Secret Warriors (Men at War 2)

"Come on down when you're clean," Canidy said.

"If you feel up to it. I've got a bottle of Scotch we can work on."

"Yeah, sure," Whittaker said. Canidy, shamed, realized that drinking was the last thing the poor, beat-up sonofabitch wanted to do. He wanted to fall into bed, but his ego required that he accept the offer to booze.

We'll have one drink, Canidy decided, and then I will announce I'm beat, and head for bed. He went back down the stairs and into the kitchen.

Cynthia Chenowith came into the kitchen fifteen minutes later. She was a tall, lithe, fair-skinned nearly beautiful woman who was in her late twenties, but looked younger, She was expensively dressed, and the purse hanging from her shoulder was alligator. She gave Canidy an impersonal nod by way of greeting. It was all he expected. He didn't like Cynthia Chenowith, and she didn't like him. She went to a wall telephone hanging by the door to the dining room and dialed a number from memory. "This is Miss Chenowith," she announced.

"I'm at the house and will be until further notice." She was checking in with the duty officer at COI, Canidy thought. She loves it. It makes her feel important. What would be nice would be for her to go upstairs and screw that poor, beat-up, exhausted sonofabitch who thinks he's in love with her But that won't happen. She sensed his eyes on her. "Something, Canidy?" she asked. "No," he said.

"Nothing at all."

"He brought a man in," the black woman volunteered.

"Him and Ellis."

"Who, Canidy? Cynthia demanded.

"I asked if there was anything."

Well, the hell with you, too. He said, "Donovan sent Doug lass, Ellis, and me out to Bolling Field to pick him up and bring him here."

"What are you doing here anyway?" she asked. "I'm not sure you have the need to know, Miss Chenowith," Canidy said, openly mocking her.

"Suffice it to say that I, too, am on duty."

"You're here in connection with our problem with the admiral," she flared. He smiled, very broadly, very artificially, at her. He didn't know what the hell she was talking about, except that "the admiral" was more than likely Vice Admiral d'escadre jean-Philippe de Verbey, French Navy, whom he had loaded aboard a submarine off Safi and sent to the States, but he was damned if he would let her know he didn't know. "No comment," he said.

"I'm sure you understand." White-faced, she tried to stare him down and failed. With a little bit of luck, he thought, she'll take a swing at me with her purse. She did not. She turned to the black woman.

"Is the man upstairs a French naval officer?" The black woman shook her head and told her that the new guest was an Air Corps captain; that he had arrived looking as if he hadn't had a meal in a week and without luggage; that he had crabs; and that she had put him in the second room on the left, as ordered. Cynthia, Canidy saw, with pleasure, was annoyed. She turned to him. "Crabs?" she asked incredulously.

"Body vermin?"

"Crabs," Canidy confirmed happily.

"I sent Ellis for crab medicine."

"I'll have to have the room fumigated!" she said. "They also serve who fumigate," Canidy said. Ellis, as if on cue, came through the kitchen door carrying a large kraft paper bag. "He's in the master bedroom, Ellis," Canidy said.

"Take it up to him."

"The master bedroom?" Cynthia demanded. She turned furiously on the black woman.

"I told you to put anybody who came in unexpectedly in the second room, left."

"She told me," Canidy said.

"But I decided, what the hell, it wasn't being used." He thought for a moment that she was about to lose her temper. But then, as if she understood that was exactly what he wanted her to do, she gained control of herself and smiled at him just as warmly and patently artificially as he was smiling at her. "Well, we'll just have to move him where he's supposed to be," Cynthia said, "won't we?" She reached for Ellis's package.

"Give me that, please. "Mat's in it?"

"Personal-comfort items," Canidy said, winking at Ellis.

"And crab killer.

She took the bag and stormed upstairs to the master bedroom, which was actually a suite. She had, as she always had when she went to its door, a mental picture of Ellis carrying Chesley Hay wood Whittaker, naked, wrapped in a sheet, dead, into that bedroom. And now Canidy had taken it upon himself to put some vermin infested character in Chesly's room, to leave his filth in the shower where they had put Chesly.