Semper Fi

Chapter Three

(One)

The Metropole Hotel Shanghai, China 12 May 1941

None of his peers was surprised when Corporal Kenneth J. "Killer" McCoy, USMC, took an off-the-compound apartment immediately after his return from the first "Get Him out Of Sight" trip to Peking.

He was now a corporal, and most of the noncommissioned officers of the 4th Regiment of Marines in Shanghai had both a billet and a place where they actually lived. McCoy's billet, appropriate to a corporal, was half of a small room (not unlike a cell) in one of the two-story brick buildings that served the Headquarters Company, First Battalion, as barracks. It was furnished with a steel cot (on which rested a mattress, two blankets, two sheets, a pillow and a pillow case), a wall locker and a footlocker filled with the uniforms and accoutrements prescribed for a corporal of Marines.

With the exception of an issue mirror mounted to the door, that was all. There was not even a folding chair.

McCoy shared his billet with a staff sergeant assigned to the office of the battalion S-4 officer (Supply). The two of them split the cost of a Chinese room boy (actually a thirty-five-year-old man) who daily visited the room, polished the floor, washed the windows, tightened the blankets on the bunks, touched up the gloss of the boots and shoes, polished the brass, saw that the uniforms and accoutrements were shipshape, and in every way kept things shipshape.

Before inspections that Corporal McCoy and Staff Sergeant Patrick O'Dell were obliged to attend (and there was at least one such scheduled inspection every month, on payday) Chong Lee, the room boy, would remove from the wall locker and the footlocker those items of uniform and accoutrements that were required by Marine regulation and lay them out on the bunks precisely in the prescribed manner.

To prepare for the monthly inspection of personnel in billets, it was only necessary for Staff Sergeant O'Dell and Corporal McCoy to go to the arms room and draw their Springfield Model 1903 rifles and the bayonets for them, ensure they were clean, and proceed to their billet.

The gunnery sergeant of Headquarters Company, First Battalion, 4th Marines, was a salty old sonofabitch who drew the line at some fucking Chink having access to the weapons. His men would fucking well clean their own pieces.

The assignment of Staff Sergeant O'Dell and Corporal McCoy to the same room was a matter of convenience. They did not like each other. And sometimes the only time they spoke was when they met, once a month for the scheduled inspection. The only thing they had in common was that neither of them had responsibility for the company supervision of subordinates. The six other enlisted men assigned to battalion S-4 were supervised outside the office by the assistant S-4 corporal, Corporal Williamson.

After his promotion and return from the first "Get Him out of Sight" trip to Peking, Corporal McCoy had been officially transferred from Dog Company to Headquarters Company and assigned to the motor pool.

Whether- as some reasoned-it had been decided to continue to keep him out of sight of the Italians, or whether-as others reasoned-that to get right down to it McCoy didn't know his ass from left field about being a motor pool corporal, he had been given the more or less permanent assignment of riding the supply convoys to Peking.

That kept him out of town more than he was in Shanghai. The result was that since he didn't have a shack job and since he was gone so often, the first sergeant and the gunny had decided there was no sense in putting him on duty rosters if more often than not he wouldn't be around when the duty came up.

And then after sometimes three or four weeks spent bouncing his ass around in the cab of a Studebaker truck, it seemed only fair to give him liberty when he was in Shanghai.

For all practical purposes, then, he didn't have any company duties when he wasn't off with one of the supply convoys. And it was understandable that he didn't want to hang around the billet waiting for some odd job to come up. When he was in Shanghai he stood the reveille formation. After that nobody saw him until reveille the next morning. He needed an apartment. You couldn't spend all day in bars and whorehouses.

Most of his peers found nothing wrong with the way McCoy was playing the game. Most of them had themselves made one or more trips away from Shanghai in truck convoys. For the first couple of hours, maybe even the first couple of days, it was okay. But then it became nothing but a bumpy road going on for fucking ever, broken only by meals and piss calls. And the meals were either cold canned rations or something Chink, like fried chunks of fucking dog meat.

But there were a few-generally lower-ranking noncommissioned officers with eight or more years of service-who held contrary opinions: The Goddamned Corps was obviously going to hell in a handbasket if a candy-ass sonofabitch with Parris Island sand still in his boots gets to be a corporal just starting his second fucking hitch, for Christ's sake, instead of having his ass shipped in irons to Portsmouth for cutting up them Italian marines.

What his peers did not know-and what McCoy was under orders not to tell them-was that not only did he have an apartment with a telephone but that the Corps was paying for it. The less the other enlisted men knew about the real nature of McCoy's S-2 duty, the better. Getting him out of the billets would help. And there was another secret from the troops, shared only by the colonel (who had to sign the authorizations), Captain Banning, and the finance sergeant: McCoy had been given a one-time cash grant of $125 for "the purchase of suitable civilian clothing necessary in the performance of his military duty" and was drawing "rations and quarters allowance."

Corporal Kenneth J. McCoy's apartment was on the top floor of a three-story building in P'u-tung. It was not at all elaborate. And it was small, one large room with a bed in a curtained alcove, and a tiny bathroom (shower, no tub) in another. There was no kitchen, but he had installed an electric hot plate so that he could make coffee. And he had an icebox to cool his beer.

But there was a tiny balcony, shielded from view, large enough for just one chair, on which he could sit when he had the time and watch the boat traffic on Soochow Creek.

There was a restaurant in the adjacent building. If he wanted something to eat, all he had to do was put his head out the window and yell at the cook, and food would be delivered to him. He often got breakfast like that, yelling down for a couple of three-minute eggs and a pot of tea. And sometimes late at night, when he was hungry, he'd call down for some kind of Chinese version of a Western omelet, eggs scrambled with onions, bits of ham, and sweet pepper.

He rarely ate in the NCO mess of the 4th Marines, although the chow there was good. It was just that there were so many places in Shanghai to eat well, and so cheaply, that unless he just happened to be near the mess at chow time, it didn't seem worth the effort to take a meal there.

The building on the other side was a brothel, the "Golden Dragon Club," where he had run an account for nearly as long as he'd been stationed in Shanghai. It was through his friend Piotr Petrovich Muller he had found the apartment. Piotr had known the proprietor of the Golden Dragon in the good old days, back in Holy Mother Russia.

The man had an unpronounceable name, but that didn't matter, because he liked to be called "General." He claimed (McCoy was sure he was lying) that he had been a General in the Army of the Czar.

When he had first moved into the apartment, McCoy had played "Vingt-et-Un" with the General long enough for the both of them to recognize the other was not a pigeon to be plucked. They had become more or less friends afterwards, despite the differences in their age and "rank."

Most of the items on the monthly bill the General rendered were for services not connected with the twenty-odd girls in the General's employ. The General's people cleaned McCoy's apartment and did his laundry. And then there were bar charges and food charges. The girls themselves were more than okay. Mostly they were Chinese, who ranged from very pretty to very elegant (no peasant wenches in the General's establishment), but there were a few Indochinese and two White Russians as well.

McCoy actually believed that the General, who exhibited a certain officer-type arrogance, had most probably been an officer, if not officially a general, in the Czarist Army. Something like captain or maybe major was what he probably had been when, like so many other White Russian "generals," he had come penniless and stateless to Shanghai twenty years before. McCoy didn't like to think how the General had survived at first-probably as a pimp, possibly by strong-arm robbery-but he was now inarguably a success.

He had an elegant apartment in one of the newer buildings, to which he sometimes invited McCoy for a Russian dinner. He drove a new American Buick, and he had a number of successful business interests now (some of them perfectly legal) in addition to the Golden Dragon.

There were eight sets of khakis hanging in the wardrobe when McCoy, naked, and still dripping from his shower, walked across the room and opened it. They were not issue. His issue khakis hung in his wall locker at the barracks. These uniforms were tailor-made. The shirts had cost him sixty cents, American, and the trousers ninety. The field scarves (Neckties) had been a nickel, and the belt (stitched layers of khaki) a dime. The belt was not regulation. Regulation was web. But McCoy knew that the only time anything would ever be said about it was at a formal inspection, and he hardly ever stood one of those anymore.

Neither were his chevrons regulation. Regulation chevrons were embroidered onto a piece of khaki and then sewn onto the shirt. McCoy's chevrons (and those of the gunnery sergeant) had been embroidered directly onto their shirts. If it was good enough for the gunny, McCoy had reasoned, it was good enough for him. And now that he had made corporal, he knew that the shirts would be worn out long before he would make sergeant.

The shirt and trousers were stiffly starched. They would not stay that way long. It was already getting humid. Shanghai was as far south as New Orleans, and every bit as muggy. Before long the starch would wilt, and it was more than likely that he would have to change uniforms when he went to the compound, which is where he had to go after he introduced himself to the Reverend Feller, who was staying at the Hotel Metropole. He did not wish to give the assholes in Motor Transport any opportunity to spread it around that Killer McCoy had shown up in a sweaty uniform looking like a fucking Chinaman.

When he was dressed, with his field scarf held in place with the prescribed USMC tie clasp, there was no longer any question that he would need another uniform before the day was over. He decided that it made more sense to take one with him than to use one of the issue uniforms in his billet. He could change in the motor pool head and avoid going to the barracks at all.

Carrying an extra uniform on a hanger, he left the apartment and trotted down the stairs. He did not lock the apartment. The way that worked was that there were some Westerners whose apartments were robbable, and some whose apartments were not. It had nothing to do with locks on doors and bars over windows. The trick was to get yourself on the list of those whose apartments were safe. One way to do this was to have it known that you were friendly with a Shanghai policeman, and the other was to be friendly with the chief of the tong whom the association had granted burglary privileges in your area.

McCoy's apartment was twice safe. When he was in town, he continued to gamble regularly with both Detective Sergeant Lester Chatworth of the Shanghai Police, and (not at the same time, of course, but when the local celebrity honored the Golden Dragon with his presence) with Lon Ci'iang, head of the Po'Ti Tong.

On the crowded street, he stopped first to buy a rice cake, and then flagged down a rickshaw.

He told the boy, a wiry, leather-skinned man of maybe twenty-five, to please take him to the Hotel Metropole, and the boy swung around to look at him in unabashed curiosity. It always shocked the Chinese to encounter a white face who spoke their language.

When the rickshaw delivered him in front of the Hotel Metropole, there were several Europeans (in Shanghai, that included Americans), among them a quartet of British officers, standing on the sidewalk there. The civilians looked at him with distaste, the officers with curiosity. When McCoy saluted crisply, one of the officers, as he returned the salute with a casual wave of his swagger stick, gave him a faint smile.

He is giving me the benefit of the doubt, McCoy thought, deciding that I wouldn't be coming here unless I were on duty. The civilians just don't like a place like this under any circumstances fouled by the presence of a Marine enlisted man.

He went to the desk and asked for the room number of the Reverend Mr. Feller. Captain Banning had been specific on the telephone about that. The missionary named Sessions was really a Marine lieutenant, but McCoy was to deal with a Reverend Feller and not the lieutenant.

As he crossed the lobby to the elevators, one of the bellboys offered to relieve him of the spare uniform, but McCoy waved him away.

The elevators were contained within an ornate metal framework, and the cage itself was glassed in. As it rose, it gave McCoy a view of the entire lobby: the potted palms, the leather couches and chairs, the hotel guests, the men already in linen and seersucker suits, and the women in their summer dresses. He could see the outlines of underwear beneath some of the dresses; and in the right light, some of the women-the younger ones mostly-showed ghostly, lovely legs.

McCoy saw few European women. He hadn't, he thought, spoken to a European woman in over six months, the only exceptions being the General's two Russian whores, and they didn't really count.

He walked down the wide, carpeted corridor to 514, and knocked at the door.

"Who is it?" an American female voice called after a moment.

"Corporal McCoy, ma'am," he called out. "Of the Fourth Marines. I'm here to see Reverend Feller."

"Oh, my!" she said. He heard in the tone of her voice either displeasure or fright that he was here. He wondered what the hell that was all about.

The door opened.

"I'm Mrs. Moore," she said. "Please come in. I'll have to fetch the Reverend. He's with Mr. Sessions."

She was a large woman, big boned, just on the wrong side of fat. She was, McCoy judged, maybe forty. With the well-scrubbed, makeup-free face of a woman who took religion seriously. She had light brown hair, braided and pinned to the side of her head. And she wore a cotton dress, with long sleeves and buttons fastened up to the throat. Hanging from her neck was a four-inch Christian cross, made of wood.

"Thank you," McCoy said.

"Are you the man who was originally supposed to come?" she asked.

"I don't think I understand you," McCoy said.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "I'll go fetch the Reverend Feller," she added, smiling uneasily at him. She slid past him to the door, as if she were afraid he would pick her up, carry her into the adjacent bedroom, throw her on the bed, and work his sinful ways on her. The thought amused him, and he smiled, which discomfited her further.

He decided he'd have a word with the people in the convoy to watch what they said and did with her around. If somebody said "fuck," she would faint. Then her husband would bitch to the lieutenant in civilian clothes, and he would make trouble.

A minute later, the Reverend Glen T. Feller entered the room. He wore a broad, toothy smile, and his hand was extended farther than McCoy believed was anatomically possible.

He was of average height, slim, with dark hair plastered carefully to his skull, and a pencil-line mustache. He was immaculately shaven, and McCoy could smell his after-shave cologne.

"I'm the Reverend Feller," he said. "I'm happy to meet you, Corporal, and I'm sorry I wasn't here when you came."

"No problem, sir," McCoy said. The Reverend Feller's hand was soft, clammy, and limp. McCoy was a little repelled, but not surprised. It was the sort of hand he expected to find on a missionary.

Mrs. Moore moved around -them, so as to stand behind the Reverend and put him between herself and McCoy.

There was a rap at the door, and then "Mr." Sessions entered the room.

Even in the civilian clothes, McCoy decided, this guy looks like he's an officer. But like a regular platoon leader, not a hotshot intelligence officer from Headquarters, USMC, in Washington.

"You're Corporal McCoy?" Sessions asked, surprised. "The one they call 'Killer'?"

"Some people have called me that," McCoy said, uncomfortably.

"You're not quite what I expected, Corporal, from the way Captain Banning spoke of you," Sessions said.

Well, shit, Lieutenant, neither are you.

"Well, I'm McCoy," he said.

He was aware that Mrs. Moore was looking at him very strangely; he decided she had heard all about the Italian marines.

"How long have you been in the Corps, Corporal?" Lieutenant Sessions asked.

"About four years," McCoy said.

"There aren't very many men who make corporal in four years," Sessions said. "Or as young as you are."

McCoy looked at him, but said nothing.

"How old are you, Corporal?"

"Twenty- one, sir," Corporal Killer McCoy said.

"Presuming Captain Banning was not pulling your leg, Ed," the Reverend Feller said, laughing, "we must presume the Killer's bite is considerably worse than his bark."

I don't like this sonofabitch, McCoy thought.

"Killer," the Reverend Feller said, "we place ourselves in your capable hands."

"I said some people call me that, Reverend," McCoy said.

"I didn't mean you could."

"Well, I'm very sorry, Corporal," the Reverend Feller said. He looked at Sessions, as if waiting for him to remind Corporal McCoy that he was speaking to a high-ranking missionary. When Sessions was silent, Feller said, "I don't want us to get off on the wrong foot. No hard feelings?" "No," McCoy said.

(Two)

Motor Pool, First Bn, 4th Marines

Shanghai, China

14 May 1941

The Christian Missionary Alliance vehicles had been taken from the docks to the motor pool of the First Battalion, 4th Marines, where they were carefully examined by Sergeant Ernst Zimmerman, who was the assistant motor transport supervisor and would be the NCOIC (Noncommissioned Officer In Charge) of the Peking convoy.

The vehicles were greased and their oil was changed. And just to be on the safe side, Ernie Zimmerman changed the points and condensors and cleaned and gapped the spark plugs. Zimmerman, at twenty-six, was already on his third hitch, and had been in China since 1935.

He was a phlegmatic man, stocky, tightly muscled, with short, stubby fingers on hands that were surprisingly immaculate considering that he spent most of his duty time bent over the fender of one vehicle or another doing himself what he did not tryst the private and PFC mechanics to do.

He lived with a slight Chinese woman who had born him three children. She and the children had learned to speak German. Though he understood much more Chinese than he let on, Zimmerman spoke little more than he had the day he'd carried his sea bag down the gangway of the Naval Transport U.S.S. Henderson more than six years before.

At 0700 hours, two hours before the convoy was to get underway, a meeting was held in the motor pool office, a small wooden building at the entrance to the motor pool. The motor pool itself was a barbed-wire-fenced enclosure within the First Battalion compound.

Present were Lieutenant John Macklin, who would again be the officer in charge of the convoy; Sergeant Zimmerman; Corporal McCoy; and the eight other enlisted men of the convoy detail. They had just spread maps out on the dispatcher's table when they were joined by Captain Edward Banning.

The usual route the convoy traveled could not be followed on this trip, because of the necessity to stop at the six Christian Missionary Alliance missions. The first deviation would be to Nanking. Normally they turned off the Shanghai-Nanking highway onto a dirt road just past Wuhsi. Fifty miles down that road was the ferry across the Yangtze River between Chiangyin and Chen-chiang.

It would now be necessary to enter Nanking, drop off supplies for the Christian Missionary Alliance there, and pick up the Reverend Feller's wife, her luggage, and their household goods. It was a hundred miles from where they normally turned off, a two-hundred-mile round trip, because it still made good sense to cross the Yangtze between Chiangyin and Chen-chiang.

"It has been suggested, sir," Lieutenant Macklin said to Captain Banning, "that at the turnoff point for Chiangyin we detach from the convoy one of the Studebaker automobiles, the wrecker, and the missionary truck with the Nanking supplies. The rest of the convoy would go onto Chiangyin and wait for the others to return from Nanking there. That would mean spending the night in Nanking."

There was no question in Sergeant Ernst Zimmerman's mind who had made the suggestion, and he was not at all surprised when Captain Banning said, "That seems to make more sense than having the whole convoy make the round trip." Banning continued, "Why don't you have McCoy drive the civilian car? That would make sort of a Marine detachment, with the wrecker, to accompany the missionary vehicles."

"Aye, aye, sir," Lieutenant Macklin said.

There was therefore, Sergeant Ernie Zimmerman concluded, some reason for McCoy to go to Nanking, as there was obviously some reason why McCoy had been given the convoy as kind of a primary duty. He had not been told what that reason was, and he had no intention of asking. If they wanted him to know, they would have told him. He believed the key to a successful career in the Corps was to do what you were told to do as well as you could and ask no questions. And to keep your eyes open so that you noticed strange little things, like the fact the regimental S-2 paid a lot of attention to a truck convoy that was really none of an intelligence officer's business, and that the real man in charge of the convoys was not whichever officer happened to be sent along, but Corporal "Killer" McCoy.

It took about an hour to decide-and mark on the three maps they would take with them-where the convoy would leave their normal route to visit the other five missions where they would be stopping.

Then Lieutenant Macklin sent the enlisted men to the arms room to draw their weapons. Each Marine drew a Colt Model 1911A1.45 ACP pistol with three charged magazines. Two PFCs drew Browning Automatic Rifles, caliber.30-06, together with five charged twenty-round magazines. Sergeant Zimmerman and Corporal McCoy drew Thompson submachine guns, caliber.45 ACP with two fifty-round drum magazines. Everybody else took their assigned Springfield Model 1903 rifles from the arms room. There was also a prepacked ammo load, sealed cases of ammunition for all the weapons, plus a sealed case of fragmentation grenades.

There never had been any trouble on the Peking convoys. Sergeant Zimmerman, unaware that he was in complete agreement with the colonel, believed this was because the convoy detail was heavily armed.

There were nine vehicles in the convoy when it rolled out of the First Battalion compound: four Marine Corps Studebaker ton-and-a-half trucks, with canvas roofs suspended over the beds on wooden bows; two Christian Missionary Alliance trucks, also Studebakers, differing from the Marine trucks only in that they did not have a steel protective grill mounted to the frame; two gray Studebaker "Captain" sedans, with the Christian Missionary Alliance insignia (a burning cross) and a legend in Chinese ideograms painted on their doors; and bringing up the rear was the homemade pickup/wrecker, stacked high with spare tires and wheels.

Sergeant Zimmerman drove the wrecker. He usually rode in it as a passenger, but its normal driver was at the wheel of one of the missionary trucks. The second missionary truck was driven by a Marine who ordinarily would have been assistant driver on one of the trucks. Lieutenant Macklin drove one of the missionary Studebakers, and Corporal McCoy the other.

As the trucks made their way through heavy traffic toward the Nanking Highway, the passenger cars left the convoy and went to the Hotel Metropole to pick up the missionaries. Zimmerman was not surprised when they had to wait by the side of the Nanking Highway for more than an hour for the missionaries. Missionaries were fucking civilians, and fucking civilians were always late.

The first hundred miles went quickly. The Japanese Army kept the Nanking Highway and the rail line that ran parallel to it in good shape. Every twenty miles or so, near intersections, there were Japanese checkpoints, two or three soldiers under a corporal. But they just waved the convoy through. Long lines of Chinese, however, were backed up at every checkpoint.

It was less a search for contraband, McCoy thought, than a reminder of Japanese authority.

Just past Wuhsi, two and a half hours into the journey, the convoy rolled through another Japanese checkpoint, then turned off the highway onto a gravel road which led, fifty miles away, to the ferry between Chiangyin and Chen-chiang.

Once they had reached the ferry, the Reverend Feller, Mr. Sessions, and Mrs. Moore got in the back seat of the Studebaker McCoy was driving, and (trailed by one of the missionary trucks) headed down the highway for Nanking.

The rest of the convoy, led by Lieutenant Macklin in the other missionary Studebaker, started off toward Chiangyin. It was the rainy season, and, predictably, it began to rain buckets. The road turned slick and treacherous, and it took them nearly as long to make that fifty miles as it had to come from Shanghai to Wuhsi.

(Three)

Christian Missionary Alliance Mission

Nanking, China

1630 Hours 14 May 1941

Nanking was a curious mixture of East and West, ancient and modern. The tallest building in the city, for instance, was not a modern skyscraper but the Porcelain Tower, an octagon of white glazed bricks 260 feet tall, built five hundred years before by the Emperor Yung Lo to memorialize the virtues of his mother.

Recently, from 1928 until 1937, Nanking had been the capital of the Republic of China. But in 1937 the Japanese had captured it in a vicious battle followed by bloody carnage. Their victory was soon known as "The Rape of Nanking."

There had nevertheless still been time for Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang government to make their modern mark on it. Outside of town was the Sun Yat-sen mausoleum, honoring the founder of the Chinese Republic. And within the city half a dozen large, Western-style office buildings were built on wide avenues to house governmental ministries. There was also a modern railroad station and a large airport.

After "The Rape of Nanking," in the correct belief that representatives of the foreign press (whom they could not bar from China) would all immediately head for Nanking, the Japanese had made a point of keeping Nanking peaceful. Only a handful of military units were stationed there, and they were on their good behavior. When, in the interests of furthering the Greater Japanese Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere it became necessary to slice off some heads, the persons designated were first removed from Nanking.

The Christian Missionary Alliance mission was in an ancient part of town, close to the Yangtze and within sight of the cranes on the docks. The mission covered a little more than two acres, which were enclosed by walls. Directly across from the gate a four-hundred-year-old granite-block building had been converted to a chapel. A wooden, gold-painted cross sat atop it.

There were two large wooden crates in the courtyard of the mission, obviously the household goods of the Fellers. Captain Banning had told McCoy of his suspicions about their contents, and now he wondered idly if the captain was right. Then, more practically, he wondered how they were going to load the crates onto the trucks. The damn things probably weighed a ton.

A woman who was almost certainly Mrs. Feller appeared in the courtyard as the truck and car drove through the gate. She was more or less what McCoy expected, a somewhat thinner, somewhat younger copy of Mrs. Moore-a well-scrubbed, makeup-free do-gooder. She even wore her hair the same way, braided and then pinned to the sides of her head. But unlike Mrs. Moore, McCoy noticed, she had good-looking legs, trim hips, and an interesting set of knockers.

She kissed her husband like a nun kisses a relative. On the cheek, as if a little uncomfortable with that little bit of passion.

When the Reverend Feller marched her over to the car and introduced her, McCoy was surprised that her hand was warm. He had expected it to be sort of clammy, like her husband's.

She had a boy show McCoy and PFC Everly (the tall, gangly hillbilly driving the missionary truck) where they were to sleep. Except for a Bible on a bedside table and a brightly colored framed lithograph of Jesus Christ gathering children around his knee, it was very much like McCoy's billet in the First Battalion compound in Shanghai. A steel cot, bedclothes, a chair, and nothing else.

Sessions came to the room shortly after the mission boy left them there.

"Could I have a word with you, Corporal McCoy?" he asked.

"Take a walk, why don't you, Everly?" McCoy ordered.

"Where am I supposed to go?"

"See if you can scout up a decent-looking place for us to eat. Come back in fifteen minutes."

When he was gone, Sessions said, "Mrs. Feller has asked you to supper, McCoy."

"Everly and I will get something," McCoy said.

"She meant the both of you, of course," Sessions said. "You're welcome, you understand? She's really a very nice person."

"Lieutenant, I didn't come here to eat supper with missionaries," McCoy said. "I'm going out on the town."

"In the line of duty, of course," Sessions said, sarcastically.

"The Corps's paying for it," McCoy said. "Why not?"

"Yes, of course," Sessions said. "Is there anything of interest here that I could credibly have a look at?"

"There's Kempei-Tai (The Japanese Security Police) watching this place. They're not going to think much if two Marines leave here to get their ashes hauled. They might get very curious if a newly arrived missionary did the same thing."

"I wasn't thinking of going to a brothel," Sessions replied, chuckling. "I was suggesting that it would be credible if the Fellers, while I was here, showed me the sights. And that while so doing, I might come across something of interest."

"If the Japs have German artillery, it's not going to be here in Nanking," McCoy said flatly. "And I think the less attention you call to yourself, the better it would be."

"McCoy, I am simply trying to do my job," Sessions said, annoyed at what he considered McCoy's condescension. He wondered what Captain Banning had told McCoy about him.

"That's all I'm trying to do, Lieutenant," McCoy said. "Captain Banning said I was to do what I could for you, and that's what I'm trying to do."

As the whores later confirmed, nothing was happening in Nanking. So at half past ten, McCoy decided that there wasn't anything more to be gained from spending the night in the whorehouse. He put on his clothes, paid off his girl, and went to the room Everly had taken.

"I'm heading back in," he told Everly, who was standing there in the doorway a little dazzled by the interruption. He had wrapped a towel around his middle. It threatened to fall.

"Do I have to?" he said.

"Just be at the mission at five o'clock," McCoy said, after a moment. Everly was a fucker, not a fighter; and he didn't drink dangerously. There was little chance that he would get in trouble. On the other hand, if he spent the night in the whorehouse, it would give the Kempei-Tai agents who had trailed them something to do. And the report they would write would state that a Marine had hired a whore for the night and stayed with her.

He returned to the mission and searched in vain through the small mission library for something that had nothing to do with Christianity. Then, disappointed, he retreated to his room, undressed to his skivvies, and took from his musette bag one of the copies of the Shanghai Post that had accumulated during his last trip to Shanghai. After he'd read it, he started in on the crossword puzzle.

Someone knocked at the door. Certain that it was the boy, he called permission to enter in Chinese.

It was Mrs. Feller, a very different Mrs. Feller from the tight-assed lady he had met that afternoon. She was wearing a cotton bathrobe over a silk gown; and her hair was free now, hanging halfway down her back. It was glossy and soft, as though she had just brushed it. Then he noticed-more than noticed-the unrestrained breasts under her thin night clothes… The Reverend was about to get a little, after what presumably was a long dry spell.

"Do you speak Chinese?" she asked, in Chinese.

"Some," McCoy said, in English.

"I just wanted to see if you or the other gentleman needed anything," she said.

"No, ma'am," McCoy said, chuckling. "We're fine, thank you."

"Why are you chuckling?" she asked, smiling.

"Hearing you call Everly 'the other gentleman,' " McCoy said.

"Where is he?" she asked.

When McCoy didn't reply, her face flushed.

"Mrs. Moore told me an incredible story about you," she said. "I can't believe it's true."

"What did she tell you?"

"Now I'm sorry I brought this up," she said. "I shouldn't have."

He nodded his acceptance of that.

"But do they call you 'Killer'? Or were they just teasing my husband and Mr. Sessions?"

"Some people call me that," McCoy said. "I don't like it much."

"But you're just a boy," she said, after deciding that the rest of the story was also probably-if incredibly-true.

"I don't like to be called a boy, either," McCoy said. "I'm a corporal in the Marine Corps."

"I'm really sorry I brought the whole thing up," she said.

McCoy nodded.

"Breakfast will be at six-thirty," she said. "My husband wants to get on the way early. Is that all right with you?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said. "We'll be there. Thank you."

"Then I'll say good night," she said.

He thought that he would really have liked to get a look at her teats. Chinese women, by and large, didn't have very big teats, and it had been a long time since he had seen an American woman's teats.

Come to think of it, he had seen very few American women's teats. Before he had come to China it had been a really big deal to get a look at a set of teats-not to mention actually getting laid. But getting laid in China was about as out-of-the-ordinary as blowing your nose. And in fact he had come to see there was no big difference between Chinese women and American (the story that their pussies ran sideward had turned out to be so much bullshit); but it would still be kind of nice to make it with a real American.

He would, come to think of it, really like to jump Mrs. Feller, though he immediately recognized that dream as the same kind of fantasy as wishing he would make sergeant next week… out of the goddamned question for two hundred different reasons.

He turned his attention back to the crossword puzzle.

(Four)

The Christian Missionary Alliance Mission

Nanking, China

0830 Hours 15 May 1941

The Christians of the mission put on a little farewell ceremony for Mrs. Feller. After maybe fifty Chinese had manhandled the wooden crates onto the bed of the Studebaker, they went to one side of the courtyard and stood in some kind of a formation. McCoy settled into the front seat of the car, and watched.

Next came maybe fifty little Chinese kids dressed in middie-blouse uniforms (which reminded McCoy of the uniform of the Italian marines). They lined up in four ranks. Finally, the missionary equivalent of the officers appeared-all the white Christians and half a dozen suit-wearing Chinese Christians. They sat down on a row of chairs set up on a sort of platform against a wall. One of them rose and said a prayer. Then the Chinese kids sang a hymn in Chinese. McCoy recognized the melody but could not recall the words.

One of the Chinese Christians gave Mrs. Feller a present. She thanked him, and they sang another hymn, this time in English. The Reverend Feller then gave what was either a sermon or a very long prayer. Then came another hymn.

All this time, McCoy was looking up Mrs. Feller's dress. He hadn't started out to do that. But the way she was sitting up on the platform, and the way he was looking out the Studebaker window, that's where his eyes naturally fell. And then it got worse. He was originally looking at a lot of white thigh. But then she had uncrossed her knees, and put her feet flat on the little platform just far enough apart to show all the way up. And she wasn't wearing any pants.

He didn't believe what he saw at first. Ladies didn't go around without their underpants, and she was not only a lady, she was a lady missionary. But there was no question about it. She was sitting there with everything showing.

And then Lieutenant Sessions came over and sat beside McCoy. The minute he did, Mrs. Feller crossed her legs.

Did she suddenly remember how she was sitting? Or didn't it matter, since only an enlisted man was getting an eyeful? Or was she playing the cockteaser with me, and stopped only because Sessions showed up?

When the ceremony was finally over, and the officer-type Christians walked with Mrs. Feller to the Studebaker, McCoy did not get out from behind the wheel to open the door. He had a hard-on.

Mister/Lieutenant Sessions, obviously anxious to get the show on the road again, opened the door and motioned for Mrs. Feller to get in.

"If you don't mind, Mr. Sessions," Mrs. Feller said. "I'll sit with Corporal McCoy. I get woozy if I ride in backseats."

She got in beside McCoy and smiled at him.

"I'm sorry you had to wait," she said.

"No sweat," McCoy said, devoting all of his attention to starting the engine.

"I always wondered how you did that," she said.

"Did what?" he asked. In spite of his misgivings, curiosity forced him to look at her.

She was holding up his hat press (A device that keeps the brim of the felt campaign hat from curling). He had put his campaign hat in it when he'd got in the car. It was the rainy season, and humidity was hell on fur felt hats.

"Oh," McCoy said. "That."

She put the hat press back where it had been.

"Very clever," she said.

"Okay to go?" McCoy asked.

"Get the show on the road, McCoy," Sessions said.

Mrs. Feller waved to the Christians, and blew several of them a kiss.

For somebody who got screwed as much as she probably got screwed last night, having been away from the Reverend all that time, McCoy thought, she don't look all that worn out.

Then he realized he was wrong about that. The reason she was going around without any underpants was that she and the Reverend had screwed it sore.

She half turned on the seat, pulling her dress above her knees in the process, and started talking to Sessions. "Where are you from?" And "Where is your wife from?" And "How much do you like the Marine Corps?" That sort of thing.

McCoy kept his eyes off her knees as much as he could.

He had it made now, he told himself. It would be real dumb fucking that up by doing something dumb with this missionary woman. He had probably the best duty of any corporal in the Corps. For all practical purposes, he didn't have anybody telling him what to do. And the Corps was paying all his expenses, even what he spent getting laid. And it was even better than that:

When he filled out the "report of expenses" Captain Banning made him do about once a month, he put down on it usually twice (sometimes three times) what it really cost him. He wasn't greedy, and Captain Banning probably thought he was getting a bargain. But the prices McCoy listed on the report were what Marines would be expected to pay for a room, a meal, a whore, or whatever. Marines who spoke Chinese didn't pay half what Marines who didn't speak Chinese did. Not a month had passed since he'd gone to work for Banning that he hadn't been able to add a hundred dollars to his retirement-fund account at Barclays Bank. And that didn't include his gambling money.

They always spent two days in the Marine Compound at Tientsin on the way to Peking, then two days in Peking, and then another day at Tientsin on the way back to Shanghai. As regular as clockwork, he'd been taking ten, fifteen dollars a night from the Tientsin and Peking Marines. He hadn't been greedy, which wasn't easy, because there were Tientsin and

Peking Marines who played poker so bad it was sometimes hard not to clean them out.

It was hard to believe how much money he had in Barclays Bank.

And he could fuck the whole thing up by doing something stupid with this missionary who went around without her underpants.

When they were out of Nanking, the humidity started to close in so bad that the outside of the windshield kept clouding over and he had to run the wipers every once in a while. It would be better whenever it started to rain. He wished it would start soon.

Mrs. Feller glanced at McCoy to make sure he had his eyes on the road. Then she took a little bottle of perfume or cologne from her purse and shook a tiny dab of it on a handkerchief. She touched her temples with it, and her ears, and her forehead, and then quickly opened a couple of buttons on her dress and rubbed a little in the crack between her breasts.

McCoy's erection was painful.

He was sure, to make it worse, that she had seen him looking.

Goddamn these missionaries anyway! If the Corps had wanted to find out if the 11th Jap Division had German artillery pieces, I could have found out, without dragging a bunch of fucking missionaries around with me.

It finally started to rain, a steady, soft rain that meant it would probably go on forever.

And now the inside of the windshield started to steam up. Mrs. Feller, trying to be helpful, kept wiping it with a handkerchief. Sometimes when she leaned over to wipe his window, her hand rested on his knee. And every time he could see her boobs straining against her brassiere and the thin cotton of her dress.

It was still raining when they reached the Yangtze ferry at Chiangyin. McCoy was not pleased with what he found. Not only was one of the two ferries that normally worked the crossing tied up at a wharf and out of service, but none of the other vehicles in the convoy had crossed over.

Several hundred Chinese were milling around. A few drove trucks, and half a dozen had oxcarts. But mostly there were hand-pulled carts, and people carrying huge bundles on their backs. That meant that they would have to post a guard on every truck. Otherwise, if they blinked, they would have an empty truck.

Zimmerman told McCoy that when he tried to load the vehicles the night before, Lieutenant Macklin wouldn't let him. Macklin thought it would be better to wait on this side of the Yangtze for the car and truck from Nanking.

Officer- type thinking, McCoy decided. You had to keep your eyes on the bastards all the time, or they would think of something smart like this.

The remaining ferry was going to require three trips to transport all of the vehicles, so it was going to be at least an hour, probably closer to an hour and a half, before they were all across the river, which was at least four miles across at that point.

McCoy went to Lieutenant Macklin and told him he thought it would probably be a good idea if he took one of the cars, two Marine trucks, and one missionary truck on the first trip. Two of the three remaining trucks could cross on the second trip. And the remaining truck, the pickup/wrecker, and the other car could cross on the third… if that was all right with Lieutenant Macklin.

There was a nice little restaurant in Chen-chiang on the far shore, and McCoy could see no reason to remain on the near shore hungry, while there was a commissioned officer and gentleman (two, if you counted Sessions) available to supervise the loading of the rear echelon.

And if he was just a little lucky, he'd be able to overhear a conversation (or perhaps even join in one) in the restaurant that might tell him something about Japanese activity farther up the road.

Lieutenant Macklin thought that was as good a way to do it as any.

"Sergeant Zimmerman can handle it by himself, sir," McCoy said, "if you'd rather cross with the first load."

"I'll bring up the rear, McCoy," Lieutenant Macklin said, as McCoy had been eighty percent sure he would. "You and Sergeant Zimmerman go over and see what you can do to get the men something to eat."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Might as well let Zimmerman feed his face first, too. McCoy liked Zimmerman. He was a placid, quiet German who had found a home in the Corps, started a family with a Chinese girl, and did not resent McCoy's unofficial-if unmistakable-authority on the convoys the way some other senior noncoms did.

Ernie had some kind of rice bowl going on the Peking trips, McCoy was sure, but whatever it was, he did it quietly. And he didn't get fall-down drunk in a whorehouse as soon as there was the chance. Ernie understood Chinese, too, although for some strange reason, he pretended he didn't.

He was also faster on the pickup than you'd expect. For instance, he caught on right away to what McCoy wanted when McCoy suggested that he eat at a different restaurant from the big one McCoy was going to. Ernie would pick up whatever he could learn about any Japanese activity farther up the road while he sipped slowly on a beer. Too bad Lieutenant Macklin wasn't as sharp, McCoy thought.

The other two drivers McCoy took on the first ferry were PFCs, and they were on their best behavior because making the trips got them out from under the harassment of the motor pool. McCoy gave them his ritual "one beer, no more, or I'll have your ass" speech, confident that he'd be obeyed.

When Ernie came into the big restaurant (six tables, plus a low counter), McCoy was gnawing on a nearly crystallized piece of duck skin. Ernie took off his wide-brimmed campaign hat, gave it several violent shakes to knock the water loose from the rain cover; and then looked for and found McCoy.

Ernie was a man of few words: "The other Studebaker car's on the ferry."

McCoy nodded, and Ernie left. McCoy shoved the rest of the crisp duck skin in his mouth, daintily dipped his fingers into a bowl of warm water, dried them, and reached for his hat. He put it on at the prescribed angle, twisted his head around to seat the leather strap against the back of his head, and started out of the restaurant.

Then he changed his mind.

Fuck him. So Macklin and/or Sessions sees me eating and having a beer, so what?

He gave the proprietor a large bill and told him he would be back for his change after he'd returned the empty beer bottle and the napkin he was taking with him.

Then he walked quickly to the ferry, keeping himself (more importantly, the campaign hat) out of the rain as much as possible.

He didn't know why Lieutenant Macklin had decided to come in the second car rather than the third ferry trip, but it didn't matter: It was a to-be-expected thing for an officer- any officer-to do. No matter what an enlisted man decided, it could be improved upon by any officer. That's why they were officers.

McCoy paid little attention to the Studebaker until it was off the ferry and, with its wheels slipping and skidding, had made it up the road from the ferry slip. Then he stepped out from beneath the overhang of a building where he had been sheltered from the rain, went into the middle of the road, and made more or the less official Corps hand signals to tell Lieutenant Macklin where the car should be parked.

But Macklin wasn't driving the Studebaker. The lady missionary, Ol' No Underpants, Perfume on the Teats herself, was at the wheel. And she was alone.

What the hell's going on?

McCoy reclaimed the beer bottle he had been prepared to discard for either of the officers and walked nimbly-avoiding puddles where possible-to where Ol' No Underpants had parked.

She saw him coming and opened the door for him as he approached. The way she leaned over the seat to reach the door, he could see down her dress, down where she'd wiped perfume between her teats.

"I hope I'm not interfering with anything, Corporal McCoy," she said. "Lieutenant Macklin said it would be all right if I came now."

"Yes, ma'am," McCoy said.

"I also thought," she said, "that since there was no restaurant on that side, maybe there would be one on this one. I'm hungry."

"Yes, ma'am," McCoy said. "There's a restaurant here."

"Could you take me there?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"I've got an umbrella," she said, and reached into the backseat for it. He noticed that her breasts got in the way.

When she had it, she handed it to him.

"No, ma'am," McCoy said. "Thank you just the same."

"You mean you'd get wet?"

"I mean that Marines don't use umbrellas," McCoy said.

"It's against the rules, you mean?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Don't you ever break the rules, Corporal?" she asked.

"Sometimes," he said.

"Everybody breaks them sometime," she said. "And this seems to be a good time for you to break this one."

He thought that sounded a little strange coming from a missionary, but decided to share the umbrella with her. There was no one here to see him who counted, and it was raining steadily.

Accepting the umbrella from her, McCoy got out of the car, opened the umbrella, and walked around to the driver's side. She slid out of the Studebaker, stepped under the umbrella, closed the door, and then took his arm. Her arm pressed against his, and he could feel the heaviness of her breast.

He marched with her back to the restaurant, shifting course to avoid the larger puddles.

The eyes of the proprietor widened without embarrassment when he saw the woman. Blond hair simply fascinated Orientals.

He came to the table for their order.

"What do you recommend?" she asked.

"I had the duck," McCoy said, almost blurted, "the way they fix it in Peking. I don't like the duck much, but the skin's first rate."

"Then I'll have that," she said. "Are you going to have anything?"

"I've had mine, thank you," McCoy said.

"Not even another beer?"

"I told the men they could have one beer," McCoy said. "It wouldn't be right if I had two."

"I'm sorry to hear that," she said.

"Why?" he asked, surprised.

"Because I would like a beer," she said. "But I can't have one. My husband doesn't like me to drink."

"What you mean is, you could have had a sip of mine?"

She nodded her head conspiratorially.

There was something perversely pleasant in frustrating the morality of a missionary, McCoy thought. He told the proprietor to put a bottle of beer in a tea pot and to bring the lady a cup to go with it.

When it was delivered she said, "I thought that you were telling him something like this."

"You did?" he asked.

"Your eyes lit up like a naughty boy's," she said.

He didn't know what to make of this missionary lady. She was being much too friendly. And he was well aware of the kind of relationship possible between American women and Marines in China: none. American women, probably because there were so few of them, were on a sort of pedestal. They were presumed to be ladies. They wore gloves and hats and did no work. And they did not speak to enlisted Marines, who were at the opposite end of the American social structure-only a half step above the Chinese. Most American women in China pretended that Marines were invisible. They did not walk arm in arm with them under umbrellas, or sit at tables with them in restaurants, or look directly-almost provocatively-into their eyes.

He could only come up with two explanations for Mrs. Reverend Feller's behavior. She could simply be acting according to her private idea of what it meant to be Christian; in other words, treating him as a social equal out of some strange notion that everybody was really equal in the sight of God. Or else maybe she was in fact flirting with him, or at least pretending to.

There were a couple of reasons that she might be doing just that. One was that she had caught him looking at her when she was putting perfume on her teats and thought it was funny. If that was the way it was, then she knew she could tease him and have her fun in perfect safety, because she knew that only a goddamned fool of a Marine would make a pass at an American lady missionary. And might even be hoping that he would say or do something out of line, so that she could run and tell the Reverend about it.

He'd heard about that happening. Not with a missionary lady, but with the wives of American businessmen. They'd catch their husband with a Chinese girl and decide to make it look like they were paying him back by getting some Marine to start hanging around and panting with his tongue hanging out. They had no intention of giving the poor fucker any; they just wanted to let their old man know there was a Marine with the hots for them. And then if the old man went to the colonel and the Marine wound up on the shit list, that was his problem.

Whatever Mrs. Reverend Feller was up to-even if she was just being Christian-it made him uncomfortable, and he wanted nothing to do with it. He changed the subject.

"There's one good thing about the bad road," McCoy said. "We can stay at Chiehshom tonight. It's going to be too dark to go any farther today."

"What's at Chiehshom?" she asked, looking at him over the edge of her teacup of beer.

"A nice hotel," he said, "built by a German. The plumbing works, in other words, and the kitchen's clean. It's on a hill over the lake."

"You always stay there?" she asked.

"Normally we get a lot farther than this," he said.

"When you don't have to carry missionaries with you, you mean?"

"I didn't say that," McCoy said.

"No, but that's what you meant," she said.

McCoy stood up and put his campaign hat on. "I'll go down to the ferry and see what's up," he said. "You can stay here. You'll be all right."