“We’re not going to need the thirty seconds, I see,” Pickering said. He walked to the desk and reached for the telephone.
He had it halfway to his ear when Feldt stayed his hand.
“It’s the booze, for Christ’s sake.”
“Then leave the goddamned booze alone!”
“I have this terrible tendency to lubricate myself when I find myself writing letters that go, ‘Dear Mrs. Keller, I very much regret having to inform you that information has come to me indicating that your husband has been captured and executed by the Japanese ...’”
Pickering put the telephone back in its cradle, but did not take his hand off it, nor take his eyes off Feldt.
Feldt avoided Pickering’s eyes and looked at Wing Commander Foster.
“When they catch one of our lads, Wing Commander, what the Nips do—after interrogation, of course—is put him down ceremonially. First, they make him dig his own grave; and then they behead him, after making sure their chap with the sword is of equal or superior grade. After that, they pray over the grave. Did you know that?”
“No,” Foster said quietly, “I did not.”
Feldt looked at Pickering.
“Letting the side down, in my cups, I look for someone, a friend, against whom I can vent my ‘caustic bullshit.’ Ed Banning usually gets it. I don’t know how or why he puts up with it. And I certainly can understand why you won’t, Pickering. But for the record, I am fully aware that Buka would not be up and running if it weren’t for your two lads. They have balls at least as big as any of my lads, and the one thing I was not suggesting was that they don’t.”
Pickering looked into his eyes for a moment, then took his hand from the telephone and straightened up.
“Let’s talk about Buka,” he said.
“I gather you accept my apology?”
“Oh, was that an apology?” Pickering asked lightly.
“As close as I know how to come to one.”
“In that case, yes,” Pickering said.
“Let’s talk about Buka,” Feldt said.
“We can’t afford to lose it,” Pickering said. “Worse possible case, we can’t afford to lose it in the last few days before and the first few days following the invasion of Guadalcanal. Every plane the Japanese launch from Rabaul to attack the invasion force will pass over Buka. If we know the type of aircraft, how many, and when they’re coming, we can have our fighters in the air to repel them. If we don’t have that intelligence from Buka, a lot of people are going to be killed, and ships we can’t afford to lose will be sunk.”
“So?”
“I want to reinforce it,” Pickering said. “I’ve discussed this with Admiral Boyer and he agrees. Wing Commander Foster has been directed to provide aircraft to drop another team, or teams, in.”
“Sod Admiral Boyer,” Feldt said. “No.”
“You have reasons?” Pickering asked. Banning saw his face pale again.
“If there is anybody in Australia or New Zealand who knows his way around Buka, I haven’t been able to find him,” Feldt said. “And Christ knows, it’s not for want of trying.”
“What’s your point?”
“There is only one spot on Buka where we could parachute a team in with any chance of them surviving the landing. We already used it to put your lads in there. The Nips know we used it. They are now watching it. So we can’t use that again. The sodding island is covered with dense jungle, except where the Nips are. You jump a team in there, what you’re going to have is three skeletons in trees. And even if by some miracle that didn’t happen, and they got to the ground in one piece, they still wouldn’t know the island, would they? They’d never be able to get from where they were dropped to where they could do any good. Either the jungle would get them, or the natives—you understand that the natives are still reliably reported to be cannibals?—or the sodding Nips, of course.”
Pickering nodded, and then said softly, “It might become necessary to send in one team after another until one made it.”
“You are a cold-blooded bastard, aren’t you, Pickering?” Feldt asked softly.
“A lot of lives are at stake,” Pickering replied. “We simply can’t afford to lose that early intelligence.”
“Are you looking for advice? Or did you come here to tell me when we are going to start dropping parachutists?”
“Advice.”
“OK. Form your teams. Banning’s already done that, anyway. Lay on an airplane, have it ready around the clock. For that matter, if you have the clout, lay on a submarine, or maybe a PT boat, in case we decide the best thing is to put them ashore and not parachute them in. If Buka goes down, then we start sending people. Not before. This isn’t the Imperial sodding Japanese Navy; our lads don’t want to die for their emperor, and I will be damned if I’ll ask them to.”
Pickering pursed his lips for just a moment.
“OK,” he said. “We’ll do it your way. And pray that Buka doesn’t go down.”
Feldt nodded.
“Since you’ve been so sodding agreeable, I’m going to offer you some of my bubbly. You understand I wouldn’t do that for just anybody, Pickering.”
(Three)
COMPANY GRADE BACHELOR’S OFFICER’S
QUARTERS #2
SUPREME HEADQUARTERS, SOUTH WEST PACIFIC
AREA
(FORMERLY, COMMERCE HOTEL)
BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA
0430 HOURS 22 JULY 1942
As often happened when the telephone rang in the middle of the night, and he made a grab for it, Lieutenant Pluto Hon, BS, MS, PhD (summa cum laude, Mathematics), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, knocked the unstable fucking museum piece off the bedside table and had to retrieve it from under the bed before he could answer it. The unstable fucking museum piece held its cone-shaped mouthpiece atop a ten-inch Corinthian column, and the ear piece hung from a life boat davit on the side.
“Lieutenant Hon, Sir.”
“What the hell was that noise?” Captain Fleming Pickering asked.
“I knocked the phone over, Sir.”
“Pluto, I’m really sorry to wake you at this ungodly hour, but something has come up, and I really want to have a word with you before I go.”
“No problem, Sir. Where?”
“Here. On the way to the airport. Is that going to be a problem?”
“No, Sir. I’ll catch a ride out there as soon as I can.”
“No. I called Moore and told him to pick you up on his way out here. He should be at the hotel in ten, fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll be waiting for him, Sir.”
“Thank you, Pluto. I am really sorry to have to do this to you. But I think it’s important.”
“No problem, Sir.”
I have just spoken to the only officer in the grade of Army captain or above at the Emperor’s Court who would dream of apologizing for waking a lowly lieutenant up. I am really going to miss Captain Pickering.
Pickering was leaving Brisbane to join the Guadalcanal invasion fleet in time for the rehearsal in the Fiji Islands. Hon suspected he would not be back for a long time, if ever.
Pickering hadn’t come right out and said so, but there was little doubt in Hon’s mind that when the rehearsal was over, Pickering was going with the invasion fleet to Guadalcanal instead of resuming his duties as the Secretary of the Navy’s personal representative to the Emperor. Hon thought it was entirely likely that Pickering wouldn’t stop there—watching the landing from the bridge of the command ship USS McCawley—but would actually go ashore with the Marines.
Pickering’s contempt for the brass hats—at least for their petty bickering—at SHSWPA and CINCPAC had been made clear in the reports he had written (and Hon had read in the process of transmission) to Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. And Pickering had also taught Hon that there was still life in the old saw, “Once A Marine, Always A Marine.” Pickering thought of himself as a Marine. He felt a tie of brotherhood with the men who were actually invading Guadalcanal and
Tulagi. The notion of returning to the cocktail party circuit in Australia while they were going in harm’s way was repugnant to him.
In Hon’s opinion, it would not be at all hard for Pickering to convince himself that he could best discharge his duty by going ashore with the Marines. If he was actually on the scene, he’d be in a better position to keep Frank Knox informed than if he were back in Australia—or at least so he would rationalize. Hon half expected that Pickering would actually suggest this plan to Knox in one of his reports. When he didn’t, Hon suspected it was because he knew Knox would immediately forbid him to go anywhere near Guadalcanal.
If he decided to go ashore with the invasion force, there was nobody in the Pacific with the authority to stop him. His orders made it absolutely clear that he was subordinate only to Frank Knox.
Lieutenant Pluto Hon got out of the narrow iron bed, with its lumpy mattress, and took a very quick shave over the tiny sink in his room. The toilet and bath, in separate rooms, were down the corridor. About the only good thing Hon could think to say about the Commerce Hotel was that it was only a block and a half from the new Supreme Headquarters, South West Pacific Area. After the move from Melbourne, that was established in an eight-story building from which an insurance company had been evicted for the duration.
Before the war, the Commerce Hotel had apparently catered to traveling salesmen on very limited expense accounts. It was, of course, good enough for company grade officers assigned to the Emperor’s Court.
He dressed quickly, ran down the stairs rather than wait for the small, creaking elevator (which often did not answer the button, anyway), and was standing outside on the sidewalk when Sergeant John Marston Moore pulled up in the Studebaker President sedan Banning’s sergeant had scrounged for them.
Hon got in the front seat beside him.
Moore had really been screwed by the move from Melbourne, he thought. In Melbourne, he’d lived in a large room at The Elms. In Brisbane, the only property Pickering could find was a small house, called Water Lily Cottage, out by the racetrack. There was not only no room for Moore there, but when Pickering had ordered Hon to find someplace decent for Moore to live in and give him the bill, Hon had been unable to find any kind of a room at all.
So Moore lived outside of town with the other headquarters enlisted men in an old Australian barracks. When he didn’t have the Studebaker, he had to ride back and forth to work on Army buses, when they were running. Worse, in the barracks, a headquarters company commander and a first sergeant, who could not be told what Moore was doing, saw in him just one more sergeant who could be put to work doing what sergeants are supposed to do, like supervising linoleum waxing and serving as sergeant of the guard.
Captain Pickering spoke several times with the headquarters commandant about his needing Moore around the clock, which meant he would not be available for company duties. The last time he made such a call, he told the headquarters commandant he would register his next complaint with General Sutherland. And that worked. But with Pickering gone, it would happen again. Lieutenant Hon could not register complaints with MacArthur’s Chief of Staff, “Dick, I’m having a little trouble with your headquarters commandant.”
“I think we’re going to miss Captain Pickering, Lieutenant,” Moore said as they pulled away.
“Don’t read my mind, please. Lowly sergeants should not be privy to the thoughts of officers and gentlemen.”
“I went by the shop,” Moore said, chuckling. “To see if there was anything for the boss. Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Two more of Feldt’s Coastwatchers are—‘no longer operational.’ ”
“Buka?”
“Buka’s all right. Should I tell the boss?”
“Not unless he asks. What can he do anyway?”
There were lights on all over Water Lily Cottage when Moore turned off Manchester Avenue into the driveway. Pickering’s borrowed Jaguar drophead coupe was parked in the driveway ahead of them.
Pickering came out onto the porch in his shirt-sleeves as Hon got out of the car.
“Come on in, the both of you,” he said. “There’s time for coffee, and I want you to meet someone.”
There was a woman in Water Lily Cottage. She had apparently spent the night, for she was wearing a bathrobe. It covered her from her neck to her ankles. She was, Hon quickly judged, in her thirties. Her dark hair was parted in the middle, brushed tightly against her scalp, and drawn up in a bun at the back. She wore no makeup.
Jesus, what’s the boss been up to? I can’t believe he’s been screwing this dame.
“Gentlemen,” Pickering said, “I’d like you to meet Mrs. Ellen Feller. She got in last night from Pearl Harbor.”
I would never have thought she was an American, Hon thought, and then revised his opinion of her sexual desirability. Even the padded bathrobe could not conceal an attractive breastworks, which was apparently unrestrained by a brassiere.
I still don’t think he’s been screwing her. But on the other hand, I was twenty before I was willing to admit that my parents hadn’t had me via immaculate conception.
Ellen Feller’s smile, which accompanied the hand she gave Hon, was somewhat the wrong side of being friendly and inviting.
“Ellen and I go back pretty far,” Pickering said. “She was my secretary in Washington.”
“We’re old friends,” Ellen Feller added, quietly demure. Then she turned to Moore. “I believe I know your father,” she said. “The Reverend John Wesley Moore, isn’t it? Of Missions?”
“Yes, Ma‘am,” Moore said, visibly surprised.
“Of what?” Pickering asked.
“Missions, Sir,” Moore furnished. “The William Barton Harris Methodist Episcopal Special Missions to the Unchurched Foundation.”
“My husband and I were in China before the war,” Mrs. Feller said, “with the Christian and Missionary Alliance. I met your father, and your mother, too, I believe, in Hong Kong.”
“Ellen will be working with you,” Pickering said, obviously impatient with missionary auld lang syne. “She’s a damned good linguist, and a damned good analyst, and more to the point, she’s MAGIC cleared.”
I’ll be damned.
But then another thought struck him, It makes a lot of sense though.
The high-ups in the intermingled and confusing multiservice command structure of communications intelligence had to send someone else with a MAGIC clearance to MacArthur’s headquarters. They didn’t know that Pickering had brought Sergeant John Marston Moore in on the most important secret of the war in the Pacific, which meant they believed only two underlings, Hon himself and Major Ed Banning, even knew what MAGIC was.
That made a total of four people in the Emperor’s Court who were cleared to read intercepted messages between the Japanese Imperial General Staff and Japanese Naval Headquarters and units at sea: The American Emperor himself, of course; MacArthur’s G-2, newly promoted Brigadier General Charles M. Willoughby (who to Hon’s private amusement spoke with an unmistakable German accent); and Banning and Hon.
Even taking very seriously the cliche that the more people in on a secret, the greater the chance the secret will soon be out, it just didn’t make sense not to send at least one other person to Brisbane. For the most basic of reasons: If a Brisbane bus ran over Lieutenant Hon while Banning was up at Townesville, as he was most of the time, and a hot MAGIC came in, it would not reach MacArthur or Willoughby until Banning could fly down from Townesville to decrypt it for them.
As a practical matter, of course, Sergeant Moore would have filled in. Hon had given him a crash course in operation of the cryptographic equipment, and he knew what to do with MAGIC messages. But they didn’t know that.
And so they sent someone else in; and not the kind of person Hon might have expected—a Navy Lieutenant Commander or an Army Signal Corps Lieutenant Colonel, the rank a sop to the rank consciousness of MacArthur’s headquarters, where daily Hon was made to realize that a lowly l
ieutenant was of no consequence whatsoever. Instead, they sent a civilian, and even more incredibly, a female civilian.
“There was a chance for Ellen and me to talk last night,” Pickering continued. “So it was fortunate that she came in when she did. I’m sure everybody would have been confused had she come in this afternoon.” He stopped for a time to gather his thoughts. “Her coming,” he went on after a moment, “might cause us a few minor problems. But let’s deal with who’s in charge first. Pluto, that’s you. You’re doing a fine job, and there’s no one better qualified. Unfortunately, you’re a lowly first lieutenant. I’ve been—punching pillows is what it feels like—trying to get you promoted to at least captain. For reasons that escape me, that has so far proven impossible. I left word with Ed Banning that he is to continue trying.”
“That’s very good of you, Sir, but ...”
“Oh, bullshit ... sorry, Ellen. Nonsense, Pluto. You’re well deserving of promotion, and we all know it. But anyway, you are outranked not only by Ed Banning, obviously, but by Ellen as well.”
“Sir?”
“What is it they said you are, Ellen?”
“An assimilated Oh Four, Captain.”
“You know what that means, Pluto?” Pickering asked.
“Yes, Sir. Mrs. Feller is entitled to the privileges of a major, Sir. Or a Navy lieutenant commander.”
“OK. That may come in handy for billeting, or whatever. And I don’t give a damn who anyone at the Palace thinks is running things. But between you and Ellen, so far as MAGIC is concerned, you’re in charge, Pluto. I have also left word with Ed Banning making that clear.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You remain, Sergeant Moore,” Pickering said, “low man on the totem pole, outranked by everybody.”
“Yes, Sir. I understand.”
“But since I suspect that moron at Headquarters Company will have you on a guard roster the moment he hears I’ve left, I want you to clear your things out of that barracks and move in here. I had to take a six month’s lease on this place, and there’s no sense letting it go to waste.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Battleground Page 34