There was a corporal at the front gate. We played the salute game and I gave him my orders. He told me where to park and which building to enter. I parked where he said, received and returned salutes, and showed my orders to another corporal in the entrance hall of the appointed building. This kept happening until I reached the offices of General Baldwin Winden. His secretary announced me over an intercom. He said he wasn’t expecting me, and the secretary said something about misdirected memos and took my orders inside. I opened the intercom and listened to them discuss me. My tan was mentioned, damn it. The general and his secretary tried to figure out who or what I was and decided that asking me might save time.
“I don’t know what he’s doing here,” I heard the general say, “but if it says he belongs here, that’s all that counts.”
The military mind. Nothing ever changes, orders are always orders. Extraordinary.
I went into the general’s office. We saluted each other, and I made a point of doing nothing until the secretary went away. I figured he would listen in on the intercom, but that was fine with me. When the door closed I said, “General Baldwin, I—”
“Winden,” he said. “Baldwin’s my first name, Major.”
It wasn’t a slip on my part. It was the sort of bad prep military men liked to expect from civilian agencies.
“Hell,” I said. “They never get anything right.” I put a finger to my lips, moved it to my ear, then pointed at the walls and ceiling. He looked at me as though I was bucking for a Section Eight. I handed him my Agency ID. He flipped it open and did a take that was almost too good to be true. You could almost see a cartoon-style light bulb over his head.
“Well, well, well,” he said. “Have a seat, Mr. Lynch. You know, I’m not surprised. Something about those orders didn’t ring true.” Oh, sure. “Sit down, tell me what I can do for you. Oh, we can talk here, sir. Oh, don’t you worry now, we can talk here, sir. This is United States Army property, there hasn’t been a civilian on the grounds since the fence went up. Except for your sort of people, of course. Sit, sit...”
I sat. I had wondered what sort of general they would pick to run a candyass warehouse in the middle of South Dakota, and now I knew, and he was better than anything I could have dreamed up.
“So you came to see us,” he said. “Well, well, what can I do for you people? Hmmm?”
“You can find me something innocuous to do for the next three weeks,” I said. “If there’s an empty office, put me in it and pile papers on my desk. If anybody asks, I’m Major John Walker and I’m doing something confidential. Don’t tell anyone otherwise, not even your secretary. And don’t—”
“Now one moment, sir! Now one moment!”
I stared at him.
“You have no authority here, sir. None! You are a civilian, sir, and you have no lawful right to be here, let alone furnish me with instructions. No right at all! You are a civilian and we are military and—”
I stood up, and he stopped talking. Just like that. I wondered if General Tree was as much of a washout as this moron.
I broke the silence. I said, “If you want to order me out, for Christ’s sake go ahead. I left the middle of a Brazilian summer for this. They put me up here in Eskimoland and issued me a pretty little soldier suit and forgot to put an overcoat in my bag. I’m supposed to spend three fucking weeks doing nothing waiting for something that isn’t going to happen. I couldn’t sleep last night and I had a stinking breakfast this morning and the clowns who searched my room this morning did everything but autograph my pillow. You can’t want me out of here as much as I want to get out of here, sir, and I’m sure this is God’s own country in the summer, but—”
“Sir!”
I stared at him, and this time he gave me his guarded look. “You’ll be here for three weeks?”
“I’ll be here until your shipment goes out, which could be any time during the next three weeks but which we both know will be on the fourth of February.”
“The date has not yet been determined, Mr., uh, Lynch.”
“Maybe they haven’t notified you.” And, as an afterthought, “Or maybe our information is wrong.”
“The latter, I’m sure. The date will purposely remain undetermined until the last moment.” If he honestly believed they wouldn’t set the date until they were ready to give him the word, then he was too dumb to live. “Now let me see, Lynch. You’re concerned with the shipment?”
I just nodded. I had already been enough of a wiseass.
“But you’re civilian. We should have someone from Military Intelligence.”
“You probably do.”
“If that were so, I would know about it.” The hell he would. I told him his boys would probably have a man or a team down any day but that I was under orders to work independently.
“We have an interest in this ourselves,” I said. “You know the eventual destination of the shipment.”
He named a military compound in Florida, another in Texas, a third in the northeast, a fourth in California. It was the most obvious breach of security since the Trojan horse. I had trouble repressing a fairly sincere moment of civic outrage.
Instead, I filed the information. George had thought everything was being routed to Florida, and either he or the general was wrong. I figured anybody would have to pick the general for this honor, but George might have misread something. Four trucks, four destinations-there was a certain degree of logic there.
I said, “I mean final destinations.” He looked completely blank. This was a whole new concept to him. “Without going into detail,” I said, “The goods will be shipped onward from the places you mentioned. That’s where we come in, that’s where it stops being military and becomes civilian.”
“Oh, I see.”
“So while the first delivery stage is legally your baby, my team wants me here. I think it’s about as necessary as it is warm, but orders are orders.” There was a phrase he could cuddle up with. “So I have to be here unless you order me out. I’ll try not to get in anyone’s way, believe me. Keep me a secret. A blown cover would look bad. I went five years in the Amazon without getting blown, and I ought to be able to do three weeks in South Dakota.”
He stood up, and I saluted. He had trouble returning it; I could see it didn’t seem right to him. You didn’t spend your life getting to be a general just to salute camouflaged civilians.
“I will give you whatever help I can,” he said, stiffly.
“I’ll appreciate it. I’m bunked down at the motel, and I’m under orders to go on living there. I’m frankly damned if I know why.”
“Orders,” he said.
“I doubt that anyone will ask, but my story will be that I’m awaiting assignment of permanent quarters. I don’t think the point will come up—”
“I doubt it, sir.”
“—but just in case. Well. Do you have an office available? It will have to be private, but that’s my only requirement. And could I figure on moving in around two this afternoon? Good, very good.”
I extended my hand, and we shook. I could tell he liked it a hell of a lot better than a salute.
Eight
That afternoon they had an office ready for me, and, more important, a heavy overcoat. A few junior officers managed to walk past my open door and take a quick glance inside. This might be simple curiosity — what else could they do for kicks? — or the word might already have gotten around that I was an Agency snoop. It didn’t matter. The on-base intelligence crew was no threat, and if MI was going to send in a team, that was something to worry about later. The possibility always existed that the Agency had an undercover op already planted. George was certain this wasn’t so, but that I didn’t have to worry anyway. My Brazil cover would help explain the fact that he didn’t know me, or I him.