“I’m going to go back to bed for a while, honey. Make yourself at home.”
Marjorie heard the jeep drive up, and peered around the drapes of the living-room window.
Her heart jumped when she saw him get out of the jeep.
Oh, my God, his nose is bandaged!
My God, I really love that man!
As she went quickly to the door to open it before he would have a chance to ring the bell and wake up the Hanrahans, she had a second thought:
My God, he looks like a soldier! He looks like one of them!
The last time she had seen him in uniform, he looked like what he was, a draftee fresh from Basic Training, a buck private in combat boots and a baseball cap and ill-fitting mussed fatigues bearing only the legend US ARMY over the left breast pocket and PORTET over the right.
She opened the door and he trotted quickly up to her.
He is one of them!
There was a green beret on his head, and sergeant’s stripes and the insignia of Special Forces on the sleeves of his starched and form-fitting fatigues. There were U.S. Army parachutist’s wings pinned above the US ARMY patch, and what she correctly guessed were Belgian paratrooper’s wings over his name on the right. And he was wearing glistening paratrooper’s jump boots.
“You’re a long way from home, Marjorie,” he said.
“How’s your nose?” she asked.
And then she was in his arms, his face buried in her neck.
She felt him grow and stiffen against her abdomen.
“Oh, baby, I’m so glad to see you,” he said.
She freed herself.
“So I noticed,” she said.
He smiled.
“That’s what they call an ‘involuntary vascular reaction to a stimulus,’ ” he said.
She felt herself blush.
He leaned down to her and kissed her, very chastely, on the lips. The innocence of the kiss lasted perhaps three seconds, and then she was aware that she was pressing herself against him with a hunger that matched his.
She freed herself again.
“The Hanrahans,” she said, nodding toward the stairs.
“Jesus,” he said.
“You were supposed to teach them about the airport,” she challenged. “Nothing else.”
“It didn’t work out that way,” he said.
“You could have been killed, damn you!”
“I wasn’t,” he said simply.
“Good morning, Jack,” Patricia Hanrahan said from the staircase.
Last night’s carousing obviously hasn’t hurt his appetite, General Hanrahan thought. When I was a young buck and drank beer all night until there was no more, the last thing I wanted to see— even think about—the next morning was a fried egg.
Sergeant Jack Portet was seated at the kitchen table, eating ham and eggs under the adoring gaze of Miss Marjorie Bellmon. Mrs. Patricia Hanrahan, wearing an apron over her negligee, was leaning against a kitchen counter wearing a look that Red Hanrahan thought was either maternal or Ain’t They Sweet!
The telephone on the wall rang, and Hanrahan answered it on the second ring.
“General Hanrahan.”
“Colonel Swenson, sir. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“Good morning, Swede. No problem. I’ve been up for some time. What’s up?”
“General, there’s a lieutenant here asking for Sergeant Portet. I didn’t know how to handle it.”
“Very simple, Swede. We never heard of him.”
“I tried that, General,” Swenson said. “He says he knows Portet’s here.” He added: “He’s one of ours, sir. I think he just came from where Portet came.”
“Has ‘one of ours’ got a name, Swede?”
“Craig, sir. Lieutenant Geoffrey Craig.”
“Damn!” Hanrahan said. He hesitated just perceptibly. “Okay, Swede. Send him over here.”
He put the handset into its cradle and turned to look at Sergeant Jack Portet.
“Geoff Craig is here, Jack. Looking for you. Do you have any idea what that’s all about?”
“No, sir.”
“No idea at all?”
“Well, sir, it probably means that everybody’s back. They came back via the Army Hospital in Frankfurt.”
“Is there some kind of problem, honey?” Patricia asked.
“My orders are to keep Jack under a rock,” Hanrahan said. “With a lot of people knowing he’s here, that’s getting to be difficult. ”
“Do you think he has Ursula and the baby with him?” Marjorie asked.
“That’s why I think everybody’s here,” Jack replied. “I can’t imagine Geoff being here without them.”
“He was with them in the Congo?” Hanrahan asked.
“They were flown to Léopoldville in the C-130s,” Jack answered. “And then on Air Congo to Frankfurt. My stepmother and sister, too, and probably my father went along.”
Hanrahan nodded, as if he agreed with Portet’s thinking.
The telephone rang again, and Hanrahan snatched it almost angrily from its cradle, muttering, “Now what?”
“General Hanrahan,” he snarled into the instrument.