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“With all respect, this is where I get the authority.”
“What’s that?” Major Davis asked.
Mattingly did not reply to the question, instead saying, “Well, it didn’t take long for this to go to your head, did it, Cronley?”
Cronley didn’t reply.
“Keep in mind, you arrogant pup,” Mattingly said, “that you’re still a serving officer, and that what goes around comes around, and is going to bite you hard on the ass just as soon as someone comes to his senses and takes those goddamn credentials away from you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, sir.”
“Let’s go, Davis,” Mattingly said, and marched out of the bar.
Alphonse didn’t understand much of what he overheard, but it was clear that Colonel Mattingly was quite angry with Cronley about something, something much more important than Cronley’s turtleneck sweater.
He started to remove Mattingly’s and Davis’s untouched drinks.
“Leave them, Alphonse,” Cronley ordered in German. “Didn’t your mother teach you ‘Waste not, want not’?”
Ninety seconds later, just after Cronley had tossed down what was left of his Jack Daniel’s and taken the first sip of what had been Mattingly’s scotch, the woman at the bar moved down and took the stool beside Cronley.
“You’re just the man I’m looking for,” she said. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“I don’t know what you have in mind, but you better understand from the get-go that I am a practicing Episcopalian who doesn’t let himself get picked up by strange women in bars.”
“Maybe you ought to try it sometime,” she said, and put out her hand. “Janice Johansen, AP.”
He shook her hand, but said nothing.
“And you are?”
“I never give my name to strange women. If I do, then they want my telephone number, and the next thing I know, there are lewd phone calls at three a.m.”
“Your name is Cronley and I already have your phone number,” she said, and proceeded to recite it. “There was no answer when I called, so I thought I would hang around the bar and see if the mysterious chief of the Central Intelligence Directorate came in for a nightcap. I was looking for somebody twenty years older with a paunch.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Don’t be. I would much rather wield my feminine charms on someone your age.”
“You’re a cradle robber?”
“Why not? I’d like to ask you a couple of simple questions.”
“I don’t answer questions from strange women, so I’ll tell you what: Why don’t you help yourself to that Dewar’s and then go back down the bar?”
“We can start with that,” she said, and picked up the glass.
She took an appreciative sip, and then asked, “Can I try a couple of questions on for size?”
“Can I stop you?”
“You’re pretty good at pissing people off, aren’t you? I thought that colonel was about to throw a punch.”
“He wouldn’t do that. He’s an officer and a gentleman.”
“What was it that you showed him that so pissed him off? Can I see it?”
“None of your business, and no.”
