W E B Griffin - Men at War 1 - The Last Heroes

by The Last Heroes(Lit)

  "Nobody else is working on this," Donovan said. "The fact is that this house belongs to Jim Whittaker. It is his uncle who died here tonight."

  "Jesus Christ!" Baker said. "I just didn't make the connection. All I've found out so far about Whittaker is that he's in the Air Corps. I expect to find out tomorrow where he is."

  "He's in the Philippines," Donovan said. "So you can forget about him. And you can forget about Canidy, too. He's off in China with the Flying Tigers."

  Baker was silent for a moment.

  "Is there some reason I can't think of why I couldn't recruit Canidy?" he asked.

  "How would you get over there to recruit him?" Douglass asked.

  "That would be a question of travel priority," Baker replied. "I don't think any priority would get me into the Philippines right now. But China is something else."

  "You think Canidy is that important?"

  "I think he's important in that he might keep Fulmar from turning us in," Baker said. "At least that. He might even be able to blow on what small ember of patriotism may be left in Fulmar."

  "You don't like Fulmar, do you?" Donovan asked.

  "No," Baker said, "I don't."

  "When would you like to leave?" Donovan asked.

  "As soon as I can," Baker said.

  "Go pack," Donovan said. "By this time tomorrow, I should be able to have your travel priority arranged."

  @J, Ellis drove Donovan to the morgue, where he was given the paperwork involved in certifying Chesty Whittaker's death. Cynthia Chenowith and Douglass stayed at the house, where they taped brown kraft paper over the side windows of Baker's station wagon.

  When Donovan and Ellis returned, Chesty's Packard was put into one of the garages. Then Donovan called Barbara Whittaker at Summer Place. After he expressed his condolences, he told her how they had worked things out. Barbara knew a funeral parlor in Asbury Park. She would telephone and tell them Edward was coming.

  "Cynthia Chenowith will be with him," Donovan said.

  "Oh?" Barbara asked, and Donovan thought he heard a catch in her voice. "Is she up to that?"

  "She says she is," Donovan said.

  "Well, tell her I'll have a room waiting for her," Barbara said.

  "Is there anything else I can do for you tonight?" Donovan asked.

  "Yes," she said, surprising him. "There is. I tried to get in touch with Jimmy. I couldn't. Is there some way you could get word to him?"

  "I'll take care of it, if you'll give me an address."

  She gave it to him and thanked him; then, without saying goodbye, she hung up.

  They drove to the funeral home. The casket fit as Ellis said it would in Baker's station wagon. Cynthia Chenowith got in beside Edward, and they drove off.

  While the others went to take care of the body, Ellis drove Donovan and Douglass to their homes. Donovan owned a town house in Georgetown, and Douglass had a small apartment nearby.

  Donovan, exhausted, fell into bed without even taking his ritual shower. But as he mashed the pillow beneath him, he remembered that he had told Barbara he would do what he could to get word t( Jimmy Whittaker that Chesty was dead.

  The international operator told him that they weren't accepting calls for the Philippines. And both Western Union and MacKay told him that while they would accept messages, they would not guarantee delivery. The military had priority, and all the circuits were tied up with official business.

  He put the handset in the cradle and started to turn off the light. Then he thought of something he had to do right then.

  He dialed a number from memory. A woman's voice answered.

  "This is Bill Donovan. Is he still up?" Donovan said.

  "Yes, Bill?" the familiar voice came on the line a moment later.

  "Mr. President, if you hadn't ordered me to report on this, I wouldn't bother you. We've sent Chesty Whittaker's body to New Jersey," Donovan said.

  "I'll telephone Barbara in the morning," the President said. "Bu you'll have to represent me at the funeral, Bill."

  "Yes, Mr. President."

  "And I'll see you in the morning. Thank you for calling."

  "Good night, Mr. President."

  The President of the United States had a personal, kind thought when he hung up the telephone. Poor Chesty had never had any children. But he had looked upon Jimmy as his son, and Jimmy would have to be told. Communication with the Philippines was difficult.

  He summoned one of his military aides. "If there's a moment's free time on the lines to the Philippines, I would like to ask General MacArthur to pass the word to Lieutenant James Whittaker that his uncle Chesty has passed away. I'm sure he'll know where he is."

  "Yes, Mr. President," the aide said. "I'll take care of it."

  An hour later a radio message went out from Washington:

  PRI THE whrrf- HOUSE WASHINGTON 0005 HOURS 8 DEC 41

  HEADQUARTERS US FORCES PI-IILIPPINFS PERSONAL FOR GENERAL MACA_RTHUR DIRECTION OF THE PRESIDENT STOP LOCATE A-ND RELAY 2D IT JAMES M. C. WHFFTAXER USARMY AIRCORPS CONDOLENCES OF PRESIDENT RE CIIESLEY HAYWOOD WHITTAKER DECEASED WASH DC OF STROKE 7

  DEC 1941 STOP LEWIS MAJOR GEN USA Memphis, Tennessee 8:30 pm., December 7, 1941

  Ann Chambers had been in the city room of the Memphis Daily Advocate when the bells had rung on the AP and the INS, and finally the UP teletype machines, announcing the arrival of a flash. She was covering the hospitals with the "good" funerals (as opposed to routine obituaries, the province of a feisty old lady). When the bells rang, she was working on a feature story about questionable business practices of certain funeral directors.

  The instant he was told of the Pearl Harbor story, Orrin Fox, the editor of the Daily Advocate, decided to put on an extra. Since the Advocate was a morning paper, which normally went to bed at two in the morning, he had to move the deadline forward to six that night, which he thought would give him and his staff time both to get out the news the paper would normally print eight hours early and to assemble the facts about the Japanese attack from the wires.

  Ann's greedy funeral directors' story went into a drawer as she and everybody else worked frantically to put together the paper. It was half past eight when Ann went home to the four-room suite she shared with Sarah in the Peabody Hotel.

  Ann found Sarah sitting on the windowsill, looking in the general direction of the Mississippi River, tears running unashamedly down her cheeks. Her pregnancy was now obvious: she was in her sixth month.

  : wise W. E. B. Cm R I F 1P "Well," Ann said, "I finally got a byline on page one. It took war to do it."

  She handed Sarah a copy of the Advocate, the ink still slick, and pointed out a box on the front page: "Last-Minute War News Fro, Our Wire Services. Compiled by Ann Chambers, Daily Advocate staff writer."

  "Ed could be dead right now, you know that?" Sarah said, "Oh, I don't think so," Ann replied. "They attacked Hawaii, not Bun-na."

  "I've been listening to the radio," Sarah said, turning to Ann to t argue with her. "There's fighting all over, over there."

  Ann shrugged.

  "I want a father for my baby!" Sarah said, close to tears.

  Tears weren't going to help anything, Ann thought. A fight would be better.

  "Then maybe you should have written and told him," she said sarcastically.

  "I couldn't do that," Sarah said illogically, but rising to the bait.

  "And when he comes back? Do you plan to tell him then?"

  "If he comes back, you mean," Sarah said.

  "He'll be back," Ann said, hoping she sounded more convincing than she felt. She had spent the day reading the wire-service yellows: the Japanese had struck all over the Orient. She hadn't seen any specific story about an attack on Rangoon, but that didn't mean anything. And if the Japanese had struck Rangoon, Ed and Dick would have been in it. They were fighter pilots. Fighter pilots, by definition, fought.

  God, Ann prayed silently, protect those two bastards.

  "It's not really fair, is it?" Sarah aske
d.

  "You should have thought about that before you took your pants off," Ann said, and immediately regretted it.

  "Ann!" Sarah replied, shocked and hurt.

  "I'm sorry' " Ann said. "I'm really sorry." Sarah looked at her, Ann thought, like a kicked dog.

  T018 LAST HNROES 287

  "I had an interesting thought today," Ann said. Sarah didn't seem at all interested in her interesting thought. "I thought that you were one up on me."

  6)"at,s that supposed to mean?" ,If mine doesn't come back, I don't have anything." ,What do you mean, i yours'?"

  ,I thought you'd figured that out," Ann said. "Did you really think I've been writing him as my 'patriotic duty'? The only reason he didn't get in my pants is because he didn't ask." ,Ann," Sarah said, disapproving but unable to keep from smil-ing. "You're outrageous." 111 almost-but not quite- "I really wish he had," Ann said. wish I was in your condition."

  "Oh, AMP9

  ,Well, knowing those two, we have nothing to worry about Ann said. "Unless you want to worry about them being picked off by some exotic foreign female, while we sit here and wait." ,I thought," Sarah said, ignoring Ann's last remark, "that you'd... never done it."

  "I never have," Ann said. "That's what I meant when I decided you were one up on me."

  "Thanks a lot," Sarah said.

  "If you knew then what you know now, would you have?" Ann asked.

  Sarah thought that over a moment.

  "Yes," she said.

  "See what I mean?" Ann said. ,pity you can't drink," she said. "I could use some company."

  She picked up the telephone and told the bell captain to send up a quart of bourbon.

  "I worked it out," Sarah said. "At this moment, it's half past nine tomorrow morning in Rangoon. If he's still alive, he's already had his breakfast."

  Bargoon, Burma 0930 9 December 1941

  If there had been any tea at Wing Commander Hepple's house, six blocks away, Bitter hadn't seen it. But there had been a good deal of gin and whiskey, and even a bottle of bourbon. A redheaded Scottish woman had also been there. She was private secretary to a Briton high in the colonial bureaucracy, and she and Stephanie Walker, the woman with whom she shared an apartment, found the newly arrived young American fliers a welcome addition to the British officers and civil servants.

  Stephanie Walker was small and pale, and in some ways reminded Ed Bitter of Sarah Child. It was Ed Bitter told himself when he woke up in Stephanie Walker's bed, partly that, plus the excitement of the war starting, plus all the liquor they had put away at Wing Commander Hepple's tea, that had brought him to her bed.

  Stephanie Walker was married to an RAF fighter pilot "temporarily, for eight damned months" posted to Singapore, but by the time Ed learned that, they were already in the apartment.

  He got out of bed and found Canidy naked and entwined with the redhead in another bedroom. Then he walked on tiptoe to the bed and shook Canidy's arm. The obvious thing to do was get out of the apartment as quietly and quickly as possible.

  Canidy was hungover, he announced quite unnecessarily, and before he did anything he wanted a good breakfast and a lot of coffee. There was no sense in rushing off to get it, since they had been invited to eat right here.

  Breakfast was actually rather pleasant, and Stephanie Walker was neither as coarse nor as crude as he thought he would find her when he was sober.

  He would, he thought, telephone her in a day or two.

  Then he thought, Good Christ ' I'm getting as amoral as Canidy.

  When they stopped by the CAMCO house to change clothing, there was another radio message for them, taped to Canidy's mirror:

  CANIDY BITTER RELIEVED RANGOON STOP REPORT ME WITH PERRY GE-AR STOP CROOKSHANKS There was a penciled note on the bottom of the teletype paper: I've got a truck going up there this afternoon. Your gear would probably make it OK on it. Dolan.

  "Shit," Canidy said. "I knew this was too good to last."

  They packed their clothing, then drove out to Mingaladon Air Base.

  Canidy, without making any kind of preflight examination of aircraft, climbed into the cockpit and put his helmet on. Bitter was at first surprised that he was taking chances like that, then angry that he was probably still drunk and didn't know what he was doing. But finally he was angry with himself when he realized what Canidy was actually doing.

  It was folklore among pilots that the best cure for a hangover was oxygen. Since Bitter had never flown hungover, he had had no chance to test the theory. But that was clearly what Canidy was doing.

  Two minutes later, Canidy climbed out of the plane and handed Bitter the mask and the oxygen bottle.

  "It's leaking Canidy announced blandly. "You might as well use the rest. I'll go check the weather and get another bottle."

  Ed Bitter was very surprised at how good the cool oxygen felt in his nasal passages, and how quickly it seemed to blow the cobwebs away.

  When Canidy returned from Operations, he had two.45 Colt Model 1911AI pistols.

  "This should make you happy, Admiral Farragut," he said. "We are now officially armed to make war." And then he had a second thought. "Speaking of which," he said, "don't push the red button. They've put ammo aboard."

  Five minutes later, they lifted off. The hip-holstered automatic got in the way, : and Bitter resolved to get an aviator's shoulder holster just as soon as he could. But having the pistol was comforting. Even more comforting was to be in control of an armed fighter plane. This is what he had been trained for, at the Naval Acadern Y and at Pensacola. He was indeed going in hanii's way in the defense of his country, even though he was an employee of the Chinese govermnent in a uniform without insignia.

  There were no other aircraft in the bright blue skies between Rangoon and Toungoo.

  Deal, NOW Jersey 4:30 pm., December Sy 1941

  Donovan found Barbara Whittaker in the breakfast room.

  "I'm afraid I'm going to have to be going, Barbara," he said. vere driving and.

  ,I'm glad you could come she said. "It was a nice funeral, I thought. Just his friends, really."

  "The President wanted to come," Donovan said.

  "He telephoned just a few minutes ago," she said. "After what Chesty called him, and to his face, I thought it was a nice thing to do' "

  4 6Franklin forgives those of us who don't agree with him. He's convinced we're just not capable of understanding his noble inotives," Donovan said.

  "I wonder if Jimmy knows yet," she said. "We're trying, " Donovan said. "Communications to the Philip-Pines are a problem."

  "Franklin said he was trying to help," Barbara said.

  460h?"

  "He said he had sent word to General MacArthur to find Jimmy and tell him ' " she said.

  46 Then by now, Barbara, I would think Jimmy knows. But it will be as difficult for him to get back word from there as it is to reach him,"

  "I was thinking before," she said calmly, "that if anything should happen to Jimmy over there, the Whittaker name would die with him. I would really hate to see that happen."

  "I'm sure Jimmy will be all right," Donovan said with a convic_ tion he did not feel.

  "Something like this does strange things to you," Barbara said.

  "Of course it does," he said comfortingly.

  "I was just thinking," she said, "that it would have been nice if Chesty had made her pregnant."

  "I beg your pardon?" Donovan said, astonished.

  "Her," Barbara Whittaker said, nodding out the window.

  Donovan looked. Cynthia Chenowith was on the beach, her head wrapped in a kerchief, her hands jammed in the pockets of her trench coat.

  Barbara Whittaker smiled at Donovan.

  "Don't be so naive, Bill," she said. "If you took a young mistress, don't you think Ruth would know9"

  She smiled at his discomfiture.

  "When I saw her out there," Barbara went on, "I felt sorry for her. After Chesty, what's left for her? And then I had another thought. I wanted
so much for him to have a child. If there was a child, it wouldn't quite be the end of everything."

  "There's something I would like to ask you," Donovan said, wondering if he was asking now because he desperately wanted to change the subject.

  "Oh?"

  "I talked with Chesty about this on our way to Washington," he said, "and he was willing to let me have the house on Q Street."