In Danger's Path Page 9

  MacArthur looked at McCoy. “Is that so?”

  “McCoy was on the Makin Island raid,” Pickering replied, “with the President’s son. And then he went onto Buka to replace our Coastwatcher team there.”

  MacArthur looked at Pickering. “Presumably, Fleming, recommendations for decorations for these two fine young officers are making their way through the bureaucracy?”

  “There really hasn’t been time for that yet, sir,” Pickering replied.

  “I was thinking that I would be honored to decorate them myself,” MacArthur said thoughtfully, and then announced, “And by God, I will!” He looked at Colonel Huff. “Sid, go down the hall to G-1”—the General Staff section that dealt with personnel—“and get a couple of Silver Star medals,” he ordered. “Silver Stars would be appropriate, don’t you agree, Fleming?”

  “Yes, sir. I think they would be. But General, there were two enlisted men on McCoy’s team.”

  “Silver Stars for the officers, Bronze Stars for the men,” MacArthur decreed. “General Pickering can prepare the citations later.”

  “Yes, sir,” Huff said, and left the room.

  III

  [ONE]

  Quarters of the Supreme Commander

  Supreme Headquarters

  South West Pacific Ocean Area

  Brisbane, Australia

  1815 11 February 1943

  Jeanne (Mrs. Douglas) MacArthur offered Brigadier General Fleming Pickering her cheek to kiss. “I’m delighted to see you back, Fleming,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  “And I would offer my congratulations on your new appointment, but I’m not sure that’s the thing to do.”

  My God, Pickering thought, she knows all about it. That message from the President was classified Top Secret, and wife to El Supremo or not, she had no right to know what it said.

  I wonder what else she knows?

  Dumb question. She knows whatever El Supremo feels like telling her, which probably means she knows more Top Secret material than most of the officers around here.

  “Darling,” MacArthur said, “would you please ask Manuel to bring us two stiff drinks of Fleming’s excellent Famous Grouse scotch?”

  Master Sergeant Manuel Donat, late of the Philippine Scouts, was MacArthur’s orderly. Pickering had provided the MacArthurs with several cases of Famous Grouse whisky from the stores of a P&FE freighter that had called at Brisbane. Fleming Pickering was Chairman of the Board of Pacific & Far East Shipping.

  “Then congratulations are in order?” she asked.

  “What we’re celebrating is the safe return of two of Fleming’s officers from their mission to see this Fertig fellow. I had the privilege of decorating both of them.”

  So she knows about that, too. Why am I surprised?

  “Curiosity overwhelms me,” she said. “I hope Charley was wrong.”

  Charley was Brigadier General Charles A. Willoughby, MacArthur’s intelligence officer. Though Pickering thought that Willoughby was actually bright, he had also concluded that his closeness to MacArthur was based more than anything else on his absolute loyalty to, and awe of, the Supreme Commander.

  “Charley was wrong about what?” Pickering asked.

  “He said the poor fellow was…that the stress had been too much for him.”

  “Jeanne, according to my people, General Fertig is perfectly sane, and, if we can get supplies to him, is going to cause the Japanese a good deal of trouble.”

  “Would you ask Manuel to bring us the drinks, Jeanne, please?” MacArthur said.

  Obviously, El Supremo wants the subject changed, Pickering thought, but as soon as his wife had left the room, MacArthur proved him wrong.

  “And that, presumably, is what your officers are going to tell the people in Washington?” MacArthur asked. “That this Fertig fellow knows what he’s doing?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  MacArthur raised his expressive eyebrows and shook his head.

  Pickering thought it over for half a second and decided he was obliged to make the Supreme Commander even unhappier.

  “Fertig made quite an impression on both McCoy and Lewis, General. What Lewis thinks, of course, he will report to Admiral Wagam, and more than likely to Admiral Nimitz. And just before I went back to Espíritu Santo, there was a Special Channel message from Colonel Fritz Rickabee, suggesting I prepare McCoy to brief the President just about as soon as he gets off the plane in Washington.”

  “Who is Rickabee? How would he know what the President wants? For that matter, why would Franklin Roosevelt want to hear what a captain thinks?”

  “Rickabee is my deputy—was my deputy—before this OSS thing came up. I don’t know this, but I suspect the President told Frank Knox that he wants to talk to McCoy.”

  “Why would he want to do that?”

  “McCoy is held in high regard by Jimmy Roosevelt; they were both on the Makin raid.”

  MacArthur snorted.

  “And Frank Knox told his assistant, Captain Houghton, who told Colonel Rickabee,” Pickering finished his thought.

  MacArthur considered that for a moment. “Don’t misunderstand me, Fleming,” he said. “I admire this Fertig fellow. And I will move heaven and hell and whatever else has to be moved to see that he gets the supplies he needs.”

  Sergeant Donat, in a crisp white jacket, arrived with a tray holding glasses, ice, and a bottle of Famous Grouse.

  “Good to see you again, General,” he said.

  “Thank you, Manuel,” Pickering said.

  Donat poured two stiff drinks, then looked at Mrs. MacArthur, who smiled and shook her head, “no.”

  “A toast, I would suggest, is in order,” MacArthur said. “To your brave young officers, Fleming.”

  “And the enlisted men they had with them,” Pickering responded. “Better yet, to all the brave men who are carrying on your fight in the Philippines.”

  MacArthur considered that, then sipped his drink. “So what are you going to do now, Fleming?” he asked.

  “Now that my nose is under your tent flap?”

  MacArthur smiled and nodded.

  “I’m going to meet with Colonel Waterson first thing in the morning,” Pickering said.

  Colonel John J. Waterson was OSS Brisbane Station Chief, which is to say head of the Office of Strategic Services detachment assigned to Supreme Headquarters, South West Pacific Ocean Area.

  “In your new role as Deputy Director for Pacific Operations of the OSS?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You have not previously met the gentleman?”

  Pickering shook his head, “no.”

  “Coast Artillery Corps. Class of ’22 at West Point,” MacArthur recited. “Resigned in 1934, with twelve years of service, after failure of selection for promotion to captain. Commissioned as major artillery, reserve, in 1939. Called to active service October 1940. Instructor—mathematics—at the Artillery School, Fort Bliss. Detailed to the OSS January 1942. Promotions to lieutenant colonel and colonel came shortly after he joined the OSS. In his civilian career, Colonel Waterson was a vice president of Malloy Manufacturing Company—they make hubcaps for automobiles—which is owned by his wife’s family.”

  It was not a very impressive recitation of military credentials, and both men knew it.

  MacArthur, looking very pleased with himself, smiled at Pickering.

  “You know more about him than I do,” Pickering confessed.

  “I thought that might be the case,” MacArthur said.

  “What was that? ‘Know your enemy’?” Pickering asked.

  “Your phrase, Fleming, not mine,” MacArthur said, smiling. “And I certainly don’t think of you as the enemy.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Unfortunately, I was never able to find time to receive Colonel Waterson,” MacArthur said, obviously pleased, “and now it won’t be necessary, will it?”

  Pickering suddenly understood why Douglas MacArthur was pleased that the Presi
dent had appointed him OSS Deputy Director for Pacific Operations.

  He thinks I’m going to get Roosevelt and Donovan off his back.

  And in his shoes, I would think the same thing. He knows he’s right about the OSS; and he knows I think he’s right, and I can plead his case in Washington better even than he can.

  Just before Pickering left Washington for his current Pacific trip, the President of the United States had personally given him a subsidiary mission: to convince General Douglas MacArthur to find time in his busy schedule to receive Colonel Waterson.

  OSS Director William Donovan had complained to Roosevelt that following a very brief meeting with General Charles A. Willoughby, MacArthur’s G-2, shortly after his arrival in Brisbane seven weeks before, Waterson had been waiting in vain for the meeting with MacArthur Willoughby had promised to arrange “just as soon as the Supreme Commander can find time in his schedule.”

  When Pickering had raised the subject to MacArthur soon after his arrival in Brisbane, he was told that MacArthur had decided that the OSS was going to be more trouble than it was worth. Receiving Colonel Waterson would therefore be tantamount to letting the nose of an unwelcome camel into his tent. MacArthur had no intention of doing that.

  Pickering thought MacArthur was right. The OSS probably would be more trouble than it would be worth in the kind of war MacArthur was fighting. The situation here was completely different from Europe and Africa, where the OSS had proven very valuable.

  It was a relatively simple matter to infiltrate OSS Jedburgh teams into France and other German-occupied areas of the European landmass by parachute or even by small fishing boats setting out from England. Once inside enemy-held territory, agents who spoke the language and were equipped with forged identification papers could relatively easily vanish into the local society, aided by in-place resistance movements. Once in place, OSS agents in Europe could go about their business of blowing up railroad bridges and harbor facilities, of gathering intelligence, and of arranging for resistance groups to be armed and equipped with communications equipment.

  None of the conditions that made the OSS valuable in Europe prevailed in the Pacific. For one thing, there was no contiguous landmass. The war in the Pacific was already becoming known as “island hopping.” Hundreds—often thousands—of miles separated Allied bases from Japanese-occupied islands.

  Simply infiltrating OSS teams onto a Japanese-held Pacific island would pose enormous—probably insurmountable—logistical problems.

  And, with the exception of a few Americans and Filipinos who had refused to surrender when the Philippine Islands had fallen to the Japanese, there was no organized resistance in Japanese-occupied territory anywhere in the Pacific. In other words, there would be no friendly faces greeting OSS agents when they landed.

  Furthermore, no matter how well he might speak Japanese, no matter how high the quality of his forged identification papers, a Caucasian agent stood virtually no chance of passing himself off as a Japanese soldier, or making himself invisible in a society whose brown-skinned citizens often wore loincloths, filed their teeth, and spoke unusual languages.

  And finally, on the Pacific Islands where MacArthur intended to fight, there were very few railroad or highway bridges or industrial complexes to blow up, and really very little intelligence to gather.

  Aware that his thinking was probably colored by his personal feelings toward OSS Director Colonel “Wild Bill” Donovan, Pickering thought the very idea of setting the OSS up in the South West Pacific Ocean Area probably had more to do with Donovan playing Washington politics than anything else.

  Pickering had little use for Donovan, a law school classmate of President Roosevelt who had been a highly successful Wall Street lawyer before Roosevelt had appointed him to lead the OSS.

  Lawyer Donovan had once been engaged by Chairman of the Board (of the Pacific & Far East Shipping Corporation) Pickering to represent P&FE in a maritime legal dispute. Pickering had liked neither the quality of the legal services rendered—the suit had been decided against them—nor the size of the bill rendered, and had called Donovan on the telephone and bluntly told him so.

  William Donovan was not used to people talking to him the way Pickering did; and he was Irish. He was still angry two weeks later when he ran into Pickering in the lobby of the Century Club in New York City. There was some disagreement about who uttered the first unkind remark, but it was universally agreed that only the intervention of friends—strong friends—of both gentlemen had prevented adding to the many Century Club legends a fistfight in the main lobby between two of its most prominent members.

  The enmity between the two men had continued after Donovan became Roosevelt’s intelligence chief as head of the newly created Office of Strategic Services and Pickering had performed various intelligence services—separate from the OSS—for Navy Secretary Frank Knox, leading to his appointment as head of the highly secret Office of Management Analysis. The new marriage—at Roosevelt’s direction—between Pickering and the OSS was likely to become a marriage made in hell from the point of view of everyone except the President.

  Brigadier General Fleming Pickering looked at General Douglas A. MacArthur, shrugged, shook his head, took a healthy swallow of his Famous Grouse, and then shook his head again.

  “Yes, Fleming?” MacArthur asked. “What is it you are having such a hard time saying?”

  “I was wondering how a simple sailor like myself ever wound up between a rock named MacArthur and a hard place named Roosevelt,” Pickering said.

  “All I ask of you, Fleming, with every confidence in the world that you are incapable of doing anything else, is to tell the President the truth. I don’t think the OSS can play a valuable role here—I wish that it were otherwise—and neither do you.”

  Pickering didn’t reply.

  “Elsewhere in Asia,” MacArthur went on, “India, China, Indochina, Burma, the OSS may prove, under your leadership, to be very useful.”

  Christ, I didn’t even think of those parts of the world! Are they considered within the area of responsibility of—what the hell is my title?—“OSS Deputy Director for Pacific Operations”?

  “I hadn’t even thought about China, or India,” Pickering thought aloud. “I can’t believe that Roosevelt would give me the responsibility for intelligence and covert operations in those areas.”

  That’s not true. I did think about that when McCoy asked me if he could expect to be sent into the Gobi Desert. And I told him I didn’t think so. And I told him that because the Gobi Desert doesn’t sound like the Pacific to me.

  And now MacArthur is telling me that I’m wrong.

  “If I were in his shoes,” MacArthur said, “I would.”

  “It borders on the absurd,” Pickering said.

  “Absurd? No. Imaginative? Yes. I guess you’re just going to have to ask the President for clarification of your role.”

  “Yeah,” Pickering said thoughtfully.

  “When are you going to Washington, Fleming?”

  “As soon as I can,” Pickering thought aloud. “The day after tomorrow, if I can get things here organized by then.”

  “Please be good enough to personally pass to the President and Mrs. Roosevelt the best regards of Jeanne and myself,” MacArthur said. “Now, with that out of the way, would you like another drink before I speak to Manuel about dinner?”

  “I would very much like another drink, please, General,” Pickering said, and raised the glass in his hand to his mouth and drained it.

  [TWO]

  Water Lily Cottage

  Brisbane, Australia

  0815 12 February 1943

  Second Lieutenant George F. Hart, USMCR, knocked at the door to Brigadier General Fleming Pickering’s room. “General, Colonel Waterson is here.”

  Using the first joint of his thumb as a gauge, Pickering was in the act of pinning his brigadier general’s stars to the collar points of a tropical worsted shirt.

  “Offer the Colone
l a cup of coffee—for that matter, breakfast—and tell him I’ll be right out,” Pickering called.

  Pickering had specified the time he expected Colonel Waterson to arrive at Water Lily Cottage: 0830. Waterson was fifteen minutes early.

  What the hell, if I was meeting my new boss, I would err on the side of being too early myself.

  But does he know that I’m his boss? Or does he think I summoned him over here to tell him he’s finally going to get the audience with El Supremo that Willoughby promised him?

  He pushed the pins on the underside of the star through the cloth of the right collar point, then compared that with the star on the left collar point. It was close enough. He picked up his fruit salad—an impressive display of colored ribbons, all mounted together, representing his decorations and services in two world wars—and started to pin the device to the shirt. And then changed his mind.

  While he certainly wasn’t ashamed of his decorations, wearing some of them sometimes made him uncomfortable—especially the Silver Star Admiral Nimitz had given him for taking the con of the destroyer USS Gregory when her captain had been killed and he himself painfully wounded; he thought that was worth no more than a Purple Heart. He was proud of his Navy Cross. He had been too young and stupid to think about what he was doing at the time, but the bottom line, looking back, was that he had behaved in Belleau Wood the way Marines are supposed to behave and the Navy Cross proved it.

  To judge by the curriculum vitae MacArthur had provided, Colonel Waterson was not going to have many ribbons pinned to his chest; and Pickering decided that he was not going to make him uncomfortable by using his own ribbons to rub it in that Waterson had never heard a shot fired in anger. It was going to be bad enough as it was. MacArthur had made it quite clear that he still had no intention of permitting the OSS to operate in the South West Pacific. There was only one role he saw for Waterson, and he probably wasn’t going to like it. Nor would Donovan when he heard about it.

  Pickering put the shirt on, tucked it in his trousers, zipped up his fly, checked in the mirror to see that the button line on his shirt was aligned with his belt buckle and the trousers fly, shifted the belt buckle until it was in alignment, and then walked out of his bedroom.