Honor Bound (Honor Bound 1)

Graham stopped the Plymouth in front of the main entrance and opened his door.

“Leave your bag. If they don’t offer to take you to the barracks, I will. But come with me now, please. I want you to meet the man who runs the place.”

Another security guard in a police-type uniform sat at a desk just inside the door to the lobby. He rose to his feet as soon as he saw Graham, but did not make it quite to the door before Graham opened it himself.

“Good morning, Colonel,” the guard said.

“Good morning.”

“Colonel, the Colonel would like to see you.”

The Colonel, the other colonel, was the Deputy Assistant Director for Training, Colonel Baxter F. Newton-Haddle.

“As his peers played golf and polo,” Colonel Donovan had announced in a stage whisper, just before he introduced Graham to him, “Newton-Haddle played soldier. I think the greatest disappointment of his life was when Georgie Patton told him he was too old to come on active duty. But he’s that rare bird for us, the round peg in the round hole.”

Their reserve colonelcies, Graham often thought, were the only things he and Newton-Haddle had in common. He had kept his reserve commission after the First War, too, and worked his way up in the Marine Corps Reserve, as Newton-Haddle had in the Army.

But for him it was a serious business, not a game. From what he had seen of Newton-Haddle, Donovan had been right about him. Newton-Haddle loved to “play soldier.” Graham did not think the war was a game, an activity to be enjoyed.

Graham led Ettinger up a wide flight of marble stairs to the second floor. Newton-Haddle’s secretary, who was one of the very few women at the Country Club (he brought her with him from his office at the First Philadelphia Trust Company), rose from behind her desk when she saw Graham.

“Colonel Newton-Haddle expects you, Colonel. Go right in.” When she saw Ettinger start to follow Graham, she quickly add

ed, “Colonel, I think the Colonel would rather see you alone for a moment.”

Graham ignored her and went to the door. It opened on a spacious, paneled room with windows overlooking the South Course.

“You wanted to see me, Newt?”

Newton-Haddle, a lithe and trim sixty-year-old who looked at least fifteen years younger than his age, was wearing Army-green trousers and a tieless, open-collared khaki shirt adorned with colonel’s eagles and parachutist’s wings. He stepped quickly from behind his desk and strode toward Graham with his hand extended.

Bounded, Graham noticed, like a gazelle. Not walked.

“Alex,” he said, “you look fit.”

“Appearances are deceptive,” Graham said.

“I tried to call you before,” Newton-Haddle said. “Your secretary told me you were coming down.”

“Newt, this is Mr. Ettinger,” Graham said. “I think he’s going to be quite valuable.”

“Sergeant Ettinger, isn’t it?” Newton-Haddle said, nodding at Ettinger, and not offering his hand.

“He’s a CIC Special Agent,” Graham said. “They’re called ‘Mister,’ right?”

“But now he belongs to us, Alex,” Newton-Haddle said. “So he’s no longer a CIC agent, right?”

“I’ve arranged for him to keep his credentials until he actually leaves for Argentina, Newt,” Graham said, with an edge in his voice. “I thought they might come in handy.”

“I don’t mean to sound argumentative, Alex,” Newton-Haddle said argumentatively, “but here we operate on a military basis. We use our ranks.”

“That’s one of the reasons I’m here, Newt,” Graham said. “I wanted to talk to you about that.”

“About how I run the training school?”

“About David’s training here,” Graham said.

“Oh.”