In Danger's Path Read online

  They locked eyes for a moment, and then the DDO went on: “Anyway, Haughton said that many of these guys—the enlisted men of the Fourth Marines, the Army’s Fifteenth Infantry, and the Yangtze River patrol—just stayed in China. Retired there. Once there, they got time and a half toward their retirement.”

  “What?”

  “They got six weeks’ credit toward retirement for every month they served in China. Which meant they could retire after about twenty years of service as if they had served thirty years. And a good many of them acquired wives after they’d been there for a while.”

  “Chinese wives?” the Deputy Director asked, his tone making it clear that he found the idea distasteful.

  “Mostly Chinese, but according to Captain Haughton, a number of these chaps married White Russians. After the Bolshevik takeover in Russia, thousands of Russians fled into Shanghai, Peking, et cetera. Many of them had been aristocrats. Anyway, after fifteen, twenty years in China, these people had acquired wives and children. And their pension checks would go much further in China than in the States. So they didn’t come home. Some of them, according to Haughton, opened bars and restaurants. Some went into the countryside and bought farms. Anyway, they stayed. And rather than let themselves be imprisoned—or shot—by the Japanese, they took off. Presumably, they are hoping that they can get out through Russia. And the safest route to Russia is through the Gobi Desert.”

  “Fascinating. But I still don’t see what all this has to do with the OSS.”

  “If I may continue, Charley,” the DDO said. “There has been some radio communication with these people. Erratic. They apparently don’t have very good equipment.”

  “So they can’t furnish the weather data?”

  “They need meteorological equipment and better radios. Plus, of course, meteorologists to operate it. Which the Navy proposes to send in to them.”

  “How do they propose to do that?”

  “Haughton was a little vague about that.”

  The DDA snorted.

  “The Navy came to the meeting hoping to convince Admiral Leahy that since the Air Corps has been unable to get a weather station operating in the Soviet Union, and since the data generated in the Gobi Desert would be more useful anyway, and since they have these military retirees already in the Gobi Desert—”

  “With whom they are not in communication,” the DDA interrupted.

  “—they be given the weather station mission,” the DDO finished.

  “And the Navy, not surprisingly, got their way, right? And we have been directed to cooperate with them?”

  “Not exactly. ‘Cooperate’ isn’t the precise word. I don’t know whether Leahy didn’t want to slap the Air Corps down, or appear to be too partial to the Navy, but the Solomon-like decision of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is that the OSS will determine, as a high-priority mission, whether or not the ‘assets’ presently in the Gobi Desert can be reinforced so that they can operate a weather station, and if so, to do so.”

  “Which means that we are expected to establish communication with these people—who may or may not exist?”

  “Not only establish reliable communication with them, but, if feasible, use them in setting up a secret weather station.”

  “God!” the DDA said.

  “Leahy threw a bone to the Air Corps. They can still send their weather team into Russia as soon as they get permission from Uncle Joe. In other words, if and when.”

  “The Navy is really not capable of taking on something like this,” the DDA said thoughtfully. “The Gobi Desert is some distance from the nearest ocean.”

  “The Marine Corps is part of the Navy,” the DDO said. “The Marine Corps could be given the mission. But that would annoy the Army Air Corps. If we do it…”

  “I take your point,” the DDA said. “On the subject of the Marine Corps, you are aware that General Pickering is now the OSS Deputy Director for Pacific Operations?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  The DDO knew General Fleming Pickering, USMCR, only by reputation. And he also knew that Pickering had been named OSS Deputy Director for Pacific Operations by the President of the United States, who had not consulted OSS Director Donovan before making the appointment.

  “Since when is Mongolia considered in the ‘Pacific,’ Charley?” the DDO asked.

  “I think Director Donovan will determine that it falls in General Pickering’s area of responsibility,” the DDA said.

  It took the DDO a moment to figure that out, but then it made sense. Or, rather, he saw what good ol’ Charley had in mind: While the DDA hoped, of course, that General Pickering would quickly accomplish the task of establishing contact with a group of former enlisted men and their Chinese wives roaming somewhere in the Gobi Desert, it was possible that he would fail. That would, of course, disappoint Director Donovan. On the other hand, Director Donovan had not appointed General Pickering to run OSS Operations in the Pacific; consequently, he could not be held responsible for his failure.

  The DDO knew that if Director Donovan had been consulted vis-à-vis General Pickering’s appointment, he would have strongly advised against it. Director Donovan was not an admirer of General Pickering, for a number of reasons he had shared with the DDO immediately after learning of the presidential appointment. The DDO had decided that that conversation had been private and so had not shared it with good ol’ Charley. But now it seemed obvious to him that Donovan had also complained to good ol’ Charley.

  “Presumably, there is written notification of this assignment of mission in the briefcase?” the DDA asked.

  “Duly initialed by all parties concerned.”

  “I’ll bring it to the Director’s attention as soon as I see him.”

  “If you see him before I do, Charley, ask him to give me a ring, will you?”

  “In connection with the Gobi Desert operation?”

  The DDO pushed himself out of the green leather armchair.

  “Actually no,” he said. “Something else. Thanks for the coffee, Charley.”

  He was pleased with himself. He had nothing really important for Donovan, nothing that couldn’t wait. But the DDA didn’t know this; and, with a little bit of luck, he’d worry all afternoon about what the DDO was going to discuss with the Director.

  [TWO]

  Paotow-Zi, China

  8 February 1943

  Milla, Mae Su, and the children left Shanghai on November 30, three days after the 4th Marines sailed away aboard the President Madison. It took them six weeks to travel to Mae Su’s home village in the tractor-drawn cart. Milla dressed as a Chinese. At night, they stopped by the side of the road. And when they passed through a village, she hid herself in the cart, sometimes for five or six hours. Mae Su dealt with the curious who came to see what they could sell to—or steal from—the travelers. Several times, it was necessary for her to brush aside the flap of her loose, thigh-length blouse to make the curious aware of the Mauser Broomhandle machine pistol hanging there, but there was no serious trouble.

  By the end of the third week on the road, Milla knew she was pregnant.

  She prayed that wasn’t so—not in this worst of all possible times to bear a child. Into what horrible kind of world would she be bringing it?

  And worse, it would not have a father. Not now, certainly, with Ed in the Philippines, and probably—facing reality—not ever. Even on the back roads they were traveling over, they heard stories that the Japanese had attacked the American Navy base in Hawaii, and that America and Japan were at war. Ed would certainly be in that war. Facing reality, he would probably die in it.

  That left the entire responsibility for rearing a child on her shoulders. Facing reality, that meant finding enough food for it to eat, a place for it to live, and medicine for it when it became ill.

  Facing reality, she was not equipped to do any of those things. If she was arrested—facing reality, a real possibility—her possessions would be searched and the gemstones in her mother’s girdle, her
only means of buying food and shelter for herself and an infant, would be seized.

  God did not answer her prayers. She was pregnant.

  Suicide was no longer a possibility. Suicide was a sin, but she had been willing to endure whatever punishment God gave her for doing it to herself. But now suicide would mean killing the life in her womb, and she could think of no greater sin. She had no option but to bear the child and do whatever she could to keep both of them alive.

  Finally, she told Mae Su, very much afraid that Mae Su would decide the only way to keep herself and her own children alive would be to abandon the Nansen stateless person and her unborn child.

  “It will make things more difficult,” Mae Su responded. “There is a midwife in my village, but she will expect to be paid not to report another birth to the authorities. We are going to have to be very careful with our money.”

  Mae Su then matter-of-factly laid out what they could expect once they reached Paotow-Zi, a small farming village of less than a thousand people. She had relatives there, but her parents were both dead. The head of her family, who was also the presiding elder of the village, was her uncle, her father’s brother.

  “He is of the old school,” Mae Su said. “He has difficulty understanding the justice of a woman—particularly a woman who has borne a foreigner’s children—having a larger house, and more land, and of course more money, than he does, the head of the family and the village. Ernie, my man, told him he would kill him if he tried to take our property. But now he will naturally start to wonder whether or not Ernie will ever come back.

  “That means practically that he can only be trusted not to report your presence in Paotow-Zi—or, for that matter, my presence, and my half barbarian children—only as long as that poses little risk to him…and only as long as we make regular gifts to him.

  “If the authorities discover that we are in the village, he will do nothing to protect me, my children, or you. He will tell the truth, that Ernie threatened him. Other people besides my family heard what Ernie said to him about stealing from me.”

  From what Mae Su had told her, Milla expected the uncle to be a village elder, old, dignified, with maybe even a wispy beard. But when they finally reached Paotow-Zi, Gang-Cho turned out to be clean-shaven, muscular, and tall, certainly not yet forty, who was the head of the family simply because he was of the generation of Mae Su’s parents. One of Mae Su’s brothers actually turned out to be older than he was.

  When they met, Gang-Cho was courteous to them. But he looked at Milla the way a man looks at a woman he wants.

  Almost immediately Mae Su began to make regular trips with one or more of her brothers to Baotou, a city of half a million people thirty miles away. They traveled in Mae Su’s cart, but now it was drawn by a small horse rather than the tractor. The tractor was placed on blocks and hidden behind a wall in Mae Su’s house. The horse really only had to work going in one direction, for the entire party was able to float back from Baotou to Paotow-Zi aboard a raft powered by the current of the Huang-He (Yellow) River.

  The purpose of Mae Su’s trips was twofold. First—publicly—to sell sausage and chickens, and once in a while ducks and pigs, in the Baotou marketplace. Secondly—very privately—to sell a few of Milla’s precious stones to make a present of gold to Gang-Cho, in exchange for his silence. Mae Su hoped he believed the gold came out of the profits from her businesses; she didn’t want him aware that she and Milla both had gold and gemstones.

  On 9 August 1942, six months after her arrival in Paotow-Zi, Milla was delivered of a healthy boy by the village midwife. She decided to name the baby Edward Edwardovich, in the Russian custom. Though she worried she would not have enough milk to nurse the infant, she had more than enough. And Edward Edwardovich quickly proved to be a healthy child, and a happy one.

  Obviously, Milla thought, because he does not yet understand the terrible situation, in a terrible world, that his mother has brought him into.

  Before long, Mae Su turned over half the work of the sausage making business to Milla. Mae Su handled the pig farm part of it, including the slaughter of the animals, then delivered the meat and the spices to Milla so she could prepare the mixture.

  The large sausage grinder and stuffer had the legend “Thos. Graves Co. Boston Mass. USA” cast into the side of its mouth. The meat had to be run through the machine twice, first to grind it, and then to stuff it into the intestines after it had been seasoned and blended.

  Since there was no refrigeration in Paotow-Zi, most of the sausage was smoked to preserve it. The fire beneath the clay smokehouse had to be fed with wood gathered in the countryside and tended every four hours, around the clock, seven days a week. The smokehouse, including the wood gathering and tending the fire, also became Milla’s responsibility.

  Milla also cared for the chicken hutch. She gathered eggs and slaughtered the chickens, and sometimes ducks. Some went to their table; most were smoked for sale in Baotou.

  The business grew, largely because Milla’s work making and smoking the sausage left Mae Su more time for the Baotou market or else buying and selling livestock. One by one, Mae Su’s sister, her two sisters-in-law, and a niece were also put to work in the sausage factory. They were well paid.

  Gang-Cho, meanwhile, said nothing, although Milla sensed that Mae Su’s success made him uncomfortable. To make his discomfort more bearable, the size of their gifts to him increased; and he expected—and received—gifts from the women Mae Su and Milla had put to work.

  With Mae Su making regular and frequent trips to market, their product line expanded. It soon included fresh sausage, which commanded a higher price than the smoked, as well as smoked pork loins and hams and smoked duck. Milla prepared the fresh sausage, in a frenzy of activity, the day and night before Mae Su left on a trip.

  In December 1942, Mae Su returned from Baotou with news for Milla. “One of your people is in Baotou,” she said, “recently arrived from Shanghai.”

  “An American?”

  “A Russian. A Nansen person.”

  “What is he doing there?”

  “He gambles and he makes business,” Mae Su said, “from what I hear.”

  The next time Mae Su went to Baotou, she—very reluctantly—carried a message from Milla for the Russian Nansen person gambling businessman.

  The message was simple. Just “Ludmilla Zhivkov. St. Petersburg,” written in the Cyrillic alphabet on a small piece of paper. Nothing that would really identify her, nothing that the gambling businessman could turn over to the authorities to curry favor. Even if there was a reply, she told Mae Su—meaning it—she would think long and hard before actually meeting this person. If he in fact existed.

  When Mae Su and the cart and the pony came again floating on a tiny raft down the Yellow River three days later, she brought a reply.

  * * *

  Praise God for His mercy in Preserving you.

  If you tell this woman to tell me where you are, I will come pray with you.

  God bless you, my child.

  Father Boris

  * * *

  Three weeks later, in the first week of January 1943, when Edward Edwardovich was now five months old, Father Boris walked up the steep path from the Yellow River. He did not look much like a Russian Orthodox priest. Most of his face was hidden by a conical straw hat; and he now had a full, yellow-white beard, which hung below the top buttons of his ankle-length black cotton garment, the dress of the successful elderly. He wore sandals and carried a heavy staff. And he was accompanied by four Chinese, each almost as large as he was, each carrying a similar staff.

  When he saw her with Edward Edwardovich in her arms, his face reflected both pleasure and great sadness.

  The first thing Milla said to him, defiantly, was, “I am married. In the eyes of God, I am married. This is my son.”

  “He is a beautiful baby. God loves him.”

  “He is not christened.”

  “I will take him into the arms of Holy Mother C
hurch.”

  “And will you now grant me absolution?”

  “Are you sorry for your carnal life? Will you abstain in the future?”

  “I am married,” she said.

  “How can that be?”

  “I tell you, I am married.”

  “By whom, my child, were you married?”

  “By an Englishman, an English priest. In the Anglican cathedral in Shanghai.”

  His face beamed.

  “The Anglican apostolic succession is valid,” Father Boris said. “I am happy for you, my child.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Their priests, Anglican priests, like those of Holy Mother Church and the Roman Church, can trace their ordination in an unbroken line back to the Holy Apostles. If an Anglican priest gave you the sacrament of marriage, it is as valid as if I did.”

  Milla began to weep.

  Father Boris raised his hand and made the sign of the cross. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I grant you absolution. Go and sin no more, my child.” He held out his hand, and she kissed his ring. “And we will take the child into Holy Mother Church,” he said, adding, “after we have something to eat.”

  After Father Boris had time to think it over, while devouring an entire duck, and a huge plate of rice and peppers, the christening of the baby initially had seemed to pose problems he had not originally thought of. “I don’t know where we are going to find a second male godparent,” he said. “We are surrounded by heathens, of course, and we need Christians. Two Christian males, because the baby is a boy, and one Christian female. In extraordinary circumstances like these, you may serve as the child’s godmother.”

  “And you will be his godfather, Father Boris?” Milla asked, pleased by the notion.

  “That is impossible,” he said, suggesting disapproval of her lack of canonical knowledge. “Lee Tsing is a Christian,” he went on, indicating the larger of the four men he had with him, “but we need two males.”