The Corp - Counterattack Part 13

"Oh, Christ! Can I get out of it?"

"This would be the third time you've canceled, Sir."

Mclnerney looked at his watch.

"Order up the car."

"I've done that, Sir. It's outside."

"Sometimes you're just too G.o.dd.a.m.n efficient, Charlie. With a little bit of luck, maybe it would have had an accident on the way here from the motor pool."

"Sorry, Sir," Orfutt said, and went to the clothes tree and took General Mclnerney's overcoat from it and held it up for him.

Fifteen minutes later, as the Marine-green 1941 Ford was moving down Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House, General Mclnerney suddenly sat up. He had been glancing casually out the side window, but now he stared intently, then turned and stared out the back.

"Stop the car!" he ordered.

"Sir?" the driver, a young corporal, asked, confused.

"That was English, son," Mclnerney snapped. "Pull to the curb and stop!"

"Aye, aye, Sir," the Corporal replied, and complied with his orders.

"There's a Navy officer coming up behind us on the sidewalk. Intercept him and tell him I would be grateful for a moment of his time," Mclnerney said. Then he slumped low in the seat.

The driver got quickly out of the car, found the Navy officer, and relayed General Mclnerney's desires to him. He walked just behind him to the car, then quickly stepped ahead of him to pull the door open.

The Navy officer, a captain, saluted.

"Good afternoon, General," he said.

"Get in," General Mclnerney ordered.

"Aye, aye, Sir," the Captain said.

The Captain complied with his orders.

General Mclnerney examined him carefully.

"'f.u.c.k the Navy!' Isn't that what I remember you saying, Captain?"

"Yes, Sir, I seem to recall having said something along those lines."

"And how long now have you been wearing Navy blue?"

"Three days, Sir. How do I look?"

"If people didn't know any better, they'd think you were a Navy captain. The look of confusion in your eyes, for example."

"Thank you, Sir."

"I've got a lunch date I can't get out of," General Mclnerney said. "But I can give you a ride. Where are you headed?"

"Just down the block, Sir."

'To the hotel your father-in-law owns?"

"Actually, General, to the White House. Secretary Knox wants me to meet the President. I've been invited to lunch."

"Oh, Flem, you sonofab.i.t.c.h! Why am I not surprised?"

(Four) The White House Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.

30 January 1942 "My name is Pickering," Fleming Pickering said to the civilian guard at the White House gate. The civilian had come out of a small, presumably heated guardhouse at his approach. The two soldiers on guard, their ears and noses reddened by the cold, apparently were required to stay outside and freeze.

"Let me see your identification," the guard said curtly, even rudely.

Fleming produced his new Navy identification card. The guard examined it carefully, comparing the photograph on it to Pickering's face.

"Wait here," the guard said, and went back into the guardhouse. Pickering saw him pick up a telephone and speak with someone. He did not come back out of the guardhouse.

A minute later, a Marine sergeant in greens came down the driveway. He saluted.

"Would you come with me, please, Captain Pickering?" he said politely, crisply.

Pickering marched after him up the curving drive toward the White House. There was a crust of ice on the drive. It had been sanded, but the road was slippery.

The Marine led him to a side entrance, toward the building that had been built at the turn of the century to house the State, War, and Navy departments of the U.S. Government, and then up a rather ordinary staircase to the second floor.

Pickering found himself in a wide corridor. A clean-cut man in his early thirties sat at a small desk facing the wall, and two other men cut from the same bolt of cloth were standing nearby. Pickering was sure they were Secret Service agents.

"This is Captain Pickering," the Marine sergeant said. The man at the desk nodded, glanced at his wrist.w.a.tch, and made a notation in a small, wire-bound ledger.

"This way, please, Captain," the Marine said, and led Pickering halfway down the corridor to a double door. He knocked. The door was opened by a very large, very black man in a starched white jacket.

"Captain Pickering," the Marine sergeant said.

The black man opened the door fully. "Please come in, Sir," he said. "The President's expecting you."

This was, Pickering realized, the President's private suite, the Presidential apartments, or whatever it was called. He was surprised. He had expected to be fed in some sort of official dining room.

A tall, well-built, bespectacled man in the uniform of a Marine captain came out of an inner room. In the moment, Pickering recognized him as one of Roosevelt's sons, he had no idea which one. The Captain said, "Good afternoon, Sir. Let me help you with your coat. Dad and Mr. Knox are right inside."

Pickering handed him his uniform cap and then took off his topcoat and handed that over. Captain Roosevelt handed both to the steward, then motioned Pickering ahead of him through a door.

The President of the United States, in a wheelchair, rolled across the room to him, his hand extended. Pickering knew, of course, that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been crippled by polio, but the wheelchair surprised him. He was almost never photographed sitting in it.

"We've been talking about you, Captain," Roosevelt said as he shook Pickering's hand in a very firm grip. "Have your ears been burning?"

"Good afternoon, Mr. President," Pickering said.

He heard his father-in-law Andrew Foster's dry voice in his mind: "The sonofab.i.t.c.h is obviously a socialist, but giving the devil his due, he probably saved this country from going communist."

"Naval officers are forbidden to drink on duty," the President said, smiling warmly, "except, of course, when the Commander in Chief doesn't want to drink alone."

Another steward appeared at that moment with a gla.s.s of whiskey on a small silver tray.

"Thank you," Pickering said, and raised the gla.s.s. "Your health, Sir," he said, then took a sip. It was Scotch, good Scotch.

"That all right?" Roosevelt asked. "Frank said you're a Scotch drinker."

"This is fine, Sir."

"He also told me that you'd much rather be wearing a uniform like Jimmy's," the President went on, "but that he'd convinced you you would be of greater use in the Navy."

"I was a Marine, Sir," Pickering said. "Once a Marine, always a Marine."

Roosevelt laughed.

"Frank also told me to watch out for you-that if I let my guard down, you'd probably ask me for a Letter of Marque."

Pickering glanced at Frank Knox, who smiled and shook his head.

"May I have one, Sir?" Pickering said.

Roosevelt laughed heartily.

"No, you may not," he said. "I admire your spirit, Pickering, but I'm afraid you're going to have to fight this war like everybody else-including me-the way someone tells you to."

"Aye, aye, Sir," Pickering said, smiling.

I am being charmed. I wonder why.

"Why don't we go to the table and sit down?" Roosevelt said, gesturing toward a small table near windows overlooking the White House lawn. Pickering saw there were only four places set.

Stewards immediately began placing small plates of hors d'oeuvres before them.

Roosevelt began to talk about the British commandos. Pickering quickly saw that he was very impressed with them-as much for the public's perception of them as for any bona fide military capability.

"When Britain was reeling across Europe from the n.a.z.i Blitzkrieg," Roosevelt announced, as if making a speech before a large audience, "when they were literally b.l.o.o.d.y and on their knees, and morale was completely collapsing, a few small commando operations, militarily insignificant in themselves, did wonders to restore civilian morale and faith in their government."

"I had really never thought of it in that context," Pickering said honestly. "But I can see your point."

Roosevelt, Pickering was perfectly willing to grant, was a genius at understanding-and molding-public opinion.

"A very few brave and resourceful men can change the path of history, Pickering," the President said sonorously. "And fortunately, right now we have two such men. You know Colonel Jim Doolittle, don't you?"

"If you mean, Mr. President, the Jim Doolittle who used to be vice-president of Sh.e.l.l Oil, yes, Sir. I know him."

"I thought you might," the President said. "Two of a kind, you know, you two. Not thinking of the cut in pay that putting on a uniform meant, but rather rus.h.i.+ng to answer the call of the trumpet."

I really am being charmed, Fleming Pickering decided. He wants something from me. I wonder what. Not the d.a.m.ned s.h.i.+ps again!

"Frank, have you told Captain Pickering what Jim Doolittle's up to?"

"It's top secret, Mr. President," Secretary Knox replied.

"Well, I think we can trust Captain Pickering. . . . Captain Pickering, would you be offended if I called you by your Christian name?"

"Not at all, Mr. President."

"Well, Frank, if Flem's going to be working for you, he'll find out soon enough anyway. Wouldn't you say?"

"Probably, Mr. President."

"Jim Doolittle, Flem, came to me with the idea that he can take B-25 Mitch.e.l.l bombers off from the deck of an aircraft carrier."

"Sir?" Pickering asked, not understanding.

"The j.a.panese Emperor is sitting in his palace in Tokyo, convinced that he's absolutely safe from American bombing. Colonel Doolittle and his brave men are about to disabuse him of that notion," Roosevelt said, c.o.c.king his cigarette holder almost vertically in his mouth as he smiled with pleasure.

"The idea, Pickering," Secretary Knox said, "is that we will carry Doolittle on a carrier within striking distance of Tokyo; they will launch from the carrier, bomb Tokyo, and then fly on to China."

"Fascinating," Pickering said, and then blurted, "but can Doolittle do it? Can you fly airplanes that large from aircraft carriers?"

"Doolittle thinks so. They're down in Florida now, in the Panhandle, learning how," Knox said. "Yes, I think it can be done."

"Christ, that's good news!" Pickering said excitedly. "So far, all we've done is take a licking."

"And there will be other reverses in the near future, I am very much afraid," Roosevelt said.

"The Philippines, you mean?" Pickering asked.

"You don't believe that Douglas MacArthur will be able to hold the Philippines?" Roosevelt asked. He was still smiling, but there was a hint of coldness in his voice.

Jesus Christ, my mouth has run away with me again!

"Mr. President, I don't pretend to know anything about our forces in the Philippines, but I do know that they will require supplies. I do know something about s.h.i.+pping. I know that there are not enough bottoms to supply a large military force, and even if there were, there are not enough wars.h.i.+ps after Pearl Harbor to protect the sea lanes to the Philippines."

"Aren't you concerned, talking like that," Roosevelt asked, carefully, "that someone who doesn't know you might think you're a defeatist?"

"If I have spoken out of turn, Mr. President . . ."

Roosevelt looked at him thoughtfully for a long moment before he spoke again.

"I said, a while ago, we have two brave and resourceful men," he said. "Jimmy here is allied with the other one. And don't tell me this is top secret, too, Frank. I know."