1. Subject officer is rlvd cmd of 2nd Tng Bn, 1st Spl Tng Rgt, 2 Div 4 Army, Ft Bliss Tex, Effective Immediately.
2. Subject officer is detached from 2 Div 4 Army.
3. Subject officer is reassigned Independent Duty JCS Command, WDC.
4. Subject officer will report to office of G-2 CJCS, WDC (A-X-32-B-21, Ft McNair) not later than 1000 hrs 23 July 41 for further reassignment.
5. Transportation by Ind TDY.
By order of CJCS,
G. D. Buckner, Colonel AUS
For G. C. Marshall, General USA, CJCS.
Alex folded the order along its original creases and slid it into his pocket.
Spaight said, “They’re sending in a Canadian to relieve you-veteran of Dunkirk. To teach us how to lose gracefully I suppose.”
“They’ll do all right,” Alex said in a distracted voice.
“Alex, they’re taking you out of here. Marshall’s G-2-that’s the cloak and dagger end. Frankly I’m not sure it’s the right place for you. I’m not sure you belong in this army at all under the circumstances. It was all right as long as you were down here-it gave you a chance to heal up, it gave me the best training officer I’ve ever had. But Washington, the Intelligence branch-that’s something else again.”
“They didn’t consult you about this?”
“It’s the first I’ve heard of it. I tried a phone call to Washington this morning but all I got was a runaround. But I’d have to be an ass if I didn’t figure you for one of their Russian desks in the Intelligence office.”
“And you want to know if I can be trusted there.”
“Alex, it’s a hell of a thing to have to-”
“If I can’t do the job with absolute loyalty I’ll resign.”
Spaight gave him a long scrutiny and then the smile-tracks creased around his tired eyes. “Good enough.”
He cleaned out his office desk and had the driver ferry him to the BOQ.
The wall phone was buzzing when he went by it and he lifted the earpiece off its bracket. “BOQ. Colonel Danilov.”
“Oh-Colonel. Base Central. Just tried to get you over to your office. They’s a long-distance call for you. You supposed to call Operator Three in Ann Arbor, Michigan.”
“All right. Can you make the call for me?”
“Yes sir. One moment please.”
When the connection went through it was poor. He had to shout through a hiss of static.
“Please hold on, Colonel.”
Then a man’s voice, a little quavery with age, in hard Kharkov Russian:
“Is that you, Alexsander Ilyavitch?”
Alex’s face changed. “Yes General.”
4
He laid out his second-best uniform for traveling and showered in tepid hard water. Naked at the sink shaving, he caught his dulled scowl in the mirror. There were two puckered scars in his neck, one three inches beyond the other on the right side where a jacketed bullet had gone through-his talisman of luck: an expanding slug of soft lead would have torn his head off. But the scars were ugly and impossible to disguise.
His hair was walnutty brown peppered with grey at the sides and cropped militarily short against the high square skull; he had sun-broiled skin above the pale vee of shirt collars, a long nose and a very large mouth that formed a rectangular bracket around his teeth if he smiled. His torso was long; the cords lay flat along his bones and he was quite thin, with a runner’s wind.
For six months he had lived in this hot close room and done very little that he hadn’t been told to do. He had become a pest, ramrodding the battalion twenty-four hours a day, not giving it or himself any respite. Now they were pulling him out of his safe cocoon and that was what frightened him a little. They were throwing him into some War Department crush and he didn’t know if he’d had time to heal yet.
He thrust himself into his clothes, breaking through the starch; he drank one undersized shot of bourbon and left the bottle on the table for his successor. He had been drinking the stuff for months because it was cheap and available but he still hadn’t learned to like it.
He went back to the telephone in the hall. A G-1 major came through, waggled a hand at him and went into his room. Alex waited until the major’s door was shut.
“Base Control. He’p you?”
“This is Colonel Danilov. See if General Spaight’s still in his office, will you?”
“Yes sir. One moment please.”
Fairly quickly Spaight was on the line. “Alex?”
“I’m not sure which one of us owes the other a favor.”
“No need to keep books on it. What do you need?”
“My orders give me four days TDY to report in. I need to get to New York a lot faster than that. By tomorrow night if I can.”
“New York?” Spaight’s voice indicated his curiosity, “Okay. Where are you right now?”
“BOQ.”
“I’ll get back to you in ten minutes.”
He held the hook down long enough to break the connection. Then he made one more call, kept it brief and went back into his cubicle to make a final check of things he might have forgotten to pack. He hadn’t forgotten anything of course; he never did. But it was a clue to his unease and he deliberately stood to attention and drew several long measured breaths to calm himself.
He answered the phone on the first ring.
“You’re all set. Be at El Paso airport at eleven sharp-twenty-three hundred hours. There’s a half-squadron of brand new bombers ferrying through to Washington. I’ve got you a lift with them. Talk to the lead pilot, a Captain Johnson.”
“Thanks, John.”
“Drop me a postcard now and then.”
“Sure.”
“Good luck, Alex.”
He heard the car draw up, crunching gravel; Carol Ann’s horn blasted cheerfully-shave-and-a-haircut, two-bits. He gathered up his uniform coat and musette bag, glanced finally around the monastic cell and went out.
The dazzling brilliance made his eyes swim. He crossed the yellow-brown patch of lawn and tossed his things in the back seat; he slid in beside the girl and threw his arm across the back of the seat while she put the open Chevy roadster in gear.
“Time’s your train?”
“Ten-fifteen,” he said, compounding the lie. He didn’t want anyone to know about the plane ride. Spaight would keep it under his hat.
“I know a place to fill your belly.” Her long brown eyes flicked toward him. “Unless you’ve got anything else in mind you’d rather do?”
Alex shook his head.
Carol Ann had a shrewd quick way of smiling. “The Way the trains are these days you’d better get yourself around a good’ Southern meal.” She was a self-confident girl, a bit of a cynic and not much of a talker; they had met four weeks ago in a roadhouse bar and in a casual way they had filled needs in each other without talking about it. She didn’t know much about him and didn’t seem to want to.
The setting sun veined the clouds with streaks of marble pink. The hot wind raked his face and Carol Ann took the dips in the road too fast for the springs on the little car.
The Rio Grande was muddy and sluggish on his right. The landmark hills guided them into the dusty outskirts of El Paso-scrubby brush and the occasional billboard for Prince Albert Tobacco and the Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous. The car’s passage flushed a covey of quail.
Detour. Through a dry arroyo where flash floods had undercut the road. On the job a half dozen convicts in stripes worked with shovels and rakes and tar buckets, their dull Indian faces aglisten with oil sweat, and two flaccid killer guards with riot shotguns sat horseback. Their heads all turned to watch the girl behind the wheel.
She pulled into the dusty lot beside a stucco cafe festooned with red-and-white Coca-Cola signs. He held the screen door for her and went inside and let it slap shut on its spring. A deep-fried smell ran along the counter and the radio was twanging, Jimmie Rodgers the Singing Brakeman. They were all men at the counter, Mexicans at the back, all of them in Levi’s and high-heel boots and flannel shirts with the backs of their necks creased like old leather.
They took the booth at the front by the window where there was a little air. Fried steak, shucked corn, buttered green beans, a huge dollop of mashed potatoes with a two-spoon crater filled with lumpy gravy. The notice above the counter said We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to Anyone and beyond that there was a placard: Discussion of the President Is Prohibited. On the radio now an announcer was talking about Hank Greenberg.
Carol Ann said, “Well then, Coop.” She fancied he resembled Gary Cooper the movie star. “I’m not going to see you again. Am I?”
“Do you want to?”
She was eating, watching him. She made no direct answer to the question. She caught the counterman’s eye: “I’ll have another cup of that coffee if it’s handy.”
Gene Autry was singing Tumbling Tumbleweeds. Carol Ann stirred a lump of sugar into the coffee and fanned herself with the paper napkin. “If you ever get down this way you come and see me, hear?”
She was bony; he could see the tendons in her throat. The thin shirt hung from her shoulders and he felt sadness well up onto the back of his mouth. Her husband was a lieutenant with a construction battalion in Alaska. She lived in a drab quick-built apartment court north of El Paso near the river. She had two little girls, five and two. It was all he knew about her except that she was lonely and she was generous, giving fully of herself when it pleased her. It had been easy and quiet between them: neither of them wanted excitement. He hadn’t realized until now that it had been important enough to make him unhappy to end it.
“Where are they sending you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well you’ll handle it all right, now.”
He wasn’t sure. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to fix the rocking chair.”
“It’s all right, Coop.”
He paid the check and she drove him to the station. There was dust on his Oxfords and she insisted on treating him: the shoeshine boy slapped his cloth across Alex’s toes with the sound of distant artillery. Then it was time to tell her to go. He kissed her on the lips, gently. It was something he had never done with her in a public place before.
She said, “I am going to miss you, Coop. You take care of yourself, hear?”
After she left it occurred to him that neither of them had asked the other to write.
He took a taxi to the airfield and waited around the hangars for the Air Corps formation to appear.