(Three)
Lieutenant Sessions learned quick, McCoy decided. You had to give him that. He took charge, the way an officer was expected to. Lieutenant Macklin was running around like a fucking chicken with his head cut off. The first thing he was worried about was that the Chinese would “counterattack.” They were a bunch of fucking bandits, more than half of them were dead. Military units counterattacked. What was left of the Chinese were still running.
The second thing that worried Macklin was what the colonel would think. His orders were to avoid a “confrontation” at all costs. There had obviously been a “confrontation.”
“There’s sure to be an official inquiry,” Macklin said. “We’re going to have to explain all these bodies. God, there must be a dozen of them! How are we going to explain all these dead Chinese?”
“There’s eighteen,” McCoy said helpfully. “I counted them. I guess we’re just going to have to say we shot them.”
Both Sessions and Macklin gave him dirty looks. Sessions still didn’t like it that McCoy was contemptuous of Macklin, who was after all an officer. And Macklin thought that Killer McCoy was not only an insolent enlisted man, but was more than likely responsible for what had happened.
What bothered Macklin, McCoy understood, was not that they had almost gotten themselves killed, but that he himself was somehow going to be embarrassed before the colonel. He was, when it came down to it, the officer in command.
“Corporal,” Macklin snapped. “I don’t expect you to understand this, but what we have here is an International Incident.”
“You weren’t even involved, Lieutenant,” McCoy said. “You were on the other side of the river. By the time you got here, it was all over.”
“That’s enough, McCoy!” Sessions snapped.
“I’m the officer in charge,” Macklin flared. “Of course, I’m involved!”
“Aye, aye, sir,” McCoy said.
Macklin sucked in his breath, in preparation, McCoy sensed, to really putting him in his place.
Sessions stopped him by speaking first.
“The important thing, Macklin,” he said, while Lieutenant Macklin paused to draw in a breath, “is to place the rolls of film McCoy took into the proper hands at Tientsin. That’s the primary objective of this whole operation.”
“Yes, of course,” Macklin said impatiently, itching to launch into McCoy. “But—”
Sessions cut him off again.
“Next in importance is the physical safety of the Reverend and Mrs. Feller.”
“Yes, of course,” Macklin repeated.
“And as you point out, there is the problem of the bodies,” Sessions said.
“Obviously,” Macklin said. “McCoy’s latest contribution to the death rate in China.”
Sessions smiled at that.
“We can’t just drive off and leave eighteen bodies in the road,” Sessions said. “And I think McCoy and I should separate, in case something should happen to one or the other of us—”
Now Macklin interrupted him: “You do think there’s a chance of a counterattack, then?”
“I think it’s very unlikely,” Sessions said, “but not impossible.”
He’s humoring the sonofabitch, McCoy thought.
“As I was saying,” Sessions went on, “I think we should do whatever we have to, to make sure that either McCoy or I make it to Tientsin, to be a witness to the fact that there are German PAK38s in Japanese hands.”
“I take your point,” Macklin said solemnly. “What do you propose?”
Just as solemnly, Sessions proposed that McCoy, two Marine trucks, and all the extra drivers be left behind in a detachment commanded by Lieutenant Macklin, while he and Sergeant Zimmerman and everybody and everything else immediately left for Tientsin.
“I think that’s the thing to do,” Macklin solemnly judged.
McCoy was almost positive the Japanese would not try anything else. They would think the Americans had something else in mind—like an ambush—when they stayed behind with the bodies. The Japanese would have left the bodies where they fell, he knew, unless they felt ambitious enough to throw them into the river.
But just to be sure, he set up as good a perimeter guard as he could with the few men he had. Meanwhile Lieutenant Macklin relieved him of the Thompson submachine gun. He kept it with him where he spent the night in the cab of one of the trucks.
Early the next morning a mixed detachment of French Foreign Legionnaires, Italian marines, and Tientsin Marines showed up.
McCoy was a little uncomfortable when he saw the Italians, but if they knew who he was, there was no sign. Somewhat reluctantly, they set about loading the bodies on the trucks they had brought with them.
It was dark before they got to the International Settlement in Tientsin, and there was no way McCoy could get away to try to go see Ellen Feller in the Christian & Missionary Alliance mission. The Tientsin officers kept him up all night writing down what had happened at the ferry.
Some of their questions made him more than uncomfortable.
First, they went out of their way to persuade him to admit that he had been more than a little excited. If he hadn’t been a little excited (We’re not suggesting you were afraid, McCoy. Nobody’s saying that. But weren’t you really nervous?) the “confrontation” could have been avoided.
“Sir, there was no way what happened could have been avoided. I was scared and excited, but that had nothing to do with what happened.”
When they realized they weren’t going to get him to acknowledge—even obliquely—that the incident was his fault, they dropped another, more uncomfortable accusation on him:
“Mrs. Feller tells us that you and Sergeant Zimmerman went around shooting the wounded, McCoy,” one of them asked. “Was that necessary?”
McCoy had been around officers long enough to know when they were up to something. They were trying to stick it in Zimmerman. Zimmerman had a Chinese wife and kids. He couldn’t afford to be busted.
“Nobody shot any wounded, Captain. Not the way you make it sound.”
“Then why do you suppose both Mrs. Feller and Lieutenant Macklin both say that’s what happened?”
“I don’t know,” McCoy said. “Lieutenant Macklin didn’t even show up there until it was all over. So far as I know, Sergeant Zimmerman didn’t fire his weapon. Lieutenant Sessions and I had to shoot a couple of them after they were down.”
“Why did you feel you had to do that?”
“Because there was three of us and fifty of them, and the rest of the convoy was still across the river. Those guys that were down were still trying to fire their weapons.”
“You don’t say ‘sir’ very often, do you, Corporal?”
“Sir, no disrespect intended, sir,” McCoy said.
“You say both you and Lieutenant Sessions found it necessary to shoot wounded men again?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mrs. Feller obviously confused you with Sergeant Zimmerman,” the officer said, and McCoy knew that was the last anybody was going to hear about making sure the Chinese were really dead.
The next morning, a runner came after him while he was having breakfast in the mess. Lieutenant Sessions was waiting for him in the orderly room.
Sessions told him there that since the Japanese would by now suspect he was not a missionary, he had decided there was no point to his staying in China for the several months he had originally planned. So he was now going to take the President Wilson home with the Fellers.
“I’d like to say good-bye to her, Lieutenant,” McCoy said.
“I’m not sure that’s wise,” Sessions said then. But in the end Sessions changed his mind and decided to be a good guy and told the Tientsin officers he wanted to speak to McCoy aboard the ship before he left.
On the way, he handed McCoy a thick envelope.
“This is for Captain Banning,” he said. “I want you to deliver it personally.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” McCoy said, wonder
ing why he hadn’t given whatever it was to Macklin to deliver—until he realized that whatever it was, Sessions didn’t want Macklin to see it.
“It’s a report of everything that happened on the trip, McCoy,” Sessions said. When he saw McCoy’s eyebrows go up, he chuckled and added: “Everything of a duty, as opposed to social, nature, that is.”
“Thank you, sir,” McCoy said.
“I was up all night writing it,” Sessions said. “There just wasn’t time for the other letter I want to write. But that’s probably just as well. I’ll have time to write it on the ship, and it would probably be better coming from someone more important than me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lieutenant,” McCoy said.
“You’re going to get an official Letter of Commendation, McCoy,” Sessions said. “For your record jacket. I’m going to write it, and I’m going to try to get someone senior to sign it. If I can’t, I’ll sign it myself.”
“Thank you,” McCoy said.
“No thanks are necessary,” Sessions said. “You performed superbly under stress, and that should be recorded in your official records.”
What Sessions meant, McCoy knew, was that without the sixth sense—or whatever the hell it was—that something was wrong, he wouldn’t have shown up when he had, and Sessions would probably be going back to the States in a coffin in the reefer compartment of the President Wilson.
Sessions meant well, McCoy decided, but he doubted if there would be a Letter of Commendation. Even if Sessions really remembered to write one, he doubted if Headquarters, USMC, would let him make it official. From the way the officers here were acting (and the higher-ranking the officer, the worse it was), what had happened at the ferry was his fault. In their view he had “overreacted to a situation” which a more senior and experienced noncom would have handled without loss of life.
The letter report he was carrying to Captain Banning was nevertheless important. He trusted Sessions now: The report would tell it like it happened, and Banning would understand why he had done what he had.
At the gangplank of the President Wilson, Sessions got him a Visitor’s Boarding Pass, and then asked the steward at the gangplank for the number of the Fellers’ cabin.
When they reached the corridor leading to the Fellers’ cabin, Sessions offered his hand.
“I’ll say good-bye here, McCoy,” he said. “I want to thank you, for everything, and to say I think you’re one hell of a Marine.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” McCoy said. He was more than a little embarrassed.
“We’ll run into each other again, I’m sure,” Sessions said. “Sooner or later. Good luck, McCoy.”
“Good luck to you, too, sir,” McCoy said.
As he looked for the Feller cabin, he felt pretty good. He was beginning to believe now that there might be a Letter of Commendation. It would be nice to have something like that in the official records when his name came up before the sergeant’s promotion board.
The good feeling vanished the moment Ellen answered his knock at her cabin door. The look on her face instantly showed she’d hoped she’d seen the last of him. Being the fucking fool he was, though, he didn’t want to believe what he saw on her face and in her eyes. He told himself that what it was was surprise.
He started out by asking her if maybe she would write him. “Maybe, you never can tell, we’ll be able to see each other again sometime.” He ended up telling her he loved her. “I think it’s still possible for me to buy my way out of the Corps,” he went on. “I’ll look into it, I have the money. And I do really love you.”
She got stiff when he started talking, the way she did when he talked crude to her; and by the time he was telling her he loved her, her face was rigid and her eyes cold.
“How dare you talk to me like that?” she said when he had finished, with a voice like a dagger.
So what she wanted after all was nothing but the stiff prick her fairy husband couldn’t give her. The funny thing about it was that he wasn’t mad. He was damned close to crying.
He turned and walked out of her cabin, vowing that he would never make a fucking mistake like that again. He’d never mistake some old bitch with hot pants for the real thing. He didn’t give a shit if she fucked Lieutenant Sessions eight time a day all the way across the Pacific. If she couldn’t get Sessions, she’d grab some other dumb fucker. And failing that, she’d get herself a broomhandle.
(Four)
Headquarters, 4th Marines
Shanghai, China
11 June 1941
Once given permission to enter the office of Captain Edward Banning, Lieutenant John Macklin marched in erectly, came to attention before Banning’s desk, and said, “Reporting as directed, sir.”
The formalities over, he stepped to the chair in front of Banning’s desk, sat down in it, and crossed his legs.
“Getting hot already, isn’t it?” he asked.
“I don’t recall giving you permission to sit down, Lieutenant,” Captain Banning said, almost conversationally, but with a touch of anger in his voice.
Macklin, surprised, took a quick look at Banning’s face and then scrambled to his feet. When he was again at the position of attention, he said: “I beg your pardon, Captain.”
“Lieutenant,” Banning said, “I have carefully read your report of the Tientsin-Peking trip, paying particular attention to those parts dealing with your detention at Yenchi’eng and the incident at the ferry.”
“Yes, sir?”
“I have read with equal care the report Lieutenant Sessions wrote on the same subjects,” Banning said.
“Sir?” Macklin asked.
“There was a caveat in Lieutenant Sessions’s report,” Banning said. “He wrote that he was writing in the small hours of the morning because he hoped to finish it before he went home. Thus he was afraid there would be some small errors in it because of his haste.”
“I wasn’t aware that Lieutenant Sessions had made a report, sir,” Lieutenant Macklin said. “May I suggest that it might be a good idea if I had a look at it, with a view to perhaps revising my own report?”
Banning’s temper flared again when he recalled Macklin’s report. It boggled his mind to think that the man blamed the detention at Yenchi’eng on McCoy’s “cowardly refusal to do what duty clearly required”; and that the “tragic events” at the river crossing could have been avoided if only Lieutenant Sessions had heeded his warning that “Corporal McCoy clearly manifested paranoid tendencies of a homicidal nature and had to be carefully watched.”
And then, in the presumption that Sessions was on the high seas and safely removed from rebuttal, he’d even gone after him:
“The possibility cannot be dismissed that Lieutenant Sessions acquiesced, if he did not actually participate, in the brutal slaughter of the wounded Chinese civilians.”
Banning waited a moment for his temper to subside.
“You are a slimy creature, aren’t you, Macklin?” Banning asked calmly. “How the hell have you managed to stay in the Corps this long?”
“I don’t know what you mean, sir,” Macklin said.
“You know what a slimy creature is, Macklin. In the Marine Corps, a slimy creature is an officer who tries to pass the blame for his own failures onto the shoulders of a brother officer. I don’t know of a phrase obscene enough to describe an officer who tries to cover his own ass by trying to blame his failures on an enlisted man. And you probably would have gotten away with it, you slimy sonofabitch, if Sessions hadn’t spotted you for what you are and sent his report back with McCoy.”
“There may be, Captain, some minor differences of judgment between the two reports, but nothing of magnitude that would justify these insulting accusations—”
“Shut your face, Lieutenant!” Banning shouted. It was the first time he had raised his voice, and his loss of temper embarrassed him. Glaring contemptuously at Macklin, he took time to regain control before he went on.
“If I
had my druthers, Lieutenant,” Banning said, “I’d bring charges against you for conduct unbecoming an officer. Or for knowingly uttering a false official statement. But I can’t. If I brought you before a court-martial, we would have to get into security matters. And we can’t do that. What I can do, what I will do, is see that your next efficiency report contains a number of phrases which will suggest to the captain’s promotion board that you should not be entrusted with a machine-gun crew, much less with command of a company. It will be a very long time before you are promoted, Lieutenant. You’re a smart fellow. Perhaps you will conclude that it would be best if you resigned from the Marine Corps.”
“Captain Banning,” Macklin said after a moment. “There is obviously a misunderstanding between us.”
“There’s no misunderstanding, Macklin,” Banning said, almost sadly. “What’s happened here is that you have proved you’re unfit to be a Marine officer. It’s as simple as that. The one thing a Marine officer has to have going for him is integrity. And you just don’t have any.”
“I’m sure I’ll be able to explain this misunderstanding to the colonel,” Macklin said. “And that is my intention, sir.”
Banning looked at him for a moment and then picked up his telephone and dialed a number.
“Captain Banning, sir,” he said. “I have Macklin in here. I have just informed him of the contempt in which I hold him. He tells me that he believes he can explain the misunderstanding to you.”
There was a hesitation before the colonel replied.
“I suppose he is entitled to hear it from me,” the colonel said. “Send him over.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Banning said, and replaced the telephone in its cradle.
“You’re dismissed, Macklin,” Banning said. “The colonel will see you, if you wish.”
Macklin did an about-face and marched out of his office.
Banning knew what sort of a reception Macklin was going to get from the colonel. He had had to argue at length with him to talk him out of a court-martial. It was only Banning’s invocation of the Good of the Corps that finally persuaded the colonel to reluctantly agree that the only way to deal with the problem was to immediately relieve Macklin of duty until such time as he could be sent home.
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