“I think this is what your friend Dr. McGrory would call ‘postcoital depression,’ ” Babs Mitchell said to Pick Pickering.
They were having a room-service breakfast; both were wearing hotel-furnished terry-cloth robes. The robe concealed all the curvature of her body.
It doesn’t matter. I can see her face. Even without makeup, she’s beautiful.
Okay. Here it comes. You knew goddamn well it would.
“Now that I’ve thought it over . . .”
“Something bothering you?”
“I had too much to drink last night,” she said. “You must think I’m really a slut.”
“No I don’t,” he said.
“You don’t?”
“I don’t.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
“Believe it.”
“Oh, God, what have we done?”
After a moment, Pick solemnly said, “If that question was addressed to the Deity, I’m sorry to have to tell you He’s not available at the moment. But—as one of His favorite people on this particular planet—I feel confident in telling you that when He finally gets around to answering your query, He will say something like ‘Nothing wrong.’ Or ‘Good for you.’ ”
“ ‘One of His favorite people’?” Babs parroted incredulously.
“I have the proof,” Pick said. “He put us together, didn’t he? Just when we really needed each other. Would He have done that if He didn’t like us?”
“Oh, God, I’d like to believe that.”
“I told you, He’s not available at the moment. But you can believe it.”
She stood, walked around the room-service cart, and put her arms around his neck from behind.
“Oh, God, I really hope this works,” she said.
“For the third time, I’m sorry to have to tell—”
“I’m going to have to stop saying that, aren’t I?”
“I don’t know. He’ll probably wonder why you stopped talking to Him.”
She pulled on his ears, and he twisted in his chair, and somehow his face wound up inside her bathrobe. And then, somehow, the bathrobe became completely unfastened and fell from her shoulders.
He had just picked her up and thrown her over his shoulder and announced, “Me Tarzan, you Jane! We go make whoopee-whoopee, okay?” when the door chimes sounded.
“Come back next year,” Pick called loudly.
“It’s Captain McGowan, sir.”
“Oh, shit,” Pick said softly. Then he raised his voice. “Be right with you, Art.”
He carried Babs into the bedroom, dumped her unceremoniously on the bed, and went to answer the door.
“Got a message for you, sir,” Captain McGowan said.
“From General Dawkins?”
“No, sir. From Japan.” He handed it to him, then said, “Sir, when you go back to the hospital . . . The general told them he’d asked you to spend the night, and didn’t think he had to ask their permission. They were about to send the Shore Patrol looking for you.”
“My compliments to the general, Captain, and please relay my appreciation for his understanding of the situation.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll do that. Good morning, sir.”
Pick tore open the envelope.
UNCLASSIFIED
URGENT
OFFICE OF THE CIA DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR ASIA TOKYO
0305 3NOVEMBER1950 TOKYO TIME
TO MAJOR MALCOLM S. PICKERING, USMCR
DETACHMENT OF PATIENTS
US NAVAL HOSPITAL SAN DIEGO
VIA BRIG GEN C W DAWKINS, USMC CAMP PENDLETON, CALIFORNIA
PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM DDCIA TOKYO TO MAJ PICKERING BEGINS
MAJOR AND MRS KENNETH R. MCCOY, USMCR, ANNOUNCE THE BIRTH OF THEIR SON, PICKERING KENNETH MCCOY, IN TOKYO JAPAN AT 0215 3NOVEMBER1950. MOTHER AND CHILD ARE DOING WELL.
END PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM DDCIA TOKYO
Pick went to the bedroom door.
“What was that all about?”
“One more proof that He likes me, sweetheart,” Pick said, and sat on the edge of the bed and handed her the message.
Christ, she doesn’t even know who the Killer and Ernie are.
She handed it back to him.
“Friends of yours?” Babs asked.
“Yeah. You’ll like them,” Pick said.
“If you’re happy,” Babs said, “I’m happy.”
Afterword
I was an X Corps sergeant/combat correspondent in Korea shortly after the events fictionally chronicled in this book took place. As such, I was able to read the official version of what happened in the X Corps and 1st Marine Division After Action Reports.
What follows are the facts as we now know them, from our own sources and from those of the Communist Chinese, more than half a century after the conflict.
On 3 November 1950, Major General Charles Willoughby announced to the press that there “possibly” were from 16,500 to a maximum of 34,000 Red Chinese soldiers in Korea.
There were, in fact, 180,000 Chinese soldiers facing the Eighth United States Army on the west of Korea, and about 120,000 facing the X United States Corps in the east. They had begun crossing the Yalu River and entering North Korea in October 1950, each carrying a personal weapon, eighty rounds of ammunition, sometimes three