McCoy thought the officers would be pissed. Eating in the same room with enlisted Marines was bad enough, but not as bad as having to share a table with them. But they weren't. They were playing spy again, McCoy saw, and the dinner table gave them a stage for the playacting they thought was necessary.

"Mr." Sessions announced that he had asked Lieutenant Macklin if it would be all right if they spent two nights in Chiehshom. instead of the one originally planned. The Christian Missionary Alliance was considering opening another mission in Yenchi'eng, and they wanted to take advantage of being close to it to have a good look at it.

He's a goddamned fool, McCoy thought. They're all goddamned fools. They think they will look more innocent brazening it out, two missionaries and a Marine officer in full uniform simply out for a ride looking for a new place to save souls. It will take the Japs about ten minutes to learn they've left here, and there will be a greeting party waiting for them long before they get anywhere near Yenchi'eng.

The only thing more dangerous than an officer convinced he's doing what duty requires is two officers doing the same thing, two officers and a missionary.

They would be back in Chiehshom by nightfall, Sessions said, and spending the extra day would give Sergeant Zimmerman and his men the chance to go over the vehicles and make sure everything was shipshape.

"You're not going with them, Corporal McCoy," Mrs. Feller asked, "to drive the car?"

"No, ma'am," McCoy said. "I'm not going along."

Ernie Zimmerman, uncomfortable in the presence of the officers, and fully aware there was some friction between them and McCoy, bolted down his food and pushed himself wordlessly away from the table.

McCoy went after him.

"Ernie, jack up one of the trucks and drop the drive shaft," McCoy said.

"What the hell for?" Zimmerman demanded.

"Just do it, Ernie, please," McCoy said.

"What are they up to?" Zimmerman asked.

"You heard it," McCoy said.

"What was that bullshit anyway?"

"Just get somebody to drop a drive shaft, Ernie. And make sure one of the cars is gassed and ready to go," McCoy said. Then he went to his room to mark the route the damned fools should take to Yenchi'eng.

When McCoy met with the three of them in Sessions's room, they made no further attempt to get him to take them to Yenchi'eng. This surprised him until he realized they'd concluded that their brilliant inspiration of brazening it out was going to work, and they didn't need him.

After they came back from successfully spying on the Japs, they'd be in a position to rack his ass with Banning for refusing to go with them. They would have been right all along, and he would have been nothing but an insolent enlisted man with the gall to challenge the wise judgment of his betters.

There was nothing he could do to stop them, of course, and (except for having one of the missionary trucks jacked up and the drive shaft dropped so that it might fool the Kempei-Tai watching the hotel) there was nothing he could do to help them either.

But he set his portable alarm clock for half-past four and went down to the courtyard to see them off. Mrs. Feller was there too, the nipples of her teats sticking up under her bathrobe and her blond hair, now unbraided, hanging down her back.

Jesus Christ, without her hair glued to her head, she's a hell of a good-looking woman. I would give my left nut to get in the sack with her.

The officers and the missionary were a little carried away with the situation. They saw themselves, McCoy thought contemptuously, as patriots about to embark on a great espionage mission. McCoy had to temper his scorn, however, when Sessions took him aside and told him, dead serious, that no matter what happened today he wanted him to understand that he understood his position.

"This is one of those situations, Corporal, where we both must do what we believe is right. And I want you to know that I believe you thought long and hard about your obligations before you decided you couldn't go with me."

He's not so much of a prick as a virgin.

"Good luck, Lieutenant," McCoy said, and offered his hand.

What the hell, it didn't cost anything to say that. And if Sessions means what he said, then on the off chance they don't get bagged and Macklin tries to get me in trouble, maybe it'll help.

As they walked back to the hotel, Mrs. Feller's leg kept coming out of the flap of her bathrobe, and she kept trying to hold the robe closed. He remembered that all through dinner she had kept bumping her knee "accidentally" against his.

McCoy was now convinced she was just fucking around with him, getting some kind of sick kick out of trying to make him uncomfortable, the way some people get a sick kick out of teasing a dog. He intended to stay as far away from her as he could.

"Is there any interesting way you can think of to kill the time until they get back?" she asked, when they were inside the hotel.

She goddamned well knows there are two or three meanings I could put on that.

"Until it starts to rain, which should be about noon, you could fish, I suppose," McCoy said. "They've got tackle. I've got to work on the trucks."

"That doesn't sound very exciting," she said.

"I guess not," he said, turning and walking away from her down the corridor to his room.

He didn't see her at breakfast, and he ate with the Marines at lunch. They asked him where the officers and the Christer had gone, and how long that would keep them all in Chiehshom. Zimmerman had already told them he didn't know, they said, or else he wouldn't tell them. McCoy told them he didn't know, either.

At half- past three, a boy came to his room and told him that Sergeant Zimmerman wanted to see him in the lobby. When McCoy went down, there were two Japanese soldiers with Zimmerman, a sergeant and a corporal. They were both large for Japanese, and they were wearing leather jackets and puttees. Goggles hung loosely from leather helmets. Motorcycle messengers.

They bowed to McCoy and then saluted, and he bowed back and returned the salute. Then Zimmerman gave him two envelopes, one addressed to him and the other to Mrs. Feller.

"This is addressed to you," McCoy said.

"I can read," Zimmerman said. "And they want me to sign for it. I thought I better ask you."

One of the Japanese soldiers then handed McCoy some kind of a form to sign. He saw that it was just a message receipt form.

"Sign it," he said to Zimmerman.

"What is it?"

"A confession that you eat babies for breakfast," McCoy said.

Zimmerman, with obvious reluctance, carefully wrote his name on the form. He gave it to the Japanese sergeant, who bowed and saluted again, then marched out of the lobby with the other Japanese hopping along after him.

As he tore open the envelope and took out the message, McCoy heard their motorcycle engines start.

From what his note said, Lieutenant Macklin had obviously decided that the Japanese were going to read it before they delivered it:

Yenchi'eng

Sergeant Zimmerman:

The Reverend Mr. Feller, Mr. Sessions and I have accepted the kind invitation of the commanding general of the 11th Division of the Imperial Japanese Army to inspect the division.

I will send further orders as necessary.

R.B. Macklin 1/Lt. USMC

McCoy realized there was absolutely no "I Told You So" pleasure in his reaction. He felt sorry for them, and he felt a little sorry for himself. Sooner (if he could get through on the telephone now) or later, Captain Banning was going to eat his ass out for letting them get their asses in a crack.

"Well, what the hell does it say?" Zimmerman asked.

McCoy handed him the note.

"I figured it was something like that," Zimmerman said. "How come you didn't go? You knew they was going to get caught?"