The Winston Affair Read Online Free PDF Page B

I make myself plain. It’s a good many years since I have opened a lawbook, and this is not as easy for me as for those of you who keep a hand in it always.”
    â€œOf course,” Colonel Thompson agreed with a smile. “The idea is to get a foot wet. Then just plunge in and swim.”

Wednesday 4.30 P.M .
    Four white cows barred the path of their jeep, and stood there, looking at them stupidly. Traffic piled up behind the jeep. Corporal Baxter leaned on his horn, and behind them the Sikh drivers joined in the chorus until the whole street screamed and wailed with sound. A small, thin man in native dress observed the situation thoughtfully, and then without any great show of force or persuasion, he led the cows put of the way.
    â€œMother-loving waugs talk the cows’ language,” said Baxter. It annoyed him that the captain limited small talk. Baxter liked talkative people.
    They drove on and came to a square block given over to an open pool of dirty water. Brown-skinned boys, clad only in loincloths, were diving and swimming and shouting gleefully. It occurred to Barney Adams with something of a shock that this was the first laughter he had heard today.
    â€œIf the water was clean—a swim would be good in this weather.”
    â€œThat’s no public pool,” said Baxter. “It’s a ghat, a ritual bath. It fills up in the rainy season, and that water festers and stinks all year through.”
    Adams shook his head.
    â€œWhat the hell—there are plenty of waugs. Reproduction, that’s the big industry here.”
    They drove on, twisting and turning until they reached a wide boulevard that ran on toward the edge of the city. This avenue was lined with houses that seemed originally to have been built after the style of the great palaces in the center of the city, but smaller, their domes no more than ten feet across, their minarets reminding Adams of the decorations on roadside drive-ins in California. Then, beyond the houses, for about half a mile the boulevard was lined with day huts, windowless, formless; and women and children crouched at the doors to these huts, their apathy full of hunger and the fatigue of sickness.
    Then there were fields, with here and there a flat-topped stucco house, and then the long, sprawling bulk of the General Hospital.
    Many years before this time, the British had built the core of the hospital as an army barracks. This part was one story high, foot-thick day walls finished with stucco and painted pink. Around each building, there was a veranda approached through archways; grass mats hung in these archways and, sprinkled all day by water-bearers, provided a primitive sort of cooling system. The U.S. Army had joined these buildings with plywood corridors, and had added a dozen more buildings at each end of the installation, using pre-fabricated Quonset huts. As it stood now, the General Hospital was a full half-mile long, and around it were palm trees and acacias, concealing some of its ugliness.
    â€œDrive around it,” said Adams.
    â€œSir?”
    â€œI said drive around it.”
    â€œIt’s none of my business—”
    â€œNo, it isn’t, Baxter. But if you’re curious, I want to look at it.”
    â€œAt the hospital, Captain?”
    â€œThat’s right—at the hospital.”
    Baxter drove the jeep around the hospital twice, muttering to himself, while Barney Adams studied it searchingly and thoughtfully.

Wednesday 5.00 P.M .
    People who meet in odd places for the first time wear masks. They are reborn when they shake hands, for each is new to the other, without history, mistakes or the heavy burdens of shared memories. In this case, however, Colonel Archer Burton, commanding officer of the General Hospital, had the advantage; he knew that Barney Adams was an infantry officer, new to the theater, and assigned by General Kempton to the Winston defense. He also knew that General Kempton had a good