Battleground

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I see that I am not alone,” he said to the aide. “There’s a Marine.”

  “He’s one of the cave-dwellers, Colonel.”

  “I beg pardon?”

  “Classified documents and cryptography are two floors underground. They call the people who work down there in the dark ‘cave-dwellers.’ ”

  “I see.”

  “I think I heard someone say that that sergeant is a Japanese-language linguist.”

  “I see,” Dailey said. He was about to ask how come a sergeant had a staff car when the obvious answer came to him. It belonged to a Marine officer of appropriate rank. He wished they’d gotten into that in the briefings. He would have liked to know if he was junior to or senior to the other Marine officer. Or officers.

  The elevator took them to the eighth floor.

  Brigadier General Charles Willoughby greeted Dailey cordially, offered him coffee, quite unnecessarily apologized for not having met him personally at the airport, and asked if he found his quarters satisfactory.

  And he asked an odd question:

  “Does the phrase MAGIC mean anything to you, Colonel?”

  “No, Sir. I can’t say that it does.”

  “It’s of no importance,” Willoughby said.

  Dailey was no fool. He knew that General Willoughby had not asked him about MAGIC, whatever the hell that was, because it was “of no importance,” but very probably because it was important, and he expected Dailey to know what it was.

  I wonder what the hell MAGIC is, and why haven’t I been told about it?

  At 1643, they were in General Douglas MacArthur’s outer office. General Willoughby introduced Dailey to Lieutenant Colonel Sidney Huff, MacArthur’s aide-de-camp. Dailey was reminded again what august company he was now keeping. A lieutenant colonel for an aide-de-camp!

  At 1645 exactly, Colonel Huff formally announced, “The Supreme Commander will see you now, gentlemen.”

  General Douglas MacArthur looked exactly like the picture of him that had been on the cover of Life magazine. When he rose from behind his huge, mahogany desk, he was wearing a khaki shirt open at the neck and pleated khaki trousers. The famous, battered, heavily gold embroidered cap was sitting in MacArthur’s IN basket. Dailey looked for but did not see MacArthur’s famous corncob pipe.

  “General, may I present Lieutenant Colonel Dailey? Colonel, the Supreme Commander.”

  Dailey remembered that it was the Army’s odd custom to salute indoors, and did so. MacArthur returned it with a vague gesture toward his forehead and then offered that hand to Dailey.

  “We are very pleased to have you here, Colonel,” he said.

  “I am honored to be here, Sir.”

  “To clear the air between us, Colonel ...” MacArthur said, interrupting himself to say, “Please, be seated. There’s coffee of course, but it’s nearly seventeen hundred—what is it you sailors say? Time to sink the main brace?—and at that hour I always like a little pick-me-up.”

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  “There is no naval officer for whom I have higher professional or personal regard than Admiral Chester Nimitz,” MacArthur said, coming very quickly to the reason why Dailey was there. “I regard him as a brother.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “There has been some unfortunate talk of friction between us. That’s absolute rot. We have had some frank interchanges of thought, where we both approached problems from our different perspectives. Which is as it should be. We have resolved our differences without an iota of rancor. Isn’t that so, Willoughby?”

  “Absolutely, General.”

  “I don’t know how that sort of thing gets started,” MacArthur said. “All I know is that it does, and that it’s circulated so quickly that the Signal Corps should find out how and adapt the technique for themselves.”

  Dailey understood in a moment that the General had been witty, and he was expected to at least chuckle and smile. He did so.

  “General Willoughby’s got you settled all right, I presume. Decent quarters, a car, that sort of thing? Is there anything I can do to make Admiral Nimitz’s representative here feel more welcome than General Willoughby has?”

  “My quarters are fine, Sir. General Willoughby has been most gracious.”

  “No car, General,” Willoughby said. “I didn’t think about that.”

  “Sid, get on the phone and tell the headquarters commandant to arrange for a car for Colonel Bailey ...”

  “It’s ‘Dailey,’ General,” General Willoughby said.

  “Dailey then,” MacArthur said, his tone making it clear that he did not like to be either interrupted or corrected. “Effective immediately.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Huff said, and started to leave the room.

  “Sid,” MacArthur called after him, “Tell Sergeant Gomez that I have just decreed that it is seventeen hundred. He has his orders to be executed at that hour.”

  A moment later, a stocky Filipino Master Sergeant rolled in a tray loaded with liquor bottles, glasses, and a silver bowl full of ice.

  Five minutes or so later, one of the four telephones on MacArthur’s desk rang.

  Huff grabbed it on the second ring.

  “Office of the Supreme Commander, Colonel Huff.”

  He listened, then covered the mouthpiece with his hand.

  “General, it’s Lieutenant Hon. He has two MAGICS.” There’s that word MAGIC again. And it’s obviously important, or they wouldn’t be telling General MacArthur about it. Them. He said MAGICS. Plural. What the hell does it mean?

  “Ask him to bring them up,” MacArthur ordered. “Tell him General Willoughby is here.”

  Huff nodded.

  “Come up, Hon. General Willoughby is here.”

  MacArthur looked at Dailey.

  “Take your time, Bailey. Finish your drink. But when Pluto—Lieutenant Hon. Unusual fellow. He has a PhD in Mathematics from MIT; splendid bridge player—gets here, I’ll have to ask you to excuse me.”

  “Yes, of course, Sir.”

  “Do you play bridge, by chance, Bailey?”

  “Yes, Sir. I do.”

  “Well, Mrs. MacArthur and I like to think we play well. We’ll have to try that some evening.”

  “I would be honored, Sir.”

  “Make a note, Sid, to ask Colonel Bailey, when he’s had time to settle in, for bridge.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  A minute later, there was a knock at the door. A very large Asiatic of some sort wearing the insignia of an Army Signal Corps First Lieutenant walked in the room. He held two Top SECRET cover sheets in his hand.

  “Nothing startling, I hope, Pluto?” General MacArthur said.

  “I would say ‘interesting’ rather than ‘startling,’ Sir.”

  “Well, let’s see them,” MacArthur said. “Sid, you make sure Bailey here gets a car.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Glad to have you here, Bailey,” MacArthur said.

  “Thank you, Sir,” Dailey said. Huff ushered him out of the room.

  (Four)

  Sergeant John Marston Moore, USMCR, noticed Lieutenant Colonel George F. Dailey outside the building and wondered idly who he was. But then he put him out of his mind. The only thing really unusual about him was that he had aviator’s wings on his blouse. There were Marine officers commonly in and out of SWPA, for one reason or another, but this was the first aviator that Moore could remember seeing.

  He got into the elevator and rode it down to the basement. He showed his identity badge to the MP buck sergeant on guard in the passageway outside the elevator. Although they knew each other, he examined it carefully. And then Moore signed himself into the commo center.

  “They were looking all over for you last night and this morning,” the MP sergeant said. “You were supposed to be charge-of-quarters.”

  “I was moved out of the barracks,” Moore said.

  “I guess nobody told them. They were pissed.”

  “Fuck ‘em,” Moore said.

&
nbsp; “They were pissed, you better watch out,” the MP sergeant said. “The whole fucking war will be lost because you weren’t there to answer their fucking phone.”

  Moore chuckled, nodded at him, and went down the corridor. There was a steel door at the entrance to the cryptographic section. It was guarded by another MP, this one a corporal. He had another IN/OUT log.

  Moore went through that security check, and then unlocked the steel door where he, Pluto Hon, and, at least in theory, Mrs. Ellen Feller plied their trade.

  When he turned and locked himself inside, Pluto said, “I gather the Deaconess didn’t come with you? Prayer meeting, no doubt?”

  “She’s playing tennis,” Moore said. “She said that if it was anything interesting, I should bring it out to the house.”

  For what Moore thought were obvious reasons, Mrs. Feller did not like to spend any more time than she had to in their cubicle.

  “Tennis? That’s new.”

  “There’s half a dozen courts at the racetrack. She asked around, and they let her join.”

  “War is hell, isn’t it, Moore?”

  “She has nice legs,” Moore said, and immediately wondered why he had volunteered that. It was sure to result in a crack from Pluto. It came immediately.

  “It’s not nice to notice married women’s legs, Moore,” Pluto said, mockingly stern. “And how did you get to see them? Is something that I don’t know about going on at Water Lily Cottage between you and the Deaconess?”

  “She bought tennis clothes. You know. And she asked me if I thought they were too daring.”

  “And were they?”

  “Come on. No, of course not. They were hardly shorter than a regular dress.”

  “But short enough for you to notice her legs, right?”

  “I knew I made a mistake the minute I said that,” Moore said. “What came in?”

  I hope that gets him off the subject.

  Hon pushed a Top SECRET cover sheet off a thin sheaf of papers fresh from the crypto machine. He handed these to Moore.

  “The Nips may finally be getting off the dime,” he said.

  Moore read the intercepts.

  The most significant one was on top. It was from the Imperial General Staff in Tokyo, addressed to Vice Admiral Nishizo Tsukahara, commander of the 11th Air Fleet; and to Lieutenant General Harukichi Hyakutake, who commanded the 17th Army, whose headquarters were in Rabaul.

  It relieved the Navy of responsibility for dealing with the Americans on Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Gavutu, and gave it to the 17th Army.

  “What does Pearl Harbor make of this? I mean, wasn’t it expected?” Moore asked. “The Navy doesn’t have any troops they could use on Guadalcanal. If anyone is going to be able to throw us off, it will have to be the Jap Army.”

  “Pearl Harbor expected it,” Hon said. “Read the other ones.”

  The next intercepted message, also from the Imperial General Staff, was to a convoy of ships at sea. It directed the convoy commander to divert to Truk and off-load the Ichiki Butai.

  “That’s the 28th Infantry, 7th Division, right?” Moore asked. “The ones that were on Guam?”

  “Right. First class troops. Colonel Kiyano Ichiki. Two thousand of them.”

  The Japanese Army, Moore had learned, had the interesting habit of officially referring to outstanding units by the name of the commanding officer.

  The next intercepts, two of them, were an offer from the Japanese Navy to General Hyakutake of a battalion of Rikusentai “for use in connection with your new responsibility”; and his acceptance.

  The last two intercepts placed an infantry brigade in the Palau Islands under Hyakutake’s command and assigned the Ichiki Butai to him as soon as they reached “their next destination,” which of course a previous intercept had identified as Truk.

  “OK,” Moore said. “What are we looking for?”

  “You tell me. You’re the one always noticing things you shouldn’t, like missionary ladies’ legs.”

  “Ah, come on, Lieutenant!”

  “I’ll give you a hint,” Hon said. “Numbers. Ratios. That’s two hints.”

  “I don’t know what you mean?”

  “What do we have on Guadalcanal?”

  “I don’t know,” Moore replied, then thought about it and came up with an answer: “Less than a division, since they didn’t all get to land. Is that what you’re driving at?”

  “Plus the Raider Battalion, plus the Parachute Battalion, less the troops that didn’t make it onto the beach. A Division, about. Ten, twelve thousand troops.”

  “OK.”

  “I personally thought the estimate of Japanese on Guadalcanal at the time of the invasion was high, but let’s say it really was six thousand. For the sake of argument, let’s say there are four thousand effectives—I don’t think there are...”

  “OK,” Moore said, grasping Hon’s line of thought.

  “OK, what?”

  “How many Japs in a brigade?”

  “For the sake of argument, three thousand. It’s like one of our regimental combat teams. Basically an infantry regiment that they’ve augmented with artillery, and maybe some tanks, and some service troops.”

  “Three thousand in the brigade in the Palau Islands, plus two thousand in the Ichiki Butai on Truk, plus what? Five, six hundred in the Rikusentai battalion? Five thousand five hundred people. Plus the four thousand you say may be left on Guadalcanal. Ninety-five hundred, ten thousand.”

  “At the most optimistic,” Hon said, “they would have as many people there as we do. Much more likely, a couple of thousand less.”

  “And you can’t push an Army back in the sea unless you outnumber them—what? Two to one?”

  “Question,” Hon said. “Are we missing intercepts that authorize more troops than these? Probable answer, probably not. We know about the two divisions they intend to stage through Rabaul to use in New Guinea. So again, probably not.”

  “Question,” Moore picked up, “Do they not know how many men we have on Guadalcanal? Probable answer, they know damned well.”

  “So?”

  “Question, do they really think they are so much better soldiers than we are that they can kick us off Guadalcanal with the troops they have and the ones they’re sending? Answer : I don’t know. They are not stupid, but when they get their pride going, all bets are off.”

  “How about this? Question, are they only sending five thousand troops because they don’t have shipping to transport any more than that? Probable answer, I haven’t the faintest idea. Maybe there are enough ships and they intend to use them to move those two divisions from Rabaul to New Guinea with them, leaving Guadalcanal until later.”

  “So what we’re looking for is shipping information?” Moore asked.

  “One other thing. I have seen nothing in any of these intercepts that suggests the Japs are worried about our getting that airfield up and running. Does that mean they don’t think we can do it? Or they don’t understand what it will mean?”

  “How much more is there to go through?”

  “I’ve got another thirty intercepts.”

  “I’ll get on them,” Moore said.

  “The reason I was hoping you would bring the Deaconess with you was so that she could help. Why should we do all the work? She’s making all the money.”

  “Lieutenant,” Moore said, in mock shock and outrage, “that’s very ungentlemanly of you.”

  “I haven’t been admiring her legs. I don’t have to be gentlemanly.”

  “I’ll take the intercepts out to the cottage.”

  “I thought you said she was playing tennis?”

  “You don’t play tennis all afternoon.”

  “OK,” Hon said. “Now listen to me, John. I’m not pulling your leg. I don’t trust that woman. She looks to me like she has taken post graduate courses in how to take credit for what other people have done, while simultaneously keeping her own ass out of the line of fire.”

  “You bett
er go deeper into that,” Moore said.

  “So far, she has not put her ass on the line with any analysis we’ve taken to the Emperor. Think about it. So far we have been right. She’s getting credit for that, because they think she’s in charge. But if we had been wrong, I think she would have said, ‘Lieutenant Hon never discussed that with me.’ ”

  “You really think she’s that much of a bitch?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, there’s something damned cold about her, I’ll admit that.”

  “I want to make sure she reads every goddamned thing that comes through here. I don’t want her to be able to say she never saw something.”

  “What are you going to do about the Emperor?”

  “I’m going to call Sid Huff and tell him I have some MAGIC. What you read. Before we offer an analysis, I want the Deaconess’s two cents.”

  “I’m on my way,” Moore said.

  “Take a pistol and use the chain on the briefcase. Do it by the book, Sergeant.”

  “OK.”

  “Do I have to tell you that making a pass at the Deaconess would earn you a prize for Stupid Action of the Century?”

  “Jesus Christ, that never entered my mind.”

  “Bullshit. That leg crack didn’t just pop into your head.”

  “Believe what you want. But rest assured, the lady’s virtue is in no danger from me.”

  “OK. One final thing. Did you know that you’re on the AWOL report this morning?”

  “I heard they were looking for me.”

  “Well, you are. I think I fixed it. But you better not go anywhere near the headquarters company barracks until I know for sure.”

  “Don’t worry about that either,” Moore said.

  He picked the briefcase off the floor, opened it, and set it on the table. Hon put the intercepts into it—it looked more like fifty or sixty than thirty, Moore thought. And then Moore closed the briefcase and snapped the handcuff around his wrist. Hon took a .45 Colt automatic from a file cabinet. Moore hoisted the skirt of his tunic and put the pistol in the small of his back under his trouser waistband.