“Why? Pity?” He turned away from her and she could feel the barriers of memories start to build again.
“How about need, feeling… maybe even love?” Her hand was still touching his cheek. “Anthony J. Waters, ever since you walked off that airplane at Andrews shoving your cruddy flight cap over your thick skull I felt something about you. For you. Don’t make this crazy lady explain. I’m saying and doing things I’ve never done before—”
“And Jack?”
“I don’t understand what he has… Oh, yes, well… ” She searched for the right words, knowing how critical they were. “Please try to understand what I’m saying. Jack… I think I saw a young, a very young you in him. But I don’t want you that way, I want you the way you are now.”
Waters was staring straight ahead, not looking at her, not daring to.
She tried one last time to break through his reserve. “Jack only invited me to the marketplace in Alexandria. We had dinner. Period.”
“Blevins,” he muttered. “I should have known. That lying sack of—” But her lips on his cut him off, and he was grateful to find her pulling him close, and down, obliterating all thoughts except of his delight in this lovely woman actually seeming to want an old party named Muddy Waters.
Morning. Still in bed, Sara was saying how much she loved the concert, especially the final encore. “I know they planned it, but when that little old lady walked down to the stage and he bent over the edge while she whispered to him… well, I could have cried when he played the Polonaise.”
“Show biz. Sentimental but it worked. Besides, it was only one of his Polonaises, number six in A-flat. Cliburn really did it the way I bet Chopin meant for it to be played.”
“Well, aren’t you the big-deal expert… Okay, go ahead, pontificate. What did he do so special?” she asked, nuzzling his chest.
Waters had to force himself not to be hopelessly diverted. “It’s the four-note bit in the middle. Sort of heroic, and I think that’s what Chopin had in mind — ouch, damn it. Don’t bite… ” he gasped as her head worked lower.
“I’ll bite when you sound like the back of a record jacket,” she whispered. “Now, stop twitching, you’re as bad as that old man who sat next to me.”
“That old man was Senator Leeds.”
Sara raised her head and wiggled back up his body. “Him? A senator? He’s a dirty old man.”
“Right. So watch out for him. He has a reputation for twitching.”
“How do you know?”
“Never mind… any man would want you. Especially the way you looked last night.”
“How about this man? What about now?”
She cradled back into his arms. “Do you know how worried I was that I might have lost you tonight? I wanted you so bad I couldn’t wait. Shameless, right?”
“You bet,” he said. “Now, please shut up and let’s get serious.”
The yellow slip of paper telling Waters to call Cunningham’s aide was on his desk when he arrived at his office at 5:30 in the morning. The colonel was not surprised when Stevens answered on the first ring; the general had a reputation for coming to work at ungodly hours. Stevens was very polite, asking Waters to “drop by” Cunningham’s office at his convenience for a word with the general.
Six minutes later Waters was standing at attention in Sundown’s office. Cunningham leaned over his desk. “Sit down, Waters. It makes me nervous to look up to someone tall as you.” He puffed on his cigar, sending a thick smoke screen into the room. The cigar was the key to Cunningham’s mood. When he rolled it about in his mouth unlit he was worrying and chasing a problem to a solution. If he lit the cigar and puffed lazily away and savored the aroma he was, for him, relaxed. Waters had never seen him puff so hard and braced himself for an outburst of the famous Cunningham temper.
“The Egyptians kicked the 45th out of Alexandria South yesterday.” Cunningham bit off each word as Waters settled into a chair. “Like we suspected, the Libyans made a deal with the Egyptians. They kicked out their Russians, Egypt gives it to us. The Egyptian ambassador told State late yesterday that his government had no choice but to close Alexandria South because of the political situation. All operational flying has been stopped and I’ve got a wing tossed into the wilderness.” A fog of smoke swirled around the general’s head. He was, Waters suspected, blaming himself for losing control of the situation, for not being able to handle the Egyptians, even when he all but appeased the bastards. “I hope you’ve found a base for the wing in Britain because none of our other so-called friends over there are interested.”
“Yes, sir. RAF Stonewood in East Anglia.”
“Good. I’ll talk to our air attaché in London and have the British send a negotiator to work out arrangements for a base activation. Have one of your people show him around and work out a technical agreement.
“There’s something else” — he laid the cigar in an ashtray and leaned across his desk, clasping his hands — “the brigadier general’s list will be released in the next few weeks and I wanted to tell you why you aren’t on it.”
The news did not surprise Waters. Still, he appreciated Cunningham telling him to his face.
“Muddy, this is crazy, but you’re a bachelor and no single man makes general or command of a wing. I think the Secretary’s wife made the policy. Find yourself an Air Force wife and you’ll get promoted. It sucks, but that’s the way it is.”
Muddy Waters ambled back to his own office, distracted and intrigued, and less upset than the general could have imagined or understood.
Protocol had briefed Carroll on the proper care and handling of the British officer, Group Captain Sir David Childs. He first met Sir David on Monday afternoon when he arrived at Dulles and escorted him to one of the VIP suites at Boiling Air Force Base on the edge of Washington.
Sir David was average looking, and at first his funny high-pitched voice struck Carroll as ridiculous. However, the lieutenant soon learned there was nothing peculiar or amusing about what he said. The group captain displayed a first-rate intellect. Carroll had met Royal Air Force officers while serving as an intelligence officer, but this one was different. During the next week Carroll became Childs’ shadow. He noticed that the vice air marshal in charge of the Permanent British Liaison Office located in the Pentagon deferred to Sir David’s abbreviated suggestions about the base activation.
Finally Carroll was able to tell him that a meeting with General Cunningham was set for three o’clock on a Wednesday, right after the How-Goes-It briefing on Stonewood’s activation to initial the technical agreement.
“Ah, yes. I see.” It was the longest conversation that Carroll had had with Childs.
Cunningham twirled a pen, thinking about the document in front of him that created a new base. Once signed by the U.S. ambassador to England and the British Minister of Defense, RAF Stonewood would become a formal reality. In name it would remain an RAF base complete with a British base commander. But inside the main gate it would mostly be an American base.
“Waters, this is good,” Cunningham said, tapping the Technical Agreement for the Operational Use of RAF Stonewood with his pen. “How did you negotiate it so quickly?”
“It was easy with Group Captain Childs here. We built on the other agreements worked out for Bentwaters, Lakenheath and Upper Heyford. Sir David made it clear that Stonewood can never be anything but an intermediate base for a forward deployment into the Middle East. That simplified things.” Waters realized he was getting to feel at ease with the general as he got the hang of how the general worked.