the Navy officer’s identification card.
The CIC agent examined it.
“They’re expecting you, Lieutenant,” he said. “Second door on the left.”
Taylor walked down the corridor, and knocked at the door.
Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, USMCR, was in a crisp, tieless shirt, with the silver star of his rank on both sides of the collar.
I would have sworn they said Major General.
“My name is Taylor, sir,” he said. “I was ordered to report to Major General Howe.”
“We’ve been expecting you, Lieutenant,” Pickering said. “Come on in. General Howe’s taking a shave.” He pointed into the room, where Howe, draped in a white sheet, was being shaved by a Japanese barber, a woman. “My name is Pickering.”
Pickering offered Taylor his hand, and was pleased but not surprised at the firmness of his grip. He had decided the moment he’d seen Taylor at the door that he was probably going to like him.
Taylor’s khaki uniform was clean but rumpled. The gold strap and the insignia on his brimmed cap was anything but new. It looked, Pickering decided, one sailor judging another, that Taylor would be far more comfortable on the bridge of a ship than he would be sitting at a desk, and certainly more comfortable on a bridge than reporting—reason unstated—to an Army major general in one of the most luxurious suites in the Imperial Hotel.
“Be with you in a minute,” Howe called from his chair. “Have you had breakfast?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, there’s coffee, and if you change your mind, there’s stuff on a steam table in the dining room.”
Pickering smiled at Taylor, and motioned for him to follow him.
“You’re the first to show up,” Pickering said. “The others will be here soon.”
Pickering went to a silver coffee service, poured two cups of coffee, and handed one to Taylor.
“Black okay?”
“I’m a sailor, sir. Sailors get used to black coffee.”
“I know,” Pickering said. “Once upon a time, I was an honest sailor-man myself.”
What the hell does that mean?
“Yes, sir,” Taylor said.
The first of “the others” to arrive was a Marine captain, who walked into the dining room and headed straight for the coffee.
“You got him, George?” Pickering asked when he had finished pouring coffee.
“Sergeant Rogers is having a word with him,” the Marine captain said.
Lieutenant Taylor was surprised that the captain had not said, “Sir,” and even more surprised when he took off his tunic and pulled down his tie, and then still more when he saw that the captain had a .45 ACP pistol in a skeleton holster in the small of his back.
General Howe came into the dining room.
“Did you get him, George?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. Charley’s having a word with him,” Hart replied.
“McCoy and Zimmerman?” Howe asked.
“They should be here now, Ralph,” Pickering said.
“Should I call?” the captain asked.
“What Ernie’s going to say,” Pickering replied, “is that they’re on the way, and should be here now.”
The captain went to a telephone—one of four—on the sideboard and dialed a number.
“Could you get him out of bed, Ernie?” he said when someone answered.
Howe chuckled.
“Okay, sorry to bother you,” the captain said, and hung up.
“And?” Pickering asked.
“They left early because of the traffic and should be here any minute,” Hart reported.
Pickering spread his hands in a What did I tell you? gesture.
Howe chuckled again.
“We’ll wait,” he said. “Then we’ll only have to do the welcoming ceremony once.”
“I thought that’s what Charley was doing to Keller,” Hart said.
“No, what Charley is doing to Sergeant Keller is impressing upon him the wisdom of paying close attention to the welcoming ceremony,” Howe said. He looked at Taylor and walked over to him. “My name is Howe, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir.”
A barrel-chested Marine master gunner with a chest full of ribbons came into the dining room.
“We got stuck in traffic,” he announced. “Sorry.”
“No problem, you’re here,” Howe said. “Zimmerman, this is Lieutenant Taylor.”
Zimmerman wordlessly shook Taylor’s hand.
Now this is the kind of jarhead with whom a wise sailor does not get into a barroom argument. And this kind of jarhead is the last kind of jarhead you expect to find in a room in the Imperial Hotel with two generals.
Another Marine captain came in the room.
Christ, I know who he is. He’s the guy—McCoy is his name—who asked me, two, three times—once in Taipei, another time in Hong Kong, and some other place, places, I forget, the sonofabitch was all over the Far East—always the same question, Had I seen any unusual activity in North Korea, or along the China Coast?
And I told him yeah, I had. Why not? He had an ID