And since she had learned in a class euphemistically called "Human Hygiene" in college that the male erection was an "involuntary vascular reaction," she had not been able to tell him to "stop that."
He held her hand as they returned to the table.
Jimmy picked up his glass and, smiling, looked over the rim of it at Greg.
"I have been thinking, Ronald Reagan--" he began.
"I saw the furrowed brow," Hammersmith interrupted, "and it's "Greg Hammer."
Ronny Reagan is the one they call the "Errol Flynn of the B movies."" "Right," Whittaker said.
"Hammer, as in the baking soda."
"Now you've got it," Hammersmith said.
"What have you been thinking, 0 worthy leader?"
"That despite my initial unflattering impression of you, you may be reasonably trustworthy after all."
"Oh, thank you. Sir."
"To the point where I would feel comfortable in leaving you in sole charge of Radioman Garvey while I escort the lady to her hotel."
"I can get to the hotel by myself," Cynthia protested.
They ignored her.
"So that you can protect our girl from the unwanted attentions of sailors in the Mark Hopkins?"
"Correct," Whittaker said.
"I have heard all sorts of tales about sex-starved naval officers making indecent proposals to unaccompanied young ladies such as Miss Chenowith, right in the lobby of the Mark Hopkins."
"We couldn't have that, could we?" Greg replied.
"You sneaky sonofabitch."
""You sneaky sonofabitch, Sir,"" Whittaker corrected him.
The two men, pleased with their own wit, smiled at each other, which infuriated Cynthia.
"I don't need an escort," Cynthia said.
"The way she says that," Whittaker replied, "you'd think she thinks I have designs on her body, wouldn't you?"
"I don't think you're funny, Jimmy," she said.
"Let's go," he said.
"We have an early day tomorrow."
He took her arm when he put her into the Navy car, but as soon as Greg had gotten out at the hangar, he slid away from her on the seat, so that their hips were no longer pressing together. And he did not try to hold her hand, put his arm around her, or kiss her on the way to the hotel.
He did speak to the driver:
"How are we going to get Miss Chenowith back out to Mare Island in the morning?"
"My orders are to stick with you, Sir, until you get on the plane."
"All night?"
"Well, you go get yourself some sleep," Whittaker ordered.
"Be at the hotel at 0400. I'll catch a cab back out there tonight."
"Why don't you go back out with him?" Cynthia asked.
Whittaker ignored her for a moment, then somewhat lamely said, "I want to check in with Ellis. I'd rather do that from your room than try to get a longdistance authorization at Mare Island or feed quarters to a pay phone."
He might, indeed, actually call Ellis from the Theodore Roosevelt Suite, once he gets there, Cynthia thought, but he obviously just thought up that excuse to get into the room.
There was also a good chance that the moment he got her behind the closed doors of the Theodore Roosevelt Suite, he would make a play for her, she thought. She really didn't want that. But she didn't want to make an issue of it now. If it happened, she could handle him.
When they got to the suite, he went directly to the telephone on the table in front of the couch and put in a call to Chief Ellis in Washington.
He seemed genuinely disappointed that Ellis was not immediately available.
"I'm in Miss Chenowith's room in the Mark Hopkins," he said to the telephone.
"I'll wait here for his call."
He put the telephone in its cradle.
"Not there? That's surprising," Cynthia said.
"He would have been there if I had called when I was supposed to," he said.
"I didn't even think of calling him until I needed an excuse to be alone with you."
She smiled at him.
That should have been my cue, she thought, to say something cutting-"Don't get any ideas, Jimmy," something like that. I wonder why I didn't?
It was, she decided, because his honesty disarmed her. And then she realized there was more than that. She had tried to force the thought from her mind whenever it had appeared. But that had been hard, and it kept reappearing, as it was doing now.
The thought was that the clock was running down, like the clock at a basketball game. Very soon, Jimmy and Greg--and maybe even Garvey, whom she thought of as "the boy in the sailor suit" --would get on the submarine and try to establish contact with this man Fertig and his guerrillas in the Philippines.
There was a very good chance that they would be caught, and if they were caught, they could count on being executed. Cynthia had seen photographs of Japanese executions of Americans. It was done ritually, according to the Japanese warriors' code of Bushido, which prescribed execution by beheading.
And this was followed by another thought, alarming in its implications:
There seemed to be little morally wrong with going to bed with a man who stood a very good chance of being executed by beheading in the very near future.
It seemed little enough to do for him.
But that presumed he would be executed. Jimmy, God bless him, seemed to have an incredible ability to stay alive. And if he stayed alive, he would be back. And he would interpret her taking him into her bed as a reciprocation of love. And he would want to marry her.
There were a number of reasons she couldn't marry Jimmy. For openers, she was convinced that the love she felt for him was not the sort of love a woman should have for the man she would marry, whose children she would bear. He was younger than she was. And she had been his uncle's mistress. She sometimes thought that she owed the love she felt for Jimmy simply to his likeness, in so many subtle ways, to Chesty Whittaker. Sometimes, when he looked at her, it was as if Chesty was behind the eyes.
And she didn't reciprocate Greg's affection, either. Greg said it jokingly, but she believed that he thought he loved her. And she didn't want to sleep with him, either.
It would be better all around if she were a slut, she thought every so often.
Not an absolute, four-star slut, but just a little bit of a slut, like Charity Hoche.
The situation Cynthia found herself in would pose no great problems for Charity.
If Charity believed that two men like these, both of them handsome and rich, and head and shoulders above most other men, thought they were in love with her, and if she was as fond of both of them as Cynthia was, Charity would sleep with both of them. One at a time, of course, but with both of them.
"I think we should talk about Joe Garvey," Cynthia said.
"Ellis will want to know when he calls back."
Whittaker nodded.
"On the one hand, you need a backup for Greg," Cynthia said, all business.
"And on the other, Joe Garvey looks and acts as if he should be working the lights for the senior play," Whittaker said.
He walked to the bar and made himself a drink, then returned to the couch and sat down, slumped against the rear cushion, his legs stretched out straight in front of him, holding his glass on his stomach.
"He's not trained for anything like this," Cynthia said.
"Neither am I, according to good old Eldon Baker," Whittaker said.
"You're going out of your way to be difficult, aren't you?"
"I'm about to start," he said.
"Excuse me?"
"While I was off in Merry Old England," Whittaker said, "I was fucking a duchess."
"For God's sake, Jimmy!"
"Elizabeth Alexander Mary Alexandra, Her Grace the Duchess of Stanfield," he said.
"Her family owns Whithey House. He's in the R.A.F. Missing in action.
I'm sure there is a word for what I was doing. And it was my fault, not hers."
He me
t her eyes until she averted them.
"And then, when I was in Cairo, I was fucking another married woman.
Her husband was off with Charles de Gaulle and the Free French."
"Why are you telling me this?" Cynthia asked.
"You think it's funny?"
"There's a punch line," he said.
"I don't think I want to hear it," she said.
"I used to ask myself, Cynthia," Whittaker said, looking at her, "sometimes at very inappropriate moments, "Why are you doing this? If you love Cynthia, why the hell are you screwing somebody else?"" He looked at her as if he expected a response.
"No answer came, Cynthia," he said.
"The conclusion to be drawn, therefore, is that I am an unprincipled sonofabitch."
"Another possibility is that you don't really love me," she said.
"Not that way. For God's sake, Jimmy, we have known each other since we were kids. I used to take care of you when you were a little boy."
"I have loved you since you were about fourteen," he said, matter-of factly
"You were climbing out of Chesty's pool in Palm Beach, and I got a look down your bathing suit. My heart stopped, and then jumped. My heart still stops and then jumps sometimes when I look at you. What this equation means, I'm afraid, is that I do in fact love you. That way."
"What about Garvey?" she said.
Whittaker nodded his head as if he expected not only her change of subject but even that particular question.
"She said," he said, "changing the subject."
He drained his drink, then stretched across the couch to put the empty glass on a table.
"I'm not going to let you off the hook there, Cynthia," he said, and started to cross the room to the bar.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"There's more to playing Mata Hari, my dear Cynthia, than running around the woods in Virginia with a rifle, or flashing your OSS credentials to impress people."
"Now, that's a cheap shot!"
"It involves things like making decisions," he said.
"For example, "Do I send a nice little boy in a sailor suit off someplace where he is liable to drown, or have his head sliced off with a sword?"" My God, he's seen those pictures! He knows what he's getting himself into. He's frightened!
He looked at her out of Chesty's eyes.
"Goddamn you!" she said.
He didn't reply. He walked back to the couch and sat down.
She felt a sudden infuriating urge to cry. She fought it down, then went to the bar and poured an inch of brandy into a snifter.
She wondered why Whittaker was being such a sonofabitch about Garvey.
Why he didn't just say, "We'll take him," or "We better not take him." He damned well was equipped to decide whether the contribution Garvey could make to the mission overrode his youth, and inexperience, and lack of training, and, for that matter, physical stamina.
That's what had to be judged. Whether Garvey was drowned or beheaded was important only insofar as it would affect the mission.
Clearly, Garvey should go. Why had Jimmy been unwilling to come out and say that?
Because, she suddenly understood, he was being a sonofabitch again--a male sonofabitch. He was simply unable to understand that she thought as he did. He still thought she was playing at being a spy; the bastard had even called her "Mata Hari" and accused her of flashing her OSS credentials to impress people.
Goddamn him!
"Garvey will go," she announced.
He nodded.
Their eyes met.
"If I asked you a straight question, could I have a straight answer?" Cynthia heard herself ask.
"That would depend on the question," he said.
The telephone rang. It was Ellis.
"Sorry I didn't call earlier, Ellis," he said.
"I just forgot."
He reported that the material was on hand, that the weather was good, and unless Ellis heard to the contrary, they would depart Mare Island for Hawaii on schedule.
"And we're taking Garvey," he concluded.
"Get him transferred officially as soon as you can. Get him overseas pay, and hazardous-duty pay... whatever you can."
Ellis said something else, to which Whittaker replied:
"Thanks, Chief, I'll damned well try."
Cynthia knew that Ellis had told him to take care of himself.
Whittaker hung the phone up again.
"You were asking?" he said, meeting her eyes.
"Are you afraid?"
"I'll tell you what I'm afraid of," he said seriously, after a pause.
"I'm afraid I'll answer that dumb question the wrong way, and that'll give you your excuse to throw me out of here."
"Are you afraid. Jimmy?" Cynthia asked.
"This is probably the wrong answer, but fuck it. Truth time. No, I'm not.
I'm good at this sort of thing. There's a thrill, Cynthia. It's even better than flying."
She looked at him first in disbelief, then in astonishment when she realized he was telling the truth.
"The wrong answer, I gather?" he asked dryly.
"It wasn't the answer I expected," she said.
"Do I get to stay?"
She felt her face flush. She felt faint. There was a contraction at the base of her stomach.
She forced herself to look at him.
"If you like," she said very softly.
And then, more quickly than she would have thought possible, he erupted from the couch and came to her.
Embarrassed, she averted her face.
His hand came up, and the balls of his fingers touched her cheek and gently turned her face to his. She met his eyes.
His fingers moved down her cheek, and down her neck, and onto her shoulders. He buried his face in her hair. She felt his arms around her, pressing her to him, and then felt his body shudder.
And then he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.
[THREE]
St. Gertrud's Municipal Prison
There was just barely room enough for the Tatra diesel dump truck to pass through the tunnel to the courtyard of St. Gertrud's. Scrape marks on the granite walls of the tunnel and on the fenders of the truck testified that the drivers didn't always make it through on the first try.
The Tatra pulled into the courtyard and, with a great clashing of gears and bursts of sooty diesel exhaust, backed up to within ten feet of an interior door.
The heavy wooden door opened inward and three guards came out. They were middle-aged men in gray uniforms and black boots. Carrying billy clubs and small.32-caliber automatic pistols in closed-top holsters, two of them took up positions facing each other between the truck and the door. The third, holding a clipboard in gray woolen gloved hands, stood to one side by the door. As the prisoners came out of the door and started to climb onto the truck, he checked their names off on a roster.
The prisoners, of various ages and sizes, wore loose-fitting black duck jackets and trousers over whatever clothing they had been wearing when they were arrested. On their heads were black cotton caps with brims, universally too large. These covered their ears as well as the tops of their heads. There were more than thirty of them, more than the Tatra's dump body could comfortably accommodate sitting down. It was necessary for them to line the three walls of the truck bed (the rear wall of the dump truck was slanted) standing up and hanging on to the wall and each other.
It was just after six in the morning, and they had just been fed. Breakfast had been a hunk of dark bread and a veal, potato, and cabbage soup. It was hearty fare and tasty. The intention of the prison authorities was obviously to provide adequate nutrition for the prisoners. There would be a second meal, bread and lard, and a third at night, always a gulyas (stew). This sometimes had paprika, making the traditional Hungarian stew, and sometimes just chunks of meat floating in a rich broth with potatoes and cabbage.
When all the prisoners had climbed onto the Tatra truck, the guard with t
he clipboard went back inside the prison. The other two guards went to a small BMW motorcycle, kicked it into life, and waited for the truck to leave the courtyard.
W E B Griffin - Men at War 4 - The Fighting Agents Page 20
