Under Fire

by Griffin, W. E. B.

  McCoy had a lot of questions to ask, but Hart had made it clear that they shouldn’t be asked in the hearing of the CIC agent/staff car driver Willoughby had assigned to “ensure General Pickering’s security.”

  He got out of the car and walked through the gate toward the house.

  The door to the house slid open. A female that Captain Kenneth R. McCoy sincerely believed was the most beautiful woman in the world came out.

  Maybe you can’t gild a lily, but Jesus, Ernie never looked that good before!

  Mrs. Ernestine McCoy was wearing an ankle-length elaborately embroidered black silk kimono.

  She bowed, in the Japanese manner.

  “Welcome home, most honorable husband,” she said.

  I am so goddamned dirty it would be obscene to get close to, much less hug, something that beautiful.

  “Hey, baby,” he said. His voice sounded strange.

  Ernie turned and reached through the open door and came back with what looked very much as if it was a double scotch.

  “I hope my humble offering of something to drink pleases my honorable husband,” Ernie said and, bowing again, handed him the drink.

  “What’s with the Japanese-woman routine?” McCoy asked, taking the drink.

  “I hoped that my honorable husband would be pleased,” Ernie said.

  “Your honorable husband is delighted,” McCoy said. “Have you got one of those for Zimmerman?”

  “For Zimmerman-san and Hart-san, honorable husband, ” Ernie said, and signaled through the door.

  A Japanese woman came out with two drinks on a tray. Ernie took them one at a time and, bowing to Zimmerman and Hart, gave them to them.

  “Hey, Ernie,” Zimmerman said. “Could you get Mae-Su to think along these lines?”

  “You’ll have to do that yourself, Honorable Zimmerman-san,” Ernie said.

  “Baby, I really need a bath,” McCoy said. “You don’t want to know where Ernie and I have been.”

  “I can make a good guess from the way you smell, honorable husband,” Ernie said.

  “The only difference between a Korean outhouse and a Korean rice field,” Zimmerman said, “is that some of the outhouses have roofs.”

  Ernestine Sage McCoy, still playing the Japanese wife, put her hands in front of her chest, palms together, stood to one side, bowed, and indicated that her husband was supposed to go into the house.

  The living room, too, was unchanged from the last time he’d been in the house. McCoy had presumed their furniture was in a shipping crate somewhere, but he didn’t know. Ernie took care of the house and everything connected with it.

  He walked through the living room into the bedroom, also unchanged. The sheets on the bed were even turned down. He stuck his head in the bathroom, saw towels on the racks, and went inside and started to undress. He really wanted to put his arms around Ernie, and he couldn’t do that reeking of the mud of human feces-fertilized Korean rice fields.

  When he was naked, he turned the shower on, stepped into the glass walled stall, and let the water run over him for a full minute before even trying to soap himself.

  He closed his eyes when he soaped his head and hair and was startled after a moment when he felt Ernie’s arms around him, her breasts pressing against his back.

  He raised his face to the showerhead, and after a moment opened his eyes and turned in his wife’s arms and held her to him. She raised her face to his, and they kissed.

  She caught his hand and directed it to her stomach.

  “It’s starting to show,” she said, softly. He caressed her stomach for a moment, and then, with a groan, picked her up and carried her out of the shower to the bed.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on?” Ken McCoy asked.

  Ernie was lying with her head on his chest, her legs thrown over his.

  “Going on about what?”

  “About everything,” he said. “The house, the Japanese-wife routine. Everything.”

  “Well, they’re sort of tied together,” Ernie said.

  “Start with the house,” he said. “How did we get it back? General Pickering?”

  “Actually, it’s ours,” Ernie said.

  “What do you mean, ‘ours’?”

  “We own it,” she said.

  “How come we own it?”

  “Well, when I went to the housing office when we first came to Japan, what they were going to give us was a captain’s apartment—a captain/no children’s apartment. They give out quarters on the size of the family. A captain/no children gets one bedroom and a bedroom/study. I didn’t like what they showed me, and I knew you wouldn’t, so I went house-hunting. . . .”

  “And bought this, and didn’t tell me?”

  “I didn’t tell you because you thought our having money was going to hurt your Marine Corps career,” she said. “I was willing to go along with that, but the quarters were different. I didn’t want to live in that lousy little apartment. You really want to hear all of this?”

  “All of it,” he said.

  “Okay. If you don’t like what they offer you, you can ‘go on the economy,’ and if you can find something to rent that your housing allowance will pay for, they’ll rent it for you.”

  “You said you bought it?”

  “What you can rent on a captain’s housing allowance is just about what they have, a dinky little apartment. So I made a deal with the Japanese real estate guy. I would buy this place. He would say he was renting it to me. They would send him a check for your housing allowance, which he would turn over to me.”

  “Jesus!”

  “Then, when they sent us home, I figured it would sell better with furniture in it . . . No, that’s not true. I wanted to sell the furniture, except for a few really personal things— that Ming vase we bought in Taipei, for example. When we started our new, out-of-the-Marine-Corps life, I didn’t want you to remember, every time you sat on the couch or something, how they had crapped all over you.”

  McCoy said nothing.

  “So it didn’t sell while we were in the States,” she said. “So when you and Uncle Flem came back, I called the real estate guy and told him to take it off the market. Then I decided, what the hell, since we have a house in Tokyo, there’s no point in me staying in the States all by my fucking lonesome.” She paused. “Are you really pissed, honey?”

  “I’m shocked, is what I am,” he said. “ ‘Fucking lonesome’? ‘Crapped all over you’? ‘Pissed’? What happened to that innocent lady I married?”

  “She married a Marine, and she now knows all the dirty words,” she said. “Answer the question.”

  He exhaled audibly.

  “No,” he said. “I can never be . . . pissed at you.”

  “Good, because there’s more,” Ernie said. “Now that we know how the Marine Corps paid you back for all your loyal service, I don’t care if the goddamn Commandant himself knows we’re well off—”

  “You’re well off,” McCoy interrupted.

  “—we’re well off,” Ernie repeated, firmly, even angrily. “Don’t start that crap again, Ken. I’ve had enough of it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “And we’re going to live like it,” Ernie said, firmly.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay?” she asked, as if she had expected an argument.

  “Okay,” he repeated.

  “Starting tonight with dinner in the best restaurant in Tokyo,” she said.

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Well, with that out of the way,” Ernie asked, “whatever shall we do now?”

  Her hand moved sensually down from his neck over his chest and stomach.

  “Hart said Pickering said I get thirty minutes, no more, ‘personal time’ with my wife.”

  “Fuck him,” Ernie said. “He can wait a couple of minutes. The whole fucking world can wait a couple of minutes.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” McCoy said.

  [SEVEN]

  Capta
in Kenneth R. McCoy, USMC, came out of his bedroom in a crisp uniform fresh from the dry-cleaning plant of the Imperial Hotel.

  He was just a little light-headed. It was probably due, he thought, to the sudden change of uniform, from foul utilities to clean greens, from foul and heavy boondockers to highly shined low-quarter shoes, which felt amazingly light on his feet, and he was, of course, freshly bathed and shaved.

  And freshly laid, he thought somewhat crudely. Freshly laid twice. It’ll be a long goddamn time before those guys on the Clymer and Pickaway get to share any connubial bliss again. If they ever do.

  Master Gunner Ernest W. Zimmerman, USMC, similarly attired, was sitting in one of the armchairs in the living room with Captain George F. Hart. They both had a drink dark with scotch in one hand, and a bacon-wrapped oyster on a toothpick in the other.

  “Do I live here now, or what?” Zimmerman asked. “From the way the room I took a shower in looks, it looks that way.”

  “There’s plenty of room,” McCoy said. “You, too, George.”

  “The boss wants me in the hotel, but thanks.”

  That’s the difference between a reservist and a regular. I never think of General Pickering as anything but “the general, ” and neither does Zimmerman. George thinks of him as “the boss.” And George is perfectly comfortable with that drink in his hand at three o’clock in the afternoon, and I was just about to jump Ernie’s ass about it.

  Fuck it. We’re entitled to a drink.

  He walked to the bar and made himself a drink.

  “How come we never came here before?” Zimmerman asked.

  “I didn’t know until fifteen minutes ago that Ernie owns this place,” McCoy said. “Until then, I thought it was GI quarters; that we’d given them up when they sent me to the States.”

  “Ernie bought this?” Hart asked.

  “Ernie didn’t like the GI quarters,” McCoy said.

  “Good for her,” Zimmerman said. “Mae-Su got us out of officer’s housing at Parris Island just as soon as she could get a house built in Beaufort.”

  “Duty calls,” McCoy said. “Should I gulp this down, or trust that CIC spook to drive slowly?”

  “Gulp it down,” Zimmerman said, stood up, finished his drink, burped, and walked toward the door.

  As he did, the doorbell—actually, a nine-inch brass bell hung on the wall just inside the gate—rang.

  “Our driver getting impatient?” McCoy asked. “Who else knows we’re here?”

  “Maybe something for Ernie?” Zimmerman asked.

  McCoy shook his head “no”—there was a rear entrance to the property, with its own bell; tradesmen used that— and went to the front door, carrying his glass with him.

  Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, USMCR, was halfway between the gate in the wall and the house. On his heels was Major General Ralph Howe, U.S. Army, and a large, muscular man in civilian clothing. He was carrying a briefcase. There was something about him that made McCoy suspect he was a soldier, a noncom, or maybe a warrant officer.

  There being nothing else to do with it, McCoy shifted what was left of his double Famous Grouse on the rocks to his left hand, and saluted with his right.

  Pickering and Howe returned the salute.

  “You look pretty natty for someone fresh from the rice paddies of Korea, Captain,” General Howe said. “Please forgive the intrusion. General Pickering said you wouldn’t mind.”

  “We were just about to go to the Imperial, sir.”

  “Who’s here, Ken?” Pickering asked.

  “Hart, Zimmerman, and Ernie, sir,” McCoy said. “And—I guess—the housekeeper and a maid.”

  “Well, if you don’t mind, Captain, after you fix us all one of those, why don’t you send them shopping?” Howe said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Just the Japanese,” Howe said. “Mrs. McCoy’s going to have to be brought in on this. Your home just became what I understand you CIA people call a ‘safe house.’ ”

  “Yes, sir,” McCoy said.

  “Charley,” General Howe said to the muscular man in civilian clothing. “This is the legendary Killer McCoy—”

  “Who really doesn’t like to be called that, Ralph,” Pickering said.

  He’s calling him “Ralph”?

  “Sorry,” Howe said. “Captain McCoy, Master Sergeant Charley Rogers.”

  Master Sergeant Rogers wordlessly shook McCoy’s hand.

  Hart and Zimmerman came more or less to attention as everybody entered the living room.

  Howe made a gesture indicating they should relax. He went to Zimmerman.

  “You look like what a Marine gunner should look like,” he said. “Zimmerman, right?”

  “Yes, sir,” Zimmerman said.

  “My name is Howe. This is Master Sergeant Charley Rogers. We go back to his being my first soldier when I was a company commander.”

  The two shook hands wordlessly.

  Ernie McCoy, in the kimono she had worn earlier, came into the room.

  “Nice to see you again, Mrs. McCoy,” Howe said. “Sorry to barge in on you like this. We just couldn’t take a chance that the ears in the walls in the Imperial might be active.”

  “Excuse me?” Ernie said.

  “Charley found three microphones in General Pickering’s suite. They might be Kempe Tai leftovers, and then again they might not be.”

  “Oooh,” Ernie said, then: “Welcome to our home, General. ”

  “Ernie, send the help shopping for a couple of hours,” Pickering ordered.

  “Just the servants?”

  “I think you’re going to have to be in on this, Mrs. McCoy, ” Howe said.

  Ernie nodded and headed for the kitchen.

  “McCoy, if you’ll point out the booze to Charley?” Howe said.

  “I’m the aide,” Hart said. “I’ll make the drinks. What will you have, sir?”

  “What’s that in your glass? Pickering’s brand of scotch?”

  “Yes, sir. Famous Grouse.”

  “Sergeant?” Hart asked.

  Master Sergeant Rogers nodded his head.

  Ernie McCoy came back into the room two minutes later.

  “I told them to buy enough pressed duck to feed us all for dinner,” she said. “Not to come back for two hours— and to ring the bell when they came in.”

  Howe looked at her a little surprised.

  “This is not the first time I’ve sent the help shopping, General,” Ernie said.

  “I’m not surprised,” Howe said. “And I think you’ll understand what it means when I tell you that you’re about to be made privy to some national security information that it is not to leave this room.”

  “I understand,” Ernie said.

  “Can we talk here?” Howe asked.

  “There’s the dining room,” Ernie said. “In case anyone wants to write, or take notes.”

  “The dining room, please, then,” Howe said.

  Ernie led them into the dining room, and indicated that Howe should take a seat at the end of the table.

  “This is your house, Mrs. McCoy,” Howe said. “That’s your husband’s chair. I’ll sit here.”

  He pulled out the first chair next to the head of the table, and gestured for McCoy to sit at the head. Master Sergeant Rogers took the chair across from General Howe, and set his briefcase on the floor. He reached into it and came out with three pencils and a pad of yellow lined paper. McCoy saw that the briefcase also held a 1911A1 Colt and what looked like the straps of a GI tanker’s shoulder holster.

  Pickering sat down beside McCoy; Zimmerman beside Rogers, and Hart beside him.

  “I had the maid start coffee,” Ernie McCoy said. “It’ll be ready in a minute.”

  “That’s very kind,” Howe said. “But I’m doing fine with this.”

  He raised his whiskey glass.

  Ernie sat down beside Pickering.

  “Okay,” Howe said. “Where to begin?”

  He thought about that for a mome
nt.

  “At the beginning is always a good place. Harry S. Truman. Our President and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. I work for him, and so does everybody else in uniform, but sometimes people have trouble really understanding that.

  “He’s a very good man. If he had his druthers, when War Two started he would have gone on active duty as a colonel—we both made colonel on the same National Guard promotion list—and probably would have made two stars, as I did. But he was in the Senate, doing important work, and they talked him into not going on active duty, and retired him as a colonel.

  “That’s important to keep in mind. You don’t get to be a colonel unless you know something about soldiering, more important, soldiers, and more important than that, officers.

  “If I forget, and refer to our commander-in-chief as ‘Harry,’ no disrespect is intended. I have picked up a lot of respect for him since the time we were both captains. He was a good captain, and he was a good colonel, and he was a damned good senator. He wasn’t vice president long enough to make any judgments about that, but since he’s been President, he’s done a good job, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a hundred years from now, he’s regarded by the historians as being in the same league as Washington and Lincoln.

  “Having said that, Harry S. Truman is no saint. He’s got a temper, and he holds a grudge, and once he makes up his mind, he finds it hard to admit his original decision was wrong. I honest to God don’t know what he’s got against the Marine Corps, but it’s pretty obvious he really doesn’t like it.

  “He’s got a lot against the professional officer corps generally. Probably some of that goes back to our National Guard days, when the regular army used to rub their superiority in our faces. And some of it, I’m sure, goes back to when he had the Truman Committee in the Senate, and a lot of brass thought they could get away with lying to him.

  “The President told me that right now there are two general officers—two only—he trusts completely. Both of them are at this table. And he told me why: He knows I don’t have a personal agenda, and he doesn’t think General Pickering does, either.

  “The truth seems to be that the military services are loaded with prima donnas, and I’m not only talking about General MacArthur, although he can certainly give lessons to the others in that regard.