The Corps V - Line of Fire Read online

  Decoded intercepts of these messages were furnished to a very few senior officers (in SWPOA, for instance, only General MacArthur and his intelligence officer, Brigadier General Charles A. Willoughby, got them). The operation had its own security classification: TOP SECRET-MAGIC. And the only cryptographic officer at SWPOA (South West Pacific Ocean Area) cleared to decrypt MAGIC messages was a Ph.D. in mathematics from MIT, First Lieutenant Hon Song Do, Signal Corps, U.S. Army. Banning joined "Pluto" Hon on the MAGIC list, as a stand-in for Pickering.

  Meanwhile, Fleming Pickering and Douglas MacArthur grew friendly-bearing in mind that to call any relationship with the General "friendly" might be stretching the truth. It was MacArthur's view (and Pickering agreed with him) that the Navy was telling him (like Frank Knox) only what it wanted him to know, and only when it wanted to tell him. As a result, a radio message brought the appointment of Marine Lieutenant Colonel George F. Dailey as liaison officer between CINCPAC and SWPOA, with orders to keep MacArthur as fully briefed as possible.

  Dailey had a second function... though he wasn't aware of it. A former Naval attach‚, he had the security and intelligence background that would enable him, if necessary, to replace Banning as both Commanding Officer of USMC Special Detachment 14 and as Pickering's stand-in on the MAGIC list.

  Since he had no Need to Know, he was told little about the Coastwatcher Establishment and nothing whatever of MAGIC-not even of its existence.

  That issue became moot when the intelligence officer of the First Marine Division was killed in the opening days of the Guadalcanal operation. Officers at Headquarters USMC Personnel, unaware of Dailey's standby role as Banning's replacement, saw only a qualified replacement for the dead First Marine G-2. And so they ordered Dailey to Guadalcanal.

  And either taking care of one of their own or (in Banning's judgment) getting rid of the sonofabitch-they ordered Colonel Lewis R. Mitchell to Australia to replace Lieutenant Colonel Dailey.

  By the time Mitchell arrived, Captain Pickering had gone to Guadalcanal (where he figured he would be more useful than he was in Melbourne). With Pickering's departure Banning lost his own one-man-removed access to Navy Secretary Knox.

  And he also had to deal with Mitchell. Colonel Mitchell might not have been a problem except that he turned out to be what Banning considered the most dangerous of men, a stupid officer with ambition.

  Soon after his arrival, Mitchell somehow learned of a priority air shipment of radio equipment Banning had ordered for Feldt from the United States. In short order he demanded to know: what the equipment was to be used for; why it was necessary to have it shipped with the highest air priority; why he had not, as Senior Marine Officer present, been consulted; what was this half-assed Coastwatcher operation all about anyway; and, since the United States was paying all the bills, why a U.S. officer was not in charge.

  Banning, as politely as possible, told him he did not have the Need to Know.

  That resulted in a radio message from Mitchell to CINCPAC "requesting clarification of his role vis-a-vis USMC Special Detachment 14 and the Australian Coastwatcher organization." When Pluto Hon showed this to Banning and asked what he should do about it, Banning told him to delay transmission for twenty-four hours while he considered his choices.

  Banning saw two options: He could go directly to General MacArthur. Or he could send a back-channel message to the Office of Management Analysis.

  On the one hand, going to MacArthur could raise more problems than it solved: MacArthur believed in the chain of command. Since colonels are de facto smarter than majors, majors do not question what colonels do.

  On the other hand, back-channel messages are not filed and therefore do not have to be phrased in military-acceptable terminology:

  URGENT FROM

  CO USMC SPECDET 14

  VIA CINCPAC MAGIC

  TO MARINE OFFICE MANAGEMENT ANALYSIS

  EYES ONLY COLONEL RICKABEE

  MITCHELL REALLY DANGEROUS X HE WILL SEND MESSAGE CINCPAC TOMORROW REQUESTING CLARIFICATION

  OF HIS ROLE VISAVIS EVERYTHING HERE X CAN YOU GET HIM OFF MY BACK X REGARDS X BANNING END

  [Three]

  THE FOSTER LAFAYETTE HOTEL

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  1415 HOURS 31 AUGUST 1942

  Senator Richmond F. Fowler (R., Cal.), was a silver-haired, erect sixty-two-year-old, Despite his attire -he wore a sleeveless undershirt and baggy seersucker trousers held up by suspenders- he still managed to look dignified when he opened the door of his apartment himself in response to an imperious knock.

  Fowler occupied a six-room suite on the eighth floor of the Foster Lafayette. It was a corner suite, and so half its windows gave him an unimpeded view of the White House on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue. Though the suite's annual rental was not quite covered by his Senatorial salary, this was not a problem. The Senator had inherited from his father The San Francisco Courier-Herald, nine smaller newspapers, and six radio stations. And it was more or less accurately gossiped that his wife and her brother owned two square blocks of downtown San Francisco and several million acres of timberland in Washington and Oregon.

  A tall, distinguished-looking man in his early forties was standing in the corridor. He was wearing a khaki uniform, shirt, trousers, and overseas cap. The U.S. Navy insignia and a silver eagle were pinned to the cap, and silver eagles were on his collar. The right armpit area of the shirt was dark with sweat. The left sleeve had been cut from the shirt at the shoulder to accommodate a heavy plaster cast which covered the arm from the shoulder to the wrist.

  The two men looked at each other for a long time before Senator Fowler finally spoke.

  "I am so glad to see you, you crazy sonofabitch, that I can't even be angry."

  "May I come in, then?" the other man asked with gentle sarcasm.

  "Are you all right, Fleming?" Fowler asked, concern coloring his voice.

  "When I get out of these fucking clothes, and you get me something cold-and heavily alcoholic-I will be."

  "You want to get in bed? Should I call a doctor?"

  "I want a very large glass of orange juice, with ice, and a large hooker of gin," Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR, said, as he walked into the sitting room of the suite. "I have been thinking about that for hours."

  "Can you have alcohol?"

  "Hey, I have a broken arm. That's all."

  "A compound fracture of the arm," Senator Fowler said.

  "Plus, I have been told, a number of other unnatural openings in the body." with his good hand Pickering started to shove an overstuffed chair across the room.

  "What are you doing? Let me do that!" Fowler said and walked quickly to him.

  "Right in front of the air-conditioning duct, if you please," Pickering said.

  "You'll catch cold," Fowler said.

  Pickering ignored him. He took off his cap, tossed it onto a couch, then unbuttoned and removed his shirt and dropped it onto the floor. In a moment his khaki trousers followed.

  Fowler looked at him with mingled resignation and alarm.

  Pickering suddenly marched into one of the bedrooms and came back a moment later with a sheet he had obviously torn from the bed. He started to drape it over the upholstered chair.

  Fowler, seeing what he wanted to do, snatched it from him and arranged it more neatly.

  Pickering collapsed into the chair.

  "Anything else I can get you, Flem? Are you in pain?"

  "How about a footstool and a pillow?" Pickering asked.

  "And of course the iced orange juice with gin." Fowler delivered the footstool and the pillow, which Pickering placed on the arm of the chair, and then he lowered his encasted arm onto it.

  "You look like hell, You're as gray... as a battleship."

  "I was feeling fine until they opened the door of the airplane and that goddamned humidity swept in like a tidal wave," he said. "I honest to God think the humidity is worse in Washington than it is in Borneo. Or Hanoi."

  "
You really want a drink?"

  "It will make the gray go away, trust me." Fowler shook his head and then walked into the kitchen, returning with a bowl of ice and a silver pitcher of orange juice.

  He went to a bar against the wall, put ice and orange juice in a large glass, and picked up a quart bottle of Gilbey's gin.

  "I don't feel comfortable giving you this gin."

  "Please don't make me walk over there and do it myself." Fowler shrugged and splashed gin into the glass. He stirred it with a glass stick and then walked to Pickering and handed it to him.

  "I knew that sooner or later you would turn me into a criminal," Fowler said.

  "Meaning what?" Pickering asked, and then took several deep swallows of the drink.

  "Harboring and assisting a deserter is a felony."

  "Don't be absurd. All I did was leave the hospital. My orders permit me to go when and where I please."

  "I don't think that includes this. The hospital didn't plan to release you for at least another two weeks."

  "Yeah, they told me."

  "Does Patricia know about it?"

  "We stopped for fuel at Saint Louis. I called her from there."

  "And what did she say?"

  "She was unkind," Pickering said.

  "Are you going to tell me what this is all about?"

  "Well, I was getting bored in the hospital."

  "That's not it, Flem."

  "I want out of the Navy. I told Frank that when I saw him in California. When nothing happened, I tried to call him. But I can't get the sonofabitch on the telephone." Frank Knox was Secretary of the Navy.

  "Did he tell you he'd let you do that?"

  "He said we would talk about it when I got out of the hospital. I am now out of the hospital."

  "I don't think it's going to happen. You were commissioned for the duration plus six months. What makes you think the Navy will let you out?"

  "The Navy does what Frank tells it to. That's why they call him `Mr. Secretary."

  "What do you plan to do, enlist in The Marines?"

  "Come on, Richmond."

  "Well, what?"

  "Go back to running the company. That way I could make a bona fide contribution to the war."

  "Why do I think I'm not getting the truth?" Pickering started to get out of the chair.

  "What are you doing?"

  "I need another of these," Pickering said, holding up his glass.

  Fowler was surprised, and concerned, to see that he had emptied it.

  "I don't think so," Fowler said.

  "Richmond, for Christ's sake. I'm a big boy."

  "Oh, God. Stay where you are. I'll get it for you." Making the second drink just about exhausted the orange juice. Fowler was about to call down for a fresh pitcher when Pickering said, "I want to see Pick before he goes over there." That, Fowler decided, sounds like the truth He carried the glass to Pickering and handed it to him.

  "Well?"

  "Thank you."

  "That's not what I mean. You wouldn't let Knox send Pick out to the hospital. For God's sake, he doesn't even know you're home. Or that you've been wounded."

  "It would upset him."

  "That's what sons are for, to be upset when their fathers are wounded."

  "The odds are strongly against Pick coming through this war."

  "Every father feels that way, Flem. The truth is that most people survive a war. I don't know what the percentage is, but I would bet that his odds are nine to one, maybe ninety-nine to one, to make it." "Most fathers haven't been where I have been, and seen what I have seen.

  And most sons are not Marine fighter pilots.

  Jesus, do you think I like facing this?"

  "I just think you're overstating the situation," Fowler said, a little lamely.

  "Just before the Gregory was hit, her captain told me what a fine airplane the F4F is. It's probably the last thing he ever said; he was dead a minute later. He was trying to do what you're trying to do, make the Daddy feel a little better. It didn't work then and it's not working now. But I appreciate the thought."

  "Goddamn it, Flem, I'm calling it like I see it."

  "So am I, goddamn it, and I'm calling it how I see it, not how I would like it to be."

  "Well, I think you're wrong," Pickering shrugged and took another swallow of the orange juice and gin, "Have I still got some uniforms here?"

  "No, I gave them to the Salvation Army. Of course you do."

  "How about having the house tailor sent up here? I need to have the sleeves cut out of some shirts."

  "Sure."

  "I mean now, Richmond."

  "You're leaving? You just got here."

  "I want to go see Frank. To do that, I'll need something more presentable than what I walked in here wearing."

  "Seeing Frank can wait until tomorrow. For that matter, I'll call him and ask him to come here."

  "Call downstairs for the tailor. Do it my way."

  "Yes, Sir, Captain," Fowler said. He walked to a table and started to pick up the telephone. Instead he picked up a copy of The Washington Star and carried it back to Pickering.

  "Here's the paper," he said, unfolding it for him and laying it in his lap.

  There were two major headlines:

  BATTLE RAGES ON GUADALCANAL WILLKIE HEADS OVERSEAS

  A photo of a Consolidated B-24 four-engine bomber converted to a long-range transport was over the caption,

  Republican Party head Wendell Willkie will travel in this Army Air Corps transport on his around-the-world trip as personal representative of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He will visit England, North Africa, China and the Soviet Union.

  "There are not enough bombers to send to the Pacific," Pickering said bitterly. "But there are enough to give one to a goddamn politician to go all over and get in the goddamned way." Fowler ignored him.

  "Are you hungry, Fleming? Have you eaten?"

  "No, and no. But I suppose I'd better have something. How about having them send up steak and eggs?"

  Fowler nodded picked up the telephone. He called the concierge and asked him to send up the tailor, and then called room service and ordered steak and eggs for Pickering. After a moment's indecision he added, "And send two pitchers of orange juice, too, please." He walked back to Pickering, thinking he could turn the pages of the Star for him. Pickering had fallen asleep. His head sagged forward onto his chest. His face was still gray.

  "Christ, Flem," Fowler said softly. He walked into the bedroom and came back with a light blanket, which he draped over him, and then he went to the air conditioner and directed its flow away from Pickering.

  Then he walked to his own bedroom, in a far corner of the apartment, and closed the door. He took a small address book from the bedside table, found the number he was looking for, d picked up the telephone.

  "Office of the Secretary of the Navy, Chief Daniels speaking."

  "This is Senator Fowler. May I speak to Mr. Knox, please?"

  "One moment, please, Senator. I'll see if he's available."

  "Richmond?"

  "He's here, Frank."

  "Let me speak with him."

  "He's asleep. More accurately, he passed out in an armchair in my sitting room."

  "How is he?"

  "He looks like hell."

  "Shall I send a doctor over there?"

  "I don't think that's quite necessary. And there's one in the hotel if it should be."

  "Do you have any idea what this is all about? What's he up to?"

  "Two things. Apparently, you told him you would discuss his getting out of the Navy when he got out of the hospital. He says he is now out of the hospital."

  "I'd hoped he would forget that."

  "He says he wants to go back to running Pacific and Far East Shipping so that he can make a bona fide contribution to the war effort."

  "I wonder what he thinks he's been doing so far?" Secretary Knox asked, and then went on, without waiting for a reply.

  "There
are a number of reasons that's not possible. I suppose I should have told him that when I saw him. But he was a sick man..."

  "He's still a sick man. I told him, for what it's worth, that I didn't think you'd let him out."

  "It's now out of my hands, if you take my meaning." Fowler took his meaning. There was only one man in Washington who could override Frank Knox's decisions as Secretary of the Navy. He was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.