On the way, he handed McCoy a thick envelope.
"This is for Captain Banning," he said. "I want you to deliver it personally."
"Aye, aye, sir," McCoy said, wondering why he hadn't given whatever it was to Macklin to deliver-until he realized that whatever it was, Sessions didn't want Macklin to see it.
"It's a report of everything that happened on the trip, McCoy," Sessions said. When he saw McCoy's eyebrows go up, he chuckled and added: "Everything of a duty, as opposed to social, nature, that is."
"Thank you, sir," McCoy said.
"I was up all night writing it," Sessions said. "There just wasn't time for the other letter I want to write. But that's probably just as well. I'll have time to write it on the ship, and it would probably be better coming from someone more important than me."
"I don't know what you're talking about, Lieutenant," McCoy said.
"You're going to get an official Letter of Commendation, McCoy," Sessions said. "For your record jacket. I'm going to write it, and I'm going to try to get someone senior to sign it. If I can't, I'll sign it myself."
"Thank you," McCoy said.
"No thanks are necessary," Sessions said. "You performed superbly under stress, and that should be recorded in your official records."
What Sessions meant, McCoy knew, was that without the sixth sense-or whatever the hell it was-that something was wrong, he wouldn't have shown up when he had, and Sessions would probably be going back to the States in a coffin in the reefer compartment of the President Wilson.
Sessions meant well, McCoy decided, but he doubted if there would be a Letter of Commendation. Even if Sessions really remembered to write one, he doubted if Headquarters, USMC, would let him make it official. From the way the officers here were acting (and the higher-ranking the officer, the worse it was), what had happened at the ferry was his fault. In their view he had "overreacted to a situation" which a more senior and experienced noncom would have handled without loss of life.
The letter report he was carrying to Captain Banning was nevertheless important. He trusted Sessions now: The report would tell it like it happened, and Banning would understand why he had done what he had.
At the gangplank of the President Wilson, Sessions got him a Visitor's Boarding Pass, and then asked the steward at the gangplank for the number of the Fellers' cabin.
When they reached the corridor leading to the Fellers' cabin, Sessions offered his hand.
"I'll say good-bye here, McCoy," he said. "I want to thank you, for everything, and to say I think you're one hell of a Marine."
"Thank you, Lieutenant," McCoy said. He was more than a little embarrassed.
"We'll run into each other again, I'm sure," Sessions said. "Sooner or later. Good luck, McCoy."
"Good luck to you, too, sir," McCoy said.
As he looked for the Feller cabin, he felt pretty good. He was beginning to believe now that there might be a Letter of Commendation. It would be nice to have something like that in the official records when his name came up before the sergeant's promotion board.
The good feeling vanished the moment Ellen answered his knock at her cabin door. The look on her face instantly showed she'd hoped she'd seen the last of him. Being the fucking fool he was, though, he didn't want to believe what he saw on her face and in her eyes. He told himself that what it was was surprise.
He started out by asking her if maybe she would write him. "Maybe, you never can tell, we'll be able to see each other again sometime." He ended up telling her he loved her. "I think it's still possible for me to buy my way out of the Corps," he went on. "I'll look into it, I have the money. And I do really love you."
She got stiff when he started talking, the way she did when he talked crude to her; and by the time he was telling her he loved her, her face was rigid and her eyes cold.
"How dare you talk to me like that?" she said when he had finished, with a voice like a dagger.
So what she wanted after all was nothing but the stiff prick her fairy husband couldn't give her. The funny thing about it was that he wasn't mad. He was damned close to crying.
He turned and walked out of her cabin, vowing that he would never make a fucking mistake like that again. He'd never mistake some old bitch with hot pants for the real thing. He didn't give a shit if she fucked Lieutenant Sessions eight time a day all the way across the Pacific. If she couldn't get Sessions, she'd grab some other dumb fucker. And failing that, she'd get herself a broomhandle.
(Four)
Headquarters, 4th Marines
Shanghai, China
11 June 1941
Once given permission to enter the office of Captain Edward Banning, Lieutenant John Macklin marched in erectly, came to attention before Banning's desk, and said, "Reporting as directed, sir."
The formalities over, he stepped to the chair in front of Banning's desk, sat down in it, and crossed his legs.
"Getting hot already, isn't it?" he asked.
"I don't recall giving you permission to sit down, Lieutenant," Captain Banning said, almost conversationally, but with a touch of anger in his voice.
Macklin, surprised, took a quick look at Banning's face and then scrambled to his feet. When he was again at the position of attention, he said: "I beg your pardon, Captain."
"Lieutenant," Banning said, "I have carefully read your report of the Tientsin-Peking trip, paying particular attention to those parts dealing with your detention at Yenchi'eng and the incident at the ferry."
"Yes, sir?"
"I have read with equal care the report Lieutenant Sessions wrote on the same subjects," Banning said.
"Sir?" Macklin asked.
"There was a caveat in Lieutenant Sessions's report," Banning said. "He wrote that he was writing in the small hours of the morning because he hoped to finish it before he went home. Thus he was afraid there would be some small errors in it because of his haste."
"I wasn't aware that Lieutenant Sessions had made a report, sir," Lieutenant Macklin said. "May I suggest that it might be a good idea if I had a look at it, with a view to perhaps revising my own report?"
Banning's temper flared again when he recalled Macklin's report. It boggled his mind to think that the man blamed the detention at Yenchi'eng on McCoy's "cowardly refusal to do what duty clearly required"; and that the "tragic events" at the river crossing could have been avoided if only Lieutenant Sessions had heeded his warning that "Corporal McCoy clearly manifested paranoid tendencies of a homicidal nature and had to be carefully watched."
And then, in the presumption that Sessions was on the high seas and safely removed from rebuttal, he'd even gone after him:
"The possibility cannot be dismissed that Lieutenant Sessions acquiesced, if he did not actually participate, in the brutal slaughter of the wounded Chinese civilians."
Banning waited a moment for his temper to subside.
"You are a slimy creature, aren't you, Macklin?" Banning asked calmly. "How the hell have you managed to stay in the Corps this long?"
"I don't know what you mean, sir," Macklin said.
"You know what a slimy creature is, Macklin. In the Marine Corps, a slimy creature is an officer who tries to pass the blame for his own failures onto the shoulders of a brother officer. I don't know of a phrase obscene enough to describe an officer who tries to cover his own ass by trying to blame his failures on an enlisted man. And you probably would have gotten away with it, you slimy sonofabitch, if Sessions hadn't spotted you for what you are and sent his report back with McCoy."
"There may be, Captain, some minor differences of judgment between the two reports, but nothing of magnitude that would justify these insulting accusations-"
"Shut your face, Lieutenant!" Banning shouted. It was the first time he had raised his voice, and his loss of temper embarrassed him. Glaring contemptuously at Macklin, he took time to regain control before he went on.
"If I had my druthers, Lieutenant," Banning said, "I'd bring charges against you for conduct unbecoming an officer. Or for knowingly uttering a false official statement. But I can't. If I brought you before a court-martial, we would have to get into security matters. And we can't do that. What I can do, what I will do, is see that your next efficiency report contains a number of phrases which will suggest to the captain's promotion board that you should not be entrusted with a machine-gun crew, much less with command of a company. It will be a very long time before you are promoted, Lieutenant. You're a smart fellow. Perhaps you will conclude that it would be best if you resigned from the Marine Corps."