The Winston Affair Read Free

the building. This space was railed off and about a dozen chairs were lined up against the rail. There were also two low tables which held magazines and ashtrays. On the tables were old copies of Life, The Saturday Evening Post, Yank, National Geographic, Esquire, Time , and The Infantry Journal . There were also several copies of Punch .
    â€œNow you can just browse among these stateside magazines,” Candyman said. “If I say so myself, they are the finest collection in the theater. I put them together myself.”
    â€œThank you, Sergeant. I have something to read.”
    â€œOf course. Feel free to do so, Captain. Mine was merely a suggestion. Do you need cigarettes, Captain?”
    â€œI’m well supplied, Sergeant.”
    â€œGood. I like to know about such things. Your comfort is my duty and my pleasure, Captain. The Coca-Cola machine is down against that wall over there. Sergeant Miller—the one with the beady eyes over there—he keeps the dimes. It is the courtesy of the house for senior officers who are here on business.”
    â€œWhy only for senior officers, Sergeant?” Adams asked curiously.
    â€œJunior officers are very thirsty and without a significant sense of dignity or restraint. They would empty the machine three times a day. We can’t have that, can we, sir?”
    â€œNo, I guess you can’t.”
    â€œCaptain, would it be presumptuous on my part to ask where you were wounded?”
    â€œYou mean what part of my body?” Adams smiled.
    â€œNo, indeed, sir. I mean the theater.”
    â€œIt was in Italy,” Adams said.
    â€œOh! Well, we also serve who stay at home and wait. Italy, you said?”
    â€œItaly.”
    â€œThank you.” The sergeant nodded and returned to his desk.
    Then Barney Adams opened the portfolio and began to sort through the documents, scanning a page here and there. But whenever he began to read, his thoughts would wander. He had come a long way and much had happened to him, and he had a sense of great distances and great loneliness. He strove for the mental discipline that would reassure him and convince him that he did not want to be home.

Wednesday 10.15 A.M .
    Captain Adams watched the general and waited. Kempton was one of those large, well-fleshed men whose calm façade and controlled facial muscles simulate repose; but he was always a little weary from the struggle he fought against his own nerves and sensitivities. He had been smoking cigarettes before; now he puffed on a cigar. He had an almost unnoticeable habit of clicking the thumb of his left hand against the pinkie nail of his right hand. A mist of perspiration lingered upon his brow and temples; it had been there before, it was there now.
    All of this, Barney Adams noticed. He sat behind his own façade, the good-looking face, the clear, untroubled blue eyes, and the soft red hair. It would have surprised General Kempton to know with what detail Barney Adams noticed and itemized, for no matter how much men—Kempton among them—recognized and honored Adams’ courage and excellent manners and good humor, they did not quickly give him credit for being clever. His record was ascribed to an earnest and satisfactory intelligence; he himself did not regard cleverness as a virtue to be paraded, and the knowledge that it troubled those around him added to his own uncertainty. Just as he was never consciously polite, so was his modesty quite unconscious; and out of this combination, those who knew him also knew that he would go to the top. It was accepted that a long and rewarding army career lay before Barney Adams, and General Kempton emphasized this before he went on to anything else.
    At the same time, Adams had the advantage, for he knew a great deal about Kempton, about the older man’s hopes and dreams and bitter luck and wretched frustrations—whereas the general, accepting Adams so readily, knew nothing of any depth or