Captain McCoy and First Lieutenant Malcolm S. «Pick» Pickering, USMCR,
General Pickering's only son, had met and become friends at Officer Candidate School.
«She's in love with you, Ken, not Pick. She told me. And you know that.»
«Yeah,» McCoy said. «She said that, too.»
«That's all she said? There were two letters.»
«She said there's going to be female Marines, and she's thinking of joining up.» The look on his face made his opinion of females in the Marine Corps very evident.
«I gather you don't approve?» Pickering asked dryly.
«Jesus!
Women
Marines?»
Pickering chuckled, then changed the subject. «I need to know what you really think of General Fertig,» he said. «Just between us.»
«Interesting guy,» McCoy said, admiringly. «Knows what he's doing. Knows the Filipinos.»
«Is he going to be able to do some damage to the Japanese?»
«If we get him the supplies he needs, he'll cause them a lot of grief.»
«In other words, you would say that he is in full possession of his mental faculties? Not suffering from the stress of what happened to him in the Philippines? Or delusions of grandeur?»
«He's a lot saner than a lot of people I know,» McCoy said. «Putting on that general's star was really smart. Nobody, Filipino or American, would have put themselves under the command of a reserve lieutenant colonel.»
«That's how you really feel?»
McCoy nodded.
«Then that's what I want you to tell El Supremo,» Pickering said, matter-of-factly, «and the President.»
«Sir?» McCoy asked.
«That's what I want you to tell General MacArthur and President Roosevelt.»
«Sir…«
When we're alone, sometimes
, Pickering thought,
he deals with me like a man who's a friend. But the moment he's not sure of himself, hears something he doesn't like, he crawls behind that shield of military courtesy, that protective womb of superior and subordinate, and starts calling me «Sir
.»
«You remember Weston?» Pickering asked. «The guerrilla officer you sent out? The guy with the beard?»
«I only saw him for a few minutes on the beach.»
«Well, in case you don't know, he was a Marine pilot who got caught in the Philippines, escaped from Luzon, and went to Mindanao. He was Fertig's intelligence officer.»
«Fertig was sore as hell when he heard I'd ordered him out.»
«I can understand why. But it was the right thing to do,» Pickering said.
«Anyway, I ran him past MacArthur and Willoughby. Still wearing his beard, by the way. I thought he made a good impression, and said some good things about Fertig and his operation, but I'm a little worried that by now El Supremo and Willoughby have managed to convince themselves that, fine young officer or not, all he is is a junior officer whose judgments can't really be trusted.»
«Sir, I'm a junior officer.»
«Who is going to brief the Secretary of the Navy and the President of the United States. I think it's important that El Supremo know what you're going to tell them. It may change his thinking about the impossibility of guerrilla activity in the Philippines, and about General Fertig.»
«Sir, I don't suppose there's any way…«
«You can get out of it? No. Ken. It's important. You have to do it.»
«Aye, aye, sir,» McCoy said.
«There's something else, Ken,» Pickering said, and reached into the pocket of his khaki shirt. «This is why Admiral Henton sent his aide to take me away from our welcome-home dinner.»
He handed McCoy several sheets of paper stamped top secret.
McCoy carefully read the Personal From The Commander in Chief.
«Jesus H. Christ!» McCoy said.
«Welcome to the OSS, Captain McCoy,» Pickering said. He saw on McCoy's face that McCoy didn't like that at all. «I'm sorry, Ken,» Pickering said sincerely. «I don't know what I'm supposed to do now, but whatever it is, I'm going to need you to help me do it.»
McCoy met his eyes for a long moment.
«Am I allowed to ask questions?»
«I'll answer any question I can.»
«What happens to that Gobi Desert operation? Are you still going to be responsible for that?»
Before being ordered into the Philippines, McCoy had been in the first stages of planning an operation in which he would somehow—probably by parachute— be infiltrated into the Gobi Desert to see if he could establish contact with some Americans thought to be there.
Christ, I'd almost forgotten about that. But he didn't. I pulled him off of that to send him into the Philippines. And all the time he was there, he was wondering, «What next? The Gobi Desert?»
«I don't know, Ken,» Pickering said. «I don't want you to get your hopes up about not having to be in on that, but that's a Management Analysis operation. We don't work for Management Analysis anymore. And I really don't think you can consider the Gobi Desert as being in the Pacific.»
McCoy, still meeting his eyes, thought that over for a moment without expression. '
«Aye, aye, sir,» he said finally.
That means, of course, that he thinks I'm wrong.
Chapter Two
note 11
Office of the Deputy Director
The Office of Strategic Services
National Institutes of Health Building
Washington, D.C.
1745 8 February 1943
«And how did you find the Pentagon?» The DDA (Deputy Director for Administration) of the OSS inquired of the DDO (Deputy Director for Operations) when the DDO walked into his office, dropped a heavy briefcase on the floor, and slumped into a green leather armchair.
«It's not hard to find, Charley. You just drive across the Potomac and there it is. Great big sonofabitch!»
«I really can do without the humor,» the DDA said, «if that was supposed to be humor.»
«You're in a bad mood. Heard from Wild Bill, have we?»
Colonel William J. Donovan, known, though not to his face, as «Wild Bill,» was Director of the Office of Strategic Services.
«Not a word, as a matter of fact,» the DDA said, visibly not amused. «What did the Joint Chiefs give you?»
The DDO reached over and picked up the briefcase, then let it fall heavily to the carpet. «I've got a briefcase full of crap from the Joint Chiefs,» he said. Then he reached into one of the pockets in his vest and came out with the key to the briefcase, which he tossed to the DDA.
By accident or intention, the toss required the DDA to lunge for the key. When he caught it, he gave the DDO a look he hoped would adequately display his displeasure.
The ten Deputy Directors of the Office of Strategic Services, known informally as the «Disciples» (because there were supposed to be twelve), had been recruited from the upper echelons of business, science, and academia. Before the War, the DDO had been the managing director of the second-largest investment banking concern in the United States and—not unreasonably—considered himself a peer rather than a subordinate of the DDA, who had been a senior vice president of the General Motors Corporation. In short, the DDO did not much like being treated like an underling.