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“Chambers, Admiral.”

“Ask Mr. Hope and Miss Chambers if they would like to take a cocktail with me. And see if you can get Lieutenant Kennedy to be there.”

“Who, sir?”

"Lieutenant Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr.,” the admiral snapped. “Tell Commander Bitter I would be pleased if he could arrange it.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Korman said. That was a mixed bag. It would certainly be good public relations for Meachum Hope and the Chambers girl to take a drink on the admiral. If he hadn’t been so leery of the admiral, he would have made precisely that suggestion himself. He wondered who the hell this Lieutenant Kennedy was.

But there was nothing to do but find out who he was, and get him to the Connaught Hotel at 1730. It hadn’t been a suggestion from Admiral Foster; it had been an order.

Chapter THREE

London Station,

Office of Strategic Services

Berkeley Square

“Colonel Stevens would like to see you right away, Major,” the sergeant major said when Canidy walked in.

“He say why?” Canidy asked. When the sergeant major shook his head, he asked: “Fulmar get in all right?”

“He’s with Captain Fine,” the sergeant major said.

Canidy went up the stairs two at a time, then raced down the corridor of the house to Colonel Stevens’s office. The stairs creaked, and the carpet was threadbare. London Station, compared to Whitbey House, was crowded, dirty, and run-down. Stevens’s private office was dark and small.

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

“How did things go at SHAEF?” Stevens asked.

"Very nicely,” Canidy said. "I managed to get a word in with Bitter—I was right, he was being stashed by the Navy PIO—and he gave a nice little speech about interservice cooperation. He is taking cocktails with Eisenhower. Or at least with Admiral Foster, and Ike has promised to drop by. The admiral also wanted Kennedy there, so I called him and told him to go.”

“I’m beginning to think like you,” Stevens said, “that is to say, scatologically. When I saw this, I thought,‘My God, publicity is like the clap. It comes as an epidemic.’”

He handed Canidy a copy of the tabloid-size Stars & Stripes.

There were two photographs on the

front page. One was of the President of the United States, smiling broadly, his cigarette holder sticking up jauntily. The second showed a good-looking female standing on the lower step of an aircraft loading ladder. She was wearing a USO uniform, and she was waving. There was a caption beneath the two-column photo:

AMERICA’S SWEETHEART IN UK—Monica Sinclair waves as she debarks a MATS transport at London’s Croydon Airfield to begin a four-week tour of American military bases in the UK. She was greeted by Col. R. J. Tourtillott Chapter left of SHAEF Special Services.

“Couldn’t this have been stopped?” Canidy asked, shaking his head. “I don’t like it. For reasons that may seem a little far-fetched—a connection being made with her and Eric, for example. But I have a gut feeling that this is bad news, and I’d rather go on the gut feeling.”

“I have the same gut feeling,” Stevens said, and then went on: “If we had known about it, we could have stopped it. But until just now, it never entered my mind to have a liaison officer at Special Services. What do you think we should do about her, if anything?”

“How do you feel about assassination?” Canidy replied.

Stevens chuckled. “I don’t think we could keep that out of Stars & Stripes,” he said. “How do we handle her short of assassination?”

“I thought you’d tell me,” Canidy said. “Fulmar know?”

“Not yet,” Stevens said. When Canidy looked at him quizzically, he added: “In the words of our sergeant major, he has never seen ‘such a fucked-up service record.’ He and Fine are wading through all the paper now. Among other things, Fulmar’s never been paid, and he doesn’t have his National Service Life Insurance—that sort of thing.”

“Well, now he can put his mommy down as his beneficiary,” Canidy said.

“What do we do, Dick?” Stevens asked.