Pickering had realized—maybe especially after he’d met with General Walter Bedell Smith—that Truman was anything but the flaming liberal incompetent the Republican party had painted him to be.
He had then realized—the late-dawning realization making him feel like a fool—that Senator Richardson K. Fowler, who was as much entitled to be called “Mr. Republican” as any politician, was fully aware of this.
That had led him to recall Truman’s visit to tell him he was naming General Walter Bedell Smith to replace Admiral Hillencoetter. When he had told Truman he had always felt he was in water over his head, Truman had told him that not only had “Beetle” Smith said the same thing, but Wild Bill Donovan as well. Pickering had been so surprised—in the case of Donovan, astonished—to hear that that it was only later that he recalled what Truman had said when he’d assumed the presidency on Roosevelt’s death, that “he was going to need all the help he could get.”
That certainly suggested that Truman thought he had been given responsibility he wasn’t at all sure he was qualified to handle.
And the truth was that Truman had proven himself wrong. Almost all the decisions he had made—right from the beginning, when he’d ordered the atomic bombs to be dropped on Japan—had been the right ones.
He of course had been mistaken to give in to the brass and disestablish the Office of Strategic Services. And Fleming Pickering found Truman’s suggestion that it was about time to disband the U.S. Marine Corps to be stupid and outrageous. But Truman had realized he’d made a mistake about the OSS, and quickly formed the CIA, and after the performance of the Marines in the Pusan Perimeter and at Inchon, Truman had changed his mind about the Marines and said so.
Truman’s selection of General Smith to head the CIA had been the right one, even though his old friend Ralph Howe, the one general officer he really trusted, had relentlessly pushed Pickering for the job, and appointing Pickering would have pleased Senator Fowler personally and silenced a lot of Republican criticism.
As the Independence stopped, Pickering saw from his window the Supreme Commander, United Nations Command, standing on the tarmac waiting for the Commander-in-Chief.
MacArthur was wearing his trademark washed-out khakis and battered, gold-encrusted cap.
Jesus, Truman is the Commander-in-Chief! At least El Supremo could have put on a tunic and neck scarf!
Then he saw the others in the MacArthur party. Brigadier General Courtney Whitney was among them; Major General Charles Willoughby was not. That was surprising.
He wondered if Willoughby, who was almost invariably at the Supreme Commander’s side, might somehow have fallen into displeasure.
Is El Supremo punishing Willoughby for something by bringing Whitney here and leaving Willoughby in Japan? I know damned well Willoughby would want to be here.
The two were, in Pickering’s judgment, the most shameless of the Bataan Gang in sucking up to MacArthur, in constant competition for his approval, or even for an invitation to cocktails and dinner.
Both disliked Pickering. He had long before decided this was because of his personal relationship with MacArthur, which was far closer than their own. Pickering declined more invitations to cocktails, or bridge, or dinner with the MacArthurs than both of them received. And MacArthur often addressed Pickering by his first name, an “honor” he rarely accorded Willoughby or Whitney or, for that matter, anyone else.
There was more than that, of course. Pickering had never been subordinate to MacArthur. Worse than that, they knew—and there was no denying this—that he was, in effect, a spy in their midst, making frequent reports on MacArthur’s activities that they never got to see.
In the case of Whitney, Pickering had made a social gaucherie the day he had met MacArthur when he arrived in Australia from the Philippines with members of his staff—soon to be dubbed the “Bataan Gang.” He had not recognized Major Whitney as a Manila lawyer he had known before the war.
The truth was that he simply hadn’t remembered the man. Whitney had decided he had been intentionally snubbed, and had never gotten over it.
Pickering had written his wife from Australia, in early 1942, that his relations with MacArthur’s staff ranged from frigid to frozen, and that had been when he had been a temporarily commissioned Navy captain sent to the Pacific by Navy Secretary Frank Knox. The temperature had dropped even lower when he had been sent to the Pacific as a Marine brigadier general and with the title of Deputy Director of the OSS for Asia.
MacArthur—with the encouragement of Willoughby and Whitney, Pickering had come to understand—had not wanted the OSS in his theater of operations. Willoughby, MacArthur’s intelligence officer, and Whitney, who had been commissioned a major in the Philippines just before the war, and was serving as sort of an adviser, were agreed that intelligence activities should be under MacArthur’s intelligence officer. Whitney, moreover, had decided he had the background to become spymaster under Willoughby.
MacArthur had not refused to accept the OSS in his theater, he had simply been not able to find time in his busy schedule to receive the OSS officer sent to his headquarters by Wild Bill Donovan, the head of the OSS.
Donovan, who was a close personal friend of Roosevelt, had complained to him about MacArthur’s behavior, and Roosevelt had solved the problem by commissioning Pickering into the Marine Corps, assigning him to the OSS, and sending him to deal with MacArthur.
Pickering had a dozen clashes with the Bataan Gang during World War II, the most galling to Willoughby and Whitney his making contact with an officer fighting as a guerrilla on Mindanao after MacArthur—acting on Willoughby’s advice—had informed the President there “was absolutely no possibility of U.S. guerrilla activity in the Philippines at this time.”
Pickering had sent a team commanded by a young Marine intelligence officer—Lieutenant K. R. McCoy—to Japanese-occupied Mindanao on a Navy submarine. McCoy had established contact with a reserve lieutenant colonel named Wendell Fertig, who had refused to surrender, promoted himself to brigadier general, announced he was “Commanding General of United States Forces in the Philippines,” and begun guerrilla warfare against the Japanese occupiers.
When, late in the war, MacArthur’s troops landed on Mindanao, they found Brigadier General Fertig waiting for them with 30,000 armed and uniformed troops, including a band. Pickering had had Fertig’s forces supplied by Navy submarines all through the war.
Every report of Fertig’s successes—even of a successful completion of a submarine supply mission to him— during the war had been a galling reminder to the Bataan Gang that Pickering had done what MacArthur had said— on their advice—was impossible to do.
Pickering had learned that MacArthur had a petty side to his character. The one manifestation of this that annoyed Pickering the most—even more than MacArthur’s refusal to award the 4th Marines on Corregidor the Presidential Unit Citation because “the Marines already have enough medals”—was MacArthur’s refusal to promote Fertig above his actual rank of lieutenant colonel even though Fertig had successfully commanded 30,000 troops in combat. An Army corps has that many troops and is commanded by a three-star general.
Whitney had risen steadily upward in rank—he ended World War II as a colonel and was now a brigadier general—and this added to Pickering’s annoyance and even contempt.
Aware that he was being a little childish himself, Pickering took pleasure in knowing that Brigadier General Whitney’s pleasure with himself for being at El Supremo’s elbow when he met with the President would be pretty well soured when he saw Pickering get off the Presidential aircraft.
There turned out to be less of an arrival ceremony for the President than there had been at K-16 when MacArthur had landed there to turn the seat of the South Korean government back to Syngman Rhee.
The door of the Independence opened, and two Secret Service men and a still cameraman and a motion picture cameraman went down the stairs. Then Truman came out of his compartment and went do
wn the stairs.
MacArthur saluted. Truman smiled and put out his hand, then started shaking hands with the others of MacArthur’s party.
The first man off the Independence after Truman was a stocky Army chief warrant officer in his mid-thirties. He carried a leather briefcase in one hand and a heavy canvas equipment bag in the other. He wore a web pistol belt with a holstered .45 around his waist. A jeep was waiting for him. He got in it and drove off before General of the Army Omar Bradley came down the stairs.
George Hart knew—and had told Pickering—what the equipment bag contained, and what Chief Warrant Officer Delbert LeMoine, of the Army Security Agency, was doing with it. LeMoine was the Presidential cryptographer. Messages intended for the President that had come in since they left Hawaii had been forwarded to Wake Island. Wake Island, however, did not have the codes. The President would have to wait for his mail until LeMoine decrypted it.
The dignitaries aboard the Independence came down the stairs one by one and shook hands with MacArthur and the members of his staff he had brought with him from Tokyo. Pickering decided he was not an official member of the Truman party, and waited until the handshaking was over before he got off the Independence.
He gave Brigadier General Courtney Whitney a friendly wave. Whitney returned it with a nod and a strained smile.
Truman and MacArthur got in the backseat of a something less than Presidential—or MacArthurian—1949 Chevrolet staff car and drove off for a private meeting.
Then everyone else was loaded, without ceremony, into a convoy of cars and jeeps and driven to one of the single-story frame buildings lining the tarmac. Inside, a simple buffet of coffee and doughnuts had been laid out for them.
Pickering had just taken a bite of his second doughnut when another Army warrant officer touched his arm.
“Would you come with me, please, General?” he asked.
“Sure,” Pickering said. “What’s up?”
The warrant officer didn’t reply, but when Hart started to follow them, he said, “Just the general, Captain.”
The warrant officer led Pickering to a frame building— identical to the one where coffee and doughnuts were being served—a hundred yards away and held open the door for him.
There was an interior office, guarded by a sergeant armed with a Thompson submachine gun. He stepped out of the way as Pickering and the warrant officer approached, and then the warrant officer knocked at the door. A moment later LeMoine unlocked the door, opened it, and motioned Pickering inside.
Then he closed and locked the door and turned to Pickering with a smile.
“We have a mutual friend, General,” he said.
“Who’s that?”
“Master Sergeant Paul Keller,” LeMoine said. “He worked for me when we were in Moscow.”
“Good man,” Pickering said.
“He says much the same about you, General,” LeMoine said. “And he has the same kind of problems I do, wondering who gets to see what and when.”
“I’m not sure I follow you,” Pickering said.
“Why don’t you have a chair, General?” LeMoine said. “I’ve got to take a leak, and I’ll see if I can’t get us some coffee.”
He pulled a chair on wheels away from a table, waited until Pickering sat down, then walked to the door, unlocked it, walked through it, and then closed and locked it.
There was one sheet of paper on the table.
Pickering wondered why LeMoine had left it on display.
A man like that does not make mistakes. Christ, whatever it is, he wants me to see it!
Pickering picked it up and read it.
TOP SECRET—PRESIDENTIAL
WASHINGTON 2215 14OCT1950
FROM DIRECTOR CIA
TO (EYES ONLY) THE PRESIDENT OF THE
UNITED STATES
FOLLOWING RECEIVED 2207 14OCT1950 FROM MAJOR K R MCCOY USMCR
MESSAGE BEGINS
MAJOR MALCOLM S. PICKERING USMCR RETURNED TO US CONTROL 1200 14OCT1950. TRANSPORTED USS BADOENG STRAIT AS OF 1300 14OCT1950.
SUBJECT OFFICER IS DIRTY, UNSHAVEN, AND VERY HUNGRY, BUT IS UNWOUNDED, UNINJURED, AND IN SOUND PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITION.
FOLLOWING CIVILIAN PERSONNEL SHOULD BE CONTACTED BY MOST EXPEDITIOUS MEANS, ASKED NOT TO DISSEMINATE INFORMATION ABOVE TO OTHERS AND ON AGREEMENT BE
NOTIFIED OF SUBJECT OFFICER’S RETURN AND CONDITION.
MRS FLEMING PICKERING C/O FOSTER HOTELS SAN FRANCISCO CAL MRS K.R. MCCOY, TOKYO, JAPAN
MISS JEANETTE PRIESTLY C/O PRESS RELATIONS OFFICER, SUPREME HEADQUARTERS UNITED NATIONS COMMAND, TOKYO
MCCOY MAJ USMCR
MESSAGE ENDS
IN PRESUMPTION YOU WILL INFORM GENERAL PICKERING I WILL NOT DO SO
W.B. SMITH
DIRECTOR
There was the sound of the door being unlocked.
Fleming Pickering swallowed hard and stood up, but did not turn around for a moment, until he felt he had his voice and himself under control.
“Ready for some coffee, General?” LeMoine asked.
“Thank you,” Pickering said.
LeMoine set a coffee mug on the table.
“A little sugar for your coffee, General?” LeMoine asked. He held a silver pocket flask over the cup.
"Can I do that myself?” Pickering asked.
LeMoine handed him the flask.
Pickering put it to his lips and took a healthy swig.
“Thank you,” he said after a moment.
“Have another. There’s more where that came from,” LeMoine said.
Pickering took another pull, then handed the flask to LeMoine.
“Thank you,” he said again.
“Oh, look what I did!” LeMoine said. He picked up the decrypted message. “I really should have put this in the envelope for the President.”
“I didn’t see it,” Pickering said.
LeMoine met his eyes and nodded.
“I don’t think anyone’s going to question the Assistant Director of the CIA for Asia coming in here to ask if I had anything for him,” LeMoine said. “But, after I told you I didn’t, they might wonder why you hung around. Will you excuse me, please, General?”
“Thank you for the coffee,” Pickering said.
“When you see Sergeant Keller,” LeMoine said, “tell him I asked about him.”
“I’ll do that,” Pickering said as he walked to the door.
As he walked back to the coffee-and-doughnuts building, Pickering saw that the people who had been on the Independence and the Bataan were now—in separate knots— gathered around a Quonset hut. As he walked toward it, the door of the Quonset opened and first Truman and then MacArthur came out.
General Bradley walked up to them, then led them toward another of the identical frame buildings.
Pickering decided that since he had not been invited to attend the official conference, he would just stay in the background. He was glad for the opportunity: That Pick was coming home didn’t seem quite real yet. He realized that he had really given up hope, and was ashamed that he had. He knew he needed a couple of minutes to set himself in order.
He walked between two of the frame buildings and leaned against the wall of one of them. He became aware that his forehead was sweaty, and took a handkerchief from his pocket to mop it.
Jesus Christ, he’s really alive! And unhurt. Thank you, God!
“General, the President would like to see you, sir,” an Army colonel said. Pickering hadn’t seen him come between the buildings.
“Right away, of course,” Pickering said, and pushed himself off the building.
“General, are you all right? Sir, you look—”
“Colonel, I couldn’t possibly be any better,” Pickering replied.
When he turned the corner of the building, he saw the President standing with General Bradley and MacArthur in front of the conference building. When Truman saw Pickering, he motioned him over.
Pickering wasn’t sure what the protocol was, whether he
was supposed to salute or not. He decided if he was going to err, it would be on the side of caution. He saluted, which seemed to surprise both Bradley and MacArthur, who nevertheless returned it.
"Delbert,” the President began, ". . . the cryptographer? . . . has had time to decode only a couple of messages. One of them is this one. I thought you’d be interested.”
The President handed him the message.
“General, I can’t tell you how happy that message made me,” Truman said as Pickering read the message again.
“Thank you, sir,” Pickering said.
“May I show it to General Bradley and General MacArthur?” the President asked.
“Yes, sir. Of course.”
Bradley read it first.
“That’s very good news, indeed,” he said as he handed the message to MacArthur.
MacArthur’s left eyebrow rose in curiosity as he read the message. Then he wrapped an arm around Pickering’s shoulder.
“My dear Fleming!” he exclaimed emotionally. “Almighty God has answered our prayers! A valiant airman will be returned to the bosom of his family! Jean will be so happy!”
Bradley could not keep a look of amazement off his face.
“I’d like a word with General Bradley before we go in here,” Truman said. “I think if you two went in, the others would follow suit.”
“Of course, Mr. President,” MacArthur said.
“I’m to be at the meeting?” Pickering blurted.
“Of course,” Truman said. “You’re really the middle-man, General. You’re the only one who knows everybody.”
MacArthur entered the building with Pickering on his heels. Truman waited until they were out of earshot, then until the others who would participate in the conference had entered the building, and then turned to Bradley.
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