W E B Griffin – Men at War 4 – The Fighting Agents

“I got your name on the list. Captain, but as a trainee, and trainees can’t have private cars.”

“But as I’ve shown you, I’m not a trainee,” Whittaker said.

“Look, call Baker and tell him I’m here, and driving a car.”

The guard went into his little shack and a moment later came out again, and said, “Mr. Baker says come right to his office, Captain. It’s in the main house. You can’t miss it.”

The road wound through a stand of pine trees, and as he was coming out of it, he passed a group of twelve or fifteen trainees taking a run. They were carrying, in front of them, at “Port Arms,” Springfield Model 1903 caliber.3006 rifles, not that it was expected they would ever use one, but to make the physical conditioning a little tougher.

He slowed down, and glanced out the side window at them as he passed them. And saw Cynthia Chenowith. She had her hair hidden under a GI fatigue habit, and the truth was that he saw her breasts flopping around under her fatigue jacket and marveled at that for a moment before he recognized her.

“Oh, shit! “he said with great disgust, then stepped on the accelerator.

Eldon Baker’s office was in what had been the breakfast room of the mansion, a rather small room whose floor-length doors opened onto a flagstone patio, and beyond that to a flat grassy area that Whittaker remembered as having been a putting green.

Baker was sitting behind a government-issue gray metal desk when Whittaker walked in. He was a pudgy-faced man in his thirties. He was wearing fatigues, but where an officer would have worn the insignia of his rank and branch of service, there was a square insignia embroidered in blue: a triangle within the square, and the letters “U.S.” It was the insignia worn by civilian experts attached to the U.S. Army in the field. Baker had been a State Department intelligence officer before joining the OSS, where he was listed on the OSS Table of Organization as “Chief, Recruitment and Training.” So far as Whittaker knew, he had never been in the service.

“Well, hello, Jim,” Baker said.

“We rather expected you last night.”

“You look very military, Eldon,” Whittaker said.

“Am I expected to salute?”

“We don’t salute around here,” Baker said.

“Neither do we wear insignia of rank or branch of service.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Whittaker asked.

“What are you doing here? Well, that’s very simple. You haven’t gone through the course and…”

“What is Cynthia Chenowith doing running around in fatigues and carrying a Springfield?”

“Isn’t that self-evident? She’s going through the course. And doing rather well. Frankly, much better than I expected she would.”

“To what end?” Whittaker asked.

“Again, isn’t that self-evident?”

“You’re out of your fucking mind, Eldon,” Whittaker said matter-of factly

“What the hell is the matter with you?”

“I had hoped that our relationship would be amicable,” Baker said.

“You’re making that difficult.”

“Are you telling me you seriously propose to send that girl out operationally?”

Whittaker asked.

“Nothing specific at the moment, but when the opportunity presents itself…”

“And Bill Donovan’s going along with that insane notion?”

“Obviously, it has Colonel Donovan’s approval,” Baker said.

“And, as obviously, it’s really none of your business, is it?”

“I’m making it my business,” Whittaker said.

“Have you some explanation for not coming here as you were directed to do?” Baker said.

“You will notice I have changed the subject.”

“I don’t have to explain anything to you, Eldon,” Whittaker said.

“I don’t work for you. I don’t even know what I’m doing in the States.”

There was more, Whittaker thought, than simple chemistry to explain why he had disliked Eldon Baker from the moment he had met him. He could prepare a long list of Things-Wrong-with-Eldon-Baker, headed by Baker’s ruthlessness, and running down to such items as pompous, overbearing, and the compleat bureaucrat, but it was the chemistry primarily responsible for the inevitable verbal flare-ups whenever they were together.

Baker now chose to tolerate Whittaker.

“There’s a mission envisioned for you,” he said.

“What kind of a mission?”

Baker ignored the question.

“Prior to which it has been decided that you will go through the course.”

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