W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps VII - Behind the Lines

He was almost instantly asleep.

[FIVE]

The Foster Lafayette Hotel

Washington, D.C.

0805 Hours 17 October 1942

When the telephone rang, Carolyn Spencer Howell, a tall, willowy thirty-two-year-old who wore her shoulder-length hair parted in the middle, woke imme-diately.

She glanced at the man in bed beside her with a sudden tenderness that made her want to cry, and then smiled, anticipating the look on his face when the telephone's ringing finally woke him up.

He slept on, oblivious to the sound.

Finally, she pushed him, at first gently and then quite hard. His only re-sponse was to grunt and roll over.

"I never really believed that cutting hair was what Delilah did to Sam-son," she said aloud. And then made a final attempt to wake him. She held his nostrils shut.

His response was to swat at whatever had landed on his face with his hand. The force of the swat was frightening.

"That was not a good idea," she said, then shrugged and reached for the telephone.

"Hello?"

She looked down at Ed's wristwatch on the bedside table. It was five min-utes past eight. She had been with him not quite four hours.

Should I be ashamed of myself for taking advantage of an exhausted man?

He didn't seem to mind.

But neither was there any of that postcoital cuddling, of fame and legend. He was sound asleep while I was still quivering.

"Who is this?" a somewhat impatient male voice demanded.

"Who are you?" Carolyn responded.

"My name is Rickabee. I was trying to reach Major Edward Banning."

"He's in the shower, Colonel Rickabee. May I take a message?"

"I'd hoped to see him. I'm downstairs."

"Why don't you give him five minutes and then come up?"

"Thank you," Rickabee said, and hung up.

She hung the telephone up, and then really tried to wake Ed. Tickling the inside of his feet-at some risk-finally worked. After thrashing his legs an-grily, he suddenly sat up, fully awake.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Your Colonel Rickabee is on his way up," Carolyn said.

"Christ! You talked to him?"

"You wouldn't wake up," she said.

"I wonder what the hell he wants?" Banning asked rhetorically, and stepped out of bed. He headed directly for the bathroom.

Carolyn picked up the telephone.

"Room Service, please," she told the operator, and then ordered coffee and breakfast rolls for three.

Ed came out of the bedroom as she was fastening her brassiere.

"Jesus, you're beautiful," he said.

"I ordered coffee and rolls," she said. "Would you like me to take a walk around the block, or what?"

"No," he said. "Don't be silly. You stay."

"I'm not being silly. Is this going to be awkward for you?"

"Don't be silly," he repeated, making a joke of it. "I'm a Marine, aren't I?"

In other words, yes, it is going to be embarrassing for you. But you are either the consummate gentleman, or you love me too much-maybe both-to consciously hurt my feelings. Whichever, Thank You, My Darling!

Almost precisely five minutes later, the door chimes of Suite 802 sounded.

Banning, by then dressed in a khaki shirt and green woolen uniform trou-sers, opened it to a tall, slight, pale-skinned, unhealthy-looking man in an ill-fitting suit.

He was not what Carolyn expected.

Ed was closemouthed about what he did in The Marine Corps. Even though she told herself she understood the necessity for tight lips, this frus-trated Carolyn. But she knew that Ed was in "Intelligence," even if she didn't know precisely what that meant, and that his immediate superior was Colonel F. L. Rickabee, whom he had once described as "the best intelligence officer in the business."

She had expected someone looking like Clark Gable in a Marine uniform. Or maybe an American version of David Niven in a splendidly tailored suit. Not this bland, pale man in a suit that looked like a gift from the Salvation Army.

"Good morning, Sir," Banning said. "I was in the shower."

"So I understand," Rickabee said. He looked at Carolyn.

"Honey," Banning said. "This is my boss, Colonel Rickabee. Colonel, my... Mrs. Carolyn Howell."

"How do you do, Mrs. Howell?"

"How do you do?" Carolyn replied, offering her hand.

Rickabee's hand was as she thought it might be. Cold.

Carolyn Spencer Howell was, in the flesh, very much as Rickabee thought she would be. He knew a good deal about her. He was a good intelligence officer.

When Banning first became involved with her, Rickabee asked the FBI for a report on her. And the FBI's New York Field Office turned the investigation over to the Army's Counterintelligence Corps, a move that annoyed Rickabee, although he could not fault the thorough, professional job the CIC did on her:

Carolyn Spencer Howell came from a respected upper-middle-class fam-ily. Shortly after graduating cum laude from Sarah Lawrence (where she was apolitical), she married James Stevens Howell, an investment banker ten years her senior. Mr. Howell's interest in younger women apparently did not dimin-ish with marriage; and after nearly a decade of marriage, Mrs. Howell caught her husband in bed with a lady not far over the age of legal consent.

As a result of encouragement by his employers to be generous in the divorce settlement-philandering vice presidents do not do much for the image of investment banking-Mrs. Howell became a rather wealthy woman. She took employment in the New York Public Library, more for something to do than the need of income, and there she met Major Ed Banning, and took him into her bed.

So far as the CIC was able to determine, Banning was the only man to ever spend the night in Mrs. Howell's apartment. And Banning, meanwhile, was honest with her, telling her up front that there was a Mrs. Edward Banning, whom he had last seen standing on a quai in Shanghai, and whose present whereabouts were not known.

For Rickabee's purposes, Mrs. Howell was ideal for Banning. So long as he was, in his way, faithful to her, which seemed to be the case, he was unlikely to go off the deep end with a dangerous floozy, or even, conceivably, with an enemy agent. There was talk around, which Rickabee believed, that Ambassa-dor Kennedy's son, the second one, John, had been sent to the Pacific after becoming entirely too friendly with a redhead who had ties with the wrong governments.

"I'm really very sorry to intrude," Rickabee said, meaning it. "And I wouldn't have come if it wasn't necessary. But the thing is, Mrs. Howell, I need about thirty minutes of Ed's time now, and about that much time at half past ten."

"I was just telling Ed that I was going to take a walk around," Carolyn said. "Have a look at the White House, maybe."

"It's raining," Rickabee said. "Walking may not be such a good idea. But if you could read the newspaper over a cup of coffee in the lobby..."

"My pleasure," Carolyn said. She smiled and left.

Rickabee waited until the door closed after her.

"Haughton called," he said. "There's a special channel from Brisbane. He's going to bring it by the office."

Captain David Haughton, USN, was Administrative Assistant to Navy Secretary Frank Knox. A "special channel" was a message encrypted in a spe-cial code whose use was limited to the most senior members of the military and naval hierarchy-or more junior officers, for example Colonel Rickabee and Brigadier General Pickering, whose immediate superiors were at the top of the hierarchy. Since Pickering was in Brisbane, the special channel was almost certainly from him. The only other person authorized access to the special channel in Brisbane was General Douglas MacArthur, who was the Supreme Commander, South West Pacific Ocean Area. It was unlikely that MacArthur would be sending messages to a lowly Marine colonel.

"Yes, Sir."