“Ah,” he said, laughing, “we have a mutiny!” He announced this with pride, as if it were a kind of raffle. “The Slavo-British Legion we have recruited. They were supposed to be in formation here, but all we could round up was the band. Do you like the band?”

Ironside frowned. “Are you serious about the mutiny?”

Chaikovsky nodded. “There was a medical exam. Only three hundred men didn’t have the syphilis.” As if that explained the mutiny, he added, “Would you like to see the palace? There will be an excellent dinner. The chef—the chef is from Paris.”

“Actually, Mr. Chaikovsky, we should investigate this mutiny, don’t you think?”

“I should tell my chef we will be late,” Chaikovsky murmured. “You know, he has that Parisian temper, and …”

“Mr. Chaikovsky, would you perhaps like to go to the palace with Pishkoff while I see to the mutiny?”

He visibly brightened, hat swaying. “That would be best.”

“I’ll see to the rooms,” Pishkoff volunteered.

“And, Mr. Chaikovsky, have you anything else to equip me with?” There was a long, silent moment during which Chaikovsky looked toward Ironside with increasing puzzlement. “Might you direct me to the Allied forces?”

Blinking from Chaikovsky.

Ironside said, “I don’t aim to suppress the mutiny alone.”

“Aha! Would you like some Americans?”

“Yes, please. Perhaps more than that, some of each army? Thank you. Let us go now.”

20

Shortly after decking Lieutenant Hart, Lee was thrown into the makeshift jail at the edge of the aerodrome. Since the concept of a standing American army was evolving, lines of demarcation were writ in water. Matters of rank and discipline were intermittently enforced. Lee could knock an officer ass-over-teakettle and be brought to the stockade without much sense of how long the punishment would last. He was, however, charged for his missing rifle.

He was deposited with a washbasin, a new uniform, and requisition papers to fill out to pay for the new uniform, into a clapboard barracks. His cot was called a butcher’s table. The frame was made of iron piping, and the springs yielded and spread quickly; a doughboy who sat nude risked unspeakable injury.

The other cots were unused—at least, on his side of the room. But chicken wire ran down the middle of the barracks, and on the other side were German prisoners. It was a housing situation that made no sense, an unarmed, unobserved American soldier within arm’s length of the enemy. But there was an overstock of Germans. Trench raiders from the 166th had deposited gaggles and clots of defeated Boche with every available way station.