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 handle 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 differing 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. Fifteen minutes later, after changing Joe, he carried the baby into his and Sarah’s bed, his wholly 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. “He 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, he’ll 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 willing 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 pillows, 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 can-apés.
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.”
“I 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. “Should I jump out the window?”
“I 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, “I 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?”
“The Navy is going to run Catalinas along your route,” Bitter said. “I assigned the Catalinas.”
“What are Catalinas?” Sarah asked.
“Long-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.
“No,” 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. “Sausage. 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.
“My, aren’t we on our white horse this morning?” Douglass said.
“There are some things officers just don’t do,” Bitter said.
“Aside 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.
“Talk about uncontrollable mouths,” Charity said to Douglass. Douglass walked 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 him 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. When he came out of the briefing room, his father was there with Chief Ellis.
“I’m sorry about last night,” his father said. “I really would have liked to have dinner with you. Charity take care of you all right?”
“Just fine,” Douglass said.
“And on that clever little line,” Charity said, “Charity will fold her tent and steal away.”
“You have to go?” Doug asked.
“It was nice to see you again, Major Douglass,” she said, offering her hand like a man. “Take care of yourself.”
“And it was nice to see you, too, Miss Hoche,” Douglass said, and then laughed out loud. “Who do you think you’re fooling?” he asked.
Lieutenant Commander Edwin W. Bitter, USN, came running down the marble corridor. He was out of uniform. He had no tie and no hat, and he was wearing a battered leather aviator’s jacket with a Kuomintang flag painted on the back.
He saw Captain Douglass.
“I don’t mean to intrude,” he said.
“Rack his ass, Dad,” Douglass said. “For the first time in his life he’s out of uniform.”
“I came to wish you Godspeed,” Bitter said.
“Thank you,” Douglass said, a little uncomfortably.
“And to remind you that I have been a self-righteous sonofabitch as long as you’ve known me, and therefore you should not have been surprised.”
“You’re an asshole,” Douglass said,“but I love you.”
“And I wish to apologize to you, too, Charity,” Bitter said.
“That’s all right, Edwin,” Charity said. “I’ve known what a self-righteous asshole you are for a long time, too.”
“I don’t think I wish to know what this is all about,”Captain Douglass said.
“No,” Doug said,“you don’t.” And then he said,“I gotta go.”
He put out his hand to his father, who shook it.
"Hug him, for God’s sake! ” Charity ordered.
They both looked at her, and then embraced.
Doug punched Bitter on the arm, then turned to Charity.
“Do I get a hug too?” she asked.
“A kiss, but only to shut your runaway mouth,” Doug said.
“How dare you, sir?” Charity said, grabbing his ears and kissing him with mock passion on the lips.
It began as a joke, for the amusement of spectators, but it didn’t end that way. When they finally stopped, Charity looked very much as if she was going to cry.
“It’s cold,” Douglass announced, “and two fans make a lot of wind. I think everybody ought to stay inside.”
The ground crew was already at the glistening, somehow menacing twin-engine fighter airplane. There was a ladder against the nose of the fuselage, which sat between the twin-engine booms, and Doug Douglass quickly climbed up it. When he was in the cockpit, a ground crewman climbed the ladder and saw that he was strapped properly into the parachute. Then he climbed back down and removed the ladder.
There were ten meatballs, each representing the kill of a Japanese aircraft, painted on the fuselage nose above the legend “Major Doug Douglass.” The first time Charity saw them, she had thought they were thrilling and very sexy. Now they made her cry, for they reminded her that he was a fighter pilot. What fighter pilots did, presuming they could indeed make it across the Atlantic Ocean, was fight. She wondered if she was seeing him for the last time.
"Clear!” Douglass called down from the cockpit. The starter ground, and the left engine started. The sudden loud noise startled Charity. Then the right propeller began to move, blowing away a cloud of light blue smoke. She saw Douglass pull a helmet over his head and then snap a face mask in place.
He raised his left hand in a very casual wave. One of the engines roared, and the P-38 moved off the parking stand.
He was almost immediately hidden from their sight by
other parked aircraft, but they stood there against the glass of the terminal and waited. Two or three minutes later, they heard the sound of an airplane taking off. Douglass’s P-38C, its wheels already up, flashed past them. The plane turned to the right and was out of sight in thirty seconds.
"He’ll be all right, Charity,” Ed Bitter said. “There are no better pilots than Doug.”
Charity smiled at him. For him, that was a real apology.
IV
Chapter ONE
The Foreign Ministry
Berlin, Germany
20 December 1942
The return to Berlin of Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz, recent German representative to the Franco-German Armistice Commission for Morocco, posed a problem at the highest levels of the Foreign Ministry: No one knew what to do with him.
In some circles, von Heurten-Mitnitz arrived under something of a cloud. There was a suggestion—ever so tactfully phrased; they were, after all, diplomats—that perhaps he had been just a bit too willing to accept the loss of Morocco to the Americans. He might after all have considered making his way to Tunisia. From there, when the Führer decided the time was propitious, the Wehrmacht would launch its counterattack for the recapture of Morocco.
His defenders, who included his brother, the Graf von Heurten-Mitnitz, who was not only a Party luminary but reputed to be one of the few aristocrats with whom the Führer was personally comfortable, pointed out, on the one hand, that transportation between Morocco and Tunisia was currently rather hazardous, and on the other, that Helmut had been ordered onto the Junkers transport which flew him to Italy.
He was defended as well by most of his peers in the Foreign Ministry. He was a career diplomat, as indeed members of his family had been for centuries. He had done his duty as he saw it, and his duty was to make himself available for further service to Germany rather than to enter American captivity. He certainly could not be held responsible for the Americans blatantly violating French neutrality, or for the French, true to form, flying the white flag the moment they had come under fire.
Some of the less politically savvy of these Foreign Ministry friends proposed that he go to the Reichschancellery to personally brief the Führer about what had happened in Morocco. His brother had gotten him out of that. The Graf von Heurten-Mitnitz knew that Adolf Hitler sometimes blamed the messenger for the bad news.
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