W.e.b. Griffin - The Corps II - CALL TO ARMS

"Hello, Mr. Pickering," Locke said. "It's good to see you."

"When did I become 'Mr. Pickering'?" Pick said, as he shook his hand.

"Maybe when you became a Marine?" Locke said, smiling.

"I'd rather, in deference to my exalted status as a Marine officer, prefer that you stop calling me 'Hey, you!'" Pick said. "But aside from that, 'Pick' will do fine."

"You look like you were born in that uniform," Locke said. "Very spiffy."

"It's supposed to attract females like moths to a flame," Pick said. "I haven't been an officer long enough to find out for sure."

"I don't think you'll have any worries about that at all," the resident manager said. "Would you like a drink? Either here"-he gestured toward the bar off the lobby-"or in your room? I've put you in the Jefferson Davis Suite." And then Locke misinterpreted the look in Pickering's eyes. "Which we cannot fill, anyway."

"I wasn't planning to stay," Pick said. "Unless my car hasn't shown up?"

"Came in two days ago," Locke said. "I had it taken to the Cadillac dealer. They serviced it and did whatever they thought it needed."

"Thank you," Pick said. "Then all I'll need is that drink and a road map."

They started toward the bar, but Pickering stopped when he glanced casually into a jewelry store. There was a display of watches laid out on velvet. One of them, in gleaming gold, band and all, had just about as many fascinating buttons and dials and sweeping bands as had the watch on the wrist of the Eastern Airlines pilot.

"Just a second," Pick said. "I have just decided that I am such a nice fellow that I am going to buy myself a present."

The price of the watch was staggering, nearly four hundred dollars. But that judgment, he decided, was a reflection of the way he had come by money-earning it himself or doing, by and large, without-until his twenty-first birthday. On his majority, he had come into the first part of the Malcolm Pickering Trust (there would be more when he turned twenty-five, and the balance when he turned thirty) established by Captain Richard Pickering, founder of Pacific Far East Shipping, Inc., for his only grandson.

The first monthly check from the Crocker National Bank had been for four times as much money as he was getting as a supernumerary assistant manager of the Andrew Foster Hotel. He could afford the watch.

"I'll take it," he said. "If you'll take a check."

"I'll vouch for the check," Locke said quickly, as a cloud of doubt appeared on the face of the jewelry store clerk.

"That's a fascinating watch," Locke said, as Pick strapped it on his wrist. "What are all the dials for?"

"I haven't the foggiest idea," Pick said. "But the Eastern Airlines pilot had one like it. It is apparently what the well-dressed airplane pilot wears."

Locke chuckled, and then led Pickering into the lobby bar. They took stools and ordered scotch.

"I really can't offer you the hospitality of the inn for the night, Pick?"

"I want to get down there and look around," Pick said. "What we Marine officers call 'reconnoitering the area.'"

"Not even an early supper?"

"Ah understand," Pick said, in a thick, mock Southern accent, "that this inn serves South'ren fried chicken that would please Miss Scarlett O'Hara herself."

"That we do," Locke said. "Done to a turn by a native. Of Budapest, Hungary."

Pickering chuckled. He looked over his shoulder and nodded at a table in the corner of the bar.

"You serve food here?"

"Done," Locke said. He reached over the bar and picked up a telephone.

"Helen," he said. "Edward Locke. Would you have the garage bring Mr. Pickering's car around to the front? And then ask my secretary to bring the manila envelope with 'Mr. Pickering' on it to the bar? And give me the kitchen."

The manila envelope was delivered first. It contained a marked road map of the route from Atlanta to Pensacola, Florida. It had been prepared with care; there were three sections of road outlined in red, to identify them as speed traps.

"There's a rumor that at least some of the speed traps are passing servicemen through, as their contribution to the war effort," Locke said. "But I wouldn't bank on that. And on the subject of speed traps, they want cash. You all right for cash?"

"Fine, thank you," Pickering said. "What about a place to stay once I get there?"

"All taken care of," Locke said. "An inn called the San Carlos Hotel. Your grandfather tried to buy it a couple of years ago, but it's a family business and they wouldn't sell. They're friends of mine. They'll take good care of you."

"Just say I'm a friend of yours?"

"I already called them," Locke said. "They expect you."

"You're very obliging," Pick said. "Thank you."

"Good poolside waiters are hard to find," Locke said, smiling.

(One)

Temporary Building T-2032

The Mall

Washington, D.C.

1230 Hours, 6 January 1942

There was a sign reading ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE on the door to the stairway of the two-floor frame building.

Second Lieutenant Kenneth J. McCoy pushed it open and stepped through it. Inside, there was a wall of pierced-steel netting, with a door of the same material set into it. On the far side of the wall, a Marine sergeant sat at a desk, in his khaki shirt. His blouse hung from a hanger hooked into the pierced-steel-netting wall.

The sergeant stood up and pushed a clipboard through a narrow opening in the netting. When he stood up, McCoy saw the sergeant was armed with a Colt Model 1911A1.45 ACP pistol, worn in a leather holster hanging from a web belt. Hanging beside his blouse was a Winchester Model 1897 12-gauge trench gun.

"They've been looking for you, Lieutenant," the sergeant said.

McCoy wrote his name on the form on the clipboard and pushed it back through the opening in the pierced-metal wall.

"Who 'they'?" he asked, smiling.

"The colonel, Captain Sessions," the sergeant said.

"I was on leave," McCoy said, "but I made the mistake of letting them know where they could find me."

The sergeant chuckled and then pressed a hidden button. There was the buzzing of a solenoid. When he heard it, McCoy pushed the door in the metal wall open.

"They said it was important," McCoy said. "Since I am the only second lieutenant around here, what that means is that they need someone to inventory the paper towels and typewriter ribbons."

The sergeant smiled. "Good luck," he said.

McCoy went up the wooden stairs two at a time. Beyond a door at the top of the stairs was another pierced-steel wall. There was another desk behind it, but there was no one at the desk, so McCoy took a key from his pocket and put it to a lock in the door.

He pushed the door open and was having trouble getting his key out of the lock when a tall thin officer saw him. The officer was bent over a desk deeply absorbed with something or other. He was in his shirtsleeves (with the silver leaves of a lieutenant colonel pinned to his collar points), and he was wearing glasses. Even in uniform, and with a snub-nosed.38-caliber Smith Wesson Chief's Special revolver in a shoulder holster, Lieutenant Colonel F. L. Rickabee, USMC, did not look much like a professional warrior.

He looked up at McCoy with an expression of patient exasperation.

"The way it works, McCoy," Lieutenant Colonel Rickabee said, as if explaining it to a child, "is that if you're unavoidably detained, you call up and tell somebody. I presume you were unavoidably detained?"

"Sir," McCoy said, "my orders were to report no later than oh-eight-hundred tomorrow morning."

Rickabee looked at Second Lieutenant McCoy for a moment. "Goddamn it," he said. "You're right."

"The sergeant said you were looking for me, sir," McCoy said.

"Uh- huh," Colonel Rickabee said. "I hope you haven't had lunch."