In Danger's Path Read online

  “Right. You’re Mario?”

  The two men shook hands.

  Mario turned to the cash register behind him, opened it, lifted an interior drawer, took an envelope from it, and handed it to Weston, who glanced quickly at what it contained, then put it into an inner pocket of his tunic.

  “And you got something for me, right?” Mario asked.

  Weston took a thick wad of bills from his pocket, peeled money from it, and laid it on the bar.

  Mario picked the money up and put it in his trousers pocket.

  “I can take care of your other problem, too, if you want,” Mario said.

  “The sooner the better,” Jim said.

  “Right now soon enough?”

  “How long would that take?”

  “Not longer than it would take you to have some pasta,” Mario said, nodding at four tables just beyond the extreme end of the bar. “If you don’t gulp it down.”

  “How do you feel about pasta, Janice?” Jim Weston inquired.

  “We also got sausage, pepper, and onions,” Mario suggested helpfully.

  “Fine!” Janice said, without much conviction.

  Weston reached into his pocket and handed Mario the keys to the Buick. Mario walked down the bar, spoke softly to an equally large man sipping a beer, and handed him the keys. The man walked out of the bar.

  Mario returned to Janice and Jim.

  “If you don’t like pasta,” he said to Janice, “the sausage and peppers is really nice.”

  “Thank you,” Janice said.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Janice asked, almost whispered, after their order had been taken by a very large middle-aged woman in a big white apron. “What’s in that envelope that man gave you? Where is the other man going with your car?”

  “You are an officer and gentlelady of the Naval Service,” Jim said. “You don’t want to know. Besides, haven’t you seen the poster? ‘Loose Lips Sink Ships!’?”

  “Jim, I want to know!” Janice said, in such a manner that Jim understood she really wanted to know.

  He handed her the envelope. She looked into it, then quickly handed it back.

  She looked at him, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “That’s dishonest!” she said. “I can’t believe you did that!”

  “It’s not dishonest,” he said. “Dishonesty, by definition, means telling people lies. He had something I wanted, and I paid him what he wanted for it. Where’s the dishonesty?”

  “It’s…it’s unpatriotic!”

  “There’s a war on, right?”

  “Yes, there is, and the armed forces need every gallon of gasoline they can get, and here you are—”

  “The armed forces get all the gasoline they need,” Weston said. “The shortage is of rubber. The thinking is that the less people drive, the less they will wear out their tires. I can understand that.”

  “But you’re going to drive…. My God, I don’t know how many gasoline ration coupons were in that envelope!”

  “There’s supposed to be enough to buy a thousand gallons of gas,” Jim said. “I didn’t count them. Mario, I thought, has an honest face.”

  “But you’re going to wear out your tires. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “I’m going to contribute my already worn-out tires—the ones that came with the car—to the very next rubber-salvage campaign I come across. Unless, of course, Mario’s friend takes care of that for me.”

  She looked at him for just a moment until she took his meaning.

  “Is that where he went with your car? To put new tires on it?”

  “God, I hope they’re new. But anything would be better than the tires that came with it. I’d never have made it out of Philadelphia on those tires, much less to the wilds of West Virginia. Much less back here to see you.”

  “You’re absolutely incredible!”

  “Thank you!”

  “I meant to say ‘shameless,’” Janice said.

  “Shamelessly in love with you,” he said. “What would you have preferred? That I die of a broken heart in Sulfuric Acid Springs, West Virginia?”

  “White Sulphur Springs,” she corrected him.

  “Because, because of a few lousy gallons of gasoline, and four tires, I was separated from her whom I love beyond measure?”

  “Will you please knock off that ‘you love me’ business?” Janice said, but Jim didn’t think she really meant it. He thought he saw that in her eyes.

  [TWO]

  The 21 Club

  21 West Fifty-second Street

  New York City, New York

  1745 18 February 1943

  Ernest Sage was sitting at the extreme end of the bar, his back against the wall, sipping his second martini. He was a superbly tailored, slightly built, and very intense man, a month shy of his fiftieth birthday, and wore his black hair slicked straight back with generous applications of Smootheee, one of the 213 personal products of American Personal Pharmaceuticals, the company whose board he chaired. He was, as well, its chief executive officer.

  When his only child, Ernestine, and her gentleman friend, Captain Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR, entered the room, he fixed a not entirely genuine smile on his face and raised his right arm to attract their attention. His daughter smiled warmly and genuinely when she saw him. As always, this warmed him.

  Captain McCoy’s smile was as strained as Ernest Sage’s.

  “Hiya, Daddy,” Ernestine said, and kissed him.

  “Hello, Princess,” he said, and hugged her.

  Oh, Princess, why did you have to get yourself involved with this character?

  “Hello, Ken,” he said, offering his hand. “It’s good to see you. Welcome home.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Charley, see what the Lieutenant will have,” Sage said to the bartender.

  “It’s Captain, Daddy,” Ernie said. “One silver bar, first lieutenant. Two silver bars, captain.”

  Oh shit. I knew that. Every time I get around him, I make an ass of myself.

  “Well, then, I guess congratulations are in order.”

  “They certainly are,” Ernie said. “And notice the new fruit salad,” Ernie said, pointing at McCoy’s ribbon-bedecked tunic. “That’s the Silver Star, the third-highest decoration for valor.”

  “Oh, Christ, Ernie,” McCoy said.

  “He got it from General MacArthur personally,” Ernie went on, undaunted.

  “Scotch,” McCoy, now very uncomfortable, said to the bartender. “Famous Grouse if you have it. A double.”

  “Ernie, you’re embarrassing Captain McCoy,” her father said.

  “You can call him ‘Ken,’ Daddy. We’re lovers.”

  “Jesus, Ernie!” McCoy protested.

  Ernest Sage pretended he had not heard his daughter. “You got to meet General MacArthur, did you, Ken?”

  “And yesterday he briefed President Roosevelt,” Ernie said. “In the White House.”

  “Did he really?” Sage asked, and then curiosity got the best of him. “I’m not sure what that means, ‘briefed.’”

  “It’s sort of a report, sir.”

  “A report on what?”

  McCoy hesitated before answering. The operation had been classified Top Secret, but that was no longer the case. After McCoy’s briefing, the President had ordered Navy Secretary Knox to put out a press release: “It will do great things for morale, Frank,” President Roosevelt had said, “for the public to learn that these brave men refused to surrender and are carrying on the fight against the Japanese in the Philippines.”

  “There’s a guerrilla force operating in the Philippines,” McCoy said.

  “A gorilla force?” Sage asked, dubiously.

  Ernie laughed at him. She started pounding her chest with balled fists.

  “Hundreds of King Kong’s cousins,” she said, “beating their chests. And looking for Japanese to rip apart. Guerrillas, Daddy. Probably from the French guerre, meaning ‘war.’”

&
nbsp; Ernest Sage saw that Captain McCoy was smiling, approvingly and fondly, at his only child. “I hadn’t heard that,” Ernest Sage said.

  “It was classified until yesterday,” McCoy said.

  “And how did you come to know about these guerrillas, Ken?”

  “He went into the Philippines and made contact with them,” Ernie said.

  “That’s enough, Ernie,” McCoy said flatly. “Put a lid on it.”

  Ernie looked stricken. She did not like McCoy’s disapproval.

  “Am I asking questions I shouldn’t be asking?” Ernest Sage said.

  “Sir, I really don’t know how much of this is still classified,” McCoy said.

  The waiter delivered McCoy’s double Famous Grouse and stood poised over it with a small silver water pitcher in one hand and a soda siphon bottle in the other.

  McCoy held up his hand to signify he wanted neither, then picked up the glass and took a sip.

  “What can I get you, Miss Sage?” the bartender asked.

  “I’ll just help myself to his. He had several…too many…on the train on the way up here.”

  McCoy overrode this decision by signaling the bartender to give her her own drink. She did not press the issue.

  “Daddy, to change the subject, what about Ken’s car?”

  At last, a safe subject.

  “I called the man at the Cadillac place in Summit,” Sage said. “He’s sending a mechanic out to the farm. You should have it tomorrow morning sometime.”

  “I was hoping we could have it today,” Ernie said.

  “Princess, it’s too late for you two to drive anywhere today,” Sage said. “This way, we can go out to the farm, have a nice dinner—your mother is making a welcome-home dinner for Ken, turkey—get a good night’s sleep….”

  “Ken’s only got fifteen days, Daddy!”

  “It’s all right,” McCoy said. “Thank you, Mr. Sage.”

  Sage nodded his acceptance of the thanks and went on: “And I have gasoline ration coupons—don’t ask me where I got them—for a hundred gallons of gas.”

  “You bought them on the black market,” Ernie said. “To replace the ration coupons—Ken’s ration coupons—you ‘borrowed’ from me.” Ernest Sage raised his eyebrows.

  “I wasn’t going to renew the license plates, honey,” Ernie went on. “But Daddy talked me into it. He said we could use the gasoline ration coupons.”

  Here I stand with a man who just got a medal from General MacArthur, and my daughter takes pains to let him know I’m supporting the war effort by using his gasoline ration.

  “I’ve got coupons for two hundred gallons,” McCoy said. “Ed Sessions gave them to me when he gave me my leave orders.”

  “We’ll take his—actually, they’re yours—anyhow,” Ernie said.

  McCoy said nothing.

  The guest room given to Captain Kenneth R. McCoy was on the ground floor of the left wing of the Sage house. The bedroom of the daughter of his hosts was on the second floor of the right wing. There was no way her parents could have separated them farther, Captain McCoy realized, unless they had put him in the stable.

  On one hand, McCoy was well aware that if he himself had been in the shoes of Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Sage, he would have put this guy who’d caught their daughter’s attention in the stable, hoping that with a little bit of luck, one of the horses would go nuts and trample him to death.

  On the other hand, the prospect of sleeping without Ernie was unpleasant. They were going to have only fifteen days. If that much. He would not have been at all surprised if something came up…“Sorry, get here as soon as you can.”

  Shit, I didn’t call in.

  He picked up the telephone, gave the operator the number of the Office of Management Analysis duty officer, assured her the call was necessary, and waited for her to put it through.

  Major Banning answered the phone by giving the number.

  “McCoy, sir. I’m at Ernie’s father’s place.”

  “I thought you might be. I have the number. Having fun?”

  “Whoopee!”

  “The Boss is back, Ken. He called a while back from Los Angeles. He said to pass ‘well done’ to you for the presidential briefing. I guess Senator Fowler gave him a report.”

  “What happens now?”

  “You take your leave, Captain McCoy. You will have a good time. That’s an order. But check in, Ken, please.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Captain McCoy was shortly afterward informed by the Sage butler that Mr. Sage was in the study and wondered if Captain McCoy might wish to join him for a drink.

  They were joined in the study by Miss and Mrs. Sage, and dinner followed shortly thereafter. It was roast turkey stuffed with oysters and chestnuts.

  “A belated Christmas dinner, Ken,” Elaine Sage said. She was a striking, silver-haired woman in her late forties. Ken often imagined Ernie looking like that when she was forty-something.

  “That’s very kind. Thank you.”

  “I don’t suppose you had a Christmas dinner, did you?”

  “The Armed Forces go to great lengths to provide a turkey dinner with all the trimmings to the boys, wherever they are,” Ernest Sage said. “Isn’t that so, Ken?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where were you on Christmas, Ken?” Ernie asked.

  I was marching through the jungles of Mindanao, hoping I could find Fertig before the Japs did. Or before they found me.

  “Actually, I did have Christmas dinner,” he said, “on a Navy ship.”

  Two days early. Nice gesture from the Sunfish’s skipper.

  “You see?” Ernest Sage said triumphantly.

  “It wasn’t as good as this,” Ken said.

  “Have another glass of wine, Ken,” Ernest Sage said.

  Following dinner, there was coffee and brandy in the study, and then Miss Sage announced she was tired and was going to go to bed.

  Captain McCoy and Ernest Sage shared another cognac, and then they, too, went to their respective bedrooms.

  Captain McCoy was more than a little surprised to find that his bed already had an occupant.

  “Jesus, Ernie,” he said. “They’ll know.”

  “No,” she said. “They are determined not to know. Come to bed, baby.”

  [THREE]

  The Greenbrier Hotel

  White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia

  1825 22 February 1943

  On the nearly ten-hour drive from Philadelphia, Captain James B. Weston came to two philosophical conclusions.

  The first: there were concrete benefits attached to being a Marine Aviator and certified hero. That proposition had three proofs. The first came in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, where he had been pulled to the side of the road by a highly indignant Pennsylvania state trooper.

  “I’ve been chasing you for five miles,” the trooper had begun the conversation. “Do you know how fast you were going?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Seventy, seventy-five. The wartime speed limit is thirty-five, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I didn’t realize I was going that fast.”

  “Well, goddamn it, you were!”

  “Yes, sir. I’m sure you’re right.”

  “I’ll need to see some identification, and your orders,” the state trooper said, and added, “There’s been people wearing uniforms who ain’t even in the armed forces.”

  The trooper’s tone of voice suggested he suspected—and indeed hoped—he now had such a person in custody.

  “Just got out of the hospital, did you, Captain?” the trooper asked when he handed Jim’s identity card and orders back to him.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Going home, are you?”

  “Actually, sir, I’m going to the Greenbrier Hotel.”

  “I saw that on the orders,” the trooper said. “I’d have thought they’d have shut that place down for the duration.”

  “No, sir, the government’s taken it over.”
/>   “What for?”

  “It’s where they send people when they come back from overseas,” Jim said.

  “You just came back from overseas?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you’re just out of the hospital. How the hell am I going to give someone like you a ticket?”

  Weston did not reply.

  “If I let you go, will you promise to slow it down a little?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I don’t think any cop would give someone like you—especially in a car like this, with good rubber—a ticket for going fifty or fifty-five. But seventy-five!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Drive careful, Captain. Now that you’re home safe, you really ought to take care of yourself.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

  The state trooper saluted. Weston crisply returned it.

  He had a similar conversation with a deputy sheriff near Romney, West Virginia, who had clocked him at sixty-five. The deputy sheriff confided in Weston that he was thinking of enlisting in the Marine Corps himself. Weston told him he felt sure the Marines could put a man with his training to good use. And promised to hold it down.

  The third proof came when he filled the Buick’s tank in Frost, West Virginia, about fifty miles shy of White Sulphur Springs. The service station attendant refused to accept gasoline ration coupons for the transaction.

  “They give us an allowance for spillage and evaporation,” the man confided. “More than what we actually spill, or what evaporates…we call it ‘overage.’ I generally save my overage for when some serviceman like you comes in.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Jim said, meaning: “I’ll use the gasoline to go see my girl.”

  “Anytime you come through here…”

  “That’s really very nice of you. I’ll take you up on it.”

  The second philosophical conclusion Captain Weston reached while driving to the Greenbrier Hotel was that he was in love with Janice Hardison.

  And from the way she had kissed him that morning when he left her, there was reason to suspect she didn’t regard him as the ugly frog, either.

  God, she is sweet!

  A Navy petty officer of some rating Weston didn’t recognize sat behind the desk in the Greenbrier lobby.

  Probably desk clerk’s mate, second class.

  “Yes, sir?”