He thought about Taylor. He thought about him the way he had known him as both soldier and individual, as general and as a man. Character. Principle. Guts. The three biggest things about Taylor. A man who followed orders to the letter—a man who would surrender of his own volition, no matter what price to pay the piper ... that was where the principle came in; the character, the guts.
He looked at Taylor's facsimile-signature again. Signed by force? By threat? Obviously. The message itself said as much. But if somehow there'd been a mistake, a record overlooked, Taylor would know, and would—
But who else would know? At a glance, who else would know? And then how much would Taylor dare?
For one of the rare times in his life, Steele was frightened to his core.
"Colonel Steele, sir!" Major Zukow snapped a perfunctory salute, put himself at rest and lowered his towering square-cut body into a laxerchair. The healthy pink in his broad face and the purposefulness in the set of his clean-cut features made him look younger than he was, and the close-cropped black hair was like an added insigne of his profession to his perfectly-fitted uniform.
"You'd better take a look at this, Georgi. And then we've got to get things moving." Steele handed the order across his desk.
He waited while Zukow read. He watched Zukow's face. It seemed to gradually coagulate.
And when he was finished, Steele said, "Now find us on there!"
"But I don't—anything else, any other details? Is this—?"
"It's as true as the leaves on your shoulders, Major. And that's all there is, so far. Grady will be in with anything else when and if it should come. Well? What are you thinking?"