"When did you become an officer?" she asked. Her hand was still on his leg.
"A couple of weeks ago," he said.
"I'm surprised that they sent you back-because of the cane, I mean."
He shrugged again.
Damn, he's not going to tell me anything. Not without a little encouragement, anyway.
She stood up and opened the bottle of Argentinian brandy, poured a good half inch of it into a snifter, and handed it to Moore.
He drank it hungrily, surprising her.
"That was medicinal," he said. "Now I'll have a social one if you don't mind."
"Are you in pain?"
"No," he lied. "It was a long ride in those airplanes," he said. "I'll be all right."
"Poor baby," she said, and poured more brandy into his glass.
When Jake Dillon came into the room, she was sitting with her legs modestly crossed in an armchair across from the couch.
"Help yourself, if you don't mind, Major," she said.
"Thank you," he said, and poured a healthy snort into his snifter.
"How's the leg?" he asked Moore.
"Legs, plural," Moore said. "I'm damned glad to get off them." As he spoke they heard the sound of tires on the gravel of the driveway. After that, a car door slammed, and then they heard feet crossing the porch.
Banning saw Dillon before Dillon saw him.
"I thought you were supposed to be selling war bonds," he said, and then he saw Moore. "I will be double dammed!
Moore! Lieutenant Moore. How are you, John?" Banning walked quickly to the couch and held out his hand.
"I'm doing just fine, Sir," Moore said. "It's good to see you, Sir. Hey, Pluto!"
Dillon waited until Hon had shaken Moore's hand, and then he said, "He is not fine. He can barely stagger around with a cane. "
"Then why is he here?" Banning asked.
"Because he told Brigadier General Pickering that he wanted to come, and Brigadier General Pickering said, `Good boy."
"What the hell is this all about, Jake?"
"Why don't we wait until the other two get here, and we can get it all over at once?"
"Who's the other two?"
"Your friend Killer McCoy and a sergeant named Hart."
Ellen Feller was acquainted with Ken McCoy. And she was not happy to learn that he was on his way.
Oh, my God! I thought I'd seen the last of Ken McCoy for a while. Forever. When I woke up this morning, everything was going just fine. I've even got Willoughby just about convinced that the G-2 of S WPOA needs his own Intercept Analysis section, and that I'm obviously the person to run it. But then Moore, and now McCoy! It never rains but it pours!
During the last days that the Marines were in China, Corporal Kenneth R. McCoy was a member of the detachment of the Fourth Marines dispatched to escort the personnel and baggage of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Mission from Nanking to their evacuation ship in Tientsin.
It turned out that Corporal McCoy was a very unusual Marine enlisted man. For one thing, Mrs. Ellen Feller found that Corporal McCoy was really very sexy. For another, she was all too aware that he could be very dangerous. This was especially apparent when he discovered that the luggage of the Rev. and Mrs. Glen T. Feller contained a considerable quantity of jade artifacts and jewelry. The export from China of such artifacts was forbidden.
Mrs. Feller defused the situation by taking McCoy into her bed.
Unfortunately, the affair almost got out of hand; the damned fool fancied he was in love with her. The result was an unpleasant scene on the ship just before it sailed. Afterward, she worried for a long time that he would take revenge and turn her in over the jade. But when the Fourth Marines were transferred to the Philippines, her fear vanished-forever, she thought.
There was no way they were going to get out of the Philippines, not with the Japanese there. And even if he survived the war, no one would care about jade removed illegally from China in 1941.
The trouble was that McCoy seemed to have nine lives. He got out of the Philippines somehow and showed up in Washington, as a fresh-from-OCS second lieutenant. The last she heard of him he was in the 2nd Raider Battalion. He survived the Makin Island raid, too, just as he'd survived the Philippines.
The bastard has more lives than a cat!
And what is he... what are all of them doing here now?
"Who's the sergeant with McCoy?" Banning asked.
"Interesting guy," Dillon said. "He used to be a detective on the vice squad in St. Louis. Rickabee plucked him out of Parris Island and made him Pickering's bodyguard."
"What's he doing here?" Banning asked.
"He's here because he told Brigadier General Pickering that he wanted to come," he said, using the line he'd used for Moore, "and Brigadier General Pickering said, `Good boy."
"In other words, you're not going to tell me?"
"Not until McCoy and Hart get here, and Mrs. Feller goes shopping or something," Dillon said.
"Major Dillon," Ellen Feller said coldly, "I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but I hold the same security clearances as Major Banning,"
"I didn't know that, Mrs. Feller," Jake said. "But what I do know is that General Pickering told me that the less you know about this the better."
"You won't mind, will you, Major," she said, "if I verify that with General Pickering?"
"I wish you would," Dillon said- calmly. "But for the moment, I'd be grateful if you could find something else to do for an hour or two. Here comes a truck. I suspect McCoy and Hart are on it."
"How am I supposed to do my job if I am denied access to... whatever is going on around here?"
"Mrs. Feller, I'm just a simple Marine," Jake Dillon said. "General Pickering gave me an order and I'm going to carry it out. He said that the less you know about this, the better."