“You told the Navy?” Staley asked.
Ellis, grunting, took a small leather wallet from his hip pocket and handed it to Staley.
“It means what it says on there,” he said.
“You carry one of those things, everybody in the government, civilian agencies, as well as any military, has got to give you what you ask for. If they don’t like it, they can bitch, later, after they give you what you ask for.”
“Jesus Christ!” Staley said, and handed the OSS credentials back.
“You’re going to get one of those,” Ellis said.
“You fuck up with it, Charley, we’ll send you someplace that’ll make Portsmouth navy prison look like heaven. And no second chances. You read me?”
“Loud and clear, Chief,” Staley said.
“You’re also going to get a badge and credentials saying you’re a deputy U.S. marshal. That’s in case anybody asks why you’re carrying a gun. You try to get by with that. I mean, you don’t show the OSS credentials until you don’t have any other choice. You understand?”
Staley nodded.
“Same thing applies to the marshal’s credentials. Fuck up with them once, and you’re finished.”
“Okay, okay,” Staley said.
“So like I was saying, the Navy found you in Great Lakes, and I remembered that we always got along pretty good, and that you weren’t as dumb as you
look, so I told them to see if you would volunteer. And you did. And you got through the school all right, and here you are.”
“Yeah,” Staley said.
“Here I am.”
“You can walk out of here right now, Charley,” Ellis said.
“I’ll get you any billet you want in the Navy. But if you stay, you’re here for good. And there’s liable to be more to it before we’re done than driving the Colonel’s Buick.”
He looked at Staley and waited for a response.
“I’m in. Chief,” Staley said.
Ellis nodded and then dialed one of the three telephones on his desk.
“I’m sending a guy named Staley down there,” he said.
“Get him credentials, and take him by the arms room and get him a.45 and a shoulder holster, and then take him over to the house.”
He hung the phone up.
“You’ll get a rations and quarters allowance from the Navy,” Ellis said, “and a rations and quarters allowance from us. Otherwise you would wind up sleeping on a park bench and starving. Until you can find someplace to live, we’ll put you up in the garage at the house.”
“The house?”
“It’s a mansion over in Rock Creek we have,” Ellis explained.
“There’s a couple of apartments over the garage. Nice. Get yourself settled, and then come back here in the morning. I probably shouldn’t have to tell you this, but I will. There’s two women at the house. They’re absolutely off-limits.”
“Got it,” Staley said.
“You fixed all right for money?” Ellis asked.
“Fine.”
Ellis pushed a lever on the intercom.
“Will you have somebody take Staley to the photo lab please?” he said, then gestured for Staley to leave.
Ellis was pleased with the way things had turned out with Staley. It had been a risk, recruiting him. But he’d done well in the school (that sonofabitch Baker had even been impressed; he’d called and said he had a job for Staley if what he was going to do in Washington was “relatively unimportant”), and now that Ellis had talked to him, he thought he could handle what was expected of him here, and, very important, that he would get along with the Colonel. He hadn’t been worried about how Staley would get along with Captain Peter Douglass, Sr.” USN, Donovan’s deputy (a Navy petty officer and a Navy officer would understand each other), but the Colonel might have been a problem.
Colonel “Wild Bill” Donovan had been one hell of a soldier in his day. He’d won the Medal of Honor in France with the “Fighting 69the,” the National Guard regiment from New York City. Between wars, he’d been a rich and powerful lawyer in New York City and Washington. He had little patience for people
he decided were fools. But Staley was no fool. The way he’d handled himself at the school and the way he acted now had proved that. He would fit in.