"What the hell is that you're drinking?" Captain Karl Hart asked his son.
"Scotch. They make it in Scotland."
"Jerry, give me some real whiskey, and give him another of those. When did you start drinking scotch?"
"I don't know. How's the suicide?"
"Accident victim, accident victim," Captain Hart said. "I just checked. The undertaker got the lipstick and rouge off him, and the women's underwear, and I talked to the cop on the scene, and there's no further problem." Hart had one final thought about Beth Lathrop: There's one thing you have to say about her, she's not the kind of girl you could bring home to meet the folks.
[Five]
FERDINAND SIX
BUKA, SOLOMON ISLANDS
15 SEPTEMBER 1942
They decided to move out. They were out of choices.
For one thing they had to eat.
They'd started with more smoked pig than the ten pounds or so Sergeant Steve Koffler found on the morning he thought everybody had taken off and left him: At Ian's orders, Patience had taken twice that much more and hidden it in the rocks by the stream, in a small cave that could be sealed with rocks and protected from wildlife and insects.
And then Ian stalked another wild pig and impaled it on his MACHETE, SUBSTITUTE STANDARD, and for two days the three of them feasted on roast pig. Ian didn't want to risk smoking it, because of the smoke, and Steve figured there was no point in arguing with him. So they roasted it over the last of their dry wood, which was smokeless. The pig was pretty good, even without salt.
But now just about everything was gone. And the men had of returned from looking for Lieutenant Reeves and Lieutenant Howard. In fact, they hadn't even sent a messenger back-suggesting the unpleasant possibility that they had run into the Japs and would not be returning.
So they took their small arms and ammunition (the British Lee-Enfield rifles and their.303 ammunition) into the jungle, and buried them. The rifles in one place, their bolts in another, and the ammunition in still another.
Steve thought that was mostly bullshit. The Japanese were not going to wander around in the jungle looking for rifles an ammo. Nor was he, Ian, or anyone else going to come back and dig them up. They could just as easily have left them in the hut with the radio for the Japs to find.
As he was spreading a layer of dirt on his rifle, he wondered what he should do about reporting in. Should he get on the air and tell Townsville or Pearl Harbor that FRD6 was leaving the net for an indefinite period?
He decided against that. It just might happen that he could come back; but if he had signed off the net, those by-the-book assholes would give him all sorts of static about coming back on.
Though he recognized it as whistling in the dark, the hope that he might get back on the air later almost made him feel comfortable about leaving the Hallicrafters intact. The rotten thing about that was the Japs would probably find it. If he was absolutely certain that the Japs would actually get it, he would have smashed the sonofabitch. But he wasn't certain of that. So in the end he compromised. He took all but one of the crystals that controlled the frequencies, wrapped them in the last remnant of his skivvy shirt, and put them in the pocket of his utility jacket.
He made one last report, this time to Townsville, for the atmospherics were such that he couldn't reach Pearl Harbor.
And then he signaled Patience to stop pedaling the generator.
Feeling a strange mixture of sadness and blind rage, he left the hut for what he thought would be the last time.
When he got outside, Edward James and Lieutenant Reeves were in the clearing.
Reeves looked like a walking corpse, and the clothes he had on him were rags.
"What about Lieutenant Howard?" Steve blurted.
"I'm delighted to see you too, old chap," Reeves said. "I appreciate the warmth of your reception."
"We thought you were all dead," Steve blurted.
"We sodding well should be," Reeves said. "Mother did not raise me to be a sodding pack mule."
"What?"
"We struck gold," Reeves reported. "A sodding Nip truck all alone on a ration run."
"No shit?"
"Which we have carried up and down every sodding hill on this sodding island."
"Anybody get hurt?"
"Your lieutenant sprained his ankle. The chaps are carrying him in."
"That's all?" Reeves nodded.
Sergeant Steve Koffler felt like crying.
[Six]
THE FOSTER LAFAYETTE HOTEL
WASHINGTON, D.C.
1630 HOURS 19 SEPTEMBER 1942
Just after he knocked on the door to Senator Richmond Fowler's suite, Sergeant George Hart noticed a doorbell button nearly hidden in the framework of the door. He had just put his finger out to it when the door opened.
A tall, trim, silver-haired woman in a cotton skirt and fluffy blouse smiled at him.
She really must have been a looker when she was young.
"Sergeant Hart, right?" she asked. "Colonel Rickabee said you were coming over."
"Yes, Ma'am." She gave him her hand. A wedding ring was her only jewelry, but pinned to her blouse was a cheap metal pin, two blue stars on a white shield background. It signified that she had two members of her immediate family serving in the Armed Forces.
George's mother had been wearing one, with one star, when he'd gone to the house from the airport.
"I'm Patricia Pickering," she said, "but I suppose that a detective like you will have already deduced that, right?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
"I'd like to apologize for what my idiot son did to you, Sergeant," she said. "To put that behind us."