“Decided by whom?”
“It’s OSS policy,” Baker said, “that everybody will go through the school.”
“You’re weaseling,” Whittaker said.
“Donovan doesn’t know you expect me to go through this school of yours for spies, does he? You were just going to tell me that’s the ‘way it is.” Screw you, Eldon. That won’t work. Canidy told me that Donovan told him that neither one of us had to do this. For Christ’s sake, I was running the school in England.”
“You have no training in infiltration by rubber boat from a submarine,” Baker said.
“Obviously, it was not my intention to send you through the whole course…”
“Oh?”
“And actually, I had planned to ask you to teach a few hours. I thought it would really get and keep the men’s attention if they understood they were being taught by someone who had been operational.”
“If that’s a bone you’re throwing, gnaw on it yourself, “Whittaker said. He started out of the room, then turned and stopped at the door.
“I’m going back to Washington,” he said.
“And it’s going to take Wild Bill himself to order me back here. And then I may not come.”
“Obviously, there’s no purpose in debating this with you, “Baker said.
When he went outside the building, determined to find Cynthia, Whittaker saw her immediately. In the time it had taken him to go through the confrontation with Baker, her group of trainees had run from where he had seen them on the road to the mansion.
Presumably, he decided, they had run all the way. Cynthia and another woman, both of them red-faced and heaving from the exertion, were sitting on the ground, their backs against a wall.
He walked over to her. She looked up at him but said nothing.
One of the senior trainees walked quickly up to him. He was tall and muscular and very handsome, and looked somehow familiar to Whittaker.
“May I help you, Sir?” he asked.
“Take a walk,” Whittaker said.
He met Cynthia’s eyes.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“What does it look like?” she replied.
“Jesus Christ, if it wasn’t so stupid, it would be funny,” he said.
“Jimmy, why don’t you just turn around and walk away from here?” Cynthia asked.
Instead, he reached down and grabbed her wrist and jerked her to her feet.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she snapped.
He kissed her, moving so quickly there was no time for her to avert her face, and so surprising her that it was a moment before she twisted free.
One of the trainees laughed and applauded.
“What was that all about?
“Cynthia said, seeming torn between outrage and tears.
“Why did you do that?”
“Two reasons,” he said.
“To remind you that you’re a woman. And because I love you.”
“Damn you!” Cynthia said, fighting an infuriating urge to cry.
“Now, just a minute here! “the senior trainee said.
“Greg, don’t!
“Cynthia called quickly.
“He’s crazy. He’ll kill you!”
The trainee looked at him warily and with great interest.
“Relax,” Whittaker said.
“I’m a lover, not a fighter. “Then, feeling very pleased with himself, he walked over to the Packard, got in, and started it up.
Rank hath its privileges. In this case that meant that the commanding officer of the 344the Fighter Group was driven in a jeep from the final briefing to the revetment where his aircraft was parked. The other pilots rode jammed together in the backs of trucks.
The commanding officer of the 344the Fighter Group, Eighth United States Air Force, was Lieutenant Colonel Peter (“Doug”) Douglass, Jr.” USMA ’39, a slight, pleasant-appearing officer who looked, until you saw his eyes, much too young to be either a fighter group commander or a lieutenant colonel. He was, in fact, twenty-five years old.
He was wearing a horsehide A-2 jacket, which had a zipper front and knit cuffs. On its back was painted the flag of the Republic of China and a legend in Chinese stating that the wearer had come to China to fight the Japanese invader, and that a reward in gold would be paid for his safe return in case he fell from the sky.