“Did he tell you what happened in Morocco?” Baker asked.
“Why do I feel that no matter how I answer that, it will cost me?” Whittaker asked.
“Answer that one, Jimmy,” Canidy said. “It’s important.”
Whittaker looked at Canidy, as if making up his mind whether or not to trust him.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “He told me all about Morocco.”
“Including him and me getting the shaft off the coast?” Canidy asked.
“Yeah, that, and how he finally got out. Tied up in the bilge of an Arab chow, or whatever they call those little boats, and taken from Tangier to Gibraltar. He didn’t like that much either.”
“I didn’t think he would,” Canidy said.
“A betrayal, followed by a kidnapping,” Whittaker said. “You guys play dirty.”
“Baker plays dirty,” Canidy said. “I got left behind too. I’m one of the good guys, Jimmy.”
“You’re doing fine, Canidy,” Baker said angrily. “Keep it up.”
“Why not?” Canidy said. “This way you can tell Douglass and Donovan that I was the one who told him all the secrets and you had nothing to do with it.”
“So tell me a secret,” Whittaker said. “Things have been a little dull around here.”
“Eric Fulmar is close to an important man in Morocco,” Canidy said. “We want to use that again. We used him once.”
“So he told me,” Whittaker said. “And if you ask him to do the same thing again, being a reasonable man of average intelligence, he’s going to tell you to go fuck yourselves.”
“If he does, then both of you stay here,” Baker said.
“You just can’t do that,” Whittaker flared.
“We can, Jimmy,” Canidy said. “And we will.”
Whittaker looked at him.
“I notice you said ‘we,’ Dick,” he said.
“Yeah, I said ‘we,’” Canidy said. “I’m part of this.”
“Otherwise you get locked up, too?”
“Partly that,” Canidy said. “And partly because I think that what we’re doing is so important that the usual rules don’t apply.”
“What’s got me pissed off,” Whittaker said, “is that just as soon as I got home, they start treating me like the enemy.”
“You got between Marshall and MacArthur,” Canidy said. “You were an innocent bystander who got caught in the line of fire. Nobody thinks you’re the enemy.”
“That’s why there’s a fence over the window and an MP outside, right?”
“We’ve come with the authority to take you out of here, Captain Whittaker,” Baker said.
“What’s the price?”
“You heard it,” Canidy said. “You volunteer for the classic dangerous, secret mission, like Errol Flynn.”
“I couldn’t just go back to flying fighters?” Whittaker asked.
“Not any more than I can,” Canidy said.
“Okay,” Whittaker said after a moment’s thought. “What the hell.” He saluted Canidy, crisply but mockingly. “I await my orders, Sir, and stand prepared to give my all for our noble cause. Whatever the hell that might be.”
“This really isn’t a joking matter, Whittaker,” Baker said.
“I didn’t think it was,” Whittaker said coldly.
“You are now a member, more or less in good standing,” Canidy said, “of Donovan’s Dilettantes.”
“What the hell is that?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Canidy said.
“And what’s the ‘more or less in good standing’ mean?”
“Now we have to get Fulmar to cooperate,” Canidy said.
“My getting out of here really depends on that?” Whittaker asked.
“I’m afraid so,” Baker said.
“No,” Canidy said firmly. “No, it doesn’t, Jimmy. Baker, I’ll go to Donovan himself about that. Jimmy’s coming with us no matter what happens with Eric Fulmar.”
Baker didn’t reply.
“Well, Mr. Baker?” Whittaker asked after a moment.
“I can see no point in keeping you here any longer, Captain Whittaker,” Baker said finally.
“Okay,” Whittaker said. “You guys are going to have a problem with Fulmar. He’s really pissed. He’s tried to escape four times.”
“I didn’t hear about that,” Baker said. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. The only reason he hasn’t escaped is that every time he was about to go, I squealed on him.”
“He know about that?” Canidy asked.
Whittaker shook his head no. “It wasn’t time to try something like that,” Whittaker said. “It was getting close, but it wasn’t time yet. I sort of thought there was a reason my childhood chum just ‘coincidentally’ wound up in the adjacent cell.”
“You are very perceptive, Captain,” Baker said approvingly.
“Lucky for you I am,” Whittaker said. “I could have gotten out of here.”
“How could you have done that?” Baker said scoffingly.
“Would you like to watch me take that forty-five away from that kid?” Whittaker said, nodding at the MP sitting on a folding chair in the fenced-in yard. “I’m surprised at you, Mr. Baker. I thought that surely