Under Fire

"Admiral, the tape recorder didn't get shut down," she said.

He looked at her.

"There was something in your voice when you said to shut it down," she said.

"You heard that conversation?" he asked.

She nodded.

"No, you didn't, Martha," he said. "And I want you per-sonally to get that tape, shred it, and burn it. And make sure there are no copies."

"Yes, sir," she said. "Do I get to read the assessment?"

"It's on my desk. You can read it, but I want zero copies made."

"Yes, sir."

"You did the right thing, Martha," Hillenkoetter said. "But this... situation... is extraordinary."

"Yes, sir," Mrs. Warburg said, and walked to his desk to read the assessment.

Chapter Four

[ONE]

THE WILLIAM BANNING HOUSE

66 SOUTH BATTERY

CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

1630 17 JUNE 1950

When they saw the Buick station wagon pull to the curb, both "Mother" Banning and her daughter-in-law, "Luddy," rose from the rocking chairs in which they had been sit-ting. Mother Banning folded her hands on her stomach. Luddy Banning clapped hers together, producing a sound like a pistol shot, and then, a moment later, a dignified, gray-haired black man in a gray cotton jacket appeared from in-side the house.

"Ma'am?"

"Stanley, our guests have arrived," Luddy Banning said.

"Please inform the colonel, and send someone to take care of their car and luggage."

"Yes, ma'am."

Mother Banning and Luddy Banning were the mother and the wife, respectively, of Colonel Edward J. Banning, USMC, who was both commanding officer of Marine Bar-racks, Charleston, and Adjunct Professor of Naval Science at his alma mater, officially the Military College of South Carolina, but far better known as the Citadel.

Colonel Banning was a graduate of the Citadel, (`26) as his father (`05), grandfather (`80). and great-grandfather (`55) had been. On April 12, 1861, Great-Grandfather Matthew Banning had stood where Mother and Luddy Ban-ning now stood on the piazza and watched as the first shots of the War of the Secession were fired on Fort Sumter.

He had then gone off as a twenty-five-year-old major to command the 2nd Squadron of the 2nd South Carolina Dragoons. When released from Union captivity in 1865, the conditions of his release required him to swear fealty to the United States of America, and to remove the insignia of a major general from his gray Confederate uniform. For the rest of his life, however, he was addressed as General Banning, and referred to by his friends as "The General."

Grandfather Matthew Banning, Jr., had answered the call of his friend Theodore Roosevelt and gone off to the Spanish American War as a major with the First U.S. Vol-unteer Cavalry. Family legend held that Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Banning had been one of the only two First Volun-teer Cavalry officers actually to be astride a horse during the charge up Kettle and San Juan Hills. There was a large oil painting of that engagement in the living room of the house on the Battery, showing Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Banning and Colonel Theodore Roosevelt leading the charge. For the rest of his life, he was addressed as Colonel and referred to by his friends as "The Colonel."

Matthew Banning III elected to accept a commission in the Cavalry of the Regular Army of the United States on his graduation from the Citadel in June 1905, the alternative be-ing going to work for his father in one or another of the Banning family businesses. He had been a first lieutenant for twelve years when the United States entered World War I in 1917. When the Armistice was signed the next year, the sil-ver eagles of a full colonel of the Tank Corps were on the epaulets of his tunic, and a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts were on the chest.

With The Colonel still running the family businesses, Colonel Banning III remained in service after the war, even though it meant accepting a reduction from colonel to ma-jor. By 1926, he had been repromoted to colonel, and on the parade ground at the Citadel had sworn his son, Ed-ward J. Banning, into the United States Marine Corps as a second lieutenant upon his graduation from the Citadel.

Like his father before him, Matthew Banning III had been addressed as Colonel for the rest of his life, and re-ferred to by his friends as "The Colonel."

The Colonel lived long enough (1946) to see his first grandson, and his son-with the eagles of a Marine colonel on his epaulets-assigned as a Professor of Mili-tary Science at the Citadel.

For a while, the likelihood of either thing happening had seemed remote. For one thing, Edward Banning had not married as the next step after graduating from the Citadel, as had all his antecedents.

He was thirty-six, a captain serving with the 4th Marines in Shanghai, before he marched to the altar, and that only days before he went to the Philippines with the 4th Marines, leaving his White Russian bride in Shanghai at the mercy-if that word applied at all-of the Japanese.

Captain Banning was blinded by Japanese artillery in the Philippines and evacuated by submarine. His sight re-turned, and he was given duties he would not talk about, but which The Colonel understood meant Intelligence with a capital I.

Once, on the piazza of the house on the Battery, just be-fore he went-for the fourth or fifth time-to the war in the Orient, then Major Banning confided in The Colonel that, realistically, he held little hope that he would ever see his wife again. There had been no word of her at all.

And then, in May of 1943, when by then Lieutenant Colonel Banning was "somewhere in the Pacific" there had been a telephone call from the Hon. Zachary W. Westmin-ister III (D., 3rd District, S.C.), a Citadel classmate.

"Matty, you sitting down?"

"No, actually, I'm not."

"Matty, ol' buddy, you better sit down."

It didn't sound as if ol' Zach was going to relate bad news about Eddie, but The Colonel had been worried nev-ertheless.

"I'm sitting, Zach, now get on with it."

"I just came from meeting with the President," Con-gressman Westminister began, "and I can only tell you a little...."

"Get on with it, goddamn it, Zach!"

"When you get off the phone, you go tell `Lisbeth to change the sheets in the guest room. Your daughter-in-law will shortly be arriving."

"My God!"

"And if you still have a crib in the attic, you better dust that off, too. She's coming with Edward Edwardovich Ban-ning in her arms."

"You're telling me there's a baby?"

"Edward Edwardovich-how `bout that?-Banning. Born August 1942, somewhere in Mongolia."

"Goddamn, Zach!"

"When I know more, I'll be in touch. The President just gave the order to put the two of them on a plane from Chunking."

Elizabeth Banning didn't say anything, of course-she was a Christian gentlewoman-but The Colonel knew that once the situation changed from Ed having married some White Russian in Shanghai who would probably never be heard from again, to having Ed's White Russian wife and their baby about to arrive at the house on the Battery, she naturally had concerns about what she would be like, how they would fit into Charleston society.

The former Maria Catherine Ludmilla Zhikov had come down the steps from the Eastern Airlines DC-3 looking far more like a photograph from Town and Country than a refugee who had spent seventeen months moving across China and Mongolia in pony-drawn carts, pausing en route for several days to be delivered of a son.

Her Naval Air Transport Service flight from China to the United States had been met at San Francisco by Mrs. Fleming Pickering, who transported her and the baby to the Foster San Franciscan hotel where the proprietors of the in-hotel Chic Lady clothing shop and the across-the-street Styles for the Very Young baby clothes emporium were waiting for her.

"I knew the moment I laid eyes on Luddy that she was a lady," Mrs. Elizabeth Banning said at the time-and many times later.

"If I had arrived in Charleston looking like I looked when I got off the plane in San Francisco," Luddy Banning said later-after The Colonel had gone to his reward, she herself had become "The Colonel's Wife" and Elizabeth Banning had acceded, much like Queen Elizabeth's mother, to the title "Mother Banning"-"Mother Banning would have had a heart attack. Thank God for Patricia Pickering."

Behind her back-not derisively or pejoratively- Luddy Banning was known as "the countess," not only be-cause she had a certain regal air about her, but also because a Citadel cadet doing a term paper on the organization of the Russian Imperial general staff had gone to The Colonel's Russian wife for help with it.

The colonel's Russian wife, while perusing one of the cadet's reference works, had laid a finger on the name of Lieutenant General Count Vasily Ivanovich Zhivkov, and softly said, "My father."

That announcement had taken no longer than twenty-four hours to become common knowledge among the cadets of the Citadel, another twenty-four hours to circu-late among the faculty, and another twenty-four hours to reach the houses along the Battery.

Luddy Banning descended the wide stairs and walked down the brick sidewalk through the cast-iron fence to the Buick and waited until Captain Kenneth R. McCoy, USMC-who was wearing a yellow polo shirt and khaki trousers-got from behind the wheel, then wrapped her arms around him.

"Our savior," she said, seriously.

"Ah, come on, Luddy!"

"You were our savior, you will always be our savior," she said. "Welcome to our home!"

She kissed McCoy twice, once on each cheek, and then went around the front of the Buick and embraced Ernie.

"How nice to see you again, Major McCoy," Mother Banning said, offering him her hand.

"It's Captain McCoy, ma'am," McCoy said. "It's good to see you, too."

"Well, I'll be damned," a male voice boomed from be-side the wide staircase. "Look what the tide washed up!"

Without realizing he was doing it-literally a Pavlovian reaction-McCoy saluted the tall, stocky, erect, starting-to-bald man, who had a blond eight-year-old boy strad-dling his neck.

"Colonel," he said.

"Goddamn, Ken, you of all people know me well enough to call me by my name."

He walked quickly to McCoy, his hand extended to shake McCoy's, then changed his mind and embraced him.

"It's good to see you," McCoy said.

"Come on in the house, Stanley'll take care of the bags and the car. I think a small-hell, large-libation is in or-der."

He looked at his wife, who was coming around the front of the car with her arm around Ernie McCoy.

"Hey, beautiful lady," he called. "Welcome to Charleston."

"Hello, Ed," Ernie said. "Thank you, it's good to be here."

They all went up the stairs as Stanley, the dignified black man, and a younger black man came down the stairs.

"I put the wine in the sitting room, Colonel," he said to Banning.

"Just the wine?"

"No, sir," Stanley said. "Not just the wine."

"Good man, Stanley."

"These glasses are... exquisite," Ernie said, as Ed Ban-ning poured champagne in her engraved crystal glass.

"They've been in the family a long time," Mother Ban-ning said. "We only bring them out for special people."

"Thank you," Ernie said.

"The general bought them in Europe before the war," Mother Banning said. "On his wedding trip."

Ed Banning saw the confusion on Ernie's face.

"Mother refers, of course, to the War of Secession," he said. "These glasses spent the war buried on the island, which always made me wonder if my great-grandfather had as much faith in the inevitable victory of the Confeder-acy as he professed at the time."

"Edward, what a terrible thing to say," Mother Banning said.

"Mother, as it says in the Good Book, the `truth shall make you free.'"

There was polite laughter.

"Speaking of the truth," Banning said. "Let me get this out of the way before we get down to serious drinking. The general called-Ken's and my general, Mother-and let me know what's going on. We're family, in my mind...."

"And mine," Luddy said. `This family wouldn't be here if it weren't for our savior."

"Hear, hear," Banning said. "Anyway, I want you both to know that what's ours is yours, anything we can do to help, we will, and we can either talk about it or not. Your choice."

"I'm going to cry," Ernie said.

"Drink your booze," Colonel Banning said, and then had another thought: "One more thing, Ken. Ernie Zimmerman, the best-dressed master gunner in the Marine Corps."

"What about him?"

"I wanted to ask you before I asked him and Mae-Su down from Beaufort. You want to see him?"

"Wouldn't that be an imposition?" Ernie asked. "Ken and I talked about going down there to see them on our way to California."

"You weren't listening, beautiful lady," Colonel Banning said. He turned to the butler, who was in the act of opening a second bottle of Moet et Chandon extra brut. "Stanley, see if you can get Mister Zimmerman on the horn for me, will you?"

"Mae-Su is my sister, Ernie," Luddy Banning said, in gentle reproof. "She is always welcome in our home."

Master Gunner Ernest W. Zimmerman, USMC, his wife Mae-Su, and their five children arrived at 66 South Battery two hours later. At Mae-Su's insistence, the entire family was dressed in a manner Mrs. Zimmerman felt was appro-priate to visit-as she described them privately to her hus-band1-"the ladies in Charleston."

The four males of the family-Father, thirty-four; Peter, thirteen; Stephen, twelve; and John, seven-were wearing identical seersucker suits. The three females-Mae-Su, thirty-three; Mary, six; and Ernestine, three-were wear-ing nearly identical summer linen dresses.

The dresses and suits had all been cut and sewn by the Chinese wife of another Parris Island Marine-this one a staff sergeant drill instructor-who had gone to the Shang-hai Palace restaurant in Beaufort, South Carolina, hoping to find employment as a cook-for that matter, anything at all; she needed the income-on the basis that she had been born and raised in Shanghai.

The proprietor, Mae-Su Zimmerman, was not interested in a cook, but she was looking for a seamstress. The DI's wife-who had met her husband in Tientsin, China, right af-ter World War II-came from a family of tailors and seam-stresses. After passing two tests, first making, from a picture in the society section of the Charleston Post-Gazette, a dress for Mrs. Zimmerman, and then, from the Brooks Brothers mail-order catalog, a suit for Master Gunner Zimmerman, Joi-Hu McCarthy went into business with Mrs. Zimmer-man, who became a silent (40 percent) partner in Shanghai Custom Tailors and Alterations, of Beaufort, South Carolina.

Mrs. Zimmerman was also a silent partner in several other Chinese-flavored businesses in Beaufort as well as the proprietor of the local hamburger emporium, and the franchisee of Hertz Rent-A-Car.

The Ford station wagon in which the Zimmerman fam-ily appeared at 66 South Battery, properly attired for a visit to the ladies, belonged to Hertz of Beaufort.

Luddy Banning and Mae-Su Zimmerman embraced with understated, but still visible, deep affection. Mae-Su had been Luddy's midwife by the side of the dirt road in Mon-golia when she had given birth to Edward Edwardovich Banning.

In Cantonese, Mrs. Zimmerman inquired of Mrs. Ban-ning, "Does the Killer know we know?"

"My husband told them," Luddy replied in Cantonese.

"Sometimes I hate the U.S. Marine Corps," Mae-Su said.

"Me, too. But they are married to it," Luddy said.

The children were gathered and ushered up the stairs to-ward Mother Banning, who waited for them. She told them they all looked elegant, and gave each a kiss and a pepper-mint candy.

"The Colonel and the Killer are downstairs, Ernie," Luddy said to Master Gunner Zimmerman.

"How is he?"

"Better than I thought he would be when I heard," Luddy said.

"That don't look like no Marine master gunner to me," McCoy said when Zimmerman walked into what was known as "The Colonel's study," although it was in fact more of a bar than a study. "That looks like an ambulance chaser."

That was not exactly the truth. Despite the splendidly tailored Brooks Brothers-style seersucker suit, white button-down-collar shirt, and red striped necktie, there was something about Zimmerman that suggested he was not a member of the bar, but rather a Marine in civvies. He was a squat, muscular, barrel-chested man, deeply tanned, and his hair was closely cropped to his skull.

"Screw you, Captain, sir," Zimmerman said, walking to him, and grabbing his neck in a bear hug.

"How they hanging, Ernie?" McCoy asked, freeing him-self.

"A little lower every year," Zimmerman said.

"Help yourself, Ernie," Banning said, gesturing toward an array of bottles in a bookcase.

"Thank you, sir. What are you-"

"Famous Grouse," Banning said.

"What else?" Zimmerman asked, chuckling.

"And we have been marching down memory lane," Ban-ning said.

"Yeah? Which memory lane?"

"Guess who's at Pendleton?" Banning asked.

Zimmerman shrugged.

"Major Robert B. Macklin," McCoy said.

"No shit?"

"I saw his name on his office door when I was in the G-l building," McCoy said. "I didn't see him."

"That figures, G-l," Zimmerman said. "That chair-warmer is a real G-l type."

Banning and McCoy chuckled.

"Killer," Zimmerman went on, conversationally, "you really should have let me shoot that no-good sonofabitch on the beach on Mindanao."

Banning and McCoy chuckled again, louder, almost laughed.

"Jack NMI Stecker said I could," Zimmerman argued. "You should have let me."

"I was there, Ernie," Banning said. "What Colonel Stecker said was that you could deal with Captain Macklin in any way you felt you had to, if, if, he got out of line. As I understand it, he behaved in the Philippines...."

"That sonofabitch was never in line," Zimmerman said. "And now he's a goddamn major, and they're giving you me boot? Jesus H. Christ!"

"Ernie, I told Ken we wouldn't talk about... that... un-less he brought up the subject," Banning said.

"How are you not going to talk about it?"

"By not talking about it," Banning said.

"So what are you going to do? Take the stripes they offer you, or get out?" Zimmerman asked, ignoring Banning.

"Would you take the stripes, Ernie?" McCoy countered.

"I thought about that," Zimmerman said. "Christ, when we were in the Fourth in Shanghai, I was hoping I could make maybe staff sergeant before I got my twenty years in. But that was then, Ken. A lot's happened to us-especially you-since then. No, I don't want to be a sergeant again, having to kiss the ass of some dipshit like Macklin, or some nice kid who got out of the Naval Academy last year."

"Spoken like a true master gunner," Banning said, chuckling.

Master gunners are the Marine equivalent of Army war-rant officers. While not commissioned officers, they are en-titled to being saluted and to other officer privileges. They are invariably former senior noncommissioned officers with long service, and expertise in one or more fields of the military profession. Their pay and allowances, depending on their rank within the master gunner category, approxi-mates that of second lieutenants through majors.

"What did they offer you?" Zimmerman asked.

"I won't know that until I get back to Pendleton," Mc-Coy said.

"You give any thought to what you would do if you do get out?"

"Fill toothpaste tubes at American Personal Pharmaceu-tical," McCoy said. "I've got an in with the boss's daugh-ter. I don't know, Ernie. I'm going to think about it on the way to California. Right now, I have no goddamn idea."

"Colonel, you tell him about the island?" Zimmerman said.

"There hasn't been time," Banning said.

"Island?" McCoy asked. "What island? The one where your great-grandfather buried the champagne glasses?"

"As a matter of fact, yes," Banning said. "You know where Hilton Head Island is?"

"Across from Parris Island? To the south?"

"Right. They're starting to develop Hilton Head, you know, put in a golf course, nice houses, that sort of thing. The family's got some property on Hilton Head..."

"Like five thousand acres," Zimmerman interjected.

"... and south of Hilton Head," Banning went on, ignor-ing him, "the family has an island."

"You own that one? That's where you buried glasses?" McCoy asked.

"Buried what glasses?" Zimmerman asked.

"Yes, we own it," Banning replied, again ignoring Zim-merman. "And Luddy and I, and Mae-Su and Ernie, have been talking about developing that ourselves."

"Where are you going to get the money?"

"Well, I have some," Banning said.

"And Mae-Su's made us a real bundle, Killer," Zimmer-man said. "Mae-Su figures that if we start now, don't get ourselves over our ass in debt, put everything we make back in the pot, starting about 1960,1961, we'll be in a po-sition to make a killing."

"Why a killing?" McCoy asked. "Why 1960?"

"Mae-Su asked me what a Marine lieutenant colonel has in common with an Army lieutenant colonel and a Navy commander."

"None of the above can find their asses with both hands?" McCoy quipped. "OK. I'll bite, what?"

"They don't have any place to go when they retire. They don't own houses, most of them, and they're going to have to have someplace to go, and they would like to be around their own kind. Plus, they have pretty decent pensions."

"And 1960, 1961, because that's when the first of the World War Two guys can start to retire at twenty years?" McCoy asked.

"Exactly. The buildup started in 1940," Banning said.

"So what are you going to do between now and 1960?" McCoy asked.

`Two things," Banning said. "One: Develop the property on Hilton Head. They're planning to sell houses, et cetera, to well-to-do people looking for a second home or a retire-ment home. We'll see how that's done, learn how to do it, and with a little luck make a little money, and invest that in the development of the other island."

"What's `two'?" McCoy asked.

"See if we can come up with some friendly investors, working partners," Banning said.

"And you're loaded, Killer," Zimmerman said. "Think about it."

"My wife is loaded," McCoy corrected him.

"I'm as broke as any other marine gunner," Zimmerman said. "Mae-Su's made a lot of money. We're loaded. Not like you and The Colonel, but loaded."

"It's more than the money, Ken," Banning said. "It would be something for you and Ernie to do, all three of us to do, when we hang up the uniform for the last time."

"Like what?"

"You know who's harder to cheat than an honest man?" Zimmerman asked, then answered his own question. "A China Marine, that's who. A graduate of the Bund School of Hard Knocks."

"Most construction, Ken," Banning said, "is done by subcontractors. One firm puts in the sewers, another one the streets, another one the electricity, et cetera. What the builder, the contractor, has to do is make sure-"

"They don't rob you blind," Zimmerman finished the thought for him. "And yeah, I do know what I'm talking about. When we built the last house in Beaufort, the one we're in now, I did the subcontracting. The first house we had, we got screwed by the numbers. This house, believe you me, we didn't."

McCoy suddenly had a thought, from out of nowhere.

When The Colonel said that General Pickering had called and told him what was going on, I presumed that he meant he told him everything. Why I got the boot from the Dai Ichi Building.

But he didn't. He just told him that I was being involun-tarily relieved from active duty as an officer. And that's all that The Colonel told Ernie, because it was all he knew.

They don't know what's going to happen in Korea.

I don't know what's going to happen to me after what happens in Korea happens. If it happens before 30 May, will they keep me in the Corps as a captain? Or what? If they of-fer me, say, gunnery sergeant, and I take it, then what? Go to war as a gunnery sergeant in a line company? But if they of-fer me gunnery sergeant and I turn it down, and get out, they damned sure won't call me back as a captain.

But I'm a Marine, and Marines are supposed to go-what's that line?-"to the sound of the musketry"-not the other way, to build houses on golf courses on islands for well-to-do people.

"Why do I get the idea you're not listening to me?" Zim-merman asked, bringing him back to The Colonel's study.

"I'm thinking, Ernie, I'm thinking," McCoy said.

Then think of something.

"Does The General know about this get-rich-quick scheme of yours?" he heard himself ask.

"It's not a get-rich scheme, Ken-" Banning said, of-fended.

"Fuck you, Killer," Zimmerman interrupted...

"-and yes, he does. He said that whenever we're ready for an investment, to let him know."

"I apologize for the wiseass remark," McCoy said. "I don't know why I said that."

"Because you're a wiseass, and always have been a wiseass," Zimmerman said.

"And with that profound observation in mind, we for-give you," Banning said. "Right, Ernie?"

"Why not?" Zimmerman said.

[TWO]

"We have a small problem," Ernie McCoy said to her hus-band in the privacy of their room. "I couldn't figure out how to say `no' again."

"No to who, about what?"

"Apparently, Ernie and Ed are starting some kind of real estate development..."

"They told me."

"And Luddy thinks it would be just the thing for us when you get out of the Marine Corps."

"And?"

"They're going to propose at dinner that we go to the is-land-"

"Which island? I think there's two islands."

Ernie threw up her hands helplessly.

"-to look at it."

"General Pickering apparently did not tell them why I was sent home from Japan," McCoy said.

"I picked up on that," Ernie said. "I almost blew that too, honey."

" `Almost'?" he parroted.

"They don't know," Ernie said.

"Good. And we can't tell them, obviously."

She looked at him curiously.

"They would try to help," he explained. "Especially Ed Banning, and there's nothing he could do, except maybe get himself in trouble."

"So what do we do?"

"When Luddy proposes we go look at the island, we say, `Gee, what a swell idea!'"

"They're not talking about much money," Ernie said. "A couple of hundred thousand."

"You know how much I make in the Corps, made in the Corps. `A couple of hundred thousand dollars' is not much money."

"You sign the Internal Revenue forms, you know what our annual income is," Ernie said. "Not to reopen that sub-ject for debate, I hope."

They met each other's eyes for a moment, then Ernie went off on a tangent.

"What I was thinking, honey, is that we don't have any place to go when... if... you get out of the Corps. Not about going in with them, but this Hilton Head Island place. It might be a nice place to build a house."

"We could probably pick up a nice little place for no more than a couple of hundred thousand, right?"

She didn't reply, but he thought he saw tears forming.

"Baby, I'm sorry," he said.

"It's all right."

"I asked Zimmerman if he would go back to wearing stripes, and he said no, he wouldn't. I had already decided that I wasn't going to either, but it was nice to hear that I wasn't alone."

"I told you that was your decision," Ernie said.

"Yeah. I remember," he said.

"And I meant it," she said.

"I know, baby. But it wouldn't have worked. It just wouldn't have worked. For me, or for you."

She nodded but didn't speak.

"I don't know what's going to happen if I'm wrong," he said.

"About `the worst-case scenario'?"

He nodded.

"I hope I am wrong," McCoy said. "I hope that there is no war, that I get separated 30 June, that-"

"We could come back here and go in the real estate de-velopment business?"

"Either that, or to Jersey, and the executive trainee posi-tion your father offered me."

"He means well, sweetheart...."

"I know, and for all I know, I might find Personal Phar-maceuticals a real challenge."

"Ken, for the last goddamn time, that was Daddy's idea of trying to be a nice guy. If I had known he was going to propose that, I would have stopped him."

"You told me that, and I believe it," he said. "But to get back to the point, the worst possible scenario may be what happens. If I'm out of the Marine Corps should that hap-pen..."

"You're out, right? There's no way they can call you back in?"

"There was a light colonel, a nice guy named Brewer, in the G-1 `s office at Pendleton. He had me in his office, and he let me know that he thought it was a dirty deal to `involun-tarily separate' me just because I don't have a college de-gree. Anyway, I asked a couple of questions, and the answer to one was that the Navy Department has the right to call someone back into the service in a national emergency up to a hundred and eighty days from the date of their separation "

"Oh, God!"

"After that, the separation becomes permanent. The thinking is, I suppose, that after six months, you've forgot-ten everything you knew. But for one hundred eighty days, I'd be subject to recall."

"Maybe they wouldn't want you back."

"Because I'm a troublemaker, and got a final fitness re-port from Captain Edward C. Wilkerson, USN, using words like `irresponsible' and `lacking basic good judg-ment'? Probably not to intelligence duties-I don't even have a security clearance anymore. Did I tell you that?"

She shook her head, "no."

"But I would be a former Marine captain, presumed to have the basic skills of any Marine captain. I don't think they'd give me command of a line company, but the Corps always needs motor officers, supply officers..."

"That's so goddamned unfair!"

"This is the `worse' that priest was talking about when we got married, `for better or for worse.'"

"Oh, honey!"

"So what we're looking at, to try to start something new in our life, baby, is 1 December 1950, not the end of this month. Between now and then, we'll just have to hold our breath."

"We'll really be starting something new in our life about then," Ernie said. "If nothing goes wrong again this time."

"Nothing will go wrong this time," McCoy said, with a conviction he didn't feel. "And with that in mind, what the hell, why not, what's a measly couple of hundred thou-sand, why don't we look for a place on Banning's Island where we can build a house? We can't just sit around wait-ing for the other shoe to drop. And maybe we'll get lucky."

"Well, maybe not build a house," Ernie said. "Maybe just buy one, a small one, until we see what happens."

[THREE]

THE WILLIAM BANNING HOUSE

66 SOUTH BATTERY

CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

1400 24 JUNE 1950

Stanley loaded the basket of fried chicken and "other munchables" Mother Banning had prepared so that Ken and Ernestine-Mother Banning could not force herself to refer to Mrs. McCoy as "Ernie"-would have something to eat on the road, in the middle seat of the Buick station wagon, and then went up the wide staircase to the house to an-nounce that everything was ready.

He had also loaded, in the back of the station wagon, two large, tall, cardboard tubes that The Colonel had pre-pared. One contained a plat of the Banning property on Hilton Head Island, showing the proposed subdivision, with a triple lot (A-301, A-302, and A-303) marked in red. The triple lot was on a high bluff over the Atlantic Beach- it would be necessary to construct a stairway to the beach, but what the hell, that was better than having the Atlantic Ocean come crashing through your living room in a once-in-a-century hurricane-and when the proposed golf course was built, would have a view of the fairways, far enough away from them to prevent golf balls from crash-ing into the house's windows.

The second cardboard tube contained a preliminary plat for the proposed subdivision of Findlay Island, which was south of, one-sixth the size of, and shielded from the At-lantic Ocean by Hilton Head.

The thinking was that the sooner they got things rolling on Hilton Head, the sooner there would be money to put into the development of Findlay Island. Moving cau-tiously, they would be ready in plenty of time for the wave of military retirees that would start in 1960, and grow for the five years after that.

Colonel Banning had made it clear that he wasn't trying to sell anything, that it was just something Ken and Ernie should take a close look at, think about.

There would be plenty of time to do that on the way to Camp Pendleton.

Ken and Ernie had originally intended to spend only a day or two with the Bannings. Then they would have driven to Beaufort, South Carolina, outside Parris Island to spend another day-or part of one-with the Zimmermans. From there, they had planned to drive to St. Louis, Missouri, to spend a day-or part of one-with George Hart, and then from there to southern California.

Instead, after two days in Charleston, they'd gone to Beaufort with the Bannings and spent three days there, in Zimmerman's surprisingly large and comfortable house on the water. Two days had been spent looking at the property on the islands, and on the third, the men had all put on their uniforms and taken a physical trip down memory lane to the U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Training Depot, Parris Island. Captain McCoy had taken his boot camp at Parris Island, and had been back only once since then, when, shortly after he'd returned from the Makin Island raid he'd been assigned to work for General Pickering, and had gone there to jerk Private George Hart out of a recruit platoon to serve as Pickering's bodyguard.

The next day, the McCoys and the Bannings had re-turned to the house on the Battery in Charleston, and a farewell dinner prepared for them under the supervision of Mother Banning.

With the time spent, they were now going to have to drive straight across the country to San Diego, and put off the visit to George Hart until after McCoy went through the separation process at Camp Pendleton.

Mother Banning surprised her son by going down the wide staircase to the Buick-instead of standing, as she usually did, on the piazza, with her hands folded on her stomach when guests left-to kiss both Ernestine and Ken goodbye.

"Drive carefully," Colonel Banning said. "And give this some serious thought, Ken."

"Yes, sir, we will," Ken said, shook his hand, and got be-hind the wheel.

At the end of the Battery, waiting for a chance to move into the flow of traffic, he said, "I wish I could."

"Could what?"

"Give it some serious thought. Doing what they're going to be doing looks like a lot more fun than filling toothpaste tubes."

There was a break in the flow of traffic, and he eased the Buick into it.

"Things will work out, sweetheart," Ernie said. "What is it they say, `it's always darkest before the dawn'?"

He laughed, but it was more of a snort than a laugh.

"What time is it, honey?" Ernie asked.

He looked at his watch.

"A little after 1400," he said.

"You're going to have to get used to saying `two,'" she said.

"I guess," he said, and added, "Mrs. McCoy, it is now a little after two p.m."

Ernie chuckled.

There is a fourteen-hour difference between Charleston, South Carolina, and the Korean Peninsula. In other words, when it was a little after two p.m. on 24 June 1950 in Charleston, South Carolina, it was a little after four a.m., 25 June 1950, on the Korean peninsula.

The North Korean attack against the Ongjin Peninsula on the west coast, northwest of Seoul, began about 0400 with a heavy artillery and mortar barrage and small-arms fire delivered by the 14th Regiment of the North Korean 6th Division. The ground attack came half an hour later across the 38th parallel without ar-mored support. It struck the positions held by a battal-ion of the Republic of Korea Army's 17th Regiment, commanded by Colonel Paik In Yup.

PAGE 27

U.S. ARMY IN THE KOREAN WAR

OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF MILITARY HISTORY

DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY

WASHINGTON, D.C., 1960

[ONE]

THE COMMUNICATIONS CENTER

THE PENTAGON

WASHINGTON, D.C.

1710 24 JUNE 1950

The first "official" word of the North Korean incursion of South Korea was a radio teletype message sent to the As-sistant Chief of Staff, G-2, Department of the Army in Washington by the military attach‚ of the U.S. Embassy in Seoul at 0905 Korean time 25 June 1950. It entered the Army's communications system a relatively short time af-terward, probably "officially"-that is to say, was "logged" in-in a matter of minutes, say at about 1710 Washington time 24 June 1950.

25 June 1950 was a Saturday. While the Pentagon never closes down, most of the military and civilian personnel who work there during the week weren't there, and only a skeleton crew was on duty.

There was a bureaucratic procedure involved. The mes-sage was classified Operational Immediate, the highest, rarely used, priority, and on receipt the senior officer on duty in the communications room was immediately noti-fied that an Operational Immediate from Korea for the G-2 had been received, and immediately sent to the Crypto-graphic Room for decryption.

The signal officer on duty telephoned the duty officer in the office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, giving him a heads-up on the Operational Immediate, and informing him that he would deliver the message personally as soon as it was decrypted.

In turn, the G-2 duty officer immediately telephoned the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, and caught him at his quar-ters at Fort Myer, Virginia.

The Army's chief intelligence officer told his duty offi-cer that he was just about out the door to attend a cocktail and dinner party at the Army and Navy Club in the District, but would stop by the Pentagon en route to have a look at the Operational Immediate from Korea.

Then he called the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, and found him at his quarters-Quarters 1-at Fort Myer. He told the Chief there was an Operational Immediate from Korea, and that he was en route to the Pentagon to have a look at it. And where would the Chief be in case it required his immediate attention?

The Chief said he was going to Freddy's retirement party at the Army and Navy, and since the G-2 was going there, he could see no point in he himself going to the Pen-tagon. Sometimes, the Operational Immediate classifica-tion was applied too easily.

By the time the G-2 reached his office, the Operational Immediate from Korea had been decrypted. He read it, and after a moment ordered his duty officer to see if he would reach the Chief, who was probably en route to the Army and Navy Club, over his car radio.

It was possible, even likely, that somewhere in the Em-bassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or in the Embassy of the Democratic Republic of Czechoslovakia, or in the Embassy of the Democratic Republic of Albania, or elsewhere, there was a man sitting at a radio receiver tuned to the frequency of the police-type shortwave radio in the Chief's car, so the conversation was phrased accord-ingly:

"Chief, that message we were talking about? I think it might be a good idea if you had a look at it yourself."

"I'm on my way. Thank you."

In the G-2's office, twenty minutes later, the G-2 read the message and reached for the red telephone on the G-2's desk. In twenty seconds, he had the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the secure line.

"Sir, I've got an Operational Immediate from Korea that I think you should have a look at right away."

"Okay."

"I think you might want to give the Secretary a heads-up, and with your permission, I'm going to do the same to mine."

"Okay. On my way. You're in your office?"

"Yes, sir."

"Meet me in the Ops Room."

"Yes, sir."

"And I'm in the car. You give the Secretary a heads-up."

"Yes, sir."

The G-2 telephoned, on the secure circuit, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Army, in that order, and gave both the same message:

He had just spoken to the Chairman about an Opera-tional Immediate he had just received from Korea, and the Chairman was en route to the Ops Room to have a look at it, and had ordered him to relay that information to the Secretary.

The Secretary of the Army said he was on his way, and the Secretary of Defense said that it would take him ten minutes to shave and get dressed, and then he'd be on his way.

Before he left his home, the Secretary of Defense called the Secretary of State and said he had no idea how impor-tant it was, but there had been an Operational Immediate from Korea, and everybody was headed for the Ops Room to have a look at it, and maybe it might be a good idea for the Secretary to send somebody to the Pentagon, if not come himself.

The Secretary of Defense also called the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and on being told the Director would not be available for thirty minutes, got the Assistant Director and told him there was an Operational Immediate from Korea that he thought the Director should have a look at, and that everybody was en route to the Ops Room. The Assistant Director said he would leave word for the Direc-tor, and leave for the Ops Room himself immediately.

Less than an hour after that, having read the Operational Immediate in the Ops Room, and assessing other intelli-gence data available to the Ops Room, it was more or less unanimously agreed that the matter should be immediately brought to the attention of Harry S. Truman, President of the United States, and Commander-in-Chief of its armed forces.

The Assistant Secretary of State personally agreed that the President should be informed, but felt that he could not concur in the decision to do so until the Secretary of State had been brought up to speed on the situation and gave his concurrence.

It took another hour to get that concurrence, whereupon the White House Signal Agency was directed to put in a se-cure call to the President of the United States at his home in Independence, Missouri.

The President took the news almost stoically, and or-dered that he be kept up to date on any new developments, regardless of the hour.

The President was not surprised to hear from the Secre-tary of Defense that the North Koreans had invaded South Korea. He had been so informed three hours previously by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who had received a radio message from the CIA station chief in Seoul, and had immediately decided the President needed to be informed immediately, and had done so personally.

[TWO]

BLAIR HOUSE

WASHINGTON, D.C.

2205 25 JUNE 1950

"Unless someone can think of something else we can do tonight," President Harry S. Truman said, "I suggest we knock this off. I suspect we're all going to need clear heads in the morning."

The men at the conference table-the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Army and Air Force Chiefs of Staff, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Advisor, and several other high-ranking advisors, rose to their feet.

Although there was nothing wrong with the conference room in Blair House, it was not as large, nor as comfort-able as the conference room in the White House. If there was still a conference room across the street in the White House. In 1948, it had been discovered that the White House was literally falling down, in fact dangerous. Tru-man had made the decision to gut it to the walls and re-build everything. In June of 1950, the reconstruction was two years into what was to turn out to be a four-year process. The last time the President had looked into the White House, it was a gutted shell.

The President had cut short his vacation in Indepen-dence and flown back to Washington-in Air Force One, a four-engine Douglas DC-6 known as the Independence- early in the afternoon.

His senior advisors had been waiting for him in Blair House, the de facto temporary White House, where the Army Signal Corps had set up a teletype conference facility with General MacArthur in the Dai Ichi Building in Tokyo.

It was essentially a closed, state-of-the-art radio teletype circuit, where what was typed in Washington was immedi-ately both typed in Tokyo and displayed on a large screen so that everyone in the room could read it. And vice versa.

MacArthur had furnished the President what he knew- not much-about the situation in Korea, and the President had authorized MacArthur-after consultation with his staff, and through the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff-to send ammunition and equipment to Korea to pre-vent the loss of Seoul's Kimpo airfield to the North Kore-ans, and to provide Air Force and Navy fighter aircraft to protect the supply planes. MacArthur had also been au-thorized to do whatever he considered necessary to evacu-ate the dependents of American military and diplomatic personnel in Korea from the war zone, and to dispatch a team to Korea to assess what was happening.

Truman had also ordered the Seventh Fleet (which was split between the Philippines and Okinawa) to sail immedi-ately for the U.S. Navy Base in Sasebo, Japan, where it would pass into the control of Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Far East. COMNAVFORFE was subordinate to the Supreme Commander, Allied Powers, so what Truman had done was to take operational control of the Seventh Fleet from the Commander-in-Chief Pacific (CINCPAC) and give it to MacArthur.

Until they knew more about what was going on, there was nothing else that anyone in the room could think of to do.

Except for Admiral Hillenkoetter, the CIA Director, and he was considering his options to ask for a few minutes of the Commander-in-Chief's time-alone-when the Presi-dent seemed to be reading his mind.

"Admiral, would you stay behind a minute, please?" Truman asked.

"Yes, Mr. President," the Admiral said.

It is entirely possible, the admiral thought, that I am about to have my ass chewed for calling him when I got the Seoul station chief's radio. He didn't say anything, but it's possible the Chairman's heard about it, and he would con-sider it going over his head.

The Chairman gave the admiral a strange look as he left the room, leaving him alone with the President.

In William Donovan's Office of Strategic Services, the OSS had technically been under the command of the Chair-man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Donovan had paid no atten-tion to that at all, deciding that he worked for the President and nobody else. Donovan had gotten away with that.

In the reincarnation of the OSS as the Central Intelli-gence Agency, the CIA was a separate governmental agency, charged with cooperating with the Defense and State Departments, but not under their command. None of the military services, or the State Department, liked that, and they tried, in one way or another, with varying degrees of subtlety, to insinuate that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was really in charge. Hillenkoetter was, after all, an admiral detailed to the CIA, not a civilian, like J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The interesting thing, Hillenkoetter often thought, was that when I was really in the Navy, I thought the CIA really ought to be under the Joint Chiefs. A couple of months in the Agency cured me of that. The only way it can be the Central Intelligence Agency is to be independent, free of in-fluence from any quarter. Things would probably be better if they had called it the Independent Intelligence Agency.

"That'll be all, thank you," Truman said to the stenogra-pher, a Navy chief petty officer, who had been taking notes of the conference on a court reporter's machine.

The Chief left the room, closing the door after him.

"Just as a matter of curiosity, Admiral," the President be-gan, "when did you pass to the Chairman the information you gave me over the telephone?"

"My deputy took that radio, Mr. President-by then there were two more of no great significance-with him when he went to the first conference in the Ops Room."

"I didn't tell the Chairman about your call," the Presi-dent said. "I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you weren't trying to one-up him."

"As I understand my role, Mr. President, I report directly to you."

"Yeah," the President said. "You do." He paused. "Have you had any more radios? Even of `no great significance'?"

"My Seoul station chief believes Seoul will fall, Mr. President. He is moving his base of operations to the south."

The President nodded but said nothing.

"Mr. President, there is something else," Hillenkoetter began.

"Let's have it," the President said.

"Several weeks ago, on June eighth, Mr. President, Sen-ator Fowler asked for an appointment as soon as possible. The next morning, he came to my office with a man named Fleming Pickering."

Truman shrugged, showing the name meant nothing to him.

"And what did the head cheerleader of Eisenhower-for-President want, Admiral?" Truman asked. "The last I heard, he was not on the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee."

"The name Pickering means nothing to you, Mr. Presi-dent?"

"Not a damned thing," the President said.

"He was Deputy Director of the OSS for the Pacific in World War Two. He's quite a character."

"Never heard of him," the President said. "One of Dono-van's Oh-So-Socials?"

"Well, that, too, sir, I suppose. He owns Pacific and Far East Shipping, and he's married to the daughter of the man who owns the Foster Hotel chain."

"And that, obviously, made Donovan decide he was OSS material?"

"Mr. President, President Roosevelt commissioned Pickering a brigadier general in the Marine Corps, and named him, I have been reliably informed, Deputy Chief of the OSS for the Pacific over Mr. Donovan's strong ob-jections."

"The Marines must have been thrilled to have some so-cialite millionaire shoved down their throat as a brigadier general," Truman said.

"There was not, as I understand it, much problem with that at all, Mr. President. Not only did Pickering win the Navy Cross as a Marine enlisted man in France in World War One, but he'd gone ashore with the First Marine Divi-sion on Guadalcanal, and become-when the G-2 was killed in action-General Vandegrift's intelligence officer."

"He was a reserve officer between the wars?" Truman asked.

Hillenkoetter was aware that Captain Harry Truman had gone into the Missouri National Guard after World I, and risen to colonel.

"He was a Navy reserve captain when he went to Guadalcanal, Mr. President, working as sort of the eyes of Navy Secretary Knox. And when Secretary Knox ordered a destroyer to take him off Guadalcanal, it was attacked, her captain killed, and Pickering assumed command of the vessel, despite his own pretty serious wounds. Admiral Nimitz gave him the Silver Star for that."

"I really am tired, Admiral," Truman said after a mo-ment. "Can we get to the point of this?"

"Mr. Pickering-General Pickering-and Senator Fowler are very close, Mr. President."

"I suppose every sonofabitch in the world has one friend," Truman said.

"General Pickering had just come from Tokyo, Mr. Pres-ident," Hillenkoetter said, "with an intelligence assessment concluding the North Koreans were preparing to invade South Korea."

"How did he get an intelligence assessment like that? Whose intelligence assessment?"

"He wouldn't tell me, Mr. President, but I have every rea-son to believe that it was prepared by a Captain McCoy, who was on General Pickering's staff when they were both in the OSS."

"Another Oh-So-Social, this one a Navy captain?" "A Marine Corps captain, sir. He'd been a major and was reduced to captain after the war." v

"I don't have a thing in the world against captains," Tru-man said. "But wasn't this one out of his league? Captains usually don't prepare assessments predicting the beginning of a war."

"This one did, sir," Hillenkoetter said. "And so far, everything he's predicted has been on the money."

"Why didn't this assessment... You're telling me you knew nothing about this assessment?"

"I had never seen it before, Mr. President. And when I read it, it went counter to everything my people had devel-oped, Mr. President."

"Who did he do this assessment for?"

"Captain McCoy was assigned to Naval Element, SCAP, sir. He submitted it to his superior, who passed it on to General Willoughby, General MacArthur's G-2...."

"And?"

"According to General Pickering, General Willoughby ordered it destroyed."

"He didn't place any credence in it?"

"Apparently not, Mr. President."

"And now it turns out this captain was right on the money?"

"It looks that way, Mr. President."

"And when General Willoughby ordered this assessment destroyed, this captain gave it to General Pickering?"

"Yes, sir."

"Who brought it to you? Accompanied by Senator Fowler?"

"Yes, sir."

"Which means Senator Fowler's seen it, knows the story?'

"Yes, sir."

"Which means, if we've just gone to war, and I'm very much afraid that we have, that the story is going to get out that we should have known it was coming, because of this captain's assessment, which MacArthur ignored. My God, it'll be another Pearl Harbor scandal!"

"I'm afraid that's a real possibility, Mr. President."

"And what did you do when this assessment came to your attention?"

"I decided that it deserved further investigation, Mr. President."

"Meaning you sat on it?"

"I sent my Deputy for Asiatic Activities, David Jacobs, to Hong Kong on the next plane with orders to light fires under everybody we have over there to check it out."

"And?"

"Well, there hasn't been much time, Mr. President, but what feedback I got tended-until yesterday-to make me question the assessment."

Truman looked at him for a long moment.

"I appreciate your honesty, Admiral," he said. "Thank you."

He looked as if he was in thought, then asked, "Where is this captain now? What else has he got to tell us that no one wants to hear?"

"That was some of the first feedback I was given, Mr. President," Hillenkoetter said. "Captain McCoy was re-turned to the United States for involuntary separation from the service."

"Kill the messenger, huh? That sounds like something Emperor MacArthur would do."

"Mr. President, General Pickering led me to believe that General MacArthur is unaware of the assessment."

"How the hell would he know that?"

"He and MacArthur are friends, Mr. President. He had dinner with the MacArthurs when he was in Tokyo."

"Then, since he had it, why didn't he give the damned assessment to MacArthur?"

"The way General Pickering put it, Mr. President, is that General MacArthur's loyalty to those officers who served with him in the Philippines and throughout World War Two is legendary."

"The `Bataan Gang,'" the President said. "I've heard about that, about them." He paused and looked at Hil-lenkoetter. "Where is the captain now?"

"I have no idea, sir. In the States, someplace. Maybe at Camp Pendleton, that's a separation center."

"What about General Pickering?"

"He lives in San Francisco."

The President looked at his watch.

"It's half past ten here," he said. "What'll it be in San Francisco?"

Hillenkoetter did the arithmetic.

"Half past seven, Mr. President."

Truman turned to the sideboard behind him and picked up the telephone.

"This is the President," he said. "In this order, get me General Fleming Pickering, in San Francisco, California."

He looked at Hillenkoetter.

"Have you got a number?"

"No, sir. And I should have one. I'm sorry, Mr. Presi-dent."

Truman waved a hand to show that it didn't matter, and turned his attention back to the telephone.

"Start looking for him at Pacific and Far East Shipping. When I'm through talking to him, get me Senator Fowler. I don't know where he is."

He put the telephone back in its cradle.

"If you have the time, Admiral, stick around until I make these calls."

"Of course, Mr. President."

"Do I have to tell you the fewer people who know about this, the better?"

"No, sir."

"You said you sent Dave Jacobs to the Far East. How much does he know?"

"Under the circumstances, Mr. President, I told David that I had reason to question the most recent data I was get-ting, and wanted it thoroughly checked. I didn't tell him why."

"Don't," the President said.

He pushed a button on a pad on the conference table.

A white-jacketed Navy steward appeared.

"I'm about to have a drink," the President said. "You?"

"Thank you, Mr. President."

[THREE]

THE PENTHOUSE

THE FOSTER SAN FRANCISCAN HOTEL NOB HILL,

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

1935 25 JUNE 1950

The chairman of the board of the Foster Hotel Corporation was about to dine with the chairman of the board of the Pa-cific and Far East Shipping Corporation in what was known as the Foster Hotel Corporation Executive Conference Center. When dealing with the Internal Revenue Service the center was treated as a reasonable and necessary busi-ness expense. It consisted of seven rooms atop the Foster San Franciscan, including a large conference room, three bedrooms, a lounge, a sauna, and a kitchen.

When the telephone rang, the chairman of the board of PandFE, attired in a bathrobe, swim trunks, and rubber san-dals, was sitting on a stool in the kitchen, watching the chairman of the board of the Foster Hotel Corporation, who was attired in a swimsuit and sandals, and standing at the kitchen stove.

Both executives had just come from the hotel's swim-ming pool, and on the elevator ride, the Foster Chairman had inquired of the PandFE Chairman what he wanted to do about dinner.

"You know what I really would like is a crab omelet," he replied.

"Good idea. And I think there's a bottle of champagne in the fridge."

"May I interpret that to mean you would not be averse to a little fooling around?"

"Flem, you're supposed to be too old for that sort of thing."

"I'm not."

"Thank God."

A telephone call had quickly produced a one-pound tub of lump crabmeat and a loaf of freshly baked French bread from the hotel kitchen. By the time it arrived, the champagne had been opened, and the PandFE chairman-who re-ally didn't like champagne-had brought a bottle of Fa-mous Grouse from the lounge to the kitchen.

When the telephone rang, the Foster chairman had in-quired, "I wonder who the hell that is."

Very few people had the number of the penthouse.

"If you picked it up, you could probably find our," Flem-ing Pickering suggested.

Patricia Fleming turned from her skillet and looked at her husband with what could be described as wifely loving contempt/affection and reached for the wall-mounted phone.

"Hello," she said, then: "Hold on a minute."

She extended the phone, which had a long cord, to her husband.

"Who is it?"

"Another of your legion of pals with a sophomoric sense of humor," Patricia said.

He walked across the kitchen, holding his whiskey glass, and took the telephone from his wife.

"Hello?"

"Brigadier General Fleming Pickering?" a female voice inquired.

"Who wants to know?"

"Brigadier General Fleming Pickering?" the woman asked again.

"This is Fleming Pickering."

"Hold one, please, General, for the President."

Fleming Pickering looked at his wife, who was shaking her head in disbelief at the childish humor of some of her husband's cronies.

"Sure," Pickering said, smiling as he wondered what was to come next.

"General Pickering?" a male voice inquired. "You got him. Come to attention when you speak with me."

"This is President Truman, General."

I'll be goddamned. "Yes, sir?"

"General, at four in the morning yesterday, North Korea launched an invasion of South Korea."

"I'm very sorry to hear that, sir."

Patricia Fleming's facial expression changed to one of concern. She pushed the skillet off the fire and went to her husband, putting her head next to his so that she could hear the conversation. She heard:

"There are very few details at this time, but enough to know that it's more than a border incident."

"Yes, sir."

"Admiral Hillenkoetter has told me of your visit to him," Truman said.

"Yes, sir?"

"Who?" Patricia asked. "Admiral who? What visit?"

"I would very much like to see you and Senator Fowler as soon as possible," Truman said. "Would you be willing to come to Washington?"

"Yes, Mr. President. Of course."

"And Captain McCoy. No one seems to know where he is. Do you?"

Well, Christ, Hillenkoetter didn't have to be a nuclear scientist to figure out the only place I could have gotten that assessment was from the Killer.

`To the best of my knowledge, Mr. President, he and his wife are driving from Charleston to Camp Pendleton, probably stopping off in St. Louis on the way."

"You don't know how to get in touch with him?"

"No, sir. I don't. He's due in Camp Pendleton on June twenty-ninth."

"What about in St. Louis? Have you got a number there?"

"Not here, sir, I'm sorry. I'm at home. If they stop off at St. Louis, it will be to see Captain George Hart, who's a policeman, head of the Homicide Bureau."

"They can deal with that," Truman said, as if to himself. "General, if you're willing to come, I'll have someone in the Air Force contact you very shortly about getting you on a plane."

"Yes, sir."

"I would be grateful, General, if this conversation, and anything about your meeting with Admiral Hillenkoetter, did not become public knowledge."

"Of course, sir. I understand, Mr. President."

"Thank you. I look forward to seeing you shortly, Gen-eral."

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you, again," Truman said, and the line went dead.

Pickering, deep in thought, put the telephone back in the wall rack.

"What the hell was that all about?" Patricia Fleming asked.

"It would appear, sweetheart, that we have just gone to war in Korea," he began.

They had just finished the crab omelet, and Pickering a sec-ond, stiff drink of Famous Grouse, when the phone rang again.

Pickering walked to it and answered it.

"Hello?"

"General Pickering?"

"Yes, speaking."

Goddamn it, you're not General Pickering.

"General, this is Brigadier General Jason Gruber, U.S. Air Force."

"Yes?"

"My orders, General, are to get you to Andrews Air Force Base as quickly as possible. How would you feel about making the trip in an F-94? It would mean getting into a pressure suit...."

"I don't even know what an F-94 is," Pickering said.

"We just started taking delivery 1 June," General Gruber said. "It's a follow-on to the Lockheed Shooting Star, the F-80...."

"That's a fighter," Pickering said. "Is there room for a passenger in a fighter?"

"There's room for a radar operator in the rear cockpit. You give the word, I can be at Alameda Naval Air Station in about an hour."

"Where are you now?" Pickering asked, and before Gen-eral Gruber could answer, asked, "You'll be flying me?"

"I'm at Nellis Air Force Base, and yes, I'll be driving."

"I thought Nellis Air Force Base was in Las Vegas."

"It is," General Gruber said.

"And you can fly here in an hour?"

"If I kick in the afterburners, and I probably will, I can make it in thirty-five, forty minutes."

"My God!"

"The alternative is some kind of transport, General. That, of course, will take a lot longer to get you to Wash-ington. It's up to you."

"I'll need more than an hour," Pickering said. "There's something I have to do before I leave here."

"In two hours, it'll be twenty-two hundred. By then, I'll be refueled and ready to go. How big a man are you, General?"

"Six-one, a hundred ninety."

"And all we'll have to do is squeeze you into a pressure suit, and we can take off."

"How do I get into the Navy base?"

"Alameda will be waiting for you. You're traveling DP, General. Everything is greased. Believe me."

"What's DP?"

"Direction of the President. You didn't know?"

"No, I didn't."

"I'll see you at Alameda, General," General Gruber said, and hung up without saying anything else.

Pickering hung up the telephone and turned to Patricia.

"What was that all about?"

"I'm to be flown to Washington by an Air Force brigadier in a fighter I never heard of. We leave in two hours frem the Alameda Naval Air Station."

Patricia Fleming considered that.

"I'll drive you," she said. "It won't take us two hours to get to Alameda, Flem."

"The Air Force guy's coming from Las Vegas. He says he can do that in forty minutes. But I told him two hours," Pickering said.

"Why?"

"I have something-something important-I want to do here first."

"What could possibly be more important than-?" She stopped in midsentence, having taken his meaning.

"The same thing I had in mind when we got on the ele-vator thirty, forty minutes ago," he replied.

She looked at him for a moment, then smiled.

"Oh, Flem, I hope you never grow up."

[FOUR]

THE PRESS CLUB

TOKYO, JAPAN

1130 26 JUNE 1950

It has been said that while there just might be honor among thieves, there is absolutely none among journalists, at least insofar as beating a fellow member of the fourth estate out of a story-"getting it first"-is concerned.

But there is a little "scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" cooperative activity among journalists, and so it came to pass that when one distinguished member of the Tokyo press corps got it reliably that an Air Force C-54 was about to leave for Seoul to evacuate American depend-ents, he told one of his peers.

"That makes us even, right?" he asked, so that things were understood between them.

"Right," the second journalist said, then retired to the pri-vacy of his room to pick up his typewriter and his camera and a change of linen. While there, he remembered he owed a big one to a third journalist, and went to his room on the third floor of the Press Club Building, made sure he was alone, and then brought him in on the C-54 about to leave Haneda for Seoul.

It never entered the mind of any of the three journalists to inform Miss Jeanette Priestly, of the Chicago Tribune, of the Seoul-bound C-54. Whatever special courtesies her gender and all-around good looks might otherwise have seen coming her way were more than neutralized by their shared belief that she was one of the more skilled practi-tioners of their profession, and thus to be treated as they treated any other of their peers. Screw her, in a metaphori-cal sense, not to be confused with the physical.

The three-who had left the Press Club at different times, one of them by the kitchen door-were therefore disappointed but not really surprised when they met at Haneda Air Base base operations and found Miss Priestly there.

They were disappointed because there would now be four dashing and courageous journalists on the first plane to the war in Korea, not just three, and one of the four was of the gentle sex, which unquestionably diluted the Richard Harding Davis aura of their journey.

Davis was a hero to all three men, who all very privately hoped to emulate him. He had covered every war from the Greco-Turkish through World War I, managing along the way to charge up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish-American War, and nearly get himself shot by the Germans as a spy in World War I. He then went on to be a highly successful novelist and playwright.

But there was nothing they could do about the comely Miss Priestly. She was duly accredited to the headquarters of the Supreme Commander, and thus just as entitled as they were to space-available accommodations on USAF transports.

And there was plenty of space. There was no one on the C-54 when it took off from Haneda but the five members of the crew and the four members of the press corps.

As they approached Seoul's Kimpo airfield, the pilot came back into the fuselage to tell them that, since North Korean Yak fighters had strafed the field and were likely to come back, and that since there was a strong possibility that the field had already been captured by the North Kore-ans, his just-received orders were to make a low pass over the field to see if there were any Americans waiting for them, and if not, to go back to Japan.

No, he could not land just to let the correspondents off.

There were Americans on the field, some of them franti-cally waving jackets to attract the attention of the C-54.

It landed, and the correspondents found Air Force Lieu-tenant Colonel Peter Scott busily burning documents in Base Operations.

Scott told them things were not as bad as they could be. Seoul had not been abandoned, as reported, and in fact, on direct orders from General Douglas MacArthur, the sixty-odd officers of the Korean Military Advisory Group, and the hundred or so enlisted men attached to KMAG who had evacuated the city, were now in the process of moving back into it.

The journalists asked Colonel Scott how they could get into Seoul, which was seven miles away. He pointed to the parking lot, which was jammed with Jeeps, trucks, and civilian automobiles, including nine recent-model Buicks.

"Most of them have keys in their ignitions," Colonel Scott said.

The male journalists then chivalrously suggested to Miss Priestly that under the circumstances, it behooved her to return to Tokyo aboard the C-54 with the dependents be-ing evacuated, while they went into Seoul. This was really no place for a woman.

Miss Priestly replied with a short pungent sentence that certainly was not very ladylike, but made it clear that she considered herself one of the boys, and had no intention of running away from the story.

The journalists watched the C-54 take off for Tokyo and then climbed into a nearly new Buick and drove into Seoul, where they had little trouble finding the large gray building housing KMAG.

There, Colonel Sterling Wright-who told them he was acting KMAG commander; Brigadier General William Roberts, the former commanding general, having left for a new assignment in the States and no replacement for him having arrived-repeated what they had heard from Lieutenant Colonel Scott at Kimpo: Things weren't as black as they had at first appeared.

For proof of this, he showed them a radio teletype mes-sage from the Supreme Commander himself, which said: "Be of good cheer. Momentous events are pending."

Colonel Wright regretted that under the circum-stances-KMAG had just returned to Seoul; he would make improvements tomorrow-the only accommodations he could offer the distinguished members of the press would be rather spartan. The men would share quarters, as would he, with the senior officers of his staff, and he would turn over his own quarters to the lady.

Miss Priestly took a shower and went to bed in Colonel Wright's narrow bed.

She was awakened in the very early hours of the next morning by an excited lieutenant who reported that the North Koreans had broken through the South Korean de-fense lines around Seoul, and that they were going to have to run for it.

Moments later, the North Koreans brought the KMAG compound under mortar fire.

Miss Priestly dressed quickly and went outside the building, where she found Colonel Wright waiting for her in a Jeep. Her fellow journalists, she was told, had already left.

Followed by another Jeep, they raced out of the KMAG compound toward the Han River. They had almost reached the river when a brilliant flash of light and a terrifying roar announced that the bridge had been blown.

Their only escape route to Suwon, thirty miles south of Seoul, where there was an air base, had been cut.

Colonel Wright drove back to the KMAG compound, where he assembled a sixty-vehicle convoy of stragglers and started out to find another way across the Han to safety. After several hours of frantic search, none was found. But they came across a place where small boats could take them across the river.

Wright ordered the vehicles destroyed, and the fleeing Americans made it across the river, and started for Suwon on foot.

About eleven o'clock in the morning, there was a growing roar of aircraft engines. After a few moments, it was possible to identify the aircraft as USAF P-51 fighters. They were obviously strafing Kimpo Airfield, with the ob-vious conclusion to be drawn that if the P-51s were strafing it, it was now in the hands of the North Koreans.

After a four-hour walk, a Jeep appeared, and Miss Priestly accepted the offer of a ride in it to Suwon. There she found her fellow journalists, two of them wearing bloody bandages. They had been on the Han River bridge when it had been blown.

There were a number of American aircraft on the field, one of which was headed for Itazuke Air Force Base in Japan, the closest one to Korea. All four journalists climbed aboard. There was no way that any of them could file their stories of the fall of Seoul from Suwon, and two of them required medical attention.

All four filed their stories from Itazuke. The two wounded men then went to the hospital, and Miss Priestly and the unwounded other one got on another plane headed back to Suwon.

The next morning, as Miss Priestly was trying to find a Jeep or something else with wheels to go see the fighting, a glistening C-54 made an approach to Suwon and landed. When she saw that it had "Bataan" lettered on its nose, she ran to get a closer look.

Thompson submachine gun-armed military policemen climbed down the stairs, followed by the Supreme Com-mander himself, and then a dozen general officers, and fi-nally four members of the press corps.

Jeanette Priestly knew all of them. They regarded themselves-perhaps not without some justification; they were the Tokyo bureau chiefs of the three major Ameri-can wire services and Time-Life-as the senior members of the Tokyo press corps. They were known by their fel-lows in the press corps as "The Palace Guard" because they covered the Supreme Commander himself, leaving coverage of whatever else happened in Japan to their un-derlings.

They had obviously been invited by MacArthur to ac-company him to Korea-"space available" did not apply to the Supreme Commander's personal aircraft; passage on the Bataan was by invitation only.

If the members of the Palace Guard were surprised to see Jeanette Priestly in Korea, it did not register on then-faces. But the Supreme Commander himself smiled when he saw her, and motioned her over to him.

There's a headline if there ever was one, Jeanette thought: MACARTHUR IN KOREA.

But how do I get the story out?

"Good morning, Jeanette," he said, offering her his hand. "I wasn't aware that you were here."

"I came yesterday," Jeanette said, and blurted, "and was almost caught in Seoul."

"Seoul will, I am sure, soon be rid of the invader," MacArthur said.

A battered sedan, a Studebaker, not nearly as nice as the Buicks Jeanette had seen deserted at Kimpo, drove up, and Colonel Sidney Huff walked up to them.

"The car is here, General," he said.

"Jeanette, if you would like to wait until I have a chance to assess the situation here," Douglas MacArthur said, "you may, if you like, ride back to Tokyo with me on the Bataan."

`Thank you," Jeanette said. "That's very kind of you."

I can file from Tokyo just as quick as the Palace Guard can.

"Not at all," MacArthur said. "For the time being, at least, this is no place for a lady."

Jeanette had another unladylike thought, but managed to smile as dazzlingly as possible at him. And then she smiled dazzlingly at the Palace Guard, who were reacting to her being on the Bataan as if she were a whore in church.

She waited until MacArthur's small convoy had driven off, and then sat down on the grass by the side of the run-way, took her Royal portable typewriter out, and began to type.

FOR CHITRIB

PRESS IMMEDIATE

NOTE TO EDITOR AP, UP AND INS WILL HAVE PICS

SLUG MACARTHUR COMES TO KOREA

BY JEANETTE PRIESTLY, TRIBUNE WAR COR-RESPONDENT SUWON, SOUTH KOREA JUNE 27-THE REMAINS OF AN AIR FORCE C54 DESTROYED BY NORTH KOREAN YAK FIGHTERS WERE STILL SMOLDERING WHEN THE BATAAN, THE GLISTENING C54 OF SUPREME COMMAN-DER GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR, TOUCHED DOWN AT THIS BATTERED AIRFIELD 30 MILES SOUTH OF THE JUST CAPTURED SOUTH KOREAN CAPITAL OF SEOUL THIS AFTER-NOON. WEARING HIS FAMILIAR BATTERED CAP AND A FUR-COLLARED LEATHER JACKET, HIS CORN-COB PIPE PERCHED JAUNTILY IN HIS MOUTH, GENERAL OF THE ARMY DOUGLAS MACARTHUR CONFIDENTLY PREDICTED TO THIS REPORTER THAT SEOUL WILL SOON BE RID OF THE INVADER.

She looked up from the portable, saw that the Palace Guard had somehow found a Jeep and were obviously in-tending to join the MacArthur convoy.

She slammed the cover shut on the Royal, jumped to her feet, and ran to it. She climbed over the rear seat just as it started to move.

"Yes, thank you," Jeanette said, beaming. "I would like to go along."

[FIVE]

WASHINGTON, D.C.

0905 26 JUNE 1950

The President of the United States came out the front door of Blair House, almost jauntily descended the stairway, and indicated with a nod of his head that he was going to turn right.

Two of the six Secret Service agents on the detail quickly took up positions so that they could precede him; two waited to bring up the tail; and two positioned them-selves so that they would be just a few steps behind him. Across the street, two Chevrolet Suburbans started their engines. One moved ahead of the little parade and the sec-ond positioned itself behind the tail.

The Secret Service agent heading the parade turned and looked questioningly at the President.

"The Foster Lafayette," the President said. "Senator Fowler."

"Thank you, sir," the Secret Service agent said. Senator Richardson K. Fowler maintained a suite in the Foster Lafayette. Not an ordinary suite, though God knew suites in the Lafayette were large and elegant as they came, but an apartment made up of two suites, and furnished, the President had learned, with museum-quality antiques.

Fowler was quite wealthy, and unlike some of his peers in the Senate, made no effort at all to conceal it. He con-sidered public service a privilege, and living in Washing-ton, D.C, even as well as he did, as the terrible price he had to pay for that privilege.

The President walked briskly, three times tipping his white Panama straw hat and smiling and waving to people on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue who recognized him. The Foster Lafayette Hotel was directly across Pennsyl-vania Avenue from the White House, the far side-from Blair House-of Lafayette Square. The general manager of the hotel was standing under the marquee beside the doorman, obviously waiting for the President.

The Secret Service agent in the lead again turned and looked questioningly at the President.

"I guess when I invited myself to breakfast, Senator Fowler told him," the President said.

The President shook hands with both the general man-ager-and called him by name-and the doorman, entered the hotel, walked across the lobby to a waiting elevator, and followed the lead two Secret Service agents onto it.

When the elevator reached the top floor, the President saw that a large, very black man wearing a gray cotton jacket and a wide smile was standing by the open door of Senator Fowler's suite.

"Good morning, Mr. President," he said. "Nice to see you again, sir. The senator's waiting for you."

The President offered him his hand.

"Hello, Franklin," Truman said. "It's good to see you, too,"

He followed the lead two Secret Service agents into Fowler's apartment.

Richardson K. Fowler and Fleming Pickering rose to their feet.

"Good morning, Mr. President," Fowler said.

"Good morning," the President said. "Could these fel-lows wait in your study?"

"Of course, Mr. President," Fowler said.

"It's through there," the President said, pointing. "When I need you, I'll call."

The Secret Service agent was visibly unhappy with his orders to be left alone.

"It's all right," Truman went on. "Senator Fowler thinks I'm a threat to the country, but I don't think he's thinking of assassination. Go on."

"Yes, Mr. President," the Secret Service agent said, and trailed by the other, left the room, closing the door after themselves.

The President turned to Fowler.

"You can call me `Harry,' Dick. We've known each other a long time."

"A long enough time to know better, Mr. President. What is it they say, `beware of Democrats wearing smiles'?"

Truman smiled, and offered his hand to Fleming Picker-ing.

"Thank you for coming, General," he said. "And I have to say that for a man who spent the night flying across the country, you don't look very mussed."

"I was very mussed, Mr. President, when we landed at Andrews," Pickering said.

Franklin appeared with a silver coffee set and placed it on the sitting room's coffee table.

"What did you set up for breakfast, Franklin?" Fowler asked.

"A little buffet, Senator. I thought you gentlemen would rather be alone."

"Why don't you move the coffee into the dining room? Then I won't spill it on my new tie."

"Yes, sir," Franklin said, and picked up the tray and car-ried it into the dining room, with the three men following him.

He set the tray on a table that would hold sixteen diners, then left the room.

"Before we go a word further, it is agreed that this is out of school, right?" Truman asked.

"Agreed, Mr. President," Fowler said.

"Yes, sir," Pickering said.

The President looked at Pickering as if making up his mind about something.

"What is it they say in the Navy, General? `Let's clear the decks'?"

"It's something like that, Mr. President. But I'm really not a general, Mr. President. That was a long time ago."

"Let's clear that part of the deck first, General," Truman said. "Yes, you are. You are a brigadier general, USMC, Reserve."

Pickering was about to argue when he stopped.

Goddamn it, maybe I am. Probably, I am. I was never discharged, in `45. I was released from active duty and or-dered to my home of record.

"And as your commander-in-chief, General, I can order you to keep anything that's said in this room to yourself."

Pickering looked at him but said nothing.

"Unfortunately, I can't order you around, Dick," Truman went on, "as either a senator or a journalist. I can only ap-peal to your patriotism. We've said-and probably be-lieve-some unkind things about each other, but I don't think you've ever questioned my patriotism, and I certainly have never questioned yours."

"What is it you want, Mr. President?" Fowler asked, coldly.

"I don't want headlines on the front page of every news-paper in the country reading, `MacArthur Ignored Warning of North Korean Attack,'" Truman said.

"In point of fact, Mr. President," Pickering said, "I don't believe General MacArthur was aware of McCoy's assess-ment."

"He's in charge over there, General," Truman said. "He should have been made aware of this assessment. He's re-sponsible for the actions-or lack of action-of his subor-dinates."

Pickering shrugged his agreement.

"We're about to go to war over there," Truman said. "The League of Nations failed because nobody paid any attention to it. Remember when Mussolini was getting ready to in-vade Ethiopia in 1936? The Emperor of Ethiopia... what's his name, Dick?"

"Haile Selassie, Mr. President," Senator Fowler fur-nished.

"Haile Selassie went to the League of Nations," Truman went on, "and the League of Nations told Mussolini to stop. He knew the League of Nations had no teeth, so he invaded Ethiopia. And the League of Nations didn't- couldn't-do a damned thing about it."

"I remember, Mr. President," Fowler said.

"And so the dictators of the world-Italian, German and Japanese-drew the logical conclusion that since the League of Nations was a joke, they could get away with anything they wanted to do. And that gave us World War Two."

"You think the United Nations is going to be different?" Fowler asked, on the edge of sarcasm.

"For one thing, Dick," Truman said. "We belong to the UN; we didn't belong to the League of Nations. For an-other, we now face the indescribable horrors of a nuclear war. We can't afford to have the UN fail."

Fowler shrugged, in agreement.

"The UN has just told the North Koreans to get out of South Korea," Truman went on. "If the UN can't make that order stick, the whole world's likely to go up in a nuclear explosion. So the North Koreans are going to have to get out of South Korea. I've decided the United States has to do whatever is necessary to see that's done."

"By ourselves, if necessary?" Fowler asked.

"I don't think it will come down to that, but if it does, yes, by ourselves."

"Mr. President, have you read McCoy's assessment?" Pickering asked.

"Admiral Hillenkoetter told me about it."

"McCoy feels that the Army of Occupation of Japan is neither equipped nor trained for combat-that they are fac-ing a superior force."

"He's competent to make a judgment like that?"

"I have absolute faith in his judgment, Mr. President," Pickering said.

"Well, he's been right so far, hasn't he?" Truman said. "MacArthur feels he can `contain the situation.' I told him to send a team to Korea to see how bad things really are."

For a long moment, no one said a word.

"There're two possibilities," Truman said. "That once the North Koreans understand we're taking action-I've given MacArthur permission to bomb railheads and bridges, that sort of thing-they'll back down, as the Rus-sians backed down in Berlin after we ran the airlift."

"Mr. President, they may have interpreted Acheson's speech, leaving Korea out of our zone of interest, as mean-ing we would not react."

Truman looked at him, and nodded, and then went on.

"The other possibility is that they-and the Russians, who are behind this-will decide it's the League of Na-tions and Ethiopia all over again, and keep up their attack. That means the involvement of American ground forces. I think that's what's going to happen."

He looked between Fowler and Pickering.

"After Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt fired the Pearl Harbor brass-Admiral Kimmel and General Short-for what amounted to dereliction of duty. They hadn't ade-quately prepared for what happened, and they deserved to be fired. General MacArthur-if we are to believe this young captain of yours, General-has not adequately pre-pared for what is happening there now. Do I have to ex-plain the problems that would be caused if I relieved MacArthur for dereliction of duty and ordered him home?"

"No, sir, Mr. President," Fowler said.

"If I have to say so, Dick, I'm not talking about political damage to Harry Truman. I don't really give a damn about that."

"Mr. President, I will not make... Captain McCoy's as-sessment and what happened in Tokyo will not be made available to the press," Fowler said.

"Or to, for example, Senator Taft?"

Senator Robert Taft (R., Ohio) who had presidential as-pirations, was one of Truman's severest critics.

"I won't tell Bob, either," Fowler said. "Or anyone else. At least for the time being."

"The American people are going to have enough trouble with us going to war in the first place. If we start taking a whipping in the beginning, and it came out MacArthur was warned this was coming and did nothing about it..."

"I understand, Mr. President," Fowler said.

"I'm glad you do," Truman said. He looked between the two of them again. "Now I'm getting hungry. I had no ap-petite at all when I walked in here."

"Mr. President," Pickering said. "I don't want McCoy hurt by what he did."

"I'll tell you what's going to happen to Captain McCoy, General," Truman said. "The Commandant of the Marine Corps has been ordered (a) not to separate him and (b) to have him report as soon as possible to Admiral Hillenkoetter. I declined to tell the Commandant what this is all about, and I'm not going to tell any of the brass, either."

"I don't want him hurt, Mr. President," Pickering re-peated. "He's a captain. When people are looking for scapegoats, captains are expendable."

"What Captain McCoy needs is a protector in high places-is that what you're saying?"

"Yes, Mr. President, I guess it is."

Truman looked at him for a moment, then nodded and smiled.

"I was going to save this for later," Truman said, "but we're clearing the decks, right?"

"I don't think I follow you, Mr. President."

"How's your health, General? Could you pass a physi-cal?"

"Yes, sir, I probably could."

What the hell is he suggesting? That I go back in the Marines?

"I think what's about to happen to you, General, is going to happen to a large number of other people in the next few weeks," Truman said.

"Sir?"

Truman walked to a wall-side credenza, picked up a telephone, and dialed a number from memory.

"This is the President," he said. "Get the Commandant of the Marine Corps for me, will you, please?"

It took less than sixty seconds.

"This is the President, General," Truman said. "I under-stand you're acquainted with Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, USMC Reserve?"

There was a very short pause.

"Please cause the necessary orders to be issued calling the general to active service for an indefinite period, effec-tive immediately, and further placing him on duty with the Central Intelligence Agency," Truman ordered. "It won't be necessary to notify him-he's with me now."

"Jesus H. Christ!" Pickering said.

Truman put the phone down and turned to Pickering.

"Take as long as you need before actually reporting to Ad-miral Hillenkoetter," he said. "But obviously, the sooner the better."

He smiled at Pickering's obvious discomfiture.

"Can we now have our breakfast?" he asked.

[SIX]

OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY CHIEF FOR OFFICER RECORDS

OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT CHIEF OF STAFF, G-l

HEADQUARTERS,

CAMP PENDLETON, CALIFORNIA

2330 29 JUNE 1950

Captain Kenneth R. McCoy had learned the legalities of leave as a PFC of the 4th Marines in Shanghai.

Leave is earned at the rate of 2.5 days per month, which adds up to 30 days a year. Leave may be accrued up to a to-tal of 60 days; anything over that is lost. Leave begins at 0001 the first day of leave and ends at 2359 on the last day.

He also believed that whatever was going to happen to him-now that there was a war-was not going to happen after duty hours, specifically, after 1630, on 29 June, the last day of his leave.

When he and Ernie had arrived in San Diego at 1545 that afternoon, therefore, he had gone to the Coronado Beach Hotel, gotten the key to the room from the desk clerk, gone upstairs, had a shower, and then gone down to the bar with Ernie to have a drink and discuss with her the possibilities.

There were several of them, starting with the most likely one, that the war in Korea was so new that there had not been time for the Corps to put into effect any new we're-going-to-war regulations. In that case, Captain McCoy would be separated from the Naval service on 30 June 1950.

It was also possible that we're-going-to-war regulations had been put into effect, and the most likely result of that would be that separations from the Naval service would be suspended either indefinitely, or, as they had been in War II, for the duration of the war plus six months.

It was also possible that while they'd been off seeing Ernie's folks, and the Bannings and the Zimmermans, Eighth and Eye had come through with the determination that ex-Corporal, now Captain, McCoy should be allowed to reenlist in the Corps as a staff sergeant, or a gunnery sergeant, or a master sergeant, and that he would be sepa-rated from commissioned service, but not the Marine Corps, and he could volunteer to reenlist as a staff sergeant or a gunnery sergeant, or a master sergeant, and if he didn't voluntarily do so, be retained as a private, USMC, until a determination about what the hell to do about this guy could be reached.

Ken and Ernie had had two drinks in the bar, then walked hand in hand along the beach, and then gone back and had a very nice dinner in the hotel dining room, and then gone to their room and had another shower, this one together, and then fooled around in the conjugal bed until 2215, when he'd risen from the bed, dressed in a uniform, told his wife not to go anywhere, he'd be back just as soon as he'd signed off leave at Pendleton.

Then he'd gotten in the Buick and driven out to Pendle-ton, arriving, as he had planned, at the office of the Deputy Chief for officer records with thirty minutes to spare.

There was a master gunner and a corporal on duty. The master gunner, a portly man in his late forties, did not bel-low "attention on deck" when McCoy pushed the door open. Master gunners rarely-if ever-pay that much mil-itary courtesy to lowly captains, especially at almost mid-night.

"Good evening," McCoy said. "Where do I sign off leave?"

"What's your name, Captain?" the master gunner asked.

"McCoy."

The master gunner reached for the telephone on his desk.

"Mister, I asked you a question," McCoy said.

There was a tone in McCoy's voice-a tone of command, of I'm a captain and you're a master gunner, and you will respect that difference in rank-that the master gunner did not expect.

He had been told by Major Robert B. Macklin to keep an eye out for Captain McCoy, Kenneth R. Out of school, between old warriors, he had told the master gunner that he knew McCoy, that the Corps had finally realized McCoy should have never been commissioned in the first place, and that McCoy had reported to Pendleton for involuntary separation. He had told him further that Eighth and Eye had determined that McCoy should be offered the chance to enlist as a gunnery ser-geant on his separation.

That fact-that tomorrow Captain McCoy would either be a civilian or a gunnery sergeant-had influenced the master gunner's decision not to stand up or call "attention on deck" when McCoy had come in the office.

The master gunner now made another decision-based on right now this clown's still a captain-and let the tele-phone fall back in its cradle.

"Sir," he said. "My orders are to inform Major Macklin the moment you showed up here."

"Have you any idea what that's all about?" McCoy asked.

"No, sir, I don't. But if the captain will have a seat, I'm sure it will be cleared up in a couple of minutes."

He reached for the telephone again.

"Get Colonel Brewer on the horn, please," McCoy said.

"Sir?"

"You heard me," McCoy said.

The master gunner made another decision, based both on the tone of the clown's voice and the fact that he was still a captain, and dialed Colonel Brewer's quarters number.

He was aware that McCoy's eyes were on him.

Colonel Brewer answered on the third ring.

"Sir. Matthews. I have a Captain McCoy here in the of-fice. He asked me to call you."

"Finally!" Colonel Brewer said. "Put him on, Matthews."

"Aye, aye, sir," Master Gunner Matthews said, and held out the phone to the clown.

"McCoy, sir," McCoy said. "Sorry to bother you at home."

"I can't tell you how glad I am to hear your voice," Brewer said. "Stay right there. I'll be there in twenty min-utes."

"Sir, my wife expects me to be coming back to the ho-tel."

"Call her and tell her that's on hold; I'll explain every-thing when I see you."

"Aye, aye, sir," McCoy said, and broke the connection with his finger. He looked at Matthews. "How do I get an outside line? I have to call `Diego."

"Captain, that phone's for official business."

"You're an interesting man, mister," McCoy said. "Most master gunners I know are anything but chickenshit." He paused. "What do I do? Dial operator?"

"Nine," Master Gunner Matthews said.

McCoy called Ernie and told her something had come up, and he would be delayed; he could call when he knew something.

Matthews took the telephone from McCoy and started to dial.

"You are not to inform Major Macklin that I have spo-ken to Colonel Brewer. You understand that? That was an order," McCoy said.

"Aye, aye, sir," Master Gunner Matthews said, finished dialing, and when Major Macklin answered, informed him that Captain McCoy was in the office.

He hung up the phone and looked at McCoy.

"Major Macklin, sir, says that you are not to leave the office until he gets here."

"Okay," McCoy said.

"Captain, I'm just following my orders."

"I understand."

"Major Macklin led me to understand that you know each other," Matthews said.

"Then you probably have had a fascinating recital of my time in the Corps," McCoy said. "Yes, mister, Major Macklin and I know each other very well."

Matthews met McCoy's eyes.

"Corporal," he ordered. "Get the captain a cup of cof-fee."

Major Robert B. Macklin, USMC, and Lieutenant Colonel Peter S. Brewer showed up in the office within three min-utes of each other, Macklin first. Macklin was in full uni-form.

"Attention on deck!" Master Gunner Matthews bel-lowed when Macklin came through the door.

He, McCoy, and the corporal popped to attention.

"As you were," Macklin said. He walked up to McCoy.

"Where the hell have you been, McCoy?"

"Sir, I have been on ordinary leave."

"I spent several hours on the telephone in a fruitless search for you," Macklin said.

McCoy didn't reply.

"Get Colonel Brewer on the telephone for me," Macklin ordered.

Master Gunner Matthews dialed a number.

After a long moment, looking at McCoy, Matthews re-ported, "Sir, there is no answer."

"Try it again," Macklin ordered, and then turned back to McCoy. "My orders are to notify Colonel Brewer the mo-ment I have located you."

"Yes, sir."

"In the event I am unable to reach him tonight, I have no intention of letting you out of sight again," Macklin said. "Mister Matthews, is there a cot here?"

"Yes, sir."

"Am I to understand, Major, that I'm under some sort of restriction? Am I under arrest?"

"What you are, Captain, is ordered not to leave this room until I establish contact with Colonel Brewer. I don't know what you've done now, McCoy, but I hope they throw the book at you."

"Yes, sir," McCoy said.

"Attention on deck," Master Gunner Matthews bel-lowed, as Lieutenant Colonel Brewer came through the door.

Colonel Brewer was wearing Bermuda shorts and a red T-shirt with a gold representation of the Marine emblem covering most of the chest.

"As you were," Brewer said. He turned to Macklin. "That will be all, Macklin," he said. "You can go home now. Sorry to have to have ruined your evening, but this was important."

McCoy looked between Macklin and Matthews.

"Sir," he said. "Mister Matthews had the duty. Major Macklin just got here."

"That's very interesting," Brewer said. "Between now and 0800, Macklin, try to come up with a good reason for your not being here until Captain McCoy showed up as you were ordered to do."

"Sir..."

"I'll hear your reasons at 0800. You are dismissed."

"Aye, aye, sir," Macklin said, and with as much dignity as he could muster, came to attention, did a left-face move-ment, and walked out of the building.

"Sir, can I ask what's going on?" McCoy asked.

"I hardly know where to begin," Brewer said. "But first things first: Matthews, in this order, call General Dawkins at his quarters and tell him Captain McCoy has shown up, and then call Colonel Wade and tell him the same thing and that General Dawkins has been notified."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Attention on deck!" Master Gunner Matthews bellowed, as Brigadier General Clyde W. Dawkins came into the building.

"As you were," General Dawkins said.

He crossed the room to Captain McCoy.

"Goddamn, Killer, where have you been?" he said, and then he wrapped his arms around him. "Christ, it's good to see you!"

"It's good to see you, too, sir," McCoy said.

"Let me start with the good news. You're not getting the boot. The bad news is that I'm ordered to get you to Wash-ington as soon as possible. To that end, an Air Force F-94-that's a two-seater jet-has been waiting for you at Miramar for the last three days."

"Sir, my wife is at the Coronado Beach...."

"I'm a general now, Killer, indulge me," Dawkins said. "Let me finish before you start arguing with me."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Your orders are to report here for duty," Dawkins said, and handed him a three-by-five card.

Director's Office

East Building,

2430 E Street

Washington, D.C.

"Sir, I don't know what this is," McCoy said.

"That's the CIA complex," Dawkins said. "The person you are to report to is Brigadier General Fleming Picker-ing."

Dawkins saw the look of surprise on McCoy's face.

"Yeah, I thought that was interesting, too."

"What's going on?" McCoy asked.

Dawkins threw his hands up helplessly.

"That's all I know, Killer. Honestly."

"Sir, my wife's at the Coronado Beach."

"So you said."

"And we drove all day to get here."

"Okay. You made your point," Dawkins said. He turned to Master Gunner Matthews. "Mister, is there a message form in that desk?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'm going to dictate a message, which you will then type, and the corporal will then take to the message cen-ter."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Matthews picked up a pencil and took a lined pad from the desk.

"Priority, Urgent," Dawkins dedicated. "From Deputy CG, Camp Pendleton. To Headquarters USMC, personal attention, the Commandant. Copy to Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, USMC. Captain Kenneth McCoy, USMC, will depart Miramar NAS aboard USAF F-94 air-craft 0800 30 June ETA Andrews AFB NLT 1600 30 June signature Dawkins, BrigGen, USMC. Got it?"

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Captain McCoy," Dawkins said.

"Yes, sir?"

"It is the desire of the deputy commanding general that you and your lovely wife take breakfast with him and his lovely wife at 0630 tomorrow at the Coronado Beach. Af-ter which, you will be transported to the Miramar NAS to comply with your orders. Can you fit that into your busy schedule?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then, considering the hour, Captain, I suggest you get moving."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"At the risk of repeating myself, Killer, I don't know what you're up to now, I don't care what you're up to now. But it's damned good to see you."

"Thank you, sir."

Chapter Six

Q: Mr. President, everybody is asking in this country, are we or are we not at war? The President: We are not at war. The members of the United Nations are going to the relief of the Korean republic to suppress a bandit raid on the Republic of Korea.

Q: Would it be correct under your explanation to call this "a police action under the United Na-tions"?

The President: Yes, that is exactly what it amounts to.

EXCERPT FROM PRESIDENTIAL PRESS CONFERENCE,

BLAIR HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

30 JUNE I95O

[ONE]

OFFICE OF THE COMMANDANT, USMC

WASHINGTON, D.C.

1430 30 JUNE 1950

"The Commandant will see you now, sir," the master gun-nery sergeant said to Fleming Pickering, as he walked to the double doors of the Commandant's office. He knocked, but didn't wait for a reply before opening the door. "Mr. Pickering, sir."

The Commandant was standing just inside his office.

"That's General Pickering, Gunny," General Clifton Cates said, in a soft southern accent. "You might want to make a note of that."

Cates was a tall, sharply featured man with an aristo-cratic air about him.

"Come on in, Flem," Cates went on. "It's good to see you."

"Thank you for seeing me without an appointment," Pickering said, as he took Cates's extended hand. He chuckled. "I was trying to decide whether or not to salute."

"Not indoors, Flem, or while in civilian attire," Cates said, smiling.

"I went to the officers' sales store at Marine Barracks yesterday, to buy uniforms," Pickering said. "No ID card; they wouldn't sell them to me."

Cates chuckled.

"I think the captain there thought he was dealing with a crazy old coot who thought he was a Marine general," Pickering went on. "Later, I realized he was right."

Cates laughed, then stepped around Pickering and opened his office door.

"Gunny," he ordered. "General Pickering's going to need an ID card, and while I think of it, a physical. Set it up to get him an ID card right away, and then call Bethesda and make an immediate appointment for the physical." He paused. "But only after you get us some coffee."

He closed the door, waved Pickering to a red leather couch, and sat down beside him.

"Frankly, I sort of hoped I would hear from you, Flem," Cates said. "Can you tell me what's going on? Right now, I'm just a Marine officer who's obeying his orders and not asking questions about them."

"I hardly know where to start, sir," Pickering said. "This is probably the best place."

Pickering opened his briefcase, took from it a manila en-velope, and handed it to Cates.

Cates opened the envelope and started to read. His eye-brows went up and he pursed his lips.

A staff sergeant came into the office carrying a tray with two china mugs of coffee, placed it on the coffee table by the couch, and then left.

"Where'd this come from?" Cates asked, not lifting his eyes from the assessment.

"It was written by a Marine officer then on the staff of Naval Element, SCAP, in Tokyo," Pickering said.

"McCoy, right?" Cates asked. "What do they call him? `Killer'?"

"Yes, sir."

"I have been advised by Clyde Dawkins-you remem-ber him from Guadalcanal? He had Marine Air Group 21."

"Yes, sir. My son was in VMF-229 in MAG-21."

"Clyde's now Deputy CG at Pendleton. He sent me a TWX saying McCoy left Miramar at 0800 this morning in an Air Force two-seater fighter for here."

"Yes, sir. I had a telephone call from Mrs. McCoy telling me that."

"Now that I think of it, you were supposed to get a copy of the TWX," Cates said, then went off at a tangent: "This thing isn't signed?"

"The original was signed and submitted to MacArthur's G-2, who ordered it destroyed," Pickering said. "The Pres-ident doesn't want that to get out."

"Then why did you tell me?"

"I thought you should know, sir."

Cates considered that, nodded, and said, "Thank you. That detail will go no further."

"Thank you, sir," Pickering said.

"But I'd like to have this."

"I thought you should have it, sir. That's why I asked to see you," Pickering said, then went on: "What happened was that I was in Tokyo, went to see McCoy, and he gave me that assessment. And told me he was being involuntar-ily released from active duty. When I got back to the States, I went to see Admiral Hillenkoetter at the CIA, and gave it to him."

"Things are beginning to make sense," Cates said.

"Apparently, after the North Koreans came across the 38th parallel, Hillenkoetter told the President about the as-sessment. The President called me, and asked me to come here. I got here on the twenty-sixth. The President came to Senator Fowler's apartment for breakfast, got Fowler's as-surance that the... rejection of the early warning would not get into the press, and then ordered me to active duty."

"Why?"

"I'm not sure," Pickering said. "Possibly to make sure I keep my mouth shut."

"There has to be more to it than that," Cates said. "Out of school, there is some dissatisfaction with Hillenkoetter's CIA. And you were a deputy director of the OSS, weren't you?"

"I don't think... Jesus Christ, I hope not. I'm wholly unqualified to run the CIA."

"As I remember it, I thought you were wholly unquali-fied to be the First Division G-2. And you proved me dead wrong."

Pickering didn't reply.

"Of course, that was when I thought you were a sailor," Cates went on, smiling. "Before Jack NMI Stecker... I re-member this clearly; we were in General Vandegrift's con-ference tent, and I had just referred to you as `that sailor G-2 of ours,' or perhaps that `swabbie G-2' when Jack stood up, and `Begging the colonel's pardon, when you and I were at Belleau Wood, so was Pickering. He was a Marine then, and he's a Marine now.'"

Pickering met Cates's eyes for a moment, then said, firmly, "I'm unqualified to run the CIA, period."

"How about to be a new broom in the Pacific, sweeping out the incompetents we apparently have there?"

"That, either," Pickering said.

Cates went off on another tangent. "Let me tell you what shape the Corps is in," he said. "I was going over the numbers before you came in." He got off the couch and went and sat behind his desk, and began to read from a folder on his desk.

"Total regular establishment strength, as of today, 74,279 officers and men..." "That's all?" Pickering blurted.

"Broken down into 40,364 officers and men in the oper-ating forces," Cates read on, "24,452 in the support forces, and 3,871 in other duties... embassy guards, afloat, that sort of thing."

"My God, I had no idea how much the Corps had been cut back," Pickering said.

"In Fleet Marine Force, Pacific-in Camp Pendleton, mostly-we have 7,779 officers and men in the First Ma-rine Division-"

"Only seven thousand men in the First Marine Divi-sion?" Pickering asked, incredulously.

"The First Marine Division (Reinforced)," Cates con-firmed, a tone of sarcasm in his voice. "You're used to a war-strength division, Flem, of 1,079 officers and 20,131 men."

Pickering shook his head in disbelief.

"In addition to the First Marine Division, we have 3,733 officers and men in the First Marine Aircraft Wing. That's roughly half the men called for in peacetime. A wartime wing calls for about 12,000 men."

"My God!"

"Roughly, the regular Marine Corps is about one-third of the Marine Corps," Cates went on. "There are 128,959 officers and men in the reserve components. There's some 39,867 people in the organized reserves, ground and air, and another 90,444 in what we call `the volunteer re-serve'-individual reservists, in other words; we don't like to think of them as `unorganized.'"

"Pick, my son, is in the organized reserve."

"I know," Cates said. "I saw his name in the paper a cou-ple of weeks ago, when he set the San Francisco-to-Tokyo speed record, and I was curious enough to check."

"I was on the plane," Pickering said.

"He ever discuss with you why he's in the reserve?" Cates asked.

"I don't think you'll like the answer," Pickering said.

"Go ahead."

"He said all he has to do is show up at El Toro and the benevolent Marine Corps gives him expensive toys to play with," Pickering said. "He really loves flying the Corsair."

Cates chuckled. "I suspect mat motivates many of the aviation reservists," he said. "We don't have recruiting problems with the organized aviation reserve; and it's at ninety-four percent of its authorized strength. The ground elements-despite a good deal of recruiting effort-are at seventy-seven percent. Buzzing Camp Pendleton at four hundred knots in a Corsair is a lot more fun on a weekend than crawling through it on your stomach."

"And is the reserve going to be mobilized?" Pickering asked.

Cates nodded. "I would be very surprised if that doesn't happen. That was my motive for filling you in with all this data."

"Sir?"

"Sometime in the next few days, or weeks, someone at the upper echelons of government is going to say, `Call in the Marines.' That's our job, of course, and we'll go. But someone in the upper echelons of government should be aware that there are not that many Marines available to go. I suspect you'll be in a position to make that point, Flem, and I think it should be made."

"General, I really have no idea what I'll be doing at the CIA."

"Nevertheless, I think it's in the interests of the Corps to make sure you're prepared for whatever that turns out to be."

"I'm not sure I understand," Pickering said.

"Ed Banning worked for you all through the war, didn't he?"

"Yes, he did."

"When I had the 4th Marines in Shanghai, until May 1940, Ed was my intelligence officer," Cates said.

"I didn't know you knew him," Pickering said.

"He now commands Marine Barracks, Charleston, and teaches at the Citadel," Cates said. "Do you think he would be useful to you in the CIA?"

"Yes, sir."

"He's yours. Anyone else?"

"There's a master gunner at Parris Island, also ex-4th Marines, also ex-OSS. Ernie... Ernest W. Zimmerman. He speaks Japanese and two kinds of Chinese. I don't know about Korean, but it wouldn't surprise me."

"Spelled the way it sounds?" Cates asked, his pencil poised.

"Yes, sir," Pickering said. "General, I'm a little uncom-fortable with this. I may have no responsibilities at all at the CIA and-"

"On the other hand, you may have great responsibility," Cates cut him off. "Let me tell you, between two old Belleau Woods Marines, my greatest concern right now is for the Corps. First, of course, is the beating we're going to take when we go to war understrength and under-equipped. Right on the heels of that primary concern are A and B. A: We'll be sent to Korea, and, once we get there, will be unable, because of the cuts-though-the-bone economies of Mr. Johnson, to do what people expect the Marine Corps to do." Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, a Truman crony, had proudly announced he had "cut mili-tary excess and waste to the bone." "And B: When that happens, when the Corps can't do the impossible, it will prove what a lot of people-including our Commander-in-Chief-have been saying, that the United States doesn't need a Marine Corps."

`Truman said that?" Pickering asked, surprised.

"Words to that effect," Cates said. "And unfortunately, I think he really believes the Marine Corps is not needed."

"It's not a pretty picture, is it?" Pickering asked.

"I have faith the Corps will come through," Cates said. "But if I can raise the odds slightly in our favor by assign-ing three people to you..."

"Frankly, I think the best help I could provide will be to talk to Senator Fowler, give him these figures..."

"He knows the figures. I think he agrees with Truman."

"He never suggested anything like... putting the Corps out of business to me," Pickering protested loyally.

"He's a politician," Cates said. "Politicians never say anything to people that they suspect might be offensive."

Pickering didn't reply.

Cates rose from behind his desk and put out his hand.

"Flem, I have a meeting. They've prepared a draft order to organize a Marine Brigade at Pendleton, and I want to go over it."

"Of course," Pickering said.

"Stay in touch, please," Cates said.

"Aye, aye, sir," Pickering said.

The Commandant's gunnery sergeant was waiting for him in the outer office.

"If you'll come with me, please, General, they're wait-ing to take your photo for the ID card. And whenever you get to the hospital at Anacostia, they're waiting for you to take your physical. Have you got wheels, General, or should I get you a car?"

"I've got wheels, Gunny, thank you," Pickering said.

[TWO]

ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE

WASHINGTON, D.C.

1305 30 JUNE 1950

"Air Force Eight Eight Three, take taxiway three right to the Base Operations tarmac. You will be met."

"Understand taxiway three right. Do you mean a follow-me?"

"Eight three, negative. Your passenger will be met."

"Got it," the pilot of USAF F-94, tail number 490883, said, then switched to intercom. "You hear that, Captain?"

"I heard it. I don't know what it means," McCoy said.

The F-94 was met at Base Operations by a ground crew, who signaled for it to stop on the tarmac itself, rather than in the VIP parking area, and then rolled a ladder up to the side of the aircraft.

"Thanks for the ride," McCoy said.

"I loved it," the pilot replied. "That was the first cross-country I made in a long time without being ordered to watch my fuel consumption."

Not without some difficulty, McCoy unplugged the con-nections to his helmet, unfastened his shoulder harness, then the parachute connections, and then crawled some-what ungracefully out of the rear seat and down the ladder.

Two muscular young men in gray suits were waiting for him on the ground.

"Captain McCoy?" the shorter of the two asked.

McCoy nodded.

"Will you come with us, please, Captain?"

"Who are you? Come with you where?"

The shorter man held out a leather credentials wallet for McCoy to see.

"We're Secret Service, Captain."

"You couldn't give me a better look at that badge, could you?"

Visibly displeased with the request, the Secret Service agent again displayed his credentials.

"Okay?" he asked.

"Fine. Now, where are we going?" McCoy asked.

"The car is over here," the Secret Service agent replied. "You have any luggage?"

"It's in the trunk," McCoy said, sarcastically. "And I think the driver's going to want this back."

He started unzipping the high-altitude flight suit.

The pilot came down the ladder and helped him, then climbed back up the ladder carrying the suit with him.

McCoy saw that the ground crew had hooked up a heavy cable to the fuselage. The Secret Service man touched Mc-Coy's arm, and when McCoy looked at him, nodded to-ward the Base Operations building.

McCoy nodded back and started to walk. He did not think he was being abducted by gypsies to be held for ran-som. The Secret Service credentials looked legitimate, and probably were, but that was not the same thing as saying he was in the hands of the Secret Service. When he had been first with the Office of Management Analysis and later the OSS, he had had bona fide credentials as an agent of the Office of Naval Intelligence and as a U.S. Marshal, and had never been either.

These two guys were probably CIA agents with Secret Service credentials. So far as he knew, the Secret Service was responsible for chasing counterfeiters of money and protecting the President. He didn't have any phony money, and he couldn't imagine anyone suspecting him of being a threat to the President.

Their "car" was a black Chevrolet Suburban, with sev-eral shortwave antennae mounted on it. They loaded him into the rear, and he heard the door lock click after he got in.

And he knew Washington, so when they headed toward it on Highway 4, which turned into Pennsylvania Avenue before the District Line, he became more convinced that they were headed to the CIA office, which was in the 2400 block of E Street.

They stayed on Pennsylvania Avenue, and when he saw the White House through the windshield, he turned on his seat for a better look.

He didn't get one. The Suburban made a sudden turn to the right, and then before he could orient himself, a turn left into an alley, and then another left and then a right.

And then it stopped, and he heard the click as the rear door was unlocked. The door opened, and the larger of the "Secret Service" agents motioned him to get out.

They were in a courtyard of a house.

"Where are we?" McCoy asked. "What's this?"

"If you'll follow Agent Taylor, please, Captain?" the smaller agent said, and pointed. McCoy followed Taylor through a ground-floor steel door, down a corridor, then up a flight of carpeted stairs, and finally into a small room fur-nished with a small leather armchair, a small desk, a chair for that, and, on a table against the wall, a telephone.

"Please wait here, Captain," Agent Taylor said. "We'll be just outside."

By now, McCoy was convinced he was in the hands of the CIA, because the two clowns with Secret Service badges were behaving much like the OSS clowns-most of whom, in the beginning, had never seen a Jap or heard a weapon fired in anger-had behaved, copying their cloak-and-dagger behavior from watching spy movies.

He walked to the desk, rested his buttocks and his hands on it, and waited for Spy Movie, Act Two.

The door opened.

The President of the United States walked in.

It took McCoy a moment to believe what his eyes saw, and then he popped to attention.

"Stand at ease, Captain," the President said, offering his hand. "What did they do, sneak you in the back door?"

"Yes, sir."

"How was the flight?" the President asked.

"Very interesting, sir," McCoy replied, truthfully. "It's hard to believe you're moving that fast." And then he had another thought. "Mr. President, my uniform's a mess...."

"There were many occasions, Captain McCoy, when it was Captain Truman of Battery B, that my uniform was, with good reason, a mess."

McCoy didn't reply.

"I've seen your assessment of war in Korea in ninety days, Captain," the President said. "I wanted to have a look at you."

"Yes, sir," McCoy said.

"I don't want you to think before you answer these ques-tions, Captain. I want you to say the first thing that comes to your mind. Understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you think General MacArthur has seen your assess-ment?"

"No, sir."

"Why not?"

"I think he would have called me in, if he'd seen it."

"Why do you think he hasn't seen it?"

"General Willoughby didn't want him to see it; didn't give it to him."

"Why not?"

"I can only guess, sir."

"Guess."

"He had only recently given MacArthur an everything-is-peachy assessment."

"And that's why he ordered it destroyed?"

"I think that's the reason, sir."

"And you were aware you were defying your orders when you kept a copy?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you customarily disobey your orders?"

"Not often, sir."

"This was not the first time?"

"No, sir."

"Why, in this case?"

"I knew I had to do something with it, sir."

"You saw it as your duty?"

"Yes, sir."

"And that's why you gave it to General Pickering? You saw that as your duty?"

"Yes, sir."

"And if he had not conveniently been in Tokyo, then what?"

"I would have given it to him in San Francisco, sir."

"Two things," the President said. "First-you're getting this from the Commander-in-Chief-you did the right thing. Secondly, General Pickering is concerned that you'll be in hot water if what you did ever gets out. I hope to en-sure that it never gets out, but if it does, you will not be in any trouble. You understand that?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

The President extended his hand. "It's been a pleasure meeting you, Captain McCoy. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw one another again."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

The President went to the door, opened it, and stepped through it.

"Take Captain McCoy wherever he wants to go," Mc-Coy heard the President order. "And take him out the front door."

"Yes, Mr. President," he heard the shorter Secret Service agent say.

By the time McCoy was led to the front door of Blah-House and walked down the flight of stairs, the Chevrolet Suburban was at the curb.

He was again installed in the backseat and heard the door lock click.

"Where to, Captain?" the larger Secret Service agent asked.

McCoy fished in his short pocket and came with the three-by-five card General Dawkins had given him at Camp Pendleton.

"Twenty-four thirty E Street," he read from it. "The East Building."

"The CIA compound?"

"If that's what's there," McCoy said.

They were now driving down Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House. McCoy had a change of heart.

"No," he ordered. "Drop me at the Foster Lafayette."

"You're sure? That place is about as expensive as it gets."

"I'm sure," McCoy said.

He was a Marine. He had been a Marine since he was seventeen. Marines do not appear in public in mussed, sweaty uniforms, much less report for duty that way. The Foster Lafayette Hotel had a splendid-more important, very fast-valet service. And he thought he could avail himself of it.

The doorman of the Foster Lafayette was visibly surprised when a Chevrolet Suburban made an illegal U-turn in front of the marquee and a Marine captain in mussed and sweat-stained tropical worsteds got out.

"Thanks for the ride," McCoy said, and walked past the doorman into the lobby of the hotel, and then across the lobby to the desk.

"Good afternoon, sir," said the desk clerk, who was wearing a gray frock coat with a rose in the lapel, striped trousers, and a formal foulard.

"My name is McCoy," he said.

"I thought you might be Captain McCoy, sir. We've been expecting you, sir."

"You have?"

"We have a small problem, Captain. General Pickering left word that if he somehow missed you, we were to put you in the Pickering suite. And Mrs. McCoy called and said that when you arrived, you were to be put up in the American Personal Pharmaceuticals suite. Which would you prefer, sir?"

McCoy thought it over for a moment.

"In the final analysis, I suppose it's safer to ignore a gen-eral than your wife," he said. "And I'm going to need some instant valet service for this uniform."

The desk clerk snapped his fingers. A bellman appeared.

"Take Captain McCoy to the American Personal Phar-maceuticals suite," he ordered. "And send the floor waiter to the suite."

[THREE]

THE FOSTER LAFAYETTE HOTEL

WASHINGTON, D.C.

1730 30 JUNE 1950

The door chimes sounded, and Captain Kenneth R. McCoy, attired in a T-shirt and shorts-from the Foster Lafayette's Men's Shop, and for which he had paid, he noticed, as he signed the bill, five times as much as he had paid for essen-tially identical items in the Tokyo PX-went to answer it, expecting to find the floor waiter with his freshly cleaned uniform.

He found, instead, General Fleming Pickering, USMCR, standing there in civilian clothing.

"The manager of the establishment tells me you ignored another order of mine, Captain, but if you will pour me a stiff drink, I'll let it pass," Pickering said, putting out his hand.

"Ernie called ahead," McCoy said, "and told them to let me stay here. I don't have any money, and I thought it would be better to charge things to my father-in-law, who doesn't like me anyhow, than to you, sir."

"You can put a hell of a lot in one sentence," Pickering said, as he walked into the suite. "First things first, where does your father-in-law-who does, by the way, think very highly of you-keep the booze?"

"In here," McCoy said, leading him to a room off the sit-ting room that held a small, but fully stocked, bar.

Pickering rummaged through an array of bottles, finally triumphantly holding up a bottle of Famous Grouse.

"I have just been paid a left-handed compliment by a Navy doctor I don't think is as old as you," he said, as he found glasses." `For someone of your age, General, you're in remarkably good condition.'"

McCoy chuckled, and took the glass of straight Scots whiskey Pickering handed him.

"Cheers," Pickering said, and they touched glasses.

The door chime went off again.

"My uniform, probably," Ken said, and walked to the door. Pickering followed him.

This time it was the floor waiter, holding a freshly cleaned uniform on a hanger. He extended the bill for Mc-Coy to sign.

"Do you know who I am?" Pickering asked.

"Yes, sir, of course."

"Are you aware there is a standing order in this inn that Captain McCoy's money is no good?"

"Jesus..." McCoy said.

Pickering held up his hand to silence him.

"... issued by the dragon lady of the Foster chain, my wife, herself?"

"No, sir," the floor waiter said, smiling.

"Trust me, and be good enough to inform the manager."

"Yes, sir, Mr. Pickering," the floor waiter said, chuck-ling.

"And, truth being stranger than fiction, you may start re-ferring to me as `General,'" Pickering said.

"Yes, sir," the floor waiter said.

"You might be interested to know, further, that for some-one of my age, I have been adjudged to be in remarkably good shape."

"I'm glad to hear that, General," the floor waiter said, smiling. "It's good to have you in the inn again, General."

"Thank you," Pickering said.

"I wish you hadn't done that, General," McCoy said when the floor waiter had left.

"One, you said you had no money, and, two, since, hav-ing just passed my recall to active duty physical, I am again a general, I will remind you that captains are not per-mitted to argue with generals."

"Yes, sir," McCoy said. "You've been recalled?"

"By the President himself," Pickering said. "I did not volunteer. He just called the Commandant and told him to issue the orders. When I told the dragon lady, it caused her to shift into her highly-pissed-off mode. She thinks I vol-unteered, and then lied about it."

"I never heard you call her that before," McCoy said.

"The kindest thing she said-on the phone just now, be-fore I came down the corridor to find a friendly face-was that I was a `selfish adolescent who thinks of nothing but his own personal gratification.'"

"Ouch," McCoy said.

"What makes it worse is that I am about as welcome as syphilis at the CIA. Calling me to active duty was not Ad-miral Hillenkoetter's idea." He paused. "I went to him with your assessment, Ken."

"The President told me he'd seen it; he didn't say how he'd gotten it," McCoy said.

"The President told you he'd seen it?"

"They flew me here-from Miramar-in an Air Force jet, a two-seater fighter. When we landed at Andrews, two guys from the Secret Service met me. They took me to a house-just down the street from here-and put me in a little office and told me to wait. The door opened, and Pres-ident Truman walked in."

"Blair House," Pickering furnished. "They're redoing the White House from the walls in. That's where he lives, for the time being. What did he have to say?"

"Not much. He asked if I thought MacArthur had seen the assessment, and then-when I told him no, that Willoughby hadn't given it to him-asked why I thought he'd done that. I told him it was only a guess, but I sus-pected Willoughby had just given him an assessment that said there wouldn't be trouble in Korea. Then he told me that I had done the right thing in giving it to you; that you were concerned I'd be in trouble, and he said I wouldn't. Then he said he wouldn't be surprised if we saw each other again, and left. The whole thing didn't last three minutes."

"Sequence of events: I went, with Senator Fowler, to Hil-lenkoetter with a sanitized version of the assessment-your name wasn't on it-as soon as I got back from Japan. He said he'd look into it. He asked for your name, and I wouldn't give it to him. The next thing I heard was a tele-phone call from the President. He said that he knew of my `visit' to Hillenkoetter, and asked if I would come to Wash-ington; he wanted to meet with Fowler and me. I said yes. He also asked where you were. I said I didn't know where you were, except en route to Camp Pendleton. Two hours later I was in an F-94, and the next morning the President came here, to Fowler's apartment, asked Fowler to keep the assessment, the warning, from the press. Fowler agreed."

"Where'd they get my name?"

"I don't suppose that was hard, Ken," Pickering said. "I also told the President that I didn't want you to get in trou-ble, and he asked if I meant I thought you needed friends in high places, and the next thing, he's on the phone to the Commandant-personally-telling him to cut active-duty orders on me, effective immediately."

"Because I need a protector?"

"I spent forty minutes with General Cates this morning. He told me that-he implied; he's both too much a gentle-man and too smart to spell it out in so many words-that there is some dissatisfaction with Hillenkoetter and that it wouldn't surprise him if Truman had me in mind as a re-placement."

McCoy visibly thought that announcement over, but his face did not register surprise.

"You were a deputy director of the OSS," McCoy said.

"Who is, and you know this as well as I do, absolutely unqualified to be head of the CIA."

"You couldn't do any worse than this admiral. He should have known this was coming."

"I wouldn't know how to do any better."

"Yes, you would," McCoy said, simply.

"Maybe Hillenkoetter's heard the same thing," Picker-ing said. "That would explain the ice-cold reception I got over there."

"What are you going to do over there?" McCoy asked.

"We have an office in the East Building-that's where Hillenkoetter's office is-four rooms, sparsely furnished."

"In which we are going to do what?"

"I think they'll probably want to pick your brains about the North Korean/Chinese order of battle, but I have no idea what I'll be doing except that Ed Banning and Zim-merman are on their way here to help me to do it."

"How did that happen?"

"That was the Commandant's idea. He painted a pretty bleak picture of the readiness of the Corps to fight a war-"

"The First Marine Division," McCoy interrupted. "The First Marine Division, Reinforced, at Pendleton, has less than 8,000 men."

Pickering was at first surprised that McCoy knew that figure, but on reflection, was not. McCoy had always been a cornucopia of data; he learned something once, then never forgot it.

"-and is concerned that when the Corps can't pull off a miracle, as it will be expected to do, it will be ammunition for those who think we don't need a Marine Corps."

"How are you and Ed Banning supposed to help about that?"

Pickering thought that over, then said what had first come into his mind.

"Every time somebody says, `First Marine Division,' we interject, `which is at less than half wartime strength.'"

McCoy chuckled.

The telephone rang.

It was Ernie.

"Good," she said. "You're there."

"And so is the General," Ken said.

"Aunt Patricia told me. She is something less than thrilled."

"Where did you see her?"

"I'm in San Francisco. With her. I'm on what they call then 'red-eye special,' a midnight flight on TWA to New York. It gets there at seven in the morning. I'll take the train to Wash-ington. Are you going to be there when I get there?"

"Yes."

"Put Uncle Flem on the phone," she ordered, and he heard her say, `Talk to him, Aunt Pat."

He handed the phone to Pickering.

"Your wife," he said.

Pickering raised his eyebrows as he took the phone.

"Selfish adolescent speaking," he said. "Honey, honest to God, I didn't volunteer."

"Whatever you are, you're not a liar," McCoy heard Pa-tricia Fleming reply. "If I get on the plane with Ernie, are you going to be there, too?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Then I'll see you tomorrow," she said. "Will you still fit in your uniforms?"

"A young Navy doctor told me that I'm in remarkably good shape for my age. Where are my uniforms?"

"I found a couple here in the apartment. Shall I bring them?"

"Please, sweetheart. Thank you."

"How in the world did a couple of nice girls like Ernie and me wind up as Marine Corps camp followers?"

"You have very good taste, maybe?"

McCoy heard Patricia Fleming laugh, and then she hung up without saying anything else.

[FOUR]

HEADQUARTERS

BEAUFORT USMC AIR STATION

BEAUFORT, SOUTH CAROLINA

0830 1 JULY 1950

Colonel Edward J. Banning, USMC, in a fresh but already sweat-stained tropical worsted uniform, and carrying a canvas Valv-Pak, walked into the headquarters building and got his hand up in time to keep the Technical Sergeant on duty from leaping to his feet and bellowing "attention on deck."

"As you were," he said. "Sergeant, is Colonel Dunn somewhere around?"

"Sir, if you're Colonel Banning, he's expecting you."

"Guilty," Banning said. "Where do I find him?"

"Hold on, sir," the sergeant said, and picked up his tele-phone. He dialed a number, then announced, "Sir, Colonel Banning is here."

Lieutenant Colonel William C. Dunn, USMC, appeared a minute later, wearing a flight suit and holding a mug of coffee in his hand.

"Good morning, sir," he said.

"Hello, Billy," Banning said, as they shook hands.

He reached into his pocket and took out a sheet of tele-type paper, the second, carbon copy of what had come out of the machine, and handed it to Dunn.

Dunn reached in the knee pocket of his flight suit and handed Banning a sheet of teletype paper.

"The Colonel," he said, dryly, "might find this of inter-est. I think I know what yours says."

Both men read the teletype messages:

PRIORITY

CONFIDENTIAL

FROM: HQ USMC 1610 30 JUNE 1950

TO: COMMANDING OFFICER USMC BARRACKS CHARLESTON, SC

INFO: COMMANDING OFFICER MCAS BEAUFORT, SC

ISSUE APPROPRIATE ORDERS IMMEDIATELY DETACHING COLONEL EDWARD M. BAN-NING FOR INDEFINITE

PERIOD OF TEMPORARY DUTY HQ USMC.

COL BANNING WILL REPORT TO OFFICE OF THE COMMANDANT, USMC.

TRAVEL BY USMC AIRCRAFT FROM MCAS BEAUFORT, SC IS DIRECTED. PRIORITY AAAAA. TRAVEL WILL COMMENCE WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR (24) HOURS.

NO INQUIRIES CONCERNING OR REQUESTS FOR DELAY IN EXECUTION OF THESE ORDERS IS DESIRED.

FOR THE COMMANDANT USMC:

WILLIAM S. SHALEY MAG GEN USMC

PRIORITY

CONFIDENTIAL

FROM: HQ USMC 1610 30 JUNE 1950

TO: COMMANDING GENERAL

USMC RECRUIT TRAINING DEPOT PARRIS ISLAND SC

INFO: COMMANDING OFFICER MCAS BEAUFORT, SC

ISSUE APPROPRIATE ORDERS IMMEDI-ATELY DETACHING MASTER GUNNER ERNEST W. ZIMMERMAN FOR INDEFINITE PERIOD OF TEMPORARY DUTY HQ USMC.

SUBJECT OFFICER WILL REPORT TO OF- FICE OF THE COMMANDANT, USMC.

TRAVEL BY USMC AIRCRAFT FROM MCAS BEAUFORT, SC IS DIRECTED. PRIORITY AAAAA. TRAVEL WILL COMMENCE WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR (24) HOURS.

NO INQUIRIES CONCERNING OR REQUESTS FOR DELAY IN EXECUTION OF THESE ORDERS IS DESIRED.

FOR THE COMMANDANT USMC:

WILLIAM S. SHALEY MAG GEN USMC

"I think I know what this is, Colonel," Dunn said, as they exchanged the teletype messages. "The Commandant is holding a convention of real estate tycoons."

"You can go to hell, Colonel," Banning said. "I have no idea what this is all about."

"It might have something to do with what's going on in Korea," Dunn said. "It just came over the radio that MacArthur went over to have a look."

Banning grunted but didn't reply. "Zimmerman here?"

"He and Mae-Su, in my office. I thought you'd want to go together. Luddy drive you up?"

Banning nodded, and nodded toward the parking lot. "And passed the time delivering lecture 401 on the evils of the communist empire. She's convinced the Russians-ex-cuse me, the Bolsheviks; Luddy is a Russian-are behind this Korean business."

"And you aren't?"

"Billy, I just don't know," Banning said.

"Well, your chariot awaits, Colonel. Unless you want a cup of coffee or something?"

"I hate long farewells," Banning said. "Let's get the show on the road."

"I'll go get the Zimmermans," Dunn said.

"What kind of a chariot do we have?"

"Gooney-Bird," Dunn said. "Driven by yours truly."

"That's very nice, Billy. But I know you've got things to do around here."

"I could say, `my pleasure, sir, there's nothing I would rather do,' but being a Marine officer, the truth is that I'm headed for Eighth and Eye, too. I think somebody up there thinks we're going to have a war; they want to talk about mobilization. Taking you in the Gooney-Bird means I can take some of my officers and senior noncoms with me."

[FIVE]

ROOM 505

EAST BUILDING, THE CIA COMPLEX

2430 E STREET

WASHINGTON, D.C.

1400 1 JULY 1950

Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, USMCR, was sprawled somewhat uncomfortably on a chrome framed, tweed-upholstered couch reading The Washington Star and Captain Kenneth R. McCoy, USMC, was sitting behind General Pickering's desk, reading The Washington Post, when the telephone on the desk rang.

McCoy looked at Pickering for guidance, and Pickering mimed picking up the telephone.

"General Pickering's office, Captain McCoy speaking, sir." He listened, and then added, "Pass them up, please." He put the telephone back in its cradle and looked at Pick-ering. "Banning and Zimmerman are downstairs," he said.

"That was quick," Pickering said. "Cates told me he would get them assigned here, but that was yesterday after-noon."

He sat up, put the newspaper on the couch, and stood up, looking thoughtful.

"Try to get Admiral Hillenkoetter again, will you, Ken?" he asked.

McCoy consulted a stapled-together telephone book and dialed a number.

"General Pickering calling for Admiral Hillenkoetter," he said into the telephone, listened again, said "thank you," and hung up. He looked at Pickering. "The admiral is not in the building," he said.

"Which means the admiral is not in the building, or the admiral doesn't want to talk to me," Pickering said. He walked to the window and looked out of it.

Escorted by an armed guard in a police-like uniform, Colonel Edward J. Banning, USMC, and Master Gunner Ernest Zimmerman, USMC, arrived three minutes later.

"Colonel Banning, Edward J., reporting as ordered with a party of one, sir," Banning said.

"Hello, Ed," Pickering said. "Ernie, how are you?"

They shook hands all around.

"General," the guard said, "when these gentlemen leave, please have them escorted to the lobby, or call the guard captain, and he will send someone here."

Pickering looked at him a moment, then nodded.

The guard left and closed the door.

"I knew you were coming," Pickering said. "But I didn't expect you so soon."

" `Travel will commence within twenty-four hours,'" Banning quoted, and handed Pickering the sheet of tele-type paper he had shown Billy Dunn at the Beaufort Ma-rine Air Station earlier. "Ernie's got one just like it, with only the names changed to protect the guilty. We went to Eighth and Eye, and they sent us over here. Orders will be cut sometime today placing both of us on indefinite TAD (Temporary Additional Duty) here."

"Colonel Dunn flew us up," Zimmerman said. "He sends his respects, sir. Can I ask what's happening?"

"Ernie, I don't know," Pickering said. "But I'm damned sure about to find out." He turned to McCoy. "Look in that phone book, Ken, and see if you can come up with a deputy director, or a deputy director, administration, some-thing like that."

"Yes, sir," McCoy said.

Sixty seconds later, he reported: "There's a deputy di-rector and deputy director for administration. In this build-ing. Shall I try to get one of them-tell me which one-on the phone?"

"Does it give room numbers?"

"Yes, sir. Four-oh-two for the deputy director, four-oh-six for the deputy director, administration."

Pickering walked to the door of the office and made a follow me motion with his hand and arm.

They followed him down the corridor toward the elevator, and then Pickering spotted and opened a door to a stairwell.

"It's only one flight down," he said.

One flight down, the door from the stairwell to the fourth floor could not be opened.

"Goddamn it!" Pickering said, and started down the stairwell, taking them two at a time, with Banning, McCoy, and Zimmerman on his tail.

The door from the stairwell to the lobby opened. Picker-ing started for the bank of elevators, and was intercepted by another guard in a police-type uniform before he could punch the button to summon the elevator.

"Excuse me, sir," the guard said. "May I see your badge, please?"

"I don't have a badge," Pickering said. "None of us have badges. It's one of the things I'm going to discuss with ei-ther Admiral Hillenkoetter or one of his deputies."

Another guard appeared.

"Sir, I can't permit you to get on the elevator without a badge, or an escort."

"Okay, escort me," Pickering said.

"Sir, I can't do that without permission from the party you wish to see."

"Okay. Get on the horn, call Admiral Hillenkoetter, or his deputy, or the deputy director for administration, and tell him that General Pickering wishes to see him."

"If you'll wait here, please," one of the guards said, and walked to the desk in the center of the lobby.

"How'd you get this far without a badge?" the other guard asked.

"I came down the goddamn chimney like Santa Claus," Pickering said.

Two minutes later, the first guard walked back over to them. He was carrying a clipboard.

"I'll have to see your ID cards," he said. "And then this officer will escort you to the office of the deputy director for administration."

That took another two minutes, but finally all five crowded into a small elevator.

They rose to the fourth floor, and the guard led them down the corridor to an office with a gold-lettered sign reading "Deputy Director, Administration" on the frosted glass of its door.

Inside was a reception room, occupied by a middle-aged secretary. A Navy captain stood beside her desk.

"General," he said. "I'm Captain Murfin, the deputy di-rector for administration. How can I help you?"

"Can we talk in there?" Pickering asked, pointing to the interior office.

"Yes, sir, of course. Can I offer you coffee?"

"That would be very nice, thank you," Pickering said. He followed Captain Murfin into his office.

"Captain, this is Colonel Banning, Captain McCoy, and Mr. Zimmerman. For lack of a better description, they are my staff."

They all shook hands. The secretary delivered coffee in mugs.

"Now, what's on your mind, General?" Captain Murfin asked.

"For openers, I will need, we will all need, identification badges. I'm getting tired of being escorted around by your guards."

"I'll arrange for temporary badges, of course."

"Does that imply you know we won't be around here long?" Pickering asked.

"No, sir. What it means is that I don't know how long you will be here."

"Or what I'll be doing?"

"That, too, General."

"Okay. Let me try to clarify that point. I am here and Captain McCoy is here at the order of the President of the United States..."

"So I understand, General."

"... and Colonel Banning and Mr. Zimmerman are here because they have been placed on indefinite TAD here, to work for me, by order of the Commandant of the Marine Corps. Orders to that effect are being cut today."

"Yes, sir. I suppose I can get you and the captain identity badges, but until I actually have the Colonel's and Mr. Zimmerman's orders in hand..."

`Tell me, Captain, is the deputy director in the build-ing?" Pickering interrupted.

"No, sir. He's not."

"And I understand the director is likewise off some-where?"

"He's at the Pentagon, sir."

"Which leaves you the senior officer on duty?"

"Yes, sir. I suppose I am running the store at the mo-ment."

"Well, Captain, in that case, let me tell you how you're going to run the store," Pickering said. "We are both in the Naval service, and I don't think I have to tell you that a brigadier general outranks a captain."

"Sir..."

"What you are going to do, Captain, is immediately take our photographs and fingerprints and whatever else you need to have ID cards printed up for all four of us. Those identity cards will be waiting for us in the lobby no later than 0800 tomorrow. You may consider that an order. If the director wishes to discuss this with me-or the deputy di-rector, presuming he is senior in rank to me-wishes to discuss this with me, I will be-we will all be-in my apartment in the Foster Lafayette hotel. Do you have any questions?"

The deputy director for administration considered his reply for at least twenty seconds. Then he said, "General, if you and these gentlemen will come with me, I'll take you to the photo lab."

"Certainly," Pickering said. "And there is one other thing, Captain."

"Yes, sir."

"Please get word to Admiral Hillenkoetter that I will be here at 0800 tomorrow, and respectfully request a few min-utes of his time as soon as possible thereafter."

"I'll give him that message, sir," Captain Murfin said.

[SIX]

THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE SUITE

THE FOSTER LAFAYETTE HOTEL

WASHINGTON, D.C.

1805 1 JULY 1950

"I really don't know what to think," Colonel Ed Banning said, popping a bacon-wrapped oyster in his mouth. "I wish I'd known about the Killer's assessment before now...."

"Goddamn it, are you never going to belay that Killer crap?" McCoy snapped.

"Sorry, Ken," Banning said.

"Never," Pickering said, "at least not among those who know you and love you so well."

"Sorry, Ken," Banning said, sincerely contrite. "It just slips out."

"Forget it," McCoy said.

"As you have forgotten that good Marine captains don't cuss at Marine colonels?" Pickering asked.

"Sir, Captain McCoy begs the colonel's pardon."

"It's Okay, Killer, forget it," Banning said.

That caused laughter.

The truth was while they were not drunk, they had been sitting, drinking, in the living room of Pickering's suite- technically, he had commented, his wife's suite; she was the chairman of Foster Hotels, Inc.-since 1645, when they had returned from the CIA complex, all the bureau-cratic necessities for the issuance of identity cards having taken a little more than an hour.

Some of their conversation had dealt with wondering where the women were; they should have been in the hotel by noon, but most of it had dealt with what was going on, both in Korea and with themselves.

A bellman had been dispatched to the National Geo-graphic Society building, several blocks away, to get a map of Korea-"On second thought, you'd better get half a dozen," Pickering had ordered. "Everything they've got, the coast of China from the Burmese border, near Ran-goon, to the Russian border, to the Sea of Okhotsk."

Using the maps, McCoy had delivered an hour-long briefing, entirely from memory, of the disposition of North Korean forces on the Korean peninsula; of Chinese and Russian forces up and down the coast of the Asian conti-nent; of U.S. Army forces in Korea-there were practically none in Korea-and Japan; and even of Nationalist Chi-nese forces on Formosa.

He traced the possible routes of invasion across the 38th parallel, and offered his assessment of the probable North Korean intentions.

"I don't think they expected the Americans to intervene, but I don't think that it will have any effect when we do. We probably can't get enough forces over there quickly enough to stop them. What we do send is likely to be pushed into the sea here, in the deep South, around Pusan."

He discussed the possibility of support from Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Army on Formosa, and dismissed it as probably not going to be worth very much. And his opinion of the war-fighting capabilities of the Eighth U.S. Army in Korea was anything but flattering.

"Their equipment is old, their training is inadequate, and they don't have any armor to match the Russian T-34s the North Koreans have. The bridges in Japan won't take the weight of an M-26, which is arguably as good as the T-34, so there are no M-26s. The M-24s they do have are light tanks that don't stand a chance against the T-34."

That was frustrating to hear, of course, and so was con-templation of what they were all going to be doing in the CIA.

Banning agreed that it was possible, even likely, that Ad-miral Hillenkoetter would be fired for not being able to predict the sudden North Korea attack.

"Probably," Banning said, "not right away. If the Presi-dent is worried about a Pearl Harbor reaction to the attack, the last thing he wants to do is fire the Director of the CIA. That makes what General Cates said, that he's thinking of you to replace Hillenkoetter, make a kind of sense."

"I'm not equipped to run the CIA."

"One scenario is that Hillenkoetter will stay on until you feel you can take over," Banning argued. The door chime sounded.

"The ladies, I hope," Pickering said, and went to the door.

Patricia Foster Pickering and Ernestine Sage McCoy walked into the room, trailed by four bellmen carrying luggage and cardboard boxes from Brooks Brothers. Both women looked around the mess in the room, and the four Marines, all of whom had their field scarves pulled down, their collars unbuttoned, and their sleeves rolled up.

"I hope we're not interrupting anything," Patricia Pick-ering said, lightly sarcastic.

"We were getting worried," Pickering said.

"I'm sure you were," Patricia Pickering said, now seri-ously sarcastic. "If there's any scotch left, I really would like a drink."

Her husband scurried to get her a drink. McCoy went to his wife and kissed her.

"How many have you had?" Ernie asked.

"A couple," he confessed.

"There is a difference between a couple, which is two, and several, which is any number three or greater."

"Several," McCoy said.

Ernie laughed. "Aunt Pat, I told you. They can't be trusted alone, but they don't lie."

"What's in the boxes?" McCoy asked.

"We went by Brooks Brothers and got you some uni-forms," Ernie said.

"Good little camp followers that we are," Patricia said. She went to Ed Banning. "I see that you-smell that you- can't be trusted out of Milla's sight, either."

But she kissed his cheek nevertheless, and then Zimmer-man's.

"And for lunch we had a hot dog with sauerkraut and a Coke on the sidewalk outside Brooks Brothers," Patricia said. "It was good, but it wasn't enough. Plan on an earlier dinner, boys."

Pickering handed his wife a drink. "Here you go, sweetheart," he said.

"You don't have one?"

"On the coffee table."

"Make it last," she said. "That's your last. I didn't fly across the country in the middle of the night, and then spend the morning in Brooks Brothers and the afternoon driving here from Manhattan just for the privilege of watching you snore in an armchair."

"Yes, dear," Pickering said, mockingly. He was more amused than annoyed, and certainly didn't appear chas-tised.

Patricia turned to McCoy.

"Say, `thank you, Ernie, for coming and going to Brooks Brothers for me.'"

"Thank you, honey, for coming and going to Brooks Brothers for me," McCoy said, with a smile.

"You're welcome," Ernie said.

The telephone rang.

Banning answered it, then extended it to Pickering.

"Senator Fowler, sir," he said.

Mrs. Pickering looked annoyed.

Pickering took the phone.

"Hello, Dick," he said. "Come down the corridor and have a drink with us. Patricia just walked in the door."

Fowler's end of the conversation could not be heard by Patricia Pickering, although she tried hard.

"Dick, I really don't want to do that. Patricia is in one of her fire-breathing moods....

"Hey, don't you listen? I said I didn't want to.

"Oh, goddamn it, Dick. All right. We'll be there in a minute." He put the phone down and looked at his wife. "Our senator wants to see me for a minute. Ken and me. He says it's important."

She didn't reply.

"I owe him a couple of favors," he said.

"Like him getting you back into your goddamn Marine Corps?"

They locked eyes for a moment, and then Pickering said, rather firmly, "Patricia, we'll only be a few minutes. Why don't you order dinner?"

He motioned for McCoy to follow him, and they left the room.

" `Goddamn Marine Corps,' Aunt Pat?" Ernie said.

"Goddamn Marine Corps," Patricia Pickering confirmed. "He's too old-he's fifty, for God's sake-to go rushing off..."

She stopped, looked at Ernie, and started for the door. "I know him and Richardson Fowler. And he's already had enough to drink. You coming?"

Ernie considered this a moment, then shook her head, "no."

"Suit yourself," Patricia Pickering said, and walked into the corridor. After a moment, Ernie followed her.

"We'll be right back," she said.

"'Goddamn Marine Corps'?" Ernie Zimmerman quoted. "She sounds just like Mae-Su."

"If the Marine Corps wanted you to have a wife, Gunner Zimmerman," Banning replied, delighted at his own wit, "they would have issued you one."

"Luddy's not pissed?"

"Actually, she's not. She would really like me to go over there and start killing Communists," Banning said.

A muscular man in a gray suit stepped in front of Patri-cia Pickering.

"Excuse me, ma'am," he said. "May I ask where you're going?"

"Not that it's any of your business, but I'm going to see Senator Fowler."

"I'm afraid that's not possible just now, ma'am," he said. "Could you come back in, say, thirty minutes?"

"Not possible? What do you mean not possible? Get out of my way!"

"I'm afraid I can't let you pass."

"You can't let me pass?" Mrs. Pickering asked in outrage. "I own this hotel-no one tells me I can't pass.'"

Another muscular man walked quickly up as the first Secret Service agent was taking his credentials from his suit jacket pocket, and then the door of Senator Fowler's suite opened.

"Oh, Jesus Christ, Patricia," Fleming Pickering said to her, then turned to someone in the room. "It's my wife."

"Let her in," a voice came from inside the room, and then President Truman appeared in the open door. "Let the lady pass."

"Ladies," Ernie said from behind the second Secret Ser-vice agent. "I'm with her."

"Ladies," the President agreed, smiling.

"Good evening, Mr. President," Patricia Pickering said.

"Good evening, Mrs. Pickering," Truman said. "I apolo-gize for this. Won't you come in for a minute?"

He offered his hand to Ernie McCoy.

"Admiral Hillenkoetter told me Captain McCoy was married to a very beautiful young woman. How do you do? You are Mrs. McCoy?"

"Yes, sir, Mr. President," Ernie said.

"Hello, Patricia," Senator Fowler said.

"I suspected that my overage adolescent was going to crawl into a bottle with you, Dick, and I see I was right."

"Mrs. Pickering, Mrs. McCoy," the President said, "this is Major General Ralph Howe, an old friend of mine."

"How do you do, ladies?" General Howe said, in a twangy Maine accent. He seemed to be amused.

"How do you do, General?" Patricia said, as she shook his hand.

"I think what we have here, Harry," General Howe said, smiling broadly, "is proof of the adage that behind every great man there really is a beautiful woman."

Truman chuckled.

"Mrs. Pickering," the President said. "I wanted a few min-utes with General Howe, your husband, and Captain Mc-Coy. A few private minutes that no one would know about. That's why I imposed on Senator Fowler's hospitality...."

"No imposition at all, Mr. President," Fowler said.

"Can I have them for ten minutes, ladies?" the President asked. "They'll tell you what this is all about later."

"Of course, Mr. President," Patricia Pickering said. "I suppose I have made a flaming ass of myself, haven't I?"

"I suspect my wife would have done exactly what you did," the President said. "Bess suspects that all my friends are always plying me with liquor."

She found herself at the door.

"Again, my apologies, ladies," the President said, and they went through the door.

"And my apologies, Mr. President," Pickering said when the door was closed. "The main reason she's on a tear is that she thinks I volunteered to go back in the Corps, and that Dick Fowler arranged it as a favor."

"If you'd like, I can straighten her out on that," the Pres-ident said.

"I would be grateful, Mr. President."

"Formidable lady, General," General Howe said.

"I don't think a shrinking violet could run the Foster Ho-tel chain the way she runs it," the President said. "Now, where were we?"

"I was about to offer Fleming a drink," Fowler said. "Now I'm not so sure that's a good idea."

"I think it is," Pickering said.

"I'll make them," Fowler said. "The usual?"

"Yes."

"For you, too, Ken?" Fowler asked.

"Yes, sir, please," McCoy said.

"To get right to the heart of this," the President said. "When Admiral Hillenkoetter first brought your name up, General, he said that you had first gone to the Pacific as the private eyes of Navy Secretary Knox, and that that had evolved into your being the private eyes of President Roo-sevelt."

"Yes, sir, that accurately describes what happened."

"I found that fascinating," Truman said. "Although I didn't say anything to the admiral."

"Sir?"

"Until that moment, I thought I had the bright idea all on my own," Truman said. "That if you really want to know what's going on around the military, send someone who considers his primary loyalty is to the President, not the military establishment. General Howe and I go back to France-we were both captains in France. Then we saw one another over the years in the National Guard. In War Two, when I was in the Senate, he went back into the Army, and rose to major general. When this Korean thing broke, he was about the first person I knew I was going to need, and I called him to active duty-to be my eyes in this war."

"I see," Pickering said.

"And when he came down from Maine, I told him about you, about Captain McCoy's assessment, and the trouble he had with it, and we are agreed that your talents in this sort of thing should not be allowed to lay fallow."

"Mr. President, I'm afraid you're overestimating my tal-ents," Pickering said.

"You can do one thing I can't, General," Howe said. "You can talk to MacArthur, maybe even ask him ques-tions no one else would dare ask him."

"Wow!" Pickering said, as Fowler handed him a drink.

"Would you be willing to take on such an assignment?"

"Sir, I'm at your orders," Pickering said.

`Take a look at this," the President said, handing Picker-ing a squarish envelope. "And tell me if it's all right."

THE WHIT E HOUS E

WASHINGTON , D.C.

JULY 1, 1950

GENERAL OF THE ARMY DOUGLAS MACARTHUR

THE DAI ICHI BUILDING

TOKYO, JAPAN

BY OFFICER COURIER

DEAR GENERAL MACARTHUR:

THERE IS ONE SMALL PIECE OF GOOD NEWS IN WHAT FRANKLY LOOKS TO ME LIKE A DARK SITUATION, AND WHICH I WANTED TO GET IN YOUR HANDS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

ADMIRAL HILLENKOETTER, THE DIRECTOR OF THE CIA, HAS ASKED ME TO RECALL TO ACTIVE DUTY YOUR FRIEND BRIGADIER GEN-ERAL FLEMING PICKERING, USMCR, AND I HAVE DONE SO. AT ADMIRAL HILLENKOET-TER `S RECOMMENDATION, I HAVE NAMED GENERAL PICKERING ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF THE CIA FOR ASIA, A POSITION MUCH LIKE THE ONE HE HELD DURING WORLD WAR II, WHERE HE WAS SO VALUABLE TO YOUR-SELF, OSS DIRECTOR DONOVAN, AND PRESI-DENT ROOSEVELT.

HE WILL BE COMING TO THE FAR EAST IN THE VERY NEAR FUTURE, AND I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT HE ENJOYS MY EVERY CONFI-DENCE AND THAT YOU MAY FEEL FREE TO SAY ANYTHING TO HIM THAT YOU WOULD SAY TO ME.

SINCERELY,

Harry S. Truman

HARRY S. TRUMAN

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE ARMED FORCES

Pickering raised his eyes from the letter to the President. "Is that about the way President Roosevelt handled it?" Truman asked.

"He referred to the general as `my dear Douglas,'" Pick-ering said.

"He knew MacArthur," Truman said. "I don't. And I don't think I want to know the sonofabitch."

"Harry!" General Howe cautioned.

"He's an officer in the U.S. Army," Truman said. "Not the Viceroy of Japan, but I don't think he knows that, and if he does, he doesn't want to admit it. And I want you to know how I feel about him, General."

"I understand, sir."

"How do you feel about him?" Truman asked.

"He's a brilliant man-possibly, probably, the best gen-eral of our era, Mr. President."

"Better than Eisenhower? Bradley?"

"I never had the opportunity to watch General Eisen-hower at work, Mr. President. But I have watched General MacArthur. The word `genius' is not out of place. But he sometimes manifests traits of character that are disturbing to me personally. He can be petty, for example."

"For example?"

"Every unit on Corregidor but the 4th Marines was given the Presidential Unit Citation. General MacArthur said the Marines had enough medals."

"That's all?"

"His blind loyalty to the Bataan Gang disturbs me, Mr. President."

"That's why you didn't take McCoy's assessment to him?"

"I think his support of General Willoughby would have been irrational, and that very likely would have caused McCoy more trouble than he was already in, Mr. Presi-dent."

"All I expect him to do is not disobey orders," Truman said. "If he does, I want to know about it. Would that be a problem for you?"

"No, sir."

"Okay. This will go out tonight," Truman said. "I want you to work closely with Ralph here, but you both have the authority to communicate directly with me. If there's a disagreement between you, I want to hear both sides, and I'll decide. Clear?"

"Clear," General Howe said.

"Yes, sir."

"General Howe wants to pick your brain, Captain Mc-Coy," the President said. "I want you to tell him everything you know."

"Yes, sir," McCoy said.

"McCoy gave us a briefing tonight you might find fasci-nating yourself, Mr. President-"

"Us? Who's Us?" the President interrupted sharply. "Who else have you let in on McCoy's assessment?"

"Sir, when you ordered my recall, General Cates as-signed two officers to me, officers who had been with me in the OSS in War Two. Colonel Ed Banning and Marine Gunner Zimmerman."

"That was very obliging of the Commandant," the Presi-dent said.

It was a question. Pickering decided he could let it pass, but decided not to.

Is that a courageous decision, or is the Famous Grouse talking?

"Mr. President, General Cates is afraid that when the Marine Corps can't perform the miracle everyone will ex-pect it to, it will reflect badly on the Corps."

"What miracle won't it be able to perform? And how will the assignment of these two officers to you keep that from reflecting badly on the Marine Corps?"

"General Cates hopes that whenever I have the opportu-nity I will inject `the First Marine Division is at half wartime strength.'"

"Half wartime strength?" General Howe asked incredu-lously.

"Half strength," Pickering repeated. "And in the entire Marine Corps, there are only about eighty thousand offi-cers and men, plus twice that many in the reserve."

"God, I knew there had been reductions, but I didn't know it was that bad!" Howe said.

"It's that bad," Pickering said.

"It would appear General Cates got what he wanted, wouldn't it?" the President said. "I'll keep that unhappy statistic in mind, along with many others."

Neither Howe nor Pickering replied.

"McCoy gave a briefing to these two officers?" Truman asked.

"And to me, sir. I thought it was brilliant."

"I'd like to hear it," Howe said. "Can you do that for me, Captain?"

"Yes, sir," McCoy said.

"Not tonight," Truman said. "We have other things to talk about tonight, Ralph."

"Where can I find you in the morning, McCoy? Say about eight?" Howe asked.

"I'm here in the hotel, sir. But if you'll tell me where-"

"The hotel's fine. I'm staying here myself. Where are you? With General Pickering?"

"No, sir. I'm in the American Personal Pharmaceuticals suite."

"The American Personal Pharmaceuticals suite?" Howe asked, with a smile.

"He's like you, Ralph, he doesn't need the job, he just likes the uniform," Truman said, and immediately added: "I shouldn't have said that, I suppose. I meant it admir-ingly."

"I'll call you at eight, Captain," General Howe said.

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Ralph, why don't you walk down the corridor with General Pickering, and deliver a message from me to Mrs. Pickering?"

"What message, Harry?"

"His recall to active duty was my idea, not his."

"I'll be happy to."

"Thank you both," the President said. "I hope there will be a chance to see you both again before you go over there."

He went to the door and shook the hands of both men as they went through it.

Chapter Seven

[ONE]

OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY COMMANDING GENERAL

CAMP PENDLETON, CALIFORNIA

1305 JULY 1950

Brigadier General Clyde W. Dawkins, USMC, was an-noyed-and his face showed it-when the telephone on his desk buzzed. He was in conference with Brigadier General Edward A. Craig, USMC, who until two days before had been Deputy Commanding General, 1st Marine Division, and was now Commanding General, 1st Marine Provi-sional Brigade, and he had, he thought, made it clear to Captain Arthur McGowan, USMC, his aide-de-camp, that he didn't want to be disturbed.

"Sorry," he said to Craig, a tall, lean officer beside him, a tanned man in his early fifties who wore his thick silver hair in a crew cut, and reached for the telephone.

"Sir, it's the Commandant," Captain McGowan an-nounced.

"General Dawkins, sir."

"Dawkins," the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps said, without any preliminaries, "this is a heads-up on an Urgent TWX you're about to get from the JCS. In essence, it says by Direction of the President, Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, USMCR, will shortly be in San Diego. Give him whatever he wants, and tell him anything he wants to know."

"Yes, sir?" General Dawkins said.

"Do just that, Dawkins. Give him whatever he wants and tell him anything he wants to know."

"Aye, aye, sir."

General Dawkins waited for the Commandant to con-tinue. And continued to wait until a dial tone told him that the Commandant, having said all he wished to say, had ter-minated the conversation.

Dawkins put the phone back in the cradle and mused, aloud, "I wonder what the hell that's all about?"

"What what's about?"

"That was the Commandant. I'm about to get an Urgent TWX from the JCS informing me that Brigadier General Fleming Pickering is coming here, and I am to give him whatever he asks for and tell him anything that he wants to know."

"Pickering?"

"He was on Guadalcanal, G-2 for a while when Goettge got killed..."

Craig nodded, indicating he knew who Dawkins was talking about.

"And the last I heard got out of the Corps the minute the war was over."

"What's he want here?"

"I have no idea. Whatever it is, it's Direction of the Pres-ident," Dawkins said.

Craig pursed his lips thoughtfully, and then both men re-turned to the most pressing problems involved in forming, organizing, and equipping a provisional Marine brigade under orders to sail within ten days.

[TWO]

U.S. NAVY/MARINE CORPS RESERVE TRAINING

CENTER

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

1920 5 JULY 1950

Captain George F. Hart pulled his nearly new unmarked blue Chevrolet into a parking slot behind the building, stopped, and reached for the microphone mounted under the dash.

"H-l," he said into it.

Hart was thirty-two years old, nearly bald, and built like a circus strong man.

"Captain?" Dispatch responded. H-l was the private call sign of the Chief, Homicide Bureau, St. Louis Police De-partment. Dispatch knew who he was.

"At the Navy Reserve Training Center until further no-tice."

"Navy Reserve Training Center, got it."

"You have the number?"

"I think so."

" `Think' don't count. Know. Check."

"Yes, sir," the dispatcher said, his tone suggesting he didn't like Captain Hart's tone.

"I have the number, Captain," the dispatcher said, and read it off.

"That's it," Hart said.

"Yes, sir," the dispatcher said.

Hart put the microphone back in its bracket, turned the engine off, got out of the car, went in the backseat and took from it a dry cleaner's bag on a hanger, locked the car, and then entered the building through a rear door to which he had a key.

He often thought the U.S. Navy/Marine Corps Reserve Training Center looked like a high school gymnasium without the high school.

The ground floor was essentially a large expanse of var-nished wooden flooring large enough for two basketball courts, and there were in fact two basketball courts marked out on the floor, their baskets now retracted up to the roof. At one end of the floor was the entrance, and at the other rest rooms, and the stairway to the basement, which held lockers and the arms room.

On one side of the floor were the glass-walled offices of the Naval Reserve, and on the other, the glass-walled of-fices of the Marine Corps Reserve.

Hart unlocked the door with "COMMANDING OFFI-CER" lettered on the glass, then closed it, locked it, and checked to see that the Venetian blinds were closed. One was not, and he adjusted it so that no one could see into his office.

His office was furnished with a desk, a desk chair, two straight-back chairs, two chrome armchairs, a matching couch, and a double clothing locker.

He unlocked the doors to both, then started getting un-dressed. First he took off his jacket, which revealed that he was wearing a shoulder holster. The holster itself held a Colt Model 1911.45 ACP semiautomatic pistol under his left armpit. Under his right armpit, the harness held two spare seven-round clips for the pistol, and a pair of hand-cuffs.

So far as Captain Hart knew, he was the only white shirt in the department who elected to carry a.45. Only white shirts-lieutenants and higher; so called because their uni-form shirts were white-were allowed to carry the weapon of their choice. Sergeants and below were required to carry the department-issued handgun, either Smith and Wesson or Colt.38 Special five-inch-barrel revolvers. Plainclothes cops and detectives were required to carry two-inch-barrel.38 Special revolvers.

When Hart had come home from World War II to be-come a detective again, he had ignored that regulation, and carried a.45. As a detective, he had shot two people with a.38 Special, neither of whom had died, and one of whom, despite being hit twice, had kept coming at him until he hit him in the head with the pistol butt. The people he had shot in the Corps with a.45 had gone down and stayed down, usually dead. He had decided that he would rather explain to an investigating board how come he had shot some scumbag with a.45 rather than the prescribed.38 Special than have a police department formal funeral ceremony and his picture hung on the wall in the lobby of police headquarters.

As it turned out, he had been a captain five months be-fore he had to use the.45, and by then, of course, it was his business what he carried.

He put all of his civilian clothing on hangers and hung them, and the shoulder holster, in the left locker, then took a fresh Marine Corps khaki uniform from the dry cleaner's bag. He laid the shirt on his desk and pinned the insignia on carefully. His ribbons included the Bronze Star medal with V-device, and a cluster, indicating he had been deco-rated twice. He also had the Purple Heart medal, which signified he had been wounded. And he had, souvenirs of Parris Island, silver medals indicating he had shot Expert with the M-l Garand Rifle, the U.S. Carbine Caliber.30, the M-1911A1 pistol, the Browning Automatic Rifle, and the Thompson machine gun.

He put on the fresh uniform and examined himself in the mirror mounted on the door of the left locker.

He looked, he thought, like a squared-away Marine cap-tain, who had seen his share of war, and was perfectly qualified to be what he was, commanding officer of B Company, 55th Marines, USMC Reserve.

That was pretty far from the truth, he thought. Baker Company was an infantry company. Every Marine in Baker Company, from the newest seventeen-year-olds who had not even yet gone through boot camp at Parris Island through the non-coms, most of whom were really good Marines, many combat tested, to the other four officers, two of whom had seen combat, was absolutely delighted that the old man, the skipper, the company commander was a World War II veteran tested-and wounded, and deco-rated for valor-in combat.

The problem with that was that he wasn't an experienced, combat-tested, infantry officer. The first-and only-in-fantry unit in which he had ever served was Company B, 55th Marines, USMC Reserve. The only Table of Organization (TOandE) unit in which Captain Hart had ever served was USMC Special Detachment 16.

USMC Special Detachment 16 had been formed with the mission of supporting the Australian Coastwatchers, men left behind when the Japanese occupied islands in the Solomons, who at great risk to their lives had kept tabs on Japanese units and movements. He had been assigned to Detachment 16 because command of it had been given to Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, and then Sergeant Hart had been Pickering's bodyguard.

He'd won the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart fair and square with Detachment 16, going ashore on Japanese-held Buka Island, but that had been his last combat. Immediately after returning from Buka, he had been given a commission as a second lieutenant-not because he had done anything outstanding as a sergeant, but because his being an officer was more convenient for General Pickering.

The convenience had nothing to do with General Picker-ing's personal comfort, but rather with giving Hart access to one of the two most closely held secrets of World War II, MAGIC-the other was the development of the atomic bomb. Cryptographers in the United States and Hawaii had cracked many-by no means all-of the codes of the Im-perial Japanese Army and Navy. Second Lieutenant Hart's name had appeared on a one-page typewritten list of those who held a MAGIC clearance.

The list was headed by the name of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, followed by those of General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and worked its way down through the ranks past Brigadier General Pick-ering-who reported directly to Roosevelt-to those of the junior officers who had broken the code, and those-like Hart-who handled the actual decryption of MAGIC mes-sages in Washington, Hawaii, and Brisbane.

Generals and admirals did not themselves sit down at the MAGIC machines and punch its typewriter-like keys. Second Lieutenant Hart, and a dozen others like him, did.

And, in a very real sense, Hart's MAGIC clearance had been his passport out of the fighting war. No one with a MAGIC clearance could be placed in any risk at all of being captured.

And then, in early February 1943, President Roosevelt had named General Pickering OSS Deputy Director for the Pacific. All of the members of USMC Special Detachment 16 had been "detached from USMC to duty with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), effective 8 August 1943" and that remark had been entered into the service-record jack-ets.

That remark was still in Captain Hart's service records, and he knew that both his first sergeant and the gunnery sergeant had taken a look at his records, and suspected his officers had, too. In their shoes, he would have taken a look.

There were other remarks entered sequentially in his jacket, after the "detached to OSS" entry, that he knew his men had seen:

5 May 1944 Promoted Captain

4 October 1945 Relieved of Detachment to OSS

4 October 1945 Detached to USMC Inactive Reserve

18 April 1946 Detached to USMC Organized Reserve

18 April 1946 Attached Company B, 55th Marines,

USMC Reserve, St. Louis, Mo., as Commanding Officer

Hart knew that his service records jacket, combined with everyone's knowledge that he was the Chief of the St. Louis Homicide Bureau, painted a picture of George Hart that was far more glamorous than the facts: a decorated, wounded Marine who had been an OSS agent in the War had come home to the police force, and for patriotic rea-sons had joined the active reserve.

There had been questions, of course, about his wartime service, which he had declined to answer.

How could he have answered them?

I wasn't really an OSS agent, fellas. What I was was a bodyguard to a general who had a MAGIC clearance.

What's MAGIC?

He could not have answered that question. In 1946, any-thing connected to MAGIC was classified; as far as he knew, it still was.

It was far easier to say what he had said.

"I'd rather not talk about that, you understand."

They understood. They had all seen the movies about the OSS. OSS agents didn't talk about the OSS.

Until now, it hadn't made any difference. He had joined the Marine Corps Organized Reserve because the recruiter who had made the pitch had pointed out that he would draw a day's pay and allowances for one four-hour training session a week, plus two weeks in the summer, which wasn't bad money, especially since he had acquired a wife and ultimately three children to support on a police lieu-tenant's pay.

And if he put in a total of twenty years combined active duty and reserve service, there would be a pension when he turned sixty, something to consider, since police pensions were anything but generous.

On assuming command of Baker Company, he had had virtually no idea what a company commander was sup-posed to do, or how to do it. But he'd inherited a first ser-geant who did have an idea, and who initially led him by the hand through the intricacies of commanding a com-pany.

And he had taken correspondence courses in all kinds of military subjects from the Marine Corps Institute. And he asked questions of the regular Marine Corps officer as-signed as instructor/inspector at the Navy/Marine Corps Reserve Training Center.

The IandI was an Annapolis graduate, but he had never been in a war, and he treated Captain Hart, who had, with respect and a presumption of knowledge on Captain Hart's part that Hart knew he really didn't deserve.

But with a lot of hard work, the IandI and Hart had turned Baker Company into a first-class reserve infantry com-pany, at 94 percent of authorized strength, with everybody but the kids-yet-to-go-to-boot-camp trained in their spe-cialty.

Which was not, Hart realized, the same thing as saying Baker Company was prepared to go to war under the com-mand of Captain George S. Hart. It looked like that was going to happen.

Hart had just finished tucking his shirt into his trousers, and making sure the shirt placket was precisely aligned with his belt and fly, when there was a discreet knock on the glass pane of his door.

"Captain? You in there, sir?"

Hart recognized the IandI's voice.

"Come in, Peterson," Hart called.

"Good evening, sir," First Lieutenant Paul T. Peterson, USMC, USNA `46, a slim, good-looking twenty-five-year-old, said as he came through the door.

Hart could see that the platoon sergeants were forming the men on the glossy varnished floor.

"How goes it, Paul?" Hart asked.

"I don't know," Peterson said, turning from closing the door. "This Korea thing..."

"Yeah," Hart said.

"What do you think?" Peterson asked.

"I think we're going to get involved over there," Hart said.

"You hear anything, sir?"

Hart shook his head, "no."

But the White House-Jesus Christ, The White House!! !- was looking for Killer McCoy, and the Killer hadn't come by St. Louis with his wife as he said he was going to.

The Killer, the last I heard before he called and said he was coming to St. Louis, was stationed in Tokyo. As an in-telligence officer.

And now the White House is looking for him!

Korea is right next door to Japan, and if anything is go-ing to happen over there, the Killer will have a damned good idea of what and when. And probably why.

Hart was a cop, a good cop, a good detective, and he had heard from his father, also a cop, and now believed that good cops developed a special kind of intuition.

He intuited that there was going to be a war in Korea, despite what the President had said about it being a "police action," and that meant that Company B, 55th Marines, was going to be called to active duty.

"Neither have I," Peterson said. He looked at Hart. "Do you think there's anything we should be doing?"

Jesus Christ, you're supposed to be the professional Ma-rine. Why ask me?

"I've been giving it some thought, Paul," Hart said. "Yeah, there is. And I'm not sure you're going to like what I've decided to do."

"Sir?" Peterson asked, at exactly the same moment as there was another knock on the glass of the door.

"We're ready, skipper," First Sergeant Andrew Mulligan called.

"Right," Hart called, and started toward the door.

The moment he came through the door, Mulligan bel-lowed, `Ten-hut on deck," and Company B, 55th Marines, lined up by platoons, popped to attention. Lieutenant Pe-terson stood in the open door.

Hart, trailed by Mulligan, marched across the varnished floor until he was in the center of the formation. He did a left face, so that he was facing the executive officer, First Lieutenant William J. Barnes, who had been a technical sergeant in World War II, and commissioned after he had joined the organized reserve.

Hart barked: "Report!"

Lieutenant Barnes did an about-face and barked, "Re-port!"

The platoon leaders, standing in front of their platoons, did an about-face and barked, "Report!"

The platoon sergeants saluted their platoon leaders, and reported, in unison, "All present or accounted for, sir!"

The platoon leaders did another about-face, saluted Lieutenant Barnes, and announced, in unison, "All present or accounted for, sir."

Lieutenant Barnes did an about-face and saluted Captain Hart.

"Sir, the company is formed. All present or accounted for, sir."

Hart returned the salute.

"Parade Rest!" he ordered.

The company assumed the position of Parade Rest, standing erectly, feet twelve inches apart, their hands folded stiffly in the small of their backs.

The entire little ballet, Captain Hart judged, had been performed perfectly, even by the kids who hadn't earned the right to wear the Marine Corps globe and anchor by go-ing through boot camp.

Hart looked at his men, starting at the left and working his way slowly across the ranks and files.

Oh, to hell with it!

"Stand at ease," he ordered.

That was not the next step in the prescribed ballet, and he saw questioning looks on a lot of faces.

"You did that pretty well," he said. "Only two of you looked like cows on ice, and you know who you were."

Fifty men decided the skipper had detected a sloppy movement on their part, and vowed to do better the next time.

"There will be a change from the published training schedule," Hart announced. "Based on my belief that there are several things always true about the Marine Corps, first that there is always a change in the training schedule, usu-ally unexplained."

He got the laughter he expected.

"The second truth is that every Marine is a rifleman."

His tone was serious, and he knew he had their attention. "The third truth, and you may find this hard to believe, is that company commanders are sometimes wrong. I really hope I'm wrong now, and I want to tell you that I don't know a thing more about the possible mobilization of the Marine Reserve-of Baker Company-than you do."

There was absolute silence in the room as they waited for him to go on.

"But I have the feeling we're going to be called. I don't know where we'll go, or what we'll do, but we're the Ma-rine Corps reserve, and the reserve gets called in time of war. I hope we're not in a war in Korea, but we may be, and it is clearly our duty to prepare for that." He paused.

"Every Marine is a rifleman. My drill instructor taught me that when I went through boot camp at Parris Island. And during the war, I saw how right he was, how important it is to the Corps. So the one thing 1 know we can do to prepare for being mobilized is to make sure that every Ma-rine in Baker Company is not only a rifleman, but the best rifleman he can be." He paused again.

"The training schedule is therefore changed to rifle marksmanship. In the first hour of training tonight, you will draw your piece from the armory, clean it, inspect it, make sure it's as right as it can be. The following three hours will be devoted to dry firing, et cetera. I have arranged for us to use the St. Louis Police Department fir-ing range. It's only a hundred yards, but it'll have to do. There will be a special drill next Saturday. You will report here, draw your weapons, and be taken by truck to the range. Those who will be working at your civilian jobs on Saturday, give your name to your platoon sergeant, and ei-ther your platoon leader will, or I will, call your employer and explain the importance of this." He looked again at the faces of his men. Well, I've done it. Peterson will shit a brick. There will be no deviations from the prescribed training schedule without prior permission from battalion.