The Corps I - Semper Fi

by W. E. B Griffin

  McCoy thought the officers would be pissed. Eating in the same room with enlisted Marines was bad enough, but not as bad as having to share a table with them. But they weren't. They were playing spy again, McCoy saw, and the dinner table gave them a stage for the playacting they thought was necessary.

  "Mr." Sessions announced that he had asked Lieutenant Macklin if it would be all right if they spent two nights in Chiehshom. instead of the one originally planned. The Christian Missionary Alliance was considering opening another mission in Yenchi'eng, and they wanted to take advantage of being close to it to have a good look at it.

  He's a goddamned fool, McCoy thought. They're all goddamned fools. They think they will look more innocent brazening it out, two missionaries and a Marine officer in full uniform simply out for a ride looking for a new place to save souls. It will take the Japs about ten minutes to learn they've left here, and there will be a greeting party waiting for them long before they get anywhere near Yenchi'eng.

  The only thing more dangerous than an officer convinced he's doing what duty requires is two officers doing the same thing, two officers and a missionary.

  They would be back in Chiehshom by nightfall, Sessions said, and spending the extra day would give Sergeant Zimmerman and his men the chance to go over the vehicles and make sure everything was shipshape.

  "You're not going with them, Corporal McCoy," Mrs. Feller asked, "to drive the car?"

  "No, ma'am," McCoy said. "I'm not going along."

  Ernie Zimmerman, uncomfortable in the presence of the officers, and fully aware there was some friction between them and McCoy, bolted down his food and pushed himself wordlessly away from the table.

  McCoy went after him.

  "Ernie, jack up one of the trucks and drop the drive shaft," McCoy said.

  "What the hell for?" Zimmerman demanded.

  "Just do it, Ernie, please," McCoy said.

  "What are they up to?" Zimmerman asked.

  "You heard it," McCoy said.

  "What was that bullshit anyway?"

  "Just get somebody to drop a drive shaft, Ernie. And make sure one of the cars is gassed and ready to go," McCoy said. Then he went to his room to mark the route the damned fools should take to Yenchi'eng.

  When McCoy met with the three of them in Sessions's room, they made no further attempt to get him to take them to Yenchi'eng. This surprised him until he realized they'd concluded that their brilliant inspiration of brazening it out was going to work, and they didn't need him.

  After they came back from successfully spying on the Japs, they'd be in a position to rack his ass with Banning for refusing to go with them. They would have been right all along, and he would have been nothing but an insolent enlisted man with the gall to challenge the wise judgment of his betters.

  There was nothing he could do to stop them, of course, and (except for having one of the missionary trucks jacked up and the drive shaft dropped so that it might fool the Kempei-Tai watching the hotel) there was nothing he could do to help them either.

  But he set his portable alarm clock for half-past four and went down to the courtyard to see them off. Mrs. Feller was there too, the nipples of her teats sticking up under her bathrobe and her blond hair, now unbraided, hanging down her back.

  Jesus Christ, without her hair glued to her head, she's a hell of a good-looking woman. I would give my left nut to get in the sack with her.

  The officers and the missionary were a little carried away with the situation. They saw themselves, McCoy thought contemptuously, as patriots about to embark on a great espionage mission. McCoy had to temper his scorn, however, when Sessions took him aside and told him, dead serious, that no matter what happened today he wanted him to understand that he understood his position.

  "This is one of those situations, Corporal, where we both must do what we believe is right. And I want you to know that I believe you thought long and hard about your obligations before you decided you couldn't go with me."

  He's not so much of a prick as a virgin.

  "Good luck, Lieutenant," McCoy said, and offered his hand.

  What the hell, it didn't cost anything to say that. And if Sessions means what he said, then on the off chance they don't get bagged and Macklin tries to get me in trouble, maybe it'll help.

  As they walked back to the hotel, Mrs. Feller's leg kept coming out of the flap of her bathrobe, and she kept trying to hold the robe closed. He remembered that all through dinner she had kept bumping her knee "accidentally" against his.

  McCoy was now convinced she was just fucking around with him, getting some kind of sick kick out of trying to make him uncomfortable, the way some people get a sick kick out of teasing a dog. He intended to stay as far away from her as he could.

  "Is there any interesting way you can think of to kill the time until they get back?" she asked, when they were inside the hotel.

  She goddamned well knows there are two or three meanings I could put on that.

  "Until it starts to rain, which should be about noon, you could fish, I suppose," McCoy said. "They've got tackle. I've got to work on the trucks."

  "That doesn't sound very exciting," she said.

  "I guess not," he said, turning and walking away from her down the corridor to his room.

  He didn't see her at breakfast, and he ate with the Marines at lunch. They asked him where the officers and the Christer had gone, and how long that would keep them all in Chiehshom. Zimmerman had already told them he didn't know, they said, or else he wouldn't tell them. McCoy told them he didn't know, either.

  At half- past three, a boy came to his room and told him that Sergeant Zimmerman wanted to see him in the lobby. When McCoy went down, there were two Japanese soldiers with Zimmerman, a sergeant and a corporal. They were both large for Japanese, and they were wearing leather jackets and puttees. Goggles hung loosely from leather helmets. Motorcycle messengers.

  They bowed to McCoy and then saluted, and he bowed back and returned the salute. Then Zimmerman gave him two envelopes, one addressed to him and the other to Mrs. Feller.

  "This is addressed to you," McCoy said.

  "I can read," Zimmerman said. "And they want me to sign for it. I thought I better ask you."

  One of the Japanese soldiers then handed McCoy some kind of a form to sign. He saw that it was just a message receipt form.

  "Sign it," he said to Zimmerman.

  "What is it?"

  "A confession that you eat babies for breakfast," McCoy said.

  Zimmerman, with obvious reluctance, carefully wrote his name on the form. He gave it to the Japanese sergeant, who bowed and saluted again, then marched out of the lobby with the other Japanese hopping along after him.

  As he tore open the envelope and took out the message, McCoy heard their motorcycle engines start.

  From what his note said, Lieutenant Macklin had obviously decided that the Japanese were going to read it before they delivered it:

  Yenchi'eng

  Sergeant Zimmerman:

  The Reverend Mr. Feller, Mr. Sessions and I have accepted the kind invitation of the commanding general of the 11th Division of the Imperial Japanese Army to inspect the division.

  I will send further orders as necessary.

  R.B. Macklin 1/Lt. USMC

  McCoy realized there was absolutely no "I Told You So" pleasure in his reaction. He felt sorry for them, and he felt a little sorry for himself. Sooner (if he could get through on the telephone now) or later, Captain Banning was going to eat his ass out for letting them get their asses in a crack.

  "Well, what the hell does it say?" Zimmerman asked.

  McCoy handed him the note.

  "I figured it was something like that," Zimmerman said. "How come you didn't go? You knew they was going to get caught?"

  McCoy shrugged.

  "You figure the Japs'll find out Sessions is an officer?"

  "What makes you think he's an officer?"

  "Come on, McCoy," Zimmerman said.


  "Christ, for his sake, I hope not."

  "What do we do now?"

  "We wait twenty-four, maybe forty-eight hours to see what the Japs do."

  "Then what?"

  "Then I don't know," McCoy said. "There's reason the guys have to hang around here, but I don't want them getting shitfaced in case we need them."

  "Okay," Zimmerman said. He walked out of the hotel lobby, and McCoy went up the wide stairs to the second floor and knocked on Mrs. Feller's door.

  When she opened it, her hair was up in braids again, and she was wearing a pale yellow dress just about covered with tiny little holes.

  He handed her the letter addressed to her. She raised her eyebrows questioningly and then tore open the envelope.

  Even with her hair up again, she still looks pretty good. And Christ, what teats!

  When she had read the letter, she raised her eyes and looked at him, obviously expecting some comment from him.

  "Nothing to be worried about," he said. "They'll show them marching troops and barracks, and feed them food they know they won't like; and tonight they'll probably try hard to get them drunk. But there's no danger or anything like that. If there was, they wouldn't have let them send the letters."

  "My husband doesn't drink," she said.

  "He probably will tonight," McCoy said.

  She seemed to find that amusing, he saw.

  "His letter says that you will look after me," she said. "Are you going to look after me?"

  "Yes, ma'am," he said.

  "Starting at dinner? I missed you at lunch."

  "I had something to do over lunch," he said. "And I'm afraid I'll be busy for dinner, too. If you'd like, I can ask Sergeant Zimmerman to have dinner with you."

  "That won't be necessary," she said coldly.

  Fuck you, too, lady!

  "Are you going to. do anything about this?" she asked. "Notify someone what's happened?"

  "If I can get through on the phone," McCoy said.

  It turned out he couldn't get through to Captain Banning in Shanghai, which didn't surprise him-and was actually a relief. Getting your ass chewed out was one of those things the longer you put off, the better.

  And then he realized there was a way he could avoid it entirely. He thought it over a minute and went looking for Ernie Zimmerman.

  (Three)

  The Hotel am See Chiehshom, Shantung Province 0815 Hours 17 May 1941 McCoy had just finished a hard day and night in the country and was now lowering himself all the way into a full tub hot clean water when there was a knock at his door.

  "Come back later," he yelled in Chinese.

  "It's Ellen Feller," she said.

  "I'm in the bathtub."

  Her response to this was a heavy, angry-sounding pounding on the door.

  "Wait a minute, wait a minute," he called. "I'm coming."

  McCoy hoisted himself out of the tub, wrapped a towel around his waist, and walked dripping to the door.

  The moment it was opened a crack, she pushed past him into the room. She was wearing her robe, and her hair was again unbraided and hanging nearly to her waist. When he came back she must have seen him from her window talking to Ernie Zimmerman in the courtyard, he decided.

  She walked to his small window, turned, and glared at him.

  "Close the door, or someone will see us in here," she ordered.

  In his junior year in St. Rose of Lima High, there had been a course in Musical Appreciation. They had studied Die Walkure then. That was what Mrs. Ellen Feller looked like now, McCoy thought, smiling. Obviously pissed off, she stood stiff and strident-looking, with her long hair flowing, her cheeks red, and her teats awesome even under her bathrobe-a goddamned Valkyrie.

  "What are you smiling about?" she demanded furiously. Then, without waiting, demanded even more angrily, "And where have you been?"

  "I don't think that's any of your business," McCoy said.

  "You've been laying up with some almond-eyed whore in the village," she accused furiously. "You've been gone all night!"

  "Don't hand me any of your missionary crap," McCoy said angrily. "Where I have been all night is none of your goddamned business. What did you do, come looking for me?"

  He could tell from the look in her eyes that she had, indeed, come to his room looking for him.

  "Why?" he asked. "What's happened?"

  She shook her head. "Nothing," she said. "I just wondered where you were," she added awkwardly.

  McCoy was still angry. "So you could start playing games with me again?" he asked.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," she said automatically.

  "You know goddamned well what I'm talking about," he said.

  "So that's what you thought," she said, after a moment.

  "Go find some clown in the mission," he said, warming to his subject, "if you get your kicks that way. Just leave people like me out of it."

  "How can you be so sure it was a game?" she asked.

  "Huh!" McCoy snorted righteously.

  "Maybe you should have considered the possibility that it wasn't a game and that you didn't have to go buy a woman," she said. "Maybe what you need, Corporal Killer McCoy, is a little more self-confidence."

  "Jesus Christ!" he said.

  "What's your given name?" she asked.

  "Ken, Kenneth," he said without thinking. Then, "Why?"

  "Because if I'm going to get in that bathtub with you and scrub the smell of your whore off you, I thought it would be nice to know your name."

  "There was no whore," he said.

  She looked intently at him and almost visibly decided he was telling the truth. She nodded her head.

  "Then the bath can wait till later," she said. "Lock the door."

  (Four)

  Room 23

  The Hotel Am See

  Chiehshom, Shantung Province

  1015 Hours 18 May 1941

  "This is very nice," Ellen Feller said, picking the camera up from the chest of drawers and turning to look at him. She was naked. "Very expensive." That was a question.

  "It's a Leica," he said. "It belongs to the Corps."

  She held it up and pretended to aim it.

  "Pity we can't use it," she said. "I would like to have a memento of this. Of us."

  "For your husband to find," he said.

  She laughed and put the camera down. It had been practically nonstop screwing (with breaks only for meals and trips to make sure none of the Marines had gone off on a drunk someplace); but this was the first time either of them had mentioned her husband.

  "It's possible he could walk in any minute," McCoy said. "And catch us like this."

  "You don't have to worry about him," she said. "But I wouldn't want to get you in trouble with your officers. Are they really likely to come back soon?"

  "Can't tell. Why wouldn't I have to worry about him?"

  "You mean you couldn't tell? Not even from the way he looked at you?"

  "What are you saying, that he's a fairy?"

  She shrugged.

  "Then why do you stay married to him?" he asked. "Why did you marry him in the first place?"

  "That's none of your business," she said. She leaned against the chest of drawers and arched her back.

  She inhaled and ran her fingers across the flat of her belly. And then she told him.

  "When I was fourteen, my father had a religious experience," she said. "Do you know what that means?"

  "No," he admitted.

  "He accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal saviour," Ellen Feller said, evenly. "And brought his family, my mother and me, into the fold with him. She didn't mind, I don't suppose, although I suspect she's a little uncomfortable with some of the brothers and sisters of the Christian Missionary Alliance. And I just went along. Girls at that age are a little frightened of life anyway; and when the hellfire of eternity is presented as a reality, it's not hard to accept the notion of being washed in the blood of the lamb."

  "J
esus Christ," McCoy said.

  "Yes," Ellen said wryly. "Jesus Christ."

  She pushed herself off the chest of drawers and walked to the bed. Then she leaned over him and ran the balls of her fingers over his chest.

  "So I passed through my high school years convinced that when I had nice thoughts about boys, it was Satan at work trying to get my soul.".

  "I was a Catholic," McCoy said. "They tried to tell us the same thing."

  "Did you believe it?" she asked.

  "I wasn't sure," he said.

  "I was," she said. "And I went through college that way. It wasn't hard. I was surrounded with them. Whenever anyone confessed any doubts, the others closed ranks around her. Or him. We prayed a lot, and avoided temptation. No drinking, no dancing, no smoking. No touching."

  She moved her hand to his groin and repeated, "No touching."

  "So how come you married him? Where did you meet him?"

  "I was a senior in college," she said. "The Christian Missionary Alliance is, as you can imagine, big on missionaries; and he came looking for missionary recruits. Came from here, I mean. With slides of China and ail the souls the Alliance was saving for Jesus. He told us all about the heathens and how they hungered for the Lord. Very impressive stuff.

  "And then that summer, right after I graduated, he came to our church in Baltimore… I'm from Baltimore… to give his report to our church. My father is a pillar of our church, and he was important to my husband, because my father is pretty well off. He stayed with us while he was in Baltimore."

  "And made a play for you," McCoy said. "Jesus, that feels good!"

  She chuckled deep in her throat and bent over him and nipped his nipple with her teeth. He put his hand on her breast and dragged her down on top of him.

  "Do you want to hear this, or not?" she asked.

  "Yeah," he said.

  "It's all right with me if you don't," she said.

  "Finish it," he said.

  "What I thought I was getting was a life toiling in the Lord's Vineyard," Ellen went on. "With a man of God. Saving the heathen Chinese from eternal damnation. What he knew he was getting was a wife, and a wife who would not only put to rest unpleasant suspicions that had begun to crop up, but a wife whose father would more than likely be very generous to his mission… he had the mission in Wang-Tua, then… but probably to him personally."