The Operative's Portrait

By Frank Hajek

Uncle Frank suffered his entire life following the Great War.
Now HD Carson is going to find out why. A love story, a war story, an intrigue. Discover the tale of a broken man and all the things
you didn’t know about World War One.
A SHORT FLIGHT NOVELLA

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frank Hajek
• Release date: Jul 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311432179

Frank Hajek

AUTHOR Frank Hajek spent his career working within the design and advertising communities, owning an advertising agency for more than thirty years. He has written throughout his life for print and television, including screenplays. Presently he lives and works in the Philippine Islands.

Book preview

The Operative’s Portrait

Copyright 2016, Frank Hajek

ISBN 9781311432179.

This is a work of fiction. Characters, companies, organizations, and agencies in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe their actual conduct.

Published by Frank Hajek at Smashwords

Distributed by Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or noncommercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

Other books by Frank Hajek

The Shepherds of Asia

Starlight Serenade

Lightening and Other Thrills

PROLOGUE

Sooner or later a predator is going to kill you. Whether it’s a virus, a parasitic worm or a human with a gun, your defense will fail and you will die. We are surrounded by assassins, and the only reason you can exist is through their failure every day of your life. Never forget that.

Dr. Noland Prindall

CHAPTER ONE

The Great War

‘Casey began to shake with the reality of where he was. A stinking trench with six inches of water as its floor, and mud walls that constantly wanted to slide down on you. Above the top berm concertina wire held out the enemy, or that was the theory; and hellfire rained periodically, proving the title ’no-man’s-land’ was accurate. He looked to his left and the smiling face of Eddy Richards.

You ever see anything like this? Eddy asked, holding up the field glasses Sergeant Holman had left with him. Casey shook his head ‘no’.

They say you can spot a kraut from a hundred yards out.

Casey shook his head again, still frozen with fear.

Grab my rifle. I’m going to take a look.

Casey took Eddy’s weapon as Richards stood up to peer over the berm.

Jeeze. You can see everything with these. Eddy exclaimed, There’s even a foxhole out there I never noticed before.

As Casey was looking up, Eddy’s body was suddenly thrown across the trench to the back wall, followed by the crack of a rifle somewhere behind Casey’s left ear. Wide eyed, he could not comprehend the image that was before him. A tacky, pink mist that filled the heavy air began to settle out. One of Eddy’s eyes was gone and fully one third of his head had disappeared leaving a mangled hole that still pumped blood in weakening spurts.

Casey quietly began to weep.’

Henry David Carson, (HD or just Dave to his friends) closed the cover of ‘Casey’s War’ by Sir Raymond Hudson and set the book on a small table alongside his favorite reading chair. The seat was a Chinese knock-off of the famous Ames design with fake leather and real bent plywood structures, including a footrest. Cheap, but comfortable.

He glanced across the small room at his great uncle Frank seated in the over-stuffed chair opposite him. Uncle Frank had dozed off. A modest fire that they had built earlier was down to a few embers and the room was beginning to chill. Frank Moravec was his grandmother’s brother.

He had seen action in the trenches of the Great War, and HD decided he would be careful not to show Frank the book he was reading. It would bring back too many memories of the horrors that haunted his uncle every day. Frank walked with a painful limp using a cane throughout his post service life. He had taken a German bullet in the hip. His old eyes still reflected the savagery he lived through, and their dark hollow stillness revealed the shell left of a once happy-go-lucky bohemian.

HD had never really gotten to know his uncle. Frank was a captive of ghostly terrors and distant dreams that left little of the man he once was. There was almost nothing to connect with; a sad, lonely figure no one could reach. It had HD thinking about what war does to the men that survive. What Dave, or for that matter anyone else in the family had never known, was that Sir Raymond Hudson interviewed many soldiers before writing ‘Casey’s War’ and the incident HD had just read was based on an actual episode his uncle Frank lived through, but could never talk about to those he loved.

HD got up and walked to the fireplace. With a poker he broke the last few embers and pushed them to the back of the fire box, then replaced the protective screen and returned to Frank’s side. Gently he woke him. Dave helped him stand up and then walked the old warrior to his room. The hour was late and the house was quiet. It was the last time Dave would see his uncle alive.

The following morning, Emma, Frank’s sister would find him quietly cold as he lay on his side under a winter feather bed. It was February sixteenth, nineteen sixty four when Frank Edward Moravec was laid to his final resting place in a damp cold Huntington cemetery, a few miles from her home. There were no military salutes, no twenty one guns, no one of importance to speak for his sacrifice. A gentle rain offered the proper perspective.

CHAPTER TWO

Finding Frank’s Watch

Life will go on and the business of organizing never ends. To that end Dave offered to help his grandmother with the review and distribution of a small number of possessions Frank left behind. It seemed there was not enough to mark the quiet man’s life, but then Dave considered, there were many who might leave even less. A closet half filled with old clothing, worn shoes, and the cane. A box of trinkets like his war ribbons, shooter’s medal, military ID and such. A tattered old suitcase and a floppy hat, long past fashionable.

In the night table alongside his bed were a few unused pain medications, tissues and a gauze roll bandage, and a small box containing his wedding ring and watch. Yes, Frank had been married, but that ended when he returned unable to be the man that went ‘over there’. His wife had tried for a while, but found it too difficult to hold on with no communication and no prospects. She left after a year, and they never saw each other again.

Dave held up the watch. It was an interesting design with a black face, large white numbers and four tick marks between each number point to mark the minutes. A small second hand within a white circle was centered at the bottom. The metal color was almost gold, but more like a dull copper and there were two belt loops soldered on either side, probably for a cloth or leather strap. The crystal covering the watch face was hinged to one side and could be snapped open, but Dave was not sure why. A stem and winding wheel protruded from the right, and as he turned the piece in his hand, he noted that there was a second door that could be unfastened at the back. Snapping this open, he discovered the photo.

It was a portrait of a young woman, probably twenty-five, quite attractive and done up in that turn-of-the-century fashion we might chuckle about today. It had been trimmed carefully to fit inside the circular back cover. Dave showed the photo to his grandmother.

Don’t know her. was her reply, then but that’s not his wife.

Really?

His wife wasn’t that pretty.

Who do you think she was?

Emma took the watch up in her hands and examined it more closely. The photo was sepia in tone and faded, but still readable having been protected by the cover for so many years.

This was Frank’s ‘trench’ watch. He was issued this during the war.

She looked again at the photo then passed the timepiece back to Dave.

She looks French to my eyes. she said with a twinkle, But I have no idea who she might be. Certainly he never mentioned her to me.

HD studied the photo and had a thought.

Maybe there’s an inscription on the back? he suggested, and reaching for a nail file in the night table, tried to work the point behind the photo to turn it out. After a few moments he was successful revealing a few faded words penned in a small flowing hand. Dave read the words aloud;

‘Always be careful, my love

nd stay alive for me. Trust no on’

Aimee

HD looked up to his grandmother with questioning eyes.

The words on the second line were clipped when he trimmed the photo, but I think that’s correct.

He scratched his head.

Do you think Uncle Frank had a secret lover during the war?

Emma chuckled in her grandmotherly way.

At my age I’ve learned never to dismiss any possibility.

She sat back in her chair and Dave could see that she was remembering her