"Captain Douglass?" Ellis asked.
"Who's calling, please?" the man asked.
"Marmon, goddamn you, is that you?"
"You don't have to bite my ass off, Chief," Marmon said righteously.
"I
thought I recognized your voice."
"Is the Captain there?"
"You want me to get him?"
"No. Shit! I'm taking a census."
In a moment. Captain Douglass came on the line.
"Good morning, Chief," he said.
"What's up?"
"I don't know what's going on where you're going, but if you can put it off, I think it would be a good idea if you came in."
"He ask for me?" i
"No, Sir, but I think he probably will."
"I'll be there in half an hour," Captain Douglass said.
"Thank you, Chief."
Ellis hung the telephone up.
"That important, huh?" Warrant Officer Vose asked.
Ellis looked at him.
"If you're fishing for an explanation," Ellis said, "don't."
"I read the decrypt,"Vose protested.
"That's only because we haven't figured out a way for you to decrypt stuff without reading it," Ellis said matter-of factly
He got up and walked to the safe and worked the combination. From a two-foot-high stack of folders piled precariously in the bottom, he pulled a thick one with a top secret cover sheet and EX LAX written on it with a thick pointed pen.
He carried it to the desk and started going through it. There was no more of a question in his mind that the Colonel would want the paperwork in front of him than there was that he would want to talk Canidy's Eyes Only Operational Immediate over with Captain Douglass. By the time either of them walked into the office, the paperwork would be ready for them.
Ellis's eye fell on the overnight traffic. He should get that out of the way before he laid this stuff out.
Then he had another thought. He opened a drawer and took out a lined pad and a pencil and wrote quickly on it.
"You want to make yourself useful," he said to Vose.
"Get this encoded and out right away. And then stick around. I think there will be a reply to the Eyes Onlys."
Vose took the sheet of lined paper from Ellis and read it.