"Are you enjoying the trip?" I asked. After the Cairo conference, Uncle Ike's boss, General George C. Marshall, had ordered him to take a brief vacation. Uncle Ike decided to play tourist, and took a bunch of us along to see the pyramids in Egypt, and then on a short flight to Jerusalem to see the Holy Land. Kay and a couple of other secretaries from headquarters had come along, as had Uncle Ike's aide, Colonel Tex Lee, and Sergeant Mickey McKeogh, his orderly. Diana and I rounded out the party.

"Yes, and Ike needed a break. I'm so glad General Marshall ordered him to take one. He hasn't had a day off for months. Neither have the rest of us."

"I never thought I'd see the Garden of Gethsemane."

"It was so very sad," Kay said, her eyelids flickering as she looked away from me, her hand playing around her mouth. I thought she might cry.

Uncle Ike had taken us to the Mount of Olives, where the thick, gnarled olive trees reminded me of Sicily. The Garden of Gethsemane is on the western slope, next to a church built over a rock where the Franciscan monks told us Jesus prayed the night before his arrest, while his disciples drifted off to sleep. I thought about how easy it always has been to get men to do unimaginable things. Roman soldiers nailing men to crosses, Black and Tans burning homes and shooting Irishmen, Nazis committing mass murder. Indeed it was all so very sad, but I didn't think that's what gave Kay her faraway look.

"What's wrong, Kay?"

"Don't mind me, Billy," she said, shaking her head as if coming out of a dream. "Diana is who you should be thinking of. Don't let your pride kill what the two of you have together."

"If she has her way, we won't be together."

"Don't be a fool!" Kay slammed her glass down, drawing brief stares and raised eyebrows. She grabbed her uniform jacket from the back of her chair and pulled it on, thrusting her arms in angrily. As she did, a packet of postcards fell from an inside pocket. I recognized them as the ones Uncle Ike had bought outside the church and handed out to all of us. I knelt to pick them up and Kay hurriedly pushed me away.