“Isn’t that what we are?”
“Flem, what it says on our orders—which are signed by Harry Truman—is that we are on a mission for him. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t had word from the President that I’m supposed to place myself at the disposal of this guy, just that he’s coming.”
Pickering didn’t reply.
“What about you?” Howe pursued.
Pickering shook his head, “no.”
“Harry Truman sent me here to do a job for him—this isn’t Ralph Howe’s ego in high gear—and I don’t think I can do that job if Harriman thinks I am—we are—just a couple of guys whose function is to assist him in his mission. More important, that he can listen to what we have to say, and ignore it if it’s not what he wants to hear.”
“Yeah,” Pickering said thoughtfully.
“I think the word is agenda,” Howe said. “And I don’t think ours is necessarily locked in step with his.”
Pickering nodded.
“You know him well enough to call him by his first name?” Howe asked.
Pickering considered that a moment.
“Why not?”
“Do you ever call the Viceroy ‘Douglas’?”
“Not often,” Pickering said. “Sometimes, on private occasions, when no one, not even his wife, is there, I do. I call her Jean, which greatly annoys the Palace Guard.”
“When you mention the Viceroy in conversation tonight, refer to him as ’Douglas,’ ” Howe said. “Are we agreed on this, Flem?”
Pickering nodded again.
Howe smiled.
“And I will manage at least several times to forget my status in life and refer to our President and Commander-in-Chief as ’Harry,’ ” Howe said.
[THREE]
When Master Sergeant Charley Rogers, wearing khakis, and with his tie pulled down, answered the knock at the door, Major General Ralph Howe, USAR, Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, USMCR, and Captain George F. Hart, all in their shirtsleeves, all looked toward it from the table at which they were sitting, playing poker.
“Gentlemen,” Colonel Sidney Huff announced, “Ambassador Harriman and General Ridgway.”
“Come on in, Averell,” Pickering called. “How was the flight?”
Harriman came into the room, and Pickering remembered what Howe had said about Harriman looking like the Chairman of the Vestry: He was a tall, slim, balding man with sharp features. His eyebrows were full and almost startlingly black.
He walked toward the table, and Pickering and Howe rose to their feet.
“Good to see you, Fleming,” Harriman said, offering his hand. “When we can have a moment alone, I have a message and a small package from Patricia.”
“You know Ralph, don’t you, Averell?” Pickering asked.
“Yes, of course,” Harriman said. “How are you, General?”
General Matthew B. Ridgway was now in the room, walking toward the table. He was a large and muscular man, and when Pickering met his bright and intelligent eyes, he remembered what MacArthur had said about Ridgway being “one of the finest brains in the Army.”
Colonel Sidney Huff and a lieutenant colonel carrying a briefcase and wearing the aiguillette of an aide-de-camp came in and stood by the door.
“It’s good to see you again, sir,” Howe said, offering his hand to Ridgway.
“How are you, Ralph?” Ridgway said.
“You don’t know Pickering, do you?” Howe said.
“No, I don’t,” Ridgway said, offering Pickering his hand. “How do you do, General?”
“How do you do, sir?” Pickering said, and then turned to Harriman: “Are you hungry, Averell? Did they feed you on the plane? A drink, perhaps?”
“I could use a little taste,” Harriman said.
“General?” Pickering asked Ridgway.
“Please,” Ridgway said. “I don’t know what time it is according to my body clock, but it’s obviously 1700 somewhere. ”
“Charley,” Howe ordered. “Fix drinks, please.”
“George, call downstairs and have them send up a large order of hors d’oeuvres,” Pickering ordered. “We’ll decide about dinner later.” He turned to Huff. “Come on in, Sid,” he said.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Ridgway said. “This is Colonel James, my aide.”
“We’re trying to come up with a term to describe Charley and George,” Howe said. “Charley was my first sergeant when I was commanding a company, and George—who is a captain of homicide when he’s not a Marine—was with Flem all through the second war. He was with Flem on the first plane to land in Japan after the Emperor decided to surrender. ”
“With your permission, sir, I will leave now, and report to the Supreme Commander that you have been safely delivered here.”
Ridgway made a gesture with his hand signifying he could leave.
“You have my number, Colonel, in case you need anything at all. And the car will be here from 0800,” Huff added, to Ridgway’s aide.
“Yes, sir. Thank you,” Colonel James said.
Huff left.
“Sid’s been Douglas’s chief dog-robber forever,” Pickering said. “No offense, Colonel.”
“None taken, sir,” James said, smiling. “I’m familiar with the term.”
“Gentlemen . . .” Charley Rogers said, and they looked at him. He was at a sideboard loaded with whiskey bottles.
“Scotch for me, please,” Harriman said.
“I’m a bourbon drinker,” Ridgway said.
“Colonel?” Rogers asked James, who looked at Ridgway for guidance.
“Jack usually drinks scotch,” Ridgway said.
“Scotch it is,” Rogers said.
“You were on the first plane, were you, Captain?” Ridgway asked Hart.
“Yes, sir.”
“That must have been interesting,” Ridgway said.
“The streets from the airport were lined with Japanese— soldiers, sailors, and civilians standing side by side. They bowed as the car drove us here,” Hart said. “Very interesting. ”
“I presume both you and Master Sergeant Rogers have all the security clearances required?” Ridgway asked.
“Top Secret/White House,” Howe answered for him. “And we have our own communications with the White House.”
“You understand, I had to ask,” Ridgway said. “Well, that means we can get right down to business, doesn’t it?”
“Give me a moment alone with General Pickering first, please,” Harriman said.
“Certainly,” Ridgway said.
“We can use my bedroom,” Pickering said, and pointed to that door.
Harriman opened the door and went through it, and Pickering followed him.
“I saw Patricia in the Foster Lafayette literally on my way to the airport,” Harriman said. “She asked me to give you her love—and this.”
He handed a small jewelry box to Pickering, who opened it.
The box had been designed for a ring. In it, stuck into the small slot designed to hold a ring, was a small silver object on a thin silver chain. There was also a sheet of jeweler’s tissue.
“My God, I thought this thing was long lost,” Pickering said, taking the object in his hands. “It’s an Episcopal serviceman’s cross. Patricia gave it to me when I went off to World War Two.”
“There’s two more in the tissue,” Harriman said. “I am under orders to tell you they are to be delivered to your son and a Captain McCoy.”
“That may prove a little difficult,” Pickering said.
“Excuse me?”
“Captain McCoy is now somewhere behind enemy lines,” McCoy said. “And my son—our son—was shot down just after noon August second.”
“Good God! My dear fellow, I didn’t know!”
“There is some hope, some faint hope, that he is still alive. He went down behind the enemy’s lines near Taegu. Another Marine flew over the site shortly afterward, and reported the cockpit was empty.”
“You think he m
ay have been captured?”
Pickering shrugged.
“Capture is better than the alternative,” Pickering said. “The enemy has shot a lot of American prisoners—at least a thousand, almost certainly more—out of hand.”
“If he is a prisoner . . . will that compromise you, Pickering? ”
Pickering didn’t reply.
“Forgive me, I should not have asked that.”
“No, Averell, you shouldn’t have asked that,” Pickering said. “Thank you for bringing this to me.”
He held up the serviceman’s cross, then draped it around his neck. He closed the jewelry box and slipped it into his pocket, and then he walked back into the sitting room.
Harriman followed him a moment later.
“It has always been my experience when faced with a difficult situation to deal with it as quickly as possible,” Harriman said.
Everyone looked at him curiously.
“General Ridgway,” Harriman said. “General Pickering has just told me his son is missing in action.”
“Oh, God!” Ridgway said. “General, I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you,” Pickering said.
“The President, in my judgment, under the circumstances, will have to be informed,” Harriman said.
“The President knows,” Howe said.
“Indeed?” Harriman asked. “You’re sure of that?”
“I called him myself and told him,” Howe said.
“And his reaction?”
“He asked me how General Pickering was taking it, and I told him, and he said to use my judgment whether or not to express his deep personal regret. I decided that General Pickering didn’t need any more expressions of sympathy.”
“That’s all?” Harriman asked.
“What Harry said to me, Mr. Ambassador,” Howe said, coldly, “was ‘use your judgment, Ralph. If telling him I’m really goddamn sorry will help, tell him. If not, don’t.’ That’s practically verbatim. And that’s all he had to say. Is that clear enough?”
“Yes, of course,” Harriman said. “I meant no offense.”
There was a moment’s awkward silence, and then General Ridgway said, “The ambassador and I will be meeting with General MacArthur in the morning. There are some things that I think you should know, and may not, and there are some things I know you know that we don’t know, and should, before that meeting. May I suggest we get on with this?”
There was a knock at the door. Hart opened it, and a waiter rolled in a cart on which an enormous display of hors d’oeuvres was arranged.
“Is this place secure?” Ridgway asked.
“Charley found some microphones,” Howe said. “They may have been Japanese leftovers, or not. Anyway, both Charley and Sergeant Keller, our cryptographer, have gone over it—and keep going over it, and Charley’s and my suite—and as far as we know, it’s secure.”
“ ‘Or not’?” Ridgway quoted.
“I don’t think the KGB has bugged this place, General,” Howe said. “And I also don’t think the KGB would be the only people interested in what might be said in this room.”
“You don’t have a safe house, Fleming?” Harriman asked.
“There doesn’t seem to be any way to say this delicately, ” Pickering said. “So: The station chief here thinks of himself as a member of MacArthur’s staff. I think anything said in the CIA safe house would be in the Dai Ichi Building within an hour.”
“And there’s no other place?”
“Ernie McCoy—Ernie Sage McCoy—has a place here,” Pickering said. “Ralph and I have been using that.”
“That’s Ernest’s daughter, right? She’s married to a Marine? ”
Pickering nodded.
“And she’s cleared for Top Secret/White House,” Howe said. “I cleared her.”
“And we could go there?” Harriman asked.
“George, call Ernie and tell her to expect guests,” Pickering ordered. “And tell her not to worry about hors d’oeuvres. We’ll be bringing our own.”
“They’ll know we went there, Flem,” Howe said.
“Perhaps the ambassador can casually mention he went to see the daughter of an old friend when he’s with MacArthur,” Pickering said.
[FOUR]
NO. 7 SAKU-TUN DENENCHOFU, TOKYO, JAPAN 1905 6 AUGUST 1950
“I thought it might be you, Mr. Ambassador,” Ernie Sage McCoy said when they walked up to her door. “It’s nice to see you again, sir.”
“Forgive the intrusion, Ernestine,” Harriman said. “But we needed someplace to talk, and General Pickering suggested your home.”
“There’s coffee in the dining room, and I understand you’ve brought hors d’oeuvres?”
“George is getting them out of the trunk,” Pickering said.
“. . . and I sent the help out. And now I’ll get out of your way.”
“You’re very gracious, Ernestine,” Harriman said.
“My name is Ridgway, Mrs. McCoy,” Ridgway said. “Thank you for letting us intrude.”
“No intrusion at all,” she said. “My husband is—what should I say, ‘Out of town on business’?—and it’s good to have something to do.”
She led them into the dining room, then left them alone. Hart and Rogers carried in the hors d’oeuvres, and looked at Pickering and Howe for directions.
“Go keep Ernie company, George,” Pickering ordered.
“Take some of the hors d’oeuvres with you, Charley,” Howe ordered.
When they had left, Harriman picked up a shrimp, took a bite, and then said: “That’s what the President was worried about—that you two would get along too well, and that therefore it might be best to talk to you separately. He said you were two of a kind.”
“We haven’t had anything to disagree about,” Howe said. “We see the same things—from our different perspectives—the same way. But we can make ourselves available to be interrogated separately, can’t we, Flem?”
“Interrogation is not the word, General,” Harriman said.
“That’s what it sounded like you had in mind on the telephone, ” Howe said, bluntly.
“From my perspective,” Ridgway said, quickly, as if to keep the exchange from getting more unpleasant, “given that both General Howe and General Pickering enjoy the confidence of the President, we could save a lot of time by just sitting down at the table and talking this out together.”
“That’s fine with me,” Harriman said, sat down, and reached across the table for another shrimp.
The others sat down.
“This place is secure?” Ridgway asked.
“More so than the Imperial,” Howe said.
“I defer to you, Mr. Ambassador,” Ridgway said.
Harriman nodded, and touched his lips with a napkin.
“Marvelous shrimp,” he said, and then went on, seriously: “The President is concerned—as something of an understatement—about several recent actions of General MacArthur. Let’s deal with his trip to Formosa first. Two questions in that regard. One, does General MacArthur understand that the President does not wish to have the Nationalist Chinese involved in Korea? Two, what was he doing in Formosa? General Howe?”
“I’ll defer to General Pickering,” Howe said. "MacArthur has not discussed that with me.”
“And he has with you, Fleming?”
“I was at the Residence,” Pickering replied. “General and Mrs. MacArthur had heard about my son, and wished to express their concern. The subject came up. He understands how the President feels about using Nationalist troops, and didn’t want them in the first place because they would have to be trained and equipped. He went to Taipei, he told me, as a symbol that the United States would not stand idly by if the Communists used the mess in Korea as an invitation to invade the island.”
“And you believe him?”
“Yes, I do,” Pickering said.
“And you think, when I broach the subject to him, that’s what he will say?”
“I’m sure h
e will.”
“When the President heard that General MacArthur had gone to see Chiang Kai-shek,” Harriman said, “he was furious. Several members of his cabinet, and others, made it clear that, in their opinions, it was sufficient justification to relieve General MacArthur.”
Neither Pickering nor Howe responded.
“The question of relieving General MacArthur came up again with regard to his message to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the VFW,” Harriman said. “You’re familiar with that?”
Pickering shook his head, no, and looked at Howe, who shrugged his shoulders, indicating he had no idea what Harriman was talking about.
“Neither of you is familiar with the message?” Harriman asked.
“No,” Pickering said. “What was in the message?”
“A disinterested observer would think that General MacArthur was not in agreement with the foreign policy of the United States,” Harriman said, sarcastically. “A cynic might interpret it to be the first plank in the platform of presidential candidate Douglas MacArthur.”
“There was nothing about a VFW message in the Stars & Stripes,” Howe said.
“The message was ‘withdrawn’ at the President’s order,” Harriman said.
“Then what’s the reason for the pressure on the President to relieve him?” Howe asked.
“There are those, I surmise,” Harriman said, “who do not share General MacArthur’s opinion of himself.”
“You know what Frank Lloyd Wright said, Averell,” Pickering said. “Something about it being rather difficult to be humble if you’re a genius.”
“But Wright is a genius,” Harriman said.
“So is MacArthur,” Pickering said. “He’s flawed, certainly. We all are. But he’s a military genius, and that should not be forgotten.”
“There are those who blame him for this mess we find ourselves in, in Korea,” Harriman said.
“How about Acheson’s speech?” Pickering said. “I took the trouble to read it. He made it pretty clear—maybe by accident—that Korea was not in our zone of interest. It was almost an invitation for North Korea to move south.”
"MacArthur has been in command of any army here that is—as has been demonstrated—incapable of fighting a war,” Harriman argued.
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