Fowler handed the briefcase back to him.
"You still don’t understand the rules of the game, do you?" he said.
"I guess not."
"Right now I can put my hand on the Bible and swear that you never showed me one classified document, and you can swear that you never showed me one. I want to keep it that way."
"So what do you want?"
"I want a briefing," Fowler said. "I want your opinion of what’s going on."
"With a map and a pointer?" Pickering asked sarcastically.
"A map would be nice," Senator Fowler said. "You probably won’t need a pointer. Have you got a map?"
Pickering saw that Fowler was serious.
"Yeah," he said. "I’ve got a map. It’s in the safe. I had a safe installed in here to make sure people who don’t have the need to know don’t get to look at my map."
"Why don’t you get it, Flem?" Senator Fowler said, ignoring the sarcasm. "Maybe thumbtack it to the wall?"
Fleming went into his bedroom, and returned a moment later with several maps.
"I don’t have any thumbtacks," he said seriously. "I’ll lay these on the floor."
"Fine."
"OK, what do you want to know?"
"I know a little bit about what’s going on in Europe," Fowler said. "And your area of expertise is the Pacific. So let’s start with that."
I have a counterpart, maybe in the Army, who’s doing this for him for Europe. I’ll be damned!
"Where should I start?"
"December seventh," Fowler said. "I know you’re not prepared for this, Flem. Would it help if you went on the premise that I know nothing about it?"
"OK," Pickering said, getting on his knees beside the large map. "Here’s the way the pieces were on the board on December seventh. The U.S. Pacific Fleet was here, at Oahu, in the Hawaiian Islands. That’s about three thousand nautical miles from San Francisco, and four thousand from Tokyo. It’s as far from San Francisco to Hawaii as it is to New York. And it’s about as far from San Francisco to Hawaii as it is from New York to London.
"Wake Island is here, 2,200 miles from Tokyo and 2,500 from Pearl Harbor. Guam, here, is two thousand miles from Tokyo, and four thousand from Pearl, and it’s about two thousand miles from Tokyo to Luzon, in the Philippines, and 8,500 from the West Coast to Luzon."
Pickering sat back and rested on his heels.
"So, Factor One is that distances in the Pacific favor the Japanese."
"Obviously," Fowler said.
"Factor Two is protection of the sea lanes. We lost most of our battleships at Pearl Harbor. How well they could have protected the sea lanes is a moot point, but they’re gone. And, obviously, their loss had a large part to do with the decision to pull back Task Force 14 to Pearl, and not to reinforce Wake Island."
"Should we have taken the chance with the aircraft carriers and reinforced Wake?" Fowler asked.
"I think so. We could, in any event, have made taking it far more costly. The Japanese do not have a really good capability to land on a hostile beach. They managed it at Wake because there was not an effective array of artillery on Wake. They only had one working rangefinder, for one thing. And not much ammunition. And no planes. All were aboard Task Force 14. I think they should have been put ashore."
Fowler grunted.
"Again, now a moot point, Wake is gone. So is Guam. On December tenth, the Japanese landed two divisions on Luzon. Three weeks later they were in Manila. We are now being pushed down the Bataan Peninsula. It will fall, and eventually so will Corregidor."
"It can’t be reinforced?"
"There is a shortage of materiel to load on ships; a shortage of ships; and the Japanese have been doing a very creditable job of interdicting our shipping."
"And how much damage are we doing to them?"
"MacArthur has slowed down their advance. From our intercepts, we know that the Japanese General-Homma is his name; interesting guy, went to school in California, speaks fluent English, and did not, did not, want to start this war-anyway, Homma is under a lot of pressure to end resistance in the Philippines. It’s a tough nut to crack. After they finally get rid of Luzon and Corregidor, they have to take Mindanao, the island to the south. We have about thirty thousand troops there, and supplies, under a general named Sharp."
"Why don’t they use his forces to reinforce Luzon?"
"Transportation. If they put out to sea, the Japanese have superiority: submarines, other vessels. It would be a slaughter."
"And what are we doing to the Japanese?"
"Very little. They’re naturally husbanding what’s left of the fleet: aircraft carriers, cruisers. . . ."
"What about our submarines?"
"Our torpedoes don’t work," Pickering said simply.
"What do you mean, they don’t work?"
"They don’t work. They either don’t reach the target, or they do and don’t explode."
"I’d never heard that," Fowler said, shocked. "Not all of them?"
"No, of course, not all of them. But apparently many. A hell of a lot, maybe half, maybe even more. The submarine brass, obviously, are not talking about it much. The story goes that submarine captains returning to Pearl Harbor who complained have been ordered to keep their mouths shut. I’m going out there to see for myself."
"I can’t understand that," Fowler said. "Didn’t they have any idea they wouldn’t work?"
"I don’t know. I understand it has something to do with the detonators. And since the detonators are the brainchildren of some highly placed admirals, obviously the submarine captains, not the detonators, are at fault."
"How can you hide something like that? In training, I mean. A torpedo that doesn’t explode?"
"They didn’t fire many of them in training, apparently. I asked that question. It cost too much," Pickering said. "The admiral I asked also made it rather clear that he objected to a civilian, even one wearing a captain’s uniform, asking questions like that of a professional sailor."
"How did that go down?" Fowler asked.
"I told him I had been master of a ship when he was still a midshipman."
"You didn’t!"
"No, I didn’t. I was tempted, Christ, how I was tempted. But I kept my mouth shut."
"I’m impressed, Flem," Senator Fowler said.
"OK. Let’s get on with this. The Japanese were already in French Indochina. The French-I don’t suppose they had much choice, with the Germans occupying France-permitted them to station troops and aircraft in Hanoi, Saigon, and other places, and there was a naval presence as well. From French Indochina, the Japs moved into Thailand. The Japanese have been in Korea for years.
"They landed in Malaya and conquered Singapore, our British allies having cleverly installed their artillery pointing in the wrong direction. The British surrendered seventy thousand men. That’s the largest Allied surrender so far-Frank Knox told me it was the worst defeat the English had suffered since Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga-but it will lose its place in the history books when the Philippines fall."
"There’s no way we can hang on to the Philippines? Not even Mindanao? What about General Sharp and his thirty thousand men?"
"We probably could-hang on to Mindanao, I mean. But Roosevelt has decided the first stage of the war has to concentrate on Europe. That means no reinforcement for the Philippines."