ago—to admit he beat me to it,” Pickering said. “Anyway, it’s effective today, Major McCoy.”
General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was leaning on the map table in the command room, supporting himself on his hands, with his staff around him jockeying for position.
Pickering had the thought that it looked not unlike photographs he had seen of Hitler and his generals at Rastenburg.
“Ah,” he said as Pickering, Taylor, and McCoy entered the room. “Gentlemen, for those of you who—for reasons I am sure you understand—I was not able to bring into the picture previously, these are the two officers, Lieutenant David Taylor, USN, and Major K. R. McCoy, USMC, who supervised, with great skill and courage, the covert operation I put into play to seize the Flying Fish Channel Islands. ”
[SIX]
STATEROOM B-65 USS MOUNT MCKINLEY THE FLYING FISH CHANNEL 0915 SEPTEMBER 1950
“Very nice,” McCoy said, as he, Taylor, Hart, and Zimmerman followed Pickering into the stateroom. “I’ve never been in this kind of officer’s country before.”
“There’re two like this,” Pickering said. “You fellows can decide who bunks with who. I put all the luggage in the one next door.”
“These are flag officer’s quarters,” McCoy protested.
“They were assigned to me, and now I’m letting you use them,” Pickering said. “The original idea was to put you all in sick bay.”
“I thought you got one for you and one for Jeanette,” Hart said, sitting down on the bed. “Jesus, that feels good.”
“Jeanette batted her eyes at the captain,” Pickering said, “whereupon he offered her his cabin, and I moved into General Howe’s just before you came aboard.”
"Where’s he?”
“When last seen, headed for Inchon,” Pickering said. “With the announced intention of hitching up with Chesty Puller and his First Marines.”
“He must have a death wish,” McCoy said.
Pickering picked up on the bitter tone. He started to say something, then changed his mind, and instead went to a metal chest of drawers, the top drawer of which had a combination lock. He worked the combination, opened it, and came out with a bottle of Famous Grouse wrapped in a towel.
“I suspect you can use one of these, Ken,” Pickering said. “Or two.”
“The last I heard booze aboard ships was an absolute no-no, ” McCoy said. “And thank you, General, but no.”
“Speak for yourself, John Alden,” Hart said. “You can hand me that, boss.”
Pickering did so, then asked, “What’s bothering you, Ken?”
McCoy shrugged.
“El Supremo taking credit for the operation?”
“That didn’t surprise me at all,” McCoy said. “ ‘Fertig the Crazy Man’ became ‘my brilliant guerrilla leader in the Philippines,’ remember?”
“Very well,” Hart said.
“I don’t know that story,” Taylor said.
“I guess what pisses me off is that Willoughby is going to walk,” McCoy said. “Isn’t he?”
“What did you think was going to happen to him? They’d march him to the door of the Dai-Ichi Building, cut the stars and buttons off his uniform, and toss him into the gutter?”
“That would be one solution,” McCoy said, and then said, “Oh, hell, George, hand me that.”
“For one thing, Ken, he rendered long and faithful service to El Supremo. . . .”
“Covering his own ass, I suspect, every step of the way,” McCoy said, and took a pull from the neck of the bottle. He handed it to Taylor, who looked for a moment as if he didn’t know what to do with it, but then took a pull. And then handed it to Zimmerman.
"Ken,” Pickering said, “look at it this way. MacArthur will never completely trust him again. That hurts both of them. MacArthur has learned that somebody he trusted completely was not trustworthy. And Willoughby will know for the rest of his life that the only reason MacArthur doesn’t sack him, doesn’t publicly humiliate him, is for the good of the service. And I know Douglas MacArthur well enough to know that’s why he’s acting as he has. I think he thinks Willoughby will now ask to retire, and he’ll let him, and that will be the end of it, without getting into accusations and excuses or denials.”
McCoy met Pickering’s eyes for a long moment.
“If you say so, sir,” he said after a moment.
“That was a speech, Ken, not an order,” Pickering said.
McCoy opened his mouth to reply, and there came a knock at the door.
“Who is it?” Pickering asked, and gestured to Zimmerman to get the scotch bottle out of sight.
“Ship’s doctor. Let me in, please,” a male voice called.