The General's Daughter

went on in the small viewing room, Mace, Nick, the engineer, and I were all smiling. We had a winner.

The movie, The General’s Daughter, is not the novel, The General’s Daughter. It is an adaptation. It’s easy for a novelist to complain or get angry at how his or her book was treated or mistreated. In too many cases, these feelings are justified. The egos in Hollywood are big, and the story conferences are many. Studio heads, producers, directors, and screenwriters engage in a collaborate effort that the novelist neither comprehends nor desires. The result of collaborative efforts and compromises often lead to the proverbial committee-designed racehorse becoming a giraffe. This process is inherent in the motion-picture business and will never change.

Sometimes, however, the moons, the planets, and the stars all line up, and many visions become a thing of magic. As I write this, I have not seen the fully cut and edited movie, nor have I heard the musical score or the sound effects, or seen the ending of the story. But I liked what I did see, on the screen and on the set.

The most common and frequent complaint of moviegoers who see a movie based on a book is this: The book was better than the movie. One rarely if ever hears that the movie was better than the book, or that the novelist’s story and characters were changed for the better. And you’re not going to hear that now. But what I can say is that the essence of my novel was captured and conveyed on the screen through excellent acting, sharp and funny dialogue, and through the use of visual settings that even the best novelist can’t convey on paper.

Regarding the visuals, executive producer Jonathan Krane said, “The look of this film is almost supernatural. It’s the most staggeringly spectacular film I’ve ever seen.” A bit of hype, maybe, but the point is made that visuals are what American filmmaking does best. When you couple this with great acting and a great screenplay, you have a real movie.

As important as being true to the book is the often overlooked notion that the movie should be entertaining. The movie version of The General’s Daughter is entertaining. I was entertained, and if I was entertained, everyone else who sees it should be entertained.

My Hollywood experience may be atypical, and I may not be as lucky or fortunate on my next close encounter with Hollywood, but this time, the heavenly bodies did align.

CHAPTER

ONE

Is this seat taken?” I asked the attractive young woman sitting by herself in the lounge.

She looked up from her newspaper but didn’t reply.

I sat opposite her at the cocktail table and put down my beer. She went back to her paper and sipped on her drink, a bourbon and Coke. I inquired, “Come here often?”

“Go away.”

“What’s your sign?”

“No trespassing.”

“Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

“No.”

“Yes. NATO Headquarters in Brussels. We met at a cocktail party.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” she conceded. “You got drunk and threw up in the punch bowl.”

“Small world,” I said. And indeed it was. Cynthia Sunhill, the woman sitting across from me now, was more than a casual acquaintance. In fact, we were once involved, as they say. Apparently she chose not to remember much of it. I said, “You threw up. I told you bourbon and Coke wasn’t good for your stomach.”

“You are not good for my stomach.”

You’d think by her attitude that I had walked out on her rather than vice versa.

We were sitting in the cocktail lounge of the Officers’ Club at Fort Hadley, Georgia. It was the Happy Hour, and everyone there seemed happy, save for us two. I was dressed in a blue civilian suit, she in a nice pink knit dress that brought out her tan, her auburn hair, her hazel eyes, and other fondly remembered anatomy. I inquired, “Are you here on assignment?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that.”

“Where are you staying?”

No reply.

“How long will you be here?”

She went back to her newspaper.

I asked, “Did you marry that guy you were seeing on the side?”

She put down the paper and looked at me. “I was seeing you on the side. I was engaged to him.”

“That’s right. Are you still engaged?”

“None of your business.”

“It could be.”

“Not in this lifetime,” she informed me, and hid behind her paper again.

I didn’t see an engagement ring or a wedding ring, but in our business that didn’t mean much, as I’d learned in Brussels.

Cynthia Sunhill, by the way, was in her late twenties, and I’m in my early forties, so ours was not a May– November romance, but more May–September. Maybe August.

It lasted a year while we were both stationed in Europe, and her fiance, a Special Forces major, was stationed in Panama. Military life is tough on relationships of all kinds, and the defense of Western civilization makes people horny.

Cynthia and I had separated a little over a year before this chance encounter, under circumstances that can best be described as messy. Apparently neither she nor I had gotten over it; I was still hurting and she was still pissed off. The betrayed fiance looked a little annoyed, too, the last time I saw him in Brussels with a pistol in his hand.

The O Club at Hadley is vaguely Spanish in architecture, perhaps Moorish, which may have been why Casablanca popped into my mind, and I quipped out of the side of my mouth, “Of all the gin joints in the world, she walks into mine.”

Either she didn’t get it or she wasn’t in a smiling mood, because she continued to read her newspaper, the Stars and Stripes, which nobody reads, at least not in public. But Cynthia is a bit of a goody-goody, a dedicated, loyal, and enthusiastic soldier with none of the cynicism and world-weariness that most men display after a few years on this job. “Hearts filled with passion, jealousy, and hate,” I prompted.

Cynthia said, “Go away, Paul.”

“I’m sorry I ruined your life,” I said sincerely.

“You couldn’t even ruin my day.”

“You broke my heart,” I said with more sincerity.

“I’d like to break your neck,” she replied with real enthusiasm.

I could see that I was rekindling something in her, but I don’t think it was passion.

I remembered a poem I used to whisper to her in our more intimate moments, and I leaned toward her and said softly, “ ‘There hath none pleased mine eyes but Cynthia, none delighted mine ears but Cynthia, none possessed my heart but Cynthia. I have forsaken all other fortunes to follow Cynthia, and here I stand, ready to die if it pleases Cynthia.’ ”

“Good. Drop dead.” She stood and left.

“Play it again, Sam.” I finished my beer, stood, and walked back to the bar.

I sidled up to the long bar among men who had seen some of life; men with chests full of medals and Combat Infantry Badges, men with campaign ribbons from Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, and the Gulf. The guy to my right, a full colonel with gray hair, said, “War is hell, son, but hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

“Amen.”

“Saw the whole thing in the bar mirror,” he informed me.