The Enemy

Heidelberg with the infantry,” I said. “Many times.”
    “Is that near?”
    “Not far,” I said.
    There were broad stone steps leading up to the doors. The whole place looked like a capitol building in some small state back home. It was immaculately maintained. We went up the steps and inside. There was a soldier at a desk just behind the doors. Not an MP. Just a XII Corps office grunt. We showed him our IDs.
    “Your VOQ got space for us?” I asked.
    “Sir, no problem,” he said.
    “Two rooms,” I said. “One night.”
    “I’ll call ahead,” he said. “Just follow the signs.”
    He pointed to the back of the hallway. There were more doors there that would lead out into the complex. I checked my watch. It said noon exactly. It was still set to East Coast time. Six in the evening, in West Germany. Already dark.
    “I need to see your MP XO,” I said. “Is he still in his office?”
    The guy used his phone and got an answer. Pointed us up a broad staircase to the second floor.
    “On your right,” he said.
    We went up the stairs and turned right. There was a long corridor with offices on both sides. They had hardwood doors with reeded glass windows. We found the one we wanted and went in. It was an outer chamber with a sergeant in it. It was pretty much identical to the one back at Bird. Same paint, same floor, same furniture, same temperature, same smell. Same coffee, in the same standard-issue machine. The sergeant was like plenty I had seen before too. Calm, efficient, stoic, ready to believe he ran the place all by himself, which he probably did. He was behind his desk and he looked up at us as we came in. Spent half a second deciding who we were and what we wanted.
    “I guess you need the major,” he said.
    I nodded. He picked up his phone and buzzed through to the inner office.
    “Go straight through,” he said.
    We went in through the inner door and I saw a desk with a guy called Swan behind it. I knew Swan pretty well. Last time I had seen him was in the Philippines, three months earlier, when he was starting a tour of duty that was scheduled to last a year.
    “Don’t tell me,” I said. “You got here December twenty-ninth.”
    “Froze my ass off,” he said. “All I had was Pacific gear. Took XII Corps three days to find me a winter uniform.”
    I wasn’t surprised. Swan was short, and wide. Almost cubic. He probably owned a percentile all his own, on the quartermasters’ charts.
    “Your Provost Marshal here?” I said.
    He shook his head. “Temporarily reassigned.”
    “Garber signed your orders?”
    “Allegedly.”
    “Figured it out yet?”
    “Not even close.”
    “Me either,” I said.
    He shrugged, like he was saying,
Hey, the army, what can you do?
    “This is Lieutenant Summer,” I said.
    “Special unit?” Swan said.
    Summer shook her head.
    “But she’s cool,” I said.
    Swan stretched a short arm over his desk and they shook hands.
    “I need to see a guy called Marshall,” I said. “A major. Some kind of a XII Corps staffer.”
    “Is he in trouble?”
    “Someone is. I’m hoping Marshall will help me figure out who. You know him?”
    “Never heard of him,” Swan said. “I only just got here.”
    “I know,” I said. “December twenty-ninth.”
    He smiled and gave me the
What can you do?
shrug again and picked up his phone. I heard him ask his sergeant to find Marshall and tell him I wanted to see him at his convenience. I looked around while we waited for the response. Swan’s office looked borrowed and temporary, just like mine did back in North Carolina. It had the same kind of clock on the wall. Electric, no second hand. No tick. It said ten minutes past six.
    “Anything happening here?” I said.
    “Not much,” Swan said. “Some helicopter guy went shopping in Heidelberg and got run over. And Kramer died, of course. That’s shaken things up some.”
    “Who’s next in line?”
    “Vassell, I guess.”
    “I met him,” I said. “Wasn’t impressed.”
    “It’s a poisoned chalice. Things are changing. You should hear these guys talk. They’re real gloomy.”
    “The status quo is not an option,” I said. “That’s what I’m hearing.”
    His phone rang. He listened for a minute and put it down.
    “Marshall’s not on-post,” he said. “He’s out on a night exercise in the countryside. Back in the morning.”
    Summer glanced at me. I shrugged.
    “Have dinner with me,” Swan said. “I’m lonely here with all these cavalry