W.E.B. Griffin - Retreat, Hell!

MacArthur—with the encouragement of Willoughby and Whitney, Pickering had come to understand—had not wanted the OSS in his theater of op­erations. Willoughby, MacArthur's intelligence officer, and Whitney, who had been commissioned a major in the Philippines just before the war, and was serv­ing as sort of an adviser, were agreed that intelligence activities should be under MacArthur's intelligence officer. Whitney, moreover, had decided he had the background to become spymaster under Willoughby.

MacArthur had not refused to accept the OSS in his theater, he had simply been not able to find time in his busy schedule to receive the OSS officer sent to his headquarters by Wild Bill Donovan, the head of the OSS.

Donovan, who was a close personal friend of Roosevelt, had complained to him about MacArthur's behavior, and Roosevelt had solved the problem by commissioning Pickering into the Marine Corps, assigning him to the OSS, and sending him to deal with MacArthur.

Pickering had a dozen clashes with the Bataan Gang during World War II, the most galling to Willoughby and Whitney his making contact with an offi­cer fighting as a guerrilla on Mindanao after MacArthur—acting on Willoughby's advice—had informed the President there "was absolutely no possibility of U.S. guerrilla activity in the Philippines at this time."

Pickering had sent a team commanded by a young Marine intelligence officer—Lieutenant K. R. McCoy—to Japanese-occupied Mindanao on a Navy submarine. McCoy had established contact with a reserve lieutenant colonel named Wendell Fertig, who had refused to surrender, promoted himself to brigadier general, announced he was "Commanding General of United States Forces in the Philippines," and begun guerrilla warfare against the Japanese occupiers.

When, late in the war, MacArthur's troops landed on Mindanao, they found Brigadier General Fertig waiting for them with 30,000 armed and uniformed troops, including a band. Pickering had had Fertig's forces supplied by Navy submarines all through the war.

Every report of Fertig's successes—even of a successful completion of a sub­marine supply mission to him—during the war had been a galling reminder to the Bataan Gang that Pickering had done what MacArthur had said—on their advice—was impossible to do.

Pickering had learned that MacArthur had a petty side to his character. The one manifestation of this that annoyed Pickering the most—even more than MacArthur's refusal to award the 4th Marines on Corregidor the Presi­dential Unit Citation because "the Marines already have enough medals"—was MacArthur's refusal to promote Fertig above his actual rank of lieutenant colonel even though Fertig had successfully commanded 30,000 troops in com­bat. An Army corps has that many troops and is commanded by a three-star general.

Whitney had risen steadily upward in rank—he ended World War II as a colonel and was now a brigadier general—and this added to Pickering's an­noyance and even contempt.

Aware that he was being a little childish himself, Pickering took pleasure in knowing that Brigadier General Whitney's pleasure with himself for being at El Supremo's elbow when he met with the President would be pretty well soured when he saw Pickering get off the Presidential aircraft.

There turned out to be less of an arrival ceremony for the President than there had been at K-16 when MacArthur had landed there to turn the seat of the South Korean government back to Syngman Rhee.

The door of the Independence opened, and two Secret Service men and a still cameraman and a motion picture cameraman went down the stairs. Then Truman came out of his compartment and went down the stairs.

MacArthur saluted. Truman smiled and put out his hand, then started shak­ing hands with the others of MacArthur's party.

The first man off the Independence after Truman was a stocky Army chief warrant officer in his mid-thirties. He carried a leather briefcase in one hand and a heavy canvas equipment bag in the other. He wore a web pistol belt with a holstered .45 around his waist. A jeep was waiting for him. He got in it and drove off before General of the Army Omar Bradley came down the stairs.

George Hart knew—and had told Pickering—what the equipment bag contained, and what Chief Warrant Officer Delbert LeMoine, of the Army Se­curity Agency, was doing with it. LeMoine was the Presidential cryptogra­pher. Messages intended for the President that had come in since they left Hawaii had been forwarded to Wake Island. Wake Island, however, did not have the codes. The President would have to wait for his mail until LeMoine decrypted it.

The dignitaries aboard the Independence came down the stairs one by one and shook hands with MacArthur and the members of his staff he had brought with him from Tokyo. Pickering decided he was not an official member of the Truman party, and waited until the handshaking was over before he got off the Independence.

He gave Brigadier General Courtney Whitney a friendly wave. Whitney re­turned it with a nod and a strained smile.

Truman and MacArthur got in the backseat of a something less than Pres­idential—or MacArthurian—1949 Chevrolet staff car and drove off for a pri­vate meeting.

Then everyone else was loaded, without ceremony, into a convoy of cars and jeeps and driven to one of the single-story frame buildings lining the tarmac. Inside, a simple buffet of coffee and doughnuts had been laid out for them.

Pickering had just taken a bite of his second doughnut when another Army warrant officer touched his arm.

"Would you come with me, please, General?" he asked.

"Sure," Pickering said. "What's up?"

The warrant officer didn't reply, but when Hart started to follow them, he said, "Just the general, Captain."

The warrant officer led Pickering to a frame building—identical to the one where coffee and doughnuts were being served—a hundred yards away and held open the door for him.

There was an interior office, guarded by a sergeant armed with a Thomp­son submachine gun. He stepped out of the way as Pickering and the warrant officer approached, and then the warrant officer knocked at the door. A mo­ment later LeMoine unlocked the door, opened it, and motioned Pickering inside.

Then he closed and locked the door and turned to Pickering with a smile.

"We have a mutual friend, General," he said.

"Who's that?"

"Master Sergeant Paul Keller," LeMoine said. "He worked for me when we were in Moscow."

"Good man," Pickering said.

"He says much the same about you, General," LeMoine said. "And he has the same kind of problems I do, wondering who gets to see what and when."

"I'm not sure I follow you," Pickering said.

"Why don't you have a chair, General?" LeMoine said. "I've got to take a leak, and I'll see if I can't get us some coffee."

He pulled a chair on wheels away from a table, waited until Pickering sat down, then walked to the door, unlocked it, walked through it, and then closed and locked it.

There was one sheet of paper on the table.

Pickering wondered why LeMoine had left it on display.

A man like that does not make mistakes. Christ, whatever it is, he wants me to see it!

TOP SECRET-PRESIDENTIAL

WASHINGTON 2215 14OCT1950

FROM DIRECTOR CIA

TO (EYES ONLY) THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

FOLLOWING RECEIVED 22 07 14OCT1950 FROM MAJOR K R MCCOY USMCR

MESSAGE BEGINS

MAJOR MALCOLM S. PICKERING USMCR RETURNED TO US CONTROL 1200 14OCT1950. TRANSPORTED USS

BADOENG STRAIT AS OF 1300 14OCT1950.

SUBJECT OFFICER IS DIRTY, UNSHAVEN, AND VERY HUNGRY, BUT IS UNWOUNDED, UNINJURED, AND IN

SOUND PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITION.

FOLLOWING CIVILIAN PERSONNEL SHOULD BE CONTACTED BY MOST EXPEDITIOUS MEANS, ASKED NOT TO