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"Oh, yes," said Richards. "That's a splendid aim." He glanced up at the wall clock, as if from then on they all would be wasting time.

The Secretary raised his head, and Jeff realized he had been watchful, though silent. "I take it you don't like war, Mr. Baker?"

"No sir, I don't."

"What outfit?"

"Eighty-fifth Division, 339th Regiment, sir."

"Coulter was a good general," the Secretary stated, in the professional way that one doctor speaks of another as "a good man." He ran a forefinger along the tabletop, and Jeff knew he was exercising his fabulous memory for the minutiae of battle. He knew something that in the room only he and the Secretary knew--that the Secretary was tracing Jeff's boot prints up the spiny back of the Italian peninsula. He was following Jeff's mad entry into Rome, through the ambuscades of the 88s on the road to Florence, edging with him across the minefields on the banks of the Arno. He was witnessing the heartbreaking attack on the Gothic Line, and suffering through the terrible winter in the Apennines, exulting a little in the last assault across the Po, and experiencing the sickening letdown and disillusion that followed victory. "I see," the Secretary said. "I think I see."