The general gazed out the plane window, trying to make up his mind. Then suddenly he chuckled. The A.D.C. saw him pull a leather case out of his pocket and watched, puzzled, as a golden coin spun briefly in the air.
The general caught it on the back of his left hand, covering it with his right. Then he removed the right, looked at it.
He chuckled again.
When General O'Reilly retired the following week, the President asked Congress for a fourth star for him and, in a special message, listed in glowing terms the services he had rendered to America and the world. The bill passed without a murmur, and Terence Patrick O'Reilly became at last a full general.
Messages poured in from nearly every country in the world, from dozens of presidents and premiers, and the handful of remaining kings. Along with them came hundreds of gifts. They included a carved elephant tusk from Nepal, a Royal Copenhagen dinner service for twenty-four from the Kingdom of Denmark, a one-rupee note from a ten-year-old girl in Bombay and—a gesture that excited much speculation—a case of caviar from the Kremlin.
The Department of Defense announced that General O'Reilly had become the most decorated soldier ever to wear American uniform. In every toss, each of the rival sides had awarded him some kind of decoration. When he wore full-dress uniform, the ribbons solidly covered both sides of his tunic, and he was nearly strangled with various stars and orders that dangled from ribbons around his neck.
"He retired just in time," his wife told her daughter-in-law one day at tea. "There's not another square inch left for another ribbon."
General O'Reilly presented the Golden Judge to the United Nations, and the King of Saudi Arabia proved his sportsmanship by having a theft-proof case made for it of solid crystal, so that it could be on public display. It was soon as visited and cherished as the Magna Carta and the Liberty Bell. A night and day guard stood watch over it.
Yet it was far from a useless relic. Often the crystal case was empty, and this meant it was seeing service somewhere in the world, in the hands of a Swedish general who had finally been chosen by the United Nations to succeed Terence O'Reilly.