In Danger's Path Read online

  “Everything I decide he has a need to know; as a practical matter, that means just about everything. Why Rickabee and Banning got promoted; all about this Gobi Desert business; everything.”

  Fowler grunted.

  “I strongly suspect,” Pickering went on, “that Vandegrift will make his manners to Admiral Nimitz in Pearl Harbor on his way home. And that Nimitz will explain to him the significance of the Gobi operation—and, more important, that he wanted me to run it. If I’m right, Vandegrift’s blessing on the operation will grease a lot of skids. What I’m really trying to do is eliminate friction between the Corps and the OSS.”

  Fowler met Pickering’s eyes for a long moment.

  “Maybe you’re learning how the game is played, Flem,” he said, and turned to Fred: “See if you can get Secretary Knox on the phone, please, Fred. I’ll speak with Captain Haughton if I have to, but tell him it’s important that I speak to Knox personally.”

  “Thank you, Dick,” Pickering said.

  Senator Fowler shrugged. “The reason I keep getting reelected is that I have become known for my service to my constituents,” he said, straight-faced.

  When he heard the door to his apartment open, General Pickering was examining the insignia and decorations on his tunic. He was doing that with great care; this morning he really wanted to look like a Marine general about to go on parade.

  “In here, Fred,” he called out. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  “It’s me, General,” Second Lieutenant George F. Hart, USMCR, replied.

  What the hell is he doing here? He’s supposed to be visiting his family in St. Louis.

  Pickering turned to his bedroom door and waited for Hart to appear.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Where the hell were you when I needed you, George?” Pickering asked, gesturing toward the tunic laid out on his bed.

  Hart walked to the bed and carefully examined the placement of the insignia and decorations.

  “Shipshape, sir,” he said, picked up the tunic, and held it out for Pickering.

  “I didn’t expect you so soon. You understand that?” Pickering asked as he slipped his arms into the sleeves.

  “Well, I could say duty called, but the truth is my girl is in New York, and Washington is closer to New York than St. Louis.”

  “Well, then why aren’t you in New York?”

  “I thought maybe you might need me,” Hart said.

  “This morning, I do,” Pickering said. “And then you can go to New York.”

  “What’s happening this morning?”

  “We’re going to see Colonel Stecker at Eighth and I,” Pickering said, “and I really want to look like a general. And you can’t look like a general, can you, without an aide-de-camp hovering around you?”

  “Who are we trying to impress?” Hart asked, smiling.

  “Every feather merchant at Eighth and I,” Pickering said. At that moment a thought occurred to him. He went to his briefcase and removed a legal pad. He handed it to Hart. “That’s a list of the people we’re taking into the OSS. I made it up last night. Have I left anybody off?”

  Hart studied the list. “Two questions,” he said.

  “Shoot.”

  “The sergeant—maybe I should say the lieutenant—who was with Weston in the Philippines. Everly. Percy L. Everly?”

  “Why him?”

  “Killer McCoy told me he told him he was going to try to get him out of the Philippines.”

  “He should be brought out,” Pickering thought out loud. “Weston told me about him.”

  “The Killer must think he’s okay. They were in the Fourth Marines in Shanghai. Anyway, just a question.”

  “McCoy didn’t say anything to me about getting him out.”

  “Once you told him he was going to have to brief the President, the Killer wasn’t really himself.”

  Pickering chuckled.

  “He did that very well, by the way,” Pickering said. “The President told Admiral Leahy to radio both MacArthur and Nimitz that support of U.S. forces in the Philippines is to be considered essential. Okay. Add his name to the list. If we get him out—when we get him out—he finds out he’s in the OSS.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You said you had two questions, George?”

  “I noticed Lieutenant Easterbrook’s name on the list,” Hart said evenly.

  Second Lieutenant Robert F. Easterbrook, USMCR (who was known to his friends as “the Easterbunny”), had been a combat correspondent on Guadalcanal. After a Marine who had won the Medal of Honor on Bloody Ridge described him as “the bravest man on Bloody Ridge,” he had been directly commissioned as an officer. Easterbrook was nineteen years old.

  Making him an officer looked good in the newspapers, but Pickering, who knew and admired Easterbrook, thought making him an officer just about headed the list of stupid acts perpetrated by the feather merchants at Eighth and I.

  When he heard the Marine Corps was about to send the boy back to the Pacific in command of a team of combat correspondents—an act that would almost certainly get him, and the men under him, killed—he had decided that Lieutenant Easterbrook could make a far greater contribution to the war effort in the OSS.

  It was a moment before Pickering replied.

  “We’re going to make history, George, and I have decided that we need someone with us to photograph it all for posterity.”

  “Yes, sir.” Hart chuckled.

  “If anybody at Eighth and I, or at the OSS, asks you what you know about Easterbrook, you know nothing.”

  “Yes, sir. Off the record, sir?

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “I approve, and so will Pick when he hears,” Hart said. “He was really worried about the Easterbunny going back over there and getting himself killed trying to prove he’s really a Marine officer.”

  The door opened again; this time it was Fred. “Anytime you’re ready, General,” he called.

  “We’re ready now,” Pickering said.

  [TWO]

  Headquarters, United States Marine Corps

  Eighth and I Streets, N.W.

  Washington, D.C.

  0955 25 February 1943

  The Marine guards at the gate of the compound were armed with pistols suspended from web belts. They were also wearing steel helmets, the new style. Pickering thought of this as “German style,” as opposed to the old style, which General Pickering had worn both in France and on Guadalcanal and thought of as “Limey style.”

  He also thought that wearing helmets here was a little absurd. Their primary purpose was to protect the skull from artillery and mortar shrapnel, or from pieces of exploded antiaircraft shells falling back to earth. And none of that was liable to happen right now in the District of Columbia.

  Fowler’s 1942 Packard 280 limousine had a license plate: U.S. SENATE 12. The Marine sergeant who approached it was already prepared to be very polite to the august personage the vehicle was carrying.

  His determination to be very polite increased by at least fifty percent when he saw the passenger was a Marine brigadier general. He saluted crisply. “Good morning, sir!” he barked. “How may the sergeant assist the General, Sir?”

  Pickering returned the salute.

  “Good morning, Sergeant. I’m here to see Colonel Jack (NMI) Stecker.”

  When Colonel Jack (NMI) Stecker, USMC, was a young sergeant in France in World War I, he had won the Medal of Honor. Sergeant Fleming Pickering and Corporal D. G. McInerney had been with him in the action.

  “Yes, sir. May the sergeant trouble the General, Sir, for his identification? Regulations, sir.”

  It is, I suppose, possible that the Axis Powers would, for some nefarious purpose, attempt to gain entrance to Headquarters, USMC, by sending in the agent wearing a Marine brigadier’s uniform and in a car they stole from a senator.

  “Certainly,” Pickering said, removing his wallet and nudging George Hart with his elbow to do the same thing.
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br />   The sergeant examined both ID cards carefully.

  “Thank you, sir,” the sergeant said, handing them back. “One moment, sir, and I’ll try to locate Colonel—Stecker, you said?—for you.”

  “Stecker,” Pickering confirmed. “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  The sergeant walked quickly to the guard shack and consulted a mimeographed list mounted on a clipboard. After a moment, it was evident from his face that he couldn’t find what he expected to find.

  He checked again, carefully, and then, looking worried, returned to the rear window of Fowler’s long black Packard limousine.

  “Sir, the sergeant probably misunderstood the General, Sir. The name of the colonel the General wishes to see is?”

  “Stecker, Sergeant. Colonel Jack (NMI) Stecker,” Pickering said.

  “Sir, I couldn’t find a Colonel Stecker on my list, sir.”

  “I know he’s here, Sergeant,” Pickering said. “Why don’t you call the Office of the Commandant and ask the sergeant major?”

  “Aye aye, sir,” the sergeant said, and trotted quickly back to the guard shack.

  A minute later, he was back. “Sir, if the General will be good enough to wait, the Office of the Commandant is sending someone down, sir, to take you to Colonel Stecker.”

  “Thank you very much, Sergeant,” Pickering said.

  Three minutes later a very natty Marine major walked up to the limousine and saluted.

  He’s a chair-warmer, Pickering decided, somewhat unkindly, and not only because none of the ribbons on the major’s chest indicated he had seen foreign service.

  “Good morning, sir,” the Major said, saluting. “I’m Major Robinson, sir, of the Commandant’s staff.”

  “Good morning, Major,” Pickering said. “Do you know where I can find Colonel Stecker?”

  “Yes, sir. The Colonel is also on the Commandant’s staff. Specifically, he’s a Special Assistant to the Commandant, sir. If I may get in the General’s car, sir, I will show you where you can park, and then I’ll take you to Colonel Stecker.”

  “Special Assistant” to the Commandant? That means they don’t know what the hell to do with him.

  “Thank you very much,” Pickering said.

  After the major had slipped in the front seat next to Fred, they drove into the compound, and he showed Fred where to park behind a redbrick building.

  They stepped out of the car.

  “I don’t believe I’ve had the privilege of previously meeting the General, sir,” Major Robinson said.

  “No, I don’t believe we’ve met,” Pickering said. “My name is Pickering, and this is my aide, Lieutenant Hart.”

  Major Robinson shook Pickering’s offered hand and nodded at Hart.

  “Right this way, sir,” Major Robinson said. “Colonel Stecker’s office is in the basement.”

  In the basement, and it’s probably a broom closet. That will change when General Vandegrift gets back.

  Colonel Jack (NMI) Stecker’s office was a little larger than a broom closet, but not much. There was room for a desk and two chairs and not much else. Stecker was a tall, muscular, tanned man in his early forties. When he saw Pickering, he looked up in surprise. The four rows of ribbons on his tunic were not topped by the whitestarred blue ribbon indicating he had been awarded the Medal of Honor.

  He’s not embarrassed by it. He just doesn’t want to hide behind it.

  “General Pickering to see you, Colonel,” Major Robinson announced.

  “Good morning, General,” Stecker said.

  “Good morning, Colonel Stecker,” Pickering said, and turned to Major Robinson. “Thank you, Major. That will be all.”

  “Sir, the Commandant is not aboard at the moment,” Robinson said. “But the chief of staff…”

  “Please present my compliments to the chief of staff, Major, and tell him I will not waste his valuable time by making my manners. I have no business with him; I’m here to see Colonel Stecker.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Close the door after the major, will you, please, George?”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Pickering waited until the door was closed, and then smiled at Stecker.

  “Hello, you ugly old bastard,” he said. “How the hell are you?”

  “What the hell are you up to?”

  “Well, I heard they’d put you in a broom closet in the basement, and I came to cheer you up.”

  “They don’t know what the hell to do with me,” Stecker said.

  “Nobody’s even suspected that you’re going to be the éminence grise behind the incoming commandant?”

  “The only one who knows who his replacement will be is the Commandant, and he told me he wants to keep it that way.”

  “But you are looking forward to the day when General Vandegrift shows up and rescues you from the basement?”

  “I’m looking forward to the day when I can make a contribution,” Stecker said.

  “Well, I have a few little things you can do for me,” Pickering said.

  “Hello, George,” Stecker said, offering his hand to Hart. “I wasn’t trying to ignore you. But the last person I expected to see down here this morning is your boss.”

  “Good to see you again, sir.”

  “You’re aware, of course, that you are looking at the new Deputy Director, Pacific, of the Office of Strategic Services?” Pickering asked.

  “I saw it in the Washington Post. What’s that all about?”

  “According to the Special Channel I got from the President—I got it on Espíritu Santo, a couple of hours after McCoy and the others flew in from Mindanao—the idea of giving me the job came, as a divine revelation, while he was having dinner with Dick Fowler. He said he needed somebody who enjoyed the trust of El Supremo and Admiral Nimitz, and lo and behold, there I was.”

  “Sounds like you were sandbagged. Everybody was sandbagged.”

  “Oddly enough, both MacArthur and Nimitz seemed pleased. I stopped to pay my manners to Nimitz at Pearl on the way home, and he told me he’d already arranged—through Admiral Leahy—my first OSS assignment. That’s where you come in, old buddy.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to like this.”

  “I want someone with the ear of the Commandant—by that I mean General Vandegrift, when he takes over—who knows what we’re doing, so that when we ask the Corps for something, we have a friend in the right place.”

  “Flem, not only don’t I know what you’re going to be doing, but I very seriously doubt that I am cleared to know,” Stecker said.

  “I thought about that,” Pickering said seriously. “And I decided that the authority that came with my appointment includes the authority to decide the need-to-know of anybody I decide needs to know.”

  Stecker shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way, Flem,” he said.

  “In your case, Colonel Stecker,” Pickering went on. “You are not, repeat not, authorized to bring anyone but General Vandegrift in on anything you hear from me.”

  Stecker threw his hands helplessly in the air.

  “Did you understand that, Jack?” Pickering said, now obviously very serious.

  “Understood, sir,” Stecker said after a moment.

  “Okay. The mission that Nimitz, who has more confidence in me than I have, arranged for Leahy to get me is to (a) find a group of Americans, mostly retired Marines, soldiers, and Yangtze River patrol sailors, who are wandering around somewhere in the Gobi Desert; and then (b) somehow use them to set up a weather station, which means also a radio station. The Air Corps is going to need it whenever they get their new B-29 superbomber operational, and the Navy wants it now.”

  He watched Stecker carefully for his reaction. It wasn’t what he expected.

  “That seems right down McCoy’s alley,” Stecker said. “And Banning’s.”

  “You don’t seem surprised,” Pickering said, thinking out loud.

  “There’s been a need for a weather station in that area for
years. As a matter of fact, I think Banning tried to get permission to reconnoiter the Gobi in…1939, 1940.”

  “And?”

  “The Navy was all for it. The State Department said no, it would antagonize the Japanese. So I don’t think it happened. If Banning did something on his own…”

  “Speaking of Banning,” Pickering said. “He’s on a list of people, Marines, I’m taking into the OSS with me.”

  “The way that works, Flem, is that you request that the Corps detail to you people you want. Then, considering the needs of the Corps, the Corps decides whether or not you can have them.”

  “The President says I can have anybody I want. I think I can take him at his word. I expect resentment, and foot-dragging. What I want from you is to reduce the foot-dragging.”

  “I don’t have any influence around here,” Stecker said.

  “Right now, Jack, the subject of conversation in the Commandant’s office is what does the Brigadier General want with Colonel Stecker? The Brigadier General who arrived in Senator’s Fowler’s car and works for Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. You’re wrong. You have influence around here, negative influence. None of these chair warmers will dare to cross you.”

  Stecker’s face showed that he didn’t like to hear that.

  “I don’t like it any more than you do, Jack,” Pickering said, “but as Fowler told me this morning, I’m learning the rules of the game as it’s played around here.”

  Stecker shrugged and exhaled audibly.

  “Okay. Give me your list of people,” he said. “At least it will give me something to do besides read the newspapers.”

  “Give Colonel Stecker the list, George,” Pickering said. “I’m going from here to see Fritz Rickabee. Then we’re all going to have lunch at the Army-Navy Club. Any reason we can’t pick you up here at quarter to twelve?”

  “Oh, Flem, I don’t know.”

  “Rickabee won’t like it any more than you do,” Pickering said. “Think of it as your sacrifice of the day to the war effort.”

  “What?”

  “If any of the Marine brass missed hearing about your influential visitor here, they’ll see us all at the Army-Navy Club.”

  “I should have shot you when I had the chance,” Stecker said.

  “Quarter to twelve, Colonel. Thank you for your valuable time. I know how busy you are.”