Now What?

When you walk the wide boulevards of Trieste in the glorious days of summer, you may wonder why, every few feet at the curbs, there are white and red metal stanchions, about three feet high, each one graced on top with a large metal loop. To the strictly summer vacationer these silent metal guardians may well remain a mystery. But the veterans of Trieste winters know; for more than one has been saved from a cold watery death by these stalwart protectors. This introduces you to the Boras, the cold, robust, hurricane-force winds that, for a period of two weeks every year, gather speed in the funnel-shaped Austrian Alps and roar down unmercifully through the streets of Trieste city on the way out to the Adriatic Sea. At the beginning of winter, prior to the arrival of these devil winds, the city fathers, tiring of seeing many of their good citizens blown into the Adriatic, string heavy rope through the loops of these poles, thereby permitting its denizens, to navigate the streets to do their daily chores, proceeding, hand over fist, hanging onto these ropes for dear life. Anyway, this is a roundabout way of introducing you to a Captain of the Army Counter Intelligence Corps, a new arrival I’ll call Carson. He’d come in mid-winter, his beloved and trusty six-year-old Buick Roadmaster in tow. Like most officers, draftees were considered lower than dirt and they couldn’t tell Carson a thing. He knew it all. The first time he left the agency compound, I flagged him down. I stood in front of his car, blocking the exit. That was the only reason he bothered at all to roll down the window to hear what I had to say. I moved over to the Buick window and leaned in. “Captain Carson, Sir, if you’re going for gas, I respectfully suggest that do not to check your oil. Let the motor pool guys do it when you get back.” “I always check the oil personally when I get gas,” he huffed. “It’s the only way to keep the car in tip-top shape.” “B-but...” By mid-sentence, he’d already rolled up his window and drove off, tires squealing. He was not about to take advice from a lowly corporal. I shook my head, a wicked smile forming on my lips. Don’t look at me that way! It wasn’t as if I didn’t try. My conscience is clear. Pulling into a Fina gas station on Piazza d’Unita, right smack on the shores of the Adriatic, while the attendant pumped the gas, our intrepid captain released the catch on his engine hood, the attendant’s warning shout lost in the howling winds of the Boras, lifted the hood, and before he could say, “Oh, shit,” the Buick Roadmaster hood with its distinctive four-hole ports, sailed a hundred feet up into the air before slowly settling on the water about a mile out, floating briefly before sinking forever into the depths of the Adriatic. Needless to say, there’s no way in hell he’d ever find another hood for a six-year-old Buick Roadmaster in Europe. That kind of retired his Buick until summer. No matter, he was assigned a small nondescript Fiat for his work. It was about one quarter the size of his Buick Roadmaster but what the hell, it would get him around. At least that’s what we plebian NCOs thought. I don’t know about today, but back in the Fifties the Fiat was one strange little car. On the gearshift lever, reverse was where first gear normally was on most European cars. Our agency Fiats were backed into parking spaces next to a canal. You had to be careful because there was nothing to prevent you from backing into the canal--no curb, no fence, no nothing--well, you get the idea. We led him to his Fiat in its assigned canal parking spot. He looked the little car over, shaking his head. He was not a small man. He shrugged and poured himself into the Fiat. Captain, Sir” I said, “that there shift is real tricky and. . .” Once again, he cut me off in mid-sentence, barking angrily, “I know how to drive goddamn a shift car, Corporal.” Peevishly, he rolled up his window. “Yes Sir, Captain, Sir,” I said and saluted smartly as he promptly put the car into reverse, gunned the engine, let up on the clutch, and backed into the canal. The Adriatic, it seems, became Carson’s personal garage--one engine hood and an entire Fiat, parked under water, courtesy of the good, but unheeding, Captain. Water, it seems, depending on the season, brought out the worst--and best--in the captains assigned to our counterintelligence outfit.