Griffin W.E.B. - The Corps 08 - In Dangers Path

«Sorry to do this to you, Ed,» his caller said, without wasting time on a greeting. He recognized the voice. It was his boss, Colonel F. L. «Fritz» Rickabee,

USMC, Deputy Director of the U.S. Marine Corps Office of Management Analysis. After Ed had been evacuated from the Philippines, just before they'd fallen to the Japanese, Banning had been assigned to the little-known unit.

Even its title was purposely obfuscatory—it had nothing to do with either management or analysis. It was a covert intelligence unit that took its orders from, and was answerable only to, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox.

«Oh, no!» Banning said.

«One of the sailors apparently has a tummy ache,» Rickabee said.

«When?»

«Right now,» Colonel Rickabee said. «A car's on the way.»

«Oh shit!»

» 'Oh, shit'?»

«Aye, aye, sir,» Major Banning said.

There was a final grunt from Colonel Rickabee and the line went dead.

Banning marched naked to his bathroom and stepped under the shower. Five minutes later, he stepped out, having made use of time normally wasted standing under the shower by shaving there. He toweled himself quickly and then paused at the washbasin only long enough to splash aftershave cologne on his face. Then he went into his bedroom to dress.

He took a uniform from a closet still-in-its-fresh-from-the-dry-cleaners-paper-wrapping, ripped off the paper, and laid the uniform on the bed. With a skill born of long practice, he quickly affixed his insignia and ribbons to the tunic. His ribbons indicated, among other things, that he had seen Pacific service, during which he had twice suffered wounds entitling him to the Purple Heart Medal with one oak-leaf cluster.

Next he took a fresh, stiffly starched khaki shirt from a drawer and quickly pinned a gold major's oak leaf in the prescribed position on its collar points. He slipped on the shirt, buttoned it, tied a khaki field scarf in the prescribed manner and place, and put on the rest of his uniform. The last step before buttoning his tunic was to slip a Colt Model 1911 Al .45 ACP pistol into the waistband of his trousers at the small of his back.

The entire process, from the moment the telephone rang until he reached the apartment building's curb where a light green Plymouth sedan was waiting for him, had taken just over eleven minutes.

Though the car had civilian license plates, the driver, a wiry man in his thirties just then leaning on a fender, was a Marine technical sergeant. He was in uniform, which told Banning that when the call from the crypto room came in, no one around the office had been wearing civilian clothing—and there'd been no time to summon somebody in civvies. Standing operating procedure was that the unmarked cars were to be driven by personnel in civilian clothes. The sergeant straightened up, saluted, and then opened the door for him.

«Good morning, sir,» he said.

«That's a matter of opinion,» Banning said, smiling, as he returned the salute.

«The Colonel indicated you might be pissed, sir,» the sergeant said.

«I left that goddamn place nine hours ago,» Banning said. «And now another eight hours!»

«War is hell, isn't it, sir?»

«Oh, screw you, Rutterman,» Banning said.

Sergeant Rutterman drove Major Banning to the Navy Building, where Banning underwent four separate security screenings before reaching his destination. The first was the more or less

pro forma

examination of his identity card before he could enter the building. The second, which took place on the ground floor, required him to produce a special identity card to gain access to the Secure Area. When this was done, he was permitted to enter the elevator to the second sub-basement. Once he was in the second sub-basement, armed sailors carefully matched a photo on his Cryptographic Area identification card against a five-by-seven card that held an identical photograph. The successful match allowed them to admit him to the area behind locked steel doors. The final security check was administered by a Navy warrant officer and a chief petty officer at a desk before still another heavy, vaultlike door.

Although they both knew Banning by sight, and the warrant officer and Banning had often shared a drink, they subjected him to a detailed examination of the three identity cards and finally challenged him for his password. Only when that was done, and the chief petty officer started to unlock the door's two locks— the door also had a combination lock, like a safe—did the warrant officer speak informally. «I can see how delighted you are to be back.»

«Is he in there?» Banning said.

«Oh, he's been in there, Major, waiting for you.»

There was no identifying sign on the steel door, and few people even knew of the existence of the «Special Communications Room.» Even fewer had any idea of its function.

In one of the best-kept secrets of the war, cryptographers at Pearl Harbor had broken several of the codes used by the Japanese for communications between the Imperial General Staff and the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy, as well as between Japanese diplomatic posts and Tokyo. Most, but not all, of the cryptographers involved in this breakthrough had been Navy personnel. One of the exceptions was an Army Signal Corps officer, a Korean-American named Lieutenant Hon Song Do.

Intercepted and decrypted Japanese messages were classified top secret— magic. The magic window into the intentions of the enemy gave the upper hierarchy of the United States government a weapon beyond price. And it wasn't a window into the Japanese intentions alone, for some of the intercepted messages reported what the Japanese Embassy in Berlin had been told by the German government. In other words, magic also opened a small window on German intentions as well.

But it was a window that would be rendered useless the moment the Japanese even suspected that their most secret messages were being read and analyzed by the Americans.

The roster of personnel throughout the world who had access to magic material fit with room to spare on two sheets of typewriter paper. It was headed by the name of President Roosevelt, then ranged downward through Admiral William Leahy, the President's Chief of Staff; Admiral Ernest King, Chief of Naval Operations; General George C. Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff; Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the Navy Commander in Chief, Pacific; General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, South West Pacific Ocean Area; and Major Edward J. Banning, USMC; then farther downward to the lowest-ranking individual, a Marine Corps Second Lieutenant named George F. Hart.

Almost as soon as the system to encrypt and transmit magic messages had been put in place, the senior officers with access to it—from Roosevelt on down—had realized that magic also gave them a means to communicate with each other rapidly and with the highest possible level of security. The result was that nearly as many «back-channel» messages were sent over the system as there were intercepted Japanese messages.

«Okay, Major,» the chief petty officer said to Banning, and swung the vaultlike door open. Banning stepped inside and the chief swung the door closed after him. Banning heard the bolts slip into place.

Inside the room were two desks placed side by side, a safe, and two straight-backed chairs. The magic cryptographic machine was on one of the desks, along with a typewriter and three telephones, one of them red and without a dial.

A Navy lieutenant commander rose from one of the chairs. His uniform bore the silver aiguillettes signifying a Naval aide to the President, and he carried a .45 ACP pistol in a leather holster suspended from a web belt.

«Good morning,» Banning said.

He had seen the lieutenant commander a dozen times before and didn't like him.