“You don’t have the need to know, just yet,” Baker said.
“Fuck you,” Canidy said.
“You really should learn to control your mouth,” Baker flared. “One day it’s going to get you in trouble.”
There was a pause while Baker waited for an apology. He went on after none came: “It is important, Canidy. You’ll have to take my word for it.”
“If you say so, Eldon,” Canidy said sarcastically. He was trying to get under Baker’s skin, and he succeeded.
“You don’t really think we recruited Fine just to fly that airplane, do you?” Baker asked sarcastically.
“I wondered about that,” Canidy said.
“Fine has some interesting contacts in Europe,” Baker said. “And we have reason to believe his uncle has made substantial contributions to the Zionist movement.”
“I don’t understand that,” Canidy said.
“The Zionists have a very skillful intelligence service,” Baker said, as if patiently dealing with a backward child.
“I didn’t know that,” Canidy confessed.
“Much of what we know about German jet-engine development we got from the British, who got it from the Zionists,” Baker said. “And you’re shortly going to be joined at Summer Place by Second Lieutenant C. Holdsworth Martin the Third.”
“The Disciple, Junior?” Canidy asked, surprised. “Wait till Drew Pearson hears about that.”
Baker ignored him again. “He was at La Rosey in Switzerland with Fulmar,” Baker said.
“What the hell is so important about Fulmar?” Canidy asked.
“Important enough that I may order responsibility for Captain Whittaker transferred from Fort Knox to you, at Summer Place—if he can bring Fulmar with him.”
“How can I get Whittaker to talk Fulmar into anything if neither of us has the slightest idea what you want Fulmar to do?”
“We tell Whittaker that it’s something connected with the invasion of North Africa. That’s credible. But we simply cannot even suggest what we really want from Fulmar at this point.”
“I’ll be a sonofabitch if I understand any of this,” Canidy said.
“Good. You’re not supposed to.”
“What makes you think Fulmar will believe anything you have to say?” Canidy asked. “I suppose it’s occurred to you that you destroyed your credibility with Fulmar when you left him and me floating around in the Atlantic off Safi?” Canidy said.
“That’s where you come in,” Baker said. “Why do you think you were left behind? You ever wonder about that?”
“I was too mad to wonder about it,” Canidy said.
“Police detectives have an interrogation technique,” Baker said, “where one is a heartless sonofabitch, and another is kind, gentle, and understanding.”
“And I’m to be the good guy, right?”
“Now you’re getting the picture,” Baker said. “You’re not a sonofabitch like Baker; you were left behind, too.”
“The truth is that you are a genuine, heartless sonofabitch, and like being one,” Canidy said.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Baker said.
“Okay,” Canidy said. “I get the picture. Is this class about over now?”
“I was about to suggest it was,” Baker said, and waved his hand back down the pebble runway to where the D18 sat waiting for them.
PART SIX
1
THE WILLARD HOTEL
WASHINGTON, D.C.
JUNE 29, 1942
Sarah Child Bitter was kneeling on the floor of what at one time had been the suite Joseph Schild and Company, Merchant Bankers, maintained in Washington. The suite was now what she thought of as her first married home. What she was trying to do was force mashed carrots into Joe, a losing battle that was thankfully interrupted when the telephone rang. Long distance was calling for Commander Bitter.
“I’m sorry, operator, he’s not here,” Sarah said.
“If that’s Mrs. Bitter, operator,” the voice said, “I’ll talk to her.”
“This is Mrs. Bitter,” Sarah said.
“Go ahead, Sir,” the operator said.
“This is Doug Douglass, Mrs. Bitter,” a pleasant voice said. “I’m an old friend of Ed’s.”
“I know,” she said.
Doug Douglass was more than an old friend. He was the man who had saved Ed’s life when Ed had been wounded. Doug Douglass had landed his own P-40 on a dry riverbed, manhandled Ed from the cockpit of his plane into his own cockpit, and then somehow managed to take off again.
“When I called his folks to ask if they knew where he was, they gave me your number.”
“You don’t know how glad I am to hear you’re back,” Sarah said.
“So am I,” he said. “I never thought I would be delighted to be stationed in Selma, Alabama, but—”
“Is that where you are?” Sarah asked. “Alabama?”
“They gave me a fighter group down here, Mrs. Bitter,” he said.
I will thank him for my husband’s life, for Joe’s daddy, but this isn’t the time.