Call to Arms

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I think we can spare your mother those stories,” her father said.

  “You asked,” she said simply.

  “Have you considered, honey, that just maybe—considering your background—”

  She interrupted him by laughing again. “That I am thrilled by close association with a killer?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “I fell in love with him, Daddy,” she said, “the first time I saw him. When I thought he was some friend of Pick’s from Harvard. He was sitting on the patio wall of one of the penthouse suites at the Foster Park. The very first thought I had about Ken was that the Marine Corps was crazy if they thought they could take someone so gentle, so sweet, so vulnerable, and turn him into an officer.”

  “And when you found out what he’s really like?”

  “I found that out the same day,” Ernie Sage said. “I didn’t find out about the Italians and the Chinese until later.”

  Her father looked at her (she met his eyes, but her face did blush a little) until he was sure he had correctly taken her meaning, then asked, “When do I get to meet Mr. Wonderful?”

  “Soon,” she said. “Now that he’s back in Washington, he doesn’t think they’ll be sending him anywhere else. Not soon, anyway.”

  Twenty minutes after Miss Ernestine Sage returned to her office at J. Walter Thompson, she received a telephone call from Second Lieutenant Kenneth J. McCoy, USMCR, from Washington, D.C.

  Lieutenant McCoy told Miss Sage that he had been transferred to a Marine base near San Diego, California. He would write. Or call, if he had access to a phone. He was sorry, but there would be no chance for him to come to New York; he was getting in the car the moment he got off the phone.

  If he was going by car, Miss Sage argued, there was no reason he couldn’t go to the West Coast by way of New York. If not New York, then Philadelphia. If she left right now from New York, she could be at the Thirtieth Street Station in Philadelphia just about the time he could get there by car from Washington.

  “Honey, goddamnit,” Miss Sage argued. “You can’t go without saying good-bye.”

  Lieutenant McCoy agreed to meet Miss Sage at the Thirtieth Street Station of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Philadelphia.

  “But that’s it, baby,” Lieutenant McCoy said. “There won’t be any time for anything else.”

  “I’ll be standing on the curb,” Ernie Sage said, and hung up.

  VII

  (One)

  The San Carlos Hotel

  Pensacola, Florida

  8 January 1942

  When Pick Pickering woke in the morning, he decided he would not go to the coffee shop for breakfast. It was entirely possible that Captain Mustache would be there. And Pick was not anxious to run into Carstairs again, not after the captain had eaten his ass out for being sloppy and unshaven. And there was a good chance that Martha Sayre Culhane would be there as well. He couldn’t quite interpret them, but he saw danger flags flying in the territories occupied by the blond widow with the flat tummy and the marvelous derriere.

  Discretion was obviously the better part of valor, Pick decided. If he decided to find some gentle breast on which to lay his weary head while he was in Pensacola, he would find one that did not belong to the widow of a Marine aviator who was not only the daughter of an admiral but who was also surrounded by noble protectors of her virtue. There was no reason at all to play with fire.

  He called room service and had breakfast on his patio, surprised and disappointed that the orange juice had come from a can. This was supposed to be Sunny Florida—with orange trees. He tasted the puddle of grits beside his eggs and grimaced. There must be two Floridas, he decided, the one he knew and the one he was condemned to endure now. On Key Biscayne, which was the Florida he knew, the Biscayne Foster would not dream of serving canned orange juice or, for that matter, grits.

  He called the valet and ordered them to press his uniforms, and then he dressed in the one least creased and rumpled. After that, he went down to the lobby barbershop for a haircut and a shave and a shoeshine. Then he got in the Cadillac (which, he noticed, had been washed and serviced) and put the top down.

  Three blocks from the hotel, he pulled to the curb and put the top back up. Even in his green woolen blouse, he was cold. Obviously, there were two Floridas. This one was a thousand miles closer to the Artic Circle.

  He drove more or less aimlessly, having a look around. After a while, he found himself on a street identified as West Garden Street. And then the street signs changed, and he was on Navy Boulevard. That sounded promising, and he stayed on it, driving at the 35-MPH speed limit for five or six miles.

  Here were more signs of the Navy: hock shops, Army-Navy stores, and at least two dozen bars.

  Then he heard the sound of an airplane engine. Close. He leaned forward and looked up and out of the windshield.

  To his right, a bright yellow, open-cockpit, single-engined biplane was taking off from a field hidden by a thick, though scraggly, stand of pine. NAVY was painted on the underside of one wing.

  Pickering slowed to watch it as it sort of staggered into the air, and he was still watching when an identical plane followed it into the air. Pick pulled onto the shoulder of the road, stopped, and got out. At what seemed to be minute or minute-and-a-half intervals, more little open-cockpit airplanes flew over his head, taking off.

  He was awed at the number of airplanes the Navy apparently had here, until, feeling just a little foolish, he realized he was watching the same planes over and over. After they staggered into the air, they circled back and landed, and then took off again. There were really no more than a dozen or so, he realized, and they were using two runways.

  He climbed back in his car and started up again, looking for a road he could take to where he could watch the actual takeoffs and landings. But no road appeared. Instead, he came to a low bridge across some water. On the other side of the bridge was a sign, UNITED STATES NAVY AIR STATION, PENSACOLA, and immediately beyond that a guardhouse.

  A Marine guard saluted crisply, waving him past the gate and onto the reservation. A few hundred yards beyond the Marine guard, he saw to his right a red, triangular flag. It bore the number “8,” and its flagstaff was in the center of what looked like a very nicely tended golf green.

  It had been some time since he had gone a round of golf. Much too long. He missed bashing golf balls. And then he remembered that he had found his clubs in the Cadillac’s trunk when he had loaded his luggage in Atlanta. Were lowly second lieutenants permitted on Navy base golf courses? he wondered. Or was that privilege restricted to high-ranking officers? He would, he decided, find out.

  He drove around the enormous base, finding barracks and headquarters and the Navy Exchange, and finally an airfield. He parked the convertible by a chain-link fence and watched small yellow airplanes endlessly take off and land, take off and land. He found this fascinating, almost hypnotic, and he lost track of time.

  Eventually, his stomach told him it was time to eat; and his new wristwatch told him that it was ten minutes after twelve. Earlier he had driven past the Officers’ Club. The question was, could he find it again?

  The answer was yes, but it took him twenty mintues. He went inside, and for thirty-five cents was fed a cup of clam chowder, pork chops, and lima beans.

  The hotelier in him told him that there was no way the Navy could afford to do this without some kind of a subsidy, and then he realized what the subsidy was. The building and the furnishings were owned by the Navy. There was no mortgage to amortize, and it was not necessary to provide for maintenance or painting. And the cooks were on the Navy payroll.

  He drank a second cup of coffee and then left the dining room. Near the men’s room was a map of the air station mounted on the wall. He studied it, and after a few moments he realized that with the exception of several off-the-main-base training airfields, he had covered in his aimless driving just about all of Pensacola NAS that there was to cover.

  Ne
xt, he decided to leave the base, drive back into Pensacola, and ask Gayfer where he could find a good place to take a dip in the Gulf of Mexico. And then, after a swim and dinner, and maybe a couple of drinks, he would put his uniform back on and return out here and report in.

  He didn’t make it off the base. On the way out, he saw an arrow pointing to the officers’ golf course and decided he would really rather play golf than swim. He recalled additionally that this was the arctic end of Florida and that there would probably be icebergs in the water.

  He found the clubhouse without trouble. There he asked a middle-aged Navy petty officer how one arranged to play a round. Shoes and clubs were available for fifty cents in the locker room, he was told, and the greens fee was a dollar.

  “And do I have to play in uniform?”

  “Uniform regulations are waived while you are physically on the golf course proper, sir,” the petty officer told him. “You can take off your hat and blouse and tie.”

  Pickering fetched his clubs and a pair of golf shoes from the trunk of the convertible and then went to the locker room and paid the fees. After that he hung his blouse, hat, Sam Browne belt, and field scarf in a locker and went outside. A lanky teenaged Negro boy detached himself from a group of his peers, offered his services as a caddy, and led him to the first tee.

  A middle-aged woman was already on the tee. A woman who took her golf seriously, he saw. She was teed up, but had stepped away from the ball and was practicing her swing. He at first approved of this (his major objection to women on the links was that most of them did not take the game seriously); but his approval turned to annoyance when the middle-aged woman kept taking practice swings.

  How long am I supposed to wait?

  And then she saw him standing there and smiled. “Good afternoon,” she said.

  “Hello,” he said politely.

  “I didn’t see you,” she said. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Pickering said.

  “I was waiting for my daughter,” the woman said. And then, “And here, at long last, she is.”

  Pickering followed her gesture and found himself looking at Martha Sayre Culhane. She was wearing a band over her blond hair, a cotton windbreaker on top of a pale blue sweater, and a tight-across-the-back khaki-colored gabardine skirt. That sight immediately urged into his mind’s eye another image of her. In that one she was in her birthday suit.

  Martha Sayre Culhane’s eyebrows rose when she saw him; she was not pleased.

  “If you don’t mind playing with women,” Martha Sayre Culhane’s mother said. “They really discourage singles.”

  “I would be delighted,” Pick said.

  “I’m Jeanne Sayre,” Martha Sayre’s Culhane’s mother said. “And this is Martha. Martha Culhane.”

  In turn, they offered their hands. Martha Sayre Culhane’s hand, he thought, was exquisitely soft and feminine.

  “My name is Malcolm Pickering,” he said. “People call me Pick.”

  “I thought your name was Foster,” Martha Sayre Culhane said, matter-of-factly.

  “Oh, you’ve met?” Jeanne Sayre asked.

  “The desk clerk at the San Carlos, almost beside himself with awe, pointed him out to me,” Martha Sayre Culhane said.

  That’s not true, Pickering thought, with certainty. She asked him who I was. She was curious.

  “Oh?” her mother said, her tone making it clear that her daughter was embarrassing and annoying her.

  “According to the desk clerk,” Martha Sayre Culhane said, “we are about to go a round with the heir apparent to the Foster Hotel chain, now resident in the San Carlos penthouse.”

  “He told me about you, too,” Pickering blurted.

  Jeanne Sayre looked uncomfortably from one to the other. And then she looked between them, avoiding what she did not want to look at.

  “But your name isn’t Foster?” Martha challenged. “What about the rest of the story? How much of that is true?”

  “Martha!” Jeanne Sayre snapped.

  “Andrew Foster is my mother’s father,” Pickering said.

  He saw surprise on Jeanne Sayre’s face. But he didn’t know what was in Martha Sayre Culhane’s eyes.

  “And what brought you to honor the Marine Corps with your presence?” Martha Sayre Culhane challenged.

  “An old family custom,” Pick snapped. “My father—my father is Fleming Pickering, as in Pacific & Far East Shipping—was a Marine in the last war. Whenever the professionals need help to pull their acorns out of the fire, we lend a hand. I am twenty-two years old. I went to Harvard, where I was the assistant business manager of the Crimson. I am unmarried, have a polo handicap of six, and generally can get around eighteen holes in the middle seventies. Is there anything else you would like to know?”

  “Good for you, Lieutenant!” Jeanne Sayre said. “Martha, really—”

  “If there’s no objection,” Martha Sayre Culhane interrupted her mother, “I think I’ll go first.”

  She stepped to the tee and drove her mother’s ball straight down the fairway.

  Whoever had taught her to play golf, Pickering saw, had managed to impress upon her the importance of follow-through. At the end of her swing, her khaki gabardine skirt was skintight against the most fascinating derriere he had ever seen.

  “If you would rather not play with us, Lieutenant,” Jeanne Sayre said, “I would certainly understand.”

  “If it’s all right with you,” Pick said, “I’ll play with you.”

  She met his eyes for a moment. Her eyes, Pick saw, were gray, and kind, and perceptive.

  “You go ahead,” Jeanne Sayre said. “I’ll bring up the rear.”

  Martha Sayre Culhane hated him, Pick was aware, because he was here. Alive. And her husband—the late Lieutenant Whatever-his-name-had-been Culhane, USMC—had died in the futile defense of Wake Island.

  Pick was ambivalent about that. Shamefully, perhaps even disgustingly ambivalent. He was sorry that Lieutenant Culhane was dead. He was sorry that Martha Sayre Culhane was a widow. And glad that she was.

  By the time they came off the course, there was no doubt in Pick Pickering’s mind that he was in love. There was simply no other explanation for the way he felt when—however briefly—their eyes had met.

  (Two)

  Thirtieth Street Station

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  1820 Hours, 8 January 1942

  The weather was simply too cold and nasty for Ernie Sage to wait on the curb outside the Thirtieth Street Station as she had promised.

  But she found, inside the station near one of the Market Street doors, a place where she could look out and wait for him. It was hardly more comfortable than the street: Every time the door opened, there was a blast of cold air, and she desperately needed to go to the ladies’ room. But she held firmly to her spot; she was afraid she would miss him if she left.

  And finally he showed up. Except for the path the wipers had cleared on the windshield, the LaSalle convertible was filthy. The bumper and grill were covered with frozen grime, and slush had packed in the fender wells.

  Ernie picked up her bags and ran outside; and she was standing at the curb when he skidded to a stop.

  She pulled open the door and threw her bags into the car.

  “If they won’t let you wait, go around the block,” Ernie ordered. Then she ran back inside the Thirtieth Street Station to the ladies’ room.

  He wasn’t there when she went back outside, but he pulled to the curb a moment later, and she got in.

  She had planned to kiss him, but he didn’t give her a chance. The moment she was inside, he pulled away from the curb. She slid close to him, put her hand under his arm, and nestled her head against his shoulder.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “What’s with all the luggage?” McCoy asked, levelly.

  “I thought you’d probably be going through Harrisburg,” Ernie said. “I thought I would ride that far with you, and then c
atch a train.”

  He looked at her for a just a moment, but said nothing.

  “I’m lying,” Ernie Sage said. “I’m going with you. All the way.”

  “No you’re not,” he said flatly.

  “I knew that was a mistake,” Ernie said. “I should have waited until we were in the middle of nowhere before I told you. Somewhere you couldn’t put me out.”

  “You can’t come with me,” he said.

  “Why not? ‘Whither thou goest…’ Book of Ruth.”

  When there was no reply to that, Ernie said, “I love you.”

  “You think you love me,” he said. “You don’t really know a damn thing about me.”

  “I thought we’d been through all this,” Ernie said, trying to keep her voice light. “As I recall, the last conclusion you came to was that I was the best thing that ever happened to you.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ!”

  “Well, am I or ain’t I?” Ernie challenged.

  “You ever wondered if…what happened…is what this is really all about?”

  “You mean,” she said, aware that she was frightened, that she was close to tears, “because we fucked? Because you copped my cherry?”

  “Goddamn it, I hate it when you talk dirty,” he said furiously.

  Her mouth ran away with her. “Not always,” she said.

  He jammed his foot on the brakes, and the LaSalle slid to the curb.

  “Sorry,” Ernie said, very softly.

  There was something in his eyes that at first she thought was anger, but after a moment she knew it was pain.

  “I love you,” Ernie said. “I can’t help that.”

  He was breathing heavily, as if he had been running hard.

  Then he put the LaSalle in gear and pulled away from the curb.

  “I was afraid you were going to put me out,” Ernie said.

  “Do me a favor,” McCoy said. “Just shut up.”

  When she saw a U.S. 422 highway sign, Ernie thought that maybe she had won, maybe that he even would reach across the seat for her and take her hand, or put his arm around her shoulder. U.S. 422 was the Harrisburg highway. If she got that far, if they spent the night together…