In Danger's Path (20 page)

Here I stand with a man who just got a medal from General MacArthur, and my daughter takes pains to let him know I'm supporting the war effort by using his gasoline ration
.

“I've got coupons for two hundred gallons,” McCoy said. “Ed Sessions gave them to me when he gave me my leave orders.”

“We'll take his—actually, they're yours—anyhow,” Ernie said.

McCoy said nothing.

The guest room given to Captain Kenneth R. McCoy was on the ground floor of the left wing of the Sage house. The bedroom of the daughter of his hosts was on the second floor of the right wing. There was no way her parents could have separated them farther, Captain McCoy realized, unless they had put him in the stable.

On one hand, McCoy was well aware that if he himself had been in the shoes of Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Sage, he would have put this guy who'd caught their daughter's attention in the stable, hoping that with a little bit of luck, one of the horses would go nuts and trample him to death.

On the other hand, the prospect of sleeping without Ernie was unpleasant. They were going to have only fifteen days. If that much. He would not have been at all surprised if something came up…“Sorry, get here as soon as you can.”

Shit, I didn't call in
.

He picked up the telephone, gave the operator the number of the Office of Management Analysis duty officer, assured her the call was necessary, and waited for her to put it through.

Major Banning answered the phone by giving the number.

“McCoy, sir. I'm at Ernie's father's place.”

“I thought you might be. I have the number. Having fun?”

“Whoopee!”

“The Boss is back, Ken. He called a while back from Los Angeles. He said to pass ‘well done' to you for the presidential briefing. I guess Senator Fowler gave him a report.”

“What happens now?”

“You take your leave, Captain McCoy. You
will
have a good time. That's an order. But check in, Ken, please.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Captain McCoy was shortly afterward informed by the Sage butler that Mr. Sage was in the study and wondered if Captain McCoy might wish to join him for a drink.

They were joined in the study by Miss and Mrs. Sage, and dinner followed shortly thereafter. It was roast turkey stuffed with oysters and chestnuts.

“A belated Christmas dinner, Ken,” Elaine Sage said. She was a striking, silver-haired woman in her late forties. Ken often imagined Ernie looking like that when she was forty-something.

“That's very kind. Thank you.”

“I don't suppose you had a Christmas dinner, did you?”

“The Armed Forces go to great lengths to provide a turkey dinner with all the trimmings to the boys, wherever they are,” Ernest Sage said. “Isn't that so, Ken?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where were you on Christmas, Ken?” Ernie asked.

I was marching through the jungles of Mindanao, hoping I could find Fertig before the Japs did. Or before they found me
.

“Actually, I did have Christmas dinner,” he said, “on a Navy ship.”

Two days early. Nice gesture from the
Sunfish'
s skipper
.

“You see?” Ernest Sage said triumphantly.

“It wasn't as good as this,” Ken said.

“Have another glass of wine, Ken,” Ernest Sage said.

Following dinner, there was coffee and brandy in the study, and then Miss Sage announced she was tired and was going to go to bed.

Captain McCoy and Ernest Sage shared another cognac, and then they, too, went to their respective bedrooms.

Captain McCoy was more than a little surprised to find that his bed already had an occupant.

“Jesus, Ernie,” he said. “They'll know.”

“No,” she said. “They are determined not to know. Come to bed, baby.”

[THREE]
The Greenbrier Hotel
White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia
1825 22 February 1943

On the nearly ten-hour drive from Philadelphia, Captain James B. Weston came to two philosophical conclusions.

The first: there were concrete benefits attached to being a Marine Aviator and certified hero. That proposition had three proofs. The first came in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, where he had been pulled to the side of the road by a highly indignant Pennsylvania state trooper.

“I've been chasing you for five miles,” the trooper had begun the conversation. “Do you know how fast you were going?”

“No, sir.”

“Seventy, seventy-five. The wartime speed limit is thirty-five, for Christ's sake.”

“I didn't realize I was going that fast.”

“Well, goddamn it, you were!”

“Yes, sir. I'm sure you're right.”

“I'll need to see some identification, and your orders,” the state trooper said, and added, “There's been people wearing uniforms who ain't even in the armed forces.”

The trooper's tone of voice suggested he suspected—and indeed hoped—he now had such a person in custody.

“Just got out of the hospital, did you, Captain?” the trooper asked when he handed Jim's identity card and orders back to him.

“Yes, sir.”

“Going home, are you?”

“Actually, sir, I'm going to the Greenbrier Hotel.”

“I saw that on the orders,” the trooper said. “I'd have thought they'd have shut that place down for the duration.”

“No, sir, the government's taken it over.”

“What for?”

“It's where they send people when they come back from overseas,” Jim said.

“You just came back from overseas?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you're just out of the hospital. How the hell am I going to give someone like you a ticket?”

Weston did not reply.

“If I let you go, will you promise to slow it down a little?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don't think any cop would give someone like you—especially in a car like this, with good rubber—a ticket for going fifty or fifty-five. But
seventy-five!
”

“Yes, sir.”

“Drive careful, Captain. Now that you're home safe, you really ought to take care of yourself.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

The state trooper saluted. Weston crisply returned it.

He had a similar conversation with a deputy sheriff near Romney, West Virginia, who had clocked him at sixty-five. The deputy sheriff confided in Weston that he was thinking of enlisting in the Marine Corps himself. Weston told him he felt sure the Marines could put a man with his training to good use. And promised to hold it down.

The third proof came when he filled the Buick's tank in Frost, West Virginia, about fifty miles shy of White Sulphur Springs. The service station attendant refused to accept gasoline ration coupons for the transaction.

“They give us an allowance for spillage and evaporation,” the man confided. “More than what we actually spill, or what evaporates…we call it ‘overage.' I generally save my overage for when some serviceman like you comes in.”

“That's very kind of you,” Jim said, meaning: “I'll use the gasoline to go see my girl.”

“Anytime you come through here…”

“That's really very nice of you. I'll take you up on it.”

The second philosophical conclusion Captain Weston reached while driving to the Greenbrier Hotel was that he was in love with Janice Hardison.

And from the way she had kissed him that morning when he left her, there was reason to suspect she didn't regard him as the ugly frog, either.

God, she is sweet!

A Navy petty officer of some rating Weston didn't recognize sat behind the desk in the Greenbrier lobby.

Probably desk clerk's mate, second class
.

“Yes, sir?”

“Do I report in here? Or check in here?” Weston asked.

The petty officer was not amused.

“You got orders, Captain? Or dependents?”

Weston handed over his orders.

“You're to report to Commander Bolemann,” the petty officer said. “Up the stairs, take the right corridor, sign over the door says ‘Commander Bolemann.'”

The name rang a bell. Dr. Kister had told him about Bolemann in the Officers' Club bar, with Janice.

And Kister also said Bolemann enjoys his reputation as one mean sonofabitch
.

“Wonderful!”

Commander Bolemann wasn't in his office. A pharmacist's mate first class told Weston that “the doctor's in the dining room” and that he was sure he would like Weston to go there.

“You'll have no trouble finding him, Captain. Chubby fellow with a cane.”

Weston had no trouble finding Commander Bolemann. The Commander with the Medical Corps insignia on his sleeves was sitting alone at a table by the door to the bar. For him, chubby was an understatement. And the cane was equally easy to spot. The handle was brass, cast in the shape of a naked lady.

Commander Bolemann spoke first.

“You must be Weston,” he said as Jim approached the table.

“Yes, sir.”

“Kister said I should look for a guy who looks like a recruiting poster,” Bolemann said. “Are you a drinking man, Weston?”

“I have been known to take a wee nip from time to time, sir.”

“What I had in mind was a martini,” Bolemann said, pointed to a chair, and added: “Sit.”

“Thank you, sir.”

A waiter appeared.

“Two martinis,” Bolemann ordered. “Give the check to this gentleman.”

Weston chuckled. There was a row of ribbons on Bolemann's jacket, among them the Silver Star. He wondered how the doctor had come by that.

“Ordinarily, I give Naval Aviators a wide berth. They're dangerous,” Bolemann said.

“Yes, sir?”

“The reason I am not standing at the bar in there,” Bolemann said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the bar, “is a Naval Aviator.”

“How is that, sir?”

“First this idiot proved that he shouldn't have been allowed to fly airplanes in the first place by running his Wildcat into the island on the Enterprise. Then he just sat there, wondering what to do next. When I went up on the wing root to suggest he exit the airplane, its fuel tanks chose that moment to explode. I spent a year learning to walk with a stiff leg, most of it where you just came from.”

“I saw the…cane,” Weston replied, deciding just in time that Bolemann would prefer that to a reference to his Silver Star.

“I need that to beat off all the women with uncontrollable urges for my body,” Bolemann said. “Anyway, when I was in Philadelphia, I got to be pals with Kister. I started out as one of his lunatics, of course, but finally he recognized me as a fellow psychiatrist. When they finally turned me loose, they sent me here. Any other questions?”

“No, sir.”

“And Kister told me all about you, and I mean all about you, including the unwarranted—or did he say ‘unwanted'?—attention you have been paying his favorite nurse, so we won't have to waste any time on that. Unless you
want
to tell me about your heroic service in the Philippines?”

“We ate a lot of pineapples,” Weston said. “That what you have in mind?”

“Ah, here's the booze,” Bolemann said as the waiter approached the table.

After the waiter had left their drinks on the table, Bolemann lifted his glass. “Welcome to the Greenbrier, Weston.”

“Thank you, sir.”

They touched glasses and Weston took a sip. Almost immediately, he could feel the alcohol. “Very nice,” he said.

“What did you drink in the Philippines?”

“We made our own beer. It was pretty bad, but not as bad as the rum we made.”

“And did all the pineapples, the bad beer, and the even worse rum cause you to have nightmares, then or since you came home?”

Weston suddenly understood that the question was not idle or bantering.

“No,” he said seriously. “Over there, I used to dream about food. But no nightmares. There or here.”

“They're nothing to be embarrassed about,” Bolemann said. “I've been blown off the wing root of that goddamned Wildcat at least a hundred times, sometimes twice a night.”

“Nothing like that, sir,” Weston said.