The propeller on the engine at Fine’s right began to turn slowly as the starter ground, and then the engine caught.
“What you do,” Thomasson said dryly, “is taxi to the threshold with just two engines.”
“I see,” Fine said.
“Then, when you get there, Captain, before you take off, I suggest you start the other two.”
Fine looked at him in disbelief.
“Go ahead,” Thomasson said, smiling. “There always has to be a first time.”
Fine had picked up the microphone.
“Chanute, Air Corps Four-oh-one in front of the terminal for taxi and takeoff.”
“Well, at least you know that much,” Thomasson’s metallic voice came over the intercom. “I’ve had guys in the right seat who got on the horn and called ‘Yoo-hoo, Tower! Anybody there?’”
The tower came back: “Air Corps Four-oh-one, taxi left on taxiway six to the threshold of the active. The active is three-two. You are number one to take off. There is no traffic in the immediate area. The altimeter is two-niner-niner-niner, the time one-five past the hour, and the winds are five, gusting to fifteen, from the north.”
“Where the hell are the brakes on this thing?” Fine asked.
The pilot showed him how to release the brakes.
Fine put his hand on the throttles and ever so gently nudged them forward. The pitch of the engines changed, and the B-17E had started to move.
A week later, he was certified as B-17 qualified, and a week after that as pilot in command. Two weeks after that, he scrawled his signature to a document of the 319th Bomber Squadron: “The undersigned herewith assumes command, Stanley S. Fine, Captain, Air Corps, Commanding.”
He then set about to make the 319th Bomber Squadron the best squadron in the group, in the wing, in the Army Air Corps. He was as happy as he could ever remember.
I should have known it couldn’t last, he thought, looking balefully at Dick Canidy.
“Cue the rolling drums and the trumpets,” he said. “Our hero is about to volunteer.”
“Then let me be the first to welcome you, Captain,” Canidy said, “to Donovan’s Dilettantes.”
“I thought so,” Fine said. “What would happen if I changed my mind again?”
“Then there would be questions about your mental stability,” Canidy said. “Psychiatric evaluation would be ordered. It would take a long time. For the duration, at least.”
“Can they do that?” Fine the lawyer asked, surprised.
“They can, and they do, Captain Fine,” Canidy said.
3
ANACOSTIA NAVAL AIR STATION
WASHINGTON, D.C.
JUNE 29, 1942
When Canidy and Fine landed at Anacostia, Chief Ellis was there with the Buick to meet them.
“Give Captain Fine a hand with his gear, please, Chief,” Canidy said. “I’ve got to see about getting this thing fueled, and I want to check the weather.”
When they had Fine’s Val-Paks and his footlocker in the Buick, Chief Ellis led Captain Fine into base ops, where they found Canidy in the weather room getting a three-day forecast from a Navy meteorologist.
As the weatherman was concluding, Captain Chester Wezevitz—the Navy officer whom Canidy had told that the COI’s job was suppressing VD—came into the room.
“VD must be a hell of a problem in the fleet,” he said. “I had a look at your airplane, Major. Carpets, upholstered leather seats, and everything.”
“You noticed, I’m sure,” Canidy said, “that the seats fold down into couches. We think of it, Captain, as our airborne prophylactics-testing laboratory.”
“Shit,” Wezevitz said, grinning.
“It is considered so important to the overall war effort,” Canidy said, “that I have been given a copilot to share the strain of my burden. May I present Captain Fine?”
As Fine, baffled, was shaking hands with Wezevitz, Lieutenant Commander Edwin H. Bitter, with the golden rope of an admiral’s aide hanging down his arm, walked into the weather room.
He and Canidy looked at each other for a moment without speaking.
“Well,” Canidy broke the silence, “look at the dog robber.”
Bitter offered his hand.
“It’s good to see you again, Dick,” he said a little stiffly. “In the Air Corps, are you?”
“That’s right,” Canidy said. “Captain Fine, Commander Bitter. Do you remember him? He was at that dinner in Washington.”
“Of course,” Fine said. “He went off to the Flying Tigers with you.”
The eyebrows of the Navy captain rose in surprise. “You’re now in the Air Corps, eh?” Bitter asked.
“The Air Corps,” Canidy said.
The awkwardness and tension between Bitter and Canidy was evident to Ellis, Fine, and Wezevitz.
“The admiral’s flight is all laid on, Commander,” Wezevitz said. “I presume that’s why you’re here?”
“Yes, Sir,” Bitter said. “The admiral asked me to check on it.”