think he does, but won’t admit it. Dunston, Zimmerman, and I speak Korean. I suppose it’s too much to hope—”
“Nothing but German—I was there for four years—and not very good German.”
In German, McCoy asked, “But if I said ‘Look doubtful, ’ you’d understand?”
“Yes.”
“And you could say, in German, ‘What did he say?’ when I give you the nod?”
“Yes, I guess I could.”
"Colonel, I really hope you can stay for supper,” McCoy said.
Why not? Raymond thought. As long as I get back to the CP by twenty-four hundred, so I can relieve the colonel. . . .
“If you think it would be useful, I will,” Lieutenant Colonel Raymond said.
“You’re really going into the general’s luggage and borrow his insignia?” Dunston said.
“Unless you’ve got a better idea where we can get a set of general’s stars,” McCoy said.
Lieutenant Colonel Raymond decided that the lithe one, McCoy, was the station chief. He was the one giving the orders.
[THREE]
HANEDA AIRFIELD TOKYO, JAPAN 1805 29 SEPTEMBER 1950
Fleming Pickering glanced out the window as the Bataan taxied toward the hangar that served as the departure and arrival point for the Supreme Commander and his entourage.
He saw the line of staff cars lined up awaiting the Bataan’s passengers. MacArthur’s black Cadillac limousine was first, and the cars of the other brass were behind it, strictly according to the rank of their intended passengers. Pickering saw his black Buick Roadmaster sitting alone in front of the hangar, facing in the opposite direction from the others.
Pickering knew this would annoy the Palace Guard, who would have greatly preferred to have his car with the others. His single star would have seen his car five or six cars behind MacArthur’s limousine, reminding him that he was actually just a minor planet revolving around MacArthur.
MacArthur’s staff—and, for that matter, El Supremo himself—really didn’t like having anyone in their midst who did not have a precisely defined place in the hierarchy of the Supreme Commander, Allied Powers.
There were two such burrs under the saddles of the Supreme Commander and the Palace Guard, Major General Ralph Howe, NGUS, and Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, USMCR. Neither was subordinate to MacArthur, and both reported directly to the President of the United States.
Pickering had not been at all surprised when he came to Tokyo that the Palace Guard had immediately begun to attempt to get some degree of control over him—the more the better, obviously, from their point of view—and had been prepared to fight that battle, confident that he could win it again, as he had in the Second War.
The Buick—and his and George Hart’s fur-collared Naval aviators’ leather jackets—were more or less subtle statements that he was not subordinate to Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers.
The Buick was his. He owned it.
When he had first come to Japan, he had been provided with an olive-drab Chevrolet staff car and a sergeant to drive it, and asked when it would be convenient for him to have the housing officer show him what government quarters were available for an officer of his rank, so that he could make a choice between them.
There was no question in Pickering’s mind that the staff car drivers—three of them, on a rotating basis—were agents of the Counterintelligence Corps, and thus reporting to Major General Charles A. Willoughby, MacArthur’s chief intelligence officer.
He had politely thanked the Headquarters Commandant for the offer of government quarters, but said that he would prefer to stay where he was, in a suite in the Imperial Hotel. And he had sent an urgent radio message to Colonel Ed Banning, who was at Camp Pendleton, ordering him to immediately buy a small Buick or Oldsmobile and have it placed aboard the very next P&FE freighter bound for Japan, even if he had to drive to San Francisco to get it on the next ship.
Colonel Banning had, with the word “immediately” in his mind, looked at the small Buicks and Oldsmobiles available in San Diego, decided “The General” would really not like any of them—he could not imagine “The General” riding around Tokyo in a bright yellow little Olds, or a two-tone, mostly lavender little Buick—and instead, eight hours after getting his orders, had stood on a wharf watching the black Buick Roadmaster being lifted aboard the Pacific Clipper, which he had been assured was among the fastest vessels in the P&FE fleet.
As soon as the car arrived, Pickering had told the Headquarters Commandant he would no longer need the staff car; he would drive his own car. The Headquarters