Battleground

by W. E. B Griffin

  This time it began to pass almost immediately.

  “Captain Pickering, Steve,” Major Stecker went on, “won the Croix de Guerre at Belleau Wood. Everybody in his squad was dead, and he had an 8mm round through each leg when we got to him, and twenty-four German Grenadiers needing burying.”

  “He was a Marine?” the Sergeant Major asked, so surprised that there was a perceptible pause before he remembered to append, “Sir?”

  Stecker nodded. “You ever hear what they say, Steve, ‘Once a Marine, always a Marine’?” he asked, now conversationally.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Captain Pickering is one of the good guys, Steve. Don’t forget that.”

  “I won’t, Sir.”

  “If you had taken a commission when they offered you one, you stupid sonofabitch, you wouldn’t have to call me ‘Sir.’ ”

  “Calling you ‘Sir’ doesn’t bother me, Major.”

  “Do what you can for Captain Pickering, Steve,” Stecker said. “Like I said, he’s one of the good guys.”

  The G-2 (Intelligence) General Staff Section of Headquarters, 1st Marine Division was set up in its own tent fifty yards from the Division Command Post, which had been established in a frame building that had survived both the pre-landing bombardment and the invasion itself.

  A labor detail, bare chested, sweat soaked, looking exhausted, had just about completed a sandbag wall around the tent. In Captain Pickering’s opinion, the wall would provide some protection from small arms fire, and from shrapnel from incoming mortar or artillery rounds landing nearby, but that was about all. A direct hit from an artillery shell would be devastating. What was needed, he thought, based on his World War I experience, was a hole in the ground, timbered over, and with a four- or five-foot-thick layer of sandbags on top.

  Colonel Frank B. Goettge, the G-2, was standing before a large, celluloid covered map mounted on a sheet of plywood. He was watching one of his sergeants mark on it with a grease pencil, when the Sergeant Major and Captain Pickering came in.

  “The General, Sir,” the Sergeant Major said when Goettge looked at him, “asked me to bring this gentleman to you. Captain Pickering, this is Colonel ...”

  “I have the pleasure of Captain Pickering’s acquaintance,” Goettge said, walking to Pickering, smiling, and offering his hand. “Good to see you, Sir. And a little surprised.”

  “I’m a little surprised myself,” Pickering said, shifting his shoulder to indicate the Springfield. “I would have given odds I’d never carry one of these things again.”

  “I don’t mean to sound facetious, Sir,” Goettge said, “but what did you do, miss the boat?”

  “Something like that,” Pickering said. “I just couldn’t bring myself to sail off into the sunset with the goddamned Navy.”

  “Is there anything I can do for you, Sir?” Goettge asked, in some confusion.

  “Tell me how I can make myself useful to you,” Fleming Pickering said, “and stop calling me ‘Sir.’ ”

  “I don’t understand ...”

  “I asked General Vandergrift where he thought I could be helpful, and he sent me to you,” Pickering said.

  “For ‘duty,’ so to speak?”

  “Anywhere where I can earn my rations—I understand, by the way, there are goddamn few of those. I’m a little long in the tooth to go on patrol, but if that’s all you’ve got for me ...”

  Colonel Goettge looked at Pickering intently. He had not had time to digest the presence of Captain Fleming Pickering, much less the reason for his presence, whatever that may be. He knew Pickering was wrapped in the mantle of the Secretary of the Navy and that he personally owned the Pacific & Far East Shipping Corporation. And yet, here he was in Goettge’s bunker with a rifle slung over his shoulder.

  I’ll be damned, he’s dead serious about going out into the boondocks of this goddamned island with that rifle, as if he was still an eighteen-year-old Marine corporal.

  “Even if I couldn’t think of half a dozen ways where you can really be of help around here, Captain,” Goettge said, “I think we’re both a little too long in the teeth to go running around in the boondocks.”

  Pickering nodded.

  “Thank you, Sergeant Major,” Goettge went on. “Please tell the General ‘thank you’ for Captain Pickering.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” the sergeant major said, and then he added: “If I can help in any way, Captain, you just tell me what and how.”

  XV

  (One)

  THE FOSTER LAFAYETTE HOTEL

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  10 AUGUST 1942

  As the 1940 Packard limousine passed out of the gates of the White House onto Pennsylvania Avenue, The Honorable Frank Knox, Secretary of the Navy, pulled a handkerchief from the cuff of his rumpled seersucker suit jacket, removed his Panama hat, and mopped at his forehead. Since the handkerchief was already damp with sweat, he did little but rearrange beads of sweat.

  As he did now and again in such weather, Knox let his mind dwell on Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. They must have really been marvelous practical politicians, he thought, right up there with Franklin Delano Roosevelt in their ability to talk people into doing foolish things against their better judgment.

  There was no other reason he could think of why the fledgling nation established its capital in a steaming swamp on the Potomac River. Certainly, Adams and Stockton and the other founding fathers must have known that the logical place for the capital was Philadelphia. Or New York. Or Boston. Or Richmond, for that matter. Anywhere but where they agreed to put it.

  It was a thought that kept popping into Secretary Knox’s mind over the last week, during which the temperature in Washington had rarely dipped below ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit and ninety-five percent humidity.

  “Mr. Secretary?”

  Knox turned to look at Captain David Haughton, USN, his administrative assistant, a tall, slender officer in a mussed, sweat-soaked khaki uniform. Haughton extended a fresh handkerchief to him.

  “Thank you,” Knox said. As he mopped at his forehead again, he saw that Haughton had half a dozen handkerchiefs in the open briefcase he held on his lap, in addition to the probably five pounds of paper, all stamped Top SECRET, and the snub-nosed .38 Colt revolver. In the summer, he carried the revolver in the briefcase, because the shoulder holster was too visible under khaki and white uniforms.

  Knox spoke aloud what came into his mind: “What the hell would I do without you, David?”

  “Probably a lot better, Mr. Secretary,” Haughton said. “May I respectfully suggest that you get someone who could really take care of you, and perhaps arrange to send me to sea?”

  “You can suggest it all you want, but you’re stuck with me.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Where now?” Knox asked.

  “Across the street, Sir,” Haughton said, and pointed toward the elegant brick facade of the Foster Lafayette Hotel. “Senator Fowler.”

  “I’d forgotten,” Knox confessed.

  “He didn’t offer to come to your office, Mr. Secretary,” Haughton said. “He usually does.”

  “No problem. We’re here,” Knox said, and then added, chuckling, “He has a nicer office than I do, anyway.”

  Senator Richmond K. Fowler, Republican of California, maintained a suite in the Foster Lafayette. Not an ordinary suite—though God knew suites in the Lafayette were as large and elegant as they came—but an apartment made up of a pair of suites. It was furnished with antiques that were the personal property of old Andrew Foster himself.

  Fowler was quite wealthy, and unlike some of his peers in the Senate, he made no effort at all to conceal it. In many ways he was like Knox: He considered public service a privilege; living in Washington, D.C., even as well as he did, was the terrible price he had to pay for that privilege.

  Fowler was also, in Knox’s opinion, one of the better senators. He was enormously influential, but rarely used his influence like a club, or a baton of
power. For example, he did not make telephone calls to the Secretary of the Navy—or to other senior executive department officials—just to hear the sound of own voice, to remind himself of his own importance, or as a fishing expedition. He called only when he had something to say, or wanted specific information he could not get elsewhere. Consequently, his calls were put through to Knox—and to others—when other senators would be told the Secretary had just left for a meeting.

  Even more rarely, he requested a personal audience with Knox. He understood his time was precious, and that he could usually accomplish in ninety seconds on the telephone business that would take thirty minutes or an hour from the Secretary’s available time if they met face to face.

  So when he did ask to see Knox personally, the Secretary of the Navy was usually willing to give him the time he needed, if at all possible. There was some business that should not be discussed on the telephone. Fowler had proven over the years that he knew what that was.

  The limousine pulled up before the marquee of the hotel, and a doorman, sweating in his uniform coat, opened the door.

  “Welcome to the Lafayette, Mr. Secretary,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Knox said and offered his hand. “How are you? Hot enough for you?”

  “I didn’t think I’d be this hot until after Saint Peter pointed toward the basement,” the doorman said. He waited until Captain Haughton was out, and then spoke to the chauffeur: “Pull it up there where it says DIPLOMATIC CORPS ONLY.”

  A bellman spun the revolving glass door for Knox as he approached, and then smiled at him as he came through. Knox walked across the quiet, heavily carpeted lobby to the bank of elevators.

  “Eight,” Captain Haughton ordered.

  By the time the elevator reached the eighth floor, there had been a telephone call from the doorman. 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 when the elevator door opened.

  “Hello, Mr. Secretary Knox, Sir. Nice to see you again, Sir. And you too, Captain Haughton. The Senator’s waiting for you.”

  “Hello, Franklin,” Knox said. “How do you manage to look so cool on a day like this?”

  “I just don’t go outside in the heat, Sir,” Fowler’s butler chuckled.

  Senator Richmond K. Fowler was in the sitting room. He was not alone. A tall, shapely, aristocratic woman was with him. She had silver hair, simply but elegantly coiffured, and she was wearing a cotton suit, with a high-necked white linen blouse under it. For jewelry, she wore a simple wedding band, a single strand of pearls, and a small, cheap pin on the lapel of her jacket. It held two blue stars on a white background and signified that two members of her immediate family were serving their country in uniform. Secretary Knox had not previously had the honor of the lady’s acquaintance, but he knew who she was.

  Her father owned the Foster Lafayette Hotel (and forty others), and her husband owned the Pacific & Far Eastern Shipping Corporation. She was, pro tempore, in her husband’s absence, Chairman of the Board of P&FE. Her name was Patricia Foster (Mrs. Fleming) Pickering.

  She stood up as Knox and Haughton entered the room, and the Secretary liked what he saw. Nice-looking woman, he thought. This was immediately followed by, Her presence here is not coincidental. I wonder what she wants?

  “Hello, Frank,” Senator Fowler said, walking up to him and offering his hand. “Thank you for finding time for me.” He looked at_ Captain Haughton, nodded, and said, “Haughton.”

  “Senator,” Haughton replied.

  “I was right across the street,” Knox said. “And anytime, Richmond.”

  “I don’t believe you know each other, do you?”

  “I know who the lady is,” Knox said. “How do you do, Mrs. Pickering? I’m pleased that I’m being given the chance to meet you.”

  “How do you do, Mr. Knox?” Patricia Pickering said, giving him her hand.

  She’s striking now, Knox thought. She must have been a real beauty when she was twenty.

  She turned to Haughton. “My husband has often spoken of you, Captain Haughton. How do you do?”

  “Very well, thank you,” Haughton said.

  “Would you do any better if we got you something cold to drink?”

  “Oh, yes, Ma‘am,” he said.

  “Franklin?” Patricia Pickering said, and the butler appeared.

  “I hope that offer includes me,” Knox said.

  “Oh, yes. We intend to ply you with liquor and anything else that might please you,” she said.

  “Do you really?” Knox said, taken a little aback.

  “I’ve been drinking—what is this, Franklin?”

  “An Orange Special, Miss Patricia.”

  “Orange juice, club soda, and a hooker of rum,” she said. “I can’t handle gin, for some reason.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” Knox said.

  “Make a pitcherful, please,” she ordered.

  “Patricia is in town for a meeting of the War Shipping Board,” Senator Fowler said.

  “That’s not quite true,” she said. “What I did, Mr. Knox, was take one of the three airline ticket priorities they gave P&FE to send people to the WSB meeting, so that I could come here and see Senator Fowler.”

  “But you are a member of the War Shipping Board,” Fowler protested.

  “Yes, I am. In the same way that I am chairman of P&FE,” she said. “But I don’t like sailing under false colors.”

  “I don’t think I know quite what you mean, Mrs. Pickering,” Knox said. There was something about this woman, beyond her grace and her beauty, that he instinctively liked.

  “I am not foolish enough to think that I can run P&FE, Mr. Knox,” she said evenly. “And only fools think I do. Despite the title. My position, I’ve come to think, is analogous to that of the King. I understand that every day they bring him a red box containing important state documents. They make sure he knows what’s going on. But they don’t let him run the British Empire.”

  “Well, then, may I say that you make a lovely queen?” Knox said.

  She smiled at him, a genuine smile. “Richmond is supposed to be the politician,” she said. “Saying, as a reflex action, what he thinks people want to hear.”

  “She was a sweet child when I first met her, Frank,” Fowler said. “And then she married Flem Pickering, who has poisoned her against public servants.”

  “That’s not true,” she said. “Flem Pickering proposed because my father had already told me about public servants.”

  “I’m afraid to ask what he told you,” Knox said.

  “He started by saying that one should regard them as used car salesmen in one-tone shoes,” she said. “And then, I’m afraid, he became somewhat cynical.”

  Knox laughed.

  “But here you are, seeing Senator Fowler,” he said.

  “My father and my husband feel he’s the exception to the rule,” she said. “And he tells me you are, too.”

  Franklin, the butler, appeared with a pitcher and glasses on a tray. It occurred to Knox that since there hadn’t been time to make it, obviously Franklin had prepared it beforehand, probably on orders from Patricia Pickering.

  Knox took one of the glasses and raised it. “Your health, Ma‘am.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Would that include my peace of mind?”

  “Certainly,” Knox said, smiling.

  “You can do something about that,” she said. “You can tell me where he is and what he’s doing.”

  “He’s in the Pacific, as you know,” Knox said. “As my personal representative.”

  “A week ago, I had a message from him saying that he was going to sea for a while and would be out of touch,” Patricia Pickering said. “And now the radio tells me that we have invaded Guadalcanal in the Solomons. And I have learned that my husband is no longer in Australia. I want to know where he is and what he’s doing. And Richmond tells me that you’re the only man who knows.”


  “Are you sure he’s no longer in Australia?” Knox replied. “I’m curious. How could you know that?”

  “The Pacific Endeavor is now in Melbourne. I radioed a message there to be relayed to my husband; and her master replied that his whereabouts are unknown to our agent there. And that MacArthur’s headquarters denied any knowledge of him.”

  Use of Maritime Radio for transmission of personal messages had been forbidden since the United States had entered the war, but Knox was not surprised to hear what she just told him. The master of the Pacific Endeavor was not going to ignore a message from her owner, or refuse to do whatever the message ordered him to do, whether or not the U.S. Navy liked it.

  Patricia Pickering read his mind. “Please don’t tell me I wasn’t supposed to do that.”

  “I have the feeling, Mrs. Pickering,” Knox said, “that anything I say wouldn’t make very much difference to you.”

  “I would take your word if you tell me there were good reasons why my husband disappeared from the face of the earth,” she said. “Is that what it is?”

  “David,” Knox said, turning to Captain Haughton, “would you show Mrs. Pickering our last message from Captain Pickering?”

  Haughton opened his briefcase, took out a two-inch thick sheaf of papers, looked through it, and pulled a file from it. The file cover sheet was marked with diagonal red stripes across its face and Top SECRET was stamped at the top and bottom. He handed it to Patricia Pickering.

  Eyes Only——The Secretary of the Navy

  DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN

  ORIGINAL TO BE DESTROYED AFTER ENCRYPTION AND

  TRANSMITTAL TO SECNAVY

  Aboard USS McCawley

  Off Guadalcanal

  1430 Hours 9 August 1942

  Dear Frank:

  This is written rather in haste, and will be brief because I know of the volume of radio traffic that’s being sent, most of it unnecessarily.

  As far as I am concerned the Battle of Guadalcanal began on 31 July when the first Army Air Corps B-17 raid was conducted. They have bombed steadily for a week. I mention this because I suspect the Navy might forget the bombing in their reports. They were MacA’s B-17s and he supplied them willingly. That might be forgotten, too.