home his point. “You’re one of us, Fleming. Wouldn’t you agree, Willoughby?”
“Yes, sir, I agree,” General Willoughby said.
“Huff?”
“Absolutely, General,” Colonel Huff said.
“You’re all very kind to think of me that way,” Pickering said.
And there is absolutely no chance of me getting MacArthur alone for a minute to talk to him about McCoy and the North Koreans. These three are going to be here all night—this is obviously a command performance for them.
I could, of course, ask him for a moment alone, and bring up the subject. But that would make it clear that McCoy had gone “out of channels,” and the fact is, I shouldn’t know what I do. McCoy still thinks of me as “his general,” but he’s wrong. I’m not his general, and he should not have shown me that.
Jesus H. Christ! What the hell am I going to do?
[FOUR]
CONFERENCE ROOM B THE HOTEL HOKKAIDO TOKYO, JAPAN 1715 1 JUNE 1950
Charley Ansley was waiting for Pick in the corridor outside the hastily rented room in which a tablecloth-draped table had been set up facing four rows of folding chairs.
When he saw Ernie Sage McCoy and Ken McCoy with Pick, he smiled. He had come to know both well in the early years of World War II, when, at Fleming Pickering’s request, he had given them the use of his cabin cruiser in San Diego. Housing in San Diego at that time had been in very short supply, and absolutely unavailable to couples who were not legally joined in matrimony.
He had been at their wedding, when Ken came home from a hush-hush mission in the Gobi Desert with brand new major’s leaves on his uniform.
“God, it’s good to see you,” he said, extending his left arm to embrace Ernie as he extended his hand to McCoy. “How’s my favorite Marine?”
“I thought I was your favorite Marine,” Pick said.
“No, you’re my favorite Trans-Global pilot, and not only because you are going to go in there and smile, and be modest, and restrain your well-known tendency to be a wiseass.”
“Nice to see you, Mr. Ansley,” McCoy said, smiling.
“Maybe not ‘Uncle Charley,’ like the prodigal son here, but at least ‘Charley,’ Okay?”
McCoy nodded.
“Pick,” Ansley asked, “do you think your father would mind if I called the Imperial and had them set up a bar, and hors d’oeuvres, in his suite?”
“Yes,” Pick said, simply, smiling.
“The public relations guy says he’d like to get him involved in this, and I know damned well he wouldn’t come here.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” Pick said.
“So you’re saying I shouldn’t do it?”
“No, I think it’s a good idea. What I said was he won’t like it, and I agree that he wouldn’t come here except at the point of a bayonet. But if I have to go in there and be charming and modest, the least the old man can do is smile at the press and whoever.”
“The charm comes easily,” Ernie said. “It’s the modesty that gives him problems.”
“Thank you, Killer, for taking this forked-tongue female off my hands,” Pick said.
“Don’t call him ‘Killer,’ goddamn you!” Ernie snapped.
“It’s okay, baby,” McCoy said.
“We’re ready for you, Captain,” a man in a gray suit said.
“And now, I think Captain Pickering will take a few questions, ” the man in the gray suit announced. “And then we’ve got cars arranged to take everybody to the Imperial for a little liquid courage.”
Predictably, Pick thought, the questions were predictable:
Q. (Fat little bespectacled fart) Isn’t this really show-boating? Putting the passengers in danger?
A. The safety of our passengers is our primary concern; we have not and will not increase any risk to them.
Q. (Tall, thin, pasty-faced. Was probably a classroom monitor in high school) But speed records imply racing, racing is by definition dangerous, so how can you say this wasn’t dangerous?
A. The aeronautical engineers of the manufacturer, Lockheed, and our own aeronautical engineers have come up with what they call an “envelope.” It sets forth the conditions in which flight is safe. Airspeed, engine rpm, that sort of thing. We were never “out of the envelope”; if we had been, the record wouldn’t have counted.
Q. (Pasty-face follow-up) But then why try to set speed records?
A. We didn’t try to set a speed record. We tried to bring our passengers here as quickly—and comfortably—as possible within the safe-flight envelope. We did that, and it happened to set a speed record.
Q. (Nice-looking. Great boobs) Aren’t you a little young to be a captain?
A. Excuse me?
Q. (Great boobs follow-up. Nice face, too) The popular image of