Alistair sat at his desk in Bern doodling. A report of OSS inquiries into the boys’ return to the United States had come back with the information that they had arrived at their homes safely, and by now, the last day of July 1944, Alistair expected they would have picked up with their former lives. Christopher Brandt had expressed his desire to resume his profession as a math teacher and track-and-field coach while working on his PhD. He seemed unworried about finding a job. Male teachers were at a premium, since the war had siphoned off the able-bodied of his gender. Sam Barton—Bucky—planned to join an engineering firm in Oklahoma City that had kept a position open for him, and the son of Joanna Bukowski Hudson expected to return to his job at his stepfather’s lumberyard.
He’d had no word of the men since, but he could picture their happy homecomings, guess at the questions they could not answer, conceive of the trail of mystery that would follow them until they were released from the bounds of the OSS’s version of the Official Secrets Service Act, in effect for five years. Alistair expected that even then they would be disinclined to clear up the speculations and misperceptions of neighbors and friends and relatives about what they did for Uncle Sam in the years they were away, reluctant even to discuss the subject with the women they would marry. Their children would most likely never hear about what Daddy did in the war.
A rap on his door drew Alistair from his thoughts. His desk sergeant poked his head in and squinted. The window behind Alistair’s desk reflected the full sun of high summer, so that upon entering the office the visitor saw only a silhouette of Alistair’s head and upper body. It was an annoyance to those approaching his desk to have their vision blinded and being forced to speak to a blacked-out face. By late afternoon the sun would have moved on, but for now his desk sergeant, come to inform him that Colonel William Donovan had arrived, thought it prudent to suggest, “The conference room is available, Major.”
“Not for our short meeting,” Alistair said, continuing his doodling. He knew why his boss had come. “Show him in, Robert.”
“Yes sir,” the sergeant said, turning away with a sigh and rapid bat of his eyes.
“For God’s sake, Alistair, move away from that window before it blinds me,” Bill Donovan complained, entering like a force blown in by a strong wind, hand shielding his eyes.
“Hello to you, too, Colonel,” Alistair said. “You’re looking hale and hearty.”
“Can’t say the same for you. You look about as hale and hearty as week-old coffee dregs. What the hell is this?” Wild Bill waved Alistair’s letter of resignation, effective upon the liberation of Paris, before his desk.
“What it looks like.” Alistair made a motion to the sergeant to bring coffee and got up to move to one of the chairs reserved for visitors. “Good trip?”
“Tolerable, but enough about me,” Bill Donovan said. He tossed Alistair’s letter of resignation onto a table. “Let’s talk about this. I know what’s behind it. All your lambs didn’t make it home to the fold, and rather than look at your glass as half full because three of them did, you’d rather consider it half empty because two of them didn’t. Well, I don’t accept your resignation, not without you hearing me out first. After that, you might want to tear it up.”
Alistair sighed wearily. “I doubt it, but what’s on your mind?”
“Congratulations, that’s what, though I know my kudos will ping off you like BBs off a Sherman tank, but I’ll give them anyway. You’ve done one hell of a great job running this station, Alistair, and your genius has paid untold dividends. The president wishes me to express his gratitude.”
“Okay, accepted,” Alistair said. “Next.”
Wild Bill grunted as if that reaction was as expected. “I’ve come to offer you another job. German defenses of the entire Normandy front are collapsing even as we speak, and the Allies are steadily moving into France. It won’t be long before U.S. Army tanks will be rolling down Paris’s Champs Élysées. The Allied powers predict that France will be liberated by the end of August, so I accept that your job here is done. Now I want you to come home with me, Alistair—to Washington, D.C., that is. I will need you to help me administer the OSS when the war is over because it won’t be over, not by a long shot. Our next enemy will be Russia. You can bet Stalin will force the Nazi-occupied countries liberated by his armies to become Russian satellites. The countries of Eastern Europe will simply exchange one yoke for another, and there’s talk of even Berlin being divided into eastern and western sectors. The West and its allies will have to face another world-domination threat, and the OSS has to be reorganized to deal with it.”
“And you think I’m the man who can help you do it.”
“Without reservation.” Donovan paused and regarded Alistair in concern as the coffee was brought in. “You’re just overtired, my good friend, jaded, and feeling the effects of bad health. You’ve been in the thick of it longer than any other case officer in the field, Alistair. You don’t want to quit now. All you need is a change of scene and venue. A job that doesn’t keep your nerves on end, and allows you three squares a day and a soft bed to lie down in at night, with the chance of getting a full eight hours’ sleep.” The OSS chief shot a glance at the rumpled cot in a corner of Alistair’s office.
Alistair rubbed his neck thoughtfully, unsure if the power of suggestion had made his boss’s proposal sound good, or if fatigue, lack of sleep and nourishment, worry and anxiety, too much caffeine and too many cigarettes, and the sick loss of Liverwort and Labrador had robbed him of the spirit and drive to go on, but he wouldn’t fool himself. He hadn’t really wanted to quit. He was just in a slump, and Bill was offering a way out of it, another opportunity to serve his country, the only mistress he’d ever cared about. He made up his mind without giving his boss’s job offer another thought.
“What if I wrap everything up in the next few days?” he asked. “I have a competent man to leave in charge, and my operatives in France will be in good hands.”
Bill Donovan reached for Alistair’s letter of resignation and tore it in half. “I’ll hold the plane for you,” he said.