W E B Griffin - Men at War 1 - The Last Heroes

by The Last Heroes(Lit)

  He took another sip of water from his goblet, which a servant had refilled. Then he went on. "Unhappily, our nation has been woefully unprepared to wage this kind : of warfare. Happily, Commander Fleming and some of his colleagues in England are very skilled at it, indeed, and have graciously agreed to help us put matters right."

  Meanwhile, as this talk of spying was going on about the table, a truly clandestine action was starting to happen beneath it.

  During the crab cocktail, Sue-Ellen Chambers, apparently mistaking Canidy's foot for the table leg, stepped heavily on his instep. He waited until the opportunity presented itself, then moved his feet far out of her way.

  During the entree, leg of lamb with oven-roasted potatoes, her shoe again found his, and again he moved it. He looked up in some surprise, for his foot was some distance from where hers should have been. When his glance reached her face, she looked directly nto his eyes again.

  It was, he told himself, his overactive imagination that suggested she was anything different from what she claimed she was: a mother of two, who had come to Washington only because "the way things are" it was the only time she got to see her husband.

  There was Brie and toasted crackers for dessert, along with a very nice burgundy. While Canidy was spreading a cracker, he felt a tug at his pants leg, and a moment later there was the unmistakable pressure of the ball of Sue-Ellen Chambers's stockinged foot against his calf.

  When he looked at her this time, she was smiling at him, and the tip of her tongue was peeping out from between her lips.

  Jesus Christ! Was she drunk, or what?

  There was to be bridge after dinner, but Mrs. Chambers asked to be excused. She had things to do in the morning, she said, and she really wasn't used to the late hours everybody up north seemed to keep.

  "Dick will take you to your hotel, Sue-Ellen," Chesty Whittaker said.

  "Oh, he can just see me to the car," Sue-Ellen said.

  A god damned tease is what she is. She had no intention of delivering what she seemed to be offering. If I made a pass at her, she would act like a goosed nun.

  "I had to send the car to New Jersey," Chesty said. "Dick will take you in the station wagon "If you'll just call me a cab," she said.

  Fuck you, lady. Now it's my turn to tease.

  "I wouldn't think of it, Mrs. Chambers." Canidy said. "I'll drive you home."

  And I won't go within three feet of you. But I'll give you a chance to worry a lot about whether or not you're going to have to fight me off.

  "Would you get Dick the keys to the station wagon, Cynthia?" Chesty said.

  She sat as far away from him as she could, against the door of the three-year-old but immaculate Ford station wagon. He drove down New Hampshire Avenue to Washington Circle, and then down Pennsylvania Avenue.

  As they passed between Lafayette Square and the White House, shelaughed.

  "You're not going to make a pass at me, are you?" she asked.

  "No, ma'am," he said.

  "Because you're afraid Mr. Whittaker or Colonel Donovan might find out? Or because you're afraid of me?"

  He didn't reply.

  "I knew," she said, "Chesty Whittaker being what he is, that he would not send me home alone."

  He looked at her as he turned down Fifteenth Street. She was fishing for something in her purse. She threw something in his lap. He felt for it. It was a hotel key.

  "When you come up for a nightcap' " she said, "try to make sure no one sees you."

  When he didn't respond, she added, "If I don't appeal to you, or if you can't work up the courage, drop it in any mailbox. They guarantee postage."

  He let her out in front of the Willard and started back across Washington to the house on Q Street.

  He got as far as Washington Circle before he changed his mind. There he made a complete circle and went back to the Willard. He put the station wagon in a parking garage and entered the hotel.

  When he put the key to the door, she pulled it open.

  She was wearing a negligee and a garter belt.

  "I probably shouldn't admit this you weren't coming."

  The Monroe Suite The Willard Hotel Washington, D.C. 5:15 A.M., June 5, 1941

  When Canidy came out of the bathroom, Sue-Ellen was sitting up in the bed. She was even at first light a fine-looking female. Ladylike. To look at her, the fact that she was a married woman; that she had gone after him, rather than the other way around; and that she had been both so passionate and so delightfully, so wickedly inventive in the bed seemed hardly credible.

  "Sorry I have to run," he said. "When am I going to see you again?"

  "You're not Sue-Ellen Chambers said, pleasantly but firmly.

  He found his trousers and put them on. He looked across the room at her. "Was I that much of a disappointment?"

  "Not at all," she said, and chuckled. "You were all I thought you would be, and more."

  "But?" he said. "I like to quit when I'm ahead," she said, matter-offactly. There was nothing of the magnolia blossom about her now, he she said. "But I was afraid thought. She was, under the drawl, about as soft as stainless steel. She had seen what she wanted, and taken it, and now it was time to make an end to the scene. Sueellen was a tough cookie. Still, though she might want to stop him right here, he wasn't willing to quit so easily.

  He turned away from her to zip his fly. "Because you're married?" he asked, without turning around. "Is that it?"

  "Obviously," she said.

  "That didn't seem to be a consideration last night."

  "Don't be nasty," she said.

  "I'm crushedi" he said wryly. "And a little curious."

  "I can't take the chance of getting involved," she said. "I could easily get involved with you."

  "Guilty," he said. He slipped his feet into his shoes.

  "Every once in a while," she said, "I do this. The conditions have to be right. I have to be alone, in circumstances that are in no way suspicious. And there has to be a suitable man."

  "I'm pleased that you found me suitable," he said, hoping that the sudden anger he felt didn't show in his voice.

  "Very suitable," she said. "You struck me as someone who wouldn't make trouble for either of us when I explained the circumstances. Someone who wouldn't, for example, try to telephone me.

  "I really would like to see you again."

  "Don't ruin everything now," she said, and there was steel in her voice.

  "OK." he said. He looked around for his cummerbund, and couldn't find it.

  She read his mind. "You left it in the other room," she said. "When you first got here."

  He remembered. She had been so anxious to get at him that she had dropped to her knees the moment she had closed the door. The cummerbund had been in the way.

  "Oh,"he said. "Thank you."

  " Good-bye, Dick Canidy," she said.

  He inclined his head toward her, sort of a bow, but said nothing. He went out of the bedroom, closing the door after him.

  The driveway gate in the wall of the house on Q Street was closed, and the key for it was not on the key ring Cynthia Chenowith had given him. But there was a key to the walk gate, so he got out of the station wagon and entered the property that way.

  He was almost through Whittaker's private parlk and at the driveway gate when a motion caught his eye.

  Chesley Haywood Whittaker, in a silk dressing gown, was walking quickly across the cobblestones between the garage and the kitchen.

  Canidy ducked behind a tree so that he wouldin't be seen.

  Sonofabitch, Chesty is screwing Cynthia Chenowith. Why else could he have been in the garage... at five-thirty in the morning... where she had an apartment?

  He thought that over a moment. The first thing that came to his mind was that Chesty Whittaker was a dirty old man, demanding sexual services in repayment for the bills he was paying. But he knew Chesty Whittaker better than that. Chesty wasn't the one who'd started whatever was going on.

  Was there a ph
rase to describe a Yankee version of a Southern magnolia blossom?

  Canidy stayed behind the tree until he was sure Chesty was inside the house, and then he opened the driveway gate and drove the Ford station wagon in, purposefully making a lot 4of noise opening and closing the doors.

  He went to his room, removed his clothes, an-d took a shower. When he came out, Chesty Whittaker was in the room.

  "I heard you come in," he said. "I thought you x-night want some breakfast."

  "I'm sorry I woke you," Canidy said.

  "Don't worry about it. Apparently the hunting@g was good after you took Miss Magnolia Blossom home?"

  "Can't complain."

  THE LAST INKNON96 am 41Are you hungry?"

  661 stopped for scrambled eggs on the way home," Canidy said.

  "And you can't stay?"

  "No, I wish I could."

  "It was good to see you, Dick, and thanks for filling in."

  "Thank you again, for having me.

  "Don't be silly, anytime Chesty said. He put out his hand, patted Canidy on the back, and left him.

  I don't think he thinks I know. I hope not.

  Transient officers' Ouarters Anacostia Naval Air Station Washington, D.C.

  0630 Hours 5 June 1941 owell Bitter, USN, woke When Lieutenant (junior grade) Edwin H he saw that the bed of Lieutenant (j.g.) Richard Canidy, USNR, had not been slept in.

  This bothered Ed Bitter, as did many other Canidy escapades in and out of bed. Dick Canidy did not, in Bitter's opinion, conduct himself as a commissioned officer and gentleman was expected to. He was less interested in discharging his duties to the best of his ability than he was in chasing skirts. If Dick Canidy was aware of the hoary naval adage that officers were supposed to keep their indiscretions a hundred miles from the flagpole, he paid no attention to it. it wasn't that Ed Bitter didn't like Dick Canidy. He did. Canidy was not only an amusing companion, but he had, in a number of ways, made it clear that he liked Bitter, which was of course flattering, and that he considered him to be highly intelligent, which was even more flattering. But Canidy seldom bothered to conceal his disdain for the limited brainpower of their peers.

  Nor did Bitter believe chasing skirts was dishonorable. What it was was that he was a professional naval officer-with corresponding standards-and Dick was not. Dick was a civilian in uniform.

  Bitter got out of bed, stripped off his pajamas, and marched naked to the shower. Naked, he looked even more muscular than he did dressed. While Dick Canidy was spending weekends lifting the skirts of Smith coeds, Ed Bitter was lifting weights in the Naval Academy gym. It showed. He was in splendid physical shape, firmmuscled, capable of great physical exertion. But to Bitter's annoyance, so was Dick Canidy. Half-jokingly, half-pridefully, Canidy had announced that the only college athletic program he had joined was performed in the horizontal attitude.

  He had just finished returning his safety razor to its stainlesssteel snap-shut case when Dick Canidy came home.

  "Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the lover, home from God only knows where," Bitter greeted him.

  "From a very nice house in Georgetown, actually," Canidy said, smiling as he started to take off his uniform. "The smell of spring in' the air. The gentle murmur of Rock Creek wending its way inexorably toward the Potomac. Very romantic."

  "And what about her parents? Were they conveniently away?"

  "I don't know about her parents," Canidy said. "Her husband was away."

  "She was married? You can get your oversexed ass courtmartialed for that, you know. They call it conduct unbecoming," Bitter said as he buttoned the cuffs of a heavily starched gray khaki shirt. Canidy stuffed his civilian clothing in his bag, took a gray khaki shirt from his chest of drawers, and started to put it on.

  After that he took a twill aviator-green uniform from the closet. He pulled the trousers on, and as he tucked the tail of the shirt in, he looked at Ed and asked: "How was the dinner party? Did you learn anything useful?"

  "I did, but I'm not sure I should tell you."

  "Come on, you're dying to!"

  "Did you know that we're shipping petroleum products from the Gulf Coast to Nova Scotia?"

  "Yeah ' " Canidy said, straight-faced. "Where they are transferred to British ships for the Atlantic crossing. Who told you? That's supposed to be classified."

  "Who told you?" Bitter asked, disappointed that his secret was known.

  "I couldn't tell you that, Eddie, you understand" Canidy said. "Suffice it to say that I broke bread with Colonel William "Wild Bill' Medal of Honor Donovan last night."

  "Really?" Bitter wasn't sure if his leg was being pulled or not.

  "Really," Canidy said. "I learned a lot more than I really cared to learn about the strategic implications of economic warfare."

  Still not sure whether he was being teased or not, Bitter challenged, "Did you also know that we are going to start Catalina flights to keep an eye on our shipping?"

  "As a matter of fact, I did," Canidy lied easily. He loved to keep Eddie Bitter off balance. "Who's been telling you all this stuff?"

  "Admiral Deer mentioned it last night. I didn't say anything to him, of course, but I wondered if it might not be a good idea to apply for that duty. It's obviously important, and you could pick up a lot of hours."

  "Eddie, if there's any job worse than sitting in a Kaydet teaching dummies to fly, it's in a Catalina, flying endless circles over the ocean."

  "It's something to think about," Bitter said.

  "I don't suppose there's any chance the weather is going to keep us on the deck?"

  Canidy asked. "I could use another day in Washington."

  "Not a chance. I checked before I went to bed.-Cloudless skies for the foreseeable future."

  "Shit," Canidy said.

  Officers might swear, Bitter thought, but they should abstain from vulgarity.

  When they were dressed, they left the BOQ and walked across the base to the officers' mess, where they had breakfast. Then they returned to the BOQ, picked up their luggage, and went to Base Op-erations.

  The glory of their selection to buzz the Naval Academy graduation was over. As soon as they could hitch a ride, which might take all day, they had to go back to Pensacola, where they could count on spending many long hours in the backseat of a Kaydet, the slowest airplane in the Navy.

  Norea UN TWO Pensacola Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida 0615 Hours 8 June 1941

  Bitter and Canidy, in Bitter's month-old 1940 dark green Buick Roadmaster convertible, drove across the pleasant, almost luxurious tropical base to the Mediterranean-style officers' club. There they had breakfast.

  They had been back a day and a half, doing hardly anything but waiting to see the deputy commander so he could vicariously experience their triumph in buzzing Annapolis. But today it was back to work, and with a vengeance, Canidy thought: a long cross-country training flight.

  Canidy ate an enormous breakfast, and then, in the men's room, read the Pensacola Journal cover to cover, while he got rid of as much liquid and bulk as he could. There were no toilets in Kaydets; and despite the many hours he had in them, he had not yet mastered the relief tube.

  Finally, they drove to the airfield, where two ensigns, already in gray flight suits, were waiting for them at Student Operations. The students followed them into the locker room, and reported on the flight plan they had laid out as Bitter and Canidy changed into their flight suits. The two instructor pilots carefully folded their green uniforms and put them into canvas flight bags. While the odds against something going wrong on their cross-country training flight were remote, if they did have to spend the night someplace they would need uniforms. Naval officers could not go into public wearing gray cotton overalls.