Part 15 (1/2)

She dropped to her knees on the pillows beside him.

”He's all right, isn't he?” she challenged. ”I know you-”

”And I know you, as Moses said to the slave girl.”

”And if he wasn't, you'd be miserable. And if you didn't know, you'd be all tense. You're relaxed and making jokes, and that means that you've heard something good.”

”That's not why I'm relaxed, as Samson said to Delilah,” Canidy said. ”But, yeah, honey, he's all right. I was a little worried, but the rough part of what he was doing is over.”

”Oh, baby, I'm happy for you,” she said.

”And you're not curious about your roommate?”

”I don't know what you're talking about,” she said. ”I don't have roommates. If I had a roommate, I couldn't greet you at the door wearing nothing but a sheepskin jacket and a smile. So I don't want a roommate. Get the idea?”

”What about good ol' Chast.i.ty?”

”Charity,” she corrected him automatically. Then, ”Charity? She's coming here?”

”In the next couple of days,” Canidy said. ”What I was thinking was that maybe you could take a couple of days off.”

”For what purpose?” she asked suspiciously.

”So she could stay here with Doug Dougla.s.s,” Canidy said.

”If she moved in here, I'd never get rid of her,” Ann said. ”How long is she going to be in London, anyway?”

”Permanently,” he said.

”Then no, period,” Ann said. ”Charity cannot stay here. She would move in, and I wouldn't have the heart to throw her out, and that would be the end of us making love on the pillows.”

”In that case, screw her,” Canidy said. ”Your logic is irrefutable. ”

She threw herself at him and nibbled his ear.

”You keep that up, you know what's going to happen,” he said.

”I hope, I hope, I hope,” Ann said. Then she said, ”d.a.m.n, I'm glad Eric's all right. I love you when you're like this.”

”Like what?”

”Happy and h.o.r.n.y,” Ann said. ”Where is he?”

”Ah, come on, Mata Hari,” he said.

”I was just trying to find out how long you'd be gone, and where you'll be going.”

”Eric at this very moment is somewhere on the European landma.s.s, riding down a forest road between towering pines,” he said. ”That tell you anything?”

”No,” she said. ”And I don't really mean to pry.”

”I know,” he said.

Eric Fulmar, at that very moment, was walking down a bas.e.m.e.nt corridor in the munic.i.p.al jail in Pecs, Hungary. He was handcuffed to Professor Friedrich Dyer, and both of them wore chain hobbles.

A member of the Black Guard, an SS-like organization owing its allegiance to Admiral Horthy, the Regent of Hungary, stopped them by a cell, unlocked the handcuffs, and pushed Professor Dyer inside. Then he pushed Fulmar into motion again, until he came to the next cell door. He retrieved his handcuffs, then pushed Fulmar into the cell.

V.

1.

OSS VIRGINIA STATION 5 FEBRUARY 1943.

Cynthia Chenowith had elected to skip the evening meal. When she had finished her bath, she would dine on Ritz crackers and canned Vienna sausages and Nescafe from the PX store. The Vienna sausages tasted like soap and would more than likely give her indigestion, and boiling water for the Nescafe (indeed, possessing an electric hot plate) was a specific violation of station regulations for trainees, but she desperately needed a bath, and she didn't want to go to supper, or for that matter to leave the privacy of her room.

His name was Horace G. Hammersmith. It had been impossible in the case of Lt. Horace G. Hammersmith, Signal Corps, U.S. Army, to obey either the spirit or the letter of the regulation that forbade any interest in, or discussion of, the private life of fellow trainees. Horace Hammersmith was also known as Greg Hammer, and Greg Hammer was a movie star in private life. He wasn't up there with Clark Gable or Tyrone Power, but his rough-hewn face, his astonis.h.i.+ngly golden wavy hair, and his football player's build had left no question in any of the trainees' minds from the moment they first saw him that Lt. Horace G. Hammersmith was really him! really him!

And from the moment Lt. Hammersmith had seen Miss Chenowith, he had made it plain that he found her fascinating. At first, Cynthia had thought it was simply a case of movie-staritis. Without arrogance, as a simple statement of fact, she realized that she was the best looking of the half-dozen women at Virginia Station. As a movie star accustomed to the adoration of his female fans, Cynthia reasoned, Hammersmith had come to believe that the pick of the herd, or the pride, or the flock, or whatever word fitted the half-dozen women at Virginia Station, was his.

His Training Group had begun training six weeks before Cynthia's. The way the school was set up (before she had come to Virginia Station as a trainee, Cynthia had read Eldon Baker's training syllabus), incoming trainees were placed under the supervision of trainees who had finished their training and were awaiting a.s.signment. The announced purpose was to spare the training staff the mundane work of seeing to the issue of equipment, the first painful hours of calisthenics, the explanation of the rules, and so on. The real reason was so that the training staff could judge how well the ”senior” trainees dealt with subordinates-to see if they could inspire cooperation. There was no place on an operational OSS team for someone who antagonized, intentionally or otherwise, the others on the team.

Lt. Horace G. Hammersmith had been as good and as natural a leader of his peers at Virginia Station as Greg Hammer had been a leader in the movies. Despite herself, Cynthia had come to like him. And she found that her first snap judgment of him had been almost entirely wrong. She had found Hammersmith to be really shy, rather than being arrogant. And she learned that, rather than being awed with himself as a movie star, he thought the whole movie business was rather funny.

Over the weeks, she had learned that he was an electrical engineer who had been sent to Los Angeles by the Murray Hill division of the Bell Telephone Laboratories to supervise the installation of a recording studio at Continental Studios.

”Lana Turner,” he told her one afternoon while they were taking a five-minute break on a ten-mile run, ”was discovered in Schwab's Drug Store. I was discovered having dinner with a vice president of Continental Studios, Stan Fine, at the Villa Friscati.”

”Stanley Fine?” she asked, genuinely surprised.

”Uh-huh,” he said.

”We're not supposed to be talking about our private lives, you know,” she said.

”I know,” he said, ”and I also know you know Stan.”

Then he'd looked at his watch, and the five-minute break was over, and he'd jumped to his feet and blown his whistle, and they'd resumed the ten-mile run. That night, at supper, he had sat down beside her and resumed the conversation where he'd broken it off.

”Over a steak, which Bell Labs was paying for, I was explaining to Stanley why it was going to cost Continental Studios a bunch of money more than they expected to get what they wanted, when this fat little bald-headed man walked up to the table and said, in an accent you could cut with a knife, 'So tell me, Stanley, who's your friend? And vy I haven't zeen any film?' ”

”Max Liebermann,” Cynthia said, laughing at Hammersmith's apt mimicry of the founder and chairman of the board of Continental Studios.

”Right,” Hammersmith said. ”But I didn't know who he was. So Stanley said, 'Uncle Max, he's the engineer from Bell Telephone.' ”

” 'What I vant to know is can he ride a horz?' Max said,” Hammersmith went on. ” 'If he can ride a horz, I tink he's Major Porter. We G.o.d a h.e.l.l uf a problem wit dat, Stanley, if I G.o.d to tell you.' ”

By then, Cynthia was giggling at the mimicry.