Page 84

"I don't remember," he said.

"What you're supposed to do, if you're a general or an admiral and abo enter battle, is decide what 'asset' you absolutely have

to have if things tough. Then you squirrel that asset away so it's ready when you need it. I sent my asset back for a nap. If anybody can sit this thing down safely mountain strip with a stream running across the runway, Dolan can. Yol low?"

"Yes, sir," Darmstadter said. He was more than a little uncomforti Canidy was obviously a highly skilled B-25 pilot and comfortable doing tthings that with it that most people would not try (his solo flight of the B-25 thrt the soup the day Darmstadter had first met him was proof of that). An' had just admitted that he didn't think he could make the landing on the is of Vis

"There is an additional problem," Canidy said.

"Commander Dolan d he is still twenty-two years old and that the doctors are dead wrong about condition of his heart. He will take affront unless handled properly. Kid glare required." t "I understand, Sir," Darmstadter said.

"And I told you before, stop calling me "Sir,"" Canidy said. ' Six hours and fifteen minutes after taking off from Fersfield, the V landed at Casablanca. Darmstadter made the landing. He had to tell hill there was no reason to be nervous. Landing on the wide, concrete runwi a commercial airport on a bright, sunny afternoon should be a snap, com to landing on the rough, narrow gravel runways at Fersfield. But he was ill

that it was sort of a test. Major Canidy was in effect giving him a check ride to Qy well Dolan had done as an instructor pilot.

Darinstadter was enormously pleased and relieved that the landing was a greaser.

A Follow The jeep, painted in checkerboard black and white and flying an enormous checkerboard flag, met them at the end of the runway and led them away from the terminal to a remote corner of the field. There was an old hangar there with the legend "Air France" barely legible through a layer of rust.

As they approached, the doors opened and a ground crewman gave Darmstadter hand signals, directing him to taxi to the doorway and then shut it down. The moment the engines died, a dozen Air Corps ground crewmen manhandled the B-25 inside the hangar and closed the doors.

[TWO]

The Mark Hopkins Hotel

It had been decided in Washington that Whittaker, Hammersmith, and Garvey would spend the night at Mare Island. Cynthia, to avoid the curiosity and comment that a civilian woman in the Mare Island Female Officers' Quarters would cause, would stay in a San Francisco hotel.

"I know someone who can get you into the Mark Hopkins," Jimmy Whittaker had said, innocently, when the issue of where she would stay in San Francisco came up in Captain Douglass's office.

"What the hell, you might as well go first class."

"Go ahead and do it, Jim," Captain Douglass had answered for her.

"Hotel rooms are in damned short supply in San Francisco."

When they arrived in San Francisco, by commercial air, they went first to the hotel. Cynthia's reserved "room" turned out to be the Theodore Roosevelt Suite, four elegantly furnished rooms on an upper floor.

"It was all they had available," Jimmy said innocently.

Cynthia knew that simply wasn't true. What had happened was that Jimmy had told the hotel something like "I'd like something very nice for a ry good friend of mine," and the hotel had come up with the Theodore Roosevelt Suite. The hotel had been very obliging to Jim Whittaker because Jimmy was a very rich man, and the hotel knew it.

Jimmy's father and his two uncles had inherited the Whittaker Construci n Company from their father. There was more to it than the construction mpany, though God knew that was enough. The Whittaker fortune was based in railroads. They had built them before the Civil War, and grown ver rich during the war building and operating railroads for the Union Army.

After the Civil War, there had been more railroads. And harbors, and heav construction. Whenever they could, which was most often, they took part o their pay in stock of whatever they were building. The company had large r estate holdings in New York City and elsewhere. It was even possible, Cynthg thought, looking around the Theodore Roosevelt Suite, that Jimmy had an it terest in the hotel.

Jimmy's father had been killed in World War I. And his third of Whittakfi Construction had gone to his only son. Both Jimmy's uncle Jack and his uncj Chesty had died childless. Jack Whittaker's third would pass to Jimmy on tfa death of his widow. Jimmy had already inherited the house on Q Street, Norn west, from Chesty, as well as some other property.

Chesty Whittaker, Jimmy's uncle and Cynthia's lover, had told her all abon the financial position of James M. B. Whittaker. Not subtly. Chesty had thougd she should marry Jimmy.

"You've got to think of the future, my darling," Chesty had said.

"We can!

go on."

"Why can't we?"

"Well, for one thing, I'm a little long in the tooth. You'll still be a young woman when I am long gone."