out with three pencils and a pad of yellow lined paper. McCoy saw that the briefcase also held a 1911A1 Colt and what looked like the straps of a GI tanker’s shoulder holster.
Pickering sat down beside McCoy; Zimmerman beside Rogers, and Hart beside him.
“I had the maid start coffee,” Ernie McCoy said. “It’ll be ready in a minute.”
“That’s very kind,” Howe said. “But I’m doing fine with this.”
He raised his whiskey glass.
Ernie sat down beside Pickering.
“Okay,” Howe said. “Where to begin?”
He thought about that for a moment.
“At the beginning is always a good place. Harry S. Truman. Our President and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. I work for him, and so does everybody else in uniform, but sometimes people have trouble really understanding that.
“He’s a very good man. If he had his druthers, when War Two started he would have gone on active duty as a colonel—we both made colonel on the same National Guard promotion list—and probably would have made two stars, as I did. But he was in the Senate, doing important work, and they talked him into not going on active duty, and retired him as a colonel.
“That’s important to keep in mind. You don’t get to be a colonel unless you know something about soldiering, more important, soldiers, and more important than that, officers.
“If I forget, and refer to our commander-in-chief as ‘Harry,’ no disrespect is intended. I have picked up a lot of respect for him since the time we were both captains. He was a good captain, and he was a good colonel, and he was a damned good senator. He wasn’t vice president long enough to make any judgments about that, but since he’s been President, he’s done a good job, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a hundred years from now, he’s regarded by the historians as being in the same league as Washington and Lincoln.
“Having said that, Harry S. Truman is no saint. He’s got a temper, and he holds a grudge, and once he makes up his mind, he finds it hard to admit his original decision was wrong. I honest to God don’t know what he’s got against the Marine Corps, but it’s pretty obvious he really doesn’t like it.
“He’s got a lot against the professional officer corps generally. Probably some of that goes back to our National Guard days, when the regular army used to rub their superiority in our faces. And some of it, I’m sure, goes back to when he had the Truman Committee in the Senate, and a lot of brass thought they could get away with lying to him.
“The President told me that right now there are two general officers—two only—he trusts completely. Both of them are at this table. And he told me why: He knows I don’t have a personal agenda, and he doesn’t think General Pickering does, either.
“The truth seems to be that the military services are loaded with prima donnas, and I’m not only talking about General MacArthur, although he can certainly give lessons to the others in that regard.
“Okay. All of this is to explain what I’m doing here, and what you all have to do with it. The day after tomorrow, Ambassador W. Averell Harriman and General Matthew B. Ridgway are going to get on a plane and come here. Item one on Harriman’s agenda is to tell MacArthur that he is absolutely not, not, going to use any of Chiang Kai-shek’s troops, and item two is Inchon. That has to be resolved—”
“My feelings won’t be hurt—” Ernestine McCoy interrupted.
Howe looked at her in surprise.
“—if you tell me I’m not supposed to ask questions. But I don’t understand . . .”
Captain Kenneth R. McCoy looked at his wife in disbelief. General Howe’s eyebrows went up. General Pickering smiled tolerantly, and waited for General Howe to more or less politely put her in her place.
“Ask away, Mrs. McCoy,” Howe said, surprising everybody. “I meant it when I said I think you have to be involved in this, and the more you understand, the better.”
“Well, I know who Ambassador Harriman is,” she said. “I know Ambassador Harriman. He and my father are friends. My father told me he’s President Truman’s ambassador-at-large. But who’s General Ridgway? And what’s Inchon?”
“Harriman is also the President’s national security advisor, ” Howe said. “ ‘Ambassador-at-large’ is a personal rank; when Harriman goes someplace, it means he speaks for the President.
"MacArthur really wears two hats. The senior American someplace is the