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Holly walked over and stood loosely and unthreateningly before him. “How hard, Whitey?”
“Just as hard as you can, Harry One.”
She knew he expected her to back down. Holly didn’t hesitate; she shot a straight left at the middle of his face and felt the satisfying crunch of cartilage. Whitey sat down hard on the mat, blood gushing from his nose, then he was on his feet and coming at her when somebody stepped between them.
“Hold it, Whitey!” the man said. He was in his late fifties, slim and dressed in khaki trousers and a polo shirt. He turned to Holly. “Why did you do that?”
“My instructor instructed me to hit him as hard as I could,” she replied. “I’m afraid I partly disobeyed.” She looked at Whitey, who was holding a bloody towel to his face. “I hit him, but not as hard as I could.”
Whitey started to move toward her, but the man put a hand on his chest and shoved him backward. “Go to the infirmary and get that fixed,” he said.
Whitey glared at Holly again, then turned on his heel and marched out of the gym.
The man turned back to Holly. “What’s your name?”
“Harry One,” she replied.
The man looked at the group. “This class is dismissed until same time tomorrow.”
The group left, but the man crooked a finger at Holly. “You stay.”
When everyone had left the gym, and he had watched them do so, he turned back to Holly. “What did he say to provoke you?”
“He insinuated that I was a lesbian.”
“Nobody here cares if you’re a lesbian,” the man said.
“Whitey does,” she replied. “He doesn’t like lesbians.”
“No, I guess he doesn’t. Why did that make you so angry?”
“I did twenty years in the Army, and I heard that sort of thing a little too often.”
The man nodded. “I apologize, on behalf of the staff here.”
“Thank you,” Holly said. “And, just for the record, I’m not a lesbian.”
“I never thought you were. Your group will have a new instructor tomorrow, and you won’t see Whitey here again.”
“I didn’t want to get the man fired.”
“Call it the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Holly nodded.
“A word of advice: if you should ever encounter Whitey again outside this establishment, be very careful. He’s good at what he does, and he likes doing it a little too much.”
“I’ll remember that,” Holly replied.
“Go get some lunch,” the man said, and he turned and walked away from her and out a door.
Holly went to get some lunch.
TWELVE
LANCE CABOT WAS HAVING LUNCH in the Farm’s dining room, in the main house, when a woman approached and handed him an envelope. “Thank you,” he said to her retreating back. He put down his fork and opened the envelope. Inside was a summons to a meeting of the executive committee at two p.m. He glanced at his watch; he still had twenty minutes, so he ordered dessert and coffee.
THE EXECUTIVE COMMITEE met in the paneled conference room two floors under the main house. Lance arrived at five minutes before the appointed hour and found no one in the room. He took a seat, rested his head against the back of the high-backed chair and closed his eyes. At one minute before two, half a dozen people filed into the room, among them the director of training, who was the on-site executive officer in charge of the Farm; the director of curriculum, who planned the courses and chose the instructors; and, to his surprise, the deputy director of Central Intelligence for Operations, Hugh English, who was either the number two or the number three man at the Agency, depending on whom you asked.
