The Hunting Trip by III William E. Butterworth

after he’d poured the ice water on him, having said something about his having fallen from a horse.
    â€œG. Lincoln, you said something earlier about my having fallen from a horse?”
    â€œRight. One moment there you were in Pferd und Frauen, up on the Clydesdale, hanging on to the Valkyrie’s boobs, and yelling ‘Hi-Yo, Silver! Away!” Everybody cheered, and the next moment you were passed out in the sawdust. Angus picked you up and we brought you home.”
    â€œI guess I embarrassed you and Angus, as well as disgraced myself, and my CIC career is about to end in shame and dismissal?”
    â€œNot at all. You made a very good impression on Angus last night. He thought your imbibing was in keeping—especially when you started drinking what you called Spritzers . . .”
    â€œSpritzers?”
    â€œYou showed us how to make them. Two three-ounce hookers of Slivovitz added to a liter of beer, along with a
soupçon
of Pernod. Quite tasty. But I digress. Angus said your imbibing, and your capacity, was in keeping with the highest traditions of the agency.”
    Holden then and there made another solemn vow, this one to never imbibe a Spritzer again in his lifetime.
    â€œBy the agency, I gather you mean the Central Intelligence Agency?”
    â€œBite your tongue, Holden! We of the agency never say that out loud!”
    â€œSorry.”
    â€œPerhaps I should have said ‘the highest traditions of the German-American Gospel Tract Foundation,’ which is what we call ‘the beard’ for that organization the name of which is never supposed to pass our lips. But I digress yet again.
    â€œAngus said that I should make every effort to hasten your passage through your ROTPIP. The sooner you do, the quicker you can start assisting in the saving of souls.”
    â€œI don’t know what that means,” Phil confessed.
    â€œIn layman’s parlance, it means causing some EXPLETIVE DELETED!! Russian to change sides. Ol’ J.C. Three is the master of that—”
    â€œLast night, I asked you who ol’ J.C. Three is,” Phil interrupted.
    â€œAnd I told you four times that he is Supervisory Special Agent Jonathan Fitzwater Caldwell the Third, who is also a lieutenant colonel of cavalry, pay grade O-5, both identities being the beard for his being presiding pastor of the German-American Gospel Tract Foundation, which itself is the beard for his being the Berlin station chief of that organization whose name is never supposed to pass our lips.”
    â€œIt must have slipped my mind.”
    â€œI’m not surprised. You were pretty well occupied most of the evening trying to have bareback carnal congress with the Valkyrie.”
    Oh, my God!
Phil suddenly thought.
What if I succeeded?
    Is it possible that I finally lost my status as the world’s only seventeen-year-old virgin yet can’t remember even one lousy lewd and lascivious detail of doing so?
    And I can’t ask, obviously, for clarification.
    If one passes a milestone of life like that, one is expected to remember it!
    I may have to give up all intoxicants of any kind!!!
    â€œAnd who is PL?” Phil asked. “Did you tell me that, too?”
    â€œFour times. PL, which stands for Pugnacious Leprechaun, isLieutenant Colonel William ‘Don’t Call Me Bill’ O’Reilly. That’s not a beard for anything. He’s pugnacious, and looks like a leprechaun.
Ergo sum
it fits.”
    â€œI think you meant to say, ‘
Id est
, it fits,’” Phil said. “
Ergo sum
is two-thirds of the Latin phrase
cogito, ergo sum
, which means ‘I think, therefore I am.’”
    â€œI think I am going to regret you coming into my life, Holden. One thing I can’t stand is a smart-ass who talks Latin.”

IV
    PHIL MEETS THE WRATH OF GOD
    Berlin, Germany
    Monday, May 19, 1947
    W hile Phil was having breakfast alone the following Monday morning,