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 and 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 chefs 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 hollandaise 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 and 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, 9:45a.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-getting 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.