W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps 03 - Counterattack

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 important, 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 Christian 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 missionaries. 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 herself. 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 general 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 Hoover-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 Secret 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, especially 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 discussed over lunch in the Presidential Apartments. Without giving 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 business.

"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 answered 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 redemption.

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