If the President was going to get evaluations of the maritime situation, it seemed perfectly clear to Fleming Pickering that it should come from someone expert in the nuts and bolts, someone who could make judgments based on his own experience with ships and ports, not someone whose experience was limited to the bottom line on a profit-and-loss statement, or whose sea experience was limited to crossing the Atlantic in a first-class cabin on the Queen Mary or some other luxury liner.
Someone like him, for example.
This was not overwhelmingly modest, he realized, but neither was it a manifestation of a runaway ego. When Fleming Pickering stepped aboard a PandFE ship-or, for that matter, ships of a dozen other lines-he was addressed as "Captain" and given the privilege of the bridge.
It was not simply a courtesy given to a wealthy ship owner. When Fleming Pickering had come home from France in 1918, he had almost immediately married. Then, to the horror of his new in-laws, he’d shipped out as an apprentice seaman aboard a PandFE freighter. As his father and grandfather had done before him, he had worked his way up in the deck department, ultimately sitting for his master’s ticket, any tonnage, any ocean, a week before his twenty-sixth birthday.
He had been relief master on board the Pacific Vagabond, five days out of Auckland for Manila, when the radio operator had brought to the bridge the message that his father had suffered a coronary thrombosis and that in a special session of the stockholders (that is to say, his mother), he had been elected Chairman of the Board of the Pacific and Far Eastern Shipping Corporation.
Pickering tried to make this point to Colonel Donovan and failed. He was not particularly surprised when Donovan politely told him, in effect, to take the offer of a job as adviser to the disciple or go fuck himself. The disciple was one of Donovan’s Wall Street cronies; Pickering would have been surprised if Donovan had accepted the wisdom of his arguments.
And, he was honest enough to admit, he would have been disappointed if he had. He didn’t want to fight the war from behind a goddamned desk in Sodom on Potomac.
"General Mclnerney will see you now, Mr. Pickering," the impeccably shorn, shined, and erect Marine lieutenant said. "Will you come with me, please, Sir?"
Brigadier General D. G. Mclnerney, USMC, got to his feet and came around from behind his desk as Fleming Pickering was shown into his office. He was a stocky, barrel-chested man wearing Naval Aviator’s wings on the breast of his heavily berib-boned uniform tunic.
"Why, Corporal Pickering," he said. "My, how you’ve aged!"
"Hello, you baldheaded old bastard," Pickering replied. "How the hell are you?"
General Mclnemey’s intended handshake degenerated into an affectionate hug. The two men, who had become friends in their teens, beamed happily at each other.
"It’s a little early, but what the hell," General Mclnerney said. "Charlie, get a bottle of the good booze and a couple of glasses."
"Aye, aye, Sir," his aide-de-camp replied. Although he was a little taken aback by the unaccustomed display of affection, and it was the first time he had ever heard anyone refer to General Mclnerney as a "baldheaded old bastard," he was not totally surprised. Until a week ago, General Mclnerney’s "temporary junior aide" had been a second lieutenant fresh from Quantico, whom General Mclnerney had arranged to get in the flight-training program at Pensacola.
His name was Malcolm Pickering, and this was obviously his father. The General had told him that they had served together in France in the First World War.
"Pick’s a nice boy, Flem," General Mclnerney said, as he waved Pickering into one end of a rather- battered couch and sat down on the other end. "I was tempted to keep him."
"I’m grateful to you for all you did for him, Doc," Pickering said.
"Hell," Mclnerney said, depreciatingly, "the Corps needs pilots more than it needs club officers, and that’s what those paper pushers in personnel were going to do with him."
"Well, I’m grateful nonetheless," Pickering said.
"I got one for you," Mclnerney said. "I called down there to make sure they weren’t going to make him a club officer down there, and you know who his roommate is? Jack Stecker’s boy. He just graduated from West Point."
Fleming Pickering had no idea what Mclnerney was talking about, and it showed on his face.
"Jack Stecker?" Mclnerney went on. "Buck sergeant? Got the Medal at Belleau Wood?"
The Medal was the Medal of Honor, often erroneously called the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for valor in action.
"Oh, yeah, the skinny guy. Pennsylvania Dutchman. No middle name," Pickering remembered.
"Right," Mclnerney chuckled, "Jack NMI Stecker."
"I always wondered what had happened to him," Pickering said. "He was one hard-nosed sonofabitch."
The description was a compliment.
The aide handed each of them a glass of whiskey.
"Mud in your eye," Mclnerney said, raising his glass and then draining it.
"Belleau Wood," Pickering said dryly, before he emptied his glass.
"Jack stayed in the Corps," Mclnerney went on. "They wanted to send him to Annapolis. Christ, he wasn’t any older than we were, he could have graduated with a regular commission when he was twenty-three or twenty-four, but he wanted to get married, so he turned it down. Until last summer he was a master gunnery sergeant at Quantico."
"Was?"
"They made him a captain; he’s at Diego."
"And now our kids are second lieutenants! Christ, we’re getting old, Doc."
"Jack had two boys. The older one went to Annapolis. He was an ensign on the Arizona. He was KIA on December 7."
"Oh, Christ!"
The two men looked at each other a moment, eyes locked, and then Mclnerney shrugged and Pickering threw up his hands helplessly.
"So what brings you to Washington, Flem?" Mclnerney asked, changing the subject. "I thought you hated the place."
"I do. And with rare exceptions, everyone in it. I’m looking for a job."
"Oh?"
"I just saw Colonel William J. Donovan," Pickering said. "He sent for me."
"Then I guess you know what he’s up to."
"I’ve got a pretty good idea."
"Out of school, he’s giving the Commandant a fit."
"Oh? How so?"
"The scuttlebutt going around is that Roosevelt wants to commission Donovan a brigadier general in the Corps."
"But he was in the Army," Pickering protested.
"Yeah, I know. The President is very impressed, or so I hear, with the British commandos. You know, hit-and-run raids. He wants American commandos, and he thinks they belong in the Corps. I hope to hell it’s not true."
"It sounds idiotic to me," Pickering said.
"Tell your important friends. Senator Fowler, for example."
"I will."
"Just don’t quote me."
"Don’t be silly, Doc."
"You were about to tell me, I think, what you’re going to do for Donovan."
"Nothing. I decided I didn’t want to work for him. Or maybe vice versa. Anyway, I’m not going to work for him."
"Won’t you have enough to do running your company? Hell, transportation is going to win-or lose-this war."
"I sold the passenger ships, at least the larger ones, to the Navy," Pickering replied. "And the freighters and tankers will probably go on long-term charter to either the Navy or the Maritime Administration-the ones that aren’t already, that is. There’s not a hell of a lot for me to do."