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

“So what else is new?

“Ann said.

“You’re about to get a roommate,” he said.

“You’ll be spending some time in London?”

“No,” he said.

“As a matter of fact, I’ve got a little trip to make. I’ll be gone a week or ten days.”

“Where are you going?” she asked quickly, softly.

“You’re not curious about your roommate?” he asked, ignoring the question.

“Where are you going, Dick?” she insisted.

“Come on, Annie,” he said.

“You know the rules.”

“To hell with the rules, and don’t call me Annie,” she said.

“After Fulmar?

“Ann asked.

“Who?”

She dropped to her knees on the pillows beside him.

“He’s all right, isn’t he?” she challenged.

“I know you–” “And I know you, as Moses said to the slave girl.”

“And if he wasn’t, you’d be miserable. And if you didn’t know, you’d be all tense. You’re relaxed and making jokes, and that means that you’ve heard something good.”

“That’s not why I’m relaxed, as Samson said to Delilah,” Canidy said.

“But, yeah, honey, he’s all right. I was a little worried, but the rough part of what he was doing is over.”

“Oh, baby, I’m happy for you,” she said.

“And you’re not curious about your roommate?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

“I don’t have roommates.

If I had a roommate, I couldn’t greet you at the door wearing nothing but a sheepskin jacket and a smile. So I don’t want a roommate. Get the idea?”

“What about good of’ Chastity?”

“Charity,” she corrected him automatically. Then, “Charity? She’s coming here?”

“In the next couple of days,” Canidy said.

“What I was thinking was that maybe you could take a couple of days off.”

“For what purpose?” she asked suspiciously.

“So she could stay here with Doug Douglass,” Canidy said.

“If she moved in here, I’d never get rid of her,” Ann said.

“How long is she going to be in London, anyway?”

“Permanently,” he said.

“Then no, period, “Ann said.

“Charity cannot stay here. She would move in, and I wouldn’t have the heart to throw her out, and that would be the end of us making love on the pillows.”

“In that case, screw her,” Canidy said.

“Your logic is irrefutable.”

She threw herself at him and nibbled his ear.

“You keep that up, you know what’s going to happen,” he said.

“I hope, I hope, I hope,” Ann said. Then she said, “Damn, I’m glad Eric’s all right. I love you when you’re like this.”

“Like what?”

“Happy and horny,” Ann said.

“Where is he?”

“Ah, come on, Mata Hari,” he said.

“I was just trying to find out how long you’d be gone, and where you’ll be going.”

“Eric at this very moment is somewhere on the European landmass, riding down a forest road between towering pines,” he said.

“That tell you anything?”

“No,” she said.

“And I don’t really mean to pry.”

“I know,” he said.

Eric Fulmar, at that very moment, was walking down a basement corridor in the municipal jail in Pecs, Hungary. He was handcuffed to Professor Friedrich Dyer, and both of them wore chain hobbles.

A member of the Black Guard, an SS-like organization owing its allegiance to Admiral Horthy, the Regent of Hungary, stopped them by a cell, unlocked the handcuffs, and pushed Professor Dyer inside. Then he pushed Fulmar into motion again, until he came to the next cell door. He retrieved his handcuffs, then pushed Fulmar into the cell.

lONE]

OSS Virginia Station

Cynthia Chenowith had elected to skip the evening meal. When she had finished her bath, she would dine on Ritz crackers and canned Vienna sausages and Nescafe from the PX store. The Vienna sausages tasted like soap and would more than likely give her indigestion, and boiling water for the Nescafe (indeed, possessing an electric hot plate) was a specific violation

of station regulations for trainees, but she desperately needed a bath, and she didn’t want to go to supper, or for that matter to leave the privacy of her room.

His name was Horace G. Hammersmith. It had been impossible in the case of It. Horace G. Hammersmith, Signal Corps, U.S. Army, to obey either the spirit or the letter of the regulation that forbade any interest in, or discussion of, the private life of fellow trainees. Horace Hammersmith was also known as Greg Hammer, and Greg Hammer was a movie star in private life. He wasn’t up there with Clark Gable or Tyrone Power, but his rough-hewn face, his astonishingly golden wavy hair, and his football player’s build had left no question in any of the trainees’ minds from the moment they first saw him that It. Horace G. Hammersmith was really himf And from the moment It. Hammersmith had seen Miss Chenowith, he had made it plain that he found her fascinating. At first, Cynthia had thought it was simply a case of movie-staritis. Without arrogance, as a simple statement of fact, she realized that she was the best looking of the half-dozen women at Virginia Station. As a movie star accustomed to the adoration of his female fans, Cynthia reasoned, Hammersmith had come to believe that the pick of the herd, or the pride, or the flock, or whatever word fitted the half-dozen women at Virginia Station, was his.

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