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"Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?"
Nov. 20th, 2022 11:58 am"Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?"
12/3-12/6/1953
I.
"I'll do a lot for my Uncle Sam, but I do NOT want to be an executioner."
Darby Monroe glanced up from where he was sprawled back in an overstuffed easy chair. Like his partner, he was a trim athletic man just thirty years old, wearing a dark suit with the necktie loosened and the top button of the dress shirt undone. But Darby was black with very dark skin and thoughtful, rather sad eyes under close-cropped hair. He folded the local newspaper WELT NEUIGKEIT and sat up straighter. "I'd do it for you, but we both know your hands are steadier. That's the secret of our exemplary teamwork. I'm good with languages and negotiations, you're the best when it's time for fists and chases."
"But a man has to draw the line somewhere," snapped Hal Beckwith. He was a deceptively mild-voiced man with crisp brown hair and dark eyes. Being underestimated had saved his life in many desperate moments. Getting up off the double bed which had been pushed right up against the window, he glared down at the Rowling SN23 sniper rifle he had painstakingly assembled and checked out that morning. It only remained to wait until dusk when Bruckner would walk out of that dreary building across the street. "I love my country. We both do. Murdering someone wasn't what I signed up for."
"Your Boy Scout uniform doesn't fit any more," Darby told him.
"Easy for you to take so lightly, being all dismissive and blithe."
"Being dismissive and blithe is what I'm all about." Darby opened the newspaper again. "Harold my compadre, I'm not going to spend the day talking you into doing your job."
Hal paced across the dingy hotel room and stopped to stare at his reflection in the wide mirror that stretched across the dresser top. "I suppose it should help that Bruckner is such an evil man."
"Oh, he's a swine, all right. During the war, he pulled so many double crosses that he got more men killed for both sides than some battles. Ice water for blood, cash register for a heart, that's Herr Gerhart Bruckner for you."
Standing well back, Hal stared out through the narrowly parted windows down across the street. "Look at all that rubble. Whole city blocks are still nothing but ruins. Sometimes it seems like nothing will ever get back to normal."
Darby made his voice softer with an effort. "We were spared a lot, you know. We had an ocean on either side to protect us. Sure, there was Pearl Harbor but America itself wasn't blitzed down to the dirt."
"Remember all the speeches about the bright new future that was dawning? Instead, we're just stuck in a new kind of war that might go on forever. I miss the glorious promises of the new Atomic Age."
"Wasn't tomorrow wonderful?" muttered Darby.
The two men had a comfortable silence for a few minutes. Two years of traveling together had gotten them used to pauses while they thought things over. Finally, Hal said, "I liked my article in the new issue of SNAPSHOT."
"How's my photography coming along?"
"Better all the time. You know, we really do spend time all over Europe. We've been here in the American sector for three days now. Maybe the chief should let us write a bit ourselves and take a few pictures as long as we're here."
That provoked an actual laugh from Darby Monroe. "I'll tell you something, man, I can't see the Chief allowing us to start mixing up our job with our cover."
"It'll keep us out of trouble when we're not busy."
"No, no, you see, he'd want to send us to pay off a mole or something, and we'd be saying, sorry we have a deadline. We have to come up with ten thousand words today about how they're cleaning the Acropolis."
Hal persisted, "I think it's worth a try, Darb. Our articles start winning awards, we get better assignments, our Agency work starts getting cut back..."
"Part time spies? Come on, man, you know it's not that easy. We've done too much dirty work already. Maybe in thirty years if we make it, we might get desk jobs sending out the next generation of eager clean-cut young suckers to die or die."
"Getting dark out," Hal said.
"Yeah. Let's get set up." Darby helped his partner prop the sniper rifle up on the boards they had placed across the bed, fastening it down in place, getting the infra-red scope calibrated. They didn't talk further until Hal was stretched out with his hand near the trigger guard and his free arm propping up his head.
Across the street, a shell of a former apartment building loomed morosely in the gathering dusk. There were not enough working street lamps in this part of the city. In front of that burnt-out structure, jagged chunks of masonry and lengths of charred wood presented a short no-man's-land to the sidewalk. Much of Berlin was still like that. Much of Europe was mere wreckage and debris only slowly being cleared away.
"We're sure Bruckner's in there?" asked Hal barely above a whisper.
"As sure as we are of anything in this game. It's a mess. We know the Reds intercepted his message to have his transport pick him up there tonight but our big thinkers have decided Mother Russia wants to capture him and pick his brains. He's a uranium expert, he's valuable in our hellbent race to blow up the world."
"Can't let anything slow that up," Hal grumbled. "Bigger and better bombs. I swear, this planet's going to end looking like the Moon once the bombs start dropping."
"He absolutely won't work for us or England. Hates the West, too bad. Better concentrate now." Darby stepped back and crouched beside the bed, fiddling with high powered binoculars. "If it happens at all, it'll happen right quickly."
"Wish I was as cold and heartless as those KGB guys are supposed to be.." Hal said as if to himself. "This would be so much easier."
Darby muttered, "Is that.. on the roof..?. Get down!" He leaped forward, seizing Hal by the body and yanking hm off the bed onto the floor. The window blew in with a storm of glass fragments as the sniper rifle spun away. The sharp crack of a gunshot echoed from across the street.
( the rest of the story )
12/3-12/6/1953
I.
"I'll do a lot for my Uncle Sam, but I do NOT want to be an executioner."
Darby Monroe glanced up from where he was sprawled back in an overstuffed easy chair. Like his partner, he was a trim athletic man just thirty years old, wearing a dark suit with the necktie loosened and the top button of the dress shirt undone. But Darby was black with very dark skin and thoughtful, rather sad eyes under close-cropped hair. He folded the local newspaper WELT NEUIGKEIT and sat up straighter. "I'd do it for you, but we both know your hands are steadier. That's the secret of our exemplary teamwork. I'm good with languages and negotiations, you're the best when it's time for fists and chases."
"But a man has to draw the line somewhere," snapped Hal Beckwith. He was a deceptively mild-voiced man with crisp brown hair and dark eyes. Being underestimated had saved his life in many desperate moments. Getting up off the double bed which had been pushed right up against the window, he glared down at the Rowling SN23 sniper rifle he had painstakingly assembled and checked out that morning. It only remained to wait until dusk when Bruckner would walk out of that dreary building across the street. "I love my country. We both do. Murdering someone wasn't what I signed up for."
"Your Boy Scout uniform doesn't fit any more," Darby told him.
"Easy for you to take so lightly, being all dismissive and blithe."
"Being dismissive and blithe is what I'm all about." Darby opened the newspaper again. "Harold my compadre, I'm not going to spend the day talking you into doing your job."
Hal paced across the dingy hotel room and stopped to stare at his reflection in the wide mirror that stretched across the dresser top. "I suppose it should help that Bruckner is such an evil man."
"Oh, he's a swine, all right. During the war, he pulled so many double crosses that he got more men killed for both sides than some battles. Ice water for blood, cash register for a heart, that's Herr Gerhart Bruckner for you."
Standing well back, Hal stared out through the narrowly parted windows down across the street. "Look at all that rubble. Whole city blocks are still nothing but ruins. Sometimes it seems like nothing will ever get back to normal."
Darby made his voice softer with an effort. "We were spared a lot, you know. We had an ocean on either side to protect us. Sure, there was Pearl Harbor but America itself wasn't blitzed down to the dirt."
"Remember all the speeches about the bright new future that was dawning? Instead, we're just stuck in a new kind of war that might go on forever. I miss the glorious promises of the new Atomic Age."
"Wasn't tomorrow wonderful?" muttered Darby.
The two men had a comfortable silence for a few minutes. Two years of traveling together had gotten them used to pauses while they thought things over. Finally, Hal said, "I liked my article in the new issue of SNAPSHOT."
"How's my photography coming along?"
"Better all the time. You know, we really do spend time all over Europe. We've been here in the American sector for three days now. Maybe the chief should let us write a bit ourselves and take a few pictures as long as we're here."
That provoked an actual laugh from Darby Monroe. "I'll tell you something, man, I can't see the Chief allowing us to start mixing up our job with our cover."
"It'll keep us out of trouble when we're not busy."
"No, no, you see, he'd want to send us to pay off a mole or something, and we'd be saying, sorry we have a deadline. We have to come up with ten thousand words today about how they're cleaning the Acropolis."
Hal persisted, "I think it's worth a try, Darb. Our articles start winning awards, we get better assignments, our Agency work starts getting cut back..."
"Part time spies? Come on, man, you know it's not that easy. We've done too much dirty work already. Maybe in thirty years if we make it, we might get desk jobs sending out the next generation of eager clean-cut young suckers to die or die."
"Getting dark out," Hal said.
"Yeah. Let's get set up." Darby helped his partner prop the sniper rifle up on the boards they had placed across the bed, fastening it down in place, getting the infra-red scope calibrated. They didn't talk further until Hal was stretched out with his hand near the trigger guard and his free arm propping up his head.
Across the street, a shell of a former apartment building loomed morosely in the gathering dusk. There were not enough working street lamps in this part of the city. In front of that burnt-out structure, jagged chunks of masonry and lengths of charred wood presented a short no-man's-land to the sidewalk. Much of Berlin was still like that. Much of Europe was mere wreckage and debris only slowly being cleared away.
"We're sure Bruckner's in there?" asked Hal barely above a whisper.
"As sure as we are of anything in this game. It's a mess. We know the Reds intercepted his message to have his transport pick him up there tonight but our big thinkers have decided Mother Russia wants to capture him and pick his brains. He's a uranium expert, he's valuable in our hellbent race to blow up the world."
"Can't let anything slow that up," Hal grumbled. "Bigger and better bombs. I swear, this planet's going to end looking like the Moon once the bombs start dropping."
"He absolutely won't work for us or England. Hates the West, too bad. Better concentrate now." Darby stepped back and crouched beside the bed, fiddling with high powered binoculars. "If it happens at all, it'll happen right quickly."
"Wish I was as cold and heartless as those KGB guys are supposed to be.." Hal said as if to himself. "This would be so much easier."
Darby muttered, "Is that.. on the roof..?. Get down!" He leaped forward, seizing Hal by the body and yanking hm off the bed onto the floor. The window blew in with a storm of glass fragments as the sniper rifle spun away. The sharp crack of a gunshot echoed from across the street.
( the rest of the story )
