W E B Griffin - Corp 03 - Counterattack

by Counterattack(Lit)

  Ellen Feller was nothing if not resourceful. A short time later-though after a good deal of thought-she came up with a reasonable plan in the event McCoy reported the crates. First of all, there was a good chance that he would not report them at all. If he did, the question would naturally arise as to why he hadn't made his report to the proper authorities in China; his failure to do so would constitute, almost by definition, dere-liction of duty.

  And even if he did report them, it would come down to his word against hers and the Reverend Feller's. Besides, Ellen Feller had so far been unable to locate the crates, although she'd tried very hard to find them. Her husband had obviously hidden them well. Under the present circumstances, she doubted that anyone in the government would spend a lot of time looking for them-or that they could find them if they did. Glen Feller might be a miserable sonofabitch, but he was not stupid.

  And even if the crates did show up, she could profess to know nothing whatever about them; or alternatively, she could claim that she had reported the matter to McCoy. What was impor-tant, she concluded, was to earn the reputation of being a simple, loyal, hardworking employee, who was so devoutly religious that she could not possibly be involved in anything dishonest.

  It was not difficult for her to play this role. In China she had successfully played the role of a pious, hardworking, good Chris-tian woman for years.

  Playing it in Washington turned out to be even easier. In fact, partially because of the mushrooming of the Intelligence staff, it produced unexpected benefits. Other linguists came aboard after she did, and many of them, like her, were former missionar-ies. Soon she was given greater responsibility: since there was neither time nor need to translate every Chinese or Japanese document that came into their hands, Ellen Feller became sort of an editor. She separated those documents that would be of interest to the Navy from the others, which were discarded, and then she assigned the job of translating the important ones to someone or other. She rarely made the actual translations her-self. Because she had taken on greater responsibility, her official job description was changed, and this resulted in a promotion.

  At precisely five minutes before eight, Ellen Feller rose from her desk and visited the ladies' room to inspect her hair and gen-eral appearance. She was generally pleased with what she saw in the mirror, yet she wished, as she almost always did, that she could wear lipstick without destroying the image she was forced to convey. Without it, she thought, she looked like a drab.

  She checked very carefully to make sure that no part of her lingerie was visible. She took what she was perfectly willing to admit was a perverse pleasure in wearing black, lacy lingerie. It made her feel like a woman. But of course she didn't want anyone, especially Commander Kramer, to see it.

  When she finished, she went to Commander Kramer's office, stood in the open doorway, and knocked on the jamb.

  "Come in, Ellen," Commander Kramer said, smiling. "Good morning."

  "Good morning, Sir," she said, and stepped inside.

  There was a captain in the office, who rose as she entered.

  "Ellen, this is Captain Haughton, of Secretary Knox's office. Captain, Mrs. Ellen Feller."

  Haughton, Ellen saw, was examining her carefully. There was a moment's concern (What does someone from the office of the Secretary of the Navy want with me?) but it passed immediately. She sensed that Captain Haughton liked what he saw.

  "Good morning, Sir," Ellen Feller said politely. "I'm very pleased to meet you."

  (Two)

  The Foster Lafayette Hotel

  Washington, D.C.

  31 January 1942

  Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR, had been talking with his wife in San Francisco. Just after he put the telephone handset back in its cradle, the telephone rang again.

  The ring disturbed him. During the last few minutes of his call he had said some unflattering things about the President of the United States, and he'd performed a rather credible mimicry of both the President's and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt's voices. As he did that, it occurred to him that his telephone might be tapped, and that Roosevelt would shortly hear what Fleming Pickering thought of him.

  The possibility that his telephone might indeed be tapped was no longer a paranoid fantasy. Telephones were being tapped. The nation was at war. J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI had been given extraordinary authority. And so, certainly, had the counterintelligence services of the Army and Navy. The Constitution was now being selective in whose rights it protected.

  The great proof of that was just then happening in Pickering's home state. A hysterical Army lieutenant general in California had decided that no one of Japanese ancestry could be trusted. And he had been joined in this hysteria by California's Attorney General, a Republican named Earl Warren. Warren was more than just an acquaintance of Fleming Pickering's. Pickering had played golf with him-and actually voted for him.

  "To protect the nation," the Army lieutenant general and the California Attorney General had decided to scoop up all the West Coast Japanese, enemy alien and native-born American alike, and put them in "relocation camps."

  Just the West Coast Japanese. Not Japanese elsewhere in the United States. Or, for that matter, Japanese in Hawaii. And not Germans or Italians either... even though it wasn't many months earlier that the German-American Bund was marching around Madison Square Garden in New York, wearing swastika-bedecked uniforms, singing "Deutschland VberAlles," and saluting with the straight-armed Nazi salute.

  It was governmental insanity, and it was frightening.

  Pickering had already concluded that if he were J. Edgar Hoo-ver-or one of his counterintelligence underlings (or for that matter, some captain in Naval Intelligence)-and had learned that Fleming Pickering, Esq., had appeared out of nowhere, been commissioned as a captain directly and personally by the Secretary of the Navy, and was obviously about to move around the upper echelons of the defense establishment with a Top Se-cret clearance, he would want to learn instantly as much as he could about Pickering and his thoughts and opinions. The easy way to do that was to tap his telephone.

  Among the many opinions Pickering had broadcast over the phone moments earlier, he'd said that "the President of the United States is either the salvation of the nation, or he's quite as mad as Adolph Hitler, and I don't know which." And "if he goes ahead with this so-called relocation of the Japanese, espe-cially the ones who are citizens, and isn't stopped, I can't see a hell of a lot of difference between him and Hitler. The law is going to be what he says it is."

  Fortunately, he'd sensed that he was upsetting Patricia, so he'd switched to mimicking Roosevelt's and Eleanor's quirks of speech. He knew that always made her laugh.

  Of course, he had not informed Patricia of the subjects dis-cussed over lunch in the Presidential Apartments. Without giv-ing it much solemn thought, he'd decided that anything the Commander in Chief had said to the Secretary of the Navy and a Navy Reserve captain was none of the captain's wife's busi-ness.

  "Hello," he said, picking up the telephone.

  "Captain Pickering, please."

  "This is Captain Pickering."

  "Sir, this is Commander Kramer. I'm in the lobby."

  Oh, Christ I should have answered the telephone in The Navy Manner. This isn`t the Adams Suite in the Lafayette. This is the quarters of Captain F. Pickering, USNR, and I should have an-swered the phone by saying `"Captain Pickering."

  "Please come up, Commander."

  "Aye, aye, Sir."

  Pickering pushed himself out of the upholstered chair in the sitting room and went into the bedroom to put on his uniform. Commander Kramer had probably already decided he had been selected by ill fortune to baby-sit another goddamned civilian in uniform. Opening the door to him while wearing a Sulka's silk dressing robe would confirm that opinion beyond redemp-tion.

  The door chimes went off while Pickering was still tying his tie. He muttered, "Damn," then went to the door and pulled it open.

  Commander Kramer, a tall, thin
man with a pencil-line mus-tache, was not alone. He had with him a lieutenant junior grade and a woman. The JG was a muscular young man who was car-rying a well-stuffed leather briefcase. Fleming would have given odds that he'd not only gone to Annapolis, but that he'd played football there.

  The woman, smooth-skinned, wearing little or no makeup, was in her middle thirties. She was wearing a hat-a real hat, not a decorative one-against the snow and cold. She had unbut-toned her overcoat, and Fleming Pickering noticed, en passant, that she had long, shapely calves and a nice set of breastworks.

  "I was just tying my tie," Pickering said. "Come in."

  "Yes, Sir," Commander Kramer said, then thrust a small package at Pickering. "Sir, this is for you."

  "Oh? What is it?"

  "The Secretary asked me to get those for you, Sir. They're your ribbons. The Secretary said to tell you he noticed you weren't wearing any."

  "Would you say, Commander, that that's in the order of a pointed suggestion?"

  "Actually, Sir," Kramer said, "it's probably more in the na-ture of a regal command."

  Pickering chuckled. At least Kramer wasn't afraid of him. Frank Knox had described Kramer as "the brightest of the lot," and Pickering had jumped to the conclusion that Knox meant Kramer was sort of an academic egghead. He obviously wasn't.

  "Captain, may I introduce Mrs. Ellen Feller? And Mr. Satterly?"

  "How do you do?"

  Mrs. Feller gave him her hand. He found it to be soft and warm. Lieutenant Satterly's grip was conspicuously firm and masculine. Pickering suspected he would love to try a squeeze contest.

  "Let me finish, and I'll be right with you," Pickering said, and started to the bedroom.

  "Captain, may I have a word with you alone, Sir?" Kramer asked.

  "Come along."

  He held the door to the bedroom open for Kramer, and closed it after he'd followed him through it.

  "Mrs. Feller is a candidate nominee, maybe, for your secre-tary, Captain," Kramer said.

  "I wondered who she was."

  "The Secretary said I should get you someone a little out of the ordinary," Kramer said. "I took that to mean I should not offer you one of the career civil-service ladies."

  "How did you get stuck with me, Kramer?"

  "I'm flattered that I did, Sir."

  "Really?"

  "It's always interesting to work with somebody who doesn't have to clear his decisions with three levels of command above him."

  "So it is," Fleming said. "Tell me about Mrs.... what did you say?"

  "Feller, Captain. Ellen Feller. She's been with us about six months."

  " `Us' is who?" Pickering interrupted.

  "Naval Intelligence, Sir."

  "OK." He had figured as much.

  "She and her husband were missionaries in China before the war. She speaks two brands of Chinese, plus some Japanese."

  "Now that you think about it, she does sort of smell of mis-sionary."

  "She doesn't bring it to work, Sir. I can tell you that. She's been working for me."

  "Why are you so willing to give her up?" Pickering chal-lenged, looking directly at Kramer.

  There was visible hesitation.

  "The lady has character traits you forgot to mention? She likes her gin, maybe?"

  "No, Sir. There's an answer, Captain. But it sounds a bit trite."

  "Let's hear it."

  "If I understand correctly what your role is going to be, you need her more than I do."

  "Oh," Pickering replied. "That's very nice of you. I thought perhaps you might be giving her to me so she could tell you ev-erything you wanted to know about me. And about what I'm doing."

  "No, Sir," Kramer smiled. "That's not it."

  "How do I know that?"

  "Well, for one thing, Sir, I don't need her for that purpose. The back-line cables will be full of reports on you."

  "What's a back-line cable?"

  "Non-official messages. Personal messages. What the admi-rals send to each other when they want to find out, or report, what's really going on."

  "OK," Fleming said. "You're a very interesting man, Com-mander."

  "I don't know about that. But I like what I'm doing, and I'm smart enough to know that if I got caught spying on you-as opposed to getting my hands on back-line cables-I would spend this war at someplace like Great Lakes, giving inspira-tional talks to boots."

  "Did you ever consider selling life insurance?" Pickering asked. "You're very convincing. People would trust you."

  "Some people can. People I admire can trust me completely."

  "How do I rate on your scale of admiration?"

  "Way at the top."

  "Is that what the Navy calls soft-soap?"

  "I really admire the Secretary," Kramer said. "He admires you, or you wouldn't be here. Call it `admiration by association.' And then there are these."

  He walked to the dresser where Pickering had laid the small package Kramer had given him. He opened it and took out two rows of multicolored ribbons.

  "These are very impressive, Captain. You didn't get these be-hind a desk."

  Pickering went to him and took them, then looked at them with interest.

  "I don't even know what they all are," he said.

  "Turn them the other way around," Kramer said, chuckling. "They're upside down. And then, from the left, we have the Sil-ver Star, the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, the Purple Heart with two oak leaf clusters...."

  "I never got a medal called the Purple Heart," Pickering in-terrupted.

  "It's for wounds received in action," Kramer said. "It was originally a medal for valor conceived by General Washington himself in 1782. In 1932, on the two-hundredth anniversary of his birth, it was revived. It is now awarded, as I said, for wounds received in action."

  "We had wound stripes," Pickering said softly, and pointed at his jacket cuff. "Embroidered pieces of cloth. Worn down here."

  "Yes, Sir. I know. You had three. Now you have a Purple Heart with two oak leaf clusters. On the left of the lower row, Captain, is your World War I Victory Medal, and then your French medals, the Legion d'Honneur in the grade of Chevalier, and finally the Croix de Guerre. A very impressive display, Sir."

  "Kramer, I was an eighteen-year-old kid...."

  "Yes, Sir. I know. But I suspect the Secretary feels, and I agree, that someone who has never heard a shot fired in anger- and we have many senior officers in that category, Sir-will not automatically categorize as a goddamn civilian in uniform a man who was wounded three times while earning three medals for valor."

  Pickering met Kramer's eyes, but didn't respond.

  "You've noticed, Sir, that the Secretary wears his Purple Heart ribbon in his buttonhole?"

  "No, I didn't. I saw it. I didn't know what the hell it was."

  "The Secretary got that, Sir, as a sergeant in the Rough Riders in Cuba in 1899."

  "OK. You and the Secretary have made your point. Now what about the young officer?"

  "He's carrying the bag. I didn't know what you were inter-ested in, so I brought everything you might be. It's a heavy bag. You pick out what you want, and he'll return the rest. Do you have a weapon, Sir?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Are you armed? Do you have a gun?"

  "As a matter of fact, I do. Am I going to need one?"

  "Much of that material is top secret, Captain. It either has to be in a secure facility or charged to someone who has the ap-propriate security clearance and is armed."

  "My pistol is stolen," Fleming Pickering said.

  "Sir?"

  "I brought it home from France in 1919," Pickering said. "It's stamped `U.S. Property.'"

  Kramer chuckled and smiled. "I'm sure the Statute of Limita-tions would apply, Sir. A Colt.45?"

  "Yeah," Pickering said He went to a chest of drawers, opened it, and held up a Colt Model 1911 pistol.

  "Well, we'll get you another one, Captain. But that should do for the time being."

  "Is t
here any reason I can't just read this stuff here and give it all back?"

  "None that I can think of, Sir. May I make a suggestion?"

  "Sure."

  "Make a quick survey, select what you want, and then we'll send Mr. Satterly back to the office with the rest. For that mat-ter, I could go with him. And then-presuming you find Mrs. Feller at least temporarily satisfactory-she could stay here until you're finished, then bring the rest back."