W E B Griffin - Corp 10 - Retreat, Hell!

by Retreat, Hell!(Lit)

  [EIGHT]

  The weather was getting nasty by the time Lieutenant Whaleburton put the C-47 down at K-16, and by the time they took off the weather was, in Whaleburtons phraseology, "marginal."

  "Not a problem, Miss Priestly," he said. "If it gets any worse, we'll just head for Pusan."

  The weather got worse.

  Thirty minutes out of Seoul, Lieutenant Whaleburton said, "If I get up in that soup, I'll never find Wonsan, so what I'm going to do is drop down below it. And if it gets any worse than this, I'm going to head for Pusan. But I really would like to get that blood to Wonsan."

  It quickly got worse, much worse, with lots of turbulence.

  When Lieutenant Whaleburton saw the ridge in the Taebaek mountain range ahead of him, he of course pulled back on the yoke to get over it.

  He almost made it.

  The right wingtip made contact with the granite of the peak, spinning the aircraft around and down. Before it stopped moving down the mountainside, it came apart and the aviation gasoline exploded.

  Lieutenant Whaleburton didn't even have time to make a radio report.

  Chapter Eleven

  [ONE]

  Wake Island

  O625 15 October 19SO

  As the Independence landed, Brigadier General Fleming Pickering saw, with a sense of relief, that the Bataan was already on the ground. He'd overheard some of President Truman's staff wondering if that was going to happen, whether, in other words, MacArthur would time his landing so that the President would arrive first and have to wait for the Supreme Commander to arrive from Tokyo. At first, Pickering had dismissed the conjecture as utter nonsense, but then he thought about it and had to admit that MacArthur was indeed capable of doing something like that. It was, he thought, like two children playing King of the Hill, except that Truman and MacArthur were not children, and Truman was, if not a king, than certainly the most powerful man on the planet. A king worried that one of his faithful subjects had his eyes on the throne.

  Pickering had realized-maybe especially after he'd met with General Wal-ter Bedell Smith-that Truman was anything but the flaming liberal incom-petent the Republican party had painted him to be.

  He had then realized-the late-dawning realization making him feel like a fool-that Senator Richardson K. Fowler, who was as much entitled to be called "Mr. Republican" as any politician, was fully aware of this.

  That had led him to recall Truman's visit to tell him he was naming Gen-eral Walter Bedell Smith to replace Admiral Hillencoetter. When he had told Truman he had always felt he was in water over his head, Truman had told him that not only had "Beetle" Smith said the same thing, but Wild Bill Donovan as well. Pickering had been so surprised-in the case of Donovan, astonished- to hear that that it was only later that he recalled what Truman had said when he'd assumed the presidency on Roosevelt's death, that "he was going to need all the help he could get."

  That certainly suggested that Truman thought he had been given responsi-bility he wasn't at all sure he was qualified to handle.

  And the truth was that Truman had proven himself wrong. Almost all the decisions he had made-right from the beginning, when he'd ordered the atomic bombs to be dropped on Japan-had been the right ones.

  He of course had been mistaken to give in to the brass and disestablish the Office of Strategic Services. And Fleming Pickering found Truman's suggestion that it was about time to disband the U.S. Marine Corps to be stupid and out-rageous. But Truman had realized he'd made a mistake about the OSS, and quickly formed the CIA, and after the performance of the Marines in the Pusan Perimeter and at Inchon, Truman had changed his mind about the Marines and said so.

  Truman's selection of General Smith to head the CIA had been the right one, even though his old friend Ralph Howe, the one general officer he really trusted, had relentlessly pushed Pickering for the job, and appointing Picker-ing would have pleased Senator Fowler personally and silenced a lot of Re-publican criticism.

  As the Independence stopped, Pickering saw from his window the Supreme Commander, United Nations Command, standing on the tarmac waiting for the Commander-in-Chief.

  MacArthur was wearing his trademark washed-out khakis and battered, gold-encrusted cap.

  Jesus, Truman is the Commander-in-Chief! At least El Supremo could have put on a tunic and neck scarf!

  Then he saw the others in the MacArthur party. Brigadier General Court-ney Whitney was among them; Major General Charles Willoughby was not. That was surprising.

  He wondered if Willoughby, who was almost invariably at the Supreme Commander's side, might somehow have fallen into displeasure.

  Is El Supremo punishing Willoughby for something by bringing Whitney here and leaving Willoughby in Japan? I know damned well Willoughby would want to be here.

  The two were, in Pickering's judgment, the most shameless of the Bataan Gang in sucking up to MacArthur, in constant competition for his approval, or even for an invitation to cocktails and dinner.

  Both disliked Pickering. He had long before decided this was because of his personal relationship with MacArthur, which was far closer than their own. Pickering declined more invitations to cocktails, or bridge, or dinner with the MacArthurs than both of them received. And MacArthur often addressed Pick-ering by his first name, an "honor" he rarely accorded Willoughby or Whitney or, for that matter, anyone else.

  There was more than that, of course. Pickering had never been subordinate to MacArthur. Worse than that, they knew-and there was no denying this- that he was, in effect, a spy in their midst, making frequent reports on MacArthurs activities that they never got to see.

  In the case of Whitney, Pickering had made a social gaucherie the day he had met MacArthur when he arrived in Australia from the Philippines with members of his staff-soon to be dubbed the "Bataan Gang." He had not rec-ognized Major Whitney as a Manila lawyer he had known before the war.

  The truth was that he simply hadn't remembered the man. Whitney had de-cided he had been intentionally snubbed, and had never gotten over it.

  Pickering had written his wife from Australia, in early 1942, that his rela-tions with MacArthurs staff ranged from frigid to frozen, and that had been when he had been a temporarily commissioned Navy captain sent to the Pa-cific by Navy Secretary Frank Knox. The temperature had dropped even lower when he had been sent to the Pacific as a Marine brigadier general and with the title of Deputy Director of the OSS for Asia.

  MacArthur-with the encouragement of Willoughby and Whitney, Pickering had come to understand-had not wanted the OSS in his theater of op-erations. Willoughby, MacArthur's intelligence officer, and Whitney, who had been commissioned a major in the Philippines just before the war, and was serv-ing as sort of an adviser, were agreed that intelligence activities should be under MacArthur's intelligence officer. Whitney, moreover, had decided he had the background to become spymaster under Willoughby.

  MacArthur had not refused to accept the OSS in his theater, he had simply been not able to find time in his busy schedule to receive the OSS officer sent to his headquarters by Wild Bill Donovan, the head of the OSS.

  Donovan, who was a close personal friend of Roosevelt, had complained to him about MacArthur's behavior, and Roosevelt had solved the problem by commissioning Pickering into the Marine Corps, assigning him to the OSS, and sending him to deal with MacArthur.

  Pickering had a dozen clashes with the Bataan Gang during World War II, the most galling to Willoughby and Whitney his making contact with an offi-cer fighting as a guerrilla on Mindanao after MacArthur-acting on Willoughby's advice-had informed the President there "was absolutely no possibility of U.S. guerrilla activity in the Philippines at this time."

  Pickering had sent a team commanded by a young Marine intelligence officer-Lieutenant K. R. McCoy-to Japanese-occupied Mindanao on a Navy submarine. McCoy had established contact with a reserve lieutenant colonel named Wendell Fertig, who had refused to surrender, promoted himself to brigadier general, announced he was "Commanding
General of United States Forces in the Philippines," and begun guerrilla warfare against the Japanese occupiers.

  When, late in the war, MacArthur's troops landed on Mindanao, they found Brigadier General Fertig waiting for them with 30,000 armed and uniformed troops, including a band. Pickering had had Fertig's forces supplied by Navy submarines all through the war.

  Every report of Fertig's successes-even of a successful completion of a sub-marine supply mission to him-during the war had been a galling reminder to the Bataan Gang that Pickering had done what MacArthur had said-on their advice-was impossible to do.

  Pickering had learned that MacArthur had a petty side to his character. The one manifestation of this that annoyed Pickering the most-even more than MacArthur's refusal to award the 4th Marines on Corregidor the Presi-dential Unit Citation because "the Marines already have enough medals"-was MacArthur's refusal to promote Fertig above his actual rank of lieutenant colonel even though Fertig had successfully commanded 30,000 troops in com-bat. An Army corps has that many troops and is commanded by a three-star general.

  Whitney had risen steadily upward in rank-he ended World War II as a colonel and was now a brigadier general-and this added to Pickering's an-noyance and even contempt.

  Aware that he was being a little childish himself, Pickering took pleasure in knowing that Brigadier General Whitney's pleasure with himself for being at El Supremo's elbow when he met with the President would be pretty well soured when he saw Pickering get off the Presidential aircraft.

  There turned out to be less of an arrival ceremony for the President than there had been at K-16 when MacArthur had landed there to turn the seat of the South Korean government back to Syngman Rhee.

  The door of the Independence opened, and two Secret Service men and a still cameraman and a motion picture cameraman went down the stairs. Then Truman came out of his compartment and went down the stairs.

  MacArthur saluted. Truman smiled and put out his hand, then started shak-ing hands with the others of MacArthur's party.

  The first man off the Independence after Truman was a stocky Army chief warrant officer in his mid-thirties. He carried a leather briefcase in one hand and a heavy canvas equipment bag in the other. He wore a web pistol belt with a holstered.45 around his waist. A jeep was waiting for him. He got in it and drove off before General of the Army Omar Bradley came down the stairs.

  George Hart knew-and had told Pickering-what the equipment bag contained, and what Chief Warrant Officer Delbert LeMoine, of the Army Se-curity Agency, was doing with it. LeMoine was the Presidential cryptogra-pher. Messages intended for the President that had come in since they left Hawaii had been forwarded to Wake Island. Wake Island, however, did not have the codes. The President would have to wait for his mail until LeMoine decrypted it.

  The dignitaries aboard the Independence came down the stairs one by one and shook hands with MacArthur and the members of his staff he had brought with him from Tokyo. Pickering decided he was not an official member of the Truman party, and waited until the handshaking was over before he got off the Independence.

  He gave Brigadier General Courtney Whitney a friendly wave. Whitney re-turned it with a nod and a strained smile.

  Truman and MacArthur got in the backseat of a something less than Pres-idential-or MacArthurian-1949 Chevrolet staff car and drove off for a pri-vate meeting.

  Then everyone else was loaded, without ceremony, into a convoy of cars and jeeps and driven to one of the single-story frame buildings lining the tarmac. Inside, a simple buffet of coffee and doughnuts had been laid out for them.

  Pickering had just taken a bite of his second doughnut when another Army warrant officer touched his arm.

  "Would you come with me, please, General?" he asked.

  "Sure," Pickering said. "What's up?"

  The warrant officer didn't reply, but when Hart started to follow them, he said, "Just the general, Captain."

  The warrant officer led Pickering to a frame building-identical to the one where coffee and doughnuts were being served-a hundred yards away and held open the door for him.

  There was an interior office, guarded by a sergeant armed with a Thomp-son submachine gun. He stepped out of the way as Pickering and the warrant officer approached, and then the warrant officer knocked at the door. A mo-ment later LeMoine unlocked the door, opened it, and motioned Pickering inside.

  Then he closed and locked the door and turned to Pickering with a smile.

  "We have a mutual friend, General," he said.

  "Who's that?"

  "Master Sergeant Paul Keller," LeMoine said. "He worked for me when we were in Moscow."

  "Good man," Pickering said.

  "He says much the same about you, General," LeMoine said. "And he has the same kind of problems I do, wondering who gets to see what and when."

  "I'm not sure I follow you," Pickering said.

  "Why don't you have a chair, General?" LeMoine said. "I've got to take a leak, and I'll see if I can't get us some coffee."

  He pulled a chair on wheels away from a table, waited until Pickering sat down, then walked to the door, unlocked it, walked through it, and then closed and locked it.

  There was one sheet of paper on the table.

  Pickering wondered why LeMoine had left it on display.

  A man like that does not make mistakes. Christ, whatever it is, he wants me to see it!

  TOP SECRET-PRESIDENTIAL

  WASHINGTON 2215 14OCT1950

  FROM DIRECTOR CIA

  TO (EYES ONLY) THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

  FOLLOWING RECEIVED 22 07 14OCT1950 FROM MAJOR K R MCCOY USMCR

  MESSAGE BEGINS

  MAJOR MALCOLM S. PICKERING USMCR RETURNED TO US CONTROL 1200 14OCT1950. TRANSPORTED USS

  BADOENG STRAIT AS OF 1300 14OCT1950.

  SUBJECT OFFICER IS DIRTY, UNSHAVEN, AND VERY HUNGRY, BUT IS UNWOUNDED, UNINJURED, AND IN

  SOUND PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITION.

  FOLLOWING CIVILIAN PERSONNEL SHOULD BE CONTACTED BY MOST EXPEDITIOUS MEANS, ASKED NOT TO

  DISSEMINATE INFORMATION ABOVE TO OTHERS AND ON AGREEMENT BE NOTIFIED OF SUBJECT OFFICER'S

  RETURN AND CONDITION.

  MRS FLEMING PICKERING C/O FOSTER HOTELS SAN FRANCISCO CAL

  MRS K.R. MCCOY, TOKYO, JAPAN

  MISS JEANETTE PRIESTLY C/O PRESS RELATIONS OFFICER, SUPREME HEADQUARTERS UNITED NATIONS

  COMMAND, TOKYO

  MCCOY MAJ USMCR

  MESSAGE ENDS

  IN PRESUMPTION YOU WILL INFORM GENERAL PICKERING I WILL NOT DO SO

  W.B. SMITH DIRECTOR

  Pickering picked it up and read it.

  There was the sound of the door being unlocked.

  Fleming Pickering swallowed hard and stood up, but did not turn around for a moment, until he felt he had his voice and himself under control.

  "Ready for some coffee, General?" LeMoine asked.

  "Thank you," Pickering said.

  LeMoine set a coffee mug on the table.

  "A little sugar for your coffee, General?" LeMoine asked. He held a silver pocket flask over the cup.

  "Can I do that myself?" Pickering asked.

  LeMoine handed him the flask.

  Pickering put it to his lips and took a healthy swig.

  "Thank you," he said after a moment.

  "Have another. There's more where that came from," LeMoine said.

  Pickering took another pull, then handed the flask to LeMoine.

  "Thank you," he said again.

  "Oh, look what I did!" LeMoine said. He picked up the decrypted message. "I really should have put this in the envelope for the President."

  "I didn't see it," Pickering said.

  LeMoine met his eyes and nodded.

  "I don't think anyone's going to question the Assistant Director of the CIA for Asia coming in here to ask if I had anything for him," LeMoine said. "But, after I told you I didn't, they might wonder why you hung around. Will you excuse me, please, General?"
<
br />   "Thank you for the coffee," Pickering said.

  "When you see Sergeant Keller," LeMoine said, "tell him I asked about him."

  "I'll do that," Pickering said as he walked to the door.

  As he walked back to the coffee-and-doughnuts building, Pickering saw that the people who had been on the Independence and the Bataan were now- in separate knots-gathered around a Quonset hut. As he walked toward it, the door of the Quonset opened and first Truman and then MacArthur came out.