Griffin W.E.B. - Honor Bound 01 - Honor Bound

He handed the clipboard across Graham to Ettinger, who looked carefully at what he was being asked to sign before signing it and handing it back. When the guard passed him the visitor's badge, he looped the chain around his neck.

The guard inside the shack pressed a lever, and the striped steel pole barrier rose into the air.

"Thank you," Graham said to the guard by the car and drove onto the reservation.

"I had something like this when I was in kindergarten," Ettinger said, examining the visitor's badge.

Graham chuckled. "Where was that?"

"Madrid," Ettinger said.

"They called it a 'kindergarten'?"

"It was run by Germans," Ettinger said simply.

Graham turned a curve on the narrow road and a large field-stone and brick building, the Club House, came into view.

"And how did the members of this place react when it was placed in public service?" Ettinger asked.

"There were howls of protest that it was too much of a sacrifice to ask for the war effort," Graham said. "Except from the finance committee, who saw their patriotic sacrifice as a means to fill up the treasury. I hate to think what this place is costing the taxpayer."

"It's rather beautiful, isn't it?"

"I'm sorry to tell you, David, but you won't be living here. Just over the hill—out of sight of this, of course—they've built standard barracks for the trainees."

"For some reason, I am not surprised."

Graham stopped the Plymouth in front of the main entrance and opened his door.

"Leave your bag. If they don't offer to take you to the barracks, I will. But come with me now, please. I want you to meet the man who runs the place."

Another security guard in a police-type uniform sat at a desk just inside the door to the lobby. He rose to his feet as soon as he saw Graham, but did not make it quite to the door before Graham opened it himself.

"Good morning, Colonel," the guard said.

"Good morning."

"Colonel, the Colonel would like to see you."

The Colonel, the other colonel, was the Deputy Assistant Director for Training, Colonel Baxter F. Newton-Haddle.

"As his peers played golf and polo," Colonel Donovan had announced in a stage whisper, just before he introduced Graham to him, "Newton-Haddle played soldier. I think the greatest disappointment of his life was when Georgie Patton told him he was too old to come on active duty. But he's that rare bird for us, the round peg in the round hole."

Their reserve colonelcies, Graham often thought, were the only things he and Newton-Haddle had in common. He had kept his reserve commission after the First War, too, and worked his way up in the Marine Corps Reserve, as Newton-Haddle had in the Army.

But for him it was a serious business, not a game. From what he had seen of Newton-Haddle, Donovan had been right about him. Newton-Haddle loved to "play soldier." Graham did not think the war was a game, an activity to be enjoyed.

Graham led Ettinger up a wide flight of marble stairs to the second floor. Newton-Haddle's secretary, who was one of the very few women at the Country Club (he brought her with him from his office at the First Philadelphia Trust Company), rose from behind her desk when she saw Graham.

"Colonel Newton-Haddle expects you, Colonel. Go right in." When she saw Ettinger start to follow Graham, she quickly added, "Colonel, I think the Colonel would rather see you alone for a moment."

Graham ignored her and went to the door. It opened on a spacious, paneled room with windows overlooking the South Course.

"You wanted to see me, Newt?"

Newton-Haddle, a lithe and trim sixty-year-old who looked at least fifteen years younger than his age, was wearing Army-green trousers and a tieless, open-collared khaki shirt adorned with colonel's eagles and parachutist's wings. He stepped quickly from behind his desk and strode toward Graham with his hand extended.

Bounded,Graham noticed, like a gazelle. Not walked.

"Alex," he said, "you look fit."

"Appearances are deceptive," Graham said.

"I tried to call you before," Newton-Haddle said. "Your secretary told me you were coming down."

"Newt, this is Mr. Ettinger," Graham said. "I think he's going to be quite valuable."

"SergeantEttinger, isn't it?" Newton-Haddle said, nodding at Ettinger, and not offering his hand.

"He's a CIC Special Agent," Graham said. "They're called 'Mister,' right?"

"But now he belongs to us, Alex," Newton-Haddle said. "So he's no longer a CIC agent, right?"

"I've arranged for him to keep his credentials until he actually leaves for Argentina, Newt," Graham said, with an edge in his voice. "I thought they might come in handy."

"I don't mean to sound argumentative, Alex," Newton-Haddle said argumentatively, "but here we operate on a military basis. We use our ranks."

"That's one of the reasons I'm here, Newt," Graham said. "I wanted to talk to you about that."

"About how I run the training school?"

"About David's training here," Graham said.

"Oh."

"I rather doubt that there will be time for him to complete the entire course. I want to get this team down there as soon as possible."

"Of course. We all do. But certainly you don't want him sent down there half-trained, inadequately trained?"

"He's had the CIC training. What he needs from you, in whatever time is available..."

"How much time are we talking about, Alex?"

"Documents is working on his papers. He needs a visa, which the Bank of Boston has to arrange for via the Argentine Consulate in Boston. Since we want as few eyebrows raised as possible, we can't push too hard for that. Still, I don't think he will be here for more than ten days or two weeks, and I think we had better operate on the ten-day idea."

"There's not much I can do for him—nothing personal, Sergeant—in ten days."

"Run him through as much explosives training as time permits, and if there is any time left over, work on his swimming, and maybe even infiltration techniques. Explosives first."

"Whatever you think is best for him, of course," Newton-Haddle said. "We'll do our best for him. Sergeant, I wonder if you'd be good enough to wait outside for a moment while I have a word with Colonel Graham?"

"Certainly, Sir," Ettinger said, and left the office, closing the door behind him.

"What's on your mind, Newt," Graham said, "that you didn't want the sergeant to hear?''

"Alex, we're friends, right?" Newton-Haddle asked. He waited until Graham nodded. "And so I may speak with candor?"

"Please do."

"It's always difficult when one feels one must—when duty requires that one must—point out to a friend where one feels the friend, so to speak, is going off half-cocked."

"We're friends, Newt. Have a shot at it."

"I see a great deal of potential in the men of your team, a potential I would really hate to see disappear down the toilet. Even Pelosi..."

"Even Pelosi?" Graham asked.

"His knowledge of explosives is extraordinary ..."

"He cut his teeth, so to speak, on a stick of dynamite," Graham said. "That's why I picked him."

“I would like to keep him here as an instructor, at least for the time being."

"He's going to Argentina, Newt, sorry. But now that you've brought up Pelosi, and his extraordinary skill, can I suggest that you get him to teach Ettinger as much as he can while they're here?"

"By the time Pelosi reaches Argentina," Newton-Haddle said, ignoring the suggestion, "the problem there will be solved. The team down there will have taken out the ship. I trained them myself, and they're good."

"I'm sure they are, and I hope—of course I hope—that they can take out that damned ship long before the backup team gets to Argentina. But we can't bank on that happening. We need a second team down there as soon as we can get them there. A little redundancy never hurts, Newt. And I have been charged with taking out the replenishment vessel. He goes, sorry."