Alistair sat at his desk in Bern doodling. A report of OSS inquiries into the boys’ return to the United States had come back with the information that they had arrived at their homes safely, and by now, the last day of July 1944, Alistair expected they would have picked up with their former lives. Christopher Brandt had expressed his desire to resume his profession as a math teacher and track-and-field coach while working on his PhD. He seemed unworried about finding a job. Male teachers were at a premium, since the war had siphoned off the able-bodied of his gender. Sam Barton—Bucky—planned to join an engineering firm in Oklahoma City that had kept a position open for him, and the son of Joanna Bukowski Hudson expected to return to his job at his stepfather’s lumberyard.

He’d had no word of the men since, but he could picture their happy homecomings, guess at the questions they could not answer, conceive of the trail of mystery that would follow them until they were released from the bounds of the OSS’s version of the Official Secrets Service Act, in effect for five years. Alistair expected that even then they would be disinclined to clear up the speculations and misperceptions of neighbors and friends and relatives about what they did for Uncle Sam in the years they were away, reluctant even to discuss the subject with the women they would marry. Their children would most likely never hear about what Daddy did in the war.

A rap on his door drew Alistair from his thoughts. His desk sergeant poked his head in and squinted. The window behind Alistair’s desk reflected the full sun of high summer, so that upon entering the office the visitor saw only a silhouette of Alistair’s head and upper body. It was an annoyance to those approaching his desk to have their vision blinded and being forced to speak to a blacked-out face. By late afternoon the sun would have moved on, but for now his desk sergeant, come to inform him that Colonel William Donovan had arrived, thought it prudent to suggest, “The conference room is available, Major.”

“Not for our short meeting,” Alistair said, continuing his doodling. He knew why his boss had come. “Show him in, Robert.”

“Yes sir,” the sergeant said, turning away with a sigh and rapid bat of his eyes.

“For God’s sake, Alistair, move away from that window before it blinds me,” Bill Donovan complained, entering like a force blown in by a strong wind, hand shielding his eyes.

“Hello to you, too, Colonel,” Alistair said. “You’re looking hale and hearty.”

“Can’t say the same for you. You look about as hale and hearty as week-old coffee dregs. What the hell is this?” Wild Bill waved Alistair’s letter of resignation, effective upon the liberation of Paris, before his desk.