Morrow was wearing a look of surprise, and I realized that I was drinking way too much and was letting my mouth get way too carried away. My ribs still hurt like all hell, though, so I kept wading through the glass in my hand. Besides, it would be a damned shame to let a perfectly good scotch go to waste.
She took a sip from her wine and studied the bruises and swells on my face. “You’ve had a difficult few weeks,” she said.
“I’m not complaining,” I answered, wondering if I should stick up my finger to get the waiter to bring two more. The waiter was actually sweating from running back and forth. People from other tables were staring at me.
“Do your ribs still hurt?”
“I think sho,” I admitted.
She giggled a little.
“What?” I asked. “Wassshh so damned funny?”
This was when I first noticed that my ribs hurt so much that they had made my tongue swell. Until that instant, I never knew my ribs were connected to my tongue.
“We’d better order dinner quickly and get some food in your stomach,” she said, flashing those wonderfully sympathetic eyes.
This was also about the same moment when I realized that eating had just gotten a little beyond my reach. I looked down at my silverware and there were at least ten forks. Which one would a polished gentleman choose, I wondered.
I said, “Mmmnydnodmebok,” or something like that.
Morrow stood up and came around the table. She took my arm, and she was really strong, because she hoisted me out of that chair like I was a fluffy pancake. She wrapped my left arm around her shoulder and led me out of the dining room. My left hand was dangling right across her left uptopper, and her naughty perfume tickled my nose. I wanted to give that comfy uptopper a gentle little squeeze, but my body was way past the point of listening to my brain.
She leaned me against the wall in the elevator, and I stood happily humming some song as we sped up to the third floor. Once we got to my room, she actually dug around inside my pants pocket until she found my key. Then she led me over to the bed. This was the moment I was waiting for. She thought I was intoxicated. She thought I was a harmless, incapacitated, drunken eunuch, too scotched out to raise ye olde noodle. Heh-heh-heh. I lunged toward the bed, tugging her along.
I said, “Youydod a jummbock,” and it was a real good thing she couldn’t understand a word I said, because what I’d just invited her to do was something nice girls don’t usually do.
The next thing I knew, the alarm on the nightstand next to my bed was howling at me, and I could hear someone pounding on my door. I rolled out of the bed and stumbled over and opened it. That damned Morrow had changed out of that fetching skirt and was back inside her BDUs again. Now how had she done that so fast?
She brushed past me and headed for my bathroom, while I stood there feeling stupid. I looked at the alarm clock. It read 7:40. I had set it to go off at six. I heard the shower go on, and Morrow went over to the phone and called room service. She told them to send up two American-style breakfasts and stylishly offered them a ten-dollar tip if they had it here in ten minutes.
She put the receiver down and said, “You’ve got five minutes to shower and shave. Don’t walk out of the bathroom naked, either. Army rules dictate that higher officers shall not display their Pudleys to lower officers. It wouldn’t bother me, but you’re the one who loves Army rules.”
Damn, so that’s what a Pudley is, I thought, as I lurched toward the bathroom. The shower felt great and my ribs only ached a little. Dr. Drummond and his scotch cure had accomplished another medical miracle. I emerged from the bathroom fully dressed about seven minutes later. Morrow was at the door paying the bellhop for our breakfasts.
I couldn’t help myself. “Where’d you learn about Pudleys?” I demanded.
“What?”
“Pudleys? Where’d you learn that word?”
That made her giggle a lot. “At that private girls’ school I went to. That was the word we used for… well, you know. Only for little ones, though. Big ones we called Humongos.”
I thought about that a moment. I took a bite of eggs and wetted it down with a little coffee. “I don’t have a Pudley,” I insisted.
“Be that as it may,” she said, smiling, “we’re going to be late, so eat quickly.”
“Okay,” I grumbled. “Just remember. I don’t have a Pudley. Maybe I’m not a Humongo, but damn it, I’m no Pudley.”
“Eat,” she ordered.
“Maybe I need to wear different pants or something,” I mumbled.
She was still smiling when we went out and caught a sedan to the air base.
Chapter 31
Terry Sanchez looked thinner. And more gaunt. There were dark, hollow pockets around his eyes, so deep it actually seemed as if his eyeballs were sucking in all the skin around them. His eyeballs themselves looked like brittle crystals that could shatter at any minute. He shambled when he walked, and his arms hung limply by his sides. I had the sense of a man who was rapidly deteriorating.
I pointed at the chair in the middle of the floor and asked him to be seated. He slumped into it and stared at me with a blank expression. I repeated the same explanation I had used the day before, taking care to update our understanding of what had happened in Kosovo.
His eyes were wandering around the room as I spoke, and he appeared too listless to be fazed that we had learned so much about the terrible events that occurred out there.
I paused, but before I could continue, Morrow suddenly said, “Terry.”
He looked up at her. Her voice became very soft, mellow and soothing. Almost like a violin playing a lullaby. Or maybe more like a concerned mother talking to a hurt child.
“Terry, we know now what happened out there. We want to hear your side, though. Do you understand what’s happening here?”
He stopped gazing around the room and looked into her eyes. “Yes.”
“Good,” she said, offering him a gentle smile. She was taking over the interrogation.
“It’s important for you to know we haven’t made any judgments yet. Things like this are never black and white. You were under terrible pressures. You were trying to do what was right. We want to hear your side.”
He was now staring into her eyes, as though they were a life raft he wanted to climb into.
She continued. “We’re going to ask some difficult questions now. The cover-up has fallen apart. Jack Tretorne and General Murphy just want us to find the truth. The other members of your team have all been truthful. It’s your turn, Terry. Okay?”
He nodded, but his eyes stayed glued to hers. It was almost like he was mesmerized. I knew in that instant that I could never do what Morrow was doing. She sensed that Terry Sanchez was drowning. She sensed that his insides were seething with turmoil, that he required a sympathetic listener or else he would just fall to pieces. Sympathy is not my strong suit.
“Good, Terry. Why don’t we start with the decision that led Captain Akhan to raid the police station in Piluca?”
He licked his lips a few times, and I thought of a man who was stuck in a desert and was staring at an oasis off in the distance. His only company the past few weeks had been the same men who obviously detested him for whatever he’d done out there. Some part of him had to be begging for the chance to explain himself to someone who wasn’t there. Morrow expertly sensed that.