In Danger's Path

by W. E. B Griffin

  “General Stillwell wants to talk to you before you talk to Generals Dempsey and Newley. What I’m thinking of doing is sending you there with last night’s Special Channel and this one—and Lieutenant Moore.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I don’t want General Stillwell to get the idea we’re not showing him everything he has every right to know,” Pickering said. “And I want him to meet Moore and to know what Moore’s function is. That make sense to you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That ‘yes, sir,’ Platt,” Pickering said, “was not an automatic reflex on Banning’s part. If he doesn’t agree with me, he says so. I want you to do the same thing.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s not hard, Colonel,” Banning said. “The boss is usually right.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere, Colonel Banning,” Pickering said. “And while you’re with General Stillwell, Platt will show me his Opplan.”

  “Makes sense, sir,” Banning said.

  “And when you have finished with General Stillwell, Ed, you go find McCoy.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Banning said. “I’ll try, sir.”

  “I’m really getting concerned, Ed.”

  “I don’t think he would take off without telling me,” Banning said.

  “The operative words in that sentence, Ed, are ‘I don’t think.’”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You have any ideas on that subject, Platt?” Pickering asked.

  “Chungking is a large city, General,” Platt said. “If someone wants to make himself scarce here, it’s not hard.”

  “Even for two Westerners with beards?” Pickering asked.

  “He’s right, General,” Banning began. “I’ll look—”

  “If the plane is leaving at four,” Pickering interrupted him. “That means Colonel Waterson will have to leave here at three. Be back here by then, Ed. Whatever you learn from Dempsey and Newley I’ll want Waterson to know so that he can tell MacArthur the minute he gets to Australia.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  [THREE]

  OSS Station

  Chungking, China

  1450 8 April 1943

  After breakfast, Pickering and Hart followed Platt to his office, which had been set up for a briefing. On either side of a blackboard, there were two easels, supporting maps covered with a sheet of canvas. Four armchairs faced the easels and blackboard.

  “Sir,” Lieutenant Colonel Platt said to Pickering a little uneasily, “I’m aware, sir, of what you said about no more information about Operation Gobi being made available to my people without your permission…”

  “But?”

  “Captain Sampson has spent a good deal of time with my proposed Opplan. He knows details about it I don’t.”

  “And you would like him in on this?”

  “The truth is, he can give you a better briefing than I can.”

  “Okay,” Pickering said. “Let’s get on with it.”

  The briefing lasted more than an hour, and Captain Sampson did a good job, calling to Pickering’s attention facts about the Gobi Desert that he had not learned in Washington. Platt’s proposed Opplan—mostly written by Sampson, Pickering quickly concluded—to go into the Gobi and establish a weather station had obviously been given a good deal of thought. With one major exception, Pickering could find nothing wrong with it. The one exception: Despite Platt’s obvious ability and experience in China, and Sampson’s intelligent attack on the problem, the two of them had no more idea how to find the Americans thought to be in the desert than he did.

  Platt’s Opplan was essentially based on the premise that the Americans could not be found. It was also obvious that neither of them thought much of the idea of sending the meteorological team into the Gobi on Navy reconnaissance aircraft. The phrasing they used was, of course, polite: “In the event transport of the meteorological personnel and equipment by Naval aircraft proves not to be feasible…”

  “In the event that it proves impossible to locate the American personnel believed to be somewhere in the Gobi Desert…”

  The tone of the Opplan made it clear that they regarded “in the event” to be as likely as the sun rising.

  Practically, their Opplan called for two companies of Nationalist Chinese infantry, mounted on trucks, accompanied by a six-man team of OSS agents. These would take the meteorologists and their equipment through the desert on known caravan routes until they found the Americans who were supposed to be there.

  In the event Americans could not be found, the weather station would be in the desert ready to go to work. Meanwhile, the two companies of Chinese infantry would provide adequate security for the weather station against the possibility that the Japanese would learn they were there, and against the bands of bandits roving the area.

  After the briefing, Pickering made no comments, announcing—truthfully—that before he offered his own thoughts he wanted to think it over, and discuss it with both Banning and Captain McCoy, if and when he turned up. At one point, however, he openly disagreed with Platt, when Platt announced that “Chungking agents have more experience in this sort of thing than Captain McCoy does, and that certainly is not intended as a reflection on Captain McCoy.”

  The implication was clear: he and Sampson didn’t think McCoy was necessary, and further that he would get in the way of the local experts. Pickering decided he couldn’t let that pass unchallenged. “I don’t think there is anyone in the Marine Corps, or the OSS, better equipped for this sort of thing than Captain McCoy,” he said. “And no matter what we ultimately decide is the best way to go about doing what we have to do, McCoy will be involved.”

  Am I doing the right thing? he immediately wondered. Platt has offered me a perfectly valid reason for not sending McCoy off—again—on a dangerous mission.

  And how much is my ego involved: Bill Donovan will be delighted to report to Leahy and the President that, “once he got over there, Pickering decided that the OSS people on the scene were better able to carry out the mission than that young captain he had originally put in charge.”

  Pickering spent the rest of the morning reading Platt’s after-action reports of the various operations OSS Chungking station had carried out.

  After making half a dozen trips to the filing cabinet, taking out one file at a time and then replacing it when he was finished, he finally—with Hart helping—took all the files from the cabinet and stacked them on the floor on the right side of his armchair, and then as he read them, stacked them, none too neatly, on the left.

  The files showed that Platt, generously using OSS non-accountable funds, had been running a wide range of generally successful operations intended to harass the Japanese and/or garner information about their troop dispositions. As he read through them, Pickering had a growing feeling that Platt really knew what he was doing here, and that he himself did not.

  I’m a mariner, a business executive. What the hell am I doing in the intelligence business, trying to tell—from a position of monumental ignorance—people who know all about this sort of thing how they should do it?

  McCoy—the missing McCoy—was never out of his mind for long, and McCoy was the first thing that came to his lips when Brigadier General H. A. Albright, USA, and Lieutenant Colonel Edward J. Banning, USMC, came into Platt’s office.

  “You find McCoy, Ed?”

  “I have no idea where he might be, General,” Banning said.

  “For the good news, General…” Albright said.

  “Let’s have some of that,” Pickering said.

  “We talked to Dempsey and Newley. General Stillwell had them come to his office, and we talked in his conference room. Banning and I are agreed that they are telling the truth when they say that, with the exception of Dempsey’s sergeant major, they told no one else about MAGIC.”

  “And the sergeant major?”

  “He told us that it went no further,” Banning said. “I believe him.”

  “Maybe bec
ause he felt that was what you wanted to hear?”

  “I don’t think so, sir. I believe him.”

  “What do we do about him?” General Albright asked.

  “That would seem to be up to you, Hugh,” Pickering said. “You’re going to need a sergeant major.”

  “I think I’ll keep him,” Albright said. “He understands the importance of MAGIC now, for sure. Banning really read the riot act to him.”

  “Your decision, Hugh. But I think you had better apply that ‘no duty in which there is any chance at all that he would be captured’ restriction to the sergeant major.”

  “He was a cryptographer at one time,” Albright said. “Since he already has his nose under the tent flap, how do you feel about getting him a MAGIC clearance? Banning’ s going to need more people to handle the Special Channel than he has.”

  “Up to you.”

  “No, sir. It’s up to you.”

  “Ed?”

  “I’d go along with him,” Banning said. “Rutterman likes him.”

  “Okay, then. I wouldn’t even mention his name to Waterson when we tell him he can tell MacArthur we think the genie didn’t get out of the bottle.”

  “You’re going to have to let Washington know that, too,” Albright said.

  “Draft a message for me to Admiral Leahy, copy to Donovan, Ed, please, right here and now. I don’t know the jargon.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “There’s a typewriter over there,” Pickering said, pointing. “Do it now, so I can have a look at it before I take Waterson to the airport.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “And there is more good news,” Albright said. “Stillwell seemed pleased with Lieutenant Moore. He apparently fancies himself an analyst of the Japanese mind himself. And he told me I can consider myself his signal officer, not just acting.”

  “I like him,” Pickering said. “In his shoes, I think I would have been just as angry.”

  There was another knock at the door. Banning opened it. Colonel Waterson was standing there.

  “Sir, I’m going to have to leave for the airport right about now,” he said.

  “I’ll see you off,” Pickering said. “George, can you find the airport?”

  “Yes, sir, I’m sure I can.”

  “Then get us one of those Studebakers, without a driver. Then I can talk to Colonel Waterson on the way.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  General Pickering rode to the airfield with Colonel Waterson in the backseat of the Studebaker. After Waterson was safely aboard the B-17 and the aircraft had taken off, Pickering got in the front seat beside Hart for the trip back into town. Five hundred yards beyond the gate, as they drove down the dirt road paralleling the runway, Pickering became aware of a horn bleating imperiously behind them. He turned and looked out the rear window. “It’s an ambulance with the red crosses painted over,” he said. “Let him by, George.”

  “Goddamn Chinamen,” Hart said, and steered to the left of the road. He cursed again when the Studebaker leaned precariously with its right wheels in the ditch beside the road. The ambulance pulled parallel but did not move ahead. Hart got a brief glimpse of a Chinese officer in the passenger seat. He was gesturing for Hart to pull over.

  “I don’t like this, General,” Hart said. Hart’s hand was inside his overcoat, obviously reaching for his pistol.

  Then the ambulance cut them off, and Hart slammed on the brakes.

  Pickering took out his pistol and worked the action. He noticed that Hart merely pulled the hammer back on his pistol. “You better charge that piece, George,” he said.

  “I carry it charged,” Hart said matter-of-factly. He was now holding the pistol in a position essentially out of sight from outside, but from which he could easily fire it through his side window.

  The passenger door of the ambulance opened and the Chinese officer stepped out and walked back toward the Studebaker. He was wearing a well-tailored Nationalist Chinese army uniform, complete to a shiny Sam Browne belt, from which hung a molded leather pistol holster.

  “Oh, shit!” General Pickering said.

  The Chinese officer walked to the driver’s side of the Studebaker, leaned down to it, and smiled. Hart cranked the window down.

  “Do you realize, young man,” the Chinese officer said, “that you were going forty-five in a twenty-five mile zone?”

  “McCoy, goddamn you,” Brigadier General Pickering said. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Good afternoon, sir,” McCoy said. “Sir, I didn’t know for sure until about half past one that you were here.”

  “You sonofabitch,” Pickering said. “I’m really glad to see you.”

  “I’m glad to see you, too, sir,” McCoy said. “I’m even glad to see your dog-robber. You can put your pistol away now, George.”

  “He almost shot you,” Pickering said. “Goddamn it!”

  “He’s probably a lousy shot, sir.”

  “Was this necessary?” Pickering said. “Why didn’t you just go to the OSS house?”

  “I’m not one of Colonel Platt’s favorite people, sir. And I wanted to talk to you before he made good on his promise to have me thrown in the stockade.”

  “Who’s driving the ambulance?” Pickering asked.

  “Zimmerman, sir.”

  “Well, tell him to follow us to the OSS house,” Pickering said. “And then get in here.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” McCoy said. Then he added, to Lieutenant Hart, “You have an honest face, young man. I’m going to let you off with a warning this time.”

  “Fuck you, McCoy!”

  McCoy laughed and walked to the ambulance, which immediately started to move out of the way. He started back to the Studebaker.

  “I’ll be a sonofabitch if he doesn’t look like a Chinese, dressed up that way,” Hart said. “I wonder what the hell that’s all about?”

  “Me, too, George,” Pickering said, and waited for McCoy to get in the backseat.

  McCoy got in the backseat of the car and closed the door. Pickering turned to look at him, resting his arm on the back of the front seat. “First things first, Ken,” he began. “Tell me about your run-in with Colonel Platt.”

  “Sir, I don’t know how much Colonel Banning told you about telling me to make myself scarce?”

  “You tell me, Ken.”

  “First, he told me that Zimmerman and I were detached from the guard detail. Then he told me that he had been ordered—by the army signal officer here, the one that’s in arrest-to-quarters now.…What’s that all about?”

  “One thing at a time, Ken.”

  “Yes, sir. Then he told me he had been ordered by the signal officer here to order me to report to OSS station Chungking. But that since I had been detached, he could no longer give me orders. Can I talk out of school?”

  “You can always talk out of school to me, Ken,” Pickering said.

  “That wasn’t hard to figure out. Colonel Banning didn’t want me to report to the OSS here. Until that moment, I didn’t even know there was an OSS station here.”

  “Neither did Banning until he got that order from General Dempsey,” Pickering said.

  “He told me that, sir.”

  “And neither did I. If it makes you feel any better, Ken, the man responsible for not telling us, your friend the OSS Deputy Director for Administration, is now in St. Elizabeth’s.”

  “For not telling you about an OSS station here?” McCoy asked incredulously, and then, a moment later, added, “Oh.”

  My God, he knows!

  “Explain that ‘Oh!’, Ken.”

  “I’m guessing, sir.”

  “Guess.”

  “I heard—what, four, five days later—that General Dempsey and the other one?”

  “Newley?”

  “Yes, sir. That they had been placed in arrest to quarters. That had to be serious; they don’t relieve general officers without good reason. And then Colonel Waterson shows up from Brisbane, and right
after him, Colonel Albright, now a general himself, and takes General Dempsey’s place. And now you tell me that the guy from the OSS has been put in St. Elizabeth’s. The only explanation for that is MAGIC.”

  “What do you know about MAGIC, Ken?”

  “It’s only another guess, sir,” McCoy replied.

  “Guess.”

  “First of all, it’s a special cryptographic system, one that regular crypto people don’t know anything about. With special crypto devices. Which we brought here.”

  “Anything else?”

  “It has something to do with Japanese cryptography. Pluto and Moore are analysts, as well as crypto people. That looks to me like we’ve broken Japanese codes, are reading their communications, and damned sure don’t want them to even suspect we are.”

  “I’m not going to comment on your guesses, Captain McCoy,” Pickering said. “But I am going to give you a direct order.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You are forbidden to discuss with anyone, except Colonel Banning or myself, in any manner whatsoever, anything connected with MAGIC.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  All I have done, of course, is let him know his guesses are right on the money.

  “How did you hear about General Dempsey being placed in arrest?”

  “I sent Zimmerman to the NCO club to find out whatever he could.”

  “In uniform, presumably, and freshly shaven?”

  “Yes, sir, the beards were the first thing to go. They made us stand out like a couple of whores in church.”

  “And the word was out that General Dempsey had been relieved?”

  “Yes, sir. Nobody seems to know why. I sent Zimmerman back another time to see if he could find out, and what the NCO’s were saying…I’m not sure you want to hear this, General.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “That they were queer,” McCoy said.

  “MAGIC never came up?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Go on, Ken.”

  “So I put on my uniform and went to the OSS house to see what I could find out. I was hoping to see Colonel Banning, but he wasn’t there. Colonel Platt was.”

  “And?”

  “I showed him my ONI credentials and told him I was Navy Intelligence, and was looking for Colonel Banning. That didn’t work too well. He had my name from someplace. Probably this General Dempsey gave it to him. And he told me he knew that I was in the OSS, that he knew all about Operation Gobi, and told me I was now under the orders of the OSS station here. Meaning him. I told him, with respect, that I couldn’t put myself or Zimmerman under his orders.”