She looked directly at Lieutenant Sessions as she walked through the room and out the door.
"Well, that really does it," Sessions said coldly, almost calmly, when she had gone. "Instead of doing your duty… Jesus Christ! I'm going to have your stripes for this, McCoy. I'd like to have you court-martialed!"
McCoy walked across the room to the chest of drawers and picked up the Leica camera.
"Goddamnit, Corporal, don't you turn your back on me when I'm talking to you!" Sessions said furiously.
McCoy rewound the film, opened the camera, and slipped the film out. He held the small can of film between his thumb and index finger and turned to face Lieutenant Sessions.
"I hope you didn't lose your temper like that in Yenchi'eng," McCoy said. "So far as the Japs are concerned, you lose a lot of face when you lose your temper.''
"How dare you talk to me that way?" Sessions barked, both incredulous and furious.
"Lieutenant, as I see it, you have two choices," McCoy said. "You can make a by-the-book report of what happened: That against my advice, you went to Yenchi'eng and got yourself caught, and that when you came back here, you found out that I hadn't even reported that the Japs had you…"
" 'Had completely abandoned your obvious obligations' would be a better way to put it," Sessions interrupted.
"And had 'completely abandoned my obvious obligations' " McCoy parroted.
"That's Silent Insolence (Prior to 1948 the Universal Code of Military Justice included the offense "Silent Insolence." Among the offenses therein embraced was a "mocking attitude" to military superiors) on top of everything else!" Sessions snapped.
"And that you found Mrs. Feller in my room," McCoy said.
"What the hell were you thinking about in that connection?" Sessions fumed. "Good God, man, her husband is a missionary!"
"Who will say that his wife was in here reading the Bible to me," McCoy said calmly. "He's a faggot."
Surprise flashed over Sessions's face.
"She is a married woman, and you damned well knew she was," Sessions said, somewhat lamely. This confrontation was not going at all the way he had expected it would.
"The other choice you and Lieutenant Macklin have," McCoy said, "is to report that you have proof the Japs don't have any German PAK38 50-mm cannons, at least not in the 11th Division." That caught Sessions by surprise.
"What are you talking about?" he asked. "What proof?"
"If they had German cannon, they would have turned in their Model 94s," McCoy said. "They didn't." He held up the can of film. "I took these at first light yesterday morning," he said. "I was lucky: The Japs were up before daylight lining them up and taking the covers off. Probably weekly maintenance, something like that."
It took Sessions a moment to frame his thoughts.
"So you went yourself. And of course didn't get caught. That was very resourceful of you, McCoy," he said.
McCoy shrugged.
"How the hell did you do it?" Sessions asked.
"The German's got a truck," he said.
"German? Oh, you mean the man who owns the hotel?"
McCoy nodded.
"You just borrowed his truck and drove into Yenchi'eng, that's it?"
"Not exactly," McCoy said. "I went into Yenchi'eng last night. On a bicycle. I told the boy who drives the German's truck there was a hundred yuan in it for him if he picked me up at a certain place on the road at half-past six yesterday morning."
"And then he just brought you back?"
"No, we had to go into town first. He picks up stuff- vegetables mostly, sometimes a pig and chickens. I had to go in with him."
"How did you keep from being seen?"
"I didn't," McCoy said. "When I'm around the Japs, I play like I'm an Italian."
"How do you do that? Do you speak Italian?"
McCoy nodded.
"Christ, you're amazing, McCoy!" Sessions said.
"It was stupid, me going in there like that," McCoy said. "I should have known better."
"Why did you go?" Sessions asked.
"You acted like it was important," McCoy said. "Anyway, it's done. And if you were to tell Captain Banning that you and Macklin and the Reverend were making a diversion, that you knew I was going to Yenchi'eng, I wouldn't say anything," McCoy said.
"You're not, I hope, suggesting, McCoy, that I submit a patently dishonest report," Sessions said.
"Rule one, doing what we're doing," McCoy said, "is don't make waves. Either with the Corps or with the people you're watching. You tell them what really happened, you're going to look like a…"
The next word in that sentence was clearly going be ' 'horse's ass," Sessions thought. He stopped himself just in time from saying, "How dare you talk to me that way?"
A small voice in the back of his skull told him quietly but surely that he had indeed made a horse's ass of himself already-in China ten days and already grabbed by the Japanese doing something he had been told not to do, and digging himself in still deeper every time he opened his mouth.
He had been a Marine eleven years. Never before had an enlisted man-not even a Master Gunnery Sergeant when he had been a wet-behind-the-ears shavetail-talked to him the way this twenty-one-year-old corporal was talking to him now.
And the small voice in the back of his skull told him McCoy was not insolent. Inferiors are insolent to superiors. McCoy was tolerantly contemptuous, as superiors are to inferiors. And the painful truth seemed to be that he had given him every right to do so.
He had been informed-and had pretended to understand- that he would have to learn to expect the unexpected. And he hadn't. Because he was a thirty-two-year-old officer, he had presumed that he knew more than a twenty-one-year-old enlisted man.
If he followed the book-the code of conduct expected of an officer and a gentleman, especially one who wore an Annapolis ring-he would immediately grab a telephone and formally report to Captain Banning that-against McCoy's advice-he had taken the Reverend Feller and Lieutenant Macklin to Yenchi'eng, been detained by the Japanese, had a pot of some greasy rice substance dumped in his lap, and then had returned to find that not only was Corporal McCoy fornicating with the missionary's wife (conduct prejudicial to good military order and discipline) but was silently insolent to boot. And that he just incidentally happened to have a roll of 35-mm film of the 11th Japanese Division's artillery park.
"I need a bath, a shave, and a clean uniform, Corporal," Lieutenant Sessions said. "We'll settle this later." "Aye, aye, sir."
"I'd like to get started again first thing in the morning," Sessions went on. "Will there be any problems about that?" "No, sir," McCoy said. "Now that you're back, we can move anytime you want to."
Sessions realized he was still making an ass of himself and that he had to do something about it.
"What I intend to do when we get somewhere with secure communications, Corporal McCoy," he said, "is advise Captain Banning that I went to Yenchi'eng against your advice and was detained by the Japanese. I will tell him of your commendable initiative in getting the film of the Japanese artillery park. I can see no point in discussing your personal life. I would be grateful, when you make your own report, if you would go easy on how I stormed in here and showed my ass."
"I hadn't planned to say anything about that, sir," McCoy said.
"And I'm sure," Sessions said, searching for some clever way to phrase it, ' 'that… you will not permit your romantic affairs to in any way cast a shadow on the Corps' well-known reputation for chastity outside marriage."
"No, sir," McCoy said, chuckling. "I'll be very careful about that, sir." And then he added: "I'd be grateful if you didn't tell Lieutenant Macklin about Mrs. Feller."
Sessions nodded. "Thank you, McCoy," he said, then turned and walked out of the room.
Chapter Five
(One)
The Hotel am See Chiehshom, China 2215 Hours 18 May 1941