In Search of a Hero

Chapter 1: In Search of a Hero

"Miss Temperance Brennan?"

Brennan, along with everyone else in the room, looked up from her typewriter at the sound of her name. The rhythmic tapping sound of fingers on keys slowly faded to silence. The uniformed corporal who stood in the doorway obviously didn't know her by sight, as his gaze skimmed the faces of all of the typists sitting in neat rows behind their clunky black machines. She raised one hand to get his attention.

"It's Dr. Brennan, not Miss."

The corporal looked down in confusion at the note in his hand. "Uh, well, this here says Miss so . . ."

"Never mind her. She puts on airs, like that fancy college education matters when our boys are dying overseas." Mrs. Bridges, the grey-haired termagant who ran the typing pool as if it were a Dickensian workhouse, hurried over and snatched the paper from the hapless young man. Eyes wide with surprise, her free hand fluttered over an ivory cameo pinned to the neck of her blouse. "Oh my. This is from General Cullen. He wants to see you, Miss Brennan."

The metal legs scraped against the floor as Brennan pushed her chair back and got to her feet. She steadied herself with one hand resting lightly on the desk beside her typewriter. All too aware of the stares directed toward her, she looked instead at the corporal.

"Why would General Cullen ask to see me?"

The corporal pokered up with indignation and grabbed the note back from the unresisting hand of Mrs. Bridges. "The general doesn't answer questions from the typing pool. Come with me."

Mrs. Bridges piggybacked on his peremptory order. "Well, go on, girl. Don't keep him waiting! And none of that 'doctor' stuff either," she hissed, as Brennan passed her. "You're just Miss Brennan when you get up there, you hear me?"

Brennan ignored the old woman and hurried by. The clip of her heels couldn't mask the wave of talk that followed her out of the room.

The soldier waited ahead, his impatience showing as he waved her on. "Come on, put some giddy-up in those gams. The general doesn't like to be kept waiting."

She circled around a group of uniformed officers who cat-called and whistled as she passed, and pretended not to hear the offers of everything from a cigarette to a night on the town. All around, busy offices bustled even more as enlisted men by the dozens carried out furniture and boxes of files. The noise was a constant roar, and the smoke rising from the cigarettes and cigars of smoking men hung like a cloud everywhere.

It was somewhat quieter when they climbed up three flights of stairs to the Administration level. The corporal pointed her toward a closed door and then sat down at a small desk just outside it. "Go ahead," he said. "He's waiting."

Brennan approached the door with an unusual sense of wariness. No one - especially not a lowly typist - had ever been called to the upper offices. She spared one quick, fleeting wish that she'd taken the time to check her lipstick, then smoothed her skirt over her hips, squared her shoulders and knocked.

"Come in."

The gruff, no-nonsense voice matched the face of the man she'd only seen from afar as he marched through the building. General Sam Cullen, lean, with thinning gray hair and hazel eyes that turned the color of mud when he was angry, had been a fixture in the Army long before the United States officially entered the war after Pearl Harbor. Now, two years later, he was more entrenched than ever. Rumour had it that the business of packing and moving happening on the lower floors was solely due to his efforts to move Army headquarters from the crowded Munitions Building to new offices in the just-constructed Pentagon. Uncertain whether the general would expect a salute from a civilian employee of the Army, Brennan simply came to a stop and stood as straight as she could.