"I guess what I'm really asking," Banning said, "is whether you do accept my apology, or whether you're just going to bide your time waiting for an opportunity to stick it in me."
"Am I carrying a grudge, you mean? No, sir."
"I really hope you mean that, McCoy, because you are going to be in a position to stick it in me," Banning said.
"Sir?"
"When your friend Chatworth came up with witnesses to your innocence, the colonel decided that there was no reason to go ahead with your court-martial. It would have been a waste of time and money. In light of the new evidence, all charges against you have been dropped. As soon as the surgeon clears you, you'll go back to duty."
"Aye, aye, sir," McCoy said. "Thank you, sir."
"But not to Dog Company," Banning said. "The colonel has given you to me. You're being transferred to Headquarters Company."
"I don't understand," McCoy said.
"The colonel said that a man with your many talents, McCoy," Banning said, dryly, "the typing and the languages- not to mention your ability to make friends in the international community-was wasting his time, and the Corps' time and money, on a machine gun. A man like you, McCoy, the colonel said, should work somewhere where his talents could be better utilized. Like S-2."
"I don't want to be a clerk," McCoy said.
"What you want, McCoy, is not up for debate," Captain Banning said. "But for your general information, I don't have any more choice in the matter than you do. What went unsaid, I think, was that the colonel wants me to make sure you don't stick that knife of yours in anyone else."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"There's more. As soon as you feel up to making the trip, you're going to Peking for a while. A month, six weeks."
"Get me out of Shanghai?" McCoy asked, but it was more thinking out loud than a question.
Banning nodded.
"You're a problem, McCoy," Banning said. "The Italians want you punished. Now that we can't do that, we want to get you out of sight for a while."
"Captain," McCoy said, "the surgeon told me that if there was going to be infection, I would have it by now. There's no reason for me to be in here."
"Do you feel up to going that far in a truck?" Banning asked.
"I thought we moved people by water between here and Tientsin," McCoy said.
"From time to time, we send a truck convoy up there," Banning said. "One is leaving on Thursday. Didn't you hear that?"
"The word is," McCoy said, "that what the convoys really do is spy on the Japs."
"And that would bother you?"
"No, Sir," McCoy said. "That sounds interesting. I asked my Gunny (Gunnery Sergeant. A senior noncommissioned officer) how I could get to go, and he told me to mind my own business."
"Military intelligence isn't what you might think it is from watching Errol Flynn or Robert Taylor in the movies," Banning said.
"I didn't think it was," McCoy said, evenly.
"Are you familiar with the term 'Order of Battle'?" Banning asked.
"No, sir."
"It is the composition of forces," Banning said. "What units are where and in what condition. By that I mean how they are armed, equipped, fed, whether or net they're up to strength, whether or not there are any signs of an impending move. You understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"One of my responsibilities is to keep up to date on the Japanese Order of Battle," Banning said. "One of the ways I do that is give the officer in charge of the Tientsin-Peking convoys a list of things to look for. That does not mean, I should add, breaking into a Japanese headquarters in the middle of the night to steal secret plans, the way Errol Flynn operates in the movies. My instructions to the officer are that his first duty is to not get caught being nosey."
"I guess the Japanese watch him pretty closely?"
"Of course they do," Banning said.
"They'd be less likely to pay attention to a PFC," McCoy said. "They judge our PFCs by the way they treat their own. And their PFCs can't spit without orders."
"The low regard the Japanese have for their own enlisted men works both ways," Banning said. "They would shoot one of our PFCs they caught snooping around, and then be genuinely surprised that we would be upset about it."
"Then the thing for our PFCs to do is not get caught," McCoy said.
"Didn't you ever hear that the smart thing to do is never volunteer for anything?" Banning asked.
"There's always an exception to that," McCoy said. "Like when you think it might do you some good to volunteer.''
"Go on," Banning said.
"I think I'm going to be on the corporals' promotion list," McCoy said. "I also think what I did is liable to fuck me up with getting promoted. Maybe I could get off the shit-list by doing something like snooping around the Japs."
"You're on the corporals' list," Banning said. "The promotion orders will be cut today. A separate order, by the way, hoping the Italians won't find out about it and think that we're promoting you for cutting up their marines. You will be a very young corporal, McCoy."
"Then maybe, if I volunteer for this and do it right," McCoy said, "I can get to be a very young sergeant."
"And maybe you'd fuck up and embarrass the colonel and give him an excuse to bust you," Banning said. "I don't think busting you would make him unhappy."
"And maybe I wouldn't," McCoy said. "I'll take that chance."
"Right now, McCoy, and understand me good, all you are to do when you go on the convoy is sit beside the driver. I don't want you snooping around the Japanese unless and until I tell you what to look for. Do you understand that?''
"Aye, aye, sir," McCoy said. "I'm not going to charge around like a headless chicken and get you in trouble, Captain."
"As long as we both understand that," Banning said.
"Yes, sir," McCoy said.
"Unless you have any questions, then, that seems to be about it. I want you to stay in here until Wednesday, when you can go to your billet and pack your gear for the trip. You are not to leave the compound. And I think it would be a good idea if you didn't sew on your corporal's chevrons until you are out of Shanghai."
"Aye, aye, sir," McCoy said.
"Any questions?"
"Do I get my knife back?"
"So you can slice somebody else up?" Banning flared.
"I wasn't looking for trouble with the Italians," McCoy said. "But when it found me, it was a damned good thing I had that knife."
"Tell me something, McCoy," Banning said. "Does it bother you at all to have killed those two men?"
"Straight answer?"
Banning nodded.
"I've been wondering if something's wrong with me," McCoy said. "I'm sorry I had to kill them. But you're supposed to be all upset when you kill somebody, and I just don't feel that way. I mean, I'm not having nightmares about it, or anything like that, the way I hear other people do."
"It says in the Bible, 'Thou shalt not kill,' " Banning said.
"And it also says, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' " McCoy said. "And that 'he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.' "
Banning looked at him for a long moment before he spoke.
"I'm not absolutely sure about this," he said finally. "Your knife was evidence in a court-martial. But now that there's not going to be a court-martial, maybe I can get it back for you."
"Thank you," McCoy said. "I'd hate to have to buy another one."
(Two)
On the way back to his office, Captain Banning wondered why in their meeting PFC/Corporal McCoy had not said "Yes, sir" as often as he was expected to-using the phrase as sort of military verbal punctuation.
And he wondered why he himself, except that once, hadn't called him on it. The fact, he concluded after a while, was that McCoy was neither intentionally discourteous nor insolent; and that the discussion had been between them as men, not officer and PFC. In other words, the kid had understood - either from instinct or from smarts - what was the correct tone to take with him.
The more he saw of McCoy, the more he learned about him, the more impressed he became both with his intelligence (his score on the written promotion examination should have prepared him for that, but it hadn't) and with his toughness. He was a very tough young man. But not entirely. Within, there was a soft center of young boy, who wished to sneak off and be a spy-for the pure glamour of it, and the romance.