be picked up by General Pickering’s pilot for purposes not known to me.”
“Thank you, sir,” Pick said.
“It might be wise to get the aircraft out of Tokyo as soon as possible,” Almond said.
“Yes, sir,” Pick said.
“There’s always tit-for-tat,” Almond said to Pickering. “Okay?”
“What can I do for you, General?” Pickering replied.
“I’d like to see McCoy’s—and, come to think of it, Major Pickering’s—reports on what they find. Unofficially. I sometimes wonder if the reports we’re getting at the daily briefings are designed to spare General MacArthur unnecessary concern.”
In other words, you suspect—with damned good reason— that Willoughby isn’t reporting anything to MacArthur he doesn’t think he should know.
“I’ll see you get them,” Pickering said.
Almond nodded.
“Major,” he said to Pick, “it might be a good idea if you happened to be around the SCAP hangar at Haneda, in case Captain Haig might show up there.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll be there,” Pick said.
Almond walked to the door and opened it. Then he turned and, in a voice loud enough to ensure the CIC could hear it, said, “I’ll take your request to the Supreme Commander as soon as I can.”
“Thank you, sir,” Pickering said.
They smiled at each other, and then Almond went through the door.
[TWO]
THE PRESS CLUB TOKYO, JAPAN 1530 28 JULY 1950
It was alleged by many of Miss Jeanette Priestly’s associates in the SCAP (and now UN Command) press corps— all of whom were male—that the Chicago Tribune’s war correspondent had a Jesuit-like attitude regarding the development of her sources. That, in other words, the end justified the means.
While it was obviously not true that Miss Priestly would fuck a gorilla to get a story—as was sometimes alleged around the press club bar—it was on the other hand true that Miss Priestly was not above looking soulfully into the eyes of some virile major—or general or, for that matter, PFC—simultaneously allowing him to glimpse down her blouse at her bosom, onto which she often sprayed Chanel No. 5, and perhaps even laying a soft hand on his, if she thought the individual concerned was possessed of knowledge that would give her a story. Or, more recently, in Korea, if he had access to a Jeep, or space on an airplane.
But she did not take these sources of news or air passage space to bed in payment for their cooperation. While it had been some time since she had lost the moral right to virginal white, the facts were that the urge and the opportunity had not coincided for quite some time.
Jeanette was honest enough to admit to herself that she had been strongly drawn to Captain Kenneth R. McCoy, USMC, probably because he had seemed like the only man in Korea who knew what he was doing. And he was cute. But he hadn’t made a pass at her, and if he had, where could they have gone to share carnal bliss?
The green rice fields of Korea in the summer are fertilized with human feces, the smell from which tends to dampen romantic ardor.
And since they had been together in Korea, she had never seen McCoy again, so he was added in her mind to her long list of missed opportunities.
And sometimes, when everything else was right, something in her psyche made her back off. There was no denying that the Trans-Global Airways pilot, the one who had set the speed record, and whose father was a buddy of MacArthur, Pickering, was the legendary answer to a maiden’s prayer. Tall, good-looking, wicked eyes, and with an undeniable charm. And rich.
Pickering had obviously been smitten with her. If he’d been a horse, he would have been neighing and tearing up the carpet with his hooves. And, if she had been willing to drop her almost maidenly reticence, there would have been a soft bed in the Imperial Hotel, with room service champagne. And she had heard somewhere that airline pilots could provide free tickets, which was something to think about, too.
But there was something about Captain Pickering of Trans-Global Airways that turned on her alarm system. She had not become a foreign—now war—correspondent for the Tribune by making herself vulnerable. As the boys in the press club bar would phrase it, she knew how to keep her ass covered, literally and figuratively.
She could have made an ass of herself over Pickering, and she rarely put herself in that position. And anyway, he was gone. Since it was unlikely that she would ever see him again, she put him out of her mind.