritation and amusement. “When this is all over you should look to a permanent career in intelligence, Rainy. You are the most close-mouthed person I’ve ever met.”

Rainy’s eyebrows rise. “But surely when the war is over we won’t be . . .” Her words peter out as she begins to sense the truth.

Herkemeier snorts. “

This war isn’t going to end, Rainy, not really. Things have changed for good. Or ill. But changed. The USA isn’t going to retreat back behind the oceans this time. There will be spies. Believe me, there will be spies.”

Rainy nods. “I suppose a knowledge of Russian would be helpful.”

Herkemeier points a finger at her. “You didn’t hear me imply any such thing. Patton was nearly fired for slighting our gallant Soviet allies. But . . .” He shrugs. “It’s never a bad thing to pick up a language.”

Rainy nods slowly. It’s a new thought. She’d always assumed after the war she would return home, go to college, and become . . . well, something worthwhile. A lawyer? A teacher? A . . . what?