“George, get him a typewriter and a desk, and put him in one of the rooms here.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Hart said.
Pickering looked at McCoy and motioned for him to follow him into his bedroom. McCoy motioned for Zimmerman to wait.
Pickering closed the bedroom door after McCoy entered.
“Sir?” McCoy said.
Pickering handed him the large envelope marked “Secret” the signal corps had given him, then went to his window and looked out of it, his back to McCoy. McCoy looked at him curiously for a moment and then went into the envelope and took out the carbon copy of the radio teletype message.
SECRET URGENT 1650 2 AUGUST 1950
FROM: ASST COMMANDER 1ST AIRCRAFT WING
TO: EYES ONLY BRIG GEN FLEMING PICKERING USMC HQ SUPREME COMMANDER, ALLIED POWERSDEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT AT SHORTLY AFTER 1220 THIS DATE MAJOR MALCOLM S. PICKERING, USMCR, WAS FORCED TO MAKE AN EMERGENCY LANDING IN HIS F4-U AIRCRAFT BEHIND ENEMY LINES IN THE VICINITY OF TAEJON SOUTH KOREA AND HIS WHEREABOUTS AND CONDITION ARE PRESENTLY UNKNOWN.
AT APPROXIMATELY 1220 HOURS THIS DATE, MAJOR PICKERING, WHO WAS FLYING ALONE ON A RECONNAISSANCE MISSION OFF USS BADOENG STRAIT, MADE A MAYDAY RADIO CALL STATING HE WAS APPROXIMATELY FIFTEEN MILES NORTH NORTHEAST OF TAEJON, AND THAT HE HAD BEEN STRUCK BY ANTI-AIRCRAFT FIRE, HAD LOST HYDRAULIC PRESSURE, HAD AN ENGINE FIRE AND WAS GOING TO DITCH.
LT COL WILLIAM C. DUNN, USMC, WHO WAS LEADING A THREE F4-U AIRCRAFT FLIGHT FROM THE USS BADOENG STRAIT IN THE VICINITY, HEARD THE MAYDAY AND IMMEDIATELY WENT TO THE AREA. LT COL DUNN FIRST SPOTTED A HEAVY COLUMN OF SMOKE COMING FROM A DESTROYED BUT STILL BURNING ENEMY RAILROAD TRAIN AND THEN APPROXIMATELY THREE MILES NORTH OF THE TRAIN A COLUMN OF SMOKE FROM A BURNING F4-U AIRCRAFT. IN THREE LOW LEVEL PASSES OVER THE DOWNED AND BURNING AIRCRAFT LT COL DUNN WAS ABLE TO DETERMINE THE COCKPIT WAS EMPTY. THERE WAS NO SIGN OF MAJOR PICKERING, AND LT COL DUNN DID NOT SEE A DEPLOYED PARACHUTE.
LT COL DUNN BELIEVES THAT MAJOR PICKERING WAS ENGAGING THE ENEMY RAILROAD TRAIN AS TARGET OF OPPORTUNITY AND THAT HIS AIRCRAFT WAS STRUCK BY .50 AND 20-MM ANTI-AIRCRAFT FIRE FROM THE TRAIN AND/OR DEBRIS CAUSED BY THE DETONATION OF EXPLOSIVE AND/OR COMBUSTIBLE MATERIALS ABOARD THE TRAIN.
FIXED AND ROTARY WING AIRCRAFT OF 1ST MAW WERE IMMEDIATELY DIRECTED TO THE CRASH SITE, ARRIVING THERE AT APPROXIMATELY 1335. THEY REPORTED THAT MAJOR PICKERING’S AIRCRAFT HAD BEEN CONSUMED BY FIRE AND THERE WAS NO SIGN OF MAJOR PICKERING.
IN CONSIDERATION OF THE ABOVE, MAJOR PICKERING IS NOW CLASSIFIED AS MISSING IN ACTION. HQ USMC HAS BEEN NOTIFIED. FURTHER INFORMATION WILL BE FURNISHED AS DEVELOPED.
THOMAS J. CUSHMAN BRIG GEN, USMC
SECRET
“Goddamn it!” McCoy said, and then raised his eyes to look at General Pickering. Pickering had turned from the window and was leaning against the windowsill, facing McCoy.
“Goddamn this war,” Pickering said, almost conversationally. “Goddamn wars in general.”
“Nothing was said about spotting a body,” McCoy said.
“I’m going to have to call his mother,” Pickering said, “and now. Before some unctuous chaplain gets to her with the usual nonsense about God’s mysterious ways.”
“Nothing was said about spotting a body,” McCoy repeated. “Billy Dunn said the aircraft was on fire and the cockpit empty. It obviously burned up later. Pick had time to get out of it.”
Pickering didn’t reply.
“This was not Pick’s first emergency landing,” McCoy said. “He’s a hell of a pilot, and you know it. And this would not be the first time he’s run around behind the lines.”
Pickering looked into McCoy’s eyes for a long moment.
“You tell me what you think happened, Ken.”
“He got out of the airplane and got away from it.”
“Or he got out of the airplane and the NK’s got him. And shot him.”
“More likely, they would have taken him prisoner,” McCoy said.
Pickering looked at McCoy for another long moment.
“If you’re going to call Mrs. Pickering,” McCoy said, “why don’t we go out to my place?”
Pickering considered that for a long moment.
“One of the reasons I was less than overjoyed when Ernie came over here was because I knew that if you didn’t come back from one of your Korean commutes, I knew I was going to have to be the one to tell her,” Pickering said. “Now you’re going to have to tell her about Pick.”
“Come out to the house anyway,” McCoy said.
“Thank you, but I don’t have the time right now. Later, maybe.”
“Sir?”
“General Howe and I are going to meet with MacArthur; he’s going to tell us all about his Inchon landing. I don’t want to miss that.”
McCoy nodded but didn’t reply.
“Best possible pissing-in-the-wind scenario,” Pickering went on. “Phase one: Pick survived the crash in reasonably good shape . . .”
“And we will shortly hear that he’s been spotted by the Air Force, or one of the Marine helicopters . . .”
“More likely he was captured. With a little luck, the North Koreans decide to keep him alive—he’s a Marine major, and I’m sure they would like to learn as much about the Marines and Marine aviation as they can. Any officer would know that and keep him alive.”
McCoy nodded his agreement.
“Phase two of the pissing-in-the-wind scenario,” Pickering went on. "MacArthur’s generally believed-to-be-insane notion of a Corps-strength amphibious landing at Inchon goes off without a hitch. We cut the peninsula in half and— the word is ‘envelop’—envelop North Korean forces in the south, including their POW enclosures. In one of which we find Pick.”
“Is that what you think, sir? Inchon’s an ‘insane notion’? ”
“No. I just asked myself that question. And I was aware that my emotions would probably cloud my judgment. But no, I don’t think it’s insane. Whatever else can be said about Douglas MacArthur, he is a military genius. I’ve seen him in action, Ken. When ordinary mortals look at a projected military operation, it’s like—trying to shave in a steam-clouded mirror. For him, there’s no steam on the glass. He sees things, things the rest of us can’t see, and he sees them clearly. He proved that time and again in War Two. If he thinks Inchon’s the answer, I’ll go with him.”
“Is that what you’re going to tell the President?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m going to tell the President.”
“And what’s General Howe going to tell him?”
“In the message he’s writing right now, I’m sure he’s going to use a phrase like ‘insane notion.’ But he’s never had a personal meeting like this with MacArthur. MacArthur can sell iceboxes to Eskimos. I think that will happen this afternoon. I hope it does.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“If, as a result of what Howe tells the President, or for any other reason, MacArthur is forbidden to do the Inchon operation, there’s a good chance he’ll quit.”
“Quit?” McCoy asked, more than a little surprised. “What the hell would he do if he wasn’t El Supremo?”
“Run for commander-in-chief,” Pickering said.
“Jesus! You really think so?”
“This goes no further, Ken,” Pickering said. “Not even to Ernie.”
McCoy nodded his agreement.
“Senator Fowler tells me either Eisenhower or MacArthur can have the Republican nomination if they want it.”
“Not both,” McCoy thought aloud.
“No. Whoever acts first. Try this on. Truman kills the Inchon landing. MacArthur resigns, very publicly, saying he cannot in good conscience serve under a president who is soft on communism, and doesn’t recognize the threat it poses. He’d probably believe that, too.”
“Truman’s not soft on communism,” McCoy argued. “He sent the Army to Greece, and now this. . . .”
“I agree, but the Republicans keep accusing him of it. Anyway, MacArthur knows that
unless he acts to get the nomination, it will go to Eisenhower. El Supremo has described Eisenhower as the best clerk he ever had. In his mind, it would be his duty to become President, to get Truman out of office, and to keep Eisenhower from getting it.”
“Jesus!”
“I think he really believes the Inchon landing will end this war. The flip side of that is that if there is no Inchon landing, there will be a long war to take South Korea back. MacArthur believes that, and so do I, as a matter of fact.
“So the election is held, and we’re still fighting here, and MacArthur will make it clear that if Truman had had the good sense to let him—the experienced general who won World War Two in the Pacific—invade Inchon, it would be over. And as soon as he’s President, he will end the war. Who do you think would win?”
“I don’t like the idea of him being President,” McCoy thought aloud.
“Neither do I,” Pickering said. “But it could happen.”
McCoy could think of nothing to say.
“So that’s why I can’t go to your house, Ken, as much as I would really like to. What I’m going to do this afternoon is what I can to convince Howe that MacArthur is right about Inchon, and everybody else wrong. The trouble with doing that is Howe is likely to decide that I’m just one more MacArthur worshiper, and so inform the President.”
“Are you going to let me know what happens?”
“I won’t know,” Pickering said. “This is hold your breath and cross your fingers time.”
He pushed himself off the windowsill, walked to McCoy, and touched his shoulder.
“One bit of advice before you go to tell Ernie,” he said.
“Yes, sir?”
“From you, Ken.”
“Sir?”
“Do I tell Howe about Pick?”
McCoy thought that over for a full fifteen seconds.
“If you don’t, and he finds out, and he will find out, he’ll wonder what else you haven’t told him.”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking. I’ll tell him now, and then I’ll call my wife. Get out of here, Ken.”
[TWO]
NO. 7 SAKU-TUN DENENCHOFU, TOKYO, JAPAN 1330 3 AUGUST 1950
“Aunt Patricia,” Mrs. Ernestine McCoy said, “now, I want you to listen to me. . . .”
She was on the telephone, standing by the couch’s end table in the living room. Tears were running down her cheeks.
Captain Kenneth R. McCoy, in his shirtsleeves, was sitting on the couch, leaning over the coffee table, idly stirring a large ice cube in his drink with his finger, and looking at his wife.
She loved him, McCoy thought. Christ, I loved him. Goddamn it. Present tense. She loves him. I love him. We don’t know he’s dead.
“The only thing you would accomplish by coming here would be getting in the way,” Ernie went on. “If there’s anything that can be done, Uncle Flem and Ken will do it.”
The doorbell rang.
“Who the fuck is that?” McCoy exploded.
“Watch your mouth,” Ernie said, and then, a moment later, into the telephone: “Ken spilled his drink.”
“Shit!” McCoy said, softly.
The truth is, it doesn’t matter who rang the goddamn bell. Kon San was told “no visitors, nobody.”
He picked up his drink and took a healthy swallow.
The truth is, I don’t want this goddamn drink.
He heard the door open and close.
Kon San will now come in here and tell us it was the goddamned butcher or somebody, and she sent him away, and is there anything else we need?
The couch on which he was sitting faced away from the sliding door giving access to the foyer. He turned on it, so that when Kon San slid it open, he could signal her not to say anything and to go away.
Smile when you do that. She’s trying to be helpful.
The sliding door—of translucent parchment—slid open.
Kon San was standing there, a look of discomfort on her face. And so were Captain George F. Hart, USMCR, Master Gunner Ernest Zimmerman, USMC, and Lieutenant David R. Taylor, USNR.
Goddamn it, they didn’t take their shoes off! Ernie will blow a gasket!
And what the fuck are they doing here? Hart and Zimmerman want to help. But Taylor?
He got quickly to his feet, nodded at Ernie, put his finger over his lips to signal silence, and went to the door.
He grabbed Zimmerman by the arm and led him down the corridors to the foyer.
“Take off your goddamn shoes,” McCoy ordered, not pleasantly. “What the hell’s the matter with you? You know better!”
“Ken . . .” Zimmerman started.
McCoy cut him off with an angry finger in front of his lips.
The three removed their shoes and slipped their feet into slippers.
McCoy gestured for them to follow him, and led them through corridors to the kitchen.
“Ernie’s on the phone with Pick’s mother,” he said.
“I’m sorry about Pick, Ken,” Hart said.
“You could have told me that on the phone,” McCoy said. “Ernie’s pretty upset. They’re like brother and sister.”
“Yeah, I know,” Hart said. “I wouldn’t have come, but I thought this was important.”
“Taylor, a friend of ours is MIA.”
“General Pickering told me,” Taylor said. “Sorry.”
Then what the fuck are you doing here? What the fuck is wrong with Hart and Zimmerman, bringing you here?
“What’s important, George?” McCoy asked.
“He asked me,” Zimmerman said. “Hart did. We thought we should come.”
“To do what?”
Watch your goddamn temper. They’re just trying to be helpful.
“Lieutenant Taylor has some ideas about the islands in the Flying Fish Channel,” Hart said.
“Right now, I don’t give a rat’s ass about the islands in the Flying Fish Channel,” McCoy said.
“You better hear him out, Ken,” Zimmerman said.
McCoy, just in time, bit off what came to his lips—“Go fuck yourself”—and said nothing.
Instead, he opened one cabinet after another until he found the liquor supply, found a bottle of Famous Grouse—
“You drink scotch, Taylor? There’s everything.”
“Scotch is fine,” Taylor said.
—set it on the butcher’s block, and then went back to cabinets to find glasses. He put the glasses on the butcher’s block, poured Famous Grouse an inch deep in each, and wordlessly passed them out.
“To Pick, wherever he is,” he said.
The others raised their glasses. Zimmerman and Hart said, “Pick.”
“The general said he’s probably a prisoner,” Zimmerman said.
“That’s good news?”
“Considering the alternatives,” Zimmerman said, “yeah.”
“So what’s so important?” McCoy said.
“If you want to be pissed at somebody, be pissed at me,” Hart said. “This was my idea.”
“What was your idea, goddamn it, George?”
“I asked Taylor what sort of a plan he had, and he said it was sort of like a Marine Raider operation in War Two,” Hart said. “So I told him he ought to talk to Zimmerman and you; you were in the Raiders.”
“For a cop, George, you have a big mouth,” McCoy said.
“So I got Zimmerman in the room, and Taylor told him what he was thinking, and Zimmerman said, ‘We got to show this to Kil—McCoy.’ ”
“Why?” McCoy asked.
“Because Taylor has to show it to the boss and that Army general, and probably by seventeen hundred,” Zimmerman said. “And the first thing the boss is going to do— and you know it, Killer—is ask you what you think.”
“I think the idea will work,” Taylor said.
“So do I,” Zimmerman interjected.
“You do, huh?” McCoy said.
“. . . and I don’t want the idea shot down just because some Army colonel or Annapolis
captain didn’t think of it first, or it’s not according to the book,” Taylor finished.
Mrs. Ernestine McCoy came into the kitchen. There was no sign of the tears that had run down her cheeks, but her mascara and eye shadow were mussed, and her eyes were red.
“Hey, Ernie,” Zimmerman said. “Sorry about Pick.”
He went to her and with surprising delicacy, put his arms around her and kissed her on the cheek.
“I heard someone come in,” she said. “I didn’t know who it was.” She put her hand out to Lieutenant Taylor. “I’m Ernie McCoy.”
“Sorry to barge in like this, Mrs. McCoy. I’m David Taylor. ”
“Hello, George,” Ernie said. “Rotten news, huh?”
“What am I, the only one in the room who hasn’t given up on him? Christ, he walks through raindrops. He always has. You know that.”
“I haven’t given up on him, goddamn it,” McCoy said.
“None of us have, George,” Ernie McCoy said. “I just talked to his mother. She wanted to come over here.”
“Did you manage to talk her out of it?” McCoy asked.
“Yes, I did. I told her she’d only be in the way; that you and Uncle Flem . . . General Pickering . . . were already working on the problem. Is that—I hope—what this is?”
“Not exactly,” McCoy said. “Taylor has an idea about a major problem with the Inchon landing, and these two think I should have a look at it.” He saw the look of surprise on Taylor’s face, and added: “General Howe has granted my wife a Top Secret/White House, Mr. Taylor.”
“Probably because he knows you can’t keep a secret from a woman,” Zimmerman said.
“Screw you, Zimmerman,” Ernie McCoy said, conversationally. “I think I’ll have one of those,” she added, and reached for the bottle of Famous Grouse. “And then, if you don’t think I should know about this, I’ll fold my tent and silently steal away.”
Fuck it, why not? If she walks out of here, she’ll go to the bedroom and start crying again. I can’t stand to hear her cry.
“OK, Taylor, let’s hear the idea,” McCoy said. “Honey, will you take notes?”
“You want to do it in here, or in the dining room?” Ernie asked.
“The dining room,” McCoy said.
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