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Batman 1939: The Dangers of Being Cold
Chapter 13: Ghosts of a Legionnaire
Tragedy was the fall of a valiant man.
Colonel Abner Tanner possessed great calm in the face of adversity. He had only cried twice in the Army: at the wedding of his sister and the funeral of his father. Tonight, he cried a third time.
Amanda Waller watched him sit in the snow outside the Brick, lines of tears turning his face red. She hadn't seen shaking like his in a long time, not since Chicago. She used to watch the cokeheads get the shakes on their low days, their hands trembling so badly they couldn't hold soup in a spoon, and Tanner was worse. She couldn't tell what he was mumbling to himself, but he was clearly a wreck.
She didn't especially like the Colonel - she didn't like most of humanity - but she had a grudging respect for the man. He was a professional. Plus, he was useful. Tanner wasn't stupid, but unlike most officers who lasted so long he was unpolitical enough to ask harsh questions. It was good to have some pepper in a subordinate. Toadies could follow a plan, but a good critic kept a plan honest.
In any case, it wouldn't do to have him seen like this. Leadership was largely appearances, after all. Lieutenant Wilson was shepherding the sentries away to form a new line, offering them a window of privacy. Waller heaved and struggled but managed to pull Colonel Tanner to his feat. Breathing like a mule in a sauna, she slung his arm over her shoulders and walked him forward. This was tolerable. If anyone noticed, it would merely look like their commander was injured. There was no disrespect in that.
They stumbled past the organizing perimeter. Whatever had happened in her office, no one was sneaking out after them. She did her best to make the Colonel look upright and ambulatory, a trick she learned for FDR at a White House function. Waller led him down a side path and finally found some privacy, a shoulder-high pile of frozen, half-rotted potatoes. They sat, displacing enough tubers to make decent impromptu chairs.
The noise on the other side of the building faded in the wind and snow. Neither broke the semi-silence; he had nothing to say and she couldn't breath. The back door was nearby, although door was more of a decorative term now. Someone had ripped it off its hinges - she could guess who - and someone else had welded it shut. The seam still glowed. Waller made a note to give whichever cocksure engineer thought that up a medal; it was one liability she didn't have to deal with.
When she caught her breath, she saw Tanner had stopped shaking. He looked at his knees with that endless stare.
"Colonel Tanner?"
He didn't respond.
"It's time to take command, Colonel. We have to control the situat-"
"Those ... those godless ape fiends. They did it to their own."
This non sequiter came out with such flat surprise that Amanda Waller was sure she misheard him. "Excuse me?"
He closed his eyes in pain. She shook his arm. "Abner!"
"Have you ever seen a human person die, ma'am? Have you seen a man die?"
Amanda Waller was a strategist, not a shrink or a bartender or a priest. She wasn't cut out for this and right now she hated him for it.
"If you must know, yes. Yes I have. Once."
"Was he young? Was he a young man?"
"Not especially."
"Was it peaceful?"
She moved to stand. "I can't say I'm equipped to compare such-"
He snatched her sleeve. "Damn it, Waller." He glared down at her, red-eyed, "You have nothing to win or lose here. Would it kill you to speak plainly a spell? I just- I just want to know."
She sat. "As such events go, I suppose it was peaceful."
"Then I envy you, ma'am. Never had that luxury. I think that's how nature generally is, you know? Ain't peaceful most times, death. Nature's artful cruel at that. But when a man commits that to man … to his own man ... well ..."
"What are you … what's wrong with you, Colonel?"
"Oh. Oh-ho." He chucked joyless. "Ain't what's wrong with me. S'what's wrong with the world. 'Spect I owe you an apology."
"For distracting me from my investigation?"
"I came here to make ready to hurt Nazis. Made no secret of it either."
"I know that."
"I beg you, lady, hush your lips fer once. I'm saying that even then I had it wrong. Got the enemy right, but I thought the fight was on honest terms. Knew they were cruel, but I thought they had standards. I tried to run this camp the honest way. I thought you took your fly-by-night ideas too far, regardless of what muckety-muck signed off on it. Crossed lines that an American ought never cross. Fact is," he wiped some snow off his cheek with a sleeve, "You were the only one with the foresight to bring it their level. You saw their hand. They'll sink to anything."
"What are you-"
"I didn't think the Germans would do it twice. Didn't think anyone ... Old man Adolph was there. He knew. He knew! How does he … he saw what it did the first time."
"I don't know th-"
"The gas, woman! The gas! A million boys going blind; their skin-" he pulled at his shirt, "Skin burning off. Dying on their own vomit." He seized a potato and crushed it to dust. "They've had twenty years to learn the lesson, but now we find a spy, and some kraut conspirator hiding nearby sees fit to … to use ..." He touched his face in shock, "Just to keep his lips tight!"
"Colonel-"
"Forget the fact we hardly got out safe ourselves. We left a man in the there, Waller. Won't call him an innocent, but a man. Stuck to a chair; can't even stand up as it wafts around him. Stuck in the dark. Like swine. Nowhere to go when he starts to feel it in his throat. Do you know what we're gonna find when we go back in?"
"I-"
"I do. I've seen it. The thing we find tied to that chair won't look human anymore."
" ... "
"We'll have to see if the quartermaster has some masks around here. I'm not sure how long it takes toxins to fade indoors. Was just a green enlisted at the time. Sure, they told us how long it might be, but that was outdoors, and I always suspected they knew jack. And who knows what sort of ugly spray the dogs have brewed up in the meantime?"
"Colonel-"
"Come to think of it, I bet we won't even have to hunt down the rat who did the deed. Wherever he is - next to a vent in a broom closet, I guess – he has to know we're out here. He didn't just silence his own buddy; he tried to take us all out. He knows there won't be kiddie gloves twice. Surely, coward like that's turned his gas on and- and took a whiff."
Waller waited until she was sure he was done. "May I speak?"
Eyes closed, he gestured permission.
"Thank you. Clearly this … event has brought up some unseemly memories. I'll forget the outburst here. But it ends now. Got it?"
Abner Tanner popped open an eye and frowned, but at least it was a thinking frown. She continued.
"Good. We won't talk of this after tonight. And I 'll remind you that we don't know what happened. You think you smelled a kind of chlorine gas. Bertholite, I presume."
"Hand to God, I know I did."
"I suppose you would be the authority. Fine, say you did. We all smelled something. But espionage is my expertise, and we can't make too many assumptions. For all we know, the gas may have been set by our John Doe."
"What?"
"Preemptively, I mean," she paused, "Perhaps as some elaborate cyanide pill."
"I … well ..."
"And although it does seem likely, we don't have firm evidence he was or is an agent of the Axis powers. There are always other factions to consider."
"What do you mean by 'was or is'? The man's a goner, Waller."
"Well, hypothetically, the gas might have also just been a distraction."
"For the love of- Sure! I suppose death can be pretty distracting!"
"I'm no chemist. Perhaps ... perhaps it was diluted. To cause enough pain to scare us away, but weakened so their man could survive and slip free." She held up her hands. "I'll admit that's conjecture, but in my experience the sort of skillful agent we met would not plan an endgame of bombastic suicide. Not from this side of the Pacific. It's not impossible our intruder is sleuthing around inside right now, thinking he can rig up a radio or wait for a gap in our lines. Do you understand, Colonel?"
Colonel Tanner was silent for a moment. She feared he had fallen numb again, but then he stood and helped her up.
"If that's what the krauts think, they got another thing coming."
