“Bearing up rather well considering what?”
“That he’s the official stud for the London-area Red Cross girls,” Whittaker said.
“Some of them are real man-eaters.”
“Damn you,” she said.
“Actually, the last time I saw him, he was staring moodily off into space, muttering Browning sonnets,” Whittaker said. ‘”How do I love Charity? Let me count the ways…. I love her…”” “That’s better,” Charity said.
“I’m going over there. I found out a couple of days ago.”
“Well, that should certainly change his social life,” Whittaker said, and then he asked the question that had been on his mind since he first saw Charity.
“Where’s the regular house mother?”
“Cynthia’s at the place in Virginia,” Charity said.
“What’s she doing there?”
“Going through the course,” Charity said.
“What course?”
“The regular course,” Charity said.
“What the hell is that all about?” he asked.
“What do you think?” Charity asked.
The notion that Cynthia was undergoing training to become an agent was so preposterous that he didn’t pursue it.
“I’ll go out there in the morning,” he said.
“Is my car here?”
“It is, but I’m not sure they allow you to have a car out there,” Charity said.
“I’ll take my chances,” he said.
“Now, if you will give me some whiskey to drink, I’ll brief you on the competition you’re going to face when you get to England. And just for the record, Charity, I came here over the very strenuous objections of this gentleman.”
“Staley’s my name, Captain,” Staley said, and offered his hand. Staley liked Whittaker. Ellis had said he would. He himself hadn’t been so sure. Officers are officers. But there was something about this guy that made him special.
“Over the strenuous objections of Mr. Staley,” Whittaker said.
“And now can I have some booze?”
He woke early, his body clock confused by the distances he’d covered, and aware that sometime around two in the afternoon, he would get very sleepy.
Worse, he thought, his mind would be dulled. And he wanted to be sharp when he saw Cynthia.
He took a shower in the large, tiled, two-headed shower where legend had it that Chesley Haywood Whittaker, his uncle “Chesty,” had died of a stroke.
The truth was that Chesty Whittaker had died in the saddle, on Pearl Harbor Day, and that Chief Ellis had manhandled the body over here so that it could be “found” in his own shower rather than in the bed of a young woman, the daughter of a college classmate, with whom he had had a two-year affair. The young woman’s name was Cynthia Chenowith.
Only a few people knew what had really happened: Wild Bill Donovan-who had been Chesty’s lifelong crony and with whom he had flown to Washington when Donovan had been summoned to the White House–knew. And Captain Douglass knew. And Chief Ellis. And Dick Canidy, Whittaker’s school chum and now number-three man in London for the OSS. And, of course, Jimmy Whittaker knew. He didn’t think Cynthia knew he knew, and that was the way he wanted to keep it. It didn’t matter to him, he told himself–and most of the time, he believed, it didn’t.
But he thought about it in the shower, and he thought about it when he backed the Packard out of the garage. The 1941 Packard 280 convertible coupe had been Chesty’s. Presumably, Chesty and Cynthia had been in it together on many happy occasions. He didn’t think they had made the beast with two backs in the backseat, but it was reasonable to presume that they had held hands, and kissed, and that sort of thing.
Despite the cold, when he was out of the District, he pulled to the side of the road and put the roof down. He had the heater going full blast, and he left the windows up, and it was really rather pleasant.
A quarter of a mile off the state highway into the Virginia property, well out of sight of the highway, a guard post had been erected, and Whittaker learned that Charity had been right about the car. They expected him, but not at the wheel of a car.
“I really don’t know what the hell to say,” the guard, wearing the uniform of a member of the National Park Service police, said.