“The Macallan?” Allan Junior asked. “What are we celebrating?”
“Actually, what we’re marking is almost the exact opposite of a celebration,” Naylor said.
The telephone rang as Allan Junior was walking out of the kitchen to get the single malt. He snatched its handset off the wall.
“Quarters One, Major Naylor, sir.”
He listened, then put his hand over the microphone, and turned to his father.
“It’s Charley,” he said to his father, referring to Captain Charles D. Seward III, his father’s junior aide. “He says that Mr. Lammelle is having dinner with Mr. Festerman and will spend the night with him, rather than in the VIP Quarters. He wants to know what you want him to do.”
Bruce L. Festerman was the liaison officer of the Central Intelligence Agency to the United States Central Command.
Naylor walked to his son and took the telephone receiver from him.
“Charley,” he ordered, “ask Mr. Lammelle if it would be convenient for him to have you pick him up at half past eight in the morning. If so, drive him slowly to the office. I want to be through with General McNab before he gets there. If that doesn’t work, call me back.”
When Naylor had returned the telephone to its cradle, Allan Junior said: “The deputy director of the CIA and Scotty McNab. What the hell’s going on?”
Colonel Brewer had wanted to ask the same questions, first when Lammelle had been waiting for him and General Naylor at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, and later at MacDill, when General Naylor had walked into his office and, even before he sat down, had told Sergeant Major Wes Suggins to get General McNab on the horn.
But he hadn’t asked. He knew Naylor would tell him what he thought he should know when he thought he needed to know it.
Brewer’s natural curiosity—both personal and professional—was not to be satisfied now, either.
“I thought you were fetching the bottle of Macallan,” General Naylor said.
“Yes, sir,” Allan Junior said. “Coming right up, sir.”
The younger Naylor returned with two bottles of Scotch whisky—the single malt Macallan and a bottle of blended Johnnie Walker Red Label. General Naylor’s father had taught him—and he had taught his son—that one never took two drinks of really superb Scotch in a row. One drank and savored the superb whisky. A second drink of the superb would be a waste, however, as the alcohol had deadened the tongue to the point where it could not taste the difference between a superb Scotch and an ordinary one—or even a bad one.
General Naylor drank his Macallan without saying a word. When that was gone, he poured a double of the Johnnie Walker, added a couple of ice cubes to his glass, moved the cubes around with his index finger, and then looked up.
“Did either of you see that actor—the guy who usually has a big black mustache—in the movie where he played Eisenhower just before D-Day?”
“Tom Selleck,” Brewer said. “Countdown to D-Day.”
“Something like that,” Naylor said. “Allan?”
“Yeah, I saw it. Good movie.”
“Very accurate,” Naylor said. “Down to his chain-smoking those Chesterfields. My uncle Tony, who was at SHAEF, said Eisenhower’s fingers were stained yellow from the cigarettes.”
He took another swallow of his drink, and his son and aide waited for him to go on.
“There was a segment where one of his officers, a two-star, let his mouth run in a restaurant. Do you remember that?”
His son and his aide nodded.
“That was also quite accurately shown in the movie. Uncle Tony knew all the players. The officer was in his cups, in a restaurant, and came close to divulging when the cross-channel invasion would take place. He was overheard, and someone reported him.”
“Eisenhower should have had the sonofabitch shot,” Allan Junior said. “Instead, they knocked rings and he walked. He didn’t even get thrown out of the Army.”
“Did you read that line in the Bible that says something about ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged’?” General Naylor said. “He was Ike’s roommate at the Point.”
“What are you saying, Dad? That if that general had gotten his commission from ROTC and/or wasn’t Ike’s classmate, that would have been different?”
“Would you so callously order your roommate at West Point shot under similar circumstances?”