“General,” Lieutenant Colonel Jack (NMI) Stecker, USMCR, said, “I didn’t want to disturb—”
“Jesus Christ, Jack, am I glad to see you!”
He stepped around the guard’s counter and shook Stecker’s hand, then wrapped an arm around his shoulder.
“When did you get in? What are you doing here?”
“Last night—” Stecker began.
“Come on back with me,” Pickering broke in. “If CINCPAC comes on line, and there’s no instant reply, they start pissing their pants.”
“Sir,” Sergeant Widakovich asked, “are you taking the Colonel in there with you? Sir, he’s not on the list.”
“If anybody says anything, Sergeant, you tell them you did everything short of turning that Thompson on me, and I still took him back.”
“Yes, Sir, General,” Sergeant Widakovich said, smiling.
“General, I can wait,” Stecker said uneasily. “I have nothing but time.”
“Come on in the dungeon, Jack,” Pickering said, then took his arm and led him down the interior corridor to the MAGIC room. He unlocked the door and gestured for Stecker to go in. He followed him in, then closed and locked the door.
“What is this place?”
“Don’t ask, Jack,” Pickering said. “How about some coffee? I just made a fresh pot.”
“Thank you,” Stecker said. When he saw the crypto machine, which Pickering, in violation of his own rules, had not covered up, curiosity overwhelmed him. “What the hell is that thing?”
“Don’t ask, Jack.” Pickering said. He took the heavy canvas cover from its hook on the wall and spread it over the machine.
“Sorry,” Stecker said.
“We can talk about anything else,” Pickering said. “Tell me about Dick, for instance.”
“They’ve got him up, out of bed. In sort of a man-sized baby walker,” Stecker said. “Some new theory that the sooner they start moving around, the better.” He met Pickering’s eyes. “I think he’s in a good deal of pain, but he won’t take anything but aspirin.”
“He wrote you?”
“I saw him. I came here the long way around, via Pearl Harbor.”
“So you saw Elly, too?”
“Yes, indeed. That’s what I’m doing here. I wanted to thank you for all you’ve done—”
“Don’t be an ass,” Pickering said, cutting him off. “Elly’s comfortable? I haven’t had a chance to check myself.”
“Yes, of course, she’s comfortable. That apartment you got for her!”
“And she’s met Patricia?”
“Yes, indeed. That’s another reason I came down here looking for you.” He reached in the bellows pocket of his jacket and handed Pickering an envelope. “From Patricia.”
“Thank you,” Pickering said. He glanced at the envelope and put it in his pocket. “So what are you doing here? When did you get in?”
“I got in last night. I’m sort of stationed here. I’m the first member of the advance party, but they’re not calling it that yet.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Arrange things, here and in New Zealand, to take care of the Division when it’s relieved and comes here for rest and refitting. They took my battalion away from me.”
That sounds, Pickering thought, as if he was relieved for cause. I don’t believe that, but I’m damned sure not going to ask.
“So why didn’t you call me when you got in?”
“I had to get a BOQ, look up the Marine liaison officer.”
“You wasted your effort getting a BOQ,” Pickering said. “You just moved in with me. I have a little house. Four bedrooms, and only two of us—”
He was interrupted by a deep, ugly, bell-like sound. Someone was beating on the steel door, which caused it to vibrate like a drum.
“What the hell?” Stecker exclaimed.
“My replacement has arrived,” Pickering said. He walked over to the door, then unlocked and opened it.
Second Lieutenant George F. Hart, USMCR, came in. His uniform was adorned with the insignia of an aide-de-camp.
Why does this surprise me? Stecker wondered. Pickering is a General. Generals have aides-de-camp.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you, George,” Pickering said. “Did you meet Colonel Stecker when you were on Guadalcanal?”
“No, Sir.”
“Jack, this is George Hart.”
“How are you, Hart?” Stecker asked.
“How do you do, Sir?” Hart replied. A moment later, he surprised Stecker by starting to take off his blouse. A moment after that, he surprised Stecker again, for he could now see that Hart was wearing a snub-nosed revolver in a shoulder holster. And a moment later, he surprised Stecker a third time when he slipped out of the holster and offered it to Pickering.
“I always feel like Edward G. Robinson in a grade-B movie when I wear that,” Pickering said.
“But on the other hand, people can’t tell you are wearing it. A .45 is pretty obvious,” Hart said. “It’s up to you.”
“I think I’ll stick with the .45, George. That makes me feel like Alan Ladd. Or John Wayne.”
“Suit yourself,” Hart said.
Pickering went to the table on which sat the mysterious machine now covered with canvas, opened a drawer, and took out a Colt Model 1911A1 .45 pistol. He removed the clip, checked to see that there was no cartridge in the action, and replaced the clip. He then put the pistol under the waistband of his trousers, in the small of his back. He sensed Stecker’s eyes on him, and looked at him.
“George and I have a deal,” he said. “I am allowed to go out and play by myself, but only if I am armed to the teeth. If you think it’s a little odd for a general to be ordered around by a second lieutenant, you have to remember Colonel Fritz Rickabee…. You know Fritz don’t you, Jack?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “The truth is that we really work for him, and this gun nonsense is his idea. And both of us are afraid of him, right, George?”
“The Colonel is a formidable man, Sir.”
“I know Rickabee,” Stecker said. “I agree, he’s formidable.”
“OK, George. I’ll save you a piece of the wedding cake,” Pickering said. “Or maybe the party will still be going when Moore relieves you.”
“I forgot to tell you. Commander Feldt is at the Cottage, he and some other RAN types. I told him you insisted that he stay there.”
“Good man,” Pickering said, and again sensed Stecker’s curiosity. “Staff Sergeant Koffler is getting married at two. He’s the radio operator Killer McCoy and company took off Buka. I am giving the bride away. Afterward, I may very well have more to drink than is good for me.”
“That seems like a splendid idea,” Stecker said.
[TWO]
Saint Bartholomew’s Church
Brisbane, Australia
1345 Hours 8 November 1942
When Pickering and Stecker drove up in Pickering’s 1938 Jaguar Drop Head Coupe, Lieutenant Commander Eric Feldt, Royal Australian Navy Reserve, a RAN lieutenant, a RAN chief petty officer, and ten RAN sailors were standing outside the church. They were all in dress uniforms (in the case of the officers and the chief, this included swords).
The chief shouted something unintelligible in the Australian version of the English language, whereupon he, the Lieutenant, and the enlisted men snapped to a frozen position of attention.
Commander Feldt, however, did not feel constricted by the minutiae of military courtesy as it was usually practiced among and between officers of an allied power. He waited until Pickering emerged from the Jaguar. Then, hands on hips, he declared, “I was wondering where the bloody hell you were, Pickering. The bloody bride has been here for an hour.”
Lieutenant Colonel Stecker’s eyes widened noticeably. He was more than a little shocked.
The RAN lieutenant, looking mortified, raised his hand in the British-style, palm-out salute, and held that position.
Pickering returned the lieutenant’s s
alute. “Good afternoon, Mr. Dodds.” He then turned to Feldt. “And good afternoon to you, Commander Feldt. I’m so glad to see that you have found time in your busy schedule for this joyous occasion.”
“Well, I couldn’t have you going around saying that all Australians are a lot of sodding arseholes, now could I?” He turned his attention to Colonel Stecker. “You’re new.”
“Colonel Stecker, may I present Commander Feldt?” Pickering said formally, but smiling. “Commander Feldt commands the Coastwatcher Establishment.”
“Thank you,” Colonel Stecker said when Feldt offered his hand—so idly it was close to insulting.
“For what?” Feldt asked suspiciously. “It was the sodding least we could do for Koffler; he’s one of us.”
“I commanded Second Battalion, Fifth Marines, on Guadalcanal,” Stecker said. “We know what the Coastwatchers did for us. So thank you.”
Commander Feldt looked very embarrassed.
“What exactly is it that you’re doing for Sergeant Koffler, Eric?” Pickering asked. “Aside from gracing the wedding with your presence?”
“What the sodding hell does it look like? When the lad and his bride come out of the church, they will pass under an arch of swords. Ours and yours. Not actually swords: They’re going to use the machetes we got from the ordnance people. They’re damned near as big as swords. I sent the one who limps—”
“Lieutenant Moore?”
“Right. The one who limps. I sent him out behind the church to rehearse with your lads.”
“To rehearse what?”
“I don’t know how the sodding Marine Corps does it, Pickering,” Feldt said, “but in the Australian Navy, everyone raises his bloody sword at the same time, on command, not when they sodding well feel like it. When I asked the one who limps if he knew how to do it, and he said no, I sent him around in back to rehearse.”
“With the General’s permission,” Lieutenant Colonel Jack (NMI) Stecker said formally, but not quite succeeding in concealing a smile, “I will go see how the rehearsal is proceeding.”
“Go ahead,” Pickering said. “We have five or ten minutes yet.”
Feldt waited until Stecker was out of earshot.
“He works for you?”
“No. He’s here to set up things for the First Marines when they come here to refit.”
“I thought he said he was a battalion commander?”
“Until a week or so ago, he was.”
“But he got himself relieved, huh? He looked pretty bloody competent to me. What did he do wrong?”
“He is pretty bloody competent,” Pickering said coldly. “Jack Stecker has our Medal of Honor, Eric. The equivalent of your Victoria Cross.”
“Then he really must have fucked up by the numbers—the way you bloody Yanks say it—to get himself relieved.”
“Eric,” Pickering flared furiously, “once again you’re letting your goddamned mouth run away with you, offering ignorant and unsolicited opinions about matters you don’t know a goddamned thing about.”
Feldt met his eyes and didn’t give an inch. “Good friend of yours, huh?”
“That has absolutely nothing to do with it.”
“To change the subject, I spoke with the bride’s father this morning.”
“I’m afraid to ask what you said.”
“I told him Daphne was in service, she worked for me, and I never knew a finer lass. And I told him that the lad she’s marrying is as good as they come, even if he’s an American, and that I thought he should be here.”
“And?”
“And he said that what they’ve done has shamed him and his wife before all of their friends, and as far as he’s concerned he no longer has a daughter.”
“God!”
“So I told him that now that I have proof of what a sodding arsehole he is, if he comes anywhere near Brisbane today—much less near the church—I will break his right leg and stick it up his arse.”
“Well said, Eric, well said,” Pickering answered.
A somewhat delicate-appearing young man in clerical vestments came out of the church and walked quickly to them.
“General Pickering,” he said, “the rector is ready for you now.”
“Tell the bloody rector to keep his pants on,” Commander Feldt said. “The sodding Americans are still practicing with their bloody machetes.”
[THREE]
Water Lily Cottage
Brisbane, Australia
1845 Hours 8 November 1942
The six stiff drinks of Famous Grouse scotch after he, Colonel Stecker, Commander Feldt, and Major Hon Song Do arrived at the cottage, added to considerable champagne at the reception for Staff Sergeant and Mrs. Steven M. Koffler, USMCR, had left Brigadier General Fleming Pickering much mellower than he’d been earlier, in the dungeon.
“Did I ever tell you, Jack, that Patricia and I really hoped that Pick would one day marry Ernie Sage?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Jack Stecker replied, confused.
“It sounds like he wanted his son to marry a poufter, is what it sounds like,” Commander Feldt said. “Pickering, old sod, you’re as tight as a tick.”
“Ernie Sage is one of the most beautiful, charming young women I have ever known,” Pickering declared indignantly, if somewhat thickly. “For a local reference, Eric, she is now…how shall I put this?…romantically involved with Killer McCoy.”
“Romantically involved?” Feldt inquired. “What the bleeding fuck is that? Why isn’t the Killer fucking her, if she’s so sodding beautiful?”
“Because he is a Marine officer and a gentleman, Eric,” Pickering said solemnly. “Marine officers do not fuck. They spread pollen, in a gentlemanly fashion.”
“You ever hear the story, Flem?” Colonel Stecker asked; he was about as mellow as General Pickering. “The one about the Marine second lieutenant in Paris in 1917?”
“Which story about which second lieutenant would that be?” General Pickering inquired, carefully pronouncing each syllable.
“He was down on the Pigalle,” Stecker said, “and the Mam’selle, who already noticed that he had a month’s pay in his pocket, did not mention money until the act was done.”
“The spreading of the pollen, you mean, Colonel?” Major Hon asked.
“Exactly,” Colonel Stecker replied. “But finally, she said, ‘Mon Lieutenant. The act is over and soon you shall leave. With great regret I have to bring up the subject of money.’ To which he replied, ‘Mam’selle, I am an officer of the United States Marine Corps. Marine officers do not take money for rendering a public service.’”
“I like the Killer,” Feldt said.
“That was a terrible joke, Colonel, with due respect,” Pluto said.
“I’m still trying to figure out Daphne’s father,” Pickering said.
“He’s a sodding arsehole,” Feldt said. “Leave it at that.”
“I thought it was pretty funny,” Stecker said.
“Where is the Killer now, Pickering?” Feldt asked. “I liked that lad.”
“Why do they call him ‘Killer’?” Pluto inquired.
“He is apparently very good at killing people, which is why Eric likes him,” Pickering replied.
“Pickering, I keep asking where the Killer is, and you keep going deaf on me,” Feldt said, almost plaintively.
“I suppose he’s in Washington,” Pickering said. “I’m thinking very seriously of sending him to the Philippines.”
“What for?” Stecker asked.
“I am constrained to remind you,” Pluto announced solemnly, “that that subject is classified.”
“Our own personal Japanese spy having been heard from,” Feldt said, “and I hope ignored, please answer the sodding question.”
“I am not a fucking Jap spy,” Pluto said righteously. “I am a Korean spy.”
“There’s an Army officer there, on Mindanao, who’s set up some sort of guerrilla operation,” Pickering said. “I think it
’s worth looking into. So does Leahy.”
“Admiral Leahy?” Stecker asked, and when Pickering grunted, he continued, “To what end?”
“To see if they’re capable of doing any damage, that sort of thing.”
“Seven to one, sometimes ten to one,” Stecker said.
“I’ll cover that,” Feldt said. “What are you betting on?”
“What do you mean, Jack?” Pickering asked. “Seven to one?”
“A reasonably well led guerrilla force can tie down forces at least seven times its own strength,” Stecker said. “Often more. We had a hell of a time in Nicaragua, and we outnumbered them more than ten to one. Good fighters, the little brown bastards.”
“That’s right, you were in Nicaragua, weren’t you?”
“Where is Nicaragua?” Feldt asked.
“It is one of the seven moons of Jupiter,” Pluto answered.
“Everybody was in Nicaragua,” Stecker said. “Chesty Puller, Lou Diamond, just about everybody who was in The Corps between the wars found himself chasing banditos, or guerrillas, at one time or another.”
“Pluto,” Feldt asked, almost lovingly, “are you well versed in that jiujitsu business, or can I tell you to go sod yourself?”
Pluto leapt to his feet and waved his arms around, mimicking as best he could an Oriental character he had once seen in a Charley Chan movie. “At your peril, Commander Feldt! My hands are lethal weapons!”
“Pluto, sit down before you fall down,” Pickering ordered. Then he turned to Stecker again. “And we had trouble with guerrillas in the Philippines, didn’t we, Jack?”
“The Corps and the Army did,” Stecker said. “That’s where the .45 caliber round came from, you know.”
“No, I didn’t,” Feldt said. “Forty-five caliber round what?”
“The pistol cartridge,” Stecker said. “The standard sidearm was the .38. The Filipinos—mainly the Moros—used to come out of the bush swinging machetes. The .38 round just wouldn’t put them down. The .38 bullet just wasn’t heavy enough. So they came up with the .45. There’s not much a 230-grain .45 bullet won’t put down with one shot.”
“Pickering, this old mate of yours is a sodding encyclopedia of military lore, isn’t he?” Feldt asked.
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