The Corps 03 - Counterattack

by W. E. B Griffin

  "She’s a beautiful young woman," Pickering said.

  "Yeah," Pick said. "She is."

  That was all he had to say about Martha Sayre Culhane. But he kept looking over at her. And when Fleming Pickering looked in that direction, more often than not, Martha Sayre Culhane was surreptitiously looking in their direction.

  Chapter Nine

  (One)

  Aboard the Motor YachtLast Time

  The San Diego Yacht Club

  San Diego, California

  7 March 1942

  Ensign Barbara Cotter, USNR, and Miss Ernestine Sage were alone aboard the Last Time. Ensign Cotter was barefoot; she wore the briefest of white shorts, and her bosom was only barely concealed beneath a thin, orange kerchief bandeau. Miss Sage was wearing the briefest of pale blue shorts and a T-shirt, beneath which it was obvious she wore nothing else.

  Although it was nearly noon, they were just finishing the breakfast dishes. They had been up pretty late the night before; there had been a certain amount of physical activity once they had gone to bed. After breakfast, they’d waved bye-bye to Lieutenants Joseph L. Howard, USMCR, and Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR, as they departed for duty. Then Miss Sage had suggested to Ensign Cotter, "To hell with the dishes, let’s go back to bed," and they had done just that, rising again only a few moments ago.

  Barbara Cotter did not go home to Philadelphia on her overseas leave. She had called her parents and told them she was being shipped out; and no, she didn’t know where she was going, and no, she wouldn’t be able to get home before she left.

  It was the first time she had ever lied to her parents about anything important, and it bothered her. But the choice had been between going home, alone, and staying in San Diego with Joe for the period of her leave. She was perfectly willing to admit that she was being a real shit for not going home, and then lying about it, but she wasn’t sorry.

  And in Ernie Sage she had found both a friend and a kindred soul; it was no time before Ernie offered Barbara and Joe the starboard stateroom for as long as they wanted it-just because they felt so close so quickly. Both of them were nice, Protestant, middle-class (in Ernie’s case, maybe upper-class) girls who had gone to college and had bright futures. And both of them were shacked up with a couple of Marines.

  And were completely unashamed about it.

  In no time they were both sharing deep, mutual confidences:

  The first time they had laid eyes on Joe and Ken, they had known in their hearts that if they wanted to do that, and they hoped they would want to do that, they were going to let them.

  It was the first time either of them had really felt that way, although in Ernie’s case there had been a poet from Dartmouth, and in Barbara’s case a gastroenterologist, who had made them feel almost that way.

  And they talked, seriously, about why those things were going on. Barbara’s theory was-that Mother Nature caused the transmitters and receptors to be turned on in the interests of propagation. And Ernie’s tangential theory was that Nature wanted to increase pregnancies in time of war.

  And they talked of getting pregnant, and/or of getting married. They both reached the same conclusion: they weren’t going to get married, not right away, anyhow. Because Joe and Ken thought they were probably going to get killed-or worse, crippled-in battle, both men refused to consider marriage. Yet Barbara and Ernie both agreed that what they really wanted, maybe most in the world, was to make babies with Joe and Ken. If they did, Joe and Ken would be furious-for the same reason they didn’t want to get married. And further, since it was really better to have a baby when the baby was wanted, it was probably really better to wait until The Boys Came Home.

  And in the meantime, they played housewife, and they loved it. They either prepared elaborate meals in the Last Time’s galley, or they went out for dinner to the Coronado Beach Hotel dining room, or to some hole-in-the-wall Mexican or Chinese restaurant. They carried their men’s uniforms to the laundry, sewed their buttons on, and bought them razor blades and boxer shorts and Vitalis For The Hair. And loved them at night. And refused to think that it couldn’t last forever-or, in Barbara and Joe’s case, not later than the time her orders gave her, 2300 hours 16 March 1942. She was supposed to report to the Overseas Movement Officer, San Diego Naval Yard; and for her the Last Time would turn into a pumpkin.

  Ernie told Barbara that after she was gone, and after Ken McCoy had shipped out, she was going back to New York City and back to work. She promised to visit Barbara’s family in Philadelphia then, and tell them about Joe. She would confirm what Barbara was going to write them about him once she was on the ship headed nobody would tell her where.

  The telephone rang, and Ernie Sage answered it, then held up the phone to Barbara.

  "It’s somebody from the Navy Yard," she said.

  Lieutenant Joe Howard, ever the dedicated officer, had advised her that if she wasn’t going home, she was required to let "the receiving station" (by which he meant the Navy Yard) know where she was and how she could be reached.

  "Ensign Cotter," Barbara said to the telephone.

  "Ma’am, this is Chief Venwell, of Officer Movement, at the Navy Yard."

  "What can I do for you, Chief?"

  "Ma’am, you’re to report here, with all your gear, for outshipment by 0630 tomorrow."

  "What are you talking about? I’m on leave until the sixteenth."

  "No, Ma’am. That’s why I’m calling. Your orders have been changed. You’re to report in by 0630 tomorrow."

  "Why?"

  "Ma’am, I guess they found a space for you to outship."

  "But what if I was in Philadelphia?"

  "Ma’am?"

  "I was authorized a leave to Philadelphia. You couldn’t do this to me if I was in Philadelphia," Barbara said. "I couldn’t get from Philadelphia to San Diego by six o’clock tomorrow morning."

  "Ma’am, you’re in San Diego," Chief Venwell said. "Ma’am, I’m sorry about this, but I can’t do a thing for you."

  (Two)

  The Coronado Beach Hotel

  San Diego, California

  8 March 1942

  "It’s been a long time since I came here with a man in uniform," Patricia Foster Pickering said to her husband as they approached the hotel entrance.

  Fleming Pickering was at the wheel of a 1939 Cadillac Sixty-Two Special he had borrowed from J. Charles Ansley, General Manager, San Diego Operations, Pacific and Far Eastern Shipping. He looked at his wife in some confusion until he took her meaning.

  "Oh," he said wickedly, "that stuck in your mind, did it?"

  It was a reference to their rendezvous in San Diego in 1919. Corporal Fleming Pickering, USMC, was going through the separation process at the San Diego Marine Barracks when, unannounced, Miss Patricia Foster of San Francisco had shown up at the gate to announce that she just happened to be in the neighborhood and thought she would just drop by.

  She had had a suite in the Coronado Beach, a complimentary courtesy rendered by the management to the only daughter of Andrew Foster, Chairman of the Board of the Foster Hotel Corporation. There she had presented him with a welcome-home present of a nature he had not really expected to receive until after their relationship was officially sanctioned by the Protestant Episcopal Church.

  "From time to time, I think of it," she admitted.

  Throughout their marriage, Patricia had often surprised him. She had surprised him at two-fifteen that morning by slipping, naked, into his bed at Charley Ansley’s house on a bluff overlooking the Pacific.

  He had called her from Oklahoma City to tell her that he was en route in a Navy plane to San Diego, where he had some business with the Navy. He also intended to see his secretary-soon his ex-secretary-aboard the U.S. Navy transport President Millard G. Fillmore, ex-Pacific Princess. He would then, he told her, see about catching a plane home.

  She could expect him late that night, or early the following morning. They would have four or five days home before he had to take the San
Francisco-Pearl Harbor courier plane. She should think of something interesting for them to do.

  He had wrapped his arms around her in Charley Ansley’s bedroom and somewhat sleepily asked, "What brings you here, honey?"

  "You said I should think of something interesting for us to do," Patricia had said, gently touching a sensitive part of his anatomy. "How does this strike you?"

  She had come to join him by plane to Los Angeles, and then on the damned Greyhound bus to San Diego. Over breakfast, she told him she thought it would be fun to borrow a car from Charley Ansley, drive to Los Angeles, have dinner with friends there, and then drive leisurely on to San Francisco, perhaps spending another night on the way.

  He told her he had to make a quick call on the Admiral commanding the San Diego Naval Yard, prepare a quick memorandum for Frank Knox reporting what the Admiral had told him, and then find an officer courier to take it to Washington. He also told her that Ellen Feller had arrived a couple of days before and was in the Pacific and Far East suite at the Coronado Beach.

  "She’s going to work at CINCPAC," Pickering said. There was an implication that she was going to become secretary to someone else. That was not actually the case. Officially, Ellen was going to work with the highly secret cryptographic unit at Pearl Harbor, putting her knowledge of Japanese and Chinese to work. And she had a second mission, to serve as a conduit for Fleming Pickering’s confidential reports to the Secretary of the Navy. He would prepare the reports himself and send them to her at Pearl Harbor, sealed, via an officer courier. At Pearl Harbor, Ellen Feller would encrypt them with a special code and send them to Washington, either by cable or radio, classified

  TOP SECRET, EYES ONLY, THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY.

  That way, only Pickering, Ellen Feller, a cryptographer who worked solely for Captain Dave Haughton, Haughton himself, and the Secretary of the Navy would ever see Pickering’s reports. Knox knew that if more people were brought into the link, or if standard Navy encryption-decryption procedures were followed, the Navy brass would be reading Pickering’s reports before they got to him. Since the reports made considerable reference to the Navy brass, including, for instance, Pickering’s opinion of their ability and performance, it would not have been clever to offer them to the brass on a silver platter, as it were. None of that, obviously, was any of Patricia’s business. "Aren’t you going to miss her?" Patricia asked, poker-faced. He wasn’t sure whether she was serious or teasing, or even if there was a touch of jealousy in the question.

  "There’s a war on, Madam. We must all make what sacrifices are necessary in the common good," Pickering replied sonorously.

  After Pickering stopped the Cadillac in front of the door, he opened the car door and started to get out. As he did that, the doorman rushed over and said, "I’m sorry, Sir, we no longer offer valet parking ..." And then he recognized Pickering. "I’ll take care of it, Mr. Pickering. You going to be long?"

  "We’re going to have lunch."

  "Then I’ll leave it right over there, Sir. Nice to see you, Mrs. Pickering. It’s been some time."

  "Hello, Dick. How are you?" Patricia said.

  Pickering called the Pacific and Far East suite from a house phone in the lobby.

  "I’m not quite packed," Ellen Feller said. "Could you come up for a minute?"

  "Sure," Pickering said. "The ship sails at two-forty-five, so I’ve been told."

  "Then we have plenty of time."

  Pickering put the phone down.

  "She’s not quite ready," he said.

  "I thought she was Miss Efficiency of 1942?" Patricia said.

  "We’re not running late," Pickering said loyally.

  "You go up," Patricia said. "I’ll get her a box of candy or a basket of fruit. For Bon Voyage."

  "I’ll go with you."

  "No, you won’t. You know how I hate it when you breathe impatiently over my shoulder in a shop. And I know where the suite is."

  (Three)

  Ellen Feller spent a good deal of time considering very carefully the pluses and minuses of her new assignment. Some of the pluses were inarguable. She’d been promoted from Oriental Languages Linguist to Intelligence Analyst. And after her name on her travel orders now appeared the parenthesized phrase "(Assimilated Grade of Lt. Commander)." That meant she was entitled to the privileges the armed forces gave to an officer of that rank; and that she was earning just about as much money as a Lieutenant Commander made.

  Back in Washington, Commander Kramer had informed her that when she reached Hawaii, she would be provided with bachelor women officers’ quarters on the Navy Base at Pearl Harbor. ("The last time I was there, lieutenant commander nurses had nice little bungalows; they’ll probably assign you one of those.") And she would be entitled to membership in the officers’ club, where she would take her meals, and have access to everything else-the base exchange and the golf course, that sort of thing-that a lieutenant commander would have.

  A remarkably short time after starting as a temporary civilian employee brought in to help with foreign-language translation (really a sort of multilingual clerk), she had risen to the upper echelons of Navy intelligence. The proof was that she was privy to, and would be working with, the Big Secret: that the Navy had cracked the Imperial Japanese Navy code. And she would continue to work-though remotely-with Captain Fleming Pickering, who answered to nobody but the Secretary of the Navy.

  It now seemed very unlikely that there would be any difficulty about the crates shipped home from China. And since she was going to Hawaii, it would no longer be necessary for her to make the weekly trips to the nursing home in Baltimore to see her father. Or to endure the hour-long sermon he always delivered.

  There were just a few minuses to her promotion and transfer; and they were all spelled Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR.

  She had been attracted to him from the very first moment she had met him in his suite in the Foster Lafayette Hotel. The expensively furnished suite itself represented a style of living that she had previously believed existed only in the movies. And as she had learned more about him, her fascination with him grew: He owned steamships, A fleet of them! His wife’s father owned a chain of hotels, including the Foster Lafayette! He personally knew a large number of very important people, people like Senator Fowler and Henry Ford, and even the President of the United States!

  There was a physical attraction, too. From that first day, she had wondered what it would be like to be in bed with him. He was tall, good looking, and in splendid physical shape. She loved the deep timbre of his voice. But just about as immediately, she also recognized that any notions of getting him into her bed were dangerous.

  Since a rich and handsome man like Fleming Pickering must have had any number of women to choose from, she was convinced that he must have grown very selective. It was entirely possible that he would not be interested in her at all, and that any overtures from her would see her returned to her old job. It didn’t especially surprise her to learn that he was faithful to his wife, and that they apparently had had a long and successful marriage . . . but it disappointed her, all the same.

  After a while, as he grew to rely on her faithful services, she realized that he was taking her under his wing. She was protected by his authority and influence. If questions about the crates from China now came up, she was sure that she could convince him of her innocence, and that he would defend her- with all of his influence-against any accusations.

  Of course, with her in Hawaii and Fleming Pickering in Australia-or God knew where else-that would no longer be the case. She would be an ex-employee, no longer his faithful right hand. She could probably call on him for help, but the situation would be changed. She might be an "assimilated lieutenant commander" in Hawaii, but she would no longer be Captain Fleming Pickering’s assistant.

  On the train to California, she wondered whether she had made a mistake in playing out her perfectly platonic half of their entirely platonic relationship. More than once she had seen
him looking at her as a man looks at a desirable woman.

  But it would now be in her interest for Fleming Pickering to remember her as a woman he had bedded, and who had asked for nothing from him. There had been several occasions in the Foster Lafayette suite when he might well have responded to an overture. More than once he had been at his Old Grouse beyond the point where his judgment was affected.

  But she had let those opportunities pass, and there was nothing that would bring them back. That was really a pity, she thought ruefully. It almost certainly would have been a very pleasant experience to have Fleming Pickering in her bed. Or, for that matter, on the floor. Anywhere.

  And then he had sent word that he would come to the hotel and see her aboard the ship.

  (Four)

  When Ellen Feller answered Pickering’s knock at the door, she was wearing a dressing gown. It was flowing-and translucent. Not missionary-lady style, he thought, recalling the black lace underwear she had worn the day he met her. And in that grossly embarrassing erotic dream.