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

Chief Hansen could not hear the Secretary's reply.

"Have it sent," Haughton ordered. "But bring that back. I'll take care of burning it."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

Haughton reached for another of the telephones on his desk and dialed a number from memory. It was answered on the second ring

"Liberty 7-2033."

Although he suspected Rickabee had good reasons for ordering the tele-phones at the Office of Management Analysis answered in that manner Haughton was always annoyed when he heard the recitation of the number

"Captain Haughton for Colonel Rickabee."

"Sorry, Sir, the Colonel is not available at this time."

"Where is he?"

'Tm sorry, Sir, I am not permitted to give out that information."

"Do you recognize my name?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Get in touch with Colonel Rickabee and have him call me. I'm in my office."

"Has the Colonel your number, Sir?"

"I think he does," Haughton said icily, and hung up.

The private line on Haughton's desk rang not more than two minutes later.

"Captain Haughton."

"What's on your mind, David?" Rickabee's dry, emotionless voice asked.

"Something's come up. The sooner we get together, the better."

"Sounds serious."

"It doesn't have to be. Would it be convenient for you to come here?"

"Frankly, no."

"Well, then, where are you?"

"At the Foster Lafayette. General Pickering's suite."

"May I come there?"

"Of course. Banning and Sessions are with me. Will that pose any prob-lems?"

"No. And it will probably spare you having to tell them what this is all about. I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

There was a click, and then a dial tone.

Haughton held the telephone handset in his hand, staring at it in amaze-ment and some annoyance, before placing it in its cradle.

"Colonel Fritz Rickabee, USMC," Haughton said aloud, shaking his head, "having decided that nothing else need be said, hung up."

He picked up the direct line to Knox's desk, intending to ask if the Secre-tary required anything else of him before he left the office, but there was no answer. Secretary Knox had gone home.

He waited four or five minutes for Chief Hansen to return from the cryp-tography room with the original of Knox's message, told him "Thank you, Chief, and go home," and then folded the message in thirds and put it in his shirt pocket.

Then, feeling a little foolish, he opened a drawer in his desk, took out a Colt.380 automatic pistol, and, somewhat awkwardly, slipped it into a leather holster on his trouser's belt.

Colonel Rickabee read Frank Knox's Special Channel Personal to Pickering, made a wry face, which could have meant contempt or resignation, and then asked with a raised eyebrow and tilt of his head if he could give it to Banning and Sessions. Haughton gestured with a wave of his hand that he could.

Rickabee knew that something like this would inevitably happen; he had, in fact, seen it coming when the President sent Pickering back to Australia to plead Donovan's case for the OSS to MacArthur.

Rickabee had long ago come to understand that everything in Washington was politics. This meant compromise, sometimes reasonable, sometimes not, between powerful people with different agendas, sometimes noble, sometimes not, and sometimes-as in this case-based on nothing more than personal or professional egos.

Rickabee knew Donovan, and respected him. And he was convinced that Donovan knew as well as he did that the role the Office of Strategic Services envisioned for Europe-which in Rickabee's professional opinion was going to work-simply would not work in the Pacific.

It was relatively easy to parachute agents into France, or Norway, or any of the other countries now occupied by the Germans. Most of the agents would be natives of those countries. They would be fluent in the language, know the country, and have contacts inside the country willing to risk their lives to fur-ther the liberation of their countries. Furnished with excellent forged identity documents, an agent fluent in the language could relatively easily lose himself in a sea of other white faces.

The situation in the Pacific was different. A white face seen anywhere in territory occupied by the Japanese would stand out like a flashing lighthouse in a sea of yellow and brown faces, and would be immediately suspect. The En-glish who had been in Singapore and Hong Kong were now in prison camps. So were the Dutch who had been in the Dutch East Indies; and, for that matter, most of the French in French Indochina-the exception being those who could prove their loyalty to Marshal Petain's German allied government in Vichy.

Rickabee knew the story of Captain Ralph Fralick, who had been commis-sioned with Fertig in the Philippines. Fralick blew up bridges, railroads, and supply depots in the face of the advancing Japanese on Luzon; and then, rather than surrender, made an incredible journey from Luzon to Hanoi in French Indochina in a fifty-foot boat. On landing in Hanoi, Fralick lined up his forty men and marched them off to report to the French authorities. Salutes were exchanged, and then the French turned Fralick and his men over to the Japa-nese.

For most of the people in territory now occupied by the Japanese, there would be very little profit in risking one's life, and the lives of one's family, to fight the Japanese... especially when the result would not be liberation from occupation, but simply the reinstallation of the British or the Dutch or the French as colonial masters.

There was an exception to this analysis-in Intelligence, there was always an exception-and that of course was the Philippines. Most Filipinos did not hate the Americans who had been running their country since they took it away from the Spanish at the turn of the century. The Filipinos believed-because it happened to be true-that the United States really intended to give their coun-try independence as soon as possible. The Philippine Army fought with great valor against the Japanese invaders, and when further resistance was impossi-ble, they went with their American comrades-in-arms into prison camps.

Meanwhile, the Japanese made the same mistake in the Philippines the Germans made in Russia: They treated the native population brutally; and so they lost any chance of cooperation-or at least docile acceptance of the occu-pation.

Consequently, American agents sent into the Philippines would have a rea-sonable chance of obtaining all sorts of assistance from the Filipinos.

But getting them there was going to be a problem, and so was logistics. (Mindanao, closest to Australia, was not the hour or so's flight time away that France and Scandinavia were from American bases in England.) Still, some-thing could be done in the Philippines, and Donovan knew it could.

But that wasn't Donovan's only motive in pushing so hard to be included in Pickering's mission to Fertig, Rickabee believed. He wanted the OSS to be involved worldwide. If the OSS was operational only in Europe, that would diminish its stature, and thus the stature of Colonel William J. Donovan.

Donovan was already engaged in a personal ego war with J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI. On the one hand, Hoover claimed the FBI had sole responsibility for Intelligence and Counterintelligence in the Western Hemisphere. On the other hand, Donovan claimed the OSS had worldwide responsibility for Intelli-gence, Counterintelligence, and Special Operations-read sabotage and sub-version. And-predictably-Roosevelt had declined to make a decision between the two of them. The result was that FBI and OSS agents in Argentina, Chile, Peru, and even Mexico spent more time fighting each other than harm-ing the German, Italian, and Japanese "Axis."

In Rickabee's view, not only was Pickering being used as a pawn in this political war, but as soon as he saw the Special Channel Personal, he would know he was being used, and it would bother him a great deal.