The Corp - Counterattack Part 61

When that process was done, Lieutenant Hon took that strip of paper and fed it into the first machine. There was the sound of more typewriter keys, and the now-encrypted message appeared at the top of the machine, the way a teletype message would. But there were no words there, only a series of five-character blocks.

Hon gave his original letter and both strips of tape to Pickering; then, carrying the encrypted message, he left the vault for the radio room across the bas.e.m.e.nt. Pickering followed him.

"Urgent," Hon said to the sergeant in charge. "For Navy Hawaii. Log it as my number"-he paused to consult the encrypted message-"six-six-oh-six."

Pickering and Hon watched as a radio operator, using a telegrapher's key, sent the message to Hawaii. A few moments later there came an acknowledgment of receipt. Then Hon took the encoded message from the radio operator and handed it to Pickering.

In a couple of minutes, Pickering thought, that will be in the hands of Ellen Feller. He wondered if her receiving a message from him triggered any erotic thoughts in her.

He followed Hon back to the Cryptology Room. Hon turned a switch, and there was the sound of a fan. Pickering dropped his letter, the two tapes, and the encrypted printout into a galvanized bucket, and then stopped and set it all afire with his cigarette lighter. He waited until it had been consumed, and then reached in the bucket and broke up the ashes with a pencil.

It wasn't that he distrusted Hon, or any of the others who encrypted his letters to the Secretary of the Navy. It was just that if he personally saw to it that all traces of it had been burned, there was no way it could wind up on Willoughby's, MacArthur's, or anyone else's desk.

"I wish I was going with you," Pluto Hon said.

Pickering was surprised. It was the first time Pluto had even suggested he was familiar with the contents of one of Pickering's messages. He was, of course-you read what you type-but the rules of the little game were that everyone pretended the cryptographer didn't know.

"Why?"

"It's liable to be as dull here as it was in Melbourne," Pluto said.

"I could probably arrange to have you dropped onto some island behind j.a.panese lines," Pickering joked. "They're short of people, I know."

"I already asked Major Banning," Pluto replied, seriously. "He said I could go the day after you let him go. 'We also serve who sit in dark bas.e.m.e.nts shuffling paper.' "

"It's more than that, Pluto, and you know it," Pickering said, and touched his shoulder.

"Good night, Sir," Lieutenant Hon said.

Pickering walked back through the bas.e.m.e.nt, then up to the lobby and to the security desk, where, after duty hours, it was necessary to produce identification and sign in and out.

"There he is," a female voice said as he scrawled his name on the register.

I am losing my mind. That sounded exactly like Ellen Feller.

He straightened and turned around.

"Good evening, Captain Pickering," Ellen Feller said.

"I hope you have some influence around here, Captain," Captain David Haughton said, as he offered Pickering his hand, smiling at his surprise. "We have just been told there is absolutely no room in the inn."

"Haughton, what the h.e.l.l are you doing here?" Pickering asked. He looked at Ellen Feller. "And you, Ellen?"

"I'm on my way to Admiral Ghormley in Auckland. They're servicing the plane. Ellen's for duty."

"For duty?" Pickering asked her. "What do you mean?"

"I was asked if I would be willing to come here," Ellen Feller said. "I was."

Jesus Christ, what the h.e.l.l is this all about?

"The boss arranged it," Haughton said. "In one of your letters you said something about not having a secretary. So he sent you one. Yours."

"You don't seem very pleased to see me, Captain Pickering," Ellen said.

"Don't be silly. Of course I am," Pickering said.

"Your billeting people are being difficult," Haughton said. "I tried to get Ellen a room in the hotel . . . Lennon's?"

"Lennon's," Pickering confirmed.

"And they say she's not on their staff, and no room."

"I can take care of that," Pickering said.

"I tried to invoke your name, and they gave me a room number. But the door was opened by a fat Army officer who said he hadn't seen you since Melbourne."

"I've got a cottage just outside of town. We can stay there tonight, and I'll get this all sorted out in the morning. Christ, no I won't either. I'm leaving first thing in the morning. But I'll make some phone calls tonight."

"Where are you going?"

"To the rehearsal," Pickering said. "I just sent Knox a letter Ellen Feller read his mind.

"I've taken care of everything in Hawaii. If it's in Hawaii now, it will be on his desk, decrypted, in three hours."

"Have you got a car?" Haughton asked.

Pickering nodded. "Why?"

"Well, Ellen's luggage is still at the airfield. If you've got a car, you could pick that up; and at the same time, I can check in about the plane."

Pickering pointed out the door, where the drop-head Jaguar was parked in front of a sign reading GENERAL AND FLAG OFFICERS ONLY.

"That's beautiful," Ellen said. "What is it?"

"It's an old Jaguar. The roof leaks."

Haughton chuckled. "I see you are still scrupulously refusing to obey the Customs of the Service."

Pickering was surprised at how furious the remark made him, but he forced a smile.

"Shall we go?"

Ellen Feller sat between them on the way to the airport. Whether by intent or accident, her thigh pressed against his. That warm softness and the smell of her perfume produced the physiological manifestation of s.e.xual excitement in the male animal.

An inspection of the aircraft had revealed nothing seriously wrong, Haughton was told. They would be leaving in an hour.

There was a small officers' club. They had three drinks, during which time Ellen Feller's leg brushed, accidentally or otherwise, against Pickering's. Then they called Haughton's flight. They watched him board the Mariner for New Zealand.

Fleming Pickering would not have been surprised at anything Ellen did now that they were alone. She did nothing, sitting ladylike against the far door, all the way out to the cottage.

"What's this?" she asked.

"It's a cottage I rented. I told you-"

"I would have bet you were taking me to an officers' hotel!" she said.

Why the h.e.l.l didn't I? I could have gotten her a room if I had to call General Sutherland himself.

"No."

"Fleming, don't look so guilt-stricken," Ellen said. "We both know you wouldn't do this if Mrs. Pickering were around."

He didn't reply for a moment. Then he pulled up on the parking brake, took the key from the ignition, got out of the car, and walked up to the house and unlocked the door.

The telephone rang. He walked across the living room to it.

"Pickering."

"Captain Pickering?"

"Yes."

"Sir, this is Major Tourtillott, Billeting Officer at the Lennon."

"Yes, Major."

"Sir, there was a Naval officer, a Captain Haughton, looking for you."

"Yes, I know, he found me."

"Sir, he was trying to arrange quarters for a Navy Department civilian, a lady, an a.s.similated Oh-Four."

"A what?"

"An a.s.similated Oh-Four, Sir. Someone ent.i.tled to the privileges of an Oh-Four, Sir."

"What the h.e.l.l is an Oh-Four?"

"An Army or Marine Corps major, Sir, or a Navy Lieutenant Commander."

"The lady has made other arrangements for tonight, Major. I'll get this all sorted out in the morning. She is a member of my staff, and quarters will be required."

"Yes, Sir. I'll take care of it. Thank you, Sir."

Pickering hung the telephone up and turned to see what had happened to Ellen Feller.

She wasn't in the small living room. He found her in the bedroom, in bed.

"I've been flying for eighteen hours," she said. "I'm probably a little gamey. Will that bother you? Should I shower?"

Fleming Pickering shook his head.

(Three) Aboard USS Lowell Hutchins Transport Group Y 17 degrees 48 minutes south lat.i.tude, 150 degrees west longitude 4 August 1942 Just about everyone on board knew that five months ago the USS Lowell Hutchins had been the Pacific & Far East pa.s.senger liner Pacific Enchantress; no one had any idea who Lowell Hutchins was, or, since Naval s.h.i.+ps were customarily named only after the dead, who he had been.

She had been rapidly pressed into service, but the conversion from a plush civilian pa.s.senger liner to a Naval transport was by no means complete. Before she had sailed from the States with elements of the 1st Marine Division aboard, she had been given a coat of Navy gray paint. It had been hastily applied, and here and there it had already begun to flake off, revealing the pristine white for which Pacific & Far East vessels were well known.

The furniture and carpeting from the first-cla.s.s and tourist dining rooms had been removed. Narrow, linoleum-covered, chest-high steel tables had been welded in place in the former tourist dining room. Enlisted men and junior officers now took their meals from steel trays, and they ate standing up.

Not-much-more-elegant steel tables, with attached steel benches, had been installed in the ex-first-cla.s.s dining room. Generally, captains and above got to eat there, sitting down, from plates bearing the P&FE insignia.

Most of the former first-cla.s.s suites and cabins, plus the former first- and tourist-cla.s.s bars, libraries, lounges, and exercise rooms, had been converted to troop berthing areas. It had been relatively easy to remove their beds, cabinets, tables, and other furniture and equipment and replace them with bunks. The bunks were sheets of canvas, suspended between iron pipe, stacked four high.

The bathrooms were still identified by porcelain BATH plates over their doors, although they had now become, of course, Navy "heads." It would have taken too much time to remove the plates. And it would also have taken too much time to expand them. So a "bath" designed for the use of a couple en route to Hawaii now served as many as thirty-two men en route to a place none of them had ever heard of a month before, islands in the Solomon chain called Guadalca.n.a.l, Tulagi, and Florida.

There was not, of course, sufficient water-distilling capability aboard to permit showers at will. Showers, and indeed drinking water, were stringently rationed.

The former tourist-cla.s.s cabins had proved even more of a problem for conversion. To efficiently utilize s.p.a.ce, the beds there had usually been mattresses laid upon steel frameworks, with shelves built under them. These could not be readily moved. These rooms had become officers' staterooms for captains and above, sometimes with the addition of several other bunks. Because they afforded that most rare privilege of military service, privacy, the few single staterooms now became the private staterooms of senior majors, lieutenant colonels, and even a few junior full colonels.

The most luxurious accommodations on the upper deck had been left virtually unchanged. Even the carpets were still there, and the oil paintings on the paneled bulkheads, and the inlaid tables, and the soft, comfortable couches and armchairs. These became the accommodations of the most senior of the Marine officers aboard, the one general officer and the senior full colonels. These men took their meals with the s.h.i.+p's officers on tables set with snowy linen, glistening crystal, and sterling tableware.

It was almost taken as gospel by those on the lower decks that this was one more case of the bra.s.s, those sonsofb.i.t.c.hes, taking care of themselves. But the decision to leave the upper-deck cabins unchanged had actually been based less on the principle that rank hath its privileges than on the practical consideration that to convert them to troop berthing would have required two hundred or so men to make their way at least twice a day from the upper deck to the mess deck through narrow pa.s.sageways. That many men on that deck might actually interfere with the efficient running of the s.h.i.+p.

Brigadier General Lewis T. Harris, Deputy Commander, 1st Marine Division, and the senior Marine embarked, actually had a strong feeling of uneasiness every time he took his seat in the s.h.i.+p's officers' mess.

Because he often went twice a day to see it, he knew what was being served in the troop messes. The troop mess-jammed full of men, some of them seasick, standing at tables with food slopped around steel mess trays-offered a vivid contrast to the neatly set table at the officers' mess, with its baskets of freshly baked rolls and bread, and white-jacketed stewards hovering at his shoulder to make sure the levels in his delicate china coffee cup and crystal water gla.s.s never dropped more than an inch, or to inquire How the General Would Like His Lamb Chop.

General Harris tried to live the old adage that an officer's first duty was the welfare of the men placed under his command. If it had been within his power, Marines on the way to battle would all be seated at a linen-covered table, eating steaks to order. That was obviously out of the question, a fantasy. He had done the next best thing, however. He told his officers that he expected the men to be fed as well as humanly possible under the circ.u.mstances, and then he repeatedly went to see for himself how well that order was being carried out. He was convinced that the mess officers and sergeants were indeed doing the best they could.

He could, he knew, take his meals with the troops in that foul-smelling mess; and if he did, his officers would follow his example. But the only thing he would accomplish-aside from being seen there, implying that he was concerned about the chow- would be to strain the facilities that much more.

The s.h.i.+p's officers-and why not?-would go on eating well, no matter where he and his officers ate. The officers' mess cooks and stewards were not being strained by feeding the Marine senior officers. And every meal they fed to a senior Marine officer was one less to be prepared down below.

So, in the end, after making sure the senior officers knew he expected them to check on the troop mess regularly and personally, General Harris continued to eat off bone china and a linen tablecloth; and he continued to feel uneasy about it.

There was a table by the door to the s.h.i.+p's officers' mess, on which sat a coffee machine and three or four insulated coffee pitchers and a stack of mugs. Between mealtimes, it was used by the stewards to take coffee to the bridge and to the cabins on the upper deck.

When General Harris left the mess, he stopped by the table, filled a pitcher a little more than half-full of coffee, and picked up two of the china mugs.

"General," one of the stewards said, "can I carry that somewhere for you?"

"I can manage, thank you," Harris said with a smile. He left the mess and went to his cabin.

In one of the drawers of a mahogany chest, there were a dozen small, olive-drab cans. Each was neatly labeled BORE CLEANER, 8OZ. They looked like tiny paint cans, and there was a neat line of red candle wax sealing the line where the top had been forced tight on the body of the can. Anyone seeing the cans would understand that General Harris did not want the bore cleaner to leak.

He took a penknife from his pocket and carefully sc.r.a.ped the wax seal from one of the cans, and then switched to the screwdriver blade. He pried the lid carefully off, then poured the brown fluid the can held into the coffee pitcher.