Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(44)

This is certainly a unique way to contribute to the war effort.

It is also troubling at a moral level. The medic has confirmed that laudanum can become addicting. He doesn’t think it will happen in a week’s time, but he admits he knows very little. He’s not a doctor in any real sense of the word, just a medic, whose job is to deal with the various crushing and pinching and scalding and chemical inhalation injuries caused by the regular operation of the Topaz.

So between them, Rainy and the medical officer may be turning a gangster into a drug addict. For the war effort.

Lieutenant Commander Alger summons Rainy to the bridge.

“Sergeant, I thought you might like to know that we are just south of Capri, twenty-four miles from our target.”

She’s been expecting this. She nods.

“We are far closer to the Italian coast than we should like under normal circumstances. I’m rather hoping that Jerry’s eye is focused on the fighting in Sicily and that he has few planes or boats to spare looking for subs. It’s night and the moon has set, so I’ll stay on the surface just a bit longer before submerging. We will pop up near the beach, get you and your . . . charge . . . ashore, submerge again, and creep away. I’d say that you should be ready to go in half an hour.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll be ready.”

He looks at her with some affection. “You’ve done well this last week. It can’t have been easy. Unfamiliar environment . . . your recalcitrant charge . . .”

Rainy smiles and gently touches the latest submarine-inflicted bruise on her forehead. “In another week I would have the hang of it.”

“I’m certain you would. But there is a rather delicate matter to consider. I assume you will be going ashore in mufti. You understand that if Jerry or the Eye-ties capture you out of uniform they will likely treat you as a spy.”

“Yes.”

He seems taken aback by her one-word answer. “The mere fact that you are being put ashore in the vicinity of Salerno is a very dangerous thing. The Gestapo are brutes but not stupid. If they take you or Mr. Smith alive . . .”

Rainy is aware now of a hush on the bridge. It’s never a chatty place, but there is now that hard-to-define feeling that all ears are eavesdropping.

“Commander, I’ve been issued a suicide pill.”

The pill is a tiny glass capsule filled with cyanide in liquid form. It is sheathed in brown rubber to minimize the odds of it being accidentally broken. And it has been cleverly concealed by sewing it into the collar of the Italian dress she is to wear ashore.

“You seem quite sanguine about it,” Alger says with a soft concern.

“I’m not thrilled about it,” Rainy says with a sigh. “But I’m even less thrilled about being questioned by the Gestapo. I would be a female Jewish spy, and I don’t think they would be gentle. I don’t know that I would be able to resist. And I would rather die than cause deaths that might come of me spilling the beans.”

Someone—she can’t see who—mutters, “She’s a prime one,” in a tone she takes to be admiring.

“And what of Mr. Smith?” Alger asks. “Surely you don’t expect him to take an equally high-minded position?”

“No,” she admits. “I considered that possibility and, well, I have a pistol.”

Alger tilts his head, and his eyebrows crinkle in the middle. “Have you ever used a firearm in that way?”

Rainy shakes her head. Something about his concern combined with the doubts that have tortured her for this last week makes her throat clench.

“I see. It could be a very difficult thing to do.”

“I would like to think it would never be easy,” she says in a low voice. “But, Commander, with great respect, how is it different from what you do?”

Alger takes that on board, frowns, and nods slightly before saying, “You’ll forgive me if I observe that there is regrettably a very long history of men fighting wars and doing the necessary. There is no such history with the gentler sex.”

“You think that in a moment of crisis I’ll hesitate because I’m a woman.”

He inclines his head in agreement.

Rainy squares her shoulders, very aware of many eyes on her and of ears tuned carefully. “I am not a draftee, Lieutenant Commander Alger, I volunteered. I volunteered to kill Germans and to help rid the world of that monster in Berlin. I would be very sad to have to shoot Mr. Smith, though I’ve been tempted . . . But I believe if it comes to it, yes, I believe I can and will put the gun to the back of his head and pull the trigger.”

Alger exhales long and slow. He makes a small, regretful smile and says, “Perhaps you will. I think it is a terribly sad thing to see that the madness of war has now carried women along too.”

Rainy almost stops herself from saying more, but cannot. “There are women under German bombs in Poland and in Holland and in the Soviet Union. And more than a few in England. They never got to shoot back.”

Alger takes Rainy’s arm and propels her gently down what Rainy has come to think of as the obstacle course and guides her into his cabin. It’s as close to private as any space on the sub.

Without preamble he says, “You know, of course, that this mission is absolutely mad.”

Rainy frowns and says nothing.

“It’s hardly unique. War is a series of foolish enterprises and a study of history is not reassuring on that score. I will tell you that this may be the most foolish. Sending a young woman with an unstable gangster—”