Free Call to Duty by Richard Herman Page B

American Bankers Association for me. I’ll have lunch with Tosh and join you both in the Oval Office for a final review before the press conference. Have all the players there.” The two men rose and left the room.
    Outside, Press Secretary Gilman said, “He always talks to Tosh before a press conference.”
    “She’s still his best adviser,” Cox told him.
    Pontowski walked upstairs to his wife’s bedroom. He knocked gently at her door and waited until the nurse answered. It was one of the small things he did to keep his wife’s morale up; she always wanted him to find her looking her best. The way the nurse smiled at him as she held the door opened signaled that Tosh Pontowski was having a good day. A smile spread across his face when he saw her sitting at the small table near the windows. He walked across the room and joined her.
    Tosh Pontowski smiled at him. “The wolf is losing today,” she said. As always, her lilting accent captivated him and touched the love he held for her, a love made stronger by her courage in coming to terms with and fighting the disease that ravaged her—systemic lupus erythematosus (lupus—the wolf). The disease was well named for the way it came and went unexpectedly, suddenly leaping out to rip and tear at human flesh and then sneaking away, only to return without warning to attack another part of the body. At first, it had only been a mild skin rash and Tosh had not been overly worried by the flare-ups that continued for a number of years. But then lupus had attacked her joints, and then had returned as kidney paralysis. But that had disappeared and then the wolf had returned again, this time attacking her heart.
    He reached across the table and took her hand, hoping that she was in remission again. But his inner alarm warned him otherwise. How much longer? he wondered. He knew he could go on without her but life would lose most of its luster.
    As usual, Tosh Pontowski refused to give in to her disease. “Press conference today?” He nodded a yes. “L’affaire Courtland no doubt.”
    “Can’t hide much from you, can we?” Pontowski observed. Charles, his valet, entered with a tray holding his lunch.
    “Courtland will turn this against you,” she said, watching him eat. “He knows he must discredit you if he is to defeat the candidate you endorse in the next presidential election.”
    “I know,” he answered. “No matter what we do, he’ll claim it isn’t enough. He’ll work the sympathy angle for all it’s worth.”
    “Then you must defuse it,” she counseled. “Recall your own escape.”
    “But I was never in captivity.”
    “No, but you were wounded, frightened, and pursued. It was a near thing. Build on that.”
    Matthew Zachary Pontowski leaned back in his chair and recalled when he had indeed been a terrified, desperately wounded fugitive.
    1943
RAF Church Fenton, England
    The battered Austin ground to a stop in front of the mat-black Beaufighter. “Right, sir,” the driver said, “here you are.” Zack Pontowski and Andrew Ruffum clambered out, dragging their flight gear with them. “Good luck,” she added before crunching the gears and driving off. Zack drew himself to his full six feet and sniffed the cold January night, waiting to feel any strange tingling sensations that might warn him about this particular aircraft they were going to fly tonight. Nothing unusual assaulted his senses and he relaxed.
    Sergeant Newman was waiting for them with two other aircraftsmen of his ground crew. “She’s in tip-top,” he told them. Both men could hear a sadness in his voice.
    “Not happy about the conversion?” Zack asked. The first of the squadron’s new Mosquito aircraft and their crews would arrive at Church Fenton the next day and the Beaufighters and their aircrews would depart. But the ground crews would remain. Zack and Ruffy had the dubious distinction of flying 25 Squadron’s last mission in Beaufighters before the conversion. The sergeant