The Fighting Agents (Men at War 4)

The atmosphere had been tense: to see if the boats could be launched and whether or not the flotation packets would keep the weapons and film boxes afloat.

Then Lennox heard a guffaw, then a belly laugh, and then a high-pitched giggle. The first thing he thought, angrily, was that someone had fallen over the side. That, despite the genuine threat to life, was always good for a laugh from his men.

And then he saw the object of the amusement.

Jim Whittaker was fifty yards off the bow, making a wide turn to return to the Drum. The strain on the line towing the boxes behind the rubber boat, plus the weight of the outboard motor and of Whittaker himself, had caused the bow to rise almost straight up out of the water. The outboard was open full bore, but it was just barely moving, and Whittaker himself looked as if he was about to sink into the water.

Sound carries well over water, and Whittaker heard the laughter of the crew.

He rose to the occasion. Balancing himself precariously, he saluted crisply.

"Man overboard!" a shout went up, followed by a bellow of laughter.

Lennox looked quickly to see what had happened. The chief torpedoman had lost his footing and gone into the water. The chief of the boat was trying, with absolutely no success, to haul him back aboard by the rope around his waist.

The captain of the USS Drum picked up his electric hailer and started to put it to his lips. Then he took it down and slammed it painfully against his leg until the pain was such that he was no longer overcome with hysterics.

"Attention on the deck," he finally announced.

"Prepare to recover rubber boats!

"And then the temptation was too much.

"And while you're at it, see if you can recover the chief torpedoman."

XIII

lONE]

Canidy woke in the dark in a large bedroom in the Countess Batthyany's hunting lodge. He was buried deep in goose down, his nostrils full of perfume.

But then he realized it wasn't perfume, it was something he had found in a bottle in his surprisingly ornate bathroom. The bottle bore a "Lanvin Paris London-New York" label underneath the words "Pour les Hommes." His French was good enough to understand what that meant, and the stuff hadn't smelled half bad when he sniffed at the bottle neck, and so he had liberally splashed it over himself after he'd wiped himself dry with a thick towel about the size of a pup tent.

The cologne would be a nice change from the way he had smelled after the fishing boat from Vis to the mainland, and after the farm truck--redolent of horse manure--which had carried him across Yugoslavia to the neighborhood of the Hungarian border.

It was only when he had put on a pair of silk pajamas and the odor of the "Pour les Hommes" had not diminished--had, in fact, seemed to intensify-that he began to suspect the legend on the bottle was directed to the gentle sex. If they doused themselves in "Pour les Hommes," men would be drawn to the smell like moths to a candle.

It had confirmed the somewhat cynical impression he had formed not long after they'd first shown him his room that the Batthyany family had apparently not only done their hunting in considerable comfort, but also that when they returned from the vigors of the field, the comfort they'd received then had been furnished by females. In his bathroom, he had found a bidet, and in a heavy bookcase by the bedside was a collection of leather-bound photo albums, the photographs portraying handsome men and women in their birthday suits performing what could only be described as sexual gymnastics.

He had at first wondered whether the albums had been purchased--they looked professionally done--or whether the Counts Batthyany had been unusually skilled amateur photographers. But when he got into the second volume, he recognized the huge fireplace in the main room of the lodge behind three dark-haired beauties and a hairy, skinny, mustachioed gentleman.

The thought passed through his mind that it might be fun to peel several of the neatly matted photographs free of the albums and take them home for Ann. It might brighten her day, he thought. But then he decided against that.

Ann took sex very seriously. But then he was sure that as far as Ann was concerned, dirty pictures would be as high on her taboo list for him as carrying on with Her Gracefulness, the Duchess of Stanfield.

The next thought he had was that he would bring some of the dirty pictures back with him, to include them with his official report.

"The photographs attached as Enclosures 16 through 26 are included in the belie that they might suggest exploitable character laws in the Hungarian aristocracy poss

ibly useful in future operations."

That would shake up the system. Dave Bruce's near-glacial dignity would crack; he might even blush. He would certainly hem, haw, and stammer.

And then he realized that he was already in enough trouble for having come to Hungary, without adding fuel to the fire. Did he need another demonstration that he didn't have the right attitude? Hardly.

Obviously, he thought, suddenly chagrined, he did not have the right attitude.

Instead of sitting here drooling over dirty pictures like some high-school junior, he should be wondering how to get Eric Fulmar and Professor Dyer out of St. Gertrud's prison without having to "terminate" them.