"I'll take it," he said. "If you'll take a check."
"I'll vouch for the check," Locke said quickly, as a cloud of doubt appeared on the face of the jewelry store clerk.
"That's a fascinating watch," Locke said, as Pick strapped it on his wrist. "What are all the dials for?"
"I haven't the foggiest idea," Pick said. "But the Eastern Airlines pilot had one like it. It is apparently what the well-dressed airplane pilot wears."
Locke chuckled, and then led Pickering into the lobby bar. They took stools and ordered scotch.
"I really can't offer you the hospitality of the inn for the night, Pick?"
"I want to get down there and look around," Pick said. "What we Marine officers call 'reconnoitering the area.'"
"Not even an early supper?"
"Ah understand," Pick said, in a thick, mock Southern accent, "that this inn serves South'ren fried chicken that would please Miss Scarlett O'Hara herself."
"That we do," Locke said. "Done to a turn by a native. Of Budapest, Hungary."
Pickering chuckled. He looked over his shoulder and nodded at a table in the corner of the bar.
"You serve food here?"
"Done," Locke said. He reached over the bar and picked up a telephone.
"Helen," he said. "Edward Locke. Would you have the garage bring Mr. Pickering's car around to the front? And then ask my secretary to bring the manila envelope with 'Mr. Pickering' on it to the bar? And give me the kitchen."
The manila envelope was delivered first. It contained a marked road map of the route from Atlanta to Pensacola, Florida. It had been prepared with care; there were three sections of road outlined in red, to identify them as speed traps.
"There's a rumor that at least some of the speed traps are passing servicemen through, as their contribution to the war effort," Locke said. "But I wouldn't bank on that. And on the subject of speed traps, they want cash. You all right for cash?"
"Fine, thank you," Pickering said. "What about a place to stay once I get there?"
"All taken care of," Locke said. "An inn called the San Carlos Hotel. Your grandfather tried to buy it a couple of years ago, but it's a family business and they wouldn't sell. They're friends of mine. They'll take good care of you."
"Just say I'm a friend of yours?"
"I already called them," Locke said. "They expect you."
"You're very obliging," Pick said. "Thank you."
"Good poolside waiters are hard to find," Locke said, smiling.
(One)
Temporary Building T-2032
The Mall
Washington, D.C.
1230 Hours, 6 January 1942
There was a sign reading ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE on the door to the stairway of the two-floor frame building.
Second Lieutenant Kenneth J. McCoy pushed it open and stepped through it. Inside, there was a wall of pierced-steel netting, with a door of the same material set into it. On the far side of the wall, a Marine sergeant sat at a desk, in his khaki shirt. His blouse hung from a hanger hooked into the pierced-steel-netting wall.
The sergeant stood up and pushed a clipboard through a narrow opening in the netting. When he stood up, McCoy saw the sergeant was armed with a Colt Model 1911A1.45 ACP pistol, worn in a leather holster hanging from a web belt. Hanging beside his blouse was a Winchester Model 1897 12-gauge trench gun.
"They've been looking for you, Lieutenant," the sergeant said.
McCoy wrote his name on the form on the clipboard and pushed it back through the opening in the pierced-metal wall.
"Who 'they'?" he asked, smiling.
"The colonel, Captain Sessions," the sergeant said.
"I was on leave," McCoy said, "but I made the mistake of letting them know where they could find me."
The sergeant chuckled and then pressed a hidden button. There was the buzzing of a solenoid. When he heard it, McCoy pushed the door in the metal wall open.
"They said it was important," McCoy said. "Since I am the only second lieutenant around here, what that means is that they need someone to inventory the paper towels and typewriter ribbons."
The sergeant smiled. "Good luck," he said.
McCoy went up the wooden stairs two at a time. Beyond a door at the top of the stairs was another pierced-steel wall. There was another desk behind it, but there was no one at the desk, so McCoy took a key from his pocket and put it to a lock in the door.
He pushed the door open and was having trouble getting his key out of the lock when a tall thin officer saw him. The officer was bent over a desk deeply absorbed with something or other. He was in his shirtsleeves (with the silver leaves of a lieutenant colonel pinned to his collar points), and he was wearing glasses. Even in uniform, and with a snub-nosed.38-caliber Smith Wesson Chief's Special revolver in a shoulder holster, Lieutenant Colonel F. L. Rickabee, USMC, did not look much like a professional warrior.
He looked up at McCoy with an expression of patient exasperation.
"The way it works, McCoy," Lieutenant Colonel Rickabee said, as if explaining it to a child, "is that if you're unavoidably detained, you call up and tell somebody. I presume you were unavoidably detained?"
"Sir," McCoy said, "my orders were to report no later than oh-eight-hundred tomorrow morning."
Rickabee looked at Second Lieutenant McCoy for a moment. "Goddamn it," he said. "You're right."
"The sergeant said you were looking for me, sir," McCoy said.
"Uh- huh," Colonel Rickabee said. "I hope you haven't had lunch."
"No, sir," McCoy said.
"Good," Rickabee said. "The chancre mechanics flip their lids if you've been eating."
"I had breakfast," McCoy said.
"Don't tell them," Rickabee said.
"I had a physical when I came back, sir," McCoy said. "That was just a week ago."
"You're about to have another," Rickabee said.
He bent over the desk again, shuffled the papers he had been looking at into a neat stack, and then put them into a manila envelope stamped with large red letters SECRET. He put the envelope into a file cabinet, then locked the cabinet with a heavy padlock.
"Wait here a moment, McCoy," Lieutenant Colonel Rickabee said. "I'll fetch Captain Sessions."
He went down the corridor and into an office. A moment later, Captain Sessions, USMC, appeared. He was a tall, well-set-up young officer, whose black' hair was cut in a crew cut. His brimmed officer's cap was perched on the back of his head, and he was slipping his arms into his blouse and overcoat. He had obviously removed the blouse and overcoat together.
"Hey, Killer," he said, smiling, revealing a healthy set of white teeth. "How was the leave?"
"As long as it lasted, it was fine, thanks," McCoy replied. Captain Sessions was about the only man in the Corps who could call McCoy "Killer" without offending him. Anyone else who did it seldom did it twice. It triggered in McCoy's eyes a coldness that kept it from happening again.
Captain Sessions was different. For one thing, he said it as a joke. For another, he had proved himself on several occasions to be McCoy's friend when that had been difficult. Perhaps most importantly, McCoy believed that if it had not been for Captain Sessions, he would still be a corporal somewhere-in a machine-gun section or a motor transport platoon. McCoy looked on Sessions as a friend. He didn't have many friends.
"Major Almond," Captain Sessions said as they went back down the stairs, referring to the Administrative Officer, "is looking forward to jumping your ass for reporting back in late. If he sees you before I see him, or Colonel Rickabee does, you tell him to see one of us."
"Yes, sir," McCoy said.
"With a little bit of luck, you'll be out of here before you run into him, and he won't learn that I made a fool of myself again. I really thought you were due back at oh-eight-hundred this morning."
"Yes, sir," McCoy repeated. He didn't understand the "you'll be out of here" business, but there was no time to ask. Captain Sessions was already at the foot of the stairs, reaching for the sergeant's clipboard to sign them out.