In Danger's Path

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Sounds fine. Have at it.”

  “Jake, I need the number-three China map on the screen,” Banning said.

  Jake Dillon had once been a sergeant in the 4th Marines in Shanghai. To the surprise of many people—including himself—he’d been directly commissioned as a major, USMCR. At that time, he was Vice President, Public Relations, of Metro-Magnum Motion Picture Studios. It had been the belief of certain senior officers within the Marine Corps that he would be of great value performing similar duties for the Marine Corps.

  In that capacity, he had led a team of still and motion picture cameramen onto the beach during the invasion of Guadalcanal. But then he had been pressed into service by General Pickering—they were friends before the war—when Pickering was staging a covert operation on the Japanese-occupied island of Buka. He proved as adept at covert operations as at placing the names of motion picture stars onto the front pages of newspapers. To the great annoyance of the Marine Corps publicity people Pickering had again pressed him into service, this time permanently, by having him transferred to the OSS shortly after Pickering’s presidential appointment.

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Dillon said, and went to the slide projector. In a moment a map of the northern area of China, from Peking (Beijing) north across Mongolia (including the Gobi Desert) to the Russian border, and west to the borders of Kazakhstan and Kyr.

  “Captain McCoy, Gunny Zimmerman, and I,” Banning began, “have spent most of the past two days discussing this area, with emphasis on the Gobi Desert, which is where Howard thinks we need a weather station.”

  “Right in the middle of it would be nice, Ed,” Colonel H. J. Hazeltine said.

  “Gunny Zimmerman is personally familiar with the area,” Banning said. “Which means we can send the National Geographic magazines back to the library.”

  There were appreciative chuckles.

  “How well do you know the area, Sergeant?” the Deputy Director (Operations) asked.

  There was a silence.

  “Sir, Zimmerman has made two trips across the desert with camel caravans,” McCoy answered for him. “One to the Russian border, and one to the Indian border.”

  “Yes, sir,” Zimmerman confirmed.

  “How did that come to be, Sergeant?” the DDO asked.

  “Sir, Gunny Zimmerman operated what you might call an import-export business,” Banning answered for Zimmerman.

  The DDO looked at Zimmerman, who nodded his head.

  “The details of which are not, in my judgment, important to us here,” Banning went on. Zimmerman looked relieved. “What is important is that Zimmerman is familiar with the workings of the cross-border import-export business and, probably more important, is personally acquainted with a number of people in the business.”

  Banning waited for that to sink in, then added: “And so is his wife. Who, Zimmerman believes, may be in a small village, Paotow-Zi, which is twenty or thirty miles downriver from Baotou.”

  He indicated the position on the map.

  “I don’t know if I should ask you, Ed, or Zimmerman, but why does he think his wife is in this village?” Rickabee asked.

  “Sir,” McCoy said, “Zimmerman owns a farm there, and a sausage factory. When we pulled out of Shanghai, he told her to go there.”

  “‘Pulled out of Shanghai’?” the DDO asked. “What do you mean by that, Captain?”

  “When the Fourth Marines were sent to the Philippines, sir,” McCoy said.

  “Did you know about Zimmerman’s wife, Ed?” Rickabee asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Pity. She might have been useful.”

  “Zimmerman told his wife,” Banning said, “to try to make it into India when she thought it would be safe. She would then find an American consulate, or legation—some American agency—and give them the name of Zimmerman’s mother here. The idea was to get Mrs. Zimmerman and their children to the United States.”

  “That hasn’t happened, I gather,” the DDO said. “I mean, there has been no word from Mrs. Zimmerman?”

  “No, sir,” Banning said.

  “Does that mean we can presume she’s still in this village? Paotow-Zi, you said?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Fritz—excuse me, General—have you any assets in that area? Can we find out?” Haughton asked.

  “You can call me Fritz in here, David,” Rickabee said. “We’re among friends. But don’t forget to kiss my stars when you leave the room.” He waited for the chuckles to die down, then went on: “Simple answer is ‘yes.’ It would mean diverting them from other things…for what, ten days, two weeks? It would probably be three weeks before we had an answer. How important is finding out?”

  “Let’s come back to that in a minute,” Pickering said.

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Rickabee said. “But, Gunny, as soon as possible, go to Management Analysis and tell Captain Sessions everything you can about your wife and children and this village.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Zimmerman said.

  “I told Ed that, as I see it, our first priority is to establish contact with the people in the Gobi Desert,” General Pickering went on. “And to see what ideas Zimmerman had about how to do that.”

  “McCoy,” Banning said.

  “Sir,” McCoy began, “Zimmerman feels—with a lot of ifs, and a lot of money—that it may be possible to get radios into the people in the Gobi Desert.”

  “Money’s not a problem,” the DDO said. “What are the other ifs?”

  “The first is a question, sir,” McCoy said. “What kind of radios do we send them? They’d have to be transported by camel. Weight would be a problem. We’d have to talk to some expert in Navy Communications—maybe, better, the Army’s Signal Corps…”

  “Collins Radio,” Captain Haughton said. “In Cedar Rapids, Iowa.”

  “What about Collins Radio?” Pickering asked.

  “You remember when Admiral Byrd went to the Antarctic a couple of years before the war?”

  Grunts indicated everyone remembered Admiral Byrd’s Antarctic expedition. Some of them were dubious: What the hell does Admiral Byrd and the Antarctic have to do with this?

  “Well, the Navy couldn’t maintain radio communication with him. The communications experts were very embarrassed. But a radio amateur, a chap named Collins, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, could talk to Byrd. And did. Just about all the time. That was even more embarrassing. But the point of this is that after this happened, the Navy has spent a lot of money with Collins. He’s become the expert in difficult radio communications.”

  “Wouldn’t his equipment be heavy-duty stuff?” Colonel Jack (NMI) Stecker asked. “We’re talking about moving this stuff on camels.”

  “We won’t know what he’s got, will we, until we ask him?” Pickering said. “Specifically, until Banning asks him.” He looked at Banning and added, “As soon as possible.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Banning said.

  “Jumping way ahead,” Colonel Hazeltine said. “Presuming we establish contact with these people and provide them with the necessary meteorological equipment, could we move their expendables in to them by camel caravan?”

  “I don’t think we’d better count on that,” Pickering said. “But let’s get back to Zimmerman’s plan to get the first radio in to these people?”

  “Radios, sir,” McCoy said. “Zimmerman thinks the way to do this is to join up with caravans about to go back into Mongolia. Three, four different caravans, maybe as many as six. When they bring back evidence that they delivered the radios to Americans in the Gobi, we give them money—which means gold—enough to make them hungry for more.”

  “But…I see what you mean, Captain, by ‘a lot of ifs’…but if we get the radios to these people, wouldn’t they get on the air to us?” the DDO asked. “We would know if they had them. We’d be talking to them.”

  “Yes, sir. But Zimmerman said if we pay them anyway, they would be available to carry other stuff in. I don’t know what the Colonel meant by �
�expendables’…”

  “Balloons, for example. To check the winds aloft,” Colonel Hazeltine explained.

  “Okay,” Pickering said.

  “Then there’s the problem of cryptography,” Haughton said. “We don’t dare send in a code book.”

  “Sir, we figure the simple substitution code we used for Buka and Mindanao will work just fine here.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” the DDO said.

  “Sir,” McCoy said, “we worked out a system to establish as secure as possible communication with a Coastwatcher team on Buka. And we used the same system to communicate with General Fertig on Mindanao. It worked twice, and there’s no reason it wouldn’t work here.”

  “How does it work?” the DDO asked.

  “Sir, it’s a simple substitution code, using personal data of people we both know and the Japanese have no way of knowing—their mother’s maiden name, the name of somebody, or something.”

  “Any simple substitution code is easy to crack,” the DDO said.

  “Yes, sir,” McCoy agreed. “But it enables us to establish initial contact. It would be enough for them to tell us where they are, and for us to tell them when the weather team is coming in.”

  “Zimmerman,” Pickering asked, “you think we can get radios into these people?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where would you meet them?”

  “Let me have China number two on the screen, Jake, please,” Banning said.

  A moment later, a map of northern China appeared on the screen.

  “Somewhere in here, sir,” Banning said, pointing to the map. “In the Gobi itself, on one of the caravan routes operating out of Ulaanbaatar.”

  “That’s assuming the caravans are still operating,” the DDO asked. “In wartime?”

  “Yes, sir,” Banning said. “These caravans have been operating for centuries. A little thing like World War Two isn’t going to stop them.”

  There were chuckles.

  “A main caravan route runs between Ulaanbaatar, in the Gobi, toward India. We believe the Americans will try to make it into India,” Banning said.

  “Why not just head for Chungking?” the DDO asked.

  Chungking was then the seat of the Chinese Nationalist government. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, the head of the Nationalist government since 1928 and the leader of the Nationalist Chinese during World War II, had retreated before the Japanese to Chungking, where they operated from bomb-shelter caves.

  “They wouldn’t be sure our Chinese would be there by the time they got there,” McCoy said. “And that’s bandit country.”

  “Bandit country?” the DDO asked.

  “Warlords, sometimes aligned with Chiang Kai-shek, sometimes with the Communists, and always ready to steal whatever they can from anybody. They don’t operate in the Gobi because there’s not much to steal there, and also because they use the caravans to smuggle things into Russia and India.”

  “According to Zimmerman,” Banning went on, pointing to the map as he spoke, “Ulaanbaatar is the marketplace, the transshipment point, so to speak, for caravans moving all over that area. Into the interior of China, to India, and, for that matter, into Russia.”

  “Have you been there, Sergeant?” the Deputy Director (Operations) asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I think we’re at the point where we can come up with some sort of plan,” Pickering said, “and start putting it into execution…even though whatever we start will almost certainly have to be changed. I hate that, but I don’t think we have any choice.”

  There were no objections.

  “Okay, Ed, tell us what you and McCoy are thinking,” Pickering said.

  “Given that the priority, sir, is establishing reliable communications with the people in the Gobi,” Banning replied, “I think we should get Zimmerman and radios to China—into Ulaanbaatar, if that can be done—as quickly as possible.”

  “Zimmerman, radios, and gold,” McCoy said. “Any radios we can put our hands on right now. With handcranked generators. We can get better radios into the Gobi on the airplane. Airplanes. What we have to do is set up communication with those people.”

  “Fritz,” Pickering asked, “did you ever send anybody with a MAGIC clearance to Chiang Kai-shek?”

  “What’s that all about?” the DDO asked. “What about Chiang Kai-shek and MAGIC?”

  “I had dinner with the President, Frank Knox, and Admiral Leahy just before I went back to the Pacific…When the hell was that?”

  “Fourteen October 1942,” General Rickabee furnished from memory.

  “…where I learned that the President had decided to bring Mountbatten and Chiang Kai-shek in on MAGIC. Over the objections of Knox and Leahy.”

  Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, the great-grandson of Queen Victoria, commanded Allied operations in China, Burma, and India.

  “Why?” the DDO asked incredulously. “That strikes me as a hell of a good way to compromise MAGIC.”

  “Which, I think, is why Leahy and Knox objected,” Pickering said. “But the point is that he told me to find people with a MAGIC clearance we could send to India and China. This, of course, took place before the President decided to send me over here?”

  “The answer to your question, General,” Rickabee said, “is that I had just about decided to send Colonel Banning to Chungking. This, of course, was before you decided to send him over here.”

  “Do I detect a needle in there somewhere, General?”

  “No, sir,” Rickabee answered with monumental insincerity.

  “Chungking is where we want to send Colonel Banning now, right? And Sergeant Zimmerman,” the DDO said, then added: “And presumably Captain McCoy?”

  “That makes sense, Ken,” Pickering said, looking at McCoy.

  “Aye, aye, sir,” McCoy said.

  “If we send Banning to Chungking—Chiang Kai-shek—now,” Pickering said, “that would mean we would have a MAGIC communications team we control. And it would give us Special Channel communications.”

  “Yeah,” the DDO said, and then asked, “Does the President want Chiang Kai-shek to have unlimited access to MAGIC material?”

  “I don’t know about the President, but I don’t think Frank Knox and Admiral Leahy do,” Pickering said. “Which means we would have in Banning someone who could immediately give to Chiang Kai-shek MAGIC material which would be of interest to him. And not—”

  “I take your point, General,” the DDO said.

  “What about the cryptographers?” Banning asked. “I’m sure the British would be delighted to have some of their men trained—”

  “But if we have our own men, that wouldn’t be necessary, would it?” Pickering interrupted. “The question is, do we have anyone?”

  “Me, sir,” 2nd Lieutenant Hart said. It was the first time he had opened his mouth.

  “Yeah,” Pickering said thoughtfully.

  “No,” Rickabee said. “You need Hart.”

  “McCoy?” the DDO asked. “Or do you plan to use him operationally?”

  “I don’t think Ken should have a MAGIC clearance,” Pickering said.

  Which is one way of telling me I’m going into the goddamned Gobi Desert, McCoy thought.

  “Hart,” McCoy asked, “how long did it take them to teach you to operate the machine?”

  “Four, five days, before they’d let me at it by myself,” Hart said.

  “The Easterbunny,” McCoy said, looking at Pickering.

  “‘The Easterbunny’?” the DDO asked.

  “Second Lieutenant Robert F. Easterbrook,” Pickering said. “One of the officers I brought with me.” He turned to McCoy. “Yeah,” he said. “Where is he?”

  “I sent him over to the Smithsonian,” McCoy said. “To improve his mind.”

  “Where’s he staying?”

  “With me, sir. He and Zimmerman.”

  “That must be cozy,” Pickering said, smiling.

  “I can
give you Sergeant Rutterman,” Rickabee said. “He told me he’s going stir-crazy in Washington, and I told him the first thing that came along…”

  “Could he teach Easterbrook what he has to know?” Pickering asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That would give us two. We need three, at least,” Pickering said.

  “General,” Hart asked, “do you think Colonel Waterson has had time to select and train two of his officers? I’m thinking of Moore, sir. That would also give Colonel Banning an analyst.”

  “Fritz, you’re right,” Pickering said. “I really can’t do without Hart.” He turned to Hart. “As soon as we’re finished here, George, Special Channel Colonel Waterson and tell him that as soon as he has two people up and running with MAGIC, he should be prepared to send Lieutenant Moore to…Where do I tell him to send him?”

  “We’ve got a couple of days to determine that,” Rickabee said.

  “You know what to say to Waterson, George,” Pickering said.

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Is there a MAGIC machine at this country club I keep hearing so much about?” Pickering asked.

  “There is, for training purposes, but I don’t think it’s connected with the network. Or, for that matter, has current codes,” the DDO replied.

  “All you need is the machine, sir,” Hart said, “to teach someone how to use it.”

  “We’re going to need a staging area and quarters,” Pickering said. “And despite the patriotic generosity of American Personal Pharmaceuticals in offering their quarters, I think maybe we better move to the Country Club.”

  “No problem,” the DDO said. “And I’m not even going to ask what American Personal Pharmaceuticals has to do with anything.”

  Banning and Rickabee chuckled.

  “I’ll call out there and tell them to give you whatever you need,” the DDO went on. “What do you think that will be?”

  “Quarters for Lieutenant Easterbrook and Sergeants Zimmerman and Rutterman,” Pickering said. “On-call quarters for Banning, McCoy, and Jake. A place to store the radios and whatever else we’re going to send to China. On that subject, Jake, I don’t think Banning will have the time to go to Collins Radio. You can do that, after you and McCoy lay your hands on what is immediately available.”