"If you are so anxious to sleep alone, you might as well start practicing right now!!". Appearing to have said all she wanted to say, she once more slammed the door shut. Its locking mechanism then clicked its own metallic mocking message. Ole just sat speechless on the couch. The following morning, he tip-toed silently to the bedroom door. Just as silently, he tried the knob. It wouldn’t budge. He then visited the bathroom where he groomed himself for work...he would need to wear yesterday’s underclothes and socks.
Just before leaving the apartment, he returned to the bedroom door and just listened. He heard nothing. He was confident of the fact that Kate would never do anything to harm herself. But just to reassure himself of that knowledge, he tapped lightly on the barricade.
The sound of his soft knocking disturbed the baby’s sleep, causing him to jabber incoherently and whine. Ole’s moral barometer rose significantly when he detected the sound of a loving mother comforting her child.
Soberly, he left his home unkissed, then strolled to the street corner to meet the vehicle that would carry him to the base and work. There he would face another uncomfortable moment; informing his supervisors of his departure.
At his work place, Blake arranged and re-arranged the documents Sgt. Dade had thrown in his in-basket. While he had engaged in those half-wasted motions, his thoughts were of his wife. He wondered if what he had done would forever weaken, or maybe even decompose the very glue that binds a couple together: unquestioned trust. After dismissing such concerns, he focused his attention on his work. It took him only five minutes to whip the turn-in documents into proper sequence. In one hour he would have them properly recorded.
At eight-thirty, the main door suddenly swung open. Papa Mitchell marched in, confessing at the same time the obvious: that he was half an hour late. "Mr. Mitchell", spoke-up Blake, catching the ex-officer off guard as he passed by his desk headed for his own.
"Morning son. What’s on your mind this fine day?"
"Looks like you won’t be seeing my smiling face around here much longer," he warned his crude faced supervisor.
"That so. Are you going someplace and not coming back?" responded Mitch acting as if he had only half realized what his young subordinate had just said. Remaining serious, the Airman gave up more specific information.
"I have received orders to go to England. I start clearing the base in one week. So, as you can see, I don’t have much time to break in a new clerk."
Mitchell did his level best to sound crushed upon hearing the news. But the young man knew that, at worst, the Major would suffer only a moment of concern; knowing as he did, that with a new clerk, the "mob" would need to endure a period of time when it would be necessary to cloak their extra-official business deals in greater secrecy.
Airman Blake also knew that Mitchell, Bender and DeAngelo would join together and rejoice in the knowledge that one who knew too much would soon be remove from the scene of their crimes by a distance of half a world.