"Jennie!" she said, smiling. "Suddenly, I'm so happy that I just want to hug you."
Sister Thomas held out her arms.
Later, they strolled the quiet paths around the grounds in the afternoon sunlight and when they came to the top of a hill, they paused there, looking down into the green valley below them.
"His beauty is everywhere," Sister Thomas said softly, turning to her friend, "I have found my place in His house."
Rosa looked at her. "How long do you remain in the novitiate?"
"Two years. Until next May."
"And what do you do then?" Rosa questioned.
"If I prove worthy of His grace, I take the black veil and go forth in the path of the Founding Mother, to bring His mercy to all who may need it."
She looked into Rosa's eyes and once again Rosa saw the deep-lying pool of serenity within them. "And I am more fortunate than most," Sister Thomas added humbly. "He has already trained me in His work. My years in the hospital will help me wherever I may be sent, for it is in this area I can best serve."
JONAS – 1945
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Book Nine1
Outside, the white-hot mid-July sun beat down on the Nevada air strip, but here in the General's office, the overworked air-conditioner whirred and kept the temperature down to an even eighty degrees. I looked at Morrissey, then across the table to the General and his staff.
"That's the story, gentlemen," I said. "The CA-JET X.P. should reach six hundred easier than the British De Havilland-Rolls jet did the five-o-six point five they're bragging about." I smiled at them and got to my feet. "And now, if you'll step outside, gentlemen, I’ll show you."
"I have no doubt about that, Mr. Cord," the General said smoothly. "If there'd been any doubts in our minds, you never would have got the contract."
"Then what are we waiting for? Let's go."
"Just a moment, Mr. Cord," the General said quickly. "We can't allow you to demonstrate the jet."
I stared at him. "Why not?"
"You haven't been cleared for jet aircraft," he said. He looked down at a sheet of paper on his desk. "Your medical report indicates a fractional lag in your reflexes. Perfectly normal, of course, considering your age, but you'll understand why we can't let you fly her."
"That's a lot of crap, General. Who the hell do you think flew her down here to deliver her to you?"
"You had a perfect right to – then," the General replied. "It was your plane. But the moment she touched that field outside, according to the contract, she became the property of the Army. And we can't afford the risk of allowing you to take her up."
I slammed my fist into my hand angrily. Rules, nothing but rules. That was the trouble with these damn contracts. Yesterday, I could have flown her up to Alaska and back and they couldn't have stopped me. Or for that matter, even catch me. The CA-JET X.P. was two hundred odd miles an hour faster than any of the conventional aircraft the Army had in the air. Someday, I'd have to take the time to read those contracts.
The General smiled and came around the table toward me. "I know just how you feel, Mr. Cord," he said. "When the medics told me I was too old for combat flying and put me behind a desk, I wasn't any older than you are right now. And I didn't like it any more than you do. Nobody likes being told he is growing older."
What the hell was he talking about? I was only forty-one. That isn't old. I could still fly rings around most of those damp-eared kids walking around on the field outside with gold and silver bars and oak leaves on their shoulders. I looked at the General.
He must have read the surprise in my eyes, for he smiled again. "That was only a year ago. I'm forty-three now." He offered me a cigarette and I took it silently. "Lieutenant Colonel Shaw will take her up. He's on the field right now, waiting for us."
Again, he read the question in my eyes. "Don't worry about it," he said quickly. "Shaw's completely familiar with the plane. He spent the last three weeks at your plant in Burbank checking her out."
I glanced at Morrissey but he was carefully looking somewhere else at the time. He'd been in on it, too. I'd make him sweat for that one. I turned back to the General. "O.K., General. Let's go outside and watch that baby fly."
Baby was the right word and not only for the plane. Lieutenant Colonel Shaw couldn't have been more than twenty years old. I watched him take her up but somehow I couldn't stand there squinting up at the sky, watching him put her through her paces. It was like going to a lot of trouble to set yourself up with a virgin and then when you had everything warmed up and ready, you opened the bedroom door and found another guy copping the cherry right under your nose.
"Is there anywhere around here I could get a cup of coffee?"
"There's a commissary down near the main gate," one of the soldiers said.
"Thanks."
"You're welcome," he said automatically, never taking his eyes from the plane in the sky, while I walked away.
The commissary wasn't air-conditioned but they kept it dark and it wasn't too bad, even if the ice cubes in the iced coffee had melted before I got the glass back to my seat. I stared morosely out of the window in front of my table. Too young or too old. That was the story of my life. I was fourteen when the last one ended, in 1918, and almost over the age limit when we got into this one. Some people never had any luck. I always thought that war came to every generation but I was neither one nor the other. I had the bad fortune to be born in between.
A medium-size Army bus pulled up in front of the commissary. Men started to pile out and I watched them because there was nothing else to look at. They weren't soldiers; they were civilians, and not young ones, either. Most of them carried their jacket over their arm and a brief case in their free hand and there were some with gray in their hair and many with no hair at all. One thing about them caught my eye. None of them were smiling, not even when they spoke to one another in the small groups they immediately formed on the sidewalk in front of the bus.
Why should they smile, I asked myself bitterly. They had nothing to smile about. They were all dodoes like me. I took out a cigarette and struck a match. The breeze from the circulating fan blew it out. I struck another, turning away from the fan and shielding the cigarette in my cupped hands.
"Herr Cord! This is indeed a surprise! What are you doing here?"
I looked up at Herr Strassmer. "I just delivered a new plane," I said, holding out my hand. "But what are you doing out here? I thought you were in New York."
He shook my hand in that peculiarly European way of his. The smile left his eyes. "We, too, made a delivery. And now we go back."
"You were with that group outside?"
He nodded. He looked out through the window at them and a troubled look came into his eyes. "Yes," he said slowly. "We all came together in one plane but we are going back on separate flights. Three years we worked together but now the job is finished. Soon I go back to California."
"I hope so," I laughed. "We sure could use you in the plant but I'm afraid it'll be some time yet. The war in Europe may be over but if Tarawa and Okinawa are any indication, we're good for at least six months to a year before Japan quits."
He didn't answer.
I looked up and suddenly I remembered. These Europeans were very touchy about manners. "Excuse me, Herr Strassmer," I said quickly. "Won't you join me in some coffee?"
"I have not the time." There was a curiously hesitant look to his eyes. "Do you have an office here as you do everywhere else?"
"Sure," I said, looking up at him. I'd passed the door marked Men on my way over. "It's in the back of this building."
"I will meet you there in five minutes," he said and hurried out.
Through the window, I watched him join one of the groups and begin to talk with them. I wondered if the old boy was going crackers. You couldn't tell, but maybe he had been working too hard and thought he was back in Nazi Germany. There certainly wasn't any reason for him to be so secretive about being seen talking to me. After all, we were on the same side.