The Soldier Spies (Men at War 3)

“You’re what?”

“I’m omniscient,” Canidy repeated. “Tell him, Your Gracefulness, that I’m omniscient.”

The captain put out her hand to Bitter.

“How do you do, Commander?” she said. “My name is Stanfield.”

"How do you do?” Bitter said.

“On your knees, you uncouth swabbie,” Canidy said. “That’s a duchess you’re talking to.”

Bitter looked in confusion at the captain and saw in her face, and then in a nod of her head, that she was indeed a duchess. He looked at the sergeant and was convinced he saw in her eyes sympathy for his discomfort.

It was just like Canidy to embarrass him in front of an enlisted man. Woman.

He looked away from the sergeant, but not before he had noticed that despite the ill-fitting uniform, she was as good-looking as the captain, toward the buses. An Army officer with a clipboard was looking at him impatiently.

“I’d better get on my bus,” Bitter said.

“You weren’t listening to Captain Whittaker, Commander,” Canidy said. “If you do that, they will carry you into hours of durance vile, or some damned thing like that: Following the short-arm inspection, there will be bullshit lectures on how you’re supposed to treat the natives. Tell him you’re going with us.”

“Natives, indeed!” Captain the Duchess Stanfield said.

"What’s a short-arm inspection?” Ann Chambers asked.

“I’ll show you later,” Canidy said, grinning at Whittaker.

"I’d better follow the SOP,” Bitter said. “Where are you going to be later?”

“You don’t have to go, Eddie,” Canidy said.

“I can’t just go AWOL,” Bitter protested.

“What are they going to do, send you overseas?” Canidy replied.

“Where are you going to be later?”

“God, you are a stuffed shirt,” Ann Chambers said.

“We’re going to drink our lunch at the Savoy Grill,” Jimmy Whittaker said. “Then we’ll be in the bar at the Dorchester from about five. Can you remember that, or should I write it down for you?”

“I’ll do what I can to be there,” Bitter said. He turned to Captain Stanfield: “I’m happy to have met you, Your Grace.”

“Thank you,” she said.

"Dick! ” Ann Chambers protested as Bitter picked up his bags and started to walk to the buses. “Don’t let him go!”

“I told him he didn’t have to go,” Canidy said. “But he’s in one of his Commander Don Winslow of the Navy moods. You can’t argue with him when he gets that way.”

As he hurried toward the buses, Ed heard Whittaker laugh. Then the duchess asked,“Commander Winslow?”

Canidy told her of Commander Don Winslow, the dauntless, perfect, true-blue hero of a daily radio program for children. Just before he boarded the bus, Ed heard the duchess laugh.

The bus carried the C-54 passengers to a hotel requisitioned as a billet for newly arrived officers. He was given a small room that was furnished with a cot and a chair. Before long a bored major delivered an hourlong lecture extolling the ancient virtues of the British people and their culture. He made it quite clear that being assigned to England, where one would have the opportunity to actually mingle with these people, was a great privilege. The major was followed by a bored medical captain who delivered another hourlong lecture, enlivened with color slides, of typical genital lesions one could expect if one became too friendly with English ladies.

When the lectures were over, a sergeant found him and sent him off to Naval Element, SHAEF. A bus ran on a thirty-minute schedule between the transient hotel and Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force. The sergeant told him he’d better take his luggage with him, since the Navy had their own officers’ quarters.

Repacking and claiming his luggage made Ed miss the first bus to Grosvenor Square. And it was ten past two—and he hadn’t had any lunch— when he finally found Naval Element-SHAEF. A captain there told him that he had been placed on further TDY with the Office of Strategic Services, which was a supersecret outfit located on Berkeley Square. He could wait for a car if he wished, but it was only a couple of blocks away.