morning. There are some things that I think you should know, and may not, and there are some things I know you know that we don’t know, and should, before that meeting. May I suggest we get on with this?”
There was a knock at the door. Hart opened it, and a waiter rolled in a cart on which an enormous display of hors d’oeuvres was arranged.
“Is this place secure?” Ridgway asked.
“Charley found some microphones,” Howe said. “They may have been Japanese leftovers, or not. Anyway, both Charley and Sergeant Keller, our cryptographer, have gone over it—and keep going over it, and Charley’s and my suite—and as far as we know, it’s secure.”
“ ‘Or not’?” Ridgway quoted.
“I don’t think the KGB has bugged this place, General,” Howe said. “And I also don’t think the KGB would be the only people interested in what might be said in this room.”
“You don’t have a safe house, Fleming?” Harriman asked.
“There doesn’t seem to be any way to say this delicately, ” Pickering said. “So: The station chief here thinks of himself as a member of MacArthur’s staff. I think anything said in the CIA safe house would be in the Dai Ichi Building within an hour.”
“And there’s no other place?”
“Ernie McCoy—Ernie Sage McCoy—has a place here,” Pickering said. “Ralph and I have been using that.”
“That’s Ernest’s daughter, right? She’s married to a Marine? ”
Pickering nodded.
“And she’s cleared for Top Secret/White House,” Howe said. “I cleared her.”
“And we could go there?” Harriman asked.
“George, call Ernie and tell her to expect guests,” Pickering ordered. “And tell her not to worry about hors d’oeuvres. We’ll be bringing our own.”
“They’ll know we went there, Flem,” Howe said.
“Perhaps the ambassador can casually mention he went to see the daughter of an old friend when he’s with MacArthur,” Pickering said.
[FOUR]
NO. 7 SAKU-TUN DENENCHOFU, TOKYO, JAPAN 1905 6 AUGUST 1950
“I thought it might be you, Mr. Ambassador,” Ernie Sage McCoy said when they walked up to her door. “It’s nice to see you again, sir.”
“Forgive the intrusion, Ernestine,” Harriman said. “But we needed someplace to talk, and General Pickering suggested your home.”
“There’s coffee in the dining room, and I understand you’ve brought hors d’oeuvres?”
“George is getting them out of the trunk,” Pickering said.
“. . . and I sent the help out. And now I’ll get out of your way.”
“You’re very gracious, Ernestine,” Harriman said.
“My name is Ridgway, Mrs. McCoy,” Ridgway said. “Thank you for letting us intrude.”
“No intrusion at all,” she said. “My husband is—what should I say, ‘Out of town on business’?—and it’s good to have something to do.”
She led them into the dining room, then left them alone. Hart and Rogers carried in the hors d’oeuvres, and looked at Pickering and Howe for directions.
“Go keep Ernie company, George,” Pickering ordered.
“Take some of the hors d’oeuvres with you, Charley,” Howe ordered.
When they had left, Harriman picked up a shrimp, took a bite, and then said: “That’s what the President was worried about—that you two would get along too well, and that therefore it might be best to talk to you separately. He said you were two of a kind.”
“We haven’t had anything to disagree about,” Howe said. “We see the same things—from our different perspectives—the same way. But we can make ourselves available to be interrogated separately, can’t we, Flem?”
“Interrogation is not the word, General,” Harriman said.
“That’s what it sounded like you had in mind on the telephone, ” Howe said, bluntly.
“From my perspective,” Ridgway said, quickly, as if to keep the exchange from getting more unpleasant, “given that both General Howe and General Pickering enjoy the confidence of the President, we could save a lot of time by just sitting down at the table and talking this out together.”
“That’s fine with me,” Harriman said, sat down, and reached across the table for another shrimp.
The others sat down.
“This place is secure?” Ridgway asked.
“More so than the Imperial,” Howe said.
“I defer to you, Mr. Ambassador,” Ridgway said.
Harriman nodded, and touched his lips with a napkin.
“Marvelous shrimp,” he said, and then went on, seriously: “The President is concerned—as something of an understatement—about several recent actions of General MacArthur. Let’s deal with his trip to Formosa first. Two questions in that regard. One, does General MacArthur understand that the President does not wish to have the Nationalist Chinese involved in Korea? Two, what was he doing in Formosa? General Howe?”
“I’ll defer to General Pickering,” Howe said. "MacArthur has not discussed that with me.”
“And he has with you, Fleming?”
“I was at the Residence,” Pickering