W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps VII - Behind the Lines

"Yes, Sir."

"I'm going to have Stecker transferred..."

What's he doing, reading my mind?

"... to us. I asked for him some time ago, got no response, and finally had enough of the feet-dragging at Eighth and Eye, and went right to Frank Knox."

Well, that ought to get them off their fat asses. But they'll have their knives out for you, and Stecker, and anybody connected with either one of you.

"Yes, Sir."

"Unfortunately, until he is transferred to us-he's here in Australia to set up for the First Marine Division's refitting and rehabilitation when they're re-lieved from Guadalcanal-I can't involve him officially. As far as that goes, I haven't even asked him if he'd be willing to go. But I've been pumping his brain and his experience, and Feldt is trying to get an Aussie submarine to take you and the supplies. If that falls through, I think I can get one from the Navy, from Nimitz. When you speak with Stecker, stay off the subject of him going with you."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"How soon do you think you could be ready to go?"

"Did you say, Sir, that Colonel Stecker's arranged for the supplies you want me to take in?"

"They're available on twenty-four hours' notice."

I don't want to go to the goddamned Philippines. What I want to do is go home, and put my arms around Ernie, and tell her I'm back and I'm going to be there awhile.

"Then, if we have an Aussie submarine, we can go in twenty-four hours, Sir," McCoy said, and then raised his voice. "Hey, George, you want to go for another rubber-boat ride?"

"No, Sir. Thank you very much just the same, Sir."

"George can't go," Pickering said. "For reasons I can't tell you."

Which means that Hart now has one of these MAGIC clearances I'm not supposed to know about. Just got it. He couldn't have gone along on the Buka Operation if he had had a MAGIC clearance. Banning wouldn't have gone with me to the Gobi Desert, and Hart can't go with me to the Philippines. Peo-ple with MAGIC clearances are not expendable. Stecker and I don't have them, so we're expendable.

How about giving me a MAGIC clearance, General, so I can't do crap like this? And while you're at it, how about throwing in one for Colonel Stecker?

"Yes, Sir."

"It won't be in twenty-four hours, obviously," Pickering said. "But don't sign any long-term leases, Ken."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"Take us home, George," General Pickering ordered. "We're done."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"You sure you don't want to change your mind, George?" McCoy asked. "Maybe this time you won't fall out of the boat."

"Once is enough, thank you just the same, for that sort of thing," Hart said.

"Ken, I said George can't go," Pickering said.

"I'm just pulling his chain, Sir."

[THREE]

Water Lily Cottage

Brisbane, Australia

0605 Hours 14 November 1942

Two U.S. Army jeeps, a jeep with USMC markings, and a 1938 Jaguar Drop Head Coupe were parked in front of the cottage when Hart pulled the Studebaker up in front of the wide porch that circled the rambling frame building. Without thinking consciously about it, McCoy identified the vehicles and con-cluded that just about everybody who lived in Water Lily Cottage was "home."

The Jaguar was the General's personal vehicle, made available to him by its owner, an Australian executive of Pacific and Far East Shipping Corporation. "One of the world's great automobiles," Pickering often declared, "presum-ing you can get the sonofabitch to start, and if you don't mind a leaking roof."

The Marine Corps jeep was probably Colonel Stecker's. The U.S. Army jeeps, which carried the bumper markings of the SWPOA motor pool, were assigned for the use of the "Dungeon Dwellers": The Dungeon-more for-mally known as the SWPOA Cryptographic Room-was so called because it was located in the subbasement of the Supreme Headquarters SWPOA Build-ing, behind a creaking steel door, and with walls that oozed condensation.

Within the Cryptographic Room (which was actually a suite) there was another room behind another heavy, always locked steel door. It was a crypto-graphic section guarding one of the most closely held-and vitally impor-tant-secrets of the war, which went by the code name MAGIC.

Navy cryptographers at the Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, Navy Base had broken many-by no means all-of the Japanese Imperial General Staff and Imperial Navy codes. Not only was the very fact that the codes had been broken classified TOP SECRET, but access to intercepted and decrypted mes-sages was limited to a very few people, personally approved by the Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief, Admiral William Leahy, or by the President himself. The Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and the Supreme Commander, South West Pacific Ocean Area, General Douglas MacArthur, were on the list. So were Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, USMCR, and Colonel F. L. Rickabee, of the Office of Management Analysis.

McCoy was assigned to the Office of Management Analysis after he was commissioned, and in the course of events learned more than he had any right to know about MAGIC. He did not consciously seek this knowledge, but it was not difficult for him to pick up a fact here and a fact there-it would have been difficult, or impossible, for him not to-and assemble a rather clear picture of MAGIC, and of how USMC Special Detachment 16 (the official unit descrip-tion for Management Analysis personnel stationed in Australia) were involved with it.

It was clear to McCoy that Major Hon Song Do, Signal Corps, USA, on "Temporary Duty" with Detachment 16, and Second Lieutenant John Marston Moore, USMCR, were far more than a pair of cryptographic officers as-signed to handle routine classified material for SWPOA.

Hon, a Korean-American from Hawaii, was not only absolutely fluent in Japanese, but held a Ph.D. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Moore was born in Japan to missionary parents, studied at the University of Tokyo, and was equally fluent in Japanese.

At least once a day, sometimes more often, one or the other of them had a private session with General Douglas MacArthur, and sometimes his Intelli-gence Officer, Brigadier General Charles Willoughby. They went to these meetings-without leaving the SWPOA Headquarters Building-with a brief-case chained to their wrists, and carrying.45 pistols under their uniform tunics.

Hence, carrying something really secret. What sort of secrets? Secrets that could not be shared with the other general officers at SWPOA; secrets that had to be handled with even greater care than other TOP SECRET material coming into SWPOA; under a classification, MAGIC, that no one was even supposed to talk about.

Hon was a mathematician. Mathematicians broke codes. Hon and Moore were Japanese linguists. By definition, Japanese linguists dealt with the trans-lation of Japanese.

In other words, McCoy correctly concluded, Hon and Moore were reading, translating, interpreting, some kind of highly classified Japanese material. Why highly classified? There would be no strict security involved if all they were doing was reading captured Japanese documents; the more people who knew what the Japanese were doing and thinking, the better.

Unless, perhaps, they were reading intercepted Japanese encrypted radio messages-and didn't want the Japanese to know that their code was broken. That would explain a good many things-why so few people had access to MAGIC material, why anyone who had knowledge of MAGIC was absolutely forbidden to go anywhere where there was any chance at all of their falling into Japanese hands.

Major Hon Song Do, a very large man-tall, muscular, and heavyset- was sitting sprawled on a couch in the living room when General Pickering and Lieutenants McCoy and Hart walked in.

"Welcome home, Ken," he said. He had a thick Boston accent.