“My breath is not sweet, perhaps. It is so late, and it has been so long since I have eaten. I cannot even recall the last time now. I am very tired, and yet I must do more tonight, and I cannot say how much more.”
The young man said, “Your breath is just as sweet, as—as a breeze in April.”
“Good.” She kissed him again. “I see you like it as well as I, but now I must go. You have been so kind. I would not wish to entangle you in difficulties with your superiors.”
She looked around. Stubb had started up the stair, reaching behind him to extend a hand to Candy. Because he was two steps higher than she, their eyes were at a level.
The young man said, “Uh, Ma’am, would you like a sandwich? I’ve got one up front.”
“Oh! Very much!”
“Just a minute.” He ducked through the doorway. The sandwich, wrapped in waxed paper, was Spam on dark rye. He handed it to the witch, who kissed him again, then started after the groaning Candy. When the witch was halfway up, she turned, took a dainty bite of bread and meat, and blew him a kiss.
He blew one in return and stood watching until the slender figure in dark fur and black lace had disappeared into the darkness of the gigantic aircraft above. Then he pushed the folding stairway up, relocked the hatch, and after a minute spent staring idly around the now-vacant plane, went into the cockpit.
A Navy officer waited there, leaning back in the pilot’s seat, his hands behind his head. He asked, “All finished, Bob?”
“Yep.” The young man sat down in the copilot’s seat.
“Took you long enough.”
“I guess.”
The Navy officer threw a switch on the control panel. Instantly they were dropping, then swooping downward in a long glide.
“Where are we?”
“Eighties. Pretty far up. Four of them?”
“Right. Two men, two women.”
The old Fortress swung into a wide, easy bank. “What were they like?”
The young man considered. “Spies,” he said.
“Spies?”
“That’s what I’d say. You know, sometimes they look like diplomats, sometimes millionaires or politicians or whatever. Right,
“How ’bout that. False whiskers?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. One had a mustache.”
“Come on, what were they like?”
“Okay. Seedy-looking guy with one eye. Face beat up, like he’d been in a fight. Average height or a little under, too old for the draft. Looked like he could be anything as long as it wasn’t too honest, maybe a bookie, something like that.”
“A pimp.”
“Maybe, if he had a little more scratch. Kind of good-looking, shiny black hair, Clark Gable mustache. He was the first one up the steps, and if it scared him he didn’t let it show much.”
“The other guy?”
“Jockey size. Thick glasses, trenchcoat.”
“What about his face?”
“I don’t remember—just the glasses. That was the whole thing about him. He was one of those guys nobody notices. Know what I mean?”
“I suppose. I didn’t see him.”
“Neither did I. That’s what I’m telling you.”
“Okay, now the good part. What about the women? You said there were two.”
“Yep. One you had to notice. If you flew over the county fair and got a picture of the crowd and she was in it, she’d be the first one.”
“Nice looking?”
“I guess if she lost a couple of hundred pounds she might have been. Blond, must have been close to six feet.”
“That where you got the lipstick, Bob?”
“Huh?” The young man wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You kidding me?”
“How’d I know? You got lipstick all over you. Want to borrow my handkerchief?”
“I’ve got one.”
“You figure this fat girl went around hiding behind doors and romancing generals? Over and above the light
