“That’s not really important,” Wilkins said.
“You’ll have to take my word for it. You’re coming with me.”
Whittaker looked at him with amusement in his eyes, his left eyebrow cocked quizzically.
“That just won’t wash,” Whittaker said.
Wilkins took his OSS identity card and held it out.
Captain Whittaker rumbled in his pockets and came out with a nearly identical card and held it out. Wilkins saw that there were two differences in the cards. His own card bore the serial number 1109 and was signed “for the Chairman, The Joint Chiefs of Staff” by Captain Peter Douglass, Sr.” USN. Whittaker’s card bore the serial number 29 and was signed by Colonel W J. Donovan, GSC, USA. Obviously, this handsome flyboy had been in the OSS almost from the beginning.
“What is all this, mon cher?” the Frenchwoman asked, softly, in French.
“Nothing at all,” Whittaker replied, in French, and then looked at Wilkins, waiting for an explanation.
Wilkins handed him the radiogram from Donovan.
“I’ll be damned,” Whittaker said.
“When’s my plane?”
“Tomorrow,” Wilkins said.
“At 0915. You had a seat on this morning’s flight, but you missed it.”
“It appears,” Whittaker said to the Frenchwoman in French, “that we’re going to have to climb the Great Pyramid again.”
She blushed attractively.
“There are quarters available, if you’ve checked out of your hotel,” Wilkins said.
“That’s very kind of you, Sir,” Whittaker said.
“But that won’t be necessary.
I’ll be staying with a friend.”
The Frenchwoman blushed attractively again.
“War is hell, isn’t it?” Whittaker, smiling broadly, asked Mr. Wilkins.
[THREE]
Virginia Highway 234 near Washington, D.C.
There were four men in the 1942 black Buick Roadmaster, riding in silence.
There had been a little snow, but the road was clear, and the illuminated needle of the speedometer pointed just past seventy miles per hour. There was virtually no traffic on the road, not even the glow of distant headlights over the gentle hills before them.
When the flashing red signal lantern suddenly appeared in the road before them, Chief Ellis was startled. But, even as the driver started stabbing at the brakes, Ellis reached under the seat and came out with a Thompson machine pistol
In the backseat, Colonel William J. Donovan looked up from the document he was reading. Ellis had rigged a really nice reading light on a flexible shaft.
The light turned automobile rides into work sessions rather than wastes of time.
“What is it?” Captain Peter Douglass asked.
“Dunno,” Ellis replied, and then, almost immediately, “It’s the nicking cops!”
“How fast were we going?” Donovan asked calmly.
“About seventy, Sir,” Staley, the driver, said.
Staley was in civilian clothing. Ellis was in uniform, except for his brimmed chief’s cap, which was on the seat beside him. But in his blue, insignia-less overcoat, he appeared at casual glance to be a portly, ruddy-faced civilian.
Ellis shoved the Thompson back under the front seat as the driver pulled onto the shoulder.
The Virginia state trooper, in a stiff-brimmed hat, swaggered up to the car.
“May I see your license and registration, please, Sir?” he asked, with ritual courtesy.
They were handed over.
“Sir, are you Charles D. Staley, of this Q Street, Northwest, address, in the District?”
“Yes, Sir,” the driver said.
“And this vehicle is the property of…” He paused to examine the registration with his flashlight.”… W J. Donovan?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Does Mr. Donovan know you are driving his vehicle?”
“I’m Donovan,” Donovan said. The trooper flashed his light in Donovan’s face.
“Yes, Sir,” he said. He returned his attention to the driver.
“Sir, you went through a speed-detection area. You were clocked, over a measured quarter mile, at seventy-three point six miles per hour.”
“I didn’t realize I was going that fast,” the driver said.
“Two state troopers will testify that you were, Sir,” the trooper said.
“I’m going to have to issue you a citation. You will be charged with reckless driving.
The law is that any speed twenty miles in excess of the posted speed limit is considered reckless driving. Are you aware, Sir, that in order to conserve gasoline and rubber for the war effort, the speed limit across the nation is now thirty-five miles per hour?”