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

was the intelligence officer, and someone who didn't speak Chinese or Japanese obviously couldn't be of much use."

"And he spoke some Chinese?"

"He told me he could read and write Cantonese and Mandarin, plus Japanese, plus French and German and even some Russian, but was having trouble with the Cyril-lic alphabet."

"And could he?"

"Natural flair for languages. Maybe natural is not the right word. Supernatural flair, maybe. Eerie flair."

"So you put him to work?"

"I had to do so without letting the colonel know," Ban-ning said. "So what I did was send him on the regular truck convoys we ran between Shanghai and Peking, and other places. They took anywhere from five days to a couple of weeks. McCoy would disappear from the convoy for a few hours-or a few days-and have a look at what the Japs were up to. God, he was good at it!"

"And the Chinese `bandit' incident?"

"The Kempae Tai would hire Chinese bandits to attack us whenever they thought they could get away with it. They particularly liked to attack the convoys. The Japs paid them, and what was on the trucks was theirs. They made the mistake of attacking one that McCoy was on. He and a buck sergeant named Zimmerman were waiting for them with Thompsons. And they were very good with Thompsons. The `bandits' left twenty bodies behind them. McCoy and Zimmerman loaded them on trucks and took them to Peking. That, sir, is where `Killer' got his name."

Pickering had not yet told Banning that Lieutenants Pickering and McCoy were friends, but he had Pick in his mind as Banning spoke of Killer McCoy.

It meant, of course, that when Malcolm S. Pickering had been in his first year at Harvard, starting to work his way through the pro* forma resistance to copulation of the nu-bile maidens of Wellesley, Sarah Lawrence, and other in-stitutions of higher learning for the female offspring of the moneyed classes, McCoy had been a Marine in China; that when Pick had been earning a four-goal handicap on the polo fields at Ramapo Valley, Palm Beach, and Los Ange-les, McCoy had been riding Mongolian ponies through the China countryside keeping an eye on the Imperial Japanese Army at a considerable risk to his life.

"How did he get to become an officer?"

"The Corps put out the word to recommend NCOs for Officer Candidate School. I thought McCoy would make a fine officer. The colonel saw sending him to the States as a good way to get him out of Shanghai. I think I was the only officer in the Marine Corps who thought he would get through officer training."

"He had some trouble getting through," Pickering said. "With some officers who didn't think a corporal with no college degree should become a Marine officer."

"How do-?" Banning blurted, and stopped.

" `How the hell do you know that'?" Pickering finished the uncompleted question. "My son was in his class; they became quite close. They are quite close."

"Well, he got through," Banning said.

"And then he volunteered for the Marine Raiders?" Pickering asked, but it was more of a statement than a question. He knew that McCoy had been a Raider.

"Yes, sir. But not quite the way that sounds."

"I don't understand...."

"McCoy's language skills-and his China service- came to the attention of the G-2," Banning said. "He de-cided McCoy was just the man he was looking for."

"As an interpreter, you mean?"

"No, sir. To keep an eye on Colonel Evans Carlson, the commander of the Marine Raiders."

"Now, that I don't understand," Pickering said.

"There were a number of officers in the Marine Corps who thought that Carlson had dangerous ideas," Banning said. "And some who suspected he was a Communist."

"My God!"

"So the G-2 called McCoy in and asked him to take that assignment."

"I knew McCoy was in the Raiders," Pickering said. "But I didn't know about this."

"He came back from the Makin Raid-where he was hit, by the way-and reported that Colonel Carson was not a Communist. And then I found him in the hospital in San Diego and had him transferred here. He was hoping to stay with the Raiders, but he belongs here."

"Yes, I'm sure he does," Pickering replied.

"It's... as if he was born to be an intelligence officer," Banning said.

"It sounds that way, doesn't it?" Pickering had agreed.

Chapter Two

[ONE]

NO. 7 SAKU-TUN DENENCHOFU,

TOKYO, JAPAN

1745 1 JUNE 1950

Ernestine Sage McCoy spoke to the woman who had come to the door in the wall-in what sounded to Pickering like fluent Japanese-and very quickly, before McCoy had fin-ished making Pickering a drink, a plate of hors d'oeuvres appeared.

"Welcome to our home, General," McCoy said, touch-ing his glass to Pickering's.

"General is a long time ago, Ken," Pickering said. "What I am now is a figurehead. You know what a figure-head is? The wooden-headed figure on the bow of a ship?"

There was dutiful laughter.

Not only dutiful, but strained.

Neither one of them is in a laughing mood.

Christ, I must have walked in here just before she was going to throw a frying pan at him. I wonder what the hell he did?

Or what she did?

Pickering relayed the love of his wife, and told her that Patricia, the last time he heard, had been going to have din-ner with her father and mother in New York, and Ernie said" to give Patricia their love when he got home.

"How long are you going to stay in Japan, General?" Ken McCoy asked.

"Three or four days, no more."

This was followed by a painful silence.

Pickering searched his mind for something to say, and found it:

"I thought I'd look around," he said, and added, "The last time I was here, I arrived five days before the war was over."

"I remember," McCoy said.

"Five days before the war was over?"

"Right."

"I never heard that story," Ernie said.

"You said," McCoy said, and for the first time there was a suggestion of a smile on his face, "that it was the first time El Supremo ever asked for an OSS intel report."

"First and only," Pickering said.

`Tell me about it," Ernie said.

At least it will break the silence.

"Major McCoy and I were on Okinawa," Pickering be-gan.

And the first word out of your mouth is a disaster, re-minding him, reminding them, that he was busted back to captain after the war.

"... and Sid Huff..."

"Who?"

"MacArthur's aide."

"He still is," Ernie said.

"So I heard," Pickering said. "Anyway, Sid showed up on

Okinawa, from Manila, where El Supremo was at the time. He announced that MacArthur wanted me to go in on the first plane. Of course, he couldn't phrase it that simply...."

" `General,'" McCoy said, accurately mimicking Huff's somewhat pompous manner of speech, " `it is the Supreme Commander's desire that you proceed to Tokyo with the initial party...'"

"Very good, Ken," Pickering said, chuckling.

"What happened, sweetheart," McCoy said, "is that El Supremo originally intended to send Huff, but changed his mind at the last minute and told him to ask the Boss here..."

Sweetheart? That means he's in the doghouse. I wonder what he did. Or she thinks he did.

"Darling, let him tell the story."

Darling? That doesn't sound like a grossly annoyed wife.

"He won't tell all of it, baby," McCoy said. "Huff couldn't make up his mind whether he was unhappy at being denied the chance to be on the first plane to land in Japan, or happy. There was a lot of talk that the Japs were out of control, and the first Americans to land might get their heads chopped off. In that case, Huff figured better that the Boss's head roll..."

Sweetheart? Darling? Baby? These two aren't fighting, at least with each other. What the hell is going on?

"I will give Colonel Huff the benefit of the doubt that he was disappointed at being denied the chance to be on that C-46," Pickering said.