W E B Griffin - Corp 08 - In Dangers Path

by In Dangers Path(Lit)

  The room was windowless, illuminated with concealed lighting. Thick carpets covered the floor and sound-absorbing material was on the walls. A lectern and a projection screen were at one end of the room, a motion picture and slide projector at the other. The large central conference table showed signs of use; it was littered with paper, some of it crumpled, dirty coffee cups, and empty Coke bottles.

  The door was closed, and immediately a whirring noise came from the film and slide projectors. The projectors were automatically shut off when the door was opened, McCoy realized. A moment later, a map flashed onto the screen.

  Shit, that's the goddamned Gobi Desert! 1 thought that operation was canceled, or at least on hold!

  Well, what the hell did I expect?

  "We've been in here for the best part of two days," Banning said. "Without accomplishing very much. You are hereby appointed, vice Lieutenant Colonel Banning, cleaning officer."

  "Which means?"

  "You will pick up every scrap of paper and put it in a burn bag. You will then telephone Classified Files-the number's on the phone-and they will come and collect everything-maps, slides, notes, and the burn bag, or bags-and haul it off. Then you will go outside and sign a certificate stating that the White Room is clean-meaning of classified material; somebody will come and deal with the Coke bottles and coffee cups-and it is available for use by others."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  "Let me give you a quick run-through of where we are on Operation Gobi - which frankly is nowhere. And then you can perform your cleaning officer duties and go home. Where is home, by the way?"

  "I'm at the Lafayette," Ken said.

  "If you're uncomfortable in the General's apartment, you can bunk with me for a couple of days until we can find you something."

  "I'm not in General Pickering's apartment," McCoy said. "I'm in the American Personal Pharmaceuticals suite."

  "Ernie's with you?"

  McCoy nodded.

  "Then you go home to Ernie and tell her to do something about your sunburn. You really look awful."

  "I feel awful."

  Banning walked to one end of the room and stood in front of the map projected on the screen. "What is needed, Ken, is a weather station in this area," he gestured at the map, "to give what Colonel Hazeltine describes as reports of atmospheric fronts and conditions there.

  "Now, we have reason to believe that a few Americans are already in the neighborhood, some former Marine guards at the Peking legation, the rest retired Marines, soldiers, and Yangtze River patrol sailors. And their wives and children." He paused. "At any point, Ken, ask questions."

  "Aye, aye, sir," McCoy said. He slipped into one of the upholstered chairs and reached for a coffee pitcher.

  "Communication with them is spotty at best, and we don't know where they are, and we can't ask them, because they have no cryptographic capability. And, to repeat, the communications are lousy.

  "Ideally, we would make up a meteorological team-that's a minimum of four men, and about a ton of equipment, much of it expendable: weather balloons, for example, which will be consumed at the rate of two or three a day, and have to be resupplied, if we ever get that far-and send it in by airplane. Since no airplane has the range to make it back and forth from one of our bases, even if it wasn't intercepted, that means it would be a one-way mission.

  "But since we don't know where our people are, or where the Japanese are, it doesn't make any sense to send in a team on an expendable airplane. Or should I say an expendable team on an expendable airplane? We need knowledge of the terrain, and the disposition of Japanese forces. We have neither."

  "Zimmerman spent four months in the Gobi Desert," McCoy said.

  "What?" Banning asked in disbelief.

  "When he first went to the Fourth Marines, 1938, somewhere around then, there was a bunch of people from the National Geographic magazine who went up there. The Fourth Marines provided the truck drivers. Zimmerman was one of them."

  "You sure about that, Ken?" Pickering asked.

  "Yes, sir. He told me about it. There's hardly any sand, he told me, it's mostly flat and rocky." He hesitated. "I think he went back up there after the explorers left."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Out of school?"

  "Sure."

  "I think he was involved in smuggling," McCoy said.

  "Smuggling what? And from where to where?"

  "Jade and fancy vases out of China into India, and gold back from India. Or stuff from Russia, through some other country inside Russia."

  "Kazakhstan?"

  "I think so."

  "You're telling me Zimmerman was on a caravan smuggling things into India and the Soviet Union?"

  "No, sir. Zimmerman was bankrolling the smugglers-actually his woman was. with Zimmerman's money. He-or Mae Su-bought the jade and the vases et cetera, in China, and then sent them out on caravans. The caravan guys got a percentage of what they sold it for."

  "How did he know he would ever see the caravan people again?" Banning asked incredulously.

  "Sometimes. when everybody's making money, people are honest," McCoy said. "And Zimmerman's not the sort of guy anyone wants to cross." he added matter-of-factly.

  "In other words, you believe this story?"

  McCoy nodded.

  "This wasn't big time stuff. Nothing more than a couple of hundred dollars at a time," McCoy said. "But he and Mae Su have a pretty good-size farm in her village. I went up there a couple of times. They even have a little sausage factory. And they lived good in Shanghai-a lot better than he could live on a corporal's pay. He told me he was saving money for when he retired."

  "But you're sure he's been in contact with smugglers?"

  McCoy nodded. "And then they would buy the stuff-mostly icons. You know what they are? Sort of folding pictures of saints painted on wood?"

  "I know what they are," Banning said.

  "They would bring the icons smuggled out of Russia, bring them to Shanghai, and sell them to the antique dealers."

  "I don't suppose you were involved in this?" Banning said.

  "I thought about it, but I didn't like the odds," McCoy replied.

  "This Chinese wife of his," Banning asked, thinking out loud. "Where do you think she is?"

  "Well, maybe. no, probably, she's playing it safe in the village," McCoy said. "It's called Paotow-Zi, on the Yellow River twenty, thirty miles from the nearest city. Baotou."

  "Show me on the map," Banning ordered, went to the table and flipped through a half-dozen large maps until he found what he was looking for, then pulled it from the others and laid it on top.

  McCoy found what he was looking for quickly, and held his finger on it for Banning to see. Banning took a compass and made some quick measurements.

  "It's a long way from there to the Gobi Desert," he said.

  McCoy didn't argue.

  "You said Zimmerman's Chinese wife is 'probably' playing it safe in this village. Was there anything significant in that?"

  McCoy looked uncomfortable.

  "What, Ken?" Banning pursued.

  "She may be in the middle of the Gobi Desert with some caravan," he said.

  "Doing what?"

  "Trying to make it to India. Or, for that matter, into Russia."

  "Into Russia? Why the hell would she want to go into Russia? Or India?"

  "That's what Zimmerman told her to do, get into India, go to the first American consulate she can find. Have the consul send word to Zimmerman's mother that she and the kids are in India. And then try to get them to the States."

  "That seems like a pretty forlorn hope," Banning said. "The American Consul is not liable to pay a lot of attention to a Chinese woman with some half-breed children who says she's married to an American."

  "They're married. Some Catholic priest married them. There's a wedding certificate, and Zimmerman went to the consulate and made some sort of statement that the kids are his."

  "I don't think that will work,
Ken. You have to admire him-both of them- for trying."

  "I don't think it will work, either. But strange things happen."

  "What did you say about Russia?" Banning asked. "You said something about them trying to get into Russia."

  McCoy looked even more uncomfortable.

  "Let's have it, McCoy," Banning said very softly.

  "I asked Mae Su to try to take care of Milla if anything happened," McCoy said, meeting Banning's eyes.

  "You never said anything about that to me."

  "I didn't want you to get your hopes up. If I were Mae Su, I would be trying to cover my ass, and protecting the kids, and wouldn't want to have to worry about taking care of a white woman with a Nansen passport."

  "And since she's a typical Chinese, she said 'yes, of course, certainly' and then forgot about it?"

  "She said she would think about it," McCoy said. "Mae Su's all right."

  "You don't really think they're together?"

  "I don't know. I've thought about it. On one hand, Mae Su wants to protect her kids, and will let nothing get in the way of that. On the other hand, when I asked her, you weren't married to Milla. I didn't know about that until you told me. But Zimmerman knew, and I'm sure he told Mae Su. A woman married to an American, an American officer, is not the same thing as a stateless woman. Mae Su may have decided that Milla might be useful. Any consulate would do more for a white woman married to an American officer than he would for a Chinese married to a corporal. Mae Su would know that. She's the brains in that family."

  "Jesus Christ!" Banning said.

  "Did Milla have any money?"

  "Not much." Banning said. "All I could lay my hands on on short notice. Whatever she could get for my stuff, which probably was damned little. And she had some money of her own-damned little, I'm sure."

  McCoy didn't reply.

  "Jesus Christ. Ken, why didn't you tell me any of this before?"

  "I didn't think there was anything you could do if you knew," McCoy said. "I didn't want to open the wound."

  "Because you don't think that they'll."

  "The odds aren't very good," McCoy said.

  "There's nothing wrong with betting on a long shot if it's the only bet open," Banning said.

  McCoy shrugged what could have been agreement.

  "The one thing we'd agreed on in here after two days is that we need to talk to someone who knows more about the Gobi Desert than what he's read in the National Geographic,'' Banning said.

  McCoy chuckled.

  "So where is Gunny Zimmerman?"

  "On his way here," McCoy said. "Which means he's either still in Brisbane, or in Pearl Harbor, or maybe San Diego. Zimmerman and Koffler-and Mrs. Koffler-are coming on the same orders. They're entitled to thirty-day leaves. There's some kind of a rest hotel somewhere."

  "The Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia," Banning furnished.

  "I guess the idea was they could hold each other's hands. But I don't think that will last after they get off the first plane. Zimmerman will 'get lost,' and the Kofflers will go on without him. And I don't think that Zimmerman is interested in going to a rest hotel someplace. So he's probably at Pearl, 'Diego. anywhere. and will check in at Management Analysis when his leave is up. Maybe even before."

  "We need him here, and now," Banning said, "which means we're going to have to find him. I'll go see General Rickabee and see what he can do."

  McCoy nodded.

  "I need a big favor from you, Ken," Banning said.

  "Yes, sir."

  "When you brief the team tomorrow morning, and you will, I want you to leave Milla and the possibility that she might be with Zimmerman's wife out."

  "Okay. But why?"

  "Because if either the DDO or General Pickering hears that my wife is involved in this, they'll take me off this operation. It would be too much of an emotional involvement for me to function rationally. You understand?"

  "If I can get to Zimmerman first," McCoy said. "I'll tell him to leave Milla out."

  "I'll do my damnedest to arrange that," Banning said.

  "Ed, don't get your hopes up," McCoy said.

  That's the first time since I first laid eyes on him that he's ever called me by my first name, Banning thought.

  "I won't. I understand the odds."

  McCoy nodded.

  But what if he's wrong ? What if the long shot comes in ? What if Milla is alive ? What do I tell Carolyn?

  "I'm going over to T-2032," Banning said. "We really need Zimmerman. Can you handle the cleaning by yourself?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Then go home and ask Ernie to do something for that sunburn. We can't afford to have you in the hospital."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  Chapter Ten

  [ONE]

  USMC Transient Barracks

  U.S. Naval Station

  San Diego, California

  0720 4 March 1943

  Staff Sergeant Karl Krantz had been a clerk for the Delaware & Lackawanna Railroad before a surge of patriotism sent him to the Marine Recruiting Office on December 9, 1941. After graduating from Parris Island, he had been a clerk in the Marine Corps.

  That hadn't kept him from being wounded on Guadalcanal; but it had kept him from carrying a rifle on the line. Having seen what happened on the line to people who carried rifles, he was now profoundly grateful for that.

  He had been wounded by bomb shrapnel during a Japanese raid on Henderson Field. A half-inch chunk of jagged shrapnel had struck him in the left buttock- which was not nearly as funny as it sounds. In due course, Corporal Krantz was sent to the Navy Hospital at Pearl Harbor. And on discharge from the hospital, he had been declared "limited duty." He could walk, but not very far, and it hurt when he did.

  After three months as a clerk at Pearl Harbor-long enough to make sergeant-they sent him home, thus allowing some fully fit sergeant clerk to be sent to the war zone. Back in the States, he had been assigned to San Diego, doing much the same thing he had done for the Delaware & Lackawanna-except here it was people getting on and off ships and airplanes, as well as trains.

  He thought of himself as sort of an expediter. He was good at it and took his responsibilities seriously, and this had gotten him another stripe.

  Which explained his presence at the office at 0720 on a Sunday morning. The man with the duty-Corporal Vito Martino, who had also been in the wrong place at the wrong time on the 'Canal, and who now had a wired-together jaw that gave him a perpetual leer-did not, in Staff Sergeant Krantz's opinion, have either the dedication or the brains to be relied upon. Sergeant Krantz was not surprised to find Corporal Martino sound asleep on a cot behind the enlisted transients report here counter. That in itself did not bother him-there was nothing wrong with crapping out if nothing was coming in or going out. What bothered him was that Martino had slept through breakfast. He would, in other words, really rather crap out than eat.

  Sergeant Krantz woke Corporal Martino up by kicking the legs of the cot. Corporal Martino opened his eyes, then pushed himself up on the cot, supporting himself with his elbows.

  "Hey, Sarge, what's up?"

  "That was what I intended to ask you. Anything happen?"

  "The 2100 Coronado from Pearl was damned near two hours late. They was getting real worried. But it got here, and I was up to damned near midnight working it."

  "Any problems?"

  "No. Usual thing. Some brass, some guys who got hit. Customs caught two guys trying to smuggle in Nambu pistols. The usual shit," Corporal Martino said, and then remembered something. "There was a gunny on it, mean-looking fucker, with some really strange orders."

  "What do you mean, 'really strange orders'?"

  "They're over there, in the Incoming Enlisted box," Corporal Martino said, pointing.

  Staff Sergeant Krantz went to the counter and found the orders Martino considered damned strange.

  Headquarters

  U.S.M.C. Special Detachment 16 FPO, San Francisco, Cal.

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sp; February