"I already found that out. The men to be immunized, the Marine officer who was here at the hospital, and the one you’re there to see, are about to go on some hush-hush mission behind the lines. High-level stuff. And I learned five minutes after you left that Pickering is not what I led you to believe he was."
"He’s really nice," Barbara said.
"He’s also General MacArthur’s personal pal," Dr. Whaley said. "And Frank Knox’s personal representative over here. Not the sort of man to jab with a dull needle."
"No, Sir," Barbara chuckled. "The other man to be immunized isn’t here yet. Captain Pickering said I’ll have to stay here until he shows up. That’s why I’m calling."
"You stay as long as you’re needed," Dr. Whaley said, "and be as charming as possible, knowing that you have our Naval careers in your hands."
"Yes, Sir."
"You better send the ambulance back, Barbara. When you’re finished, I’ll send a staff car for you."
"Yes, Sir."
Barbara hung up, walked out of The Elms, sent the ambulance back to the hospital, and then reentered the house.
"Everything go all right?" Captain Pickering asked her when she reached the room he’d directed her to. "Come in."
"Everything’s fine, Sir," Barbara said.
"Gentlemen, this is Ensign Cotter," Pickering said. "Ensign Cotter, this is Major Ed Banning, Lieutenant Vince Donnelly, and Lieutenant Joe Howard."
Lieutenant Joe Howard, who had been mixing a drink at the bar, turned, looked at Barbara, dropped the glass, and said, "Oh, my God!"
"Joe!" Barbara wailed.
"Why do I suspect that these two splendid young junior officers have met?" Banning asked dryly.
"Lieutenant Howard," Captain Pickering said, "Ensign Cotter was just telling me that sometimes these shots have adverse effects. Why don’t you take her someplace where she can examine you?"
He hardly had time to congratulate himself on having produced-snatching it from out of the blue-a Solomon-like solution to the problem of how to handle two young lovers who were embarrassed to manifest a display of affection before senior officers. For, unfortunately, his brilliance was wasted; Ensign Cotter, forgetting that she was an officer and a gentlewoman, ran to Howard and threw herself in his arms, and cried, "Oh, my darling!"
After a moment, Captain Pickering spoke again.
"Joe, why don’t you take your girl and show her the grounds?"
Howard, not trusting his voice, nodded his thanks and, with his arms around Barbara, led her out of the sitting room and started down the corridor.
All of a sudden, she stopped, spun out of his arms, and faced him.
"You’re on this mission, aren’t you?" she challenged.
He nodded.
"Oh, my God!"
"It’ll be all right," he said.
"They don’t send people on missions like that unless they volunteer," she said, adding angrily, "You volunteered, didn’t you?"
He nodded.
"Goddamn you!"
He didn’t reply.
"Why? Can you tell me why?"
"It’s important," he said.
"When do you go?"
"Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" she wailed. He nodded.
"What are we going to do now?" she asked.
He shrugged helplessly.
"We could go to my room," Joe blurted.
She met his eyes.
"They’d know," she said.
"Do you care?" he asked.
She reached out and touched his face and shook her head.
He took her hand from his face and held it as he led her the rest of the way down the stairs and then up the broad staircase to his room.
Chapter Thirteen
(One)
The Elms
Dandenong, Victoria, Australia
2105 Hours 6 June 1942
As Corporal Stephen M. Koffler and Petty Officer Daphne Farnsworth approached Melbourne, they came up to a road sign indicating a turnoff to Dandenong. It occurred to Corporal Koffler then that he’d better check in before he took Petty Officer Farnsworth home.
"Would you mind sitting in the car for a minute while I tell Mrs. Cavendish I’m back?" Steve asked as he made the turn. "Maybe there’s a message for me, or something."
"Of course not."
He drove down the long line of ancient elms that lined the driveway. When they reached the house, there were two cars parked in front of it. One was a drop-head Jaguar coupe and the other a Morris with Royal Australian Navy plates. After a moment, to her surprise, Daphne recognized it as Lieutenant Donnelly’s car.
She wondered what he was doing out here, and then she won dered what he was going to think when he saw her with Corporal Steve Koffler of the United States Marines; she was supposed to be still at home, grief-stricken.
"Oh, shit!" Steve Koffler said, when he saw the cars.
When Major Edward J. Banning, USMC, noticed the glow of the headlights flash across the front of The Elms, he rose to his feet and went to one of the French windows in the library. As he pushed the curtain aside, the Studebaker pulled up beside the Jaguar and the Morris.
It has to be Corporal Steven Koffler, goddamn the horny little AWOL sonofabitch!
I am not going to eat his ass out. It is not in keeping with the principles of good leadership to eat the ass out of an enlisted man just before you ask him to parachute onto an enemy-held island. If he doesn‘t kill himself in the jump, there is a very good chance he will be killed by the Japanese, probably in some very imaginative way.
If I were a corporal, and they left me all alone with the keys to a car, would I take the car and go out and try to get laid? Never having been a corporal, I can’t really say. But probably.
Banning couldn’t help recalling Kenneth R. "Killer" McCoy, late Corporal, 4thMarines, Shanghai.
If I had set up the Killer in a house like this in China, and told him he would be left alone for a week or ten days minimum, he would have had a nonstop poker game going here in the library, a craps table operating in the foyer, half a dozen ladies of the evening plying their trade upstairs; and he’d be using the Studebaker to ferry customers back and forth to town.
It was not the first time Banning had thought of Corporal Killer McCoy during the past twenty-four hours. He started remembering McCoy just after he and Captain Pickering arrived at The Elms; they were informed then by Mrs. Cavendish that Corporal Koffler had taken the Studebaker at five the previous afternoon, and that he hadn’t been seen since. And no, she had no idea where he might have gone. That sounded like something McCoy would have done.
Which did not mean that Corporals McCoy and Koffler were not stamped out of the same mold-far from it. Banning would have been nervous about sending Killer McCoy to jump on Buka, but he wouldn’t have had this sick feeling in his stomach. Killer was probably capable of carrying off something like this with a good chance of coming through it alive. Banning did not think that would be the case with Joe Howard and Steve Koffler. The words had come into his mind a half-dozen times: I am about to send two of my men to their deaths.
It was not a pleasant feeling, and his rationalizations, although inarguably true, sounded hollow and irrelevant: I am asking him to risk, and perhaps even give, his life so that other men may live. And: He’s a volunteer, nobody pushed him into this at the point of a bayonet. And even: He’s a Marine, and Marines do what they are ordered to do.