that, past tense,” Pickering heard himself say. “Colonel Billy Dunn flew over the site where Pick crashed his Corsair and said the cockpit was empty. It’s entirely possible that he’s alive. That was not the first Corsair he was shot down in.”
You know better than that: “Never end a sentence with a preposition.”
You’re pissing in the wind, and you know it.
If he didn’t get killed in the crash landing, the odds are that he was shot by the North Koreans.
MacArthur looked at him intently for a moment.
“Jean, darling,” he said. “Would you give Fleming and me a moment alone?”
Jesus, what’s this? Does he know something I don’t? Did Cushman find Pick’s body?
He imagined the exchange:
Does Pickering know that they found the body?
No, sir. I’d planned to go to the Imperial from here to tell him myself.
That will not be necessary. I will tell him. We are old friends.
"Of course,” Mrs. MacArthur said, softly, touched Pickering’s arm for a moment, and then walked out of the room.
“Let us speak as soldiers,” MacArthur said.
Pickering waited for him to go. He was aware that his stomach ached.
“General Willoughby believes there is more than a seventy-thirty probability that Major Pickering survived the crash,” MacArthur said.
“He does?”
“And, if that is the case, that there is an eighty-twenty probability that Major Pickering is now a prisoner of the enemy.”
Pickering didn’t reply.
“I know you’re as aware as I am, Fleming, that the enemy has been executing prisoners out of hand,” MacArthur went on, “but—and this is Willoughby’s professional judgment, not a clutching at straws—in this case, because (a) your son is an officer; and (b) a Marine aviator, about whom the enemy knows very little, it would be in the enemy’s interests to keep him alive.”
“I see,” Pickering said.
“As one soldier to another, Fleming, there is something that might happen to turn this situation.”
“Sir?”
“As we speak, Ambassador Averell Harriman and General Matt Ridgway are somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii, en route here.”
“General Howe told me, sir,” Pickering said.
“Did he tell you why?”
“In general terms, sir.”
“Harriman is coming because the President didn’t quite understand my going to Taipei to meet with Chiang Kai-shek, ” MacArthur said. “I had no intention of asking for Chinese Nationalist troops for the war in Korea, and not only because all he would have to offer is poorly trained and poorly equipped troops. What I feared at the time was that the Chinese might see our difficulties in Korea as an opportunity for them to invade Formosa. I wanted to disabuse them of the notion that the United States would permit them to do so without instant retaliation. My presence there made that point. I was prepared to send several fighter squadrons to Formosa, but intelligence developed by Willoughby has convinced me that will not be necessary. The Chinese Communists are not preparing to attack Formosa. They do not wish to go to war with us.”
“I see.”
“The President, as I say, apparently didn’t quite understand my motives. When I meet with Harriman, I will be able to put any misunderstanding to rest once and for all.”
“And General Ridgway?”
“General Ridgway is coming for two reasons, I believe. He is the prime candidate to become chief of staff. I think he wants to see for himself what’s going on in Korea. There is—again, a question of not having firsthand knowledge of the situation—some concern with the manner in which General Walker is waging that war. There is also, in the Pentagon, far from the scene of action, a good deal of uneasiness about my plan to invade the west coast of Korea, at Inchon, at the earliest possible date.”
“You have decided to make the Inchon invasion?”
“I hope to convince General Ridgway, and through him the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President, that not only would such an action bring this war to a satisfactory conclusion very quickly, but also that it is the only way to avoid a lengthy and bloody conflict to drive the enemy from the Korean peninsula. The President committed the United States to the defense of South Korea, which means the defeat, total defeat, of North Korea’s army. There is no substitute for victory, Fleming, as you are well aware.”
“And you think that Ridgway is the key to JCS approval of Inchon?”
“Yes. And I don’t see that as a problem. When I lay the operation on the table, he can’t help but see—he has the reputation of being not only a fighter, but one of the finest brains in