Pickering has never been in sound psychological condition,” Ernie said. “Are you sure, Paul? How do you know?”
“There was an Operational Immediate from the Badoeng Strait,” Keller said. “Signed by the major.”
“What major?”
“Your husband, my boss,” Keller said. “I guess the Killer carried him there after he found him. I just finished encrypting it and sending it to the States.”
“Don’t call him Killer,” Ernie said.
And then she felt herself starting to fall, and the lights went out.
The next thing she knew, she was looking up at Keller, who was gently wiping her face with a cool wet cloth.
Ernie pushed his hand away and sat up.
She saw she was on cushions on the tatami.
“Jesus, you went down like a polled ox, whatever the hell that means,” Paul said. “Are you all right, Ernie?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re sure?”
Ernie saw the look on Jai-Hu-san’s face. It was clear that she thought Keller had told her something so awful that it had caused her to pass out.
“The red-faced barbarian brought very good news, Jai-Hu -san,” Ernie said. “He is a very good man.”
“You went unconscious,” Jai-Hu-san said. “You could have hurt yourself and the baby.”
“I think I better call for an ambulance,” Paul Keller said, getting to his feet.
“No,” Ernie said flatly. “I don’t need an ambulance.”
“I think I should call an ambulance,” Paul repeated.
Ernie looked at him.
He’s trembling; his face is as white as a sheet.
Christ, is he going to faint?
“What you should do, Paul,” Ernie said, “is first sit down. Before you fall down. Jai-Hu-san will get you a stiff drink. I will watch you drink it, because I don’t get any in my condition. That out of the way, we will then try to put a call in to Pick’s mother.”
“At least let me call a doctor.”
“If I thought I needed a doctor, I’d tell you,” Ernie said.
Then she had another thought.
“Where’s the general?” she said.
“He’s with the President, on the way to Wake Island. MacArthur left here for Wake at seven this morning.”
“How will he hear about this?”
“The President is never out of touch,” Keller said. “They will forward my—Major McCoy’s—message to him wherever he is, and there’s always a cryptographer with the President. He’ll get it, Ernie.”
“And we’re going to have to get word to Jeanette, too,” Ernie said. “She’s on her way to Wonsan.”
“I wish you’d let me call a doctor.”
“Do you think you can find her?”
“That shouldn’t be hard,” Keller said. “As soon as I leave here, I’ll start calling around. She’s probably at the Press Center in Pusan.”
“First things first, Paul,” Ernie said. “Go sit on the couch before you fall down, and Jai-Hu-san will bring you a drink.”
“First things first I’m going to get you a doctor!”
Ernie, laboriously, assisted by Jai-Hu-san, got to her feet.
She walked to Keller, who was just over six feet one and weighed just over two hundred pounds, put her hands on her hips, and looked up at him.
“For Christ’s sake, Paul, go sit on the goddamn couch!”
Master Sergeant Paul T. Keller, USA, walked over to the couch and sat down.
[EIGHT]
The weather was getting nasty by the time Lieutenant Whaleburton put the C-47 down at K-16, and by the time they took off the weather was, in Whaleburton’s phraseology, “marginal.”
“Not a problem, Miss Priestly,” he said. “If it gets any worse, we’ll just head for Pusan.”
The weather got worse.
Thirty minutes out of Seoul, Lieutenant Whaleburton said, “If I get up in that soup, I’ll never find Wonsan, so what I’m going to do is drop down below it. And if it gets any worse than this, I’m going to head for Pusan. But I really would like to get that blood to Wonsan.”
It quickly got worse, much worse, with lots of turbulence.
When Lieutenant Whaleburton saw the ridge in the Taebaek mountain range ahead of him, he of course pulled back on the yoke to get over it.
He almost made it.
The right wingtip made contact with the granite of the peak, spinning the aircraft around and down. Before it stopped moving down the mountainside, it came apart and the aviation gasoline exploded.
Lieutenant Whaleburton didn’t even have time to make a radio report.
XI
[ONE]
WAKE ISLAND 0625 15 OCTOBER 1950
As the Independence landed, Brigadier General Fleming Pickering saw, with a sense of relief, that the Bataan was already on the ground. He’d overheard some of President Truman’s staff wondering if that was going to happen, whether, in other words, MacArthur would time his landing so that the President would arrive first and have to wait for the