"There's a touch of finality to that I don't like at all," Ernie said. "What is it, another skeleton?"
"What?"
She blurted what had popped into her mind: "A wife you forgot to mention?"
He chuckled. "Christ, no," he said.
"Then what?" she asked, as a wave of relief swept through her.
"You've got a job," he said. "A career in advertising. You're going places there. What about that?"
"I'd rather be with you. You know that. And you also know that when it comes down to it, I need you more than I need a career in advertising… And besides, I don't think that's what is bothering you either."
"There's a war on," McCoy said. "I'm going to be in it. It wouldn't be right to marry you."
"That's not it," Ernie said surely.
"No," he said.
"I don't give a damn about your family," Ernie said.
"That's not it, either," he said.
"Then what? What's the reason you are so evasive?"
"I can't tell you," he said. "It's got to do with the Corps."
"What's it got to do with the Corps?" she persisted.
"I can't tell you," he said.
Now, she decided, he's telling the truth.
"Military secret?" she asked.
"Something like that," he said.
"What, Ken?"
"Goddamnit, I told you I can't tell you!" he snapped. "Jesus, Ernie! If I could tell you I would!"
"Okay," she said, finally. "So don't tell me. But for God's sake, at least between here and Harrisburg, at least can I be your girl?"
McCoy reached across the seat and took her hand. She slid across the seat, put his arm around her shoulders, and leaned close against him.
"And when we get to Harrisburg, instead of just putting me on the train, can I be your mistress for one more night?"
"Jesus!" he said. The way he said it, she knew he meant yes.
"I'm not hard to please," Ernie said. "I'll be happy with whatever I can have, whenever I can have it."
(Three)
Room 402
The Penn- Harris Hotel
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
0815 Hours, 9 January 1942
Second Lieutenant Kenneth J. McCoy, USMCR, was so startled when Miss Ernestine Sage joined him behind the white cotton shower curtain that he slipped and nearly fell down.
"I hope that means you're not used to this sort of thing," Ernie said.
"I didn't mean to wake you," he said.
"I woke up the moment you ever so carefully slipped out of bed," Ernie said. "It took me a little time to work up my courage to join you."
"Oh, Jesus, Ernie, I love you," McCoy said.
"That's good," she said, and then stepped closer to him, wrapped her arms around him, and put her head against his chest. His arms tightened around her, and he kissed the top of her head. She felt his heartbeat against her ear, and then he grew erect.
She put her hand on him and pulled her face back to look up at him.
"Well," she said, "what should we do now, do you think?"
"I suppose we better dry each other off, or the sheets'll get wet," he said.
"To hell with the sheets," she said.
When she came out of the bathroom again twenty minutes later, he was nearly dressed. Everything but his uniform blouse.
When he puts the blouse on, and I put my slip and dress on, she thought, that will be the end of it. We will close our suitcases, send for the bellboy, have breakfast, and he will put me on the train.
"Don't look at me," Ernie said. "I'm about to cry, and I look awful when I cry."
She went to her suitcase and turned her back to him and pulled a slip over her head.
"I'm on orders to Fleet Marine Force, Pacific," McCoy said, "for further assignment as a platoon leader with one of the regiments."
She turned to look at him. "I thought you were an intelligence officer," Ernie said.
"Early next month, the Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific," McCoy went on in a strange tone of voice, ignoring her question, "will be ordered to form the Second Separate Battalion. It will be given to Lieutenant Colonel Evans F. Carlson-"
"What's a separate battalion?" Ernie interrupted. "Honey, I don't understand these terms…"
"You heard about the English Commandos?" McCoy asked. Ernie nodded. "The Corps's going to have their own. Two battalions of them."
"Oh," Ernie said, somewhat lamely. She was frightened. Her mind's eye was full of newsreels of English Commandos. There were shock troops, sent to fight against impossible odds.
"Colonel Carlson is going to recruit then from Fleet Marine Force, Pacific," McCoy went on. "He has been given authority to take anybody he wants. He's an old China Marine. I'm an old China Marine. He's probably-almost certainly- going to try to recruit me. He is not recruiting married men."
"And that's why you won't marry me?" Ernie said, suddenly furious. "So you can be a commando? And get yourself killed right away? Thanks a lot."
"Carlson's a strange man," McCoy went on, ignoring her again. "He spent some time with the Chinese Communists. There is some scuttlebutt that he's a Communist."
"Scuttlebutt?" Ernie asked.
"Gossip, rumor," McCoy explained. "And there is some more scuttlebutt that he's not playing with a full deck."
Ernie Sage had never heard the expression before, but she thought it through. Now she was confused. And still angry, she realized, when she heard her tone of voice.
"You're telling me… let me get this straight… that you're going to volunteer for the Marine commandos, which are going to be under a crazy Communist?"
"You can only volunteer after you're asked," McCoy said. "My first problem is to make sure I'm asked."
"And then you can go get yourself killed?"
"I didn't ask for this job," he said.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Nobody knows for sure whether Carlson is either a Communist or crazy," McCoy said.
"If there seems to be some question, why are they making him a commando?"
"When he was a captain, he was commanding officer of the Marine detachment that guards President Roosevelt at Warm Springs, Georgia. He and the President's son, who is a reserve captain, are good friends."
"Oh," Ernie said. "But what has this got to do with you? Common sense would say, stay away from all of this."
"Somebody has to find out, for sure, if he's crazy, or a Communist, or both," McCoy said.
Ernie suddenly understood. Ken McCoy had told her the military secret he wouldn't talk about in the car. But it was so incredible she needed confirmation.
"And that's you, right?"
He nodded.
"They made up a new service record for me," he said. "It says that after I graduated from Quantico, they assigned me to the Marine Barracks in Philadelphia, where I was a platoon leader in a motor transport company. There's nothing in it about me being assigned to intelligence."
"And this is what you wouldn't tell me yesterday?"
He nodded. "I'm trusting you," he said. "Even Pick doesn't know. I don't know what the hell they would do to me if they found out I told you. Or what Carlson and the nuts around him would do to me if they found out I was there to report on them."
Ernie smiled at him. "So why did you tell me?" she asked, very softly.
"I figured maybe, if you're still crazy enough to want to drive across the country with me, that is, it would be easier to put you on the train once we get there if you knew."
"That's not the answer I was looking for," Ernie said. "But it's a start."
"What answer were you looking for?" McCoy asked.
"That you love me and trust me," Ernie said.
"That, too," he said.
Chapter Eight
(One)
U.S. Navy Air Station Pensacola, Florida 9 January 1942
Second Lieutenant Richard J. Stacker, USMC, was an eager-faced, slightly built young man of something less than medium height who looked even younger than his twenty-one years and who was wearing a uniform that looked every bit as fresh off the rack as it in fact was.
It was not surprising, therefore, that the Marine corporal behind the desk at the Marine Detachment, Pensacola Naval Air Station, imagined that he was dealing with your standard candy-ass second John who couldn't find his ass with both hands.