Senator Fowler said, shaking his head. “I’ll give you seven-to-three for a hundred bucks that I’m looking at the next Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
[THREE]
THE HOUSE SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA 0725 6 OCTOBER 1950
“That’s the fifth time you’ve looked at your watch in the last five minutes,” Lieutenant Colonel D. J. Vandenburg said to Major Kenneth R. McCoy. “Expecting somebody?”
They were at the dining room table. The dishes and silverware had been cleaned away, and the table was covered with large maps of Korea, and with stacks of reports— many of them written in Korean—that reported sightings of Prisoners of War held by the North Koreans.
“Dunston,” McCoy said. “I guess he couldn’t catch a ride in an airplane. And General Howe. I’m getting a little worried about both of them.”
“General Howe is fine, thank you for your concern,” Major General Ralph Howe said, walking into the dining room trailed by Master Sergeant Charley Rogers.
Howe draped the web strap of his M-2 Grease Gun on the back of a chair and sat down. Then he gestured impatiently for McCoy and Vandenburg, who had come to attention, to relax. Rogers, after glancing at the map, sat down on the other side of the table.
“Sir,” McCoy said, “this is Lieutenant Colonel Vandenburg. Colonel, General Howe.”
Howe extended his hand.
“How do you do, Colonel?” he said. “This is Master Sergeant Charley Rogers.” He paused. “That out of the way, have we missed breakfast?”
“Of course not, sir,” McCoy said. “Ham and eggs?”
“That would be very nice,” Howe said.
McCoy walked to the kitchen, spoke to the housekeeper, and then came back into the room.
“We tried to make it back here last night, it got dark, so we sat down on a First Cav airstrip and spent the night,” Rogers said. “We passed on the cold rations that were offered, the horses kept us up all night, and we passed on a cold breakfast. So we are hungry.”
Howe chuckled.
“Not really horses,” he said. “But apparently in the Cav their sentinels are taught to shoot first, and then challenge, ‘Halt, who goes there?’ Charley’s a little too long in the tooth to keep jumping up all night the way he did.”
“The 7th Cav CP sounded like the O.K. Corral,” Rogers said. “And I kept remembering what happened to them at the Little Big Horn.”
Vandenburg laughed.
“Well, we’re here,” Howe said. “I guess Dunston is not? Where is he?”
“We took the helos to Socho-Ri yesterday, sir. I came back as soon as I could. Dunston stayed on to start the agent insertions. I caught a ride back in a Capital ROK Division L-4. I guess he couldn’t get an airplane and had to drive.”
Howe nodded, then turned to Vandenburg.
“Colonel, since Major McCoy is talking about inserting agents from Socho-Ri, I presume you have the need to know about such things.”
“Sir,” Vandenburg said, smiling, “since Major McCoy has told me who you are, I presume it’s all right to tell you I’m here to see about getting General Dean back.”
“Okay,” Howe said. “I think I know about that. You came from the States for that purpose, right?”
“Yes, sir. My orders are from DCSOPS,4but I have been led to believe the orders came from the Chief of Staff.”
“You were led wrong, then,” Howe said. “They came from the top. One of the first questions the President put to the new Chief of Staff, General Bradley, was ‘What can we do about getting General Dean back?’ I have a message from the President—it arrived here just after General Pickering left for the States—saying that somebody was beingsent here, and ordering me to do what I could to help.”
“I didn’t know that, sir,” Vandenburg said.
“If you had come to me, I would have referred you to Major McCoy, so you’ve come to the right place. You weren’t told to contact me?”
“I was told to contact General Pickering, sir. But not you, sir. Maybe there wasn’t time. An hour after I got my orders, I was on a plane for the West Coast.”
“Or maybe,” Howe said, thinking out loud, “what happened was that I got a copy of the President’s message to General Pickering, in case that didn’t reach him before he left.”
“Yes, sir,” Vandenburg said.
“I was a little surprised with the message. I’m not supposed to get involved in operations here; I’m strictly an observer. Now it makes sense. Anyway, we know what the orders are. Let’s see what we can do about getting General Dean back. Is that what this is all about?”