“I discussed the use of this one-of-a-kind asset with Colonel Donovan yesterday,” Graham said. “He seems to find that the use I came up with is satisfactory.”
“How would you feel about a meeting between you, Bill, myself—and possibly even Jasper Nestor—to look into Lieutenant Frade’s potential worth a little more deeply? I’m sure Nestor could be here in forty-eight hours if the Bank of Boston called him home for an ‘emergency consultation’ or some such. That would justify getting him a seat on the Pan American Clipper from Buenos Aires…”
“By ‘Bill’ are you by any chance referring to Colonel Donovan, Colonel Newton-Haddle?” Graham asked icily.
“No disrespect was intended. This is just a conversation between friends.”
“To answer your question, Colonel,” Graham went on, “I have no interest in discussing this mission with either you or Mr. Nestor, other than to inform you what will be required of you. Now is that clear enough, or should I get on the telephone and ask Colonel Donovan to personally make the point that operations are not your concern?”
“Now, Alex, there’s no point in flying off the handle…”
“Do you take my point, Colonel, or should I get Colonel Donovan on the phone?”
“I take your point,” Newton-Haddle said after a moment.
“Colonel, I am now going to take Mr. Ettinger to meet Lieutenant Pelosi. I am going to inform Lieutenant Pelosi that he is to devote the rest of the time he is here—however long that might be—to imparting to Mr. Ettinger as much as possible of his knowledge of explosives and demolition techniques. I am going to tell him that you will help him in any way you can, and I want you there when I tell him.”
“If you wish.”
“I don’t know how it is in the paratroopers, Colonel, but in the Marine Corps, the proper response when given an order is to respond with the words ‘Yes, Sir.’”
After a long moment, Colonel Baxter F. Newton-Haddle said, “Yes, Sir.”
[TWO]
Big Foot Ranch
RFD #2, Box 131
Midland, Texas
1115 21 October 1942
First Lieutenant Cletus Howell Frade, USMCR, put his arm around the stocky, short-haired blond woman standing beside him at the grave and hugged her. Then he said, his
voice breaking, “Christ, Martha, I’m sorry.”
Clete was wearing a brand-new Stetson, dark-brown worsted woolen work pants, somewhat battered Western boots, and a heavy sheepskin coat. The woman, who was in a fur-collared trench coat, turned and smiled up at him and put her hand to his cheek.
“He was too damned young, but he had a good life, honey,” she said. “And he was so damned proud of you!”
The tombstone, an eight-foot-wide, five-foot-high block of Vermont marble, read HOWELL in the center. Below, to the left, in slightly smaller letters, it read,
JAMES FITZHUGH HOWELL
Gunnery Sergeant USMCR WWI
March 3, 1895–August 11, 1942
To the right had been chiseled,
MARTHA WILLIAMSON HOWELL
June 11, 1899—
“We got to the ’Canal on the tenth of August,” Clete said. “We flew off an escort carrier as soon as they got the field operational. I didn’t even get the damned notification until the twentieth.”
“You wrote me, honey,” Martha Howell said.