Victory and Honor (Honor Bound 6)

“What kind of a problem?”

“I’m afraid I can’t get into that with you. Suffice it to say, we are acting at the direct order of the Supreme Commander and the action he has ordered cannot be delayed by something like this.

“So, what I’m going to do, Mr. Stevenson, is get the provost marshal over here. What I’m going to tell him is that you—all the Secret Service people—are to be held incommunicado on the base here until seventeen hundred tomorrow. Your aircraft will not be available to you until that hour.”

“You can’t do that! You don’t have the authority.”

“Believe me, Mr. Stevenson, I do.”

He immediately proved that by picking up the telephone and dialing Operator.

“Colonel,” Mattingly said to the Rhein-Main Air Base provost marshal, “if I told you that these two gentlemen and everybody else who arrived with them on that Constellation have to be held incommunicado on the base until either someone from SHAEF comes to deal with them or until seventeen hundred hours tomorrow—whichever happens first—how would you do that?”

“Well, the simplest solution would be to put them in the stockade. Get the others out of the transient officers’ quarters and put them with these two in the stockade.”

“What, exactly, is the stockade?”

“The Krauts had sort of a police station, a police precinct. It wasn’t damaged much, and I took it over. There’s enough cells for all these people.”

Stevenson spoke up: “Colonel, what if I told you that I’m a supervisory special agent of the United States Secret Service?”

The provost marshal looked at Mattingly. “Is he?”

Mattingly nodded.

“And this man,” Stevenson went on, “has no authority whatever to detain us in any way.”

The arrogance of Stevenson’s tone was not lost on the provost marshal.

“To answer your first question,” the provost marshal told Stevenson, “I’d tell you that I don’t give a damn. If Colonel Mattingly wants you held incommunicado, you get held incommunicado.”

“But we are federal agents!” Stevenson protested.

“I really would rather not put them in cells,” Mattingly said. “What about just holding them in the transient officers’ quarters?”

“I could put MPs on the BOQ, I suppose.”

“And if you took everybody’s shoes and socks, trousers and underpants . . .” Frade suggested helpfully.

“I think just the shoes and trousers, Colonel Frade,” Mattingly said. “We don’t want to embarrass them any more than they already are for having been caught with Secretary Morgenthau’s hand in the cookie jar.”

“Then just shoes and trousers,” the provost marshal said.

“Mr. Dunwiddie,” Mattingly said. “Would you go with the provost marshal while he escorts these gentlemen to their quarters, please?”

“Yes, sir.”

With a casual skill that could have come only with a good deal of practice, Dunwiddie shrugged his shoulder, which caused the strap of the Thompson to slide off. Without looking at the submachine gun, he caught it with one hand in midair, then cradled it across his chest as a hunter would a shotgun.

“After you, gentlemen,” Dunwiddie said.

“You haven’t heard the end of this, Colonel,” Stevenson said.

“One more sign of lack of cooperation on your part and you lose your drawers,” Mattingly said.

It was only when they were sure the departing party was out of earshot that anyone even chuckled. But then the chuckles turned to giggles, and then—when Frade mocked Stevenson modestly covering his private parts with his hands—became outright laughter.

Mattingly sobered first.