"May I suggest you get on with the document transfer?" Commander Kramer said, a tinge of annoyance in his voice. "Lieutenant McCoy has a sixteen-thirty plane to catch at Anacostia."

There were thirteen envelopes in the stack Ellen Feller laid on Commander Kramer's desk. There was a numbered receipt to be signed for each of them, and McCoy had to place his signature across the tape sealing the flap at the place where it would be broken if the envelope was opened.

It took some time to go through the paperwork and stuff the unyielding envelopes into the briefcase. Enough time for Commander Kramer to regret jumping on both of them.

"Ellen," he said. "If you wished to continue your reunion with the lieutenant, there's no reason you can't ride out to Anacostia with him."

"Oh, I'd like that," Ellen said.

McCoy took the handcuffs from his hip pocket and looped one cuff through the handle of the briefcase, then held out his wrist for Kramer to loop the other cuff around it.

"Have a good trip, Lieutenant," Commander Kramer said, offering his hand. He then held the door for both of them to pass through.

"My coat's just down the corridor," Ellen said.

A Navy gray Plymouth station wagon and a sailor driver waited for them at the entrance. McCoy had ridden over to OP-20-G in the front seat with him, but when the sailor saw Ellen Feller, he ran around and held the back door open for her. McCoy hesitated a moment before he got in beside her, holding the heavy briefcase on his lap.

"You were right," Ellen said, as they drove off.

"About what?"

"That I could probably find a job because I speak Chinese." She switched to Chinese. "The first place I applied was to the Navy, and they hired me right on. As a translator. But there's not that much to translate, so I've become sort of office manager. I'm a GS-6."

"I don't know what that means," McCoy said, relieved that they could speak Chinese and the driver wouldn't understand them. "Where's your husband?"

"He's in New York, busy with his work," she said.

"You manage to smuggle the vase in all right?" McCoy asked

She raised her eyebrows at the question, but didn't answer it.

"I have a nice little apartment here," she said. "You'll have to come see it."

"The last time I saw you, you-seemed damned glad to be getting rid of me."

"Well, my God, you remember what happened the day before," she said. "That was quite a shock."

"Yeah," he said, sarcastically. "Sure."

"I was upset, Ken," she said. "I'm sorry."

"Forget it," he said. "Those things happen."

"I understand why you're… angry," she said.

He didn't reply.

She turned on the seat and caught his hand in both of hers.

"I said, I'm sorry," she said.

"Nothing to be sorry about," he said.

"If you're still angry, then there is," she said.

"I'm not angry," he said.

She rubbed his hand against her cheek and then let him go.

"Not everything that happened the day before was unpleasant, of course," she said.

He didn't reply.

"Do you remember what happened just before?".

You were blowing me, that's what happened just before.

"No," he said.

"I often think about it," she said.

"I don't know what you're talking about," McCoy said.

Fuck you, lady. You get to screw old McCoy just once. I'm not about to start up anything with you again!

"Don't you really?" Ellen asked, and then sat forward on the seat to give the driver instructions: "Stay on Pennsylvania," she ordered. "It's faster this time of day."

"Yes, ma'am," the driver said.

When she slid back against the seat, her hand went under the skirt of McCoy's tunic and closed around his erection.

"Liar," she said softly.

"For God's sake," he said, pushing her hand away.

"Pity there's not more time, isn't it? But you won't be gone all that long, will you?"

At least with her, I know what she's after. It's not like with Pick's rich-bitch friend.

And thirty minutes in the sack with the old vacuum cleaner, and I won't even be able to remember Miss Ernestine Sage's name, much less remember what she looked like.

"No," he said. "A couple of weeks, is all. No more than three."

"That'll give us both something to look forward to, won't it?" Ellen Feller said.

McCoy reached out for her hand and put it back under the skirt of his blouse.

Chapter Fifteen

(One)

The Madison Suite

The Lafayette Hotel, Washington, D.C.

1410 Hours, 7 December 1941

Until this week, airplanes for Second Lieutenant Malcolm Pickering, USMCR, had been something like taxi cabs. They were there. When you needed to go somewhere you got in one and it took you.

That changed. The Navy medico (more properly, flight surgeon, which Pickering thought had a nice aeronautical ring to it) told him that he met the physical standards laid down for Naval aviators. General McInemey's senior aide-de-camp, himself a dashing Naval aviator with wings of gold, then explained that while there might officially be, say, fifty would-be birdmen in any course of Primary Flight Instruction at the Pensacola Naval Air Station (Flight training for Marine aviators is conducted by the U.S. Navy. Marine aviators wear the same gold wings as Naval aviators), that was something of a fiction. More than the prescribed number were routinely ordered to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Experience had taught that a number of students would quickly prove themselves incapable of learning how to fly. By sending extras, the Corps wound up with the desired number after the inept had bilged out.

General Mclnerney was in a position to have Pickering sent as a member of the supernumeraries. Pickering knew his mother would have a fit when she heard that he was to become an aviator, which was a problem that would be a bit difficult to handle. On the other hand, there was a positive appeal about the prospect of swapping the slush-filled streets of Washington for the white sandy beaches of Pensacola.

On the way home from Anacostia Naval Air Station in McCoy's LaSalle on Friday evening, he stopped at a bookstore, asked for books on aviation (starting with the theory of flight), and bought half a dozen that looked promising.

He was now reading one of them, one with a lot of drawings. The others, stacked up beside his chair, waited for his attention. A small table beside him held a silver pot of coffee. He was attired for a more primitive means of transportation than he was reading about: A tweed jacket with leather patches over the elbows; a plaid cotton shirt open at the collar; a pair of pink breeches; and a pair of Hailey Smythe riding boots, which rested on a pillow (to preserve the furniture) on the coffee table before him.

He had spent the morning in Virginia aboard a horse. Sort of a fox hunt without either the fox or the ceremony that went with a hunt. Just half a dozen riders riding about the countryside, jumping fences of opportunity.

They were going to sit around in the afternoon and get smashed. Rather nobly, he thought, he had pleaded the press of duty and returned to the hotel to read the airplane books.

The telephone rang, and he looked around for it, a look of annoyance crossing his face as he spotted it, ten feet out of reach. It had taken him some effort to reach his present comfortable position, with his feet just so, and his back just so, and with The Miracle of Flight propped up just so on his belly.

He had just begun to grasp the notion that aircraft are lifted into the air because there is less pressure on the upper (curved, and thus longer) portion of a wing than there is on the bottom (flat, and thus shorter) portion of a wing. As the wing moves through the air, it simply follows the path of least resistance, upward, and hauls the airplane along with it. He wasn't entirely sure he fully understood this. He was sure, however, that he didn't want to chat just now with whomever was on the phone, especially since he had to get up to go answer it.