Retreat, Hell! Part 31

She talked another thirty seconds on the telephone, then abruptly announced that she would have to call back later, hung the phone up, and walked across the room to her husband and Hart.

"h.e.l.lo, George," she said to Hart, "it's good to see you."

She kissed him on the cheek, then turned to her husband and kissed him on the cheek.

Pickering thought that he had been kissed by his wife with all the enthusiasm with which she had kissed George Hart.

Honey, that's not fair. I didn't want Pick to get shot down.

"Okay," Pickering said to the manager and Hart. "We have an understanding, right? All calls to me except from the President, Senator Fowler, and Colonel Banning go through Captain Hart, who'll be operating out of the Monroe Suite. All calls to Mrs. Pickering go on line three, which I will not answer. Right?"

"That's already set up, General," the manager said.

"Captain Hart will need the car to go to the airport to pick up his family at two-fifteen. Which means he will have to leave here at one-thirty."

"The car will be available."

"Okay, George. Take whatever time you need to get settled, then hop in a cab and go over to the CIA. Give my compliments to Admiral Hillencoetter and tell him I'm at his disposal, and that I've sent you there to get the latest briefing."

"Aye, aye, sir. Sir, Louise is perfectly capable of getting a cab at the airport. . . ."

"Do what you're told, George," Pickering said, not unkindly. "How are you fixed for cash?"

Hart hesitated, then said, "Just fine, sir."

Pickering pointed at the manager.

"Give Captain Hart five hundred dollars. Charge it to me."

"Certainly, Mr. Pickering."

"That's General General Pickering, Richard," Mrs. Pickering said to the manager. "You can tell by the uniform and the stars all over it and by the way he gives orders with such underwhelming tact." Pickering, Richard," Mrs. Pickering said to the manager. "You can tell by the uniform and the stars all over it and by the way he gives orders with such underwhelming tact."

"Sorry, General," the manager said. "I really do know better."

"Forget it," Pickering said.

General and Mrs. Pickering looked at each other, but neither spoke or touched until they were alone in the suite.

Then Pickering's eyebrow went up as he waited.

"G.o.d, I really despise you in that uniform," Patricia said finally. "I think I hate all uniforms."

"They make it easy to tell who's doing a job that has to be done, and who's getting a free ride," Pickering said.

"You did your job when you were a kid in France, and you did your job in World War Two. When does it stop? When does somebody else take over and start doing your job?"

He looked at her for a long moment, then said: "Ken McCoy says he has every reason to believe Pick is alive and in good shape, and that we'll have him back in short order."

"And you believe him?"

"Yes, honey, I do."

"I wish I shared your faith," she said bitterly.

He didn't reply.

"For the last four days," Patricia said, "ever since d.i.c.k Fowler called and told me you were on your way to Washington, I have had fantasies of having your arms around me. And I promised myself I would remember it isn't your fault . . . what's happened to Pick . . . and that I wouldn't be a b.i.t.c.h. . . ."

He looked at her a moment, then nodded.

"If you promise not to bite my jugular, Patricia," he said softly, "I'll put my arms around you."

She didn't reply.

He took a step toward her, then held his arms open. Very slowly, she walked into them, and he held her against him.

"Oh, my G.o.d, Flem," she said softly, and then she began to sob. "Oh, G.o.d, I've missed you!"

"Me, too, honey." His voice was not quite under control.

He held her a long time, until her sobs subsided.

Then she said, "I wish you'd take off that G.o.dd.a.m.n uniform."

"I'll still be a Marine, honey," he said.

"My fantasy was to feel your bare arms around me," she said softly.

"Well," he said. "I guess it is like riding a bicycle. You never forget how."

He was lying on his back in their bed. She was lying half on him.

She pinched him, painfully, on the soft flesh of his inner thigh.

He yelped.

"I'd forgotten you do that, too," he said.

She didn't reply.

"Pick's got a girl," he said.

"Pick has always had a girl," she said. "He wasn't even five years old when he talked Ernie Sage into playing doctor, and it went downhill from there."

"This is serious, I think," Pickering said.

"I have heard that before, and find it very hard to believe. "

"In many ways, she's very much like you."

"You know her? That is is unusual." unusual."

"Yeah. I know her. And Ernie knows her and likes her too; they've become quite close."

She propped herself up on her elbows and looked down at him. "Tell me about her. What do you mean, she's like me?"

"Tough, smart, competent, and, I think, very much surprised to find herself in love with Pick. She's a reporter, a war correspondent. Jeanette Priestly, of the Chicago Tribune. Chicago Tribune. " "

"I've seen her stories," she said. "No pictures."

"Tall, graceful . . . like you. Long blond hair. Not peroxide. Blue eyes. Good-looking young woman."

"I had a mental picture of a middle-aged frump with a short haircut," Patricia said.

"No. Very nice."

"And they're in love?"

"Yeah. And I mean love, rather than l.u.s.t."

"If you think that, then it is serious."

"It had to happen eventually," Pickering said. "It's the natural order of things."

"How's . . . what's her name? Jeanette? . . . taking what's happened to Pick?"

"About like you, me, and Ernie," Pickering said. "Stiff upper lip. She doesn't say much. But there's really not much that can be said, is there?"

"Do you know what happened-I mean, in detail-to Pick? How was he shot down?"

"He was flying what they call 'low-alt.i.tude tactical interdiction sorties, seeking targets of opportunity,' " Pickering said. "What he was doing was shooting up locomotives."

"Railroad locomotives?" she asked, surprised.

"If you can take out, for example, an enemy supply train, that denies the enemy supplies and ammunition, and so on. Pick was apparently pretty good at it. He had three locomotives painted on the nose of his airplane."

"I thought he was shot down by another airplane."

"We pretty much have what is known as air superiority," Pickering said. "A lot-most-of aviation activity is in close support of the troops on the ground."

"So it was antiaircraft fire?"

"What Billy Dunn . . . You remember Colonel Dunn?"

"The tiny little man with an Alabama accent you can cut with a knife?"

"That's him," Pickering said. "Billy thinks that a locomotive blew up just as Pick was pa.s.sing over it, and there was damage to the aircraft, most likely to the engine, from parts of the locomotive. Pick had to make an emergency landing; he couldn't get back to the Badoeng Strait, Badoeng Strait, the aircraft carrier." the aircraft carrier."

"Was he hurt?" she asked softly.

"Billy didn't think so, and the proof seems to be that he's covered a lot of distance. If he was injured, he couldn't move as fast and as far as he has."

"That sounds as if you know where he is," she said.

"We have an idea where he is," Pickering said. "He finds a rice paddy somewhere, and stamps out an arrow and his initials."

"If you know where he is, then why can't you go get him?"

"Because he has to keep moving. By the time a pilot who spots one of the arrows gets back to his aircraft carrier to report it, or by the time they can spot one of his arrows on an aerial photo-which is what happens most-and we can get people to that spot, he's three, four, five miles away. McCoy said the last time he doesn't think they missed him by more than a couple of hours."

"But you really believe he's . . . going to come back?"

"Yeah, I do."

"Don't lie to me, Flem."

The cold truth is that I don't know whether my faith that he's coming back is based on my professional a.s.sessment of the situation, or whether I'm just p.i.s.sing in the wind. he's coming back is based on my professional a.s.sessment of the situation, or whether I'm just p.i.s.sing in the wind.

"I'm not, honey."

The telephone on the bedside table rang.

"Don't answer it," Patricia said. "G.o.d, we're ent.i.tled to at least a few minutes."

"I have to, honey," he said, and stretched his arm out for the telephone.

Patricia didn't move off him.

"Pickering," he said.

"The President wants to see you," Senator Fowler said without any preliminaries.

"When?"

"Right now."

"Where?"

"Here."

"He's with you?"

"That's right."

"It'll take me a few minutes to get dressed."

[TWO].