Counterattack Page 5

  “If you were a second lieutenant and they gave you two days off, would you spend them seeing an aging uncle-politician, or trying to get laid?” Pickering asked with a smile.

  The Senator snorted a laugh. “Well, he could have tried to squeeze in fifteen minutes for me between jumps,” he said. He turned and walked to an antique sideboard loaded with whiskey bottles. “I have been thinking about having one of these for the last two hours. You all right?”

  Flem Pickering raised his nearly full glass to show that he was.

  Senator Fowler half-filled a glass with Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch, added one ice cube, and then sprayed soda into it from a wire-wrapped soda bottle.

  “This stuff,” the Senator said, raising his glass, “is already getting in short supply. Goddamn German submarines.”

  “I have four hundred and eleven cases,” Fleming Pickering said. “If you treat me right, I might put a case or two aside for you.”

  Fowler, smiling, looked at him curiously.

  “Off the Princess, the Destiny, and the Enterprise,” Pickering explained.

  The Pacific Princess, 51,000 tons, a sleek, fast passenger liner, was the flagship of the Pacific & Far Eastern Shipping Corporation. The Pacific Destiny and the Pacific Enterprise, 44,500 tons each, were sister ships, slightly smaller and slower, but, some said, more luxurious.

  “Is that why you’re here?” Senator Fowler asked. “The Navy after them again? Flem…”

  Pickering held up his hand to shut him off.

  “I sold them,” he said.

  “When rape is inevitable, etcetera, etcetera?” Fowler asked.

  “No,” Pickering said. “I think I could have won that one in the courts. The Navy could have commandeered them, but they couldn’t have forced me to sell them.”

  Senator Fowler did not agree, but he didn’t say so.

  “And it wasn’t patriotism, either,” Pickering said. “More like enlightened self-interest.”

  “Oh?”

  “Or a vision of the future,” Pickering said.

  “Now you’ve lost me,” Senator Fowler confessed.

  “We came home from Hawaii via Seattle,” Pickering said, pausing to sip at his drink. “On the Destiny. We averaged twenty-seven knots for the trip. It took us one hundred twenty hours—”

  “Fast crossing,” Fowler interrupted, doing some quick, rough arithmetic. “Five and a half days.”

  “Uh-huh,” Pickering said, “testing the notion that a fast passenger liner can run away from submarines.”

  “Not proving the theory? You made it.”

  “The theory presumes that submarines are not sitting ahead of you, waiting for you to come into range,” Pickering said. “And there may not have been any Japanese submarines around.”

  “OK,” Senator Fowler agreed. “Theory.”

  “While we were in Seattle, I drove past the Boeing plant. Long lines of huge, four-engine airplanes, B-17s, capable of making it nonstop to Hawaii in eleven, twelve hours.”

  “Uh-huh,” Fowler agreed. He had flown in the B-17 and was impressed with it. “That airplane may just get our chestnuts out of the fire in this war.”

  Pickering went off at a tangent.

  “You heard, Dick, that some military moron had all the B-17s in Hawaii lined up in rows for the convenience of the Japanese?”

  Fowler shook his head in disbelief or disgust or both. “There, and in the Philippines,” he said. “Christ, they really caught us with our pants down.”

  “I talked to an Army Air Corps pilot in the bar of the hotel,” Pickering said. “He said a flight of B-17s from the States arrived while the raid was going on. And with no ammunition for their machine guns.”

  “I heard that, too.”

  “Anyway,” Pickering said, “looking at those B-17s in Seattle, it occurred to me that they could more or less easily be modified to carry passengers, and that, presuming we win this war, that’s the way the public is going to want to cross oceans in the future. Twelve hours to Hawaii beats five or six days all to hell.”

  “Out of school—this is classified—Howard Hughes proposes to build an airplane—out of plywood, no less—that will carry four hundred soldiers across the Atlantic.”

  “Then you understand what I’m saying. The day of the passenger liner, I’m afraid, is over. And since the Navy was making a decent offer for my ships, I decided to take it.”

  “A decent offer?”

  “They’re spending the taxpayers’ money, not their own. A very decent offer.”

  “All of them?”

  “Just the liners. I’m keeping the cargo ships, and I will not sell them to the Navy. If the Navy tries to make me sell them, I’ll take them to the Supreme Court, and win. Anyway, that’s where I got all the Scotch. I can also make you a very good deal on some monogrammed sterling silver flatware from the first-class dining rooms.”

  Fowler chuckled. “I’m surprised the Navy let you keep that.”

  “So am I,” Pickering said.

  “What are you going to do with all that money?” Fowler asked.

  “Get rid of it, quickly, before that sonofabitch across the street thinks of some way to tax me out of it,” Pickering said.

  “You are speaking, Sir,” Fowler said, mockingly sonorous, “of your President and the Commander in Chief.”

  “You bet I am,” Pickering said. “I told my broker to buy into Boeing, Douglas, and whatever airlines he can find. I think I’d like to own an airline.”

  “And when Pick comes home from the war, he can run it?”

  Pickering met his eyes. “Sure. Why not? I don’t intend to dwell on the other possibility.”

  “I don’t know why I feel awkward saying this,” Senator Fowler said, “but I pray for him, Flem.”

  “Thank you,” Pickering said. “So do I.”

  “So what are you doing in Washington?” Fowler said, to change the subject.

  “You know a lawyer named Bill Donovan? Wall Street?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know what he’s doing these days?”

  “Where did you think he’s getting the money to do it?” He examined his now-empty glass. “I’m going to build another one of these. You want one?”

  “Please, Dick.”

  “You think you’d make a good spy?” Senator Fowler asked.

  “No.”

  “Then why are you going to see Donovan?”

  “He called me. Once before December seventh, and twice since. Once when Patricia and I were still in Honolulu, and the second the day before yesterday, in Frisco. He got me the priority to fly in here.”

  “Do you know what he’s doing?”

  “I figured you would.”

  Fowler grunted as he refilled their glasses. He handed Pickering his drink, and then went on, “Right now, he’s the Coordinator of Information. For a dollar a year. It was Franklin Roosevelt’s idea.”

  “That sounds like a propaganda outfit.”

  “I think maybe it’s supposed to. He’s got Robert Sherwood, the playwright, and some other people like that, who will do propaganda. They’ve moved into the National Institutes of Health building. But there’s another angle to it, an intelligence angle. He’s gathered together a group of experts—he’s got nine or ten, and he’s shooting for a dozen, and this is probably what he has in mind for you—who are going to collect all the information generated by all the intelligence services, you know, the Army’s G-2, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the FBI, the State Department, everybody, and try to make some overall, global sense out of it. For presentation to the President.”

  “I don’t think I understand,” Pickering confessed.

  “Donovan makes the point, and I think he’s right, that the service intelligence operations are too parochial, that they have blinders on them like a carriage horse. They see the war only from the viewpoint of the Navy or the Army or whatever.”

  The Senator looked at Pickering to see if he was getting through. Pic
kering made a “come on, tell me more” gesture with his hand.

  “OK. Let’s say the Navy finds out, as they did, that the Germans had established a weather station and aerial navigation facilities in Greenland. The Navy solution to the problem would be to send a battleship to blow it up—”

  “Where would they get one? The Navy’s fresh out of battleships. The Japanese used them for target practice.”

  “You want to hear this or not?”

  “Sorry.”

  “You’re going to have to learn to curb your lip, Flem, if you’re going to go to work for Bill Donovan. Or anywhere else in the government.”

  “What happened to free speech?”

  “It went out the same window with Franklin Roosevelt’s pledge that our boys would never fight on foreign soil,” the Senator said.

  “I’m not working for him yet,” Pickering said.

  Smiling, Senator Fowler shook his head, and then went on, “As I was saying, if Navy Intelligence finds something, they propose a Navy solution. If the Army Air Corps had found out about the Germans on Greenland, they would have proposed sending bombers to eliminate them. Am I getting through to you?”

  Pickering nodded.

  “The idea is that Donovan’s people—his ‘twelve disciples,’ as they’re called—will get intelligence information from every source, evaluate it, and make a strategic recommendation. In other words, after the Navy found the Greenland Germans, Donovan’s people might have recommended sending Army Air Corps bombers.”

  “That sounds like a good idea.”

  “It is, but I don’t think it will work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Interservice rivalry, primarily. And that now includes J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Until Bill Donovan showed up, Edgar thought that if war came, the FBI would be in charge of intelligence, period. Edgar is a very dangerous man if crossed.”

  “The story I got was that Donovan got Hoover his job, running the FBI.”

  “That was yesterday. In Washington, the question is, ‘What have you done for me today, and what can you do for me tomorrow?’ Anyway, the facts are that everybody has drawn their knives to cut Donovan’s throat. I’m betting on Donovan, but I’ve been wrong before.”

  “Really?” Pickering teased.

  “That’s what you’d be getting into if you went to work for him, Flem. When do you see him?”

  “He wanted me to have dinner with him tonight, but I wasn’t in the mood. I told him I would come to his office in the morning.”

  “Boy, have you got a lot to learn!” Fowler said.

  “Meaning I should have shown up, grateful for the privilege of a free meal from the great man?”

  “Yeah. Exactly.”

  “Fuck him,” Fleming Pickering said. “So far as I’m concerned, Bill Donovan is just one more overpaid ambulance chaser.”

  “You’d better hope he doesn’t know you think that.”

  “He already does. I already told him.”

  “You did?” Senator Fowler asked, deciding as he spoke that it was probably true.

  “He represented us before the International Maritime Court when a Pacific & Orient tanker rammed our Hawaiian Trader. You wouldn’t believe the bill that sonofabitch sent me.”

  “I hope you paid it,” Fowler said wryly.

  “I did,” Pickering said, “but not before I called him up and told him what I thought of it. And him.”

  “Oh, Christ, Flem, you’re something!” Fowler said, laughing.

  “I couldn’t get near the club car, much less the dining car, on the train from New York,” Pickering said. “All I’ve had to eat all day is a roll on the airplane and some hors d’oeuvres. I’m starving. You have any plans for dinner?”

  Fowler shook his head no.

  “Until you graced me with your presence, I was going to take my shoes off, collapse on the couch, and get something from room service.”

  There was a knock at the door. It was Max Telford.

  “Come on in, Max,” Pickering called. “The Senator was just extolling the virtues of your room service.”

  “I’ve got someone with me,” Telford said, and a very large, very black man, in the traditional chef’s uniform of starched white hat and jacket and striped gray trousers, pushed a rolling cart loaded with silver food warmers into the room.

  “Hello, Jefferson,” Pickering said, as he crossed the room to him and offered his hand. “How the hell are you? I thought you were in New York.”

  “No, Sir. I’ve been here about three months,” the chef said. “I heard you were in the house, and thought maybe you’d like something more than crackers and cheese to munch on.”

  “Great, I’m starving. Do you know the Senator?”

  “I know who the Senator is,” Jefferson Dittler said.

  “Dick, Jefferson Dittler. Jefferson succeeded where Patricia failed; he got Pick to wash dishes.”

  “Lots of dishes,” Dittler laughed. “Then I taught him a little about cooking.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard about you,” Senator Fowler said, shaking hands. “You’re the fellow who taught Pick how to make hollan-daise in a Waring Blender.”

  “That was supposed to be a professional secret,” Dittler said.

  “Well, Pick betrayed your confidence,” Fowler said. “He taught that trick to my wife.”

  “He’s a nice boy,” Dittler said.

  Pickering turned from the array of bottles and handed Dittler a glass dark with whiskey. “That’s that awful fermented corn you like, distilled in a moldy old barrel in some Kentucky holler.”

  “That’s why it’s so good,” Dittler said. “The moldy old barrel’s the secret.” He raised his glass. “To Pick. May God be with him.”

  “Here, here,” Senator Fowler said.

  Fleming Pickering started lifting the silver food covers.

  “Very nice,” he said. “One more proof that someone of my superior intelligence knows how to raise children for fun and profit. Jefferson never did this sort of thing for me before Pick worked for him.”

  “He’s a nice boy,” Jefferson Dittler repeated, and then, his tone suggesting it was something he desperately wanted to believe, “Smart as a whip. He’ll be all right in the Marines.”

  (Three)

  Building “F”

  Anacostia Naval Air Station

  Washington, D.C.

  20 December 1941

  The interview between Mr. Fleming Pickering, Chairman of the Board of the Pacific & Far Eastern Shipping Corporation, and Colonel William J. Donovan, the Coordinator of Information to the President of the United States, did not go well.

  For one thing, when Mr. Pickering was not in Colonel Donovan’s outer office at the agreed-upon time, 9:45 A.M., Colonel Donovan went to his next appointment. This required Mr. Pickering, who arrived at 9:51 A.M., to cool his heels for more than an hour with an old copy of Time magazine. Mr. Pickering was not used to cooling his heels in anyone’s office, and he was more than a little annoyed.

  More importantly, Mr. Pickering quickly learned that Colonel Donovan did not intend for him to become one of the twelve disciples that Senator Fowler had mentioned, but rather that he would be an adviser to one of the disciples—should he “come aboard.”

  That disciple was named. Mr. Pickering knew him, both personally and professionally. He was a banker, and Pickering was willing to acknowledge that Donovan’s man had a certain degree of expertise in international finance, which was certainly closely connected with international maritime commerce.

  But the United States was not about to consider opening new and profitable shipping channels. Victory, in Fleming Pickering’s judgment, was going to go to whichever of the warring powers could transport previously undreamed of tonnages of military equipment, damn the cost, to any number of obscure ports, under the most difficult conditions. In that connection there were two problems, as Pickering saw the situation.

  First, there was the actual safe passage of the vessels—getti
ng them past enemy surface and submersible warships. That was obviously going to be the Navy’s problem. The second problem, equally important to the execution of a war, was cargo handling and refueling facilities at the destination ports. A ship’s cargo was useless unless it could be unloaded. A ship itself was useless if its fuel bunkers were dry.

  Carrying the war to the enemy, Pickering knew, meant the interdiction of the enemy’s sea passages, and denying to him ports through which his land and air forces had to be supplied.

  If the President was going to get evaluations of the maritime situation, it seemed perfectly clear to Fleming Pickering that it should come from someone expert in the nuts and bolts, someone who could make judgments based on his own experience with ships and ports, not someone whose experience was limited to the bottom line on a profit-and-loss statement, or whose sea experience was limited to crossing the Atlantic in a first-class cabin on the Queen Mary or some other luxury liner.

  Someone like him, for example.

  This was not overwhelmingly modest, he realized, but neither was it a manifestation of a runaway ego. When Fleming Pickering stepped aboard a P&FE ship—or, for that matter, ships of a dozen other lines—he was addressed as “Captain” and given the privilege of the bridge.

  It was not simply a courtesy given to a wealthy shipowner. When Fleming Pickering had come home from France in 1918, he had almost immediately married. Then, to the horror of his new in-laws, he’d shipped out as an apprentice seaman aboard a P&FE freighter. As his father and grandfather had done before him, he had worked his way up in the deck department, ultimately sitting for his master’s ticket, any tonnage, any ocean, a week before his twenty-sixth birthday.

  He had been relief master on board the Pacific Vagabond, five days out of Auckland for Manila, when the radio operator had brought to the bridge the message that his father had suffered a coronary thrombosis and that in a special session of the stockholders (that is to say, his mother), he had been elected Chairman of the Board of the Pacific & Far Eastern Shipping Corporation.

  Pickering tried to make this point to Colonel Donovan and failed. He was not particularly surprised when Donovan politely told him, in effect, to take the offer of a job as adviser to the disciple or go fuck himself. The disciple was one of Donovan’s Wall Street cronies; Pickering would have been surprised if Donovan had accepted the wisdom of his arguments.