W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps IV - Battleground

Rooms-much less suites-in the Menzies Hotel, now the Headquarters of General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, South West Pacific Ocean Areas, were not ordinarily assigned to lowly Navy Captains. But Captain Pickering was not an ordinary officer, or for that matter, an ordinary man.

Six months before, he had been Chairman of the Board, Pacific and Far East Shipping Corporation. He had been known as Captain Pickering then, too, preferring the title to the more grandiose Commodore which many ship owners adopt, whether or not they have ever gone to sea. Fleming Pickering had received his Master, Any Ocean, Any Tonnage, license from the U.S. Coast Guard when he was twenty-six. He was entitled to be called Captain.

The Corporation he chaired was in many ways as singular as he was. PandFE did not for instance issue an annual stockholders' report detailing the financial condition of its assets (which included fifty-two ships and a good deal of real estate in the United States and abroad). The majority stockholders did not consider such a report necessary. Captain Pickering and his wife owned seventy-five percent of the outstanding shares, and controlled voting rights to the other twenty-five percent, which had been placed in trust for their only child.

Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR, was, in other words, an important and influential man in his own right. But what made him unique, in the military pecking order, were the orders he carried in his pocket:

THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY

WASHINGTON, D.C.

30 JANUARY 1942

CAPTAIN FLEMING W. PICKERING, USNR, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY, WILL PROCEED BY MILITARY AND/OR CIVILIAN RAIL, ROAD, SEA, AND AIR TRANSPORTATION (PRIORITY AAAAA-1) TO SUCH POINTS AS HE DEEMS NECESSARY IN CARRYING OUT THE MISSION ASSIGNED TO HIM BY THE UNDERSIGNED.

UNITED STATES NAVAL COMMANDS ARE DIRECTED TO PROVIDE HIM WITH SUCH SUPPORT AS HE MAY REQUEST. OTHER UNITED STATES AGENCIES ARE REQUESTED TO CONSIDER CAPTAIN PICKERING THE PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE UNDERSIGNED AND TO PROVIDE TO HIM APPROPRIATE SERVICES AND AMENITIES.

CAPTAIN PICKERING HAS UNRESTRICTED TOP SECRET SECURITY CLEARANCE. ANY QUESTIONS REGARDING HISMISSION WILL BE DIRECTED TO THE UNDERSIGNED.

FRANK KNOX

SECRETARY

Very soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Navy Secretary Frank Knox came to realize that the information about Naval operations in the Pacific he was getting-and would get-from regular Navy officers was understandably slanted to reflect well on the U.S. Navy. These reports tended to gloss over any facts or opinions that might suggest that the Navy was less than perfect. What he needed, he concluded, was someone to report to him directly, and someone who not only was not a member of the Navy establishment, but who would know what he was looking at.

Knox met Pickering through their mutual friend, Senator Richmond Fowler (Republican-California). He decided immediately that Pickering was the man he was looking for. It was less Pickering's nautical experience that appealed to him than Pickering's strongly stated conviction that after Pearl Harbor, Knox should have resigned and the admirals at Pearl Harbor should have been shot. It was in vino truth: The day Secretary Knox met him, Pickering was treating a sorely bruised male ego with large doses of Old Grouse Scotch whiskey. The PandFE Chairman, a much decorated Marine corporal in France during the First War, had just been told the Marine Corps could not use his services in World War II.

Two weeks later, Knox offered Pickering a commission as his personal representative, with captain's stripes to go with it. To Knox's surprise, Pickering immediately accepted. Shortly thereafter he left for the Pacific.

"Come!" Captain Pickering called; and carefully, so as not to spill the coffee, he looked over his shoulder.

A youthful-looking Navy officer somewhat hesitantly stuck his head in the door.

"Captain Pickering?"

"Yes," Pickering said. "Come on in."

His visitor's sleeves, Pickering saw with surprise, carried the stripes of a full commander. He didn't look old enough to be a commander, Pickering thought. Even more surprising was the manner in which the commander carried his large, apparently full briefcase. It was attached to his wrist by a chain and a handcuff.

"You are Captain Pickering?" the young-looking commander asked.

"Guilty," Pickering said. "Who are you?"

"Sir, may I trouble you for some identification?"

"Jesus," Pickering said, and carefully removing himself from the tilted back chair, went to his uniform jacket and took out a wallet. The breast of the jacket carried ribbons for both valor and for wounds received in action in what had now become the First World War. He offered the young commander his Navy Department identification card, and then, because he already had his hands on it, his local identity card.

That one, with red diagonal stripes across the photograph and data blocks, told the Military Police he had been authorized unlimited access to all areas of MacArthur's headquarters. The red stripes seemed to awe people, Fleming had noticed. It should satisfy this young man.

"Thank you, Sir, I just had to be sure."

"I understand," Pickering said. "Now who are you?"

The commander did not reply. Instead, he reached into an interior pocket of his uniform jacket and came out with an envelope. As he did so, Pickering saw the butt of a revolver and the straps of a shoulder holster.

"This is for you, Sir," the commander said.

"What is it?"

"Captain, I suggest that when you've read that, you burn it as soon as you can," the commander said.

Pickering tore the envelope open. Inside was another envelope. He opened that and took out a thin sheath of onion skin carbon copies of a typewritten document. There was no heading, and neither was there what he expected to find, in these circumstances, the words TOP SECRET stamped in red ink on the top and bottom of each page.

"What the hell is this?" Pickering asked. "It doesn't even look like it's classified." When there was no immediate reply, he added, a little coldly, "And for the last time, Commander, who are you?"

"I think you'll understand when you read it, Sir," the commander said. "Sir, I'm a friend of a friend."

Pickering ran out of patience. Both his eyes and his voice were cold when he replied, "In case you haven't heard, Commander, I'm a friendless sonofabitch around here."

While Pickering had established a good, even warm, relationship with MacArthur, the officers on MacArthur's staff were barely able to conceal their hostility toward a man who was not part of their clique; was not subject to their orders; and who could be accurately described as Frank Knox's spy.

The commander baffled him with a warm smile. "That's not exactly the scuttlebutt I heard, Sir," he said, adding, "Our mutual friend is Captain David Haughton. If you don't mind, Sir, I won't give you my name. Then you can truthfully say you never heard of me."

"OK, sure," Pickering said, far less icily. Captain David Haughton was Administrative Assistant to Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. If Haughton was involved, there was certain to be a satisfactory explanation for all this.

"I'll say 'Good morning,' Sir," the commander said. "I hope to meet you-for the first time-while I'm in Melbourne."

Now Pickering chuckled.

"We can walk through the looking glass together, right?" he said.

"Sir?" the commander asked, confused.

"Alice in Wonderland? Lewis Carroll?"

" 'Curiouser and curiouser,' Sir." the commander replied, now understanding.

"I would say 'Good-bye,'" Pickering said, "but you're not here, right?"

The commander smiled again and walked out of Pickering's suite. Pickering unfolded the sheets of onion skin and started to read them. The salutation was brief, and it was meaningful only to him. He was obviously FP. EF was Ellen Feller, who had been assigned as his secretary when he had been in Washington. But Ellen Feller was more than that, actually; for she'd been his administrative assistant, with the same relation to him as David Haughton had to Secretary of the Navy Knox. Ellen was now in Pearl Harbor, serving as his conduit to Knox, when she wasn't working as a Japanese language linguist in the ultrasecret Navy cryptographic office. The Commander, Pickering now guessed, was some sort of officer courier between Pearl Harbor and MacArthur; that would explain the pistol and the briefcase.