Dry Bones Read Online Free Page A

right. He was holding court amid a semicircle of officers.
    A trim, taciturn sergeant escorted Dunne down the heavily carpeted hallway to Donovan’s office. He pointed to an elegant, gold-leafed, bowlegged chair pushed against the wall. “Have a seat. The general will see you when he’s ready.” The sergeant planted himself behind his desk and pecked away with two fingers at an ancient-looking typewriter.
    The last time Dunne had seen Donovan was the previous spring in London, several weeks before the invasion. The general had sent a note asking to see him. It turned out to be a casual meeting. Instead of sitting inside, they took a walk and enjoyed the spring weather. Donovan did most of the talking—not about whatwas ahead but the last war, boys of the 69th, especially those who didn’t make it back. “I’m sure we’ll be successful,” he said, without specifying at what. “The question is what price we’ll pay.”
    Near the Houses of Parliament, he had a car waiting. He had the driver take their picture. It all seemed planned. A few days later, a print was delivered to Dunne, signed, with an inscription:
To Fintan Dunne, My highest regards to a soldier’s soldier.
    No doubt intended as a gesture of respect and—even more—encouragement to a brother-in-arms under no illusions about the mayhem and gore ahead, but the effect was to leave Dunne rattled and unsure. He fantasized about sending it back with an inscription of his own:
Thanks, but no thanks. This sounds like an epitaph.
Instead, he stuck it in an envelope and mailed it home to Roberta.
    The sergeant kept pecking at the typewriter. Pinned on the wall above his desk was a large Mercator map. The borders of the world’s nations, Dunne noticed, didn’t register any of the changes imposed since 1938.
    The casual observer might find it hard to believe this was the antechamber of the U.S. spymaster in chief. But underselling himself had always been one of Donovan’s strengths. Those lulled into thinking him a lightweight who’d be quickly KO’d by the bare-knuckle heavyweights prowling the capital’s corridors soon learned otherwise.
    Without losing his temper or indulging in verbal fisticuffs, Donovan transformed an innocuous-sounding fact-gathering bureau, the Office of the Coordinator of Information, into the Office of Strategic Services, an audacious, all-purpose agency for intelligence gathering, special operations, psychological warfare, sabotage, espionage, and counterespionage. As well as self-effacing master of the internecine struggle among government departments and military services, he became the first man to wrangle a burgeoning multimillion budget from Congress and not have to account for a single dime.
    The red button on the phone beside the typewriter silently pulsed. The sergeant grabbed the receiver. “Yes, sir,” he snapped, “right away.” He nodded at the door. “The general will see you now.” He went back to his tap-tap-tapping.
    Dunne knocked and opened the door. The blinds were drawn. A single gooseneck lamp provided the only light. Donovan sat in the darkness beyond, dim but recognizable. Dunne took the seat in front of the desk—a twin to the one he’d sat on in the hallway—and waited to see who was in charge: Wild Bill or Black Will.
    With those he wanted to impress or manipulate—celebrities, senators, cabinet secretaries, the president—affable, outgoing Wild Bill never failed to appear. But at one time or another, whether it meant crossing a corridor or continent, his associates scurried to answer the summons from Black Will. They’d wait as he studied a lone paper stranded on his uncluttered desk, or stared out the window, or gazed at the ceiling. Sunk in his own emotional trough, he said nothing. After fifteen or twenty minutes (what felt like an hour to the person sitting there), he’d look across, wide-eyed, to find he had company, fumble with a pen or paperweight, and issue a quick