“I am aware of that, sir,” Pick said. “But I didn’t think it would ever be applied in a situation where the order was to pass canapés.”
“You’re telling me that you would prefer to be running around in the swamp at Camp LeJeune to being the aide of a general officer?” General McInerney asked, on the edge of indignation.
“Yes, sir, that’s exactly my position,” Pickering said. “I respectfully request that I not be assigned as your aide.”
“I am sorry to tell you, Lieutenant,” General McInerney said, “that I have no intention of going back to Headquarters, USMC, and tell them that I have now changed my mind and don’t want you as my aide after all. As I said, arranging for your assignment as my aide wasn’t easy.” He waited until that had a moment to sink in, and then went on: “So where would you say that leaves us, Lieutenant?”
“It would appear, sir,” Pick said, “that until I am able to convince the general that he has made an error, the general will have a very reluctant aide-de-camp.”
General McInerney snorted, and then he chuckled.
“Lieutenant, you are a brand-new officer. Could you take a little advice from one who has been around the Corps a long time?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t jump until you know where you’re jumping from, and where you’re going to land,” General McInerney said. “In other words, until you have all the intelligence you can get your hands on, and have time to evaluate it carefully.”
“Yes, sir,” Pick said, annoyed that he was getting a lecture on top of everything else.
“In this case, the facts as I presented them to you seem to have misled you.”
“Sir?”
“Your dad is indeed concerned about you, and he did in fact call me and ask me to look after you. But what he was concerned about was the possibility that some chairwarmer would review your records, see what you did as a civilian, and assign you appropriately. He said he didn’t want you to spend your hitch in the Corps as a mess officer. Or a housing officer. And when I checked, that’s exactly what those sonsofbitches had in mind for you. If I had not gone over there, Lieutenant, and had you assigned to me, you would have reported for duty this morning to the officers’ club at the Barracks.”
Pick’s eyes widened.
“So, because your Dad and I are old buddies—we were corporals together at Belleau Wood—I am protecting your ass. I think you would make a lousy aide, too. You will be my junior aide only until such time as I decide what else the Corps can do with you.”
“I seem to have made an ass of myself, sir,” Pickering said.
“We sort of expect that from second lieutenants,” General McInerney said, reasonably. “The only thing you really did wrong was underestimate your father. Did you really think he would try to grease the ways for you?”
“My father is married to my mother, sir,” Pickering said.
“I take your point,” General McInerney said. “I have the privilege of your mother’s acquaintance.”
“May I ask a question, sir?”
“Sure.”
“Was my moving into the hotel a real blunder?”
“Not so far as I’m concerned,” General McInerney said. “I understand your situation.”
“I was thinking of…my best friend, I suppose is the best way to decribe him. I sort of pressured him to move in with me.”
“I see,” McInerney said. “Another hotelier? Classmate at school?”
“No, sir. He was a China Marine, a corporal, before we went through the platoon leader’s course.”
McInerney thought that over a moment before he replied.
“I think it might be a good idea if he moved into the BOQ,” he said. “There would certainly be curiosity. It could even turn into an Intelligence matter. Where would a second lieutenant, an ex-China Marine enlisted man, get the money to take a room in the Lafayette? It could be explained, of course, but the last thing a second lieutenant needs is to have it getting around that Intelligence is asking questions about his personal life.”
“Thank you, sir,” Pickering said. “I was afraid it might be something like that. May I ask another question?”
“Shoot.”
“How long will I be assigned here? I mean, you said something about deciding what to do with me. How long will that take?”
“That depends on what you would like to do, and whether or not you’re qualified to do it. Presumably, you learned at Quantico that leading a platoon of riflemen is not quite the fun and games the recruiter may have painted it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you ever thought of going to flight school?” General McInerney asked.
“No, sir,” Pickering confessed.
General McInerney was a little disappointed to hear that, but decided that Fleming Pickering’s kid meant what he said: that he simply had not thought of going to flight school—not that he had considered the notion and discarded it because he didn’t like the idea of flying.
“That’s an option,” General McInerney said. “But only if you could pass the flight physical. On your way out, have Sergeant Wallace set up an appointment for a flight physical. And then take the rest of the day off, son, and get yourself settled. I’m talking about your friend, too, of course.”
“I’ll check out of the hotel, too, of course,” Pickering said.
“Don’t do it on my account,” General McInerney said. “So far as I’m concerned, I’d be delighted to have you in there, in case my wife and I wanted to make reservations for dinner.”
General McInerney stood up and offered his hand.
“Welcome aboard,” he said. “You’re your father’s son, and that’s intended as a compliment.”
XIV
(One)
Room 26, Temporary Building T-2032
Washington, D.C.
0945 Hours, 1 December 1941
McCoy had seen quite a few office doors during his time in the Corps. Most of them had a sign announcing in some detail not only what function was being carried out behind the door, but by whom.
The door to room 26 didn’t even have a room number. McCoy had to find it by counting upward from room number 2, which had a sign: OFFICER’S HEAD.
He thought he’d gotten it wrong even then, for what he thought was room 26 had two sturdy locks on it—a storeroom, in other words, full of mimeograph paper and quart bottles of ink. But with no other option that he could think of, he knocked on it.
As soon as he knocked, however, he heard movement inside, then the sound of dead-bolt locks being operated, and a moment later the door opened just wide enough to reveal the face of a grim-looking man. He said nothing, but the expression on his face asked McCoy to state his business.
“I’m looking for room 26,” McCoy said.
The man nodded, waiting for McCoy to go on.
“I was ordered to report to room 26,” McCoy said.
“What’s your name, please?” the man asked.
“McCoy.”
“May I see your identification, please?” the man asked.
McCoy handed over his brand-new officer’s identification card. The man looked at it carefully, then at McCoy’s face, and then opened the door wide enough for McCoy to enter.
Inside was a small area, just enough for a desk. On the other side of the room there was another door, again with double dead-bolt locks.
When the man walked to the telephone on the desk, McCoy saw that he had a .45 Colt 1911A1 on his hip. On his tail, really, and not in a GI holster, but in sort of a skeleton holster through which the front part of the pistol stuck out.
If he was wearing a jacket, McCoy thought, you’d never know he had a pistol.
“I have Lieutenant McCoy here,” the man said to the telephone. “He’s not due in until 15 December.”
There was a pause.
“Well, shit, I suppose everybody’s been told but us. What does he get?”
There was obviously a reply, but McCoy couldn’t
hear it. The man put the telephone down, and then reached into his desk and came out with a clipboard and a small plastic card affixed to an alligator clip.
“Sign here, please,” he said. “Just your signature. Not your rank.”
McCoy signed his name.
The man handed him the plastic card.
“You use this until we get you your own,” he said. “Pin it on your blouse jacket.”
McCoy looked at it before he pinned it on. It was a simple piece of plastic-covered cardboard. It said “VISITOR” and there was the insignia of the Navy Department. It was overprinted with purple stripes.
“That’s good anywhere in the building,” the man said. “Or almost everywhere. But it’s not good for ONI [Office of Naval Intelligence]. Until you get your credentials, you’d better avoid going over to ONI.”
“Okay,” McCoy said, wondering what was going on.
The man stuck out his hand.
“I’m Sergeant Ruttman,” he said. “We didn’t expect you until the fifteenth.”
“So I heard you say,” McCoy said.
“You just went through that course at Quantico, right?”
“That’s right,” McCoy said.
“Pain in the ass?”
“Yes, it was,” McCoy said.
“They want to send me,” Sergeant Ruttman said. “But I’ve been putting off going. I figure if they really want me to take a commission, they can give it to me. I already know about chickenshit.”
“Good luck,” McCoy said, wondering if Ruttman was just running off at the mouth, or whether he was telling the truth.
Ruttman replaced the clipboard in his desk, and then took keys from his pocket and unlocked both of the locks in the door.
“Follow me,” he said.
Beyond the door was a strange assortment of machinery. There were typewriters and other standard office equipment. But there were also cameras; what McCoy guessed was a blueprint machine; a large photograph print dryer, a stainless-steel-drum affair larger than a desk; and a good deal of other equipment that looked expensive and complicated. McCoy couldn’t even guess the purpose of some of it.
The equipment was being manned by a strange-looking assortment of people, all in civilian clothes, and all of them armed. Most of them had standard web belts and issue flapped holsters for the .45 1911A1s they carried, but some carried the pistols the way Ruttman carried his, and others were armed with snub-nosed Smith & Wesson revolvers.
“What is this place, Sergeant?”
“The thing you’re going to have to keep in mind, Lieutenant, is that it’s just like boot camp at Parris Island. If they think you should know something, they’ll tell you. Otherwise it’s none of your business.”
He turned his attention from McCoy to the drawer of a desk. He took a loose-leaf notebook from it and two blank forms, one of them a card with purple stripes like his “VISITOR” badge, and the other a Navy identification card of some sort.
“Before I fuck things up,” he called out, raising his voice, “has anybody made out any of these and not logged them in the book?”
There was no response to the inquiry, and he put both identification cards in a typewriter and typed briefly and rapidly on them.
“I need an officer to sign these!” he called out again, and one of the civilians, a slight, tall man, walked to the desk. Despite the Smith & Wesson .38 snub-nose revolver on his hip, he looked like a clerk. He waited until Ruttman finished typing, and then took the card from him and scrawled his name on it. Then he looked at McCoy.
“You’re McCoy?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Not that I’m not glad to see you, but you weren’t due to report in until the fifteenth.”
“I reported in early, sir.”
“You’ll regret that,” the officer said. “‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!’”
He walked back where he had come from. McCoy saw that he was making notations on a large map. Next to the map were aerial photographs and a stack of teletype paper liberally stamped “SECRET” in large letters.
“You want to sign this, Lieutenant?” Sergeant Ruttman asked.
There was space for two signatures on the identification: the holder and the issuing officer. The tall skinny civilian had already signed it. According to the card, he was Lieutenant Colonel F.L. Rickabee, USMC. He sure as Christ didn’t look like any lieutenant colonel McCoy had ever seen before. He didn’t even look much like a Marine.
“Just your signature, again,” Ruttman said. “No rank.”
“You didn’t give me back my ID card,” McCoy said.
“You don’t get it back,” Ruttman said, and then apparently had doubts. He raised his voice. “Does he get his ID card back?”
“No,” the tall thin man who looked like a clerk called back. “Not anymore. They changed the policy.”
As if McCoy hadn’t heard the exchange, Ruttman said, “You don’t get it back, Lieutenant.”
The tall skinny clerk-type had another thought and turned from his map and SECRET teletype messages.
“How long is it going to take to get him his credentials?”
“I’m just about to take his picture,” Ruttman said.
“Today, you mean? He’ll get his credentials today?”
“He’ll have them by lunchtime,” Ruttman said, confidently.
“Okay,” the clerk-type said, and returned his attention to the map.
Based on the total absence of military courtesy (Ruttman had not once said “sir,” much less “aye, aye, sir,” to him, and the clerk-type hadn’t seemed to care) McCoy decided that the clerk-type was not Lieutenant Colonel F.L. Rickabee, USMC. It was common practice for junior officers to sign senior officers’ names to routine forms, sometimes initialing the signature and sometimes not. He went further with his theory: The tall skinny clerk was probably a warrant officer. Warrant officers were old-time noncoms, generally with some special skill. They wore officer’s uniforms, could go to the Officers’ Club, and were entitled to a salute, but the most senior chief warrant officer ranked below the most junior second lieutenant. And a warrant officer, particularly a new one, would probably not get all excited if an old-time noncom like Ruttman didn’t treat him as if he was a lieutenant or a captain.
Ruttman stood McCoy against a backdrop, at which was pointed a Speed Graphic four-by-five-inch plate camera.
“Take off your blouse and your field scarf, and the bars,” Ruttman ordered, “and put this on.”
He handed McCoy a soiled, well-worn, striped necktie.
McCoy looked at him in disbelief.
“The way I’ll shoot this,” Ruttman explained, “that shirt’ll look just like an Arrow.”
He took McCoy’s picture twice, “to make sure I get it,” then led him to a table where he inked his fingers. He put his thumb print on both of the ID cards, and then took another full set on a standard fingerprint card.
Ruttman handed him a towel and bottle of alcohol to clean his hands, and then said, “That’s it, here, Lieutenant. Now you go see Major Almond. He’s in the last office down the passageway.”
There was no sign hanging on Major J.J. Almond’s door, either; but aside from that, he was what McCoy expected a Marine major to be. He was a short man, but muscular, and so erect he seemed taller than he was. And he was in uniform. His desk was shipshape, and two flags were on poles behind his desk, the Marine flag and the national colors.
And to the left of Major Almond’s desk was a door with another sign: LT. COL. F.L. RICKABEE, USMC, COMMANDING. It was clear to McCoy now that he’d just gone through some sort of administrative service office where they made out ID cards and did that sort of thing, and that he was now about to face his new commanding officer.
“Let me say, McCoy,” Major J.J. Almond said, “that I appreciate your appearance. You look and conduct yourself as a Marine officer should. As you may have noticed, there is a lamentable tendency around here to let things slip. Because of what we d
o here, we can’t run this place like a line company. But we go too far, I think, far too often. I am going to rely on you, Lieutenant, to both set an example for the men and to correct, on the spot, whomever you see failing to live up to the standards of the Corps.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” McCoy said.
“Now, before we get started, you reported in early.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are entitled to a fourteen-day leave. If it is your intention to apply for that leave now that you have reported aboard, I would like to know that now.”
“No, sir.”
“You’re in the BOQ at the Barracks, I presume?”
“No, sir.”
“Where are you?”
“In a hotel, sir.”
“I don’t want to go through this, McCoy, pulling one fact after another from you.”
“I’m in the Hotel Lafayette, sir. Sharing a room with another officer, sir. Lieutenant Malcolm Pickering, sir.”
“Well, that is fortuitous,” Major Almond announced. “It is the policy of this command that both officer and enlisted personnel live off the base. You will draw pay in lieu of quarters. Will that pay be enough to pay for your hotel room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s your room number?” Almond asked. “And I’ll need the hotel telephone number.”
“I don’t know the phone number, sir,” McCoy said. “We’re living in the maid’s room of the bridal suite, sir.”
Major Almond smiled and nodded approvingly.
“Very enterprising,” he said. “I wondered how you could afford to live in the Lafayette.”
He reached into his desk drawer and came out with a three-inch-thick manila folder. He saw his name lettered on it, and that it was stamped “SECRET—COMPLETE BACKGROUND INVESTIGATION.”
“This is the report of the FBI’s investigation of you, Lieutenant,” he said. “It is classified SECRET, and you are not authorized access to it. I show it to you to show how carefully they have gone into your background.”
McCoy had no idea what was going on.
Major Almond then handed him a printed form.
“In normal circumstances, the procedure would have been for you to complete this form before the FBI did its complete background check. But the circumstances have not been normal. Time was important. The FBI had to, so to speak, start from scratch using existing records. So what has happened is that I have had our clerks prepare your background statement using existing records and the FBI report. Are you following me, Lieutenant?”
Semper Fi Page 34
