took the window seat. The captain opened the overhead bin, put the pistol belt in it, then sat down beside Pickering.
Pickering pointed out the window.
An olive-drab 1950 Chevrolet staff car had stopped at the foot of the stairway. One of the Army officers hurried to open the rear door, as Colonel Huff stood by.
A slight, elderly, gray-haired Oriental in a business suit somewhat awkwardly extricated himself from the car, then turned to offer his hand to the other passenger. This was a Caucasian woman in a black dress.
“Rhee?” Captain Hart asked softly.
Pickering nodded.
Colonel Huff saluted, then waved the couple to the stairway.
A moment later they appeared inside the aircraft. The Air Force master sergeant led them to one of the two VIP suites, the one on the right.
“So where does the Palace Guard get to sit?” Hart whispered.
Pickering smiled at him but held his finger in front of his lips, suggesting that further observations of that nature would be inappropriate. Then he pointed out the window again.
The Chevrolet staff car was gone, replaced by a black 1942 Cadillac limousine, which had a small American flag mounted on the right front fender and a small flag with five stars in a circle mounted on the left fender.
Colonel Huff personally opened the passenger door.
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Allied Powers and United Nations Forces, got out.
MacArthur was wearing well-washed khakis, his famous battered, gold-encrusted uniform cap, and an Air Force A-2 leather flight jacket, not unlike the fur-collared Naval aviator’s jackets Pickering and Hart were wearing.
Pickering was reasonably sure that his Naval aviator’s jacket was not an authorized item of uniform for Marine officers, but he was equally sure that no one was going to call him on it. So far as he was concerned, his—and El Supremo’s—leather jackets were a comfortable, practical garment for senior officers, who were not likely to find themselves rolling around in the dirt. Furthermore, he had heard somewhere that as a privilege of rank, general officers were permitted to select their own uniforms. He thought that if this were true, it probably applied only to Army officers, but had decided on the jacket anyway.
And had extended the privilege to his aide-de-camp (and bodyguard), Captain George F. Hart, as well.
“General, would it be all right if I got one of those leather jackets?” Hart had asked. “It would make hiding these a lot easier.”
Hart had shown what he meant by first pulling up his trousers’ leg and revealing a Smith & Wesson snub-nosed .38 Special five-shot revolver—his “backup” gun—in an ankle holster, then showing General Pickering his back and the Colt Model 1911A1 semiautomatic .45-ACP-caliber pistol he carried in a skeleton holster in the small thereof.
Captain Hart, who as a civilian commanded the Homicide Bureau of the Saint Louis, Missouri, Police Department, had brought the weapons with him when recalled to the Corps for the Korean Conflict. He was never either without the pistols or very far from Brigadier General Pickering.
It makes sense, and if the Palace Guard doesn’t like it, sorry about that.
“Sure, George. Why not?” Pickering had replied.
Hart now carried the .45 in a shoulder holster and the snub-nose in the right side pocket of the leather jacket.
And, predictably, the Palace Guard hadn’t liked the sight of Captain Hart in a Naval aviator’s leather jacket identical to that of General Pickering’s, and had used it to take a shot at what really bothered them—Marine General Pickering wearing a leather jacket much like the one worn by the Supreme Commander, Allied Powers and United Nations Forces.
“General,” Colonel Sidney Huff had said, “I’m sure you won’t take offense where none is intended, but do you think your aide’s leather jacket is appropriate?”
The translation of that, of course, was: “Do you think your leather jacket is appropriate when (a) General MacArthur’s leather jacket has become his trademark and (b) General MacArthur has made it plain he would prefer that his staff officers do not wear leather jackets or battered gold-bedecked uniform caps?”
General Pickering had smiled at Colonel Huff.
“Let me think about that, Sid. Thank you for bringing the subject up.”
After that, George’s leather jacket—and of course his—were set in concrete. Brigadier General Pickering, the Assistant Director of the CIA for the Far East, was not a lowly brigadier on the staff of the Supreme Commander, as much as the staff—and probably El Supremo himself—would like it so. He was, de jure, subordinate only to the Director of the CIA, Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillencoetter, USN, but,