A lone civilian aboard a modern man-of-war, with its acres of steel and bristling weapons, is a sorry thing indeed. Girard felt like a castaway space traveler as he climbed the salt-splotched wooden steps of the forward accommodation ladder. The carrier's hull bulked monstrously large now. Below him the Admiral's barge, which had not seemed to him a small boat at all, bobbed like a child's toy in a pond.
At the head of the ladder a tanned young lieutenant, obviously the officer of the deck, cut a prim salute. A commander, apparently the flag secretary, held out his hand.
"Welcome aboard, sir," he said. "I'll take you right up to admiral's country. Just follow me, please."
The knot of sailors who watched Girard cross the flight deck toward the superstructure saw little to impress them. A somewhat ungainly civilian, his suit rumpled, walked with the uncertain gait of a landsman, carrying a small attaché case. Those who hazarded a guess figured him to be some minor civil servant or a technical representative from one of the aircraft or missile contractors. Only the watch on the signal bridge, which had read the messages from shore, eyed him with real interest. They could see Admiral Barnswell, three tiny stars glinting on each point of his starched shirt collar, step from his cabin door and hold out a hand in greeting.
"Nice to see you, sir," they heard him say. "I'm glad we could offer you real Mediterranean weather instead of some of that dirty stuff we get from the Atlantic." The two men stepped into the cabin.
The hours slipped by. With the turn of the tide the carrier heaved gently in a slightly rising swell. Stars, brilliant and sharp, winked on across the sky until they filled the night. The officer of the deck, trying to keep an eye on the Admiral's cabin, knew only that the Old Man had ordered dinner for two sent to his quarters.
More than four hours passed before the watch on the bridge heard the Admiral's door open. Barnswell and the civilian exchanged farewells without banter and their handshake was quick and perfunctory. Neither man smiled.
The officer of the deck noted the grim set to the features of the civilian as he said simply, "Thanks," and lowered himself gingerly down the ladder, descending backward to get a firmer footing. The Admiral's barge purred off to return him to shore.
At the dock Girard turned down the offer of a jeep ride back to the airfield, but asked directions into town. He hurried off, in his long and graceless stride, into the maze of shops and cafes that spread out at the foot of the rock. He looked into several bars before he spotted a public telephone booth in the back of one. He went in, sat down at a table and ordered a sherry from the white-aproned proprietor, then took the little glass into the booth with him.
Making connections with the White House took some time. Girard calculated that it would now be about 7 p.m. there, which meant that most of the switchboard operators would still be on duty. He asked specifically for Helen Chervasi, finally got her and had his collect call approved. She switched him to Esther Townsend without waiting for him to ask.
Esther was cheery and the connection was clear: "And now I suppose you'll be over the border to Spain and the senoritas."
"Why, sure, beautiful," he said, "why do you suppose the boss sent a bachelor over here, anyway?"
"I'll put him on," she said. "He's called down twice about you in the past half hour."
"Paul?" It was Lyman's voice, and Girard could feel the anxiety in it.
"The news is wonderful or awful, boss," said Girard, speaking slowly and clearly. "Depending on how you want to look at it."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning what we suspected is true. All the way. The fellow here is a smooth one. No, make that read slippery. But I got it in writing, signed by both of us and time-dated in his handwriting."
"Oh, God," Lyman said. Girard waited, but he could hear only the heavy breathing of the President.
"Boss?"
"Yes?"
"Don't worry. I hate it too, but we got it all wrapped up. It's locked up tight. I'm on my way home right now."
"How soon can you get here?" Lyman asked.
"I'll get the 11:05 Trans-Ocean out of Madrid right to Dulles. That's 11:05 your time. I'll see you for breakfast, easy."
"No trouble making connections?" The President was still anxious.
"No. The charter's waiting for me. It's a fast little Italian job. I'll have time to kill in Madrid."
"Keep that thing in your pocket," Lyman warned. "Don't trust the briefcase."
"Sure, sure. Remember that cigarette case you gave me for my birthday? Right now we don't store tobacco in it. Paper fits in much better tonight."
"Any chance of your man there talking to our-er- to the other fellow here?"
"Not a snowball's chance in hell, boss. You got to talk to this fellow to know him. Jiggs is right. He goes with the winner. This is the God-damnedest thing you ever read."
"Well, take care, Paul," Lyman said. "We'll call the others in as soon as you and I go over it. And give some thought to just how we do it tomorrow."
"Right. See you at breakfast. Good night, boss."
"Good night, Paul."
When his little twin-jet plane swept off the Gibraltar runway half an hour later, Girard looked back and down at the Eisenhower, now a sparkling thicket among the scattered lights of the darkened anchorage. He settled back in his seat, his left hand clutching a silver cigarette case in his coat pocket.
Wednesday Night
Jiggs Casey woke up hot and sticky in his room at the Sherwood Hotel in New York. The light filtering through the window curtains was fading. He looked at his watch. It was 6:30. He'd have to get moving, for he was due at Shoo's apartment at seven.
He had called Eleanor Holbrook at her office as soon as he checked into the hotel. He hadn't heard Shoo's voice in two years, but it was just as he remembered it, the brittle quality of her tone offset by the haphazard pattern of little breathless rushes of speech.
"Hi, Shoo," he said. "You remember a fellow named Casey?"
“Jiggs!”
"What time do you get through work?" he asked.
"Not so fast, Colonel." He heard her quick intake of breath and remembered how she would swallow a cloud of smoke from her cigarette. "I don't make plans for men who vanish from the earth and then come back suddenly, like in a parachute."
"I want to take you to dinner," he said.
"Oh, just like that? And suppose the lady has a date, Colonel, which she happens to have."
"Gee, I wish you'd break it." Casey lowered his voice and promptly felt like a heel for feigning romantic intentions. But he had to see her. There was no place else to begin. "I have to talk to you, Shoo, really."
"Poor little misunderstood married man?" She was sarcastic now.
He could imagine her at her desk, her arms all but bare in a short-sleeved work dress, little golden hairs glinting on her forearm as she tapped ashes from the cigarette held with two fingers in a ridiculous angle. He could see the brown hair fluffed over her forehead; the nose, small and narrow; the full lips that never quite closed over her teeth. She'd be twenty-eight now, this tall, proud girl who hurried so to taste all of life. She was the woman who liked to speak wistfully of a cottage in the country, but who lived in perfect rhythm with the staccato tempo of New York-her world and her hypnosis. In the brief week that Casey had known her, Eleanor Holbrook's lack of affinity for the simple things had irritated and finally (and fortunately) estranged him, but her appetite for the city swept him along. His blood had warmed with the excitement even as he cursed the fascination. She was, indeed, the original Cloud Nine girl.
Now he could feel certain nostalgic tremors and he found it hard to phrase the lighthearted answer that he knew she expected.