Battleground

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Not willingly,” Pickering replied.

  “And he doesn’t know that?”

  “I think he knows it,” Pickering said. “I am always astonished when I find something he doesn’t know.”

  And, he thought, after that cable The Emperor just sent him, when Admiral Nimitz bitterly objects to this plan, he will not be as abrupt as he would otherwise have been.

  “It doesn’t even make much sense, does it?”

  “Yeah. I think it does. But I agree with you that the Navy will have a fit when they get this. I think they’d rather scuttle an aircraft carrier than loan it to MacArthur.”

  “What is that shit all about?” Pluto asked. “Can’t the brass understand they’re on the same side? That the goddamn Japs are whose throats they’re supposed to cut?”

  “Yours—and mine—Pluto, is not to reason why,” Pickering said. “Can I change my mind about those peanuts?”

  III

  (One)

  ROOM 26, TEMPORARY BUILDING T-2032

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  0845 HOURS 15 JUNE 1942

  “Bingo!” Technical Sergeant Harry Rutterman, USMC, said softly, nodding his head with satisfaction.

  Rutterman, a wiry man in his early thirties, raised his eyes from his desk and looked down the narrow, crowded room to an office at the end. The door was cracked open. That meant Captain Ed Sessions was in there; if he was gone, the door would have been closed and locked with iron bars and padlocks.

  Rutterman lifted himself out of his chair and took the uppermost of a stack of yellow teletype sheets from his desk. He was wearing green trousers and a khaki shirt. His field scarf was pulled down, which was unusual for a regular Marine non-com; the manner in which he was armed would also be considered unusual elsewhere in the Corps. The pistol was a standard issue Colt Model 1911A1, but instead of the flapped leather holster and web belt, its standard accoutrements, Rutterman had his pistol in a skeleton holster clipped to the rear of the waistband of his trousers; the pistol was inside his trousers with only the butt in sight.

  He went to Captain Sessions’s door, rapped it with his knuckles, and announced, “Rutterman, Sir.”

  “Come,” Sessions answered, and Rutterman pushed the door open.

  Captain Edward M. Sessions, USMC, was a tall, lithely muscular young officer, not exactly handsome, but attractive to women all the same. Like Rutterman, he had removed his blouse and pulled his tie down; and like Rutterman, he was armed in a manner not common in the Corps. He was wearing a leather shoulder holster, which held a short-barrelled Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum Revolver.

  He had expected to spend his career as a Marine officer who followed the usual progression: from infantry platoon leader, to assistant staff officer of some sort at battalion level, and then to executive officer and company commander. He had in fact commanded a platoon, but while serving as an assistant S-2 of Third Battalion, Second Marines, he had attracted the attention of the Marine Intelligence Community by the literary quality of the routine reports and evaluations he was required to write.

  These were written in a style that was the antithesis of the fancy prose that the word “literary” usually calls to mind. His words were short and simple; he came right to the point; and there was little chance of mistaking what he meant.

  Instead of returning to a line company following his eighteen-month assignment as an assistant S-2, he was relieved from the assignment after only a year. First, he was sent to the University of Southern California at Los Angeles for six months intensive training in Japanese, and then he was assigned to Marine Corps Headquarters in Washington. He was put to work synopsizing Intelligence reports and translating Japanese documents that had come into American hands.

  He had done that for six months when a far more experienced officer, a captain, fell ill three days before he was to board the Navy Transport Chaumont. The Captain was being sent to China (where the Fourth Marines were stationed in Shanghai) to have a close look at the Japanese Army. Having no one else to send, they ordered Lieutenant Sessions to go in his place.

  He performed far better than anyone expected. In his basic mission, he handled efficiently and accurately the more or less routine business of seeing how the Japanese Army was organized and equipped. And in a far more important and dramatic way, he knew what to do when the Japanese harassed a Marine convoy by dispatching Chinese “bandits” to rob it on a remote highway.

  There was a nasty firefight, during which Sessions proved that he had the one characteristic the Marine Corps seeks in its officers above all others, the ability to function well and calmly under fire.

  His promotion to captain came a full year before those who had been promoted to first lieutenant with him; by then it was clear that his career would henceforth be in the Intelligence field. At least twice a day, he dwelled on the thought that he would much rather be a line company commander in one of the regiments. But he was a Marine officer, and good Marine officers do—without complaint and to the best of their ability—what they are ordered to do.

  “This is interesting, Harry,” Captain Sessions said to Sergeant Rutterman. “The powers that be have determined that former members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade are to be considered potentially subversive, are not to be granted security clearances, and are to be ‘assigned appropriately.’ ”

  “Interesting,” Rutterman agreed. “Where’d that come from?”

  “This came from G-2,” Sessions said, “but it says, ‘on the recommendation of the Attorney General.’ That means it came from J. Edgar Hoover; I doubt if the Attorney General ever heard of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.”

  Rutterman snorted.

  “Have we got any, do you think?” Sessions asked.

  “You mean us? Or the Corps generally?”

  “In the Corps. I don’t think we have any, Harry.”

  “There was 3000, 3500 of them. I’m sure that there’s some in the Corps. But I’ll bet most of them have already been tagged as Reds. What’s that got to do with us?”

  “Nothing that I can see; it’s a Counterintelligence matter. Unless you were in Spain fighting fascism and haven’t told me. I think we were just on the distribution list.”

  Rutterman nodded.

  “What have you got, Harry?”

  “I think I have a Japanese linguist for Major Banning,” Rutterman said, handing Sessions the sheet of teletype paper.

  Major Edward J. Banning, one of the most knowledgeable-about-the-Japanese officers in the Marine Corps, had been the S-2 of the 4th Marines in Shanghai. He had gone with the Regiment to the Philippines when it had been transferred there just before the war had broken out.

  He had been blinded by concussion during a Japanese artillery barrage on Leyte, and evacuated with other blinded men by submarine from Corregidor. His sight had returned as the submarine approached Pearl Harbor. After a month’s recuperative leave he had returned to duty, and almost immediately he’d been ordered back to the Pacific as commanding officer of the purposely obfuscatorily titled “Special Detachment 14.”

  The mission of Special Detachment 14 was to support an organization known as “The Coastwatcher Establishment” of the Royal Australian Navy. When the Japanese had begun their march toward Australia down the islands, the Australians had left behind on the captured islands a motley collection of ex-colonial officials, plantation managers, and the like. They had been equipped with radios and were reporting on Japanese shipping, troop movements, and other matters of critical intelligence importance.

  One of Captain Fleming Pickering’s first reports from Australia to Secretary of the Navy Knox had informed him both of the existence of the Coastwatcher Organization and of the barely concealed hostility between it and the U.S. Navy. He recommended, strongly, that Knox establish a special unit—not subordinate to “Pearl Harbor brass hats”—to work with the Coastwatchers.

  Properly handled, Pickering wrote, the Coastwatcher Establishment would be of enormous value. Knox responded by char
ging Marine Corps Intelligence with the responsibility of working with the Coastwatchers. The orders to the again purposefully obfuscatorily named Marine Office of Management Analysis had been to set up an outfit, with whatever priorities and funds were required, to do what Captain Fleming Pickering thought should be done. Special Detachment 14 had been the result.

  There was a more or less standing requisition from Major Ed Banning for two kinds of specialists: radio technicians and Japanese-language linguists. What Banning wanted, the Marine Office of Management Analysis tried very hard to send him.

  “Think?” Captain Sessions asked. “Does he speak Japanese or not? And assuming he wasn’t in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade?”

  “He’s an officer candidate,” Rutterman said. “They started sending a bunch of them through Boot Camp at Parris Island.”

  “So? What’s the problem?”

  “For one thing, he’s five months, maybe a little more, away from being available for assignment. After he finishes Parris Island, he has to go through Officer Basic School at Quantico. And by that time, we’d have to fight for him anyhow; they’d want to send him to a Division. And Banning needs him now.”

  “So we take him and send him to Banning now,” Sessions said. “As an enlisted man.” He heard what he had said, and added: “That sounds a little ruthless, doesn’t it? But Banning really needs linguists. ‘For the good of the Corps,’ all right?”

  “Those guys who enlisted as officer candidates have a deal, Captain,” Rutterman said. “They either get the bar, or they get discharged.”

  “And then what?” Sessions asked.

  “They report him to his draft board, and he goes in the Army.”

  “What about a direct commission?”

  “Two weeks ago, that would have been the answer; but now the word is every second john goes through Basic School at Quantico. No exceptions. We’d only pick up a couple of weeks, if we could get a slot for him at Quantico. Of course, if we did that, got him a direct commission, he would belong to us, and we could probably keep him.”

  “Damn!” Sessions said. “And there are some other questions. Is he for real? Can he get a security clearance?”

  “He’s got a security clearance. Permanent SECRET. The FBI ran a complete background investigation on him when he first applied for the officer candidate program. Before they called him for active duty.”

  “So it would be reasonable to presume that his story that he lived in Japan for—how many years?”

  “Ten, in all.”

  “... checked out. And if that’s the case, maybe he really does read and write Japanese.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “I think I better go see the Colonel,” Sessions said. “And you better come with me.”

  The Colonel was Lieutenant Colonel F.L. Rickabee, USMC, who was carried on the Table of Organization and Equipment of Headquarters, United States Marine Corps, as a Management Analyst in the office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Logistics. This had absolutely nothing whatever to do with his actual duties.

  Colonel Rickabee, a tall, slight man who was in civilian clothing and didn’t, truth to tell, look much like a Marine on a recruiting poster, heard out Captain Sessions and Technical Sergeant Rutterman.

  “Ed, there’s a courier plane to Parris Island at ten o‘clock. Get on it. Go see this young man. First see if he really is fluent in Japanese. If he is, offer him instant sergeant’s stripes and five-day delay en route home leave if he waives his current rights as an officer candidate. Tell him we’ll arrange a commission for him later. If he gets on his high horse, Rutterman here will personally take him to ’Diego or ‘Frisco and load him on the first plane for Australia as a private. Questions?”

  “Sir, where are you going to get the authority to promote him to sergeant?” Sessions asked.

  “The same place I got the authority to put him on the next plane to Major Banning. Banning desperately needs linguists. This linguist Rutterman found just may keep some Marines alive if I can get him to Banning. If I have to explain that to General Holcomb personally, I will. Questions?”

  Captain Sessions was aware that two mornings a week, Lieutenant Colonel Rickabee went to Eighth and “I” Streets, S.E., in Washington. There, with the sliding doors to the Commandant’s Dining Room closed, he took breakfast alone with the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps, newly promoted Lieutenant General Thomas Holcomb. If the Commandant was out of town for longer than a couple of days, Rickabee either went wherever he was, or had a private meeting with whoever was running the Marine Corps in Holcomb’s absence.

  “No, Sir,” Sessions said, and then had a second thought. He glanced at his watch. “Sir, it’s five past nine. I’m not sure I can make that ten hundred courier.”

  Colonel Rickabee looked thoughtful for a moment, and then dialed a telephone number from memory.

  “Charley, Fred Rickabee. I’m sending an officer, Captain Ed Sessions, to Parris Island on your ten o‘clock courier plane. See that it doesn’t leave until he gets on it, will you?”

  There was a pause, and then Rickabee said, “I don’t care who gets thrown off, Sessions goes. And when he comes back, he’ll be bringing a private with him. Questions?”

  There was another pause.

  “I’ve always been an unreasonable prick, Charley, you know that,” Rickabee chuckled. He put the phone in its cradle and looked at Captain Sessions. “Questions?”

  “No, Sir.”

  “Good job, Rutterman,” Rickabee said, “finding this guy.”

  Then he dropped his eyes to the papers, most of them stamped Top SECRET, on his desk, and shut Captain Sessions and Technical Sergeant Rutterman off from his attention.

  (Two)

  HEADQUARTERS, 2ND TRAINING BATTALION

  UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS RECRUIT DEPOT

  PARRIS ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA

  1555 HOURS 15 JUNE 1942

  “Colonel Westman for you, Sir,” Major H.B. Humphrey’s clerk, a small, stocky, young Corporal in tailored khakis, announced, putting his head in the door.

  “Thank you,” Humphrey said, reaching for the telephone on the desk of his office. The desk, like the building, was new. The building was so new it smelled of freshly cut pine. The interior walls of the hastily thrown up structure had not been finished; between the exposed studs the tar paper under the outer sheeting was visible.

  Photographs of the chain of command—President Roosevelt, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and the Commanding General of Parris Island—hung from bare studs. These photos were as much de rigueur for a battalion commander’s office as the National Colors, the Marine Corps flag, and the battalion colors.

  In addition to the desk and its chair, the office was furnished with a small safe, a filing cabinet, and two folding metal chairs.

  “Major Humphrey, Sir,” he said to the telephone.

  He wondered what the hell Colonel Westman wanted. Westman was the Parris Island G-2 Intelligence Officer. There was very little that a training battalion had to do with Intelligence. For that matter, Humphrey had wondered idly more than once what the Parris Island G-2 did at all. The function of a G-2 in the Marines was to provide the Corps with whatever information he could lay his hands on about the enemy. There was no enemy anywhere close to Parris Island.

  “One of your boots has attracted the attention of some people who sit pretty close to the divine throne, Humphrey,” Colonel Westman announced without any preliminaries. “A man named Moore. John Marston Moore. An officer candidate. You know him?”

  Humphrey thought it over a moment.

  “No, Sir.”

  “I have had two telephone calls,” Westman said. “The first was official. From Washington. A captain named Sessions was on his way down here to ‘deal with’ Private Moore. I was told it would behoove me to grease this captain’s ways, and if necessary, to run interference for him.”

  “Sir, I don’t think I understand ...”

>   “The second call was back channel. From ... an old friend of mine. An aviator. He said he thought I should know that this Captain Sessions who’s coming on the courier plane works for Lieutenant Colonel Rickabee. That name mean anything to you?”

  Humphrey thought about that for a moment.

  “Sir, there was a Major Rickabee in the class ahead of me at the Command and General Staff College. That was ‘39. Thin officer. Not very ... outgoing. I’ve met him, but I can’t say I know him.”

  “That’s him. A very interesting man. I served with him years ago in Santo Domingo. I hear he now has very interesting duties. You take my meaning?”

  “No, Sir, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “He sits at the foot of the divine throne. OK?”

  “I take your meaning, Sir.”

  “I think it would behoove you to give Captain Sessions whatever he asks for, Humphrey. If he asks for anything you don’t feel you can give him, call me.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir. You don’t know what he wants with Private Moore?”

  “I was not told,” Colonel Westman said. “When I asked, I was told that if Captain Sessions wanted me to know, he would tell me.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “I had precisely the same reaction, Humphrey,” Colonel Westman said. “I would like an after action report, if I don’t hear from you in the interim.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir. When does Captain—Sessions, you said, Sir?—get here?”

  “Sessions,” Westman confirmed. “The courier plane is due here in thirty minutes.”

  “Thank you for the advance warning, Sir.”

  “Good afternoon, Major,” Colonel Westman said, and hung up.

  Major Humphrey called for his clerk, learned to his scarcely concealed annoyance that the battalion sergeant major had business on Main Post ... which meant that he was already hoisting his first brew of the afternoon at the Staff NCO Club ... and was not available.