As he neared the house and saw Banning’s Studebaker, his mind turned to unkind thoughts about Major Ed Banning, USMC.
He didn’t know what he was doing here, except that he would be meeting "a friend" and somebody else Banning wanted to introduce him to. Banning, on the telephone, acted as if he was sure the line was tapped by the Japanese, even if all he was discussing was goddamned dinner. No details. Just cryptic euphemisms.
And I will bet ten dollars to a doughnut that both "a friend" and "somebody else" are going to be people I would rather not see.
He got out of the car and ran through the drizzle up onto the porch.
Mrs. Cavendish answered his ring with a warm smile.
"Oh, good evening, Captain," she said. "How are you tonight?"
"Wet and miserable, Mrs. Cavendish, how about you?"
She laughed. "A little nip will fix you right up," she said. "The other gentlemen are in the library."
I had no right to snap at her, and no reason to be annoyed with Banning. For all I know the goddamned phoneis tapped. Maybe by Willoughby. And it is absurd to fault an intelligence officer for having a closed mouth. You are acting like a curmudgeonly old man. Or perhaps a younger man, suffering from sexual deprivation.
The latter thought, he realized, had been triggered by the perversity of his recent erotic dreams. He had had four of them over not too many more nights than that. Only one had involved the female he was joined with in holy matrimony. A second had involved a complete stranger who had, in his dream, exposed her breasts to him in a Menzies Hotel elevator, then made her desires known with a lewd wink. The other two had been nearly identicaclass="underline" Ellen Feller had stood at the side of his bed, undressed slowly, and then mounted him.
"I didn’t mean to snap at you, Mrs. Cavendish," Pickering said.
"I didn’t know that you had," she said, smiling, as she took his coat.
He walked down the corridor to the library and pushed the door open.
"I will be damned," he said, smiling. It really was a friend. "How are you, Jake?"
Major Jake Dillon, USMC, crossed the room to him, smiling, shook his hand, and then hugged him.
"You should be ashamed of yourself," Dillon said. "Patricia’s sitting at home knitting scarfs and gloves for you, imagining you living in some leaking tent; and here you are, living like the landed gentry-even including a Jaguar."
"If I detect a broad suggestion of jealousy, I’m glad," Pickering said. "I see you’re already into my booze."
"Banning took care of that, after I told him how dry it was all the way from the States to Wellington, New Zealand."
"That was probably good for you. I’m sure you hadn’t been sober that long in years. You came with the 1stDivision?" Headquarters, 1stMarine Division, and the entire 5thMarines had debarked at Wellington, New Zealand, on June 14, 1942.
"All the way. And it was a very long way. The ship was not the Pacific Princess. The cuisine and accommodations left a good deal to be desired."
"What are you doing here? And where did you meet Ed Banning?"
"Here. Tonight. He’s a friend of Colonel Goettge."
"Who’s Colonel Goettge?"
"I am, Sir," a voice said, and Pickering turned. Banning and a tall, muscular Marine colonel had come into the library from the kitchen. "I suspect that I may be imposing."
"Nonsense," Pickering said, crossing to him and offering his hand. "Any friend of Banning’s, etcetera etcetera."
"Very kind of you, Captain," Goettge said.
"Also of Jack Stecker’s," Jake Dillon said. "It was Jack’s idea that I come along. He sends his regards."
"So far, Colonel," Pickering said, "that’s two good guys out of three. But how did you get hung up with this character?"
"Watch it, Flem. I’ll arrange to have you photographed being wetly kissed by a bare-breasted aborigine maiden, and send eight-by-ten glossies to Patricia."
"He would, too," Pickering said, laughing. "Colonel, you’re in dangerous company."
"Colonel Goettge is the 1stDivision G-2, Captain Pickering,"
Banning said. "He was sent here to gather intelligence on certain islands in the Solomons."
Pickering met Banning’s eye for a moment. They both knew more about pending operations in the Solomon Islands than Colonel Goettge was supposed to know, even though he was G-2 of the 1stMarine Division.
Pickering was worried, however, about how much Goettge actually knew.
On Friday, June 19, twelve days before, Vice-Admiral Robert L. Ghormley, USN, had activated his headquarters at Auckland, New Zealand, and become Commander, South Pacific, subordinate to Admiral Nimitz at Pearl Harbor.
Pickering immediately flew down to meet him, not sure in his own mind if he was doing so in his official role as observer for Frank Knox, or as a member (if unofficial) of Mac Arthur’s palace guard.
Once he saw Pickering’s orders, Admiral Ghormley had no choice but to brief him on his concept of the war, and on his planning. But he went further than paying appropriate respect to an officer wrapped in the aura of a personal representative of the Secretary of the Navy required.
There were several reasons for this. For one, they immediately liked each other. Over lunch, Ghormley drew out of Pickering the story of how he had worked his way up from apprentice seaman in the deck department to his "Any Ocean, Any Tonnage" master’s ticket. And it quickly became clear that the two of them were not an admiral and a civilian in a captain’s uniform, but that they were two men who had known the responsibility of the bridge in a storm.
And, too, Ghormley had come to the South Pacific almost directly from London. Thus he had not spent enough time in either Washington or Pearl Harbor to become infected with the parochial virus that caused others of his rank to feel that the war in the Pacific had to be fought and won by the Navy alone- perhaps as the only way to overcome the shame of Pearl Harbor.
And to Pickering’s pleased surprise, Ghormley had independently come up with a strategy that was very much like Mac-Arthur’s. He saw the Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain as a likely and logical target for the immediate future. He thought it would be a very reasonable expenditure of assets to assault New Britain amphibiously with the 1stMarine Division, and, once the beachhead was secure, to turn the battle over to the Army’s 32ndand 41stInfantry Divisions.
Pickering then informed Admiral Ghormley that he was privy to General MacArthur’s thinking, and that the two of them were in essential agreement. He made this admission after briefly considering that not only was it none of Ghormley’s business, but that telling Ghormley such things would enrage both Frank Knox and Douglas MacArthur if they learned of it, as they almost certainly would.
Which was to say, of course, that MacArthur and Ghormley both disagreed with Admiral Ernest King’s proposed plans for immediate action: These called for a Navy attack under Admiral Nimitz on both the Santa Cruz and Solomon Islands, while MacArthur launched a diversionary attack on the East Indies.
When Pickering returned to Brisbane, he dropped the other shoe (after one of MacArthur’s private dinners) and informed MacArthur of Ghormley’s ideas for the most efficient prosecution of the war. Lengthy "independent" cables then went from Ghormley (to Admiral King, Chief of Naval Operations) and MacArthur (to General Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army). These strenuously urged an attack to retake Rabaul as the first major counterattack of the war.