W E B Griffin - Corp 03 - Counterattack
Page 11
Chapter Four
(One)
Office of the Chairman of the Board
Pacific & Far Eastern Shipping Corporation
San Francisco, California
16 January 1942
The ten-story Pacific & Far Eastern Shipping Corporation Building had been completed in March of 1934, six months be-fore the death of Captain Ezekiel Pickering, who was then Chairman of the Board. There were a number of reasons why Captain Pickering had two years before, in 1932, ordered its construction, including, of course, the irrefutable argument that the corporation needed the office space.
But it was also Captain Pickering's response to Black Tues-day, the stock market crash of October 1929, and the Depression that followed. Pacific & Far Eastern-which was to say Captain Pickering personally, for the corporation was privately held- was not hurt by the stock market crash. Captain Ezekiel Picker-ing was not in the market.
He had dabbled in stocks over the years, whenever there was cash he didn't know what else to do with for the moment. But in late 1928 he had gotten out, against the best advice of his bro-ker. He had had a gut feeling that there was something wrong with the market when, for example, he heard elevator operators and newsstand operators solemnly discussing the killings they had made.
The idea of the stock market was a good one. In his mind it was sort of a grocery store where one could go to shop around for small pieces of all sorts of companies, or to offer for sale your small shares of companies. Companies that you knew-and you knew who ran them, too. But the market had stopped being that. In Ezekiel Pickering's mind, it had become a socially sanctioned crap game where the bettors put their money on companies they knew literally nothing about, except that the shares had gone up so many points in the last six months.
The people playing the market-and he thought "playing" was both an accurate description of what they were doing and symbolic-often had no idea what the company they were buy-ing into made, or how well they did so. And they didn't really understand that a thousand shares at thirty-three-and-a-quarter really meant thirty-three thousand two hundred fifty real dol-lars.
And it was worse than that: they weren't even really playing craps with real money, they were buying on the margin, putting up a small fraction of the thirty-three thousand two hundred fifty and borrowing the rest.
Ezekiel Pickering had nothing against gambling. When he had been twenty-nine and First Mate of the tanker Pacific Cou-rier, he had once walked out of a gaming house in Hong Kong with fifty thousand pounds sterling when the cards had come up right at chemin de fer. But he had walked into the Fitzhugh Club with four thousand dollars American that was his, not bor-rowed, and that he was prepared-indeed, almost expected-to lose. To his way of looking at it, the vast difference between his playing chemin de fer with his own cash money at the Fitzhugh Club and the elevator man in the Andrew Foster Hotel playing the New York stock market with mostly borrowed Monopoly money was one more proof that most people were fools.
The stock market was a house of cards about to collapse, and he got out early. And he took with him his friend Andrew Fos-ter. So that when Black Tuesday struck, and people were liter-ally jumping out of hotel-room windows, both the Pacific & Far Eastern Shipping Corporation and Foster Hotels, Inc., remained solvent.
Of course, the Depression which followed the crash affected both corporations. Business was down. But retrenchment with cash in the bank is quite a different matter from retrenchment with a heavy debt service. Other shipping companies and hotels and hotel chains went into receivership and onto the auction-eer's block, which gave both Ezekiel Pickering and Andrew Fos-ter the opportunity to buy desirable properties, ships and hotels, at a fraction of their real value.
There never had been any doubt in Ezekiel's mind that the domestic and international economies would in time recover. In fact, he agreed with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1932 inaugural declaration that the nation had "nothing to fear but fear itself," and he said so publicly. Thus, when a suitable piece of real estate went on the auction block, he put his money where his mouth was and bought it.
The Pacific & Far Eastern Shipping Corporation Building was both a structural and an architectural marvel. It was designed not only to remain standing after what the engineers called a "hundred-year earthquake," but to reflect the dominant position of the corporation in Pacific Ocean shipping.
An oil portrait of Ezekiel Pickering, completed after his death, was hanging in the office of the current Chairman of the Board. It showed him standing with his hand resting on a five-foot globe of the earth. The globe in turn rested in a mahogany gimbal. There were the traditional four gold stripes of a ship's master around his jacket cuff, and a uniform cap with the gold-embroidered P&FE insignia was tucked under his arm.
His lips were curled in a small smile. In his widow's view, that smile caught her late husband's steely determination. But Flem-ing Pickering had a somewhat different take on it: while the art-ist had indeed captured a familiar smile of his father, based on Fleming's own personal experience with it, that smile meant, Fuck you. I was right and you were wrong; now suffer the cost of your stupidity.
He had once told this to his wife, Patricia, and it had made her absolutely furious. But when he had told the same thing to old Andrew Foster, the hotelman had laughingly agreed.
It was a quarter past two on a Friday afternoon, and Fleming Pickering was alone in his office. There was a glass of Old Grouse Scotch whiskey in his hand. He drank his Scotch with just a dash of water and one ice cube. His father had taught him that, too. Good whiskey has a distinct taste; it is stupidity to chill it with ice to the point where that taste is smothered.
While there was always whiskey available in the office-kept in a handsomely carved teak cabinet removed from the Master's cabin of the Pacific Messenger when she was retired from service and sent to the ship breakers-Fleming Pickering almost never drank alone. But the glass in his hand was the third today, and he was about to pour a fourth, when a light illuminated on one of the three telephones on the huge mahogany desk.
Since Pearl Harbor, Pacific & Far Eastern had lost nine of its fleet, eight to Japanese submarines and one, the tanker Pacific Virtue, at Pearl. It had been caught by Japanese bombers while it was unloading aviation gasoline. Three other P&FE ships were now overdue. Fleming Pickering thought it reasonable to presume that at least one of them would never make port.
He knew every officer on every crew, as well as a good many of the seamen, the black gang, and the stewards. He was not ashamed to have taken a couple of drinks.
Pickering reached over and picked up the handset of the tele-phone.
"Yes?"
"A Captain Haughton for you," said Mrs. Helen Florian, his secretary, adding: "A Navy captain."
I know what this sonofabitch is going to say, Pickering thought, as he punched the button that would put him on the line. "I'm afraid I have some bad news to report, Mr. Pickering."
"This is Fleming Pickering," he said to the telephone.
"Good afternoon, Sir. I'm Captain Haughton, of the Secre-tary's staff."
"How may I help you, Captain?"
"Sir, I'm calling for Secretary Knox. The Secretary is in San Francisco and wonders if you could spare him an hour or so of your time."
Well, no news is good news, I suppose.
"What does he want?"
I know goddamn well what he wants. He wants my ships. He's a tenacious bastard, I'll say that for him.
"I'm afraid the Secretary didn't confide that to me, Sir," Cap-tain Haughton said. "At the moment, the Secretary is on the Navy Station at Treasure Island. From there he's going to the Alameda Naval Air Station to board his aircraft. Whichever would be most convenient for you, Sir."
"No," Fleming Pickering said.
"Excuse me, Sir?"
Obviously, Pickering thought, Captain Haughton, wrapped in the prestige of the Secretary of the Navy, is not used to hearing "no" when he asks for something.
&nb
sp; "I said no. I'm afraid I don't have the time to go to either Treasure Island or Alameda."
"We'd be happy to send a car for you, Sir."
"I have a car. What I don't have is time. I can't leave my of-fice. But you can tell Mr. Knox that I will be in the office for the next several hours."
"Mr. Pickering, you do understand that the Secretary is on a very tight schedule himself," Captain Haughton said, and then added something he instantly regretted. "Sir, we're talking about the Secretary of the Navy."
"I know who he is. That's why I'm willing to see him if he wants to come here. But you might save his time and mine, Cap-tain, if you were to tell him that I have not changed my mind, and I will fight any attempt by the Navy to take over my ships."
"Yes, Sir," Captain Haughton said. "I will relay that to the Secretary. Good afternoon, Sir."
Pickering put the handset back in its cradle.
If I wasn`t on my third drink, would I have been less difficult? Well, fuck him! I told him in plain English that if the Navy tries to seize my ships, I'll take it to the Supreme Court. He should have listened to me.
He stood up from behind his desk, walked to the liquor cabi-net, and made himself another Old Grouse and water. Then he walked to an eight-by-twelve-foot map of the world that hung on an interior wall. Behind it was a sheet of light steel. Models of the ships of the P&FE fleet, each containing a small magnet, were placed on it so as to show their current positions.
After he checked the last known positions of the Pacific En-deavor, the Pacific Volition, and the Pacific Venture, he mentally plotted their probable courses. Then he wondered-for what might have been the seven hundredth time-whether it was an exercise in futility, whether he should move the three models down to the lower left-hand corner of the map to join the models of the P&FE ships he knew for sure were lost. Almost exactly an hour later, the bulb on one of his telephones lit up. When he picked it up, Mrs. Florian said, "Mr. Frank Knox is here, Mr. Pickering. He says you expect him."
Well I'll be goddamned. He really is a tenacious sonofabitch!
"Please show Mr. Knox in," Fleming Pickering said.
He opened the upper right drawer of his desk, intending to put his Old Grouse and water out of sight. Then he changed his mind. As the door opened, he stood up, holding the glass in his hand. The Hon. Frank Knox walked in, trailed by a slim, sharp-featured, intelligent-looking Navy officer with golden scrambled eggs on the brim of his uniform cap. He had to be Captain Haughton.
(Two)
Before speaking, the Hon. Frank Knox, Secretary of the Navy, stared for a moment at Fleming Pickering, Chairman of the Board of Pacific & Far Eastern Shipping. There was no ex-pression on his face, but Pickering saw that his Old Grouse and water had not gone unnoticed.
Christ, he'll think I'm a boozer; I was half in the bag the last time, too.
"Thank you for seeing me on such short notice," Knox said. "I know you're a busy man."
"I have three overdue ships," Pickering replied. "It's the rea-son I didn't come to meet you. I didn't want to get far from a telephone."
Knox nodded, as if he understood.
"Mr. Pickering, may I present Captain David Haughton, my administrative officer?"
The two shook hands. Pickering said, "We spoke on the tele-phone."
"I'd like to talk to Mr. Pickering alone, David, if you don't mind," Knox said.
"Yes, Sir."
"Mrs. Florian," Pickering said, "would you make the Captain comfortable? Start with a cup of coffee. Something stronger, if he'd like."
"Coffee will be fine," Haughton said, as he followed Mrs. Florian out of the office.
"May I offer you something?" Pickering asked.
"That looks good," Knox said, nodding at Pickering's glass. "Dick Fowler told me you had cornered the Scotch market."
Is he indulging me? Or does he really want a drink?
"It's Old Grouse," Pickering said, as he walked to the liquor cabinet to make Knox a drink. "And I'm glad you'll have one. I'm a little uneasy violating my own rule about drinking, espe-cially alone, during office hours."
Knox ignored that. He waited until Pickering had handed him the glass, then he nodded his thanks and said, "Haughton doesn't like you."
"I'm sorry. I suppose I was a little abrupt on the telephone."
"He doesn't think you hold the Secretary of the Navy in what he considers to be the proper degree of awe."
"I meant no disrespect," Pickering said.
"But you aren't awed," Knox insisted. "And that's what I find attractive."
"I beg your pardon?"
"There was a movie-or was it a book?-about one of those people who runs a motion-picture studio. He was surrounded by a staff whose primary function was to say `Right, J.B.,' or `You're absolutely right, J.B.,' whenever the great man paused for breath. After our interesting encounter in Dick Fowler's apartment, when I calmed down a little, I realized that sort of thing was happening to me."
"I don't think I quite follow you," Pickering said.
"This is good stuff," Knox said, looking down at his glass.
"I'll give you a case to take with you," Pickering said. "I have a room full of it downstairs."
"Because I'm the Secretary of the Navy?"
"Because I would like to make amends for my behavior in Fowler's apartment. I had no right to say what I said."
"The important thing, I realized, was that you said it," Knox said. "And you might have been feeling good, but you weren't drunk. I think you would have said what you said if you hadn't been near a bottle."
"Probably," Pickering said. "That doesn't excuse it, of course; but, as my wife frequently points out, when silence is called for, I too often say exactly the wrong thing."
"Are you withdrawing what you said?" Knox asked evenly.
"I'm apologizing for saying it," Pickering said. "I had no right to do so, and I'm sure that I embarrassed Richardson Fow-ler."
"But you believe what you said, right?"
"Yes, I'm afraid I do."
"You had me worried there for a moment," Knox said. "I was afraid I had misjudged you."
"It may be the Scotch, but I have no idea what we're talking about," Pickering said.
Knox chuckled.
"We're talking about you coming to work for me."
My God, he's serious!
"Doing what?"
"Let me explain the problem, and then you tell me if you think you could be helpful," Knox said. "I mentioned a moment be-fore that David Haughton doesn't like you because you're not sufficiently awed by the Secretary of the Navy. That attitude- not only on Dave Haughton's part, but on the part of practically everybody else-keeps me from hearing what I should be hear-ing."
"You mean what's wrong with the Navy?"
"Precisely. Hell, I can't blame Haughton. From the moment he entered Annapolis, he's been taught as an article of faith that the Secretary of the Navy is two steps removed from God. The President sits at the right hand of God, and at his feet the Secre-tary of the Navy."
"I suppose that's so," Pickering said, chuckling.
"To Haughton's way of thinking, and to others like him, the Secretary of the Navy controls the very fate of the Navy. That being so, the information that is presented to him has to be care-fully processed. And above all, the Navy must appear in the best possible light."
"I think I understand," Pickering said. "And I can see where that might be a problem."
Knox removed his pince-nez, took a handkerchief from the sleeve of his heavy woolen suit-now that he noticed it, Picker-ing was sure the suit was English-and polished the lenses. He put them back on his nose, stuffed the handkerchief back up his jacket cuff, and looked directly at Pickering.
"That might be an overstatement, but it's close," he said. "And to that problem is added what I think of as the Navy's institutional mind-set. From the very beginning, from the first Secretary of the Navy, the men in blue have been certain that the major cross they have to bear is that the m
an with the au-thority is a political appointee who really doesn't know-is inca-pable of knowing-what the Navy is really all about."
"Huh," Pickering grunted.
"Their quite understandable desire is-and I suppose always has been-to attempt to manage the Secretary of the Navy. To see that he hears what they want him to hear, and that he does not hear-or at least is presented with in the best possible light- what they'd rather he didn't hear at all."
"One doesn't think of the Navy as an institution," Pickering said, "but of course that's what it is."
"On October 13, 1775, Congress voted to equip seven ships to support George Washington," Knox said. "Less than a month later, on November 10, 1775, the Congress authorized the Marine Corps. And before that, there were states' navies- Rhode Island's in particular. In July 1775, Washington sent a frigate of the Rhode Island navy to Bermuda to get gunpowder for the Continental Army. In 167 years, a certain institutional mind-set is bound to occur."