Lieutenant Colonel F. L. Rickabee, USMC, in uniform, was sitting in the straight-backed chair, his feet on the bed, reading the New York Tunes. He had removed his uniform blouse, revealing that he used suspenders to hold up his trousers. There were other straps around his torso, which only after a moment Banning recognized as the kind that belonged to a shoulder holster.
"Ah, Banning," Rickabee said, "there you are. All things come to him who waits."
"Good morning, sir."
"I feel constrained to tell you that I caught the four A.M. milk train from Sodom on the Potomac in the naive belief that by so doing I could catch you before you went out."
"If you had called, sir…" Banning said.
Rickabee swung his feet off the bed, refolded the newspaper carefully, and tossed it on the bed. When he faced Banning, Banning saw the butt of what he thought was probably a Smith Wesson Chief's Special in the shoulder holster.
"No problem," Rickabee said. "It gave me the chance to talk with Captain Toland about you, which was also on my agenda. And it also gave me my very first chance to play secret agent."
"Sir?"
"I asked the white hat on duty downstairs to let me into your room. He told me it was absolutely against regulations." He bent over the bed, took what looked like a wallet from his blouse, and tossed it to Banning. "So I got to show him that. He was awed."
Banning caught it and opened it. Inside was a gold badge and a sealed-in-plastic identification card. The card, which carried the seal of the Navy Department, held a photograph of Rickabee, and identified him as a special agent of the Secretary of the Navy, all questions about whom were to be referred to the Director of Naval Intelligence.
Banning looked at Rickabee.
"I think I could have ordered him to set the building afire," Rickabee said. "It had an amazing effect on him. You could almost hear the trumpets." He held his hand out for Banning to return the identification.
Banning chuckled and tossed the small folder back to him.
"Very impressive, sir," he said.
"In the wrong hands, a card like that could be a dangerous thing," Rickabee said.
"Yes, sir, I can see that," Banning said.
A leather folder came flying across the room. Banning just managed to catch it.
"That's yours," Rickabee said. "You're a field-grade officer now, so I suppose it won't be necessary to tell you to be careful with it."
Close to astonishment, Banning opened the folder. It held the same badge and card, except that his photograph peered at him from it.
"You also get a pistol," Rickabee said, pointing to a large, apparently full, leather briefcase. "Since I didn't think you'd have to repel boarders between here and San Diego, I took the liberty of getting you a little Smith Wesson like mine."
A dozen questions popped into Banning's mind.
"Sir- " he began.
"Let me talk first, Ed," Lieutenant Colonel Rickabee interrupted him. "It will probably save time."
"Yes, sir," Banning said.
"General Forrest sent me here," Rickabee said. "My first priority was to settle to my own satisfaction the question of your mental stability. Dr. Toland's diagnosis-that there is nothing wrong with you that a good piece of ass wouldn't cure-confirmed my own. Toland told me that the way you handled yourself when you thought you were blind was as tough a test of your stability as he could think of."
Banning waited for Rickabee to go on.
"So you are now officially certified as an officer who, because of the extraordinary faith placed in his ability and trustworthiness by both the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence of the Marine Corps, and the Commandant, can be entrusted with the highest-level secrets of the Corps, and with some extraordinary authority," Rickabee said.
"Jesus Christ," Banning said. "What the hell does that mean?"
"Just what I said," Rickabee said. "Secret one is that General Forrest at this time yesterday morning was cleaning out his desk and wondering how he was going to tell his wife that he was being retired from the Corps in disgrace-a disgrace that was no less shameful because the reasons were secret."
"Forrest? Christ, he's a good man. What the hell-"
"At two yesterday afternoon, the Commandant summoned General Forrest to his office and told him that be had reconsidered; that the needs of the Corps right now-there being no one available with his qualifications and experience to replace him-were such that he would not be retired."
"Colonel," Banning said, "I don't have any idea-"
"Major General Paul H. Lesterby was retired from the Corps as of oh-oh-oh-one hours this morning," Rickabee went on. "Colonel Thomas C. Wesley-"
"Used to be with Fleet Marine Force Atlantic?" Banning interrupted.
Rickabee nodded. "And more recently, he was Plans and Projects in the Commandant's office. Wesley is now on a train" for California, where he will function as special assistant to the commanding officer of the supply depot there until the Commandant makes up his mind whether he will be retired, or court-martialed. The Commandant was honest enough to tell Wesley that he would prefer to court-martial him, and the only thing that was stopping him was the good of the Corps."
"What the hell did he do?"
"You know Evans Carlson, I understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"From this point, Ed, as you will see, we are getting into an even more sensitive area," Rickabee said, and went into his briefcase. First he took out a small revolver in a shoulder holster and laid it on the bed. Then he handed Banning a thick stack of papers. "These documents were given to the Commandant the day before yesterday. I can't let them out of my hands. You'll have to read them now. When I get back to Washington, the whole file will be burned, and I am to personally report to the Commandant that it has been burned."
The first document in the stack was stamped SECRET. It was entitled, "Report of the Activities of Evans Carlson, late Major, USMC, during the period April 1939-April 1941."
Halfway down the stack was Captain James Roosevelt's letter to the Major General Commandant of the Marine Corps. At the bottom of the stack, also stamped SECRET, were transcripts of telephone conversations between Lieutenant Colonel Rickabee or Captain Edward Sessions and Second Lieutenant K. J. McCoy.
"I wondered what McCoy was doing at Elliott," Banning said when he had finished reading everything and was tapping the stack on his chest of drawers to get it in order.
"Any other questions?" Rickabee asked.
"You want an honest response to that?" Banning asked.
"Please," Rickabee said.
"This is a despicable thing to do to Carlson," Banning said.
"Yes, it was," Rickabee said. "And that was one of the more printable terms used by the Commandant to describe it."
"Was?"
"Was," Rickabee confirmed. "Just as soon as the Commandant saw it, it was over. Except for cleaning up the mess, of course."
"How did it happen?" Banning asked. "How did it get started in the first place?"
"The goddamned Palace Guard got carried away with its own importance," Rickabee said. "Wesley took it upon himself to save the Corps from Carlson. He enlisted General Lesterby in that noble cause, and then the two of them went to Forrest with their little idea. When Forrest balked, they led him to believe they were acting for the Commandant."
"Jesus Christ!"
"And that goddamned Wesley suckered me, too," Rickabee said. "There was no question in my mind that he was working for the Commandant. Otherwise-"
"It's hard to believe," Banning said. But when he heard what he had said, he offered a quick clarification. "I mean, a colonel and a major general. Jesus Christ!"
"I think the real reason the Commandant's mad at Forrest is that Forrest was apparently willing to believe the Commandant was capable of something like that. Fortunately, I'm only a lieutenant colonel, and lieutenant colonels are supposed to be stupid. The Commandant treated me with condescending contempt, and spelled out very slowly and carefully what he wants me to do about cleaning up the mess."