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Douglass knew that if coincidence had thrown these men together in any normal military organization, and if, improbably, they had become buddies there, any commanding officer with enough sense to find his ass with both hands would have broken up the gang and transferred them as far from each other as possible--as awesome threats to "good military order and discipline."

But they weren't in any normal military organization. They were in the Office of Strategic Services.

It. Col. Douglass knew more about the OSS than he had any right to know.

He wasn't even supposed to know about Whithey House, much less spend most of his free time in the requisitioned mansion, the ancestral home of the Dukes of Stanfield. But he was a special case. Not only had he been Dick Canidy's wingman in the Flying Tigers, but his father was Captain Peter Douglass, Sr." deputy director of the OSS, Colonel Wild Bill Donovan's number two.

David Bruce, Chief of London Station, and his

deputy, It. Col. Ed Stevens, simply ignored Douglass's illegal presence at Whithey House when they saw

him there. Canidy and the others didn't talk about what they were doing in Douglass's presence, or tried hard not to, but it was difficult to remember all the time that Douglass didn't have the Need-to-Know, and things slipped out.

When Canidy had hinted that he wouldn't mind getting checked out in the P-38E Douglass had known that the next inevitable step would be for him to go along on a mission. But it would have been difficult to tell his old squadron commander, on whose wing he had first experienced aerial combat, that that was against regulations and therefore impossible. It would have been difficult if he had wanted to say "no," and he didn't want to say no.

He was the group commander, and no one asked questions when they saw him personally showing an Air Corps major around a P-38F, or when he scheduled a couple of P-38Fs for training nights and went along with the major.

If Dick dumped a P-38F while he was learning, Douglass decided, he would just say that he was flying it. That would work unless Canidy killed himself, in which case it wouldn't matter. That fear turned out to have been academic.

Canidy hadn't had any trouble with the P-38E He was a good pilot, and an experienced one. He had several thousand hours in the air. Many of Douglass's pilots had less than two hundred fifty.

When the jeep stopped in front of the revetment in which waited the P38F that Canidy would fly today, and Canidy started to get out, Douglass touched his arm.

"I'll fly your wing, if you like, Skipper," he said.

Canidy smiled at him, touched by the gesture.

"I'm just going along for the ride, thank you, Colonel," he said.

Douglass nodded and motioned for the driver to continue.

Canidy walked into the revetment. The crew chief, a young technical sergeant, threw him a casual salute.

"Good morning, Major," he said.

"Morning," Canidy said.

"You've wound both rubber bands, I presume?"

"Yes, Sir," the crew chief said.

Canidy, with the crew chief trailing him, walked around the airplane, making the preflight check. He found nothing wrong and nodded his approval of the aircraft's condition.

They walked back to the nose of the aircraft, where the crew chief held out a sheepskin flying jacket to Canidy, and then when Canidy had put his arms into it, steadied him as he pulled sheepskin trousers over his uniform trousers.

Canidy started to climb the ladder to the cockpit, which sat between the twin engines. And for the first time he saw what was painted on the nose. The Flying Tiger's shark's jaw, and "Dick Canidy," in flowing script, and beneath it five meatballs.

"That was very nice of you, Sergeant," Canidy said.

"Thank you very much."

"The Colonel thought you'd like it. Major," the crew chief said.

"He was your squadron CO in the Flying Tigers, wasn't he?"

"Right," Canidy said. It was not the time for historical accuracy.

He climbed into the cockpit. The crew chief climbed the ladder after him, carrying sheepskin boots. Canidy, not without difficulty, put them on, and then the crew chief helped him with the parachute straps, and finally handed him the leather helmet and oxygen mask, with its built-in microphone.