Semper Fi

by W. E. B Griffin

  McCoy had turned that down, too. He hadn’t joined the Corps to be a clerk in a consulate, either.

  The promotion list would be out any day now. He was sure that his name was going to be near the top of it, and he didn’t want anything to fuck that up. Like getting in a brawl with a bunch of Italian marines would fuck it up.

  They wouldn’t make him a corporal if he was dead, either, and the way this brawl was going, getting meaner and meaner by the day, that was a real possibility.

  There were two things wrong with going out wearing a cartridge belt and bayonet, he decided in the end. For one thing, he would look pretty silly walking into the poker game at the Cathay Mansions Hotel with that shit. And if he did run into some Italian marines, they would take his possession of a bayonet as a sure sign he was looking for a fight.

  McCoy finally bent over the footlocker and took his “Baby Fairbairn” from beneath a stack of neatly folded skivvy shirts. He had won it from a Shanghai Municipal cop after a poker game. He’d bet a hundred yuan against it, one cut of the deck.

  There was an officer named Bruce Fairbairn on the Shanghai Municipal Police, and he had invented a really terrific knife, sort of a dagger, and was trying to get everybody to buy them. He had made quite a sales pitch to General Smedley Butler, who commanded all the Marines in China. And Butler, so the story went, had wanted to buy enough to issue them, but the Marine Corps wouldn’t give him the money.

  McCoy’s knife was made exactly like the original Fairbairn, except that it wasn’t quite as long, or quite as big. It was just long enough to be concealed in the sleeve, with the tip of the scabbard up against the joint of the elbow, and the handle just inside the cuff.

  McCoy took off his blouse, strapped the Baby Fairbairn to his left arm, put the blouse back on over it, looked at himself in the full-length mirror mounted on the door, and left his room.

  Their billets had once been two-story brick civilian houses that the 4th Marines had bought when they came to China way back in 1927—blocks of them, enough houses to hold a battalion. Cyclone fences had been erected around these blocks. And the fences were topped with coils of barbed wire, called concertina. At the gate was a sandbagged guardhouse, manned around the clock by a two-man guard detail.

  As McCoy walked through, the PFC on guard told him he had heard that the Wops had ganged up on some Marines and put another two guys in the hospital. If he were McCoy, he went on, he would go back and get his bayonet.

  “I’m not going anywhere near the Little Club,” McCoy said. “And I’m not looking for a fight.”

  The faster of two rickshaw boys near the gate trotted up and lowered the poles.

  “Take me to the Cathay Mansions Hotel,” McCoy ordered in Chinese as he climbed onto the rickshaw.

  The guard understood “Cathay Mansions Hotel.”

  “What the fuck are you going to do there, McCoy?” he asked.

  “They’re having a tea dance,” McCoy said, as the rickshaw boy picked up the poles and started to trot down Ferry Road in the direction of the Bund.

  As they approached the hotel, McCoy called out to the rickshaw boy to pull to the curb at the corner. He paid him and then walked down the sidewalk past the marquee, and then into an alley, which led to the rear of the building. He went down a flight of stairs to a steel basement door and knocked on it.

  A small window opened in the door, and Chinese eyes became visible. McCoy was examined, and then the door opened. He walked down a long corridor, ducking his head from time to time to miss water and sewer pipes, until he came to another steel door, this one identified as “Store Room B-6.” He knocked, and it opened for him.

  United States Marines were not welcome upstairs in the deeply carpeted, finely paneled lobby and corridors of the Cathay Mansions Hotel. The often-expressed gratitude of the Europeans of the International Settlement for the protection offered by the United States Marines against both the Japanese and Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang did not go quite as far as accepting enlisted Marines as social equals.

  PFC Ken McCoy was welcome here, however, in a basement storeroom that had been taken over with the tacit permission of Sir Victor Sassoon, owner of the hotel, by its doorman, a six-foot-six White Russian. The storeroom was equipped with an octagonal, green baize-covered table and chairs. A rather ornate light fixture had been carefully hung so as to bathe the table in a light that made the cards and the hands that manipulated them fully visible without causing undue glare.

  McCoy was welcome because he always brought to the table fifty dollars American—sometimes a good deal more—which he was prepared to lose with a certain grace and without whining.

  In the nearly four years that he had been in China, McCoy had evolved a gambling system that had resulted in a balance of nearly two thousand dollars at Barclays Bank. He thought of this as his retirement program.

  He began each month’s gambling with fifty dollars, twenty-five of which came from his pay (by the time they had made the deductions, this now came to about forty-nine dollars) and twenty-five of which came from the retirement fund in Barclays Bank.

  He played until he either went broke or felt like quitting. If he was ahead of his original fifty dollars when he quit, he put exactly half of the excess over fifty dollars away, to be deposited to his account at Barclays. The rest was his stash for the next game.

  Almost always, he went broke sometime during the month, and he never played again until after the next payday. But again, he had almost always put a lot more into Barclays Bank during the month than the twenty-five dollars he would take out after the next payday. And sometimes—not often—the cards went well, and post-game deposits were sixty, seventy dollars. Once there had been a post-game deposit of $140.90.

  As he approached the group, the bright light illuminating the table made everything but the lower arms and hands of the players seem to disappear for a moment into the darkness, but gradually his eyes became adjusted, and he could see faces to go with the hands.

  The White Russian, who claimed to have been a colonel of cavalry in his Imperial Majesty’s 7th Petrograd Cavalry, was at the table. Piotr Petrovich Muller (he had a German surname, he once told McCoy, because he was a descendant of the Viennese who had been imported into Moscow to build the Kremlin) was a very large man with a very closely shaven face.

  He bowed his head solemnly when he saw McCoy and then gestured for him to take an empty chair.

  There was another Russian who had found post-revolution employment with the French Foreign Legion, and a Sikh, a uniformed sergeant of the Shanghai Municipal Police. There was also Detective Sergeant Lester Chatworth of the Shanghai Municipal Police, who looked up at McCoy and spoke.

  “I thought you’d be out bashing Eye-talians.”

  Except for a thick, perfectly trimmed mustache, Chatworth looked not unlike McCoy, but he spoke with the flat, nasal accent of Liverpool.

  “I thought I’d rather come here and take your money,” McCoy said.

  “Why not? Everybody else is,” Detective Sergeant Chatworth said, grinning.

  The men at the table had nothing at all in common except that they met Piotr Muller’s rigid standard of a decent poker player: Each could play the game well enough and each, at one time or another, had lost a good deal of money gracefully. PFC Kenneth McCoy was younger than any of them by at least a decade, and a quarter of a century younger than Muller. Neither he nor any of the others associated when they were not playing cards, nor were they friendly with any of the perhaps forty other more or less temporary residents of Shanghai who were welcome at Muller’s table in the basement of the Cathay Mansions.

  There were no raised eyebrows when McCoy took off his blue blouse and revealed the Baby Fairbairn strapped to his arm. It was prudent, if technically illegal, to arm oneself when going out for a night on the town in Shanghai.

  McCoy hung his blouse on the back of his chair, unstrapped the knife and tucked it in a pocket of the blouse, then sat down and laid his gambling m
oney on the table. Fifty dollars American that month had converted to just over four hundred yuan. He had before him four one-hundred-yuan notes, which were printed lavender and white in England and were each the size of a British five-pound banknote. He also had some change, including an American dollar bill.

  He made himself comfortable in the chair, and then watched as the hand in play was completed. When it was over, Muller nodded at him, and he reached for a fresh deck of cards, broke the seal, and went through them, finding and discarding the extra jokers. He then spread the cards out for the others to examine.

  Afterward, he gathered the cards together, shuffled, announced, “Straight poker,” and dealt.

  Three hours later, there were twenty-odd lavender-and-white one-hundred-yuan notes in front of McCoy; the Sikh and the Foreign Legionnaire had gone bust; and it was between McCoy, Piotr Petrovich Muller, and Detective Sergeant Chatworth. A half hour after that, Muller examined the two cards he had drawn, threw his hand on the table, and pushed himself away from it.

  That left only McCoy and Detective Sergeant Chatworth.

  “I don’t play two-handed poker,” McCoy announced.

  “I’m willing to quit,” Chatworth said, and tossed the just-collected deck into the wastebasket, where it joined a dozen other decks of cards.

  Stiff from three hours of little movement, McCoy stood up and stretched his arms over his head. He then strapped the Baby Fairbairn to his left arm, put his blouse on, and followed the others out of the storeroom.

  When he was back out on the street, McCoy considered having his ashes hauled. It had been about a week, and it was time to take care of the urge. But he decided against it. For one thing, he had too much money with him. He hadn’t counted it out to the last yuan, but he’d won a bunch—say at twelve dollars to the hundred-yuan note, a little better than $250. That was too much money to have in your pocket when visiting a whorehouse.

  Even if the Italian marines weren’t on the warpath.

  The smart thing to do was go back to the billet. He put his hand up and flagged a rickshaw, and told the driver to take him down Ferry Road.

  Three blocks from the compound, he saw the Italian marines, hiding in an alley. There were four of them, in uniform. The uniforms were a mixture of army and navy—army breeches and navy middie blouses.

  I am minding my own business, McCoy told himself, and I am not carrying a bayonet, and I was not at the Little Club when this whole business started. With a little bit of luck, they will let me pass.

  They didn’t say anything to him as the rickshaw pulled past the alley and there could no longer be any question that the rickshaw passenger was a Marine. So for a moment he thought they’d decided to wait for Marines who were looking for a fight.

  And then the rickshaw was turned over on its side. The rickshaw boy started to howl with fear and rage even before McCoy hit the ground, striking the elbow of his blouse on the filth of the street.

  McCoy sat up and looked around to see if there was someplace he could run. But the Italian marines had picked their spot well. There was no place to run to.

  Maybe I can talk to them, McCoy thought, tell them the fucking truth, I wasn’t at the Little Club, I have no quarrel with them.

  Then he saw the Italian marine advancing on him with a length of bicycle chain swinging in his hand. McCoy felt a little faint, and then tasted something foul in the back of his mouth.

  “I don’t know who you’re looking for,” he said in Italian. “But it isn’t me.”

  The Italian marine replied that his mother fucked pigs and that he was going to mash his balls.

  The bicycle chain missed McCoy’s leg, but before it struck the pavement with a frightening whistle, it came close enough to catch his trouser’s leg and leave the imprint of the chain there. McCoy quickly slid sideward, taking the Baby Fairbairn from his sleeve as he got to his feet.

  The Italian marine told him his sister sucked Greek cocks and that he was going to take the knife away and stick it up his ass.

  McCoy sensed, rather than saw, that two other Italian marines were making their way behind him.

  The idea was that the two would grab him and hold him while the other one used the bicycle chain. The thing to do was to get past the Italian marine with the bicycle chain.

  He made a feinting motion with the knife, and the Italian marine backed up.

  It looked like it might work. And there was nothing else to do.

  He made another feinting move, a savage leap accompanied by as ferocious a roar as he could muster, at the exact moment that the Italian marine lunged at where McCoy’s Baby Fairbairn had been.

  The tip of the Baby Fairbairn punctured the Italian marine’s chest at the lower extremity of the ribs. McCoy felt it grate over a bone, and then immediately sink to the handguard. The knife was snatched from his hand as the Italian marine continued his plunge.

  The man grunted, fell, dropped the bicycle chain, rolled over, sat up, and started to pull the Baby Fairbairn from his abdomen. He gave it a hearty tug and it came out. A moment later, a stream of bright red blood as thick as the handle of a baseball bat erupted from his mouth. The Italian marine looked puzzled for a moment, and then fell to one side.

  Jesus Christ, I killed him!

  One of the three remaining Italian marines crossed himself and ran away. The other two advanced on McCoy, one of them frantically trying to work the action of a tiny automatic pistol.

  I can’t run from that!

  McCoy picked up the Baby Fairbairn and advanced on the two Italian marines.

  He made it to the one with the gun and started to try to take it away from him, or at least to knock it out of his hand. The other one tried to help his friend. McCoy lashed out with the Baby Fairbairn again. The blade slashed the Italian’s face, but that didn’t discourage him. He got his arms around McCoy’s arms and held him in a bear hug.

  The other one managed to work the action of his tiny pistol.

  McCoy remembered hearing that a .22 or a .25 will kill you just as dead as a .45, it just takes a little longer—say a week—to do it.

  With a strength that surprised him, he got his right arm free and swung it backward at the man who had been holding him. He felt it cut and strike something, something not anywhere as hard as the ribcage, but something. And it went in far enough so that he couldn’t hang on to it when the man fell down.

  Then, free, he jumped at the man with the pistol. The pistol went off with a sharp crack, and he felt something strike his leg hard, like a kick from a very hard boot. And then he knocked the pistol from the Italian marine’s hand and, when it clattered onto the cobblestones, dived after it.

  He picked it up and aimed it at the Italian marine. Then he followed his eyes. What he had done when he had swung his knife hand backward was stick it in the man’s groin. The man was now holding his groin with both hands. The handle of the Baby Fairbairn was sticking out between his fingers. The man was whimpering, and tears were on his face.

  Down the street, McCoy could hear the growl of the hand-cranked siren at the compound.

  This is going to fuck up my promotion, he thought. Goddamn these Italians.

  (Two)

  Captain Edward J. Banning, USMC, was S-2, the staff Intelligence Officer, of the 4th Marines. He was thirty-six years old, tall, thin, and starting to bald. And he had been a Marine since his graduation from the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina: a second lieutenant for three years, a first lieutenant for eight years, and he’d worn the twin silver railroad tracks of a captain for four years.

  There were four staff officers. The S-1 (Personnel) and S-4 (Supply) were majors. The S-3 (Plans and Training) was a lieutenant colonel. As a captain, Banning was the junior staff officer. But he was a staff officer, and as such normally excused from most of the duties assigned to non-staff officers.

  He took his turn, of course, as Officer of the Day, but that was about it. He was, for instance, never assigned as Inventory Office
r to audit the accounts of the Officers’ or NCO clubs or as Investigating Officer when there was an allegation of misbehavior involving the possibility of a court-martial of one of the enlisted men. Or any other detail of that sort. He was the S-2, and the colonel was very much aware that taking him from that duty to do something else did not make very good sense.

  So Banning had been surprised at first when he was summoned by the colonel and told that he would serve as Defense Counsel in the case of the United States of America versus PFC Kenneth J. McCoy, USMC. But he was a Marine officer, and when Marine officers are given an assignment, they say “aye, aye, sir” and set about doing what they have been ordered to do.

  “This one can’t be swept under the table, Banning,” the colonel said. “It’s gone too far for that. It has to go by the book, with every ‘t’ crossed and every ‘i’ dotted.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “Major DeLaney will prosecute. I have ordered him to do his best to secure a conviction. I am now ordering you to do your best to secure an acquittal. The Italian Consul General has told us that he and Colonel Maggiani of the Italian marines will attend the court-martial. Do you get the picture?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The picture Banning got was that he was going to have to spend Christ alone knew how many hours preparing for this court-martial, participating in the court-martial itself, and then Christ alone knew how many hours after the trial, going through the appeal process.

  About half of the total would have to come from the time Banning would have normally spent with his hobby. His hobby was Ludmilla Zhivkov, whom he called ‘Milla.’

  Milla was twenty-seven, raven-haired, long-legged and a White Russian. And he had recently begun to consider the possibility that he was in love with her.