Newkirk didn't respond for a moment. He just gave Kinch a long, cool look, with the faintest of smiles on his face, and he let the silence stretch just a hair longer than was comfortable. "Well, if you feel that strongly about it, mate, I guess you'd better go do just that," he said. "It's no kind of secret, and I'm not ashamed of what I'm doing."
Kinch hadn't been expecting that, somehow. He'd expected anger, or possibly trepidation. An argument, at the very least. This was Newkirk, after all; he argued as naturally—and nearly as constantly—as he breathed. Getting, instead, an unconcerned, dismissive suggestion that Kinch 'go ahead' was like stepping off a curb he hadn't realized was there.
He took a breath. "I don't want to play the heavy here, and I'm not trying to get you in trouble. But fiddling around with the radio, sending God knows what messages back and forth… that could get us all in trouble, don't you see? Don't make me rat you out. Tell the Colonel yourself, okay? Just 'fess up, apologize, and get it over with. You know it'll go easier for you if you do."
"I'm not doing anything I feel any need to apologize for. And nothing in this whole business ever had anything much to do with making things go easier on me, so that's more or less a moot point. Tell the Colonel or don't; that's up to you." Deliberately, Newkirk took off the headphones and leaned back a bit further in the chair, that icy little smile still playing about his lips.
Kinch looked at him, and reflected, yet again, that behind the jokes and the affability lay a man he would not at all have liked to meet in a dark alley. "This is really the hill you want to die on, huh?"
For some reason, that surprised a snort of laughter out of Newkirk. "If it is, Kinch, old man, I'm about as prepared as I can be."
"Fine. I'm sorry, but if that's how you want it, you're not leaving me a whole lot of choice, here."
"Newkirk comma Peter, Corporal, serial number—"
"Oh, cut it out! For God's sake, why are you being so damn stubborn? Let's just get Hogan, we'll iron the whole thing out, and get on with our lives! Just tell him!"
*.*.*.*.*.*
As luck would have it, Hogan just happened to be coming down the tunnel in time to catch that last bit. He had no idea what mischief might be afoot, but he did know an entrance cue when he heard one. He leaned casually against the doorway, as if he had been standing there for some time. "Tell me what?"
Both men stopped in their tracks, obviously taken by surprise, and both snapped their heads around to look at him. Kinch, interestingly, looked slightly guilty at his inadvertent snitchery. Newkirk just looked irritated.
With one quick—almost apologetic—look in Newkirk's direction, Kinch began. "Newkirk's been using the radio. He said it was a personal matter."
"Personal, huh? What kind of personal matter required the radio?"
"Nothing bad, Colonel," said Newkirk. "I'm updating the just-in-case file, like I've been doing since we made the just-in-case file, and I needed some information from London. That's all. It's nothing to concern yourself over. It's not like I was getting secret orders from Berlin; those don't come until Thursday."
"What sort of information?" Hogan asked, ignoring that last bit of bitter sarcasm, and careful to make certain that there was no accusation in his voice. Yet. But, as a rule, neither last wills and farewell letters tended to need a great deal of outside assistance, so there was definitely something rotten in the state of Denmark.
Obediently, if with a clenched jaw, Newkirk took the folded papers from his jacket pocket and handed them over. "Disciplinary issues, for the most part," he said. "Not too many men are being offered the choice between enlisting and going to prison anymore, but there are still a few. One new one this month, in fact."
If that was supposed to have cleared things up, it hadn't, Hogan thought, nonplussed. He skimmed the list of names and infractions, hoping it would eventually start to make some sort of sense.
"I'll grant you," Newkirk continued. "These are the fellows that got caught, so it's not exactly a shining reference, but it's somewhere to start, anyway."
Hogan nodded absently, still scanning the list. Several of the incidents seemed to be pranks gone wrong, and a couple of them were cases of presumably beer-induced stupidity, but mostly they referred to deliberate thefts. One of the latter, which Newkirk had marked with a star, featured an airman who apparently made something of a habit of sneaking into locked supply depots, and had in fact been caught with a locker full of contraband luxuries and the lockpicks still in his pocket. Newkirk was right about one thing, at least. It wasn't exactly a shining character reference.
"So you're keeping tabs on every troublemaker in the RAF…?" The penny dropped. "Wait a minute. Not every troublemaker... every thief. You're making a list of possible replacements for yourself?"
"Of course I am," Newkirk said. "Just in case. Louie's doing his best to become a safecracker, but he's rubbish at picking pockets and just plain doesn't have the touch for the lockpicks. If my ticket should get punched, you're going to need more than just him. I can't be responsible for leaving you shorthanded, now can I? Like I said, these idiots are the ones what got caught, but I thought it was better than nothing."
Hogan picked up the worn envelope and slid out the contents. There were, in fact, a couple of sealed letters in there, but the rest of the thick stack of papers was a meticulous and much-corrected list of names, serial numbers, and infractions, with a few lines of commentary on each one.
Incredulous, he asked, "How long have you been doing this?" The file represented an enormous amount of work. It was not just the raw information from London; he had analyzed it—repeat offenders, skills displayed, overall complexity—and ranked them in descending order of quality. He must have spent untold hours collating the information, quietly minimizing any impact of his death, on a professional level, at least.
"Since the beginning," Newkirk said. "A stitch in time, wouldn't you say? What else is the bloody file for if not to make things easier on the ones left behind?"
Kinch looked at the radio. He had not spent a great deal of time thinking about who might sit at that desk if he was no longer there to do so, and that was no accident. He was fairly sure that Carter was not keeping dossiers on USAAC pyromaniacs, either. And the day LeBeau would so much as contemplate someone else in his kitchen, pigs would take to the skies in droves.
Hogan shook his head minutely, and slipped the papers back into their envelope. Honesty compelled him to admit that if—God forbid—that list was ever to become necessary, he didn't doubt he'd be grateful to have it. And further compelled him to admit that he should have thought of doing something similar a long time ago. "I'm impressed," he said. "Very… thorough, and, um, foresighted of you. Morbid, but foresighted."
"Just trying to prevent any little troubles that might crop up if I take an unscheduled early retirement," Newkirk said with a shrug. "I can't guarantee that any of these fellows are the sort you'd want to be saddled with, and they might not be willing to take the job even if you offered it to them. Probably won't have my irresistible charm and devastating good looks either, but needs must."
That was probably supposed to have been someone's cue to make a comeback of some sort. Perhaps along the lines of 'or your astounding modesty, either?' or, simply, an eloquently disbelieving snort of the sort LeBeau did to perfection. For once, no one rose to the bait.
