In Danger's Path

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Incredible!”

  “He likes you, Milla,” Ed said.

  “How can you say that?”

  “He talked to you. For the Killer, he talked a lot. And he just doesn’t talk to people he doesn’t like.”

  “Are most of your friends like him?”

  “I really don’t have many friends, Milla,” he said after a moment, thoughtfully. “To me a friend is somebody you can trust when the chips are down—do you know that expression, ‘when the chips are down’?”

  She nodded.

  “I trust the Killer. Like I trust you, my love.”

  [FOUR]

  One day, in the middle of the morning, he came to her apartment, unexpected. Milla knew it was over as soon as she looked in Ed’s eyes.

  “I don’t know how to break this to you easy, honey,” he said, just looking at her, not even kissing her.

  “Tell me.”

  “The Fourth has been transferred to the Philippines,” he said. “I’m on the advance party. I fly out of here the day after tomorrow.”

  I knew it was too good to be true, too good to last.

  “Good God!”

  “Which means we don’t have much time.”

  “Two days…”

  She wrapped her arms around him and fought back the tears.

  “I’ve got to transfer title to all my stuff to you.”

  “I don’t want anything!”

  “You’re my wife.”

  “I am not.”

  “You will be at eleven o’clock tomorrow. Jim Ferneyhough—Father Ferneyhough—at the Anglican Cathedral says he’ll marry us, and to hell with getting permission from my colonel or anybody else.”

  “But you will be in trouble with the Corps of Marines.”

  “Oh, to hell with that, baby.”

  [FIVE]

  Milla came very close to taking her life the day Ed left Shanghai. When she saw him enter the huge, four-engined Sikorski Pan American Airways “China Clipper,” she was absolutely convinced that she would never see him again. And without Ed, she didn’t want to live. Not the way things were now in Shanghai, and certainly not in the Shanghai that was soon to be. Even though Ed was an intelligence officer and should know how things really were, she was sure she knew what really was going to happen better than he did.

  Because it had a basement garage, and she wouldn’t dare leave the red Pontiac on the street in front of her own apartment, Milla drove from the wharf to Ed’s apartment—which by now she had begun to think of as their apartment, their home.

  Maybe, she thought, it would be best to take my life in our apartment, where we were so happy.

  The bed was still mussed from their last time together. Wondering why she was doing it, she made it over with fresh sheets.

  The towel in the bathroom was still damp from his last shower, and he had forgotten to take a half-empty bottle of his aftershave lotion that smelled of limes.

  She went so far as to take out the Colt automatic pistol he had left with her, after teaching her how to load and cock and aim it.

  Then she decided she would wait until the 4th Marines actually left Shanghai. The advance party, to which Ed was assigned, would fly to Manila to arrange for the arrival of the regiment, which would be moved by ship.

  She did not want Ed to receive news that she was dead. But if she took her life before the regiment left, especially in his apartment, it was possible someone would notify him in Manila.

  It would be different after the 4th Marines were gone. No one would then care if a Nansen person shot herself in an apartment once occupied by an officer of the 4th Marines.

  [SIX]

  Two days before the 4th Marines had finished loading aboard the USS President Madison, the ship sent to transport them to Manila, Milla had a visitor in her apartment. It was a Marine, a sergeant. He was short, barrel-chested, round-faced, and stubby-fingered; and her first impression was that he was stupid and crude. Behind him was a flat-faced Chinese woman, with a pair of children in tow—obviously half white—and a third in her arms.

  “Mrs. Banning?” he asked.

  It was only the second time in her life that she had been so addressed. The English priest at the cathedral had been the first. “May I congratulate you, Mrs. Banning, on your marriage, and offer my best wishes for a long and happy marriage?” he had said, knowing full well how the odds were stacked against that.

  “I am Mrs. Banning,” she said.

  It was the first time in her life she had ever said that. It sounded strange and made her want to cry.

  “Sergeant Zimmerman, ma’am,” he said. “Fourth Marines. This is my woman, Mae Su, and our kids.”

  The woman nodded at Milla but did not speak. Milla, somewhat unkindly, thought they were a well-matched pair. Mae Su was built like Zimmerman, short, squat, and muscular, and looked no more intelligent.

  “How may I help you, Sergeant?”

  “I don’t need any help, but Mae Su and the kids are probably going to need some help. Before he left, Killer McCoy said I should get the two of youse together. And before he left, I asked Captain Banning about it, and he said it was a good idea that the two of youse could probably help each other out.”

  “Well, if my husband said that, Sergeant, I’ll be happy to do anything I can for you,” Milla said, noting what she had said. It was the first time she had ever used the phrase “my husband.”

  This is insane. I’m insane. I’m in no position to help anybody. What I need is somebody to help me.

  “Okay,” Sergeant Zimmerman said. “The Killer said you was smart and would know how fucked up things are going to get around here once we get on that fucking ship and sail off.”

  The Killer said I was smart? Obviously, what has happened here is that Corporal the Killer was boasting to his friend the sergeant that he had met Captain Banning’s woman—my God, we weren’t married when the Killer went to America; that’s all I was to him, his Captain’s Nansen person equivalent of this Chinese peasant—and that the two women should get together.

  So why did this sergeant call me Mrs. Banning? Because Ed told him we were married? I don’t think so. He just decided that Captain Banning’s Nansen person woman would like to be called Mrs. Banning, it would make her feel less like a mistress, less like one more Nansen person whore.

  “Exactly what did you have in mind, Sergeant?” Milla asked.

  “Nothing now,” he said. “But sure as hell, something will fucking well turn up.”

  “Would you like to come in? Can I offer you a cup of tea?”

  Sergeant Zimmerman spoke to the woman, repeating her offer in what sounded like perfect Mandarin. The woman shook her head, “no.”

  “We don’t have much time,” Sergeant Zimmerman said. “We looked for you first over at the Captain’s apartment, waited around for you, and then we come here.”

  “I see.”

  “What I think would be best would be for youse two to get together once I’m gone.”

  “Whatever you think is best,” Milla had said. She smiled at Zimmerman’s woman, who did not smile back.

  Sergeant Zimmerman put out his hand.

  “Captain Banning told me I would like you,” he said, and added, “Would it be okay if I told you I think he’s one hell of a fucking officer?”

  “Of course.”

  “And if anybody can get you out of this fucking place, Mrs. Banning, the Captain can. That’s the real reason I wanted youse two to meet.”

  Could that possibly mean that Ed thought this woman, this Chinese peasant, could help me?

  Sergeant Zimmerman nodded at her, gestured for his woman to turn, and then walked away from Milla’s door.

  [SEVEN]

  For reasons she didn’t quite understand, Milla got all dressed up before driving Ed’s red convertible Pontiac to the Yangtze River wharf to watch the 4th Marines sail away from Shanghai aboard the President Madison.

  She was not, she saw, the only Marine’s woman to come to
the wharf to watch her man—and her future—sail away. At least twenty Chinese women were there, many of them with children, as well as four white women, two of them with children. She recognized two of them, and presumed all four were Russians. They looked as desperate and pathetic as she felt.

  She also saw Sergeant Zimmerman, leaning on the rail of the ship, and his woman and their three children on the wharf.

  As the lines tying the ship to the wharf were loosened and picked up, and the President Madison began, just perceptibly, to move away, a sudden impulse sent Milla out of the Pontiac, and she found herself walking to Sergeant Zimmerman’s woman.

  The woman nodded to her but didn’t speak.

  When Sergeant Zimmerman waved, Milla waved back. His woman—Milla remembered her name now, Mae Su—waved just once, and then just stood there, watching as the distance between the ship and the wharf grew.

  “Come with me, I’ll drive you home,” Milla said.

  Mae Su looked at her and nodded her head, just once, but didn’t speak.

  The current of the Yangtze River finally moved the President Madison far enough away from the wharf to allow her engines to be engaged. There was a sudden powerful churning at her stern, under the American flag hanging limp from a pole, and she began to move, ever faster, both farther away from the wharf and down the Yangtze.

  Milla and Mae Su watched until it was no longer possible to make out individual Marines on her deck, and then Mae Su looked up at Milla, and they walked to the Pontiac and got in.

  The Zimmerman apartment was far larger and better furnished than Milla expected. Did a Marine sergeant make enough money to support something like this, she wondered, or did they have a second source of income?

  “You have a very nice apartment,” Milla said, as Mae Su changed the diaper of her youngest child.

  “Thank you,” Mae Su said, and then as if she were reading Milla’s mind, went on: “My man is without education and crude, but he is not stupid. We supplied all the houseboys who took care of the Marines in their barracks. And had other enterprises.”

  Milla nodded politely.

  Mae Su thought of something else. “And, after much instruction, he became a very good poker player. There was always a little something extra in the pot after payday.”

  “Oh, really?” Milla asked, smiling.

  “I will really miss all of this,” Mae Su said. “We were here five years.”

  “You’re going to leave?”

  “Sell everything and leave,” Mae Su said. “Before the Japanese really get bad. I have already made some arrangements.”

  Milla nodded again.

  “I went with my man to your apartment because he wanted me to,” Mae Su said. “He thought we could help each other. I had the feeling you did not agree.”

  “How could we help each other?” Milla asked.

  “Much would depend on how much money you have, in gold or pounds or dollars—gold would be best—and on how much you could get for Captain Banning’s possessions in these circumstances.”

  The circumstances were, Milla knew, that the only potential purchasers of a westerner’s property were Chinese, and the Chinese were fully aware it was a buyer’s market. Ed’s things would not bring anything close to what they were worth. Milla seriously doubted she could find a buyer for the Pontiac at all. Who would want to pay good money for an expensive American automobile when it would almost certainly—under one pretense or another—be confiscated by the Japanese?

  “Specifically, what do you have in mind?” Milla said.

  “At first, I am going to return to my village,” Mae Su said. “I have a tractor, a Fordson, and a small caravan large enough for a stove and to sleep in on the road.”

  Milla could see that in her mind. Tractors pulling rickety four-wheel carts were a common sight outside the city, rolling along at five miles an hour on bare tires mounted on axles from ancient automobiles.

  She was also suddenly aware that she was talking to Mae Su as an equal. The woman wasn’t nearly as stupid as she looked.

  “And then?”

  “Then I think I shall do what my man said to do. Go north and then west, and try to make it through Tibet and into India. Or perhaps even further north into Mongolia, and then into India through Kazakhstan.”

  “Kazakhstan is in Russia,” Milla said with a sense of terror.

  Her father had refused to return to what had become the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—for good reason. As a former general in the White Army, he would have been imprisoned, or more likely shot, if he did. His refusal had stripped him and his family of Russian citizenship; and the Russians, like the Americans, did not permit holders of stateless person Nansen passports to cross their border.

  “Kazakhstan is Kazakhstan,” Mae Su said. “It is possible to get through it to India. Gold opens all borders.”

  “Why India?”

  “My man said for me to find an American consulate, and give them our marriage paper, and the papers he has signed saying he is the father of our children. Maybe they will be able to help us. They would probably help you. You are the wife of an American Marine officer.”

  Yes, I am, Milla realized, somewhat surprised.

  “But I only have enough money for us,” Mae Su said. “If you want to come with me, you will not only have to pay your own way, but, if necessary, to share what you have with me.”

  “I have some money,” Milla said, thinking out loud. “All that my husband had here. And a little of my own. And the car, and the furniture in the apartments. I don’t think any of that will bring very much.”

  I sound as if I’m willing to go with this woman, by tractor-drawn cart, to some nameless village in the interior of China, and entrusting her with all I have in the world.

  But she sounds so confident, and what other choice do I have, except to stay here and hope the Japanese officer who wants me for his woman will be kind to me? Or to end it all, once and for all?

  “If you would like,” Mae Su said, “I could deal with the disposition of your property. I know some people. I might be able to get you more for it than you think.”

  “All right,” Milla said. She knew a Chinese could strike a better deal than she could.

  “I have two guns,” Mae Su went on. “A shotgun and a pistol. My man took them from the Marine armory.”

  “My husband left a pistol with me.”

  “And do you know how to use it? If necessary, could you use it?”

  Milla nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I know how to use it.”

  “That may be necessary,” Mae Su said. “Now, if you will stay here and watch the children, and give me the keys to your apartments, I will see about selling your things.”

  “All right,” Milla said, and added: “Thank you, Mae Su.”

  Mae Su, for the first time, smiled at her.

  Milla wondered if she would ever see Banning again.

  I

  [ONE]

  Apartment 4C

  303 DuPont Circle

  Washington, D.C.

  0905 8 February 1943

  Fourteen months later, and half a world away, Major Ed Banning, USMC, opened his eyes, aware of the phone ringing. The next thing he noticed was that he was alone in bed.

  As he swung his feet out of bed and reached for the telephone, he read his clock, remembering that Carolyn had told him she absolutely had to go to work, which meant catching the 6:05 Milk Train Special to New York. Which meant she had silently gotten out of bed at five, dressed without waking him, and gone and caught the goddamned train. The kindness was typical of her, and he was grateful for it, but he was sorry he missed her.

  He was—especially when she showed him a kindness—shamed by their relationship. Even though she had known from the beginning about Milla, the truth was that Carolyn was getting the short end of the stick. They could be as “adult” and “sophisticated” as they pretended to be about their relationship, but the cold truth was Carolyn was doing all the givi
ng, and he was doing all the taking, and Carolyn deserved better than that.

  “Damn!” he said aloud, as he picked up the telephone. He had the day off—he had worked the Sunday 1600—2400 shift in the cryptographic room, and would not be expected at work again until 0800 tomorrow morning. It would have been nice to spend that time with Carolyn.

  “Liberty Four Thirty-four Thirty-three,” he said into the telephone.

  It was standing operating procedure in the U.S. Marine Corps’ Office of Management Analysis to answer telephones—in the office and in quarters—with the number, not the name. That way a dialer of a wrong number would learn only that he had the wrong number, not the identity of the person or office he had called by mistake.

  “Sorry to do this to you, Ed,” his caller said, without wasting time on a greeting.

  He recognized the voice. It was his boss, Colonel F. L. “Fritz” Rickabee, USMC, Deputy Director of the U.S. Marine Corps Office of Management Analysis. After Ed had been evacuated from the Philippines, just before they’d fallen to the Japanese, Banning had been assigned to the little-known unit.

  Even its title was purposely obfuscatory—it had nothing to do with either management or analysis. It was a covert intelligence unit that took its orders from, and was answerable only to, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox.

  “Oh, no!” Banning said.

  “One of the sailors apparently has a tummy ache,” Rickabee said.

  “When?”

  “Right now,” Colonel Rickabee said. “A car’s on the way.”

  “Oh shit!”

  “‘Oh, shit’?”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Major Banning said.

  There was a final grunt from Colonel Rickabee and the line went dead.

  Banning marched naked to his bathroom and stepped under the shower. Five minutes later, he stepped out, having made use of time normally wasted standing under the shower by shaving there. He toweled himself quickly and then paused at the washbasin only long enough to splash aftershave cologne on his face. Then he went into his bedroom to dress.