Behind the Lines

by W. E. B Griffin

  Everly walked up to the small building on stilts that was both the G-2 Section, Headquarters, USFIP, and the quarters he shared with Captain James B. Weston.

  He turned and faced his men.

  “Just drop that stuff where you are,” he ordered. “Somebody’ ll take care of it. Somebody go get the Chief and have him look at Zappo’s leg. Get something to eat and some sleep.”

  There were nods in acceptance of the orders, but no one responded out loud. They just lowered their loads onto the ground.

  Everly looked at the steps leading to the verandah of the house. Although he really disliked doing this—it was a mortal sin for a Marine, permitting weapons to touch the ground—he decided there was no way he could negotiate the stairs loaded down as he was.

  He put the butt of the Thompson on the ground, leaning the barrel against his leg, and started to remove the leather straps around his chest. When he had the first one off and tried to lower it gently to the ground, the Thompson fell off his leg.

  “Shit!” he said, and angrily pulled the other straps over his head and let the rifles fall. Then he picked up the Thompson and brushed the dirt from it as well as he could.

  Then he slowly climbed the ladderlike stairs to the verandah. Captain Weston was not in the "office” or their “quarters,” the two rooms into which the house was divided.

  “Fuck it,” Everly said aloud to himself. “He’ll be back.” He walked to his bed (constructed of bamboo poles, with a combination spring and mattress made of woven leaves) and lay down. He lay immobile for a minute or two, then sat up and took his boondockers and socks off. The socks were in tatters, and the sole of the right boondocker would not last much longer; it was about to tear free of the nearly rotten leather.

  He lay back down and considered that problem a moment. He had big feet, eleven-and-a-halfs, and so far no Japanese he had come across had feet nearly that big. The Filipinos were well shod, courtesy of the Japanese Imperial Army, but the footgear of all the Marines was just about shot.

  They were going to have to find a shoemaker. Or something else would have to be done.

  The house shook, signaling that someone was climbing the stairs. Everly didn’t move his head, but looked at the open door.

  “Welcome home,” Weston said.

  Everly did not reply. He disapproved of Weston’s beard. An officer should be shaved, not wearing a goatee like General Fertig, or a full beard like Weston.

  "How did it go?”

  “We got some stuff. Including fifteen gallons of gas—”

  “I saw that,” Weston interrupted.

  “And I marked some stuff on a map,” Everly said, reaching into his trousers pocket and handing it to Weston. “We didn’t lose anybody—Zappo hurt his ankle, it’s probably broken—and I am down to twenty-six rounds for my Thompson.”

  “Good job, Everly,” Weston said.

  "How about a three-day pass?” Everly said.

  Weston chuckled.

  "You’d jusfspend it on whiskey and wild women.”

  "You better believe it!”

  “We had an interesting message from Australia,” Weston said.

  “What did they say this time? ‘Your request under advisement’? For a change?”

  "Do you remember the name of the first sergeant of Baker Company, 4th Marines, in China?”

  "What?”

  “The name of the First Sergeant of Baker Company of the 4th Marines in China. Do you remember it?”

  “How could I forget it? That fat fucker was one mean sonofabitch.”

  “What was his name?”

  “It was ...” Everly began, and then drew a blank, even though he had a very clear mental image of First Sergeant Whatthefuckishisname? standing with his hands on his hips, his beer belly straining the buttons of his stiffly starched khakis.

  “Shit, I can’t remember. I can see the sonofabitch.... Why do you want to know?”

  “Australia wants to use his name in a simple substitution code.”

  “What for?”

  "I have no idea.”

  “Give me a minute, I’ll think of it.”

  Thirty minutes later, he was still unable to call the name from memory. Although one of the other Marines vaguely remembered the first sergeant of Baker Company, Fourth Marines, no one could come up with his name.

  By that time, Captain Weston and Lieutenant Everly had been joined by Lieutenant Ball, Captain Buchanan, and General Fertig.

  “I’m sorry, General,” Everly said. “Maybe if I stop trying so hard; maybe after I get some sleep ...”

  “The problem, Lieutenant, is that I promised Australia I would respond today,” Fertig said.

  “General, I’m sorry,” Everly repeated.

  “Those bastards are probably looking for an excuse to break off contact with us,” Weston said, putting into words what was in the minds of everybody in the small room.

  “Captain,” Fertig said sharply. “Please keep thoughts like that to yourself.”

  “Sorry, Sir.”

  ● “Let’s try another tack,” Fertig said. “Who would want this information? Why?”

  Everybody shrugged, but after a moment Lieutenant Ball said, “Maybe they want to know if Everly is really Everly. I mean, the one who served with the 4th Marines.”

  “What the hell is the difference?”

  “Let’s go with Ball’s idea. Unless he had also served with the Fourth Marines, who else would know about this first sergeant, and know that Everly would know.”

  “Anybody in the 4th Marines.”

  “But this chap is in Australia,” Fertig said. “So it would be someone who served with the 4th Marines and did not come to the Philippines when they did.”

  “The Killer,” Everly said.

  "What?”

  “And he would know about Zimmerman,” Everly said, now excited. “It’s got to be the Killer.”

  “Who’s the Killer?” Fertig asked.

  “Corporal Killer McCoy,” Everly said. “He used to work for Captain Banning, who was the S-2 of the Fourth. Him and Zimmerman were pals.”

  Fertig looked at Buchanan.

  “What have we got to lose, General?” Captain Buchanan said.

  XII

  [ONE]

  Radio Room

  Supreme Headquarters SWPOA

  0910 Hours 28 November 1942

  “You’ve got something for me?” Major Hon Son Do asked, as he entered the crowded room.

  “I can’t imagine who else it would be for, Major,” said Captain Edward D’Allesandro, the somewhat prissy Signal Corps Captain on duty. Captain D’Allesandro had not stopped smarting under the injustice of a system that had suddenly promoted to field grade the Asiatic lieutenant with the mysterious duties that kept him off the duty roster, while he himself had been a captain with outstanding efficiency reports for nearly eighteen months and was still waiting for his promotion.

  He handed Hon the message.

  “It came in in the clear,” Captain D’Allesandro said as Hon read the brief message.

  MFS TO GYB

  CANNOT RECALL FAT BASTARDS NAME. THE KILLER SHOULD KNOW IT. REMEMBER THE KRAUTS NAME. DO YOU WANT IT IN THE CLEAR

  FERTIG BRIG GEN

  MFS STANDING BY

  Hon smiled.

  “Call them back, please, Captain,” he said. “Message is ‘Negative Krauts Name in Clear. Stand by.’ ”

  “I think I have the right to know what this is all about,” Captain D’Allesandro said. “ ‘Highly irregular’ doesn’t begin to cover it.”

  “You don’t have the right to know, Captain,” Hon said evenly, and reached for the telephone on the Captain’s desk.

  “General, this is Pluto,” he said, and interrupted himself. “Captain, reply to MFS now!”

  “Yes, Sir,” Captain D’Allesandro said.

  “Sorry, I was interrupted. Sir, we’ve just heard from Fertig. Addressed to the Killer. I suggest, Sir, that you send him and Sessions, and the Model 9
4 here. I’m in the SWPOA radio room.”

  Captain D’Allessandro returned from responding to MFS.

  “We have an acknowledgment of your message to MFS, Sir.”

  "Thank you. We will be communicating with MFS some more. I’m going to need either your desk or a table, a typewriter, and several chairs.”

  “I’m sure the Major is aware that he is disrupting my operation. I’m going to have to bring this to the attention of the SWPOA Signal Officer.”

  “That’s Colonel ... ?”

  “Ungerer, Sir. Colonel Jason Ungerer.”

  “I suggest, Captain, that you hold off on calling Colonel Ungerer for ten or fifteen minutes. By then, General Pickering will be here, and your boss and my boss can sort this disruption out between them.”

  [TWO]

  Headquarters, U.S. Forces in the Philippines

  Davao Oriental Province

  Mindanao, Commonwealth of the Philippines

  0940 Hours 28 November 1942

  “Lieutenant,” Sergeant Ignacio LaMadrid said, “Australia’s calling.”

  “I’ll go get the General,” Lieutenant Ball replied. “He said he wanted to be here when they did.”

  LaMadrid turned to his key and tapped out: MFS TO GYB GA (Go Ahead). Then he put his fingers on his typewriter keyboard and took the incoming message. When he was finished, he tapped out MFS SB (Standing By), and then tore the carbon paper sandwich from the typewriter. He laid the bottom sheet, on which the message was legible, on his “desk,” then placed a fresh sheet of blank paper under the carbon, arranged it neatly, and fed the fresh sandwich to his typewriter.

  Then he read the message from Supreme Headquarters, South West Pacific Ocean Area.

  GYB TO MFS

  USE AS SIMPLESUB Z FIRST NAME BANNING WIFE Z SECOND NAME Z PERCYS HOMETOWN Z

  He had absolutely no idea what it meant; and neither, he quickly learned, did General Fertig, Captain Buchanan, and Lieutenant Ball—except, of course, that Captain Buchanan knew Australia wanted them to use a simple substitution code.

  “Ball, go get Captain Weston and Lieutenant Everly,” Buchanan ordered. They appeared within minutes, Everly’s clean-shaven face and clean, if water-soaked, white cotton blouse and jacket indicating he had been summoned from his toilette in the stream that ran through the command post of United States Forces in the Philippines.

  “I think this is intended for you, Lieutenant,” Fertig said. “You have any idea what it means?”

  “Banning’s wife’s name is Ludmilla Zhivkov,” Everly said almost immediately. “There aren’t many people who know that. Killer McCoy would be one of them.”

  “That sounds Russian,” Fertig thought aloud.

  “It is,” Everly said. “She’s a Russian refugee. She didn’t get out of Shanghai. Neither did my wife. They’re together. That’s how I know Milla’s name.”

  “How do you spell it?” Captain Buchanan asked, sitting down at the rattan “desk.”

  As Everly spelled the name, Buchanan wrote each letter as a large block letter, then asked Everly what his home was, and wrote those letters down in large letters. Above the letters, he carefully wrote numerals above each letter.

  1234567890123456789012345

  LUDMILLAZHIVKOVZANESVILLE

  “OK, now we have the code. Somebody read out those numbers to me. Slowly.”

  General Fertig read out the numbers one at a time, moving to stand behind Buchanan as he did so.

  When Buchanan was finished, he had this:

  “What the hell does that mean?” Fertig asked, bewildered and annoyed.

  “General, the ‘Z’ is a wild card. You’ll notice they used ‘Z’s as sentence breaks in the original message?”

  Fertig was ahead of him. “Send ... Krauts ... Name,” he translated.

  “I believe that’s ‘names,’ Sir, plural,” Buchanan said.

  “Who’s the Kraut, Everly?” Fertig asked.

  “Zimmerman,” Everly said. “What the hell was his first name?”

  “Not again, Everly, please!” Weston said.

  “August,” Everly said, and then triumphantly: “No. Ernest. Ernest Zimmerman.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Send them that,” Fertig ordered.

  It took just over a minute for Buchanan to encode the name and to hand it to Sergeant LaMadrid, with the order, “Just send the numbers, send them twice.”

  “Yes, Sir,” LaMadrid said, and tapped out the reply on his radiotelegraph key:

  There was an immediate reply from Australia:GYB TO MFS

  ACK YR NO 1

  SB

  Sergeant LaMadrid read it aloud—translated it—as it came in: “Acknowledge receipt your message Number One. Stand by.”

  “What’s that message number business?” Fertig asked. “They’ve never done that before.”

  “I think until about thirty seconds ago, Sir,” Weston said, “Australia thought LaMadrid spelled his name T-O-J-O.”

  “Here comes another one,” LaMadrid said, and this time, as he typed, he called the numbers out loud. Buchanan had already begun the decoding before the numbers were repeated.

  He handed it to General Fertig.

  “What the hell do you suppose ‘mells eezou soonk illez’ means?” Fertig asked softly.

  “Sir,” Buchanan said, his voice tight, “I believe it means ‘we’ll see you soon, signature Killer.’ ”

  He looked over at Lieutenant Everly.

  “What do you make of it, Everly?”

  “Yes, Sir. I think that’s what it means. Zimmerman and the Killer. I’d say it means they’re coming in.”

  “It doesn’t say that,” General Fertig said.

  “What else could it mean, Sir?” Everly asked, and then excitedly added, “Quentin Alexander McPherson. Fucking Quentin fucking Alexander fucking McPherson!”

  “What?” General Fertig asked.

  “I believe Lieutenant Everly’s memory has returned, Sir,” Captain Weston said.

  [THREE]

  Office of the Kempeitai Commander for Mindanao

  Cagayan de Oro, Misamis-Oriental Province

  Mindanao, Commonwealth of the Philippines

  1050 Hours 28 November 1942

  “Sir, these messages between Fertig and Australia were intercepted within the past hour,” Lieutenant Hideyori Niigata said, and laid a manila folder on Captain Matsuo Saikaku’s desk.

  When Saikaku finished examining them and looked up at Hideyori, Hideyori added, “They have been forwarded to Signals Intelligence in Manila, Sir.”

  “And how soon may we expect to have a decryption from them?”

  “Sir, there is no way of telling.”

  “You have advised them, of course, of Kempeitai’s interest in this? That this matter is to have a high priority?”

  “Yes, Sir, of course. Sir, may I ask how familiar the Captain is with simple substitution encryption?”

  “I am always willing, Hideyori, to add to my knowledge.”

  "The difficulty in decoding simple substitution encryption, Sir, arises because the sender and the receiver have access to information the interceptor does not.”

  “Explain that, please.”

  “The Captain will notice that the sender is telling the receiver to use the first and second names of Banning’s wife and the hometown of Percy. The receiver will write that information in a line, and then write numbers, from zero one through how many letters there are in the names ...”

  Hideyori saw the confusion on Saikaku’s face.

  “Sir, perhaps it might be a good idea if I demonstrated?”

  “Please do,” Saikaku said.

  The demonstration took about five minutes. When it was finished, Captain Saikaku was aware of the difficulty the Signals Intelligence people would have decoding the message.

  “What this means is that we stand virtually no chance of decoding this message?”

  “Oh, no, Sir. The Signals Intelli
gence people are quite clever, and have developed several techniques that will permit them eventually to decode these messages. But, unfortunately, that’s likely going to take some time.”

  “How much time?” Saikaku asked coldly. “Two days? A week? A month?”

  “If I had to guess, Sir, I would say five days to a week.”

  “Splendid!” Saikaku said sarcastically.

  “Sir, I had some thoughts....”

  “What kind of thoughts?”

  “Sir, I am sure that someone like yourself, an officer of the Kempeitai, almost certainly has already—”

  “The one thing you learn in the Kempeitai, Hideyori, is never to give in to the temptation not to turn over the last rock. For it is often under that last rock that you find what you’re looking for. Please go on.”

  “Sir, I have noticed that there seems to be a question of the legitimacy of this General Fertig, and of his U.S. Forces in the Philippines.”

  “He’s a bandit, Hideyori. By definition, bandits are illegitimate.”

  “Sir, I was speaking of his legitimacy in the eyes of the Americans in Australia.”

  “Go on.”

  “I am sure the Captain noticed the next-to-last message.”

  “What about it?” .

  “It says, Sir—GYB, the Australian station says—‘ACK YR NO 1.’ That means ‘We acknowledge receipt of your message Number 1.’ And then it orders them ‘SB’—Stand By. That never happened before. It seems to me, Sir, that it could mean acceptance in Australia that Fertig is who he says he is. In other words, it could be official recognition.”

  “And, of course, it could mean nothing at all,” Saikaku said. “But that was very clever of you, Hideyori. In the future, please give me all of your thoughts.”

  “It will be my pleasure, Sir.”