"So what are you going to do?"
"Strange, General, that you should ask that question," Pickering said.
"What’s on your mind, Flem?" Mclnerney asked, a hint of suspicion in his voice.
"How about ‘Once a Marine, always a Marine’?"
Mclnerney looked at him with disbelief and uneasiness in his eyes.
"Flem, you’re not talking about you coming back in the Corps, are you? Are you serious?"
"Yes, I am, and yes, I am," Pickering said. "Why is that so- to judge from the look in your eyes and your tone of voice-incredible?"
"Come on, Flem," Mclnerney said. "You’ve been out of the Corps since 1919-and then, forgive me, you were a corporal."
"There should be some job where I could be useful," Pickering said. "Christ, I’ve been running eighty-one ships. And their crews. And all the shore facilities."
"I’m sure the Navy would love to commission someone with your kind of experience. Or, for that matter, the Transportation Corps of the Army."
"I don’t want to be a goddamn sailor."
"Think it through," Mclnerney said. "Flem, I’m telling you the way it is."
"So tell me. I’m apparently a little dense."
"Your experience, your shipping business experience, is in what I think of as Base Logistics. Moving large amounts of heavy cargo by sea from one place to another. The Navy does that for the Marine Corps."
"It occurred to me that I could be one hell of a division supply officer, division quartermaster, whatever they call it."
"That calls for a lieutenant colonel, maybe a full colonel. If there was strong resistance among the palace guard to commissioning people-Marines, like Jack Stecker, a master gunnery sergeant-as captains, what makes you think they’d commission a civilian, a former corporal, as a lieutenant colonel?"
"I’m willing to start at the bottom. I don’t have to be a lieutenant colonel."
Mclnerney laughed. "I think you really believe that."
"Yes, I do."
"As a major? A captain? That your idea of starting at the bottom?"
"Why not?"
"Flem, when was the last time someone told you what to do, gave you an order?"
"Well, just for the sake of argument, I think I can still take orders, but I have the feeling that I’m just wasting my breath."
"You want the truth from me, old buddy, or bullshit from some paper pusher?"
"That would depend on what the bullshit was."
" ‘Why, we would love to have you, Mr. Pickering,’ followed by an assignment as, say, a major, and deputy assistant maintenance officer for mess-kit rehabilitation at Barstow, or some other supply depot. Where you would do a hell of a job rehabilitating mess kits, and be an all-around pain in the ass the rest of the time. You want to march off to war again, Flem, and that’s just not going to happen. Unless, of course, you go to the Navy. They really would love to have you."
"Fuck the Navy," Fleming Pickering said.
He stood up. General Mclnerney eyed him warily.
"I suppose I’ve made a real fool of myself, haven’t I, Doc?" Pickering said calmly.
"No, not at all. I’m just sorry things are ... the way things are."
"Well, I’ve kept my master’s ticket up. And I still own some ships. Taking a ship to sea is better than being ... what did you say, ‘a deputy assistant mess-kit-repair officer’?"
"Yes, of course it is. But I keep saying, and you keep ignoring, that the Navy would love to have you."
"And I keep saying, and you keep ignoring, Fuck the Navy.’"
Mclnerney laughed.
"Have it your way, Flem. But they are on our side in this war."
"Well, then, God help us. I was at Pearl Harbor."
"Is it fair to blame Pearl Harbor on the Navy?"
"On who, then?" Fleming Pickering said, and put out his hand. "Thank you for seeing me, Doc. And for doing what you did for Pick."
"If you were twenty-one, I’d get you in flight school, too. No thanks required. Keep in touch, Flem."
(Four)
The Foster Lafayette Hotel
Washington, D.C.
20 December 1941
"Thank you very much," Fleming Pickering said politely, then took the receiver from his ear and placed it, with elaborate care, in its base. It was one of two telephones on the coffee table in the sitting room of Senator Richardson Fowler’s suite. Then he said, quite clearly, "Well, I’ll be a sonofabitch!" Transcontinental and Western Airlines had just told him that even though he already had his ticket for a flight between New York and San Francisco, with intermediate stops at Chicago and Denver, he could not be boarded without a priority. He had explained to them that he had come from San Francisco with a priority and was simply trying to get home, and that he had presumed that the priority which had brought him to Washington also applied to his return trip. TWA had told him that was not the case; he would need another priority to do so.
Fleming Pickering considered his predicament and swore again.
"That goddamned sonofabitch!"
He was referring to Colonel William J. Donovan, Coordinator of Information to the President of the United States. This was his fault. Donovan should have arranged for him to get home, gotten him a priority to do so. While he didn’t think it was likely the ambulance-chasing sonofabitch was vindictive enough to have canceled his return-trip priority after their unpleasant encounter that morning, it was possible. And whether he had canceled the priority or simply neglected to arrange for one, what this meant for Fleming Pickering was that unless he wanted to spend four days crossing the country by train-and they probably passed out compartments on the train to people with priorities, which might well mean sitting up in a coach all the way across the country-he was going to have to call the bastard up and politely beg him to get him a priority to go home.
There was no question in Pickering’s mind that Donovan would get him a priority, and no question either that Donovan would take the opportunity to remind Pickering that priorities were intended for people who were making a contribution to the war effort, not for people who placed their own desires and ambitions above the common good, by, for example, declining to serve with the Office of the Coordinator of Information.
Then Fleming Pickering had another thought: Richardson Fowler could probably get him a priority. Dick was a politician. Whatever law the politicians wrote, or whatever they authorized some agency of the government to implement-such as setting up an air-travel priority system-those bastards would take care of themselves first.
The thought passed through his mind, and was quickly dismissed, that perhaps he was being a horse’s ass, that he was not working for the government and therefore had no right to a priority, and that getting one through Fowler’s political influence would deprive of a seat some brave soldier en route to battle the Treacherous Jap. He was not going to California to lie on the beach. He still had a shipping company to run; coming here had taken him away from that.
There came a knock at the door. Pickering looked at it, and then at his watch. It was probably Dick Fowler. But why would Fowler knock?