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“Did Claudette Colbert tell you why not?” El Jefe asked.

“As a gentleman, I did not press her for details,” Hessinger said. “But I suspect it has something to do with her blond hair, blue eyes, and magnificent bosoms. Women so endowed generally get whatever they want from men.”

“Is that so?”

“That is so. When Claudette looked at me with those blue eyes and asked me for help in getting into the DCI, I was tempted for a moment to shoot you and offer her the chief, DCI-Europe, job.”

“Thinking with your dick again, were you?” Cronley asked.

“That was a joke,” Hessinger said. “I don’t do that. We all have seen what damage thinking with your dick can do.”

As Cronley thought, That was a shot at me for fucking Rachel Schumann, he simultaneously felt anger sweep through him, and sensed Tiny’s and General Gehlen’s eyes on him.

I can’t just take that. Friends or not, I’m still his commanding officer.

So what do I do?

Stand him at attention and demand an apology?

Royally eat his ass out?

His mouth went on automatic and he heard himself say,

“The damage that thinking with one’s male appendage can cause is usually proportional to the size of the organ, wouldn’t you agree, Professor Hessinger? In other words, it is three times more of a problem for me than it is for you?”

Dunwiddie chuckled nervously.

El Jefe smiled and shook his head.

Cronley realized that he was now standing up, legs spread, with his hands on his hips, glaring down at Hessinger, who was still in his chair.

“Okay, Sergeant Hessinger,” Cronley snapped. “The amusing repartee is over. Let’s hear exactly what I’ve done to so piss you off that you felt justified in going off half-cocked to enlist the services of a large-breasted ASA female non-com in a smart-ass scheme that could have caused—may still cause—enormous trouble for us without one goddamn word to me or Captain Dunwiddie?”

Hessinger got to his feet.

“I asked you a question, Sergeant!”

Hessinger’s eyes showed he was frightened, even terrified.

“I was out of line, Captain. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry’s not good enough, fish!”

Where the hell did that come from? “Fish”?

College Station.

The last time I stood with my hands on my hips screaming at a terrified kid, a fish, scaring the shit out of him, I was an eighteen-year-old corporal in the Corps . . .

He saw the kid, the fish, standing at rigid attention, staring straight ahead, as he was abusing him, reciting, “Sir, not being informed to the highest degree of accuracy, I hesitate to articulate for fear that I may deviate from the true course of rectitude. In short, sir, I am a very dumb fish, and do not know, sir.”

I didn’t like abusing a helpless guy then, and I don’t like doing it here.

“Sit down, Freddy,” Cronley said, putting his hand on Hessinger’s shoulder. “Just kidding.”

Hessinger sat—collapsed—back into his chair.

“But you will admit, I hope, that going off that way to corrupt the blue-eyed nicely teated blond without telling either Tiny or me was pretty stupid.”