Griffin W.E.B. - The Corps 09 - Under Fire

"Cheers," Pickering said, and they touched glasses.

The door chime went off again.

"My uniform, probably," Ken said, and walked to the door. Pickering followed him.

This time it was the floor waiter, holding a freshly cleaned uniform on a hanger. He extended the bill for Mc-Coy to sign.

"Do you know who I am?" Pickering asked.

"Yes, sir, of course."

"Are you aware there is a standing order in this inn that Captain McCoy's money is no good?"

"Jesus..." McCoy said.

Pickering held up his hand to silence him.

"... issued by the dragon lady of the Foster chain, my wife, herself?"

"No, sir," the floor waiter said, smiling.

"Trust me, and be good enough to inform the manager."

"Yes, sir, Mr. Pickering," the floor waiter said, chuck-ling.

"And, truth being stranger than fiction, you may start re-ferring to me as `General,'" Pickering said.

"Yes, sir," the floor waiter said.

"You might be interested to know, further, that for some-one of my age, I have been adjudged to be in remarkably good shape."

"I'm glad to hear that, General," the floor waiter said, smiling. "It's good to have you in the inn again, General."

"Thank you," Pickering said.

"I wish you hadn't done that, General," McCoy said when the floor waiter had left.

"One, you said you had no money, and, two, since, hav-ing just passed my recall to active duty physical, I am again a general, I will remind you that captains are not per-mitted to argue with generals."

"Yes, sir," McCoy said. "You've been recalled?"

"By the President himself," Pickering said. "I did not volunteer. He just called the Commandant and told him to issue the orders. When I told the dragon lady, it caused her to shift into her highly-pissed-off mode. She thinks I vol-unteered, and then lied about it."

"I never heard you call her that before," McCoy said.

"The kindest thing she said-on the phone just now, be-fore I came down the corridor to find a friendly face-was that I was a `selfish adolescent who thinks of nothing but his own personal gratification.'"

"Ouch," McCoy said.

"What makes it worse is that I am about as welcome as syphilis at the CIA. Calling me to active duty was not Ad-miral Hillenkoetter's idea." He paused. "I went to him with your assessment, Ken."

"The President told me he'd seen it; he didn't say how he'd gotten it," McCoy said.

"The President told you he'd seen it?"

"They flew me here-from Miramar-in an Air Force jet, a two-seater fighter. When we landed at Andrews, two guys from the Secret Service met me. They took me to a house-just down the street from here-and put me in a little office and told me to wait. The door opened, and Pres-ident Truman walked in."

"Blair House," Pickering furnished. "They're redoing the White House from the walls in. That's where he lives, for the time being. What did he have to say?"

"Not much. He asked if I thought MacArthur had seen the assessment, and then-when I told him no, that Willoughby hadn't given it to him-asked why I thought he'd done that. I told him it was only a guess, but I sus-pected Willoughby had just given him an assessment that said there wouldn't be trouble in Korea. Then he told me that I had done the right thing in giving it to you; that you were concerned I'd be in trouble, and he said I wouldn't. Then he said he wouldn't be surprised if we saw each other again, and left. The whole thing didn't last three minutes."

"Sequence of events: I went, with Senator Fowler, to Hil-lenkoetter with a sanitized version of the assessment-your name wasn't on it-as soon as I got back from Japan. He said he'd look into it. He asked for your name, and I wouldn't give it to him. The next thing I heard was a tele-phone call from the President. He said that he knew of my `visit' to Hillenkoetter, and asked if I would come to Wash-ington; he wanted to meet with Fowler and me. I said yes. He also asked where you were. I said I didn't know where you were, except en route to Camp Pendleton. Two hours later I was in an F-94, and the next morning the President came here, to Fowler's apartment, asked Fowler to keep the assessment, the warning, from the press. Fowler agreed."

"Where'd they get my name?"

"I don't suppose that was hard, Ken," Pickering said. "I also told the President that I didn't want you to get in trou-ble, and he asked if I meant I thought you needed friends in high places, and the next thing, he's on the phone to the Commandant-personally-telling him to cut active-duty orders on me, effective immediately."

"Because I need a protector?"

"I spent forty minutes with General Cates this morning. He told me that-he implied; he's both too much a gentle-man and too smart to spell it out in so many words-that there is some dissatisfaction with Hillenkoetter and that it wouldn't surprise him if Truman had me in mind as a re-placement."

McCoy visibly thought that announcement over, but his face did not register surprise.

"You were a deputy director of the OSS," McCoy said.

"Who is, and you know this as well as I do, absolutely unqualified to be head of the CIA."

"You couldn't do any worse than this admiral. He should have known this was coming."

"I wouldn't know how to do any better."

"Yes, you would," McCoy said, simply.

"Maybe Hillenkoetter's heard the same thing," Picker-ing said. "That would explain the ice-cold reception I got over there."

"What are you going to do over there?" McCoy asked.

"We have an office in the East Building-that's where Hillenkoetter's office is-four rooms, sparsely furnished."

"In which we are going to do what?"

"I think they'll probably want to pick your brains about the North Korean/Chinese order of battle, but I have no idea what I'll be doing except that Ed Banning and Zim-merman are on their way here to help me to do it."

"How did that happen?"

"That was the Commandant's idea. He painted a pretty bleak picture of the readiness of the Corps to fight a war-"

"The First Marine Division," McCoy interrupted. "The First Marine Division, Reinforced, at Pendleton, has less than 8,000 men."

Pickering was at first surprised that McCoy knew that figure, but on reflection, was not. McCoy had always been a cornucopia of data; he learned something once, then never forgot it.

"-and is concerned that when the Corps can't pull off a miracle, as it will be expected to do, it will be ammunition for those who think we don't need a Marine Corps."

"How are you and Ed Banning supposed to help about that?"

Pickering thought that over, then said what had first come into his mind.

"Every time somebody says, `First Marine Division,' we interject, `which is at less than half wartime strength.'"

McCoy chuckled.

The telephone rang.

It was Ernie.

"Good," she said. "You're there."

"And so is the General," Ken said.

"Aunt Patricia told me. She is something less than thrilled."

"Where did you see her?"

"I'm in San Francisco. With her. I'm on what they call then 'red-eye special,' a midnight flight on TWA to New York. It gets there at seven in the morning. I'll take the train to Wash-ington. Are you going to be there when I get there?"

"Yes."

"Put Uncle Flem on the phone," she ordered, and he heard her say, `Talk to him, Aunt Pat."

He handed the phone to Pickering.

"Your wife," he said.

Pickering raised his eyebrows as he took the phone.

"Selfish adolescent speaking," he said. "Honey, honest to God, I didn't volunteer."

"Whatever you are, you're not a liar," McCoy heard Pa-tricia Fleming reply. "If I get on the plane with Ernie, are you going to be there, too?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Then I'll see you tomorrow," she said. "Will you still fit in your uniforms?"