"Rot!" Freddy snorted, red-faced. "More often than not it was I who blundered us right up a tree, and you got us out of the mess. Stop being modest, my lad. You're in your own country, you know."
"I'm pretty sure it was fifty-fifty," Colonel Welsh settled the argument with a chuckle. "Anyway, you're the two lads I need, and here you are. When Sir John and I reached an agreement about you, he simply started the ball rolling, and without your knowing it you were released from the R.A.F., and sent over to me. Right now you haven't any rank, and you don't belong to any branch of service of any country. What do you think of that?"
Dave gulped and gave a little confused shake of his head.
"What do I think of it?" he echoed. "I—well—well, it sounds as if we were headed for a firing squad, or something."
"Good grief, yes!" Freddy Farmer said in a hushed tone. "At least that!"
"Well, you can relax; there's no firing squad," Colonel Welsh chuckled. Then as his chuckle died, and his face became grim: "At least not a United Nations firing squad. But let's not think of it as even a remote possibility. I mean, some Axis crowd putting you against a wall. Now, here's the reason I had you sent over to me, and the plan I have in mind."
The chief of all U. S. Intelligence paused, and frowned off into space for a moment as though deliberately choosing the words he would speak next. Finally he brought his gaze back to Dave's and Freddy's faces.
"There are over one hundred and thirty million people in this country," he began slowly. "Over one hundred and thirty million men, women, and children, who have the Constitutional right to be regarded as loyal Americans—until proved otherwise. That for the moment is my biggest, and toughest task: to find out who in our Army and Navy isn't a loyal American. In short, to find out who is working for Berlin, and Rome, and Tokio, instead of for Washington and Uncle Sam."
The Colonel paused, clenched one fist, and a hard agate look came into his dreamy eyes.
"And we're starting off by not kidding ourselves about a single thing," he said. "We know perfectly well that Hitler has some of his spies planted right in our armed forces. Some are buck privates; some are seamen, third class; and others hold commissions. It's not been made known, and I hope it never will be, but only the other day we nailed a Nazi spy who had actually graduated from West Point. So we're not starting off on this gigantic spy hunt by kidding ourselves that the Axis rats are all civilians living near munitions factories, or camps, and that they only go slinking around corners, and down dark alleys. No, none of that! We're going after this job just as though some of them were in the White House, and in the Army and Navy Departments!"