Sentimental Journey (6 page)

Colonel Langdon had all but eaten J.R. alive for the first few months he was stationed here. He’d learned to make the best of it till he could draw a new assignment. Until then, he was just a typical victim of Army-issue SNAFU.

The screen on the front door rattled closed behind him. Here, inside camp headquarters, the rooms were small and hot. Whirring slowly overhead was a ceiling fan, and in a distant office a phone rang as loudly as an old tin alarm clock. A battle line of gray metal filing cabinets stood along the wall.

Another of the colonel’s aides, a second lieu, with a broken stub of yellow pencil stuck behind one big ear, was sitting at a desk hunched over an old Royal typewriter, pounding away on the keys as if he were Count Basie.

The kid finally looked up, then bolted to attention. “Captain Cassidy, sir.”

J.R. returned the salute. “At ease.”

The kid turned and looked nervously at the colonel’s door.

J.R. hitched his hip on the cluttered corner of the desk, finished off his last olive, and set his empty highball glass on a stack of mustard yellow supply forms. He chewed on the toothpick for a moment, then slid it to the corner of his mouth. “From your look, Lieutenant, I’d say that the colonel’s his usual pleasant self.”

“Worse,” the kid mumbled on a half groan. “He said to send you right in, sir. On—”

“I know . . . I know . . . ” J.R. held up his hand. “On the double.” He stood and strolled toward the back offices.

“He’s not alone, Captain.”

J.R. stopped and turned.

“Lt. Colonel Harrington from HQ is with him . . . ”

Great. Two horses’ asses together in one room.
He threw the toothpick into a metal ashtray and wondered what was up. If it was his lucky day, then he’d be getting an assignment. Out of there. Finally.

If it wasn’t his lucky day, well, he could be doing anything from touring some congressman around the batteries to representing the U.S. Army as a hog judge at the nearest country fair.

There was, however, one job he knew he wouldn’t be doing again. Based on camp scuttlebutt, Langdon wouldn’t order J.R. to escort his lush young wife, Adele, again anytime soon.

J.R. gave the door a firm knock. Langdon’s voice came through the door, a command to enter. J.R. walked inside.

The colonel’s office smelled of old coffee, cigar smoke, and dogmatism.

Langdon looked up, his face unreadable. He stubbed out his cigar, and they went through the routine, J.R. saluting two men he did not respect. Oh, he supposed Harrington was all right, if you could stand a pansy-assed, stiff-necked boot-licker of the first order.

Langdon gave J.R. an icy look.

J.R. returned it unflinchingly.

The colonel was about five inches shorter than he was, had light brown, graying hair and a deeply receding hairline. When you looked at his forehead, you saw that hairline formed an
M,
which made you think he had joined the wrong branch of service. He should have been a leatherneck.

“Sit down, Captain.”

The instant he sat down Langdon rose. It was a calculated move; now Langdon could look down at him. J.R. watched his commander walk over to the west window, his back to the room and his hands clasped behind him as he stood there—the little shit—milking the moment.

A fly buzzed around J.R.’s head. He ignored it, but looked up—a search for hebetude. The old metal ceiling fan spun lazily overhead and ticked like a timing device counting off tension in seconds. Outside the door, you could still hear the aide’s frenetic typing, then the sharp, final ring of the typewriter bell. Less than a second later the carriage return slammed over to the left side of the machine with a plangent rattle.

Langdon waited a long time before he faced him again.

J.R. counted six more rings of that typewriter bell. He knew this game. The colonel had played it often enough for J.R. to wonder if it was in the goddamn rule book.

“It seems that the State Department has a little problem, Captain, and according to a staff memo Lt. Col. Harrington bought down from HQ, your name keeps popping up as the man they want to handle it.”

He was getting an assignment from HQ. Something from over Langdon’s head.

Thank God and GHQ

“You’ve heard of Arnan Kincaid?”

“The genius who heads the scientific research at Wynberg-Kincaid Labs?”

“That’s the one,” Lt. Col. Harrington piped in.

J.R. just looked at him. Harrington was an annoying weasel, like the one in that nursery rhyme, the one who popped his head up from a bush every few minutes. Harrington did it just to make sure you remembered he was there.

“Rumor has it Kincaid’s working for the government.” J.R. aimed his comment to Langdon just to piss off Harrington. “But as far as I can tell, no one wants to confirm that information.”

“Consider it confirmed.” Harrington’s voice was smug in the way of those who liked it when they knew things others didn’t. He was a surefire security risk, the kind of man whose ego wouldn’t let him keep his mouth shut.

Langdon shot Harrington a sharp look, then turned back to J.R. “Kincaid is working on a top secret project. But he’s not the problem.”

“What is?”

“Not
what.
Who.” Langdon crossed back over to the desk and sat down. “Kincaid has a daughter. Kathryn. She disappeared almost two weeks ago.” The colonel held out a hand toward Harrington, who flipped open a briefcase, riffled through some papers, then handed him a photograph.

Langdon slid it in front of J.R.

The woman who stared back at him from that eight-by-ten was one helluva dish. She had flawless features and fine bones, a square but soft jaw line, a broad smile with perfectly straight teeth and full lips that bowed in the center. Her skin looked pale in the gray tones of the photo. She had a long, elegant neck strung with a single strand of perfectly graduated pearls, the kind debs wore for their coming out balls. Her dark hair was thick, parted on one side, and waved down along her face in that sexy, starlet way, before it curled under at her shoulders.

Her head was tilted slightly, as if she were thinking. Thick, dark lashes framed her eyes. Her eyebrows looked natural, thickly winged with a slight arch, instead of tweezed off and drawn on with thin pencil like so many girls did nowadays. He never understood the theory behind that style. It made them look continually surprised . . . and a little stupid.

This babe looked anything but stupid.

“The last time she was seen, she was heading for the marketplace in
Rabat
.”

J.R. looked up. “
Rabat
? What the hell was she doing in
North Africa
?”

“She’s been there for a long time, since thirty-nine.”

“Doesn’t she know there’s a war on?”

“According to Kincaid, she made up her mind to go to work with the family of a college friend. He said she had something important to prove.”

Prove? What? That she was stupid?
J.R. wasn’t sure who was more foolish. The girl for staying there or the father for not dragging her sweet butt home, where she belonged. He stared at the gorgeous image in the photo a moment longer. Foolish, but a real looker. “It always amazes me when civilians do nothing to get out of harm’s way.” He dropped the photo back on the colonel’s desk and leaned back in his chair. “Why was she there in the first place?”

“That’s not your problem, Captain,” Langdon said sharply.

Ah, J.R. thought. He doesn’t know either. “Then just what is my problem, Colonel?”

Langdon’s expression grew grim. “I’m not certain I agree with HQ, Captain. You don’t seem to me to be the kind of man for this assignment.”

Harrington popped up again, neck straining. “But, sir—”

Langdon cut Harrington off with the quick raise of his hand. This assignment was eating at Langdon. HQ had ordered Langdon, J.R.’s superior officer, to give him this assignment, and it was driving the bastard nuts.

Good.

“The name ‘Cassidy’ seems to be like ‘God’ around HQ.” Langdon looked at him.

J.R. didn’t respond.

But the colonel was waiting with an officious smile, as if he thought J.R. was stupid and hot-tempered enough to fall for that crap.

Harrington coughed in the silence, then cleared his throat.

Langdon continued, “Her friend’s family obtained their exit papers a few months ago. Kincaid was supposed to fly back to the States. But Petain signed the armistice with
Germany
. The borders closed quickly. She was caught and unable to get the papers she needed to leave. Her father has been putting pressure on his friends in high places. Someone in the State Department had just made a deal with the
Vichy
to get her out. She disappeared the day before she was scheduled to leave.”

“How convenient.” J.R. glanced at the photograph again.

“Kincaid was contacted last Sunday night by an operative near his home in
California
. His daughter’s now in the hands of the German Occupancy officials.”

“Another bogus name for one of Hitler’s agencies,” Harrington added as if J.R. had been born yesterday.

“She’s now their leverage against Kincaid. They want him to cooperate, to give them information in exchange for her continued safety. He was savvy enough to have a close friend contact the State Department immediately.”

Langdon reached over, pulled a packet from Harrington’s briefcase, and added the photo, along with some files from his desktop. He came around the desk and stood in front of J.R. He handed him the packet, then glanced at his wristwatch. “You’re flying out for
Gibraltar
at fourteen hundred.”

“That’s only two hours.” J.R. paused. “Sir.”

“I know.”

“The airfield is almost two hours from here.” J.R. looked at Langdon.

“Then I suggest you leave right away, Captain.”

J.R. had opened the envelope and quickly scanned the information. “According to this, she’s being held outside Ouarzazate. In Tizi.” They had confirmed she was in an old medieval Kasbah-type fortress that dominated one of the sheer crags almost six thousand feet up in the
Atlas Mountains
. It was one of those places ingeniously built hundreds of years before and a hundred years from now would still be difficult to infiltrate.

“That’s right, Captain.” Langdon leaned casually back against his desk and gave J.R. a snide look that said he liked this part of it. “And it’s your job to get her out of there.”

“THE BIRTH OF THE BLUES”

Less than five minutes later U.S. Army Colonel Robert Langdon, Commander,
Camp
Endicott
, stood at the west window of his office and watched Cassidy drive off in the direction of the base officers’ quarters, hoping he would never see him again, and then . . . neither would Adele.