"The car's outside?" Sessions asked.
"No, sir," the sergeant said. "Major Almond took it, sir. He went over to the Lafayette Hotel, looking for Lieutenant McCoy."
"My car's in the parking lot, sir," McCoy said.
"Why not?" Sessions said, smiling. He turned to the sergeant. "When Major Almond returns, Sergeant, tell him that Lieutenant McCoy was not AWOL after all, and that I have him."
"Yes, sir," the sergeant said, then pushed the hidden switch that operated the door lock.
McCoy's car, a 1939 LaSalle convertible coupe, was covered with snow, and the windows were filmed with ice.
"I hope you can get this thing started," Captain Sessions said as he helped McCoy chip the ice loose with a key.
"It should start," McCoy said. "I just put a new battery in it."
"You didn't take it on leave?" Sessions asked.
"I went to New York City, sir," McCoy said. "You're better off without a car in New York."
"You didn't go home?" Sessions asked. He knew more about Second Lieutenant McCoy than anyone else in the Marine Corps, including the fact that he had a father and a sister in Norristown, Pennsylvania.
"No, sir," McCoy said.
Sessions found that interesting, but didn't pursue it.
The car cranked, but with difficulty.
"I hate Washington winters," McCoy said as he waited for the engine to warm up. "Freeze and thaw, freeze and thaw. Everything winds up frozen."
"You may shortly look back on Washington winters with fond remembrance," Captain Sessions said.
"Am I going somewhere, sir?"
"Right now you're going to the Bethesda Naval Hospital," Sessions said. "You know where that is?"
"Yes, sir."
The outpatient clinic at the hospital was crowded, but as soon as Sessions gave his name, the Navy yeoman at the desk summoned a chief corpsman, who took them to an X-ray room, supervised chest and torso and leg X rays, and then led them to an examining room where he ordered McCoy to remove his clothing. He weighed him, took his blood pressure, drew blood into three different vials; and then, startling McCoy, pulled off the bandage that covered his lower back with one quick and violent jerking motion.
"Jesus," McCoy said. "Next time, tell me, Chief!"
"You lost less hair the way I done it," the chief said, unrepentant, and then examined the wound.
"That's healing nicely," he said. "But there's still a little suppuration. Shrapnel?"
McCoy nodded.
"That's the first wound like that I seen since World War I," the chief said.
A younger man in a white medical smock came in the room. The silver railroad tracks of a Navy full lieutenant were on his' collar points.
"I'm sure there's a good reason for doing this examination this way," he said to Sessions.
"Yes, Lieutenant, there is," Sessions replied.
The Naval surgeon examined McCoy's medical records, and while he was listening to his chest, the chief corpsman fetched the X rays. The surgeon examined them, and then pushed and prodded the line of stitches on McCoy's lower back.
"Any pain? Any loss of movement?"
"I'm a little stiff sometimes, sir," McCoy said.
"You're lucky you're alive, Lieutenant," the surgeon said, matter-of-factly. Then he grunted and prodded McCoy's upper right thigh with his finger. "Where'd you get that? That's a small-arm puncture, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Not suffered at the same time as the damage to your back? It looks older."
"No, sir," McCoy said.
"Not very talkative, is he. Captain?" the surgeon said to Sessions. "I asked him where he got it."
"In Shanghai, sir," McCoy said.
"That's a Japanese twenty-five caliber wound?" the surgeon asked doubtfully.
"No, sir," McCoy said. "One of those little tiny Spanish automatics… either a twenty-five or maybe a twenty-two rimfire."
"A twenty-five?" the surgeon asked curiously, and then saw the look of impatience in Session's eyes. He backed down before it.
"That seems to have healed nicely," he said, cheerfully. "You don't have a history of malaria, do you, Lieutenant?"
"No, sir."
"Nor, according to this, of social disease," the surgeon said. "Have you been exposed to that, lately?"
"No, sir."
"Well, presuming they don't find anything when they do his blood, Captain, he should be fit for full duty in say, thirty days. I think he should build up to any really strenuous exercise, however. There's some muscle damage, and-"
"I understand," Sessions said. "Thank you, Doctor, for squeezing him in this way."
"My pleasure," the surgeon said. "You can get dressed, Lieutenant. It'll be a couple of minutes before the form can be typed up. I presume you want to take it with you?"
"If we can," Sessions said.
When they were alone in the treatment room, McCoy put his blouse back on and fastened his Sam Browne belt in place. Then he looked at Sessions.
"Are you going to tell me what's going on?" he asked.
"Well, from here we go to my place," Captain Sessions said. "Where my bride at this very moment is preparing a sumptuous feast to honor the returned warrior, and where there is a bottle of very good scotch she has been saving for a suitable occasion."
"In other words, you're not going to tell me?"
"Not here, Ken," Sessions said. "At my place."
McCoy nodded.
"Colonel and Mrs. Rickabee will be there," Sessions said.
McCoy's eyebrows rose at that, but he didn't say anything.
(Two)
Chevy Chase, Maryland
"The second house from the end, Ken," Captain Sessions said. "Pull into the driveway."
McCoy was surprised at the size of the house, and at the quality of the neighborhood. The houses were large, and the lots were spacious; it was not where he would have expected a Marine captain to live.
"Well, thank God that's home," Sessions said when McCoy had turned into the driveway. "Jeannie's getting a little large to have to drive me to work."
McCoy had no idea what he was talking about, but the mystery was quickly cleared up when Jean Sessions, a dark-haired, pleasant-looking young woman, came out of the kitchen door and walked over to the car. She was pregnant.
She kissed her husband, and then pointed at a 1942 Mercury convertible coupe.
"Guess what the Good Fairy finally fixed," she said. "He brought it back five minutes ago."
"I saw," Sessions said, dryly. " 'All things come to him who waits,' I suppose."
Jean Sessions went around to the driver's side as McCoy got out. She put her hands on McCoy's arms, and kissed his cheek, and then looked intently at him.
"How are you, Ken?" she asked.
It was more than a ritual remark, McCoy sensed. She was really interested.
"I'm fine, thanks," Ken said.
"You look fine," she said. "I'm so glad to see you."
She took his arm and led him to the kitchen. There was the smell of roasting beef, and a large, fat black woman in a maid's uniform was bent over a wide table wrapping small pieces of bacon around oysters.
"This is Jewel, Ken," Jean said, "whose hors d'oeuvres are legendary. And this is Lieutenant McCoy."
"You must be somebody special, Lieutenant," Jewel said, with a smile. "I heard all about you."
McCoy smiled, slightly uncomfortably, back at her.
"Colonel Rickabee called and said you were to call him when you got here," Jean Sessions said to her husband. "So you do that, and I'll fix Ken a drink."
She led him into the house to a tile-floored room, whose wall of French doors opened on a white expanse that after a moment he recognized to be a golf course.
"This is a nice house," Ken said.
"I think it is," Jean said. "It was our wedding present."
She handed him a glass dark with scotch.
"How was the leave?" she asked.
"As long as it lasted, it was fine," he said.
"I heard about that," Jean said. "You were cheated out of most of it, weren't you?"
"I made the mistake of telling them where they could find me," he said.
"How'd the physical go?" she asked. "You going to be all right?"