code word, we thought it was rather clever for the meaning: ‘McCoy, Taylor and all hands have been successfully put over the side at half past four.’ It should have taken them no more than an hour to make Tokchok-kundo. On their arrival, Zimmerman was to transmit a code phrase meaning they had arrived. There has been no such transmission.”
“The storm could have knocked out their radio,” Howe suggested.
“That’s a possibility. The other possibility that has to be considered is that the North Koreans discovered our people on Tokchok-kundo, took the island, and McCoy and Taylor sailed into the North Koreans’ lap.”
“You don’t know that, Fleming,” Howe said.
“We set up another message, an emergency message, a phrase meaning change your frequency to another and be prepared to communicate. George and I just came from the commo center, where we watched Sergeant Keller send that code phrase every ten minutes for an hour and a half. There was no response.”
“Which proves, I suggest, only that Zimmerman’s radio is out again. There was trouble with it before, wasn’t there?”
“You always look for a silver lining in situations like this,” Pickering said. “What I’m hoping now is that if the North Koreans went to Tokchok-kundo and discovered our people there, they will think that it was nothing more than an intelligence-gathering outpost, and won’t make a connection with the invasion of Inchon.”
The first thing Howe thought was that Pickering was being unduly pessimistic, but then he remembered that this wasn’t the first covert operation Pickering had run, and that his pessimism was based on experience.
“Goddamn it,” Howe said, and then asked, “What are you going to do?”
“For the next twenty-four hours, I’m going to hope— pray—that you—and George—are right, and that the only problem is Zimmerman’s radio.”
“And then?”
“I’m going to Pusan to see what my station chief there thinks about sending the Wind of Good Fortune back up there.”
[FIVE]
EVENING STAR HOTEL TONGNAE, SOUTH KOREA 2105 23 AUGUST 1950
“Oh, shit!” Captain George F. Hart said, as the headlights of the Jeep swept across the courtyard of the hotel.
“Oh, shit what, George?” Brigadier General Fleming Pickering asked.
“Pick’s . . .” Hart said, and stopped.
“Pick’s what?” Pickering said.
“I was about to say Pick’s girlfriend is here,” Hart said. “Or maybe it’s somebody else with a war correspondent’s Jeep. At the corner?”
“I don’t need her right now,” Pickering said. “But I’m afraid you’re right.”
“Maybe Major Whatsisname . . .”
“Dunston,” Pickering furnished.
“. . . Dunston’s got a Jeep like that,” Hart said, as he pulled the nose of the Jeep, which had been more or less cheerfully furnished to them—along with directions to the hotel—by Captain James Overton, the Marine liaison officer at K-1.
“Could be,” Pickering said. “I really hope it’s not her.”
“She was a little excited the last time we saw her, wasn’t she, boss?” Hart asked.
“It has been some time since I have been called ‘a treacherous sonofabitch,’ ” Pickering said. “Especially with such sincerity.”
“I think her exact words were ‘you miserable, treacherous sonsofbitches,’ plural,” Hart said. “She seemed to be a little annoyed with me, too.”
“Well, I couldn’t let her go back to Tokchok-kundo, even if the English would have let her get on the destroyer. ”
“No, you couldn’t,” Hart said seriously, as he pulled the nose of the Jeep up to the wall of the hotel. “And I don’t think you could have explained that to her.”
Before they reached the door, other headlights announced the arrival of another Jeep at the hotel.
“That must be him,” Hart said. “The Killer said he looked like an Army Transportation Corps major.”
“Ken also said he struck him as very bright,” Pickering said. “Keep that in mind.”
“Major” William Dunston walked up to them.
“General, I’m Bill Dunston, your station chief here. I’m sorry you got here before I did, and delighted that you could find the place at all.”
“George is a cop when he’s not working for me,” Pickering said. “He’s good at finding things.”
“Bill Dunston, Captain,” Dunston said, offering Hart his hand. “I understand you’ve been with the general a long time.”
“Yeah, we go back a ways,” Hart said. “How are you? Who’s the war correspondent?”
“Jeanette Priestly,” Dunston said.
“What’s she doing here?” Pickering asked.
“The bottom line is that I didn’t know to keep her away,”
Dunston said. “What she asked for was if she could stay here rather than in the press center. What she’s doing, obviously, is hanging around here as probably the best place to learn what’s going on in the Flying Fish Channel. She said that you