Jennings nodded. "Aye, aye, sir."
"Let's go get some lunch," Pickering said, and started toward the jeep.
Major General Ralph Howe, NGUS, was sitting at the dining room table in The House, drinking coffee with Master Sergeant Charley Rogers. The table was set for lunch.
"I'm surprised to see you, McCoy," Howe said. "General Almond told me you took a pretty good hit."
"A little piece of shrapnel, sir," McCoy replied. "I'm all right."
"That is not exactly the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but," Pickering said as he shook hands with Howe. "Major McCoy is on limited duty. You do understand that, don't you, Major McCoy? Limited?"
"Yes, sir."
"Okay. Then let's have some lunch and decide where we go from here."
Master Sergeant Charley Rogers stood up and went through the swinging door into the kitchen. A moment later, two Korean women came through it carrying china tureens. Rogers followed them into the room.
"Fish chowder and chicken and dumplings," he said. "If it tastes as good as it smells, we're in luck."
"So far as I'm concerned in your where-we-go-from-here scenario, Fleming," General Howe said, "Charley and I are on the 1700 courier flight to Tokyo, where I will make my manners to General MacArthur, and then get on a plane—a Trans-Global flight, you should be pleased to learn—for the States."
"You're really determined to leave me all alone here, are you?"
"There are a lot of things I have to say to the President that I don't want to put on paper," Howe said. "After I tell him what I think he should hear, and he wants me to come back over here, I will."
Pickering nodded.
"I think the first thing on this agenda," Howe said as he smiled thanks for the fish chowder being ladled into his bowl, "should be Colonel Van's new status, with which he's not entirely delighted. I wanted to make sure he understands that while I'm sure you're delighted to have him, his transfer to the CIA—you—was my idea, not yours."
"I have to tell you, Colonel," Pickering said, "that it makes sense to me, and I feel a little foolish for not having thought of it myself."
Vandenburg didn't say anything, but it was clear that he had made the decision not to say what he was thinking.
"Let's get it out in the open, Colonel," Pickering said. "What's on your mind?'
Vandenburg met Pickering's eyes, then shrugged.
"General, in War Two, when I was asked to join the OSS, I decided I could be of more use where I was, in counterintelligence. I never regretted that decision to stay in the Army. Especially after the war, when the OSS was disbanded and my friends who had gone into the OSS—I'm talking about career officers— went back to the Army. They were treated like lepers, sir."
McCoy snorted. "Lepers with a social disease?" he asked. " 'Where were you when we were fighting the war?' "
"Exactly." Vandenburg looked at Pickering and then went on: "Ken told me just about the same thing happened to him when he went back to the Marine Corps."
"I didn't realize until right now that it was that bad, Ken," Pickering said, and then remembered: "Weren't you offered a chance to go into the CIA?"
McCoy nodded.
"Why didn't you?"
"I was a Marine," McCoy said. "I know what the colonel's talking about. He's a soldier."
"The same thing happened to me, in 1948, in Greece," Vandenburg went on. "They really wanted me in the CIA there, and I really didn't want to go. And I didn't. And now, all of a sudden, I'm told I'm now in the CIA. This time nobody asked me."
"Okay, I'm the villain," Howe said. "But don't mistake that for an apology, Colonel. It was my judgment that unless we got you out of the Army, you were about to be co-opted by General Willoughby, and I decided you were too valuable an asset for General Pickering to lose."
"General, I wasn't looking for an apology," Vandenburg said. "I'm a soldier— I go where I'm sent. But General Pickering asked what was on my mind."
"And I'm glad you told me," Howe said. "The President's going to hear about this."
"General, I wish you wouldn't do that. I'm not whining," Vandenburg said.
"I didn't think you were, Colonel," Howe said. "But my job is to tell the President what I think he would be interested in hearing. And that's what I'm going to do."
"Ken," Pickering asked, "did the same sort of thing happen to Ed Banning when the OSS was disestablished?"
"Sir, Colonel Banning was a regular before the war. He's a Citadel graduate. You know what a fine Marine he is. He was never given command of a battalion, much less a regiment, and he was never promoted above colonel. For that matter, they never used him as an intelligence officer."
"Then why did he stay in the Marine Corps?" Pickering blurted. "God knows, he doesn't need the money."
"He's a Marine, General," McCoy said. "He knows it, even if there are a lot of bastards in the Corps who don't want to acknowledge it."
"That's the end of my contribution to this," General Howe said. "But I'm going to stick around so that I'll be able to tell the President what the new broom is sweeping, and where."
"I'd like to know what you two," Pickering said, pointing at Vandenburg and McCoy, "think the priorities are. You first, McCoy."
"Finding out when the Chinese are coming in," McCoy said. "The 1st MarDiv landed at Wonsan yesterday—"
"Only part of them, McCoy," Howe interrupted. "The 1st Marine Air Wing is ashore and operating out of Wonsan—and Bob Hope and a USO troupe have entertained them there. Even I was there. But there are still elements of the division sailing around in circles waiting for the mines at Wonsan to be cleared. When I saw General Almond—when he told me what had happened to you—he had just had himself flown off the Mount McKinley on a helicopter. I guess by tonight—certainly by tomorrow—everybody should be ashore. The Marines, I mean. They're not going to even try to land the 7th Infantry Division at Wonsan; they're going to land at Iwon."
"That's a hundred sixty, seventy miles north of Wonsan," McCoy said. "When's that supposed to happen?"
"Tomorrow," Howe said.
"Pyongyang has fallen," McCoy said. "Which means there is no need for X Corps to start back across the peninsula. Which means that pretty soon they'll be ordered to move north instead—"
"They already have been," Howe interrupted again. He looked at Pickering. "I was in Wonsan last night and this morning. I used the L-19." Pickering nodded. "Almond already has his orders. The Capital ROK Division will continue advancing up the coastline toward the Russian border. The ROK 3rd Division is going to go north from Hamhung to the Chosin Reservoir, and then up to the Manchurian border. When the 1st MarDiv gets organized ashore, they will follow the 3rd ROK, and—I don't think the 3rd ROK has been told this—pass through their lines, probably near the reservoir, and beat them to the Manchurian border to make sure our Koreans don't cross it. The 7th Division, once it's ashore at Iwon, will attack north straight for the Manchurian border."
"I didn't hear any of this in Tokyo," Pickering said, more than a little bitterly.
"Did you talk to MacArthur?" Howe asked.
Pickering shook his head no.
"Almond told me he got his orders via officer courier," Howe went on. "They're probably known only to the Bataan Gang in the Dai Ichi Building, and they wouldn't tell you unless MacArthur specifically ordered them to. . . ."
"And I didn't ask," Pickering said. "They wouldn't have lied to me if I asked, but I didn't ask."
"Okay. Well, that's it," Howe said. "That's all I know."
"Sir, in these circumstances," McCoy said, "our obvious priority is to get as early a warning of the Chinese intervention as possible, especially since no one else thinks it will happen."
"I think General Almond does," Howe said. "He didn't come right out and say so, but I had the feeling he won't be terribly surprised to encounter the Chinese Red Army."