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“Oh, I see,” Dolan said, and smiled, and Bitter knew that Dolan thought he was a fool.

You can put an enlisted man in an officer’s uniform, Bitter thought self-righteously, but that doesn’t make him an officer.

“Come on in your office,” he said. “I’ve got some good bourbon.”

“I don’t think that’s my office, Dolan,” Bitter said. “I’m just here to look around.”

“Canidy said you would be around for a while,” Dolan said. “And you’re senior.”

It didn’t seem worth arguing about, and he didn’t think he should refuse the drink Dolan offered when he had ushered him into the small office. Dolan poured an inch of bourbon into two water glasses and handed one to Bitter.

“Welcome aboard, sir,” he said. He drank it down neat, then raised his voice and called out,“Go find Mr. Kennedy. Ask him to come meet the new skipper.”

"Who’s Kennedy?” Bitter asked.

“He’s the only original asshole I kept,” Dolan said, then corrected himself. “He was the only one of the originals who was not an asshole, I mean. That’s why I kept him. He’s a reservist, and he doesn’t have much time, but he’s a good man. And, considering the few hours he’s got, he’s a pretty good pilot.”

A few minutes later, Commander Bitter, watching Lieutenant Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., USNR, through the hut window, saw that he was first and foremost a gentleman. Kennedy stopped by Sergeant Draper and asked at some length if he could be of some assistance to her. But finally he came into the hut.

“Joe,” Dolan said,“this is the Pentagon candy-ass Canidy sent us. He flew with Canidy and Douglass in the AVG. He got nine kills before he caught a slug.”

“I think maybe I better go out and come in again and report properly,” Kennedy said. “I thought I was being summoned to meet yet another of Dolan’s old salts for yet another tale of the Old Navy.”

“So far as you’re concerned, Lieutenant Kennedy, Commander Bitter is an old salt,” Dolan said.

Kennedy was unrepentant.

“In that case, I suggest we go splice the main brace before we chow down,” he said. “How’s that for old salt talk?”

“Remind you of anybody we know, Commander?” Dolan asked.

There was obvious affection between the two, Bitter saw. That spoke well for Kennedy. Dolan, like Canidy, liked few people.

“MIT, Mr. Kennedy?” Bitter asked. Kennedy had, like Canidy, a slight Massachusetts accent.

“Across the street,” Kennedy said. “Harvard.”

“Commander Dolan and I will try not to hold it against you,” Bitter said, offering his hand.

“I like your driver, Commander,” Kennedy said.

“So do I,” Bitter said, then realized he was sounding proprietary. Quickly he backed away from that. “Why don’t we go get a drink?”

Chapter FOUR

The 503rd Composite Squadron, the name assigned for bureaucratic purposes to the Aphrodite Project, had too few officers and men to justify its own mess hall. Thus the officers and men were fed in the messes that served the B-17 Heavy Bombardment Group based at Fersfield.

Dolan’s rank entitled him to a place at the senior officers’ table in the mess. But because of Kennedy, who would not be welcome at the senior officers’ table when they went to dinner, Dolan led them to a table in a corner.

Almost immediately, a very young-looking major and an even younger-looking lieutenant colonel, both wearing high-altitude sheepskins, joined them without invitation. The colonel turned his chair around and rested his arms on the back.

“Dolan,” the colonel said,“I’ve told you and told you that when you don’t eat with me, everybody thinks you’re mad at me.”

Dolan stood up.

“Colonel D’Angelo, this is Commander Bitter,” Dolan said. “Colonel D’Angelo is the Group Commander.”

“And the base commander, Dolan,” D’Angelo said. “Don’t forget that.”