W E B Griffin - Men at War 3 - The Soldier Spies

by The Soldier Spies(Lit)

  Finally, it was out in the open, although there was some imaginative use of euphemisms, They could not go to Charity's place for

  "Knap"--the euphemism here being that if he was going to fly to England the next morning, he would need his rest--because she lived at the house on Q Street, and people might get the wrong idea.

  Anyplace but Washington, a hotel would have worked, but there were no hotel rooms to be had in Washington. (They spent a dollar and a half in nickels confirming that by telephone. ) And then Charity found a way, They would go to Ed and Sarah Bitter's suite in the Wardman Park Hotel. Not only could they call from there to see if there was word about his father, but Charity remembered hearing that Ed Bitter (who was a bit dense about such things) was out of town on duty.

  Sarah was much more likely to understand how important it was for Doug to get that nap, and she would probably even displace her child Joe from his room so that Doug's nap would be both private and without interruption.

  Sarah Child Bitter was indeed delighted to see Major Peter' Doug" Douglass, Jr. , Army Air Corps. For Sarah's husband, Lieutenant Commander Bitter, was for a number of reasons particularly fond of Major Douglass.

  In the days before the war, Ed Bitter and Doug Douglass had been' Flying Tigers" together. Right after the war started, Doug had saved Ed's life at considerable risk to his own neck. Wounded by ground fire while strafing a Japanese air base, Ed had managed to land his crippled plane in a dry riverbed. And then, defying the laws of aerodynamics, Doug had landed his P40, loaded Ed into it, and taken off again with Ed on his lap. If Doug hadn't done that, Ed would have either died from loss of blood or fallen into the hands of the Japanese who regarded

  "Flying Tigers" as bandits and beheaded the ones they caught.

  Doug Douglass was welcome to Little Joe's room anytime he wanted it.

  But not for the purpose Charity obviously had in mind. Sarah took her into the butler's pantry and told her so.

  "I don't mean to be nasty about this, Charity," she said. "But if you insist on acting like a woman who goes to hotels with men, go to a hotel."

  "If there were any vacant hotel rooms in Washington, and there are not, they would not rent one to an aviator and his blonde," Charity argued. KTHEY demand marriage licenses."

  "Then you are just going to have to restrain your impulses until you can arrange something," Sarah said. She giggled and added, "Either a marriage license or your own apartment."

  "Unfortunately, there's no time to do that," Charity said.

  "Unless you get to roll around with him tonight, you'll go blind, right, or grow hair on your palms?"

  "This time tomorrow night, he'u be in his little airplane somewhere over the Atlantic," Charity said.

  "Did he tell you that?" Sarah asked.

  "No, and I don't want him to know I know," Charity said.

  "If it's a secret, why are you telling me?"

  "What are you going to do, phone Hitler? The only reason I'm telling you is that I want you to know how important this is to me."

  "Charity, I love you, but I know you. If I ever found out... "

  "The reason I know is that Captain Douglass told me to get reports from the Navy on the progress of a flight of P-38s from Westover Field in Massachusetts tomorrow afternoon. They're flying via Newfoundland to Scotland.

  Doug told me he's going to Westover. I didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to put two and two together."

  "My God, if Ed found out, he'd kill me," Sarah said, weakening.

  "He won't be home until Tuesday," Charity argued conclusively.

  "You told me that yourself. And if you don't tell him, I certainly won't."

  "I'm going to take Joe for a walk," Sarah said finally, feeling very much the sophisticated woman of the world. "Do what you think is right." And Sarah took Little Joe for a walk, although he didn't need one.

  What happened between Doug and Charity while she was gone was none of her business.

  But she hadn't imagined they wouldn't be finished when she came back.

  Or that they would keep it up for hours.

  She concluded that the best way to handle the situation was to just go to bed and say nothing until after Doug left in the morning.

  Then she would really give Charity a piece of her mind.

  It was a lucky thing Ed wasn't home. Ed would have had a fit.

  But Ed had told her--with certainty--that his duty as aide-de-camp to Vice Admiral Enoch Hawley, USN, Chief Aviation Materiel Assignments Branch, BUAIR, would keep him out of town for at least the weekend and probably into Tuesday.

  Lieutenant Commander Edwin Ward Bitter, USN, returned home three hours later, just before midnight.

  When he found the baby's crib in their bedroom, his curiosity was aroused. "Who's here?" he asked when he crawled into bed beside Sarah.

  Feigning a much deeper sleep than was the case, Sarah replied, "Douglass."

  "Good," Ed said happily and went to sleep.

  That bought her some time, Sarah thought, to consider how to handlle the situation when it came up in the morning as it would as inevitably as the sun.

  Being married to one herself, Sarah had come to understand that service academy graduates and career officers were just plain different from other officers. They saw things in another kind of light, they had more rigid codes of honor and standards of behavior than people like, say, Ed's (and Sarah's and Doug's) friend Dick Canidy.

  Sometimes these diffe ring perceptions were evident. For starters, both Doug, who was a West Pointer, and Ed, who had gone to Annapolis, were not amused--and let him know it--whenever Canidy characterized the Army-Navy Club as

  "The Old Farts Home." And both took offense whenever Dick or Jim Whittaker mocked the professional military establishment.

  And now Doug Douglass had stepped over the professional line, It was another of those odd military customs that Sarah had so much trouble understanding. Ed certainly didn't expect Douglass, who was a healthy young bachelor, to play the celibate. But he fully expected him to obey the hoary adage that an officer must keep his indiscretions one hundred miles from the flagpole.

  An officer did not take his loose women under the roof of a brother officer's house, much less sleep with them there. And by sleeping with Doug at all, Charity Hoche would lose her status in Ed's eyes. She could no longer be a "lady," even though she and his wife had gone to Bryn Mawr together.

  In the morning when Ed got out of bed, Sarah pretended to be asleep.

  Fffleen minutes later, after changing Joe, he carried the baby into his and Sarah's bed, his whoxy transparent purpose being to wake her up.

  "When did Doug come in last night?"

  "Very late."

  "I'm getting hungry. Do you think I could wake him up?"

  "I think you ought to let him sleep," Sarah said, hoping to delay the inevitable just a little longer.

  To hell with it," Ed said after a moment's thought. KHE and Canidy have blasted me out of a sound sleep often enough. Now it's his turn.

  "Go ahead, then," Sarah said. "I'll have room service send up a breakfast buffet.

  "And stretchers.

  She heard him go down the corridor to Joe's room and call Doug's name, happily, cheerfully.

  She picked up the telephone and ordered a breakfast buffet for four.

  When Ed Bitter called his name and banged on the door, Doug Douglass woke up snuggled against Charity Hoche, her back to his belly, his hand holding her breast.

  He carefully withdrew his hand and rolled carefully onto his back.

  Oh, my God, he's home! Good God, he's worse than my father. When he finds out we're both in here, hew shit a brick!

  He looked at his watch. Quarter past nine. He looked down at Charity Hoche.

  A stiff prick, especially your stiff prick, you prick, he thought, has no conscience.

  He walked quietly across the room, picked up his zipper bag, and took it into the bathroom, carefully and as quietly as possible closing the
door after him. He took out a change of underwear and laid it on the sink.

  Then he adjusted the shower so that it was as cold as he could stand it, pulled the curtain in place, and climbed into the bathtub.

  She's liable to hear the shower, he thought. It sounds like the inside of a bass drum, and she's more than likely going to hear it and wake up.

  Charity Hoche had in fact been awake when he first stirred. She didn't want to stir then though, it was too nice the way she was.

  She'd experienced before a man's hand cradling her naked breast and a man's naked body warm against hers, and these had always been, she was wihing to admit, rather pleasant. But this was somehow different. She didn't know how, but it was.

  She remembered what she had said to Sarah the night before. Was it possible that she was telling the truth, in vino veritas, that this was something special to her? That Doug Douglass was not just one more terribly exciting young man?

  She forced herself to breathe slowly, regularly, as if she were still asleep, and then she felt the bed rise as he left it. She waited until she heard the shower, then she rolled onto her back, twisted out of bed, and stumbled over to look at her face in the vanity mirror.

  Her eyes were puffed, and her hair was mussed, and she cupped her hand in front of her mouth in a futile effort to smell her own breath.

  She combed her hair as well as she could with her hands and pushed her swollen eyes with the balls of her fingers. Then she returned to the bed, straightened the mussed sheets, puffed up the pihows, arranged them against the headboard, and stepped back in, propping herself against the pillows, wondering if she should modestly pull the blanket up under her chin.

  She decided there was no point in trying to pretend that her body was still some sort of secret to him. This was not the first whack he'd had at it.

  And he also knows, she thought bitterly, that I pass it around like canape's.

  When he came out of the bathroom in his underwear, he did not look pleased to see her awake and half sitting up in bed. He was going to sneak out of here, she thought.

  "Good morning," she said, and smiled at him.

  "Good morning," he replied, smiling uncomfortably. Then, "Ed came home last night." KI know," Charity said. "I've got lipstick. We can letter scarlet A's on our foreheads."

  "He is not going to think this is funny," Douglass said.

  "I'm sorry if you are now overwhelmed with morning-after remorse," Charity said. KSHOULD I jump out the window?" KI was thinking of Sarah," he said.

  He really is. He is, in addition to everything else, a nice guy.

  "She told me he wasn't due until Tuesday," Charity said. Then a thought of genuine importance hit her. "Are you going to be all right to fly?" He nodded, and then he thought of something. "My God, my father."

  "I won't tell if you won't tell," Charity heard herself say. She was sorry, but the crack had popped out on its own.

  "Jesus," he said impatiently.

  "I spoke with him an hour ago," Charity said. "He will be tied up--he's at the base in Fairfax--until nine. He wanted to know if you could delay your departure until noon. I told him you could." He looked at her in surprise.

  "You're not taking off until about six," Charity said. "There's a front going through, and they will hold you until it does."

  "You know, then?"

  "Well, you know, what the hell, why be in the OSS if you don't get to know the secrets?"

  "Is that why what happened last night happened?"

  "What happened last night is standard V-Girl service," Charity said. "Just the standard patriotic contribution to the morale of the boys in uniform." She wondered why she had said that, why she was acting as she was.

  "I don't understand you at all," he said, almost sadly.

  He turned and looked for his uniform. He found it where she had hung it in the closet and, with his back to her, started to put it on.

  He had, she saw, a very broad back.

  After he pulled his trousers on, while still in the process of tucking his shirt in, he turned and faced her.

  "I would be grateful when you come out, if you would control that clever mouth of yours. Don't make it worse for Sarah than it will be.

  " Then he finished zipping his fly and walked out of the bedroom.

  Bitter, ever the gentleman, was sitting at the table drinking coffee.

  The table was covered with silver, china, and food, but he was waiting.

  "Good morning," Douglass said, as jovially as he could manage.

  Bitter stood up and they shook hands.

  "Good to see you, buddy," he said.

  "You too," Douglass said.

  "What are you doing in Washington?" Bitter asked. "If you can tell me." "Leaving," Douglass said. "I'm going from here to the airport.

  "Sarah was so beside herself with pleasure, she ordered breakfast for four," Bitter said. "Dig in." Sarah and Douglass looked at each other, and then away.

  "As a matter of fact, Eddie," Douglass said as he helped himself to coffee, KI am about to test the premise that a lot of money and effort can be saved if we ferry P-38s to England."

  "That's you?"

  "You know? How did you hear about it?" KTHE Navy is going to run Catalinas along your route," Bitter said. "I assigned the Catalinas.

  " "What are Catalinas?" Sarah asked.

  KLONG-range amphibious patrol planes," Doug furnished. "If we have to sit down, they'll pick us up."

  "I wish I was going with you," Ed Bitter said.

  "No, you don't," Douglass said.

  "Am I allowed to ask questions about that?" Sarah asked.

  KNO," Ed Bitter said simply.

  Charity walked into the room from the corridor.

  Bitter looked at her, and then at his wife, and then back at Charity.

  "Good morning, Edwin," Charity said matter-of-factly. "I didn't think you were due back until Tuesday."

  "We came back early," Bitter said.

  "Oh, good!" Charity said. KSAUSAGE. I'm as hungry as a horse!" She sat down and began to help herself.

  Bitter looked at Douglass, who carefully avoided looking at him.

  Charity ate a piece of sausage, made a pleased face, and then said, "Captain Douglass will meet Doug at the airport in Baltimore. I think Doug would prefer that you drove him. Can that be arranged?"

  "Of course," Sarah said.

  "I don't know what to do about gasoline," Ed said.

  "Buy some on the black market," Douglass said.

  "I don't deal in the black market," Bitter said.

  "I thought everybody did," Douglass said.

  "I don't think officers should," Bitter said.

  "s "My, aren't we on our white horse this morning?" Douglass said.

  "There are some things officers just don't do," Bitter said.

  KASIDE from black market gas, what did you have in mind?" Charity asked.

  Bitter glowered, then got up.

  "Will you please excuse me?" he said stiffly, and marched out of the room.

  Charity looked at Douglass.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I promised to watch my clever mouth. I meant to.

  It just got away from me." "Fuck him," Douglass said.

  "Self-righteous sonofabitch. Come on, let's get out of here."

  "Please don't," Sarah said.

  "I'm sorry I put you on the spot, Sarah," Douglass said. "You're a lovely woman. What I can't understand is why you married that self-righteous sonofabitch."

  "I think maybe you'd better leave," Sarah said.

  "Tallk about uncontrollable mouths," Charity said to Douglass.

  Douglass wallked around the table to her, grabbed her arm, and propelled her out of the apartment.

  The door slammed and woke the baby. Sarah went to him and picked him up and carried him into their bedroom. Ed was standing at the window, looking down at the street.

  "Have they gone?" he asked after a minute.

  "I asked them to," Sarah said. "I told hi
m that I would not tolerate his calling you a self-righteous sonofabitch in your home." He looked at her and smiled uneasily.

  "You self-righteous sonofabitch!" Sarah said. "How dare you behave that way? That man is your best friend, and he saved your life, and he's liable to be dead by this time tomorrow, and you dare to lecture him!" It was the first time since he had met his wife that he had ever heard her use language stronger than a'damn." When they got to the airfield in Baltimore, Douglass went into Base Operations and checked the weather and filed his flight plan.