FERTIG BRIG GEN
MFS STANDING BY
Hon smiled.
"Call them back, please, Captain," he said. "Message is 'Negative Krauts Name in Clear. Stand by.'
"I think I have the right to know what this is all about," Captain D'Al-lesandro said. " 'Highly irregular' doesn't begin to cover it."
"You don't have the right to know, Captain," Hon said evenly, and reached for the telephone on the Captain's desk.
"General, this is Pluto," he said, and interrupted himself. "Captain, reply to MFS now/"
"Yes, Sir," Captain D'Allesandro said.
"Sorry, I was interrupted. Sir, we've just heard from Fertig. Addressed to the Killer. I suggest, Sir, that you send him and Sessions, and the Model 94 here. I'm in the SWPOA radio room."
Captain D'Allessandro returned from responding to MFS.
"We have an acknowledgment of your message to MFS, Sir."
"Thank you. We will be communicating with MFS some more. I'm going to need either your desk or a table, a typewriter, and several chairs."
"I'm sure the Major is aware that he is disrupting my operation. I'm going to have to bring this to the attention of the SWPOA Signal Officer."
"That's Colonel... ?"
"Ungerer, Sir. Colonel Jason Ungerer."
"I suggest, Captain, that you hold off on calling Colonel Ungerer for ten or fifteen minutes. By then, General Pickering will be here, and your boss and my boss can sort this disruption out between them."
[TWO]
Headquarters, U.S. Forces in the Philippines
Oavao Oriental Province
Mindanao, Commonwealth of the Philippines
0940 Hours 28 November 1942
"Lieutenant," Sergeant Ignacio LaMadrid said, "Australia's calling."
"I'll go get the General," Lieutenant Ball replied. "He said he wanted to be here when they did."
LaMadrid turned to his key and tapped out: MFS TO GYB GA (Go Ahead). Then he put his fingers on his typewriter keyboard and took the incom-ing message. When he was finished, he tapped out MFS SB (Standing By), and then tore the carbon paper sandwich from the typewriter. He laid the bottom sheet, on which the message was legible, on his "desk," then placed a fresh sheet of blank paper under the carbon, arranged it neatly, and fed the fresh sandwich to his typewriter.
Then he read the message from Supreme Headquarters, South West Pacific Ocean Area.
GYB TO MFS
USE AS SIMPLESUB Z FIRST NAME BANNING WIFE Z SECOND NAME Z PERCYS HOMETOWN Z
20 19 18 03 13
09 08 02 09 20
18 17 04 19 20
RPT
20 19 18 03 13
09 08 02 09 20
18 17 04 19 20
MFS SB
He had absolutely no idea what it meant; and neither, he quickly learned, did General Fertig, Captain Buchanan, and Lieutenant Ball-except, of course, that Captain Buchanan knew Australia wanted them to use a simple substitu-tion code.
"Ball, go get Captain Weston and Lieutenant Everly," Buchanan ordered. They appeared within minutes, Everly's clean-shaven face and clean, if water-soaked, white cotton blouse and jacket indicating he had been summoned from his toilette in the stream that ran through the command post of United States Forces in the Philippines.
"I think this is intended for you, Lieutenant," Fertig said. "You have any idea what it means?"
"Banning's wife's name is Ludmilla Zhivkov," Everly said almost imme-diately. "There aren't many people who know that. Killer McCoy would be one of them."
"That sounds Russian," Fertig thought aloud.
"It is," Everly said. "She's a Russian refugee. She didn't get out of Shang-hai. Neither did my wife. They're together. That's how I know Milla's name."
"How do you spell it?" Captain Buchanan asked, sitting down at the rat-tan "desk."
As Everly spelled the name, Buchanan wrote each letter as a large block letter, then asked Everly what his home was, and wrote those letters down in large letters. Above the letters, he carefully wrote numerals above each letter.
1234567890123456789012345
LUDMILLAZHIVKOVZANESVILLE
"OK, now we have the code. Somebody read out those numbers to me. Slowly."
General Fertig read out the numbers one at a time, moving to stand behind Buchanan as he did so.
When Buchanan was finished, he had this:
S E N D Z
20 19 18 03 09
K Z A U T
13 09 08 02 09
S Z N A M
20 09 18 17 04
E S Z Z Z
19 20 09 09 09
"What the hell does that mean?" Fertig asked, bewildered and annoyed.
"General, the 'Z' is a wild card. You'll notice they used 'Z's as sentence breaks in the original message?"
Fertig was ahead of him. "Send... Krauts... Name," he translated.
"I believe that's 'names,' Sir, plural," Buchanan said.
"Who's the Kraut, Everly?" Fertig asked.
"Zimmerman," Everly said. "What the hell was his first name?"
"Not again, Everly, please!" Weston said.
"August," Everly said, and then triumphantly: "No. Ernest. Ernest Zim-merman."
"You're sure?"
"Yes, Sir."
"Send them that," Fertig ordered.
It took just over a minute for Buchanan to encode the name and to hand it to Sergeant LaMadrid, with the order, "Just send the numbers, send them twice."
"Yes, Sir," LaMadrid said, and tapped out the reply on his radiotelegraph key:
MFS TO GYB
19 09 18 25 20
09 09 05 04 04
19 09 04 17 18
HPT
19 09 18 25 20
09 09 05 04 04
19 09 04 17 18
MFS SB
There was an immediate reply from Australia:
GYB TO MFS
ACK YR NO 1
SB
Sergeant LaMadrid read it aloud-translated it-as it came in: "Acknowl-edge receipt your message Number One. Stand by."
"What's that message number business?" Fertig asked. "They've never
done that before."
"I think until about thirty seconds ago, Sir," Weston said, "Australia thought LaMadrid spelled his name T-O-J-0."
"Here comes another one," LaMadrid said, and this time, as he typed, he called the numbers out loud. Buchanan had already begun the decoding before the numbers were repeated.
He handed it to General Fertig.
M E L L S
04 09 01 06 20
E E Z 0 U
25 19 09 14 02
S 0 0 N K
20 14 14 18 13
I L L E Z
11 06 07 19 09
"What the hell do you suppose 'mells eezou soonk illez' means?" Fertig asked softly.
"Sir," Buchanan said, his voice tight, "I believe it means 'we'll see you soon, signature Killer.' "
He looked over at Lieutenant Everly.
"What do you make of it, Everly?"
"Yes, Sir. I think that's what it means. Zimmerman and the Killer. I'd say it means they're coming in."