In Danger's Path (8 page)

With a massive effort, Captain McCoy managed to push down the lump in his throat. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “I'll read these later. General, what's the word on Mrs. Koffler?”

“She's fine, Koffler,” General Pickering said, looking at him. “I told Pluto to bring her to meet the plane tomorrow. And he has had standing orders to let me know immediately if the baby decides to arrive.”

Koffler nodded but didn't seem to be able to speak.

It got worse.

A Corpsman chief came up and tugged on McCoy's sleeve.

McCoy gave him a look that would have withered a lesser man.

“Captain, one of the ladies wants to talk to you,” the Corpsman chief said.

“Very well,” McCoy said, sounding crisply nautical, and followed the chief to a stretcher being carried by two Corpsmen.

It held a skeletal, silver-haired woman. Her eyes were sunken and her skin translucent, so that her veins showed blue. A bony hand rose from beneath the Navy blanket and reached out toward McCoy. It took him a moment to realize she wanted him to lean over so her bony hand could touch him. “God bless, thank you, God bless,” the woman said faintly. “Thank you. God bless you.”

McCoy gently touched the hand on his face, and then it was beyond his ability to maintain the dignity expected of a Marine officer.

His eyes closed, and tears ran down his cheeks. His chest heaved and hurt as he tried and failed to control his sobs.

Next he became aware of an arm around his shoulder.

He opened his eyes.

“I just happen to have a couple of bottles of Famous Grouse in my hut,” General Pickering said. “I don't suppose you'd really be interested, would you?”

“Shit!” McCoy said.

He looked around. The ambulances were moving off the beach.

He remembered what he had just said.

“Sorry, sir.”

“Let's go have a drink. Several drinks,” General Pickering said, and gently pushed McCoy in the direction of his jeep.

[FOUR]
Flag Officers' Quarters #4
U.S. Navy Base (Forward) Espíritu Santo
New Hebrides, Southern Pacific Ocean
2245 8 February 1943

Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, USMCR, knocked at the door of one of the three small bedrooms in the Quonset hut he had been assigned.

“Yeah, come in,” Captain Kenneth R. McCoy called, and Pickering pushed the door open.

McCoy was lying on the steel cot in his underwear, propped up against the wall with a pillow. He had a thin black cigar in his mouth, and there was a bottle of Famous Grouse scotch whisky on the small bedside table beside him.

He was reading Ernie Sage's letters.

The instant McCoy saw Pickering, he started to jump to his feet.

“Stay where you are, Ken,” Pickering said quickly.

McCoy nevertheless rose to his feet.

“Do you have another glass?” Pickering asked.

“Yes, sir,” McCoy said, stuffed Ernie Sage's letters under his pillow, then walked to a chest of drawers and picked up a glass.

“I was in before,” Pickering said. “You were out.” It was a question.

“I was checking on Koffler and the gunny,” McCoy said, handing the glass to Pickering.

“And?” Pickering asked, as he walked to the bedside table and poured an inch and a half of Famous Grouse into the glass.

“The gunny's playing poker with some chiefs,” McCoy said, and smiled. “Who were in the process of learning that all Marines aren't as dumb as they think we are.”

“Zimmerman's a good poker player?” Pickering asked.

“There was a lot of poker playing in Shanghai in the old days,” McCoy said. “The second time Zimmerman lost his pay, Mae Su—his wife, I guess you should call her—taught him how to play. The Chinese are great poker players.”

“Yes, I know,” Pickering said. “It was an expensive lesson for me to learn when I was a young man.”

They smiled at each other.

“Ah, the good old days!” Pickering said, then asked: “What did Ernie have to say?”

“She was a little pissed with me. Just before we went into Mindanao, I wrote her that if anything happened, she could do a lot worse than marrying Pick.” He met Pickering's eyes as he said this.

Captain McCoy and First Lieutenant Malcolm S. “Pick” Pickering, USMCR, General Pickering's only son, had met and become friends at Officer Candidate School.

“She's in love with you, Ken, not Pick. She told me. And you know that.”

“Yeah,” McCoy said. “She said that, too.”

“That's all she said? There were two letters.”

“She said there's going to be female Marines, and she's thinking of joining up.” The look on his face made his opinion of females in the Marine Corps very evident.

“I gather you don't approve?” Pickering asked dryly.

“Jesus!
Women
Marines?”

Pickering chuckled, then changed the subject. “I need to know what you really think of General Fertig,” he said. “Just between us.”

“Interesting guy,” McCoy said, admiringly. “Knows what he's doing. Knows the Filipinos.”

“Is he going to be able to do some damage to the Japanese?”

“If we get him the supplies he needs, he'll cause them a lot of grief.”

“In other words, you would say that he is in full possession of his mental faculties? Not suffering from the stress of what happened to him in the Philippines? Or delusions of grandeur?”

“He's a lot saner than a lot of people I know,” McCoy said. “Putting on that general's star was really smart. Nobody, Filipino or American, would have put themselves under the command of a reserve lieutenant colonel.”

“That's how you really feel?”

McCoy nodded.

“Then that's what I want you to tell El Supremo,” Pickering said, matter-of-factly, “and the President.”

“Sir?” McCoy asked.

“That's what I want you to tell General MacArthur and President Roosevelt.”

“Sir…”

When we're alone, sometimes
, Pickering thought,
he deals with me like a man who's a friend. But the moment he's not sure of himself, hears something he doesn't like, he crawls behind that shield of military courtesy, that protective womb of superior and subordinate, and starts calling me “Sir
.”

“You remember Weston?” Pickering asked. “The guerrilla officer you sent out? The guy with the beard?”

“I only saw him for a few minutes on the beach.”

“Well, in case you don't know, he was a Marine pilot who got caught in the Philippines, escaped from Luzon, and went to Mindanao. He was Fertig's intelligence officer.”

“Fertig was sore as hell when he heard I'd ordered him out.”

“I can understand why. But it was the right thing to do,” Pickering said. “Anyway, I ran him past MacArthur and Willoughby. Still wearing his beard, by the way. I thought he made a good impression, and said some good things about Fertig and his operation, but I'm a little worried that by now El Supremo and Willoughby have managed to convince themselves that, fine young officer or not, all he is is a junior officer whose judgments can't really be trusted.”

“Sir, I'm a junior officer.”

“Who is going to brief the Secretary of the Navy and the President of the United States. I think it's important that El Supremo know what you're going to tell them. It may change his thinking about the impossibility of guerrilla activity in the Philippines, and about General Fertig.”

“Sir, I don't suppose there's any way…”

“You can get out of it? No. Ken. It's important. You have to do it.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” McCoy said.

“There's something else, Ken,” Pickering said, and reached into the pocket of his khaki shirt. “This is why Admiral Henton sent his aide to take me away from our welcome-home dinner.”

He handed McCoy several sheets of paper stamped
TOP SECRET
.

McCoy carefully read the Personal From The Commander in Chief.

“Jesus H. Christ!” McCoy said.

“Welcome to the OSS, Captain McCoy,” Pickering said. He saw on McCoy's face that McCoy didn't like that at all. “I'm sorry, Ken,” Pickering said sincerely. “I don't know what I'm supposed to do now, but whatever it is, I'm going to need you to help me do it.”

McCoy met his eyes for a long moment.

“Am I allowed to ask questions?”

“I'll answer any question I can.”

“What happens to that Gobi Desert operation? Are you still going to be responsible for that?”

Before being ordered into the Philippines, McCoy had been in the first stages of planning an operation in which he would somehow—probably by parachute—be infiltrated into the Gobi Desert to see if he could establish contact with some Americans thought to be there.

Christ, I'd almost forgotten about that. But he didn't. I pulled him off of that to send him into the Philippines. And all the time he was there, he was wondering, “What next? The Gobi Desert?
”

“I don't know, Ken,” Pickering said. “I don't want you to get your hopes up about not having to be in on that, but that's a Management Analysis operation. We don't work for Management Analysis anymore. And I really don't think you can consider the Gobi Desert as being in the Pacific.”

McCoy, still meeting his eyes, thought that over for a moment without expression.

“Aye, aye, sir,” he said finally.

That means, of course, that he thinks I'm wrong
.

[ONE]
Office of the Deputy Director
The Office of Strategic Services
National Institutes of Health Building
Washington, D.C.
1745 8 February 1943

“And how did you find the Pentagon?” The DDA (Deputy Director for Administration) of the OSS inquired of the DDO (Deputy Director for Operations) when the DDO walked into his office, dropped a heavy briefcase on the floor, and slumped into a green leather armchair.

“It's not hard to find, Charley. You just drive across the Potomac and there it is. Great big sonofabitch!”

“I really can do without the humor,” the DDA said, “if that was supposed to be humor.”

“You're in a bad mood. Heard from Wild Bill, have we?”

Colonel William J. Donovan, known, though not to his face, as “Wild Bill,” was Director of the Office of Strategic Services.

“Not a word, as a matter of fact,” the DDA said, visibly not amused. “What did the Joint Chiefs give you?”

The DDO reached over and picked up the briefcase, then let it fall heavily to the carpet. “I've got a briefcase full of crap from the Joint Chiefs,” he said. Then he reached into one of the pockets in his vest and came out with the key to the briefcase, which he tossed to the DDA.

By accident or intention, the toss required the DDA to lunge for the key. When he caught it, he gave the DDO a look he hoped would adequately display his displeasure.

The ten Deputy Directors of the Office of Strategic Services, known informally as the “Disciples” (because there were supposed to be twelve), had been recruited from the upper echelons of business, science, and academia. Before the War, the DDO had been the managing director of the second-largest investment banking concern in the United States and—not unreasonably—considered himself a peer rather than a subordinate of the DDA, who had been a senior vice president of the General Motors Corporation. In short, the DDO did not much like being treated like an underling.

“There was one thing, Charley, that you might want to pass on to Wild Bill if you talk to him before I do.”

“And that is?”

“What do you know about the Gobi Desert operation?” the Deputy Director for Operations asked.

“So far as I know, the OSS doesn't have a Gobi Desert operation.”

“We do now,” the DDO said.

“I really have no idea what you're talking about. I can tell you this, however, Director Donovan has never discussed anything like that with me. What about the Gobi Desert?”

“It's in China. Or, actually, Mongolia,” the Deputy Director for Operations said.

“Really?” the DDA replied sarcastically.

“Yeah. It borders on Russia. It's about a thousand miles long, and from three hundred to six hundred miles wide. I looked it up in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
before I came in here. Or before I went to Wild Bill's office to report to him and heard he was out of town.”

“I presume that you eventually will get to the point,” the DDA said, and then his curiosity got the best of him. “This Mongolian desert was presumably a subject of discussion at the meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Specifically, some sort of an operation there?”

“Oh, yes. We hardly talked about anything else. The discussion was yet another fascinating display of interservice rivalry and noncooperation.”

“And you
are
going to tell me why the Gobi Desert is important to the war effort? And how this affects the OSS?”

“So far as the Army Air Corps is concerned, it is of great importance because of their plans to bomb the Japanese home islands. Once they get the B-29 operational, of course, and once they've found someplace to base them. To conduct long range bombing operations, they need weather information.”

The Boeing B-29 “Superfortress” (first flown in 1942) was a high-altitude bomber powered by four 2,200—hp Wright R-3350 radial engines. It had a takeoff weight of 70 tons; a range of 4,100 miles at 340 mph; was capable of carrying 10 tons of bombs; and was armed with ten .50-caliber machine guns.

“What's that got to do with the Gobi Desert? More important, what's that got to do with us?”

“The weather data has to come from that part of the world. It has something to do with cold air masses moving down from the Arctic Circle across Russia, Mongolia, China, Korea, the Yellow Sea, the Sea of Japan, the Japanese islands, and into the Pacific.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea, except that was the one thing on which the Air Corps and the Navy could reach agreement today. I would suspect that it is necessary for both short-and long-range planning.”

“Why is the Navy concerned?”

“They need the information for the same reasons the Air Corps does, and they insist they need it now and can't wait for the Air Corps.”

“Wait for the Air Corps to do what?”

“Army Air Corps planning has always counted on cooperation from our Russian allies. Even before we got into the war—which frankly surprised me—the Air Corps was thinking about the need for a weather station in that area, first choice Russia. As soon as we got in the war, they formed a weather station unit and asked for permission to send it to Russia. They are still waiting.”

He saw that he now had the DDA's attention.

“Representations,” the DDO went on, “as they say, have been made at the highest diplomatic levels, but so far problems of an unspecified nature have kept Uncle Joe Stalin from granting the necessary permission.”

“God!”

“The Navy, which is always interested in weather information, was informed that just as soon as the Air Corps weather station was up and running, they would be provided with any information it produced, and they should not trouble themselves worrying about it.”

The DDO pushed himself out of the green leather armchair and walked to a credenza.

“Thank you, Charley, I
will
have a cup of coffee,” he said, and poured himself a cup from a stainless-steel thermos.

“Okay. Where was I?” he asked, rhetorically, as he slumped back into the armchair. “Right. The Navy, in effect, was told to butt out, the Air Corps had the situation in hand. The Navy, however, apparently did not share the Air Corps' faith in our Russian allies' willingness to fully cooperate with us in every possible way. But what to do?”

“What, indeed?” the DDA asked impatiently.

The DDO saw that he had succeeded in annoying the DDA and was pleased. “Furthermore,” he went on, “the Navy has a card in the hole—if not an ace, then say a jack, or maybe even a queen—which, from their perspective, entitles them to preeminence vis-à-vis weather stations in the Gobi Desert.”

“Which is?”

“It has come to the attention of Naval Intelligence…”

“Naval Intelligence, overt?” the DDA broke in. “Or that Office of Management Analysis covert intelligence outfit Frank Knox operates?”

“Secretary of the Navy Knox was represented at the meeting by his Administrative Officer—he does for Knox what you do for Wild Bill—Captain David W. Haughton, USN.”

As intended, this statement annoyed the DDA, who thought of himself as Chief of Staff to Director Donovan.

“I know who Haughton is,” the DDA said, somewhat snappishly. “Knox wasn't there?”

“No,” the DDO said. “Maybe he was off somewhere with Wild Bill.”

“If that were the case, I would certainly have been advised.”

“Yes, I'm sure you would,” the DDO said sarcastically. “And, before today, I never heard Haughton admit he has even heard of the USMC Office of Management Analysis, much less that Knox has anything to do with it.”

“Today he did?”

“Today he not only did, but announced that for some time the Office of Management Analysis has been planning an operation to set up a weather station in the Gobi Desert.”

“Director Donovan is right,” the DDA said, somewhat righteously, “Management Analysis should have been brought into the OSS at the beginning! They're a loose cannon running around on the deck. They have no authority to do anything like that!”

“What Captain Haughton said,” the DDO went on, “is that Naval Intelligence—not further defined—has learned that a number of members of the Marine Guard at the Peking legation—and some other U.S. military personnel—have not all entered Japanese captivity, as previously believed. Some of them instead headed for the hills, the hills of Mongolia, accompanied by a number of retired Marines and soldiers and sailors.”

“Retired Marines and soldiers and sailors?” the DDA asked, incredulous.

“A total of sixty-seven Americans, Navy, Marine Corps, and Army, plus a not-specified number of wives and children,” the DDO finished, ignoring the interruption.

“
Retired
Marines and sailors?” the Deputy Director repeated. “And wives and children?”

“Remember the halcyon days of gunboat diplomacy? The Yangtze River patrol? The Japanese strafing of the
Panay?
”

On 12 December 1937, Japanese bombers had attacked and severely damaged the U.S. Yangtze River gunboat
Panay
near Nanking. A number of American sailors had been killed.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.”

“I'd really forgotten about it, at least about the Yangtze River patrol,” the DDO confessed. “But Captain Haughton delivered an illuminating lecture on the subject of the American military in China.”

“Can you please get to the point?”

“Bear with me, Charley,” the DDO said. “I really didn't come in here to waste your valuable time.”

They locked eyes for a moment, and then the DDO went on: “Anyway, Haughton said that many of these guys—the enlisted men of the Fourth Marines, the Army's Fifteenth Infantry, and the Yangtze River patrol—just stayed in China.
Retired there
. Once there, they got time and a half toward their retirement.”

“What?”

“They got six weeks' credit toward retirement for every month they served in China. Which meant they could retire after about twenty years of service as if they had served thirty years. And a good many of them acquired wives after they'd been there for a while.”

“
Chinese
wives?” the Deputy Director asked, his tone making it clear that he found the idea distasteful.

“Mostly Chinese, but according to Captain Haughton, a number of these chaps married White Russians. After the Bolshevik takeover in Russia, thousands of Russians fled into Shanghai, Peking, et cetera. Many of them had been aristocrats. Anyway, after fifteen, twenty years in China, these people had acquired wives and children. And their pension checks would go much further in China than in the States. So they didn't come home. Some of them, according to Haughton, opened bars and restaurants. Some went into the countryside and bought farms. Anyway, they stayed. And rather than let themselves be imprisoned—or shot—by the Japanese, they took off. Presumably, they are hoping that they can get out through Russia. And the safest route to Russia is through the Gobi Desert.”

“Fascinating. But I still don't see what all this has to do with the OSS.”

“If I may continue, Charley,” the DDO said. “There has been some radio communication with these people. Erratic. They apparently don't have very good equipment.”

“So they can't furnish the weather data?”

“They need meteorological equipment and better radios. Plus, of course, meteorologists to operate it. Which the Navy proposes to send in to them.”

“How do they propose to do that?”

“Haughton was a little vague about that.”

The DDA snorted.

“The Navy came to the meeting hoping to convince Admiral Leahy that since the Air Corps has been unable to get a weather station operating in the Soviet Union, and since the data generated in the Gobi Desert would be more useful anyway, and since they have these military retirees already in the Gobi Desert—”

“With whom they are not in communication,” the DDA interrupted.

“—they be given the weather station mission,” the DDO finished.

“And the Navy, not surprisingly, got their way, right? And we have been directed to cooperate with them?”

“Not exactly. ‘Cooperate' isn't the precise word. I don't know whether Leahy didn't want to slap the Air Corps down, or appear to be too partial to the Navy, but the Solomon-like decision of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is that the OSS will determine, as a high-priority mission, whether or not the ‘assets' presently in the Gobi Desert can be reinforced so that they can operate a weather station, and if so, to do so.”

“Which means that we are expected to establish communication with these people—who may or may not exist?”

“Not only establish
reliable
communication with them, but, if feasible, use them in setting up a secret weather station.”