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It took a moment before Staley was sure who the Chief was, then he said, "Jesus H. Christ! Ellis!"

Ellis swung around in his high-backed chair and pushed a lever on an intercom box.

"Could somebody bring us some coffee? "he asked. Then he turned to Staley and gestured toward the red leather couch.

"Sit down," he said.

"Take a load off."

Chief Boatswain's Mate J. R. Ellis, USN, was wearing a brand-new uniform.

There were twenty-four years' worth of hash marks on the sleeve. The uniform was his Christmas present to himself. It was custom-made. He had had custom-made uniforms before, but in China, when he'd been with the Yangtze River Patrol. But he hadn't been a chief then, and custom-made uniforms cost a hell of a lot less in China than they did in the States. Chief Ellis had figured, what the hell, he had never even expected that he would make chief, why the hell not get a stateside custom-made uniform. He could afford it.

The last time Staley had seen Ellis had been in Shanghai, and Ellis had been right on the edge of getting busted from bosun's mate first and maybe even getting his ass kicked out of the Navy. Ellis had been on the Panay when the Japs sank it in December 1937. After he'd swum away from the burning Panay, Ellis just hadn't given much of a damn for anything. Staley understood that: How the hell could you take pride in being a sailor if your government didn't do a goddamn thing to the goddamn Japs after they sank a U.S. man-of war and killed a lot of sailors while they were at it?

But he had never expected to see Ellis as a chief, and certainly not in a billet where he was obviously some kind of a big wheel.

One of the typists came in with two cups of coffee, in nice cups and saucers, not mugs.

"There's cream and sugar," she said, smiling at Staley, "but Chief Ellis never uses what he calls 'canned cow."" "Black's just fine, Ma'am," Staley said.

When she left, curiosity got the better of him.

"What the hell is going on around here, Ellis?" he asked.

"I've been trying to figure out how to tell you that," Ellis said.

"I guess the quickest way is the chain of command."

"Huh?"

"Tell me about the chain of command."

Staley looked at him in confusion. Ellis was obviously dead serious.

"Tell me," Ellis repeated.

"Well," Staley said, "I'm first class, and you're a chief, so I report to you, and you report to some officer, and he reports to some senior officer, and it works its way to the top, all the way, I suppose, to the Chief of Naval Operations."

"All the way to the President," Ellis corrected him.

"The Chief of Naval Operations reports to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he reports to the President, who is Commander-in-Chief."

"So?" Staley said.

"The way it is here," Ellis said, "is that you report to me, and I report to the Colonel... you met him, he was out to look things over in Virginia...."

"The guy with the Medal of Honor?"

"Colonel William J. Donovan," Ellis said.

"I work for him, and he works for the President. I mean, directly. He gets his orders from the President. Nobody else can tell him what to do."

Staley said, "No shit?"

"You're going to have to learn to watch your language around here, Charley," Ellis said, almost primly.

"Sorry," Staley said.