Retreat, Hell! Part 45

The next thing she knew, she was looking up at Keller, who was gently wiping her face with a cool wet cloth.

Ernie pushed his hand away and sat up.

She saw she was on cus.h.i.+ons on the tatami.

"Jesus, you went down like a polled ox, whatever the h.e.l.l that means," Paul said. "Are you all right, Ernie?"

"I'm fine."

"You're sure?"

Ernie saw the look on Jai-Hu-san's face. It was clear that she thought Keller had told her something so awful that it had caused her to pa.s.s out.

"The red-faced barbarian brought very good news, Jai-Hu -san," Ernie said. "He is a very good man."

"You went unconscious," Jai-Hu-san said. "You could have hurt yourself and the baby."

"I think I better call for an ambulance," Paul Keller said, getting to his feet.

"No," Ernie said flatly. "I don't need an ambulance."

"I think I should call an ambulance," Paul repeated.

Ernie looked at him.

He's trembling; his face is as white as a sheet.

Christ, is he going to faint?

"What you should do, Paul," Ernie said, "is first sit down. Before you fall down. Jai-Hu-san will get you a stiff drink. I will watch you drink it, because I don't get any in my condition. That out of the way, we will then try to put a call in to Pick's mother."

"At least let me call a doctor."

"If I thought I needed a doctor, I'd tell you," Ernie said.

Then she had another thought.

"Where's the general?" she said.

"He's with the President, on the way to Wake Island. MacArthur left here for Wake at seven this morning."

"How will he hear about this?"

"The President is never out of touch," Keller said. "They will forward my-Major McCoy's-message to him wherever he is, and there's always a cryptographer with the President. He'll get it, Ernie."

"And we're going to have to get word to Jeanette, too," Ernie said. "She's on her way to Wonsan."

"I wish you'd let me call a doctor."

"Do you think you can find her?"

"That shouldn't be hard," Keller said. "As soon as I leave here, I'll start calling around. She's probably at the Press Center in Pusan."

"First things first, Paul," Ernie said. "Go sit on the couch before you fall down, and Jai-Hu-san will bring you a drink."

"First things first I'm going to get you a doctor!"

Ernie, laboriously, a.s.sisted by Jai-Hu-san, got to her feet.

She walked to Keller, who was just over six feet one and weighed just over two hundred pounds, put her hands on her hips, and looked up at him.

"For Christ's sake, Paul, go sit on the G.o.dd.a.m.n couch!"

Master Sergeant Paul T. Keller, USA, walked over to the couch and sat down.

[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 Whaleburton's 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.

XI.

[ONE].

WAKE ISLAND 0625 15 OCTOBER 1950.

As the Independence Independence landed, Brigadier General Fleming Pickering saw, with a sense of relief, that the landed, Brigadier General Fleming Pickering saw, with a sense of relief, that the Bataan 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. 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 Walter Bedell Smith-that Truman was anything but the flaming liberal incompetent 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 ent.i.tled 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 General 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 a.s.sumed 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 responsibility 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 j.a.pan-had been the right ones.

He of course had been mistaken to give in to the bra.s.s 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 outrageous. 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 Pickering would have pleased Senator Fowler personally and silenced a lot of Republican criticism.

As the Independence Independence stopped, Pickering saw from his window the Supreme Commander, United Nations Command, standing on the tarmac waiting for the Commander-in-Chief. 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 Courtney 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 punis.h.i.+ng Willoughby for something by bringing Whitney here and leaving Willoughby in j.a.pan? I know d.a.m.ned 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 compet.i.tion for his approval, or even for an invitation to c.o.c.ktails and dinner.

Both disliked Pickering. He had long before decided this was because of his personal relations.h.i.+p with MacArthur, which was far closer than their own. Pickering declined more invitations to c.o.c.ktails, or bridge, or dinner with the MacArthurs than both of them received. And MacArthur often addressed Pickering 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 MacArthur's 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 recognized 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 decided he had been intentionally snubbed, and had never gotten over it.

Pickering had written his wife from Australia, in early 1942, that his relations with MacArthur's staff ranged from frigid to frozen, and that had been when he had been a temporarily commissioned Navy captain sent to the Pacific 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 t.i.tle 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 operations. Willoughby, MacArthur's intelligence officer, and Whitney, who had been commissioned a major in the Philippines just before the war, and was serving 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 refused to accept the OSS in his theater, he had simply been to accept the OSS in his theater, he had simply been not able to find time in his busy schedule 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. 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, a.s.signing 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 officer 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 j.a.panese-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 j.a.panese 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 submarine 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 Presidential 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 combat. 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 annoyance 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 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. 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 shaking hands with the others of MacArthur's party.

The first man off the Independence 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. 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 Security Agency, was doing with it. LeMoine was the Presidential cryptographer. 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 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 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. Independence.

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

Truman and MacArthur got in the backseat of a something less than Presidential-or MacArthurian-1949 Chevrolet staff car and drove off for a private 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 Thompson 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 moment 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.