“I don’t know what you’ve got planned for me, why I’m here and not in Australia, but if it means that Baker is my control, you’re going to have to get yourself another boy.”
“You can be a real pain in the ass sometimes, Jim,” Donovan said.
“And this is one of them. Just who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”
Whittaker’s reply came a long moment later.
“I know I’m talking to the head of the OSS,” he said.
“Not Uncle Bill, who used to bounce me on his knee. I’m not asking for any special treatment. I don’t know what my alternatives are, but whatever they are, I’ll take them, rather than go anywhere with him as my control.”
Donovan glared at him.
“You have a reason for feeling that way, I presume?”
“There are two kinds of controls,” Whittaker said.
“Both profess great sadness when somebody gets bagged. One kind means it. Baker is the other kind.
Baker is too willing to accept risks with somebody else’s life. He sees ‘the big picture’ much too clearly.”
They locked eyes for a moment, and then Donovan asked, “Did Ellis mention anything about dinner tonight?”
The question surprised Whittaker.
“No,” he said.
“He didn’t. “Then he thought a moment.
“Don’t tell me I’m to have dinner with Baker?”
“Not with Baker,” Donovan said. And then, when he was sure in his own mind that Ellis hadn’t said anything about the dinner and that Whittaker in fact did not know, he added, “With the President.”
“Oh?” Whittaker said.
“There will be no repetition, nothing remotely resembling a repetition of what happened the last time you had dinner with him,” Donovan said.
“I was a little crazy the last time,” Whittaker said.
“And I don’t want to find myself locked up in a loony bin again.”
“You take my point,” Donovan said evenly.
Whittaker nodded.
“Is dinner his idea, or yours?” he asked.
“His idea,” Donovan said.
“But when I told him you were in Washington, I was pretty sure he’d want to see you.”
“You’re being devious again,” Whittaker said.
“Trust me, Jimmy,” Donovan said, smiling.
“You, I trust,” Whittaker said.
“Ellis has some dossiers, and some other material, I want you to look at,” Donovan said.
“By the time you’re finished, I should be finished here; and we can go over to the house.”
The President of the United States traveled from 1600 Pennsylvania to Embassy Row in a four-car convoy: There was a District of Columbia police car with flashing red lights; then a black Chevrolet full of Secret Service agents; a 1939 Packard limousine (not the presidential limousine); and finally another Chevrolet packed with Secret Service agents.
The gate in the wall was already open when the convoy arrived. The police car and the tailing Secret Service car pulled to the curb and stopped. The lead Secret Service car and the Packard drove through the gate, which closed immediately after them.
When the two cars stopped, two burly Secret Service agents half trotted to the limousine. One of them reached in and swung the President’s feet outward.
Then he hauled him from the car and erect. Then he and the other agent, with an ease born of practice, made a cradle of their locked arms and carried him to and up the kitchen stairs. By the time they got there, a third Secret Service agent had taken a collapsible wheelchair from the trunk of the Chevrolet, trotted with it to the kitchen, and had it unfolded and waiting when the President was carried to it.
“One of you,” the President of the United States said, “smells of something that didn’t come out of an after-shave bottle.
“My Sin’?”
The burly Secret Service agent now pushing the wheelchair chuckled.
“No comment, Mr. President,” he said.
The other agent trotted ahead and pushed open doors until he reached the double sliding doors to the library, both of which he slid open.
“Is this the place with the booze?” the President asked as he was rolled in.
Donovan and Whittaker, who had been sitting on identical couches at right angles to a carved sandstone fireplace, stood up.
“Good evening, Mr. President,” Donovan said.