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

"What can I do for you, Chief?"

"Ma’am, you’re to report here, with all your gear, for outshipment by 0630 tomorrow."

"What are you talking about? I’m on leave until the sixteenth."

"No, Ma’am. That’s why I’m calling. Your orders have been changed. You’re to report in by 0630 tomorrow."

"Why?"

"Ma’am, I guess they found a space for you to outship."

"But what if I was in Philadelphia?"

"Ma’am?"

"I was authorized a leave to Philadelphia. You couldn’t do this to me if I was in Philadelphia," Barbara said. "I couldn’t get from Philadelphia to San Diego by six o’clock tomorrow morning."

"Ma’am, you’re in San Diego," Chief Venwell said. "Ma’am, I’m sorry about this, but I can’t do a thing for you."

(Two)

The Coronado Beach Hotel

San Diego, California

8 March 1942

"It’s been a long time since I came here with a man in uniform," Patricia Foster Pickering said to her husband as they approached the hotel entrance.

Fleming Pickering was at the wheel of a 1939 Cadillac Sixty-Two Special he had borrowed from J. Charles Ansley, General Manager, San Diego Operations, Pacific and Far Eastern Shipping. He looked at his wife in some confusion until he took her meaning.

"Oh," he said wickedly, "that stuck in your mind, did it?"

It was a reference to their rendezvous in San Diego in 1919. Corporal Fleming Pickering, USMC, was going through the separation process at the San Diego Marine Barracks when, unannounced, Miss Patricia Foster of San Francisco had shown up at the gate to announce that she just happened to be in the neighborhood and thought she would just drop by.

She had had a suite in the Coronado Beach, a complimentary courtesy rendered by the management to the only daughter of Andrew Foster, Chairman of the Board of the Foster Hotel Corporation. There she had presented him with a welcome-home present of a nature he had not really expected to receive until after their relationship was officially sanctioned by the Protestant Episcopal Church.

"From time to time, I think of it," she admitted.

Throughout their marriage, Patricia had often surprised him. She had surprised him at two-fifteen that morning by slipping, naked, into his bed at Charley Ansley’s house on a bluff overlooking the Pacific.

He had called her from Oklahoma City to tell her that he was en route in a Navy plane to San Diego, where he had some business with the Navy. He also intended to see his secretary-soon his ex-secretary-aboard the U.S. Navy transport President Millard G. Fillmore, ex-Pacific Princess. He would then, he told her, see about catching a plane home.

She could expect him late that night, or early the following morning. They would have four or five days home before he had to take the San Francisco-Pearl Harbor courier plane. She should think of something interesting for them to do.

He had wrapped his arms around her in Charley Ansley’s bedroom and somewhat sleepily asked, "What brings you here, honey?"

"You said I should think of something interesting for us to do," Patricia had said, gently touching a sensitive part of his anatomy. "How does this strike you?"

She had come to join him by plane to Los Angeles, and then on the damned Greyhound bus to San Diego. Over breakfast, she told him she thought it would be fun to borrow a car from Charley Ansley, drive to Los Angeles, have dinner with friends there, and then drive leisurely on to San Francisco, perhaps spending another night on the way.

He told her he had to make a quick call on the Admiral commanding the San Diego Naval Yard, prepare a quick memorandum for Frank Knox reporting what the Admiral had told him, and then find an officer courier to take it to Washington. He also told her that Ellen Feller had arrived a couple of days before and was in the Pacific and Far East suite at the Coronado Beach.

"She’s going to work at CINCPAC," Pickering said. There was an implication that she was going to become secretary to someone else. That was not actually the case. Officially, Ellen was going to work with the highly secret cryptographic unit at Pearl Harbor, putting her knowledge of Japanese and Chinese to work. And she had a second mission, to serve as a conduit for Fleming Pickering’s confidential reports to the Secretary of the Navy. He would prepare the reports himself and send them to her at Pearl Harbor, sealed, via an officer courier. At Pearl Harbor, Ellen Feller would encrypt them with a special code and send them to Washington, either by cable or radio, classified

TOP SECRET, EYES ONLY, THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY.

That way, only Pickering, Ellen Feller, a cryptographer who worked solely for Captain Dave Haughton, Haughton himself, and the Secretary of the Navy would ever see Pickering’s reports. Knox knew that if more people were brought into the link, or if standard Navy encryption-decryption procedures were followed, the Navy brass would be reading Pickering’s reports before they got to him. Since the reports made considerable reference to the Navy brass, including, for instance, Pickering’s opinion of their ability and performance, it would not have been clever to offer them to the brass on a silver platter, as it were. None of that, obviously, was any of Patricia’s business. "Aren’t you going to miss her?" Patricia asked, poker-faced. He wasn’t sure whether she was serious or teasing, or even if there was a touch of jealousy in the question.

"There’s a war on, Madam. We must all make what sacrifices are necessary in the common good," Pickering replied sonorously.

After Pickering stopped the Cadillac in front of the door, he opened the car door and started to get out. As he did that, the doorman rushed over and said, "I’m sorry, Sir, we no longer offer valet parking ..." And then he recognized Pickering. "I’ll take care of it, Mr. Pickering. You going to be long?"

"We’re going to have lunch."

"Then I’ll leave it right over there, Sir. Nice to see you, Mrs. Pickering. It’s been some time."

"Hello, Dick. How are you?" Patricia said.

Pickering called the Pacific and Far East suite from a house phone in the lobby.

"I’m not quite packed," Ellen Feller said. "Could you come up for a minute?"

"Sure," Pickering said. "The ship sails at two-forty-five, so I’ve been told."

"Then we have plenty of time."

Pickering put the phone down.

"She’s not quite ready," he said.

"I thought she was Miss Efficiency of 1942?" Patricia said.

"We’re not running late," Pickering said loyally.

"You go up," Patricia said. "I’ll get her a box of candy or a basket of fruit. For Bon Voyage."

"I’ll go with you."

"No, you won’t. You know how I hate it when you breathe impatiently over my shoulder in a shop. And I know where the suite is."

(Three)

Ellen Feller spent a good deal of time considering very carefully the pluses and minuses of her new assignment. Some of the pluses were inarguable. She’d been promoted from Oriental Languages Linguist to Intelligence Analyst. And after her name on her travel orders now appeared the parenthesized phrase "(Assimilated Grade of Lt. Commander)." That meant she was entitled to the privileges the armed forces gave to an officer of that rank; and that she was earning just about as much money as a Lieutenant Commander made.

Back in Washington, Commander Kramer had informed her that when she reached Hawaii, she would be provided with bachelor women officers’ quarters on the Navy Base at Pearl Harbor. ("The last time I was there, lieutenant commander nurses had nice little bungalows; they’ll probably assign you one of those.") And she would be entitled to membership in the officers’ club, where she would take her meals, and have access to everything else-the base exchange and the golf course, that sort of thing-that a lieutenant commander would have.