officers who didn’t think a corporal with no college degree should become a Marine officer.”
“How do—?” Banning blurted, and stopped.
“ ‘How the hell do you know that’?” Pickering finished the uncompleted question. “My son was in his class; they became quite close. They are quite close.”
“Well, he got through,” Banning said.
“And then he volunteered for the Marine Raiders?” Pickering asked, but it was more of a statement than a question. He knew that McCoy had been a Raider.
“Yes, sir. But not quite the way that sounds.”
“I don’t understand. . . .”
“McCoy’s language skills—and his China service— came to the attention of the G-2,” Banning said. “He decided McCoy was just the man he was looking for.”
“As an interpreter, you mean?”
“No, sir. To keep an eye on Colonel Evans Carlson, the commander of the Marine Raiders.”
“Now, that I don’t understand,” Pickering said.
“There were a number of officers in the Marine Corps who thought that Carlson had dangerous ideas,” Banning said. “And some who suspected he was a Communist.”
“My God!”
“So the G-2 called McCoy in and asked him to take that assignment.”
“I knew McCoy was in the Raiders,” Pickering said. “But I didn’t know about this.”
“He came back from the Makin Raid—where he was hit, by the way—and reported that Colonel Carson was not a Communist. And then I found him in the hospital in San Diego and had him transferred here. He was hoping to stay with the Raiders, but he belongs here.”
“Yes, I’m sure he does,” Pickering replied.
“It’s . . . as if he was born to be an intelligence officer,” Banning said.
“It sounds that way, doesn’t it?” Pickering had agreed.
II
[ONE]
NO. 7 SAKU-TUN DENENCHOFU, TOKYO, JAPAN 1745 1 JUNE 1950
Ernestine Sage McCoy spoke to the woman who had come to the door in the wall—in what sounded to Pickering like fluent Japanese—and very quickly, before McCoy had finished making Pickering a drink, a plate of hors d’oeuvres appeared.
“Welcome to our home, General,” McCoy said, touching his glass to Pickering’s.
“General is a long time ago, Ken,” Pickering said. “What I am now is a figurehead. You know what a figurehead is? The wooden-headed figure on the bow of a ship?”
There was dutiful laughter.
Not only dutiful, but strained.
Neither one of them is in a laughing mood.
Christ, I must have walked in here just before she was going to throw a frying pan at him. I wonder what the hell he did?
Or what she did?
Pickering relayed the love of his wife, and told her that Patricia, the last time he heard, had been going to have dinner with her father and mother in New York, and Ernie said to give Patricia their love when he got home.
“How long are you going to stay in Japan, General?” Ken McCoy asked.
“Three or four days, no more.”
This was followed by a painful silence.
Pickering searched his mind for something to say, and found it:
“I thought I’d look around,” he said, and added, “The last time I was here, I arrived five days before the war was over.”
“I remember,” McCoy said.
“Five days before the war was over?”
“Right.”
“I never heard that story,” Ernie said.
“You said,” McCoy said, and for the first time there was a suggestion of a smile on his face, “that it was the first time El Supremo ever asked for an OSS intel report.”
“First and only,” Pickering said.
“Tell me about it,” Ernie said.
At least it will break the silence.
“Major McCoy and I were on Okinawa,” Pickering began.
And the first word out of your mouth is a disaster, reminding him, reminding them, that he was busted back to captain after the war.
“. . . and Sid Huff . . .”
“Who?”
"MacArthur’s aide.”
“He still is,” Ernie said.
“So I heard,” Pickering said. “Anyway, Sid showed up on Okinawa, from Manila, where El Supremo was at the time. He announced that MacArthur wanted me to go in on the first plane. Of course, he couldn’t phrase it that simply. . . .”
" ’General,’ ” McCoy said, accurately mimicking Huff’s somewhat pompous manner of speech, “ ‘it is the Supreme Commander’s desire that you proceed to Tokyo with the initial party ...’ ”
“Very good, Ken,” Pickering said, chuckling.
“What happened, sweetheart,” McCoy said, “is that El Supremo originally intended to send Huff, but changed his mind at the last minute and told him to ask the Boss here . . .”
Sweetheart? That means he’s in the doghouse. I wonder what he did. Or she thinks he did.
“Darling, let him tell the story.”
Darling? That doesn’t sound like a grossly annoyed wife.