The Secret Warriors - By W.E.B. Griffin Page 0,123
listed as missing.”
“You said you missed him,” Whittaker said.
“As indeed I do,” she said. “He’s a fine, amusing, decent human being, and I pray he’s all right.”
“But?”
“We were married because it was expected of us,” she said. “One does what one is expected to do. And avoids what one is expected to avoid, which includes doing anything that would cause talk. In other words, I had to be Caesar’s wife while I was assigned to the War Office.”
He looked at her in surprise. He saw in her eyes that he had not misunderstood her meaning.
“This isn’t the War Office,” Whittaker said.
“And we are alone in the house,” she said. “I was thinking that perhaps we both have been waiting for the same tram.”
“Jesus H. Christ!” Whittaker said.
She licked her lips nervously. “I shock you, don’t I?” she asked. She stood up. “Would you rather I leave?”
“No,” he said, a tone of excitement in his voice. “For Christ’s sake, you can’t leave now.”
She nodded her head.
Carrying her fresh drink, he went to her and handed it to her. She took a sip and then set the glass on the table beside her chair.
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” she said. “But I just realized I have been hoping that something like this would happen from the moment I saw you looking at my breasts.”
“In the kitchen, you mean?” he asked.
She nodded.
She put her hand to his face.
“You looked so hungry,” she said. “So love-starved. I know the feeling.”
She took her hand from his cheek, caught his hand with hers, and directed it to the cord of her robe.
He tugged on it, and it came loose. He lowered his head and took her nipple in his mouth.
She held him there for a moment, then shrugged out of the robe and let it fall to the floor.
She stepped away from him and, looking into his eyes, pulled the towel off her head and shook her hair. Then she turned and walked naked to the canopied bed, threw the cover off, and slipped under the sheets.
“If Canidy finds out about this,” he said, “both our asses will be in a crack.”
“Then,” the Duchess of Stanfield said, “we shall have to be careful that he doesn’t find out, shan’t we?”
He went to the three doors to the apartment and carefully locked them. Then he walked toward the bed, shrugging out of his clothes.
He was later glad that he had locked them, for at ten minutes after four, several minutes after the duchess had woken up feeling frisky and had wakened him in what he thought was a delightfully wicked way, Lieutenant Jamison attempted entry without knocking.
“Whittaker!” Jamison called impatiently. “Open the damned door!”
Whittaker tried to open the door just wide enough to see what the sonofabitch wanted, but Jamison pushed his way inside, looked in genuine surprise at the duchess, and thereafter pretended she was invisible.
“Colonel Stevens was just on the horn,” he said. “You’re to come to the hangar at Croydon as soon as you can get there.”
“He say why?”
“No,” he said. “But he said bring a change of clothes, and either come by jeep or bring somebody along to drive the Ford back here.”
“Go take the tarpaulin off,” the duchess of Stanfield said. “I can drive the Ford.”
Then she got out of bed and trotted regally, stark naked, across the room to retrieve her bathrobe from where she had dropped it on the floor.
PART TWELVE
1
CROYDON AIRFIELD
LONDON, ENGLAND
0515 HOURS
AUGUST 19, 1942
They had a bit of trouble, as it turned out, gaining entrance to the field itself. The red-hatted soldiers of His Majesty’s Military Police, who guarded it, had been ordered to be on the lookout for a stolen American Ford staff car meeting the description of the one they were driving.
The MP officer of the guard, however, backed down before the icy indignation of Captain the Duchess Stanfield, WRAC, who was driving the car. Her Grace was incensed that anyone could imagine for a moment that she could possibly be found in the company of a car thief. And they were passed on to the field.
The C-46 was out of the hangar, and a snub-nosed English fuel truck was parked beside it. Its hose led to the auxiliary fuel tanks inside the fuselage. Canidy was standing in the aircraft door watching the proceedings. When he saw the Ford drive up, he came down the ladder.
“What’s going on?” Whittaker asked.
“I hate to say this, but the duchess doesn’t have the need to know,” Canidy said.