"That was the Commandant. I'm about to get an Urgent TWX from the JCS informing me that Brigadier General Fleming Pickering is coming here, and I am to give him whatever he asks for and tell him anything that he wants to know."
"Pickering?"
"He was on Guadalcanal, G-2 for a while when Goettge got killed..."
Craig nodded, indicating he knew who Dawkins was talking about.
"And the last I heard got out of the Corps the minute the war was over."
"What's he want here?"
"I have no idea. Whatever it is, it's Direction of the Pres-ident," Dawkins said.
Craig pursed his lips thoughtfully, and then both men re-turned to the most pressing problems involved in forming, organizing, and equipping a provisional Marine brigade under orders to sail within ten days.
[TWO]
U.S. NAVY/MARINE CORPS RESERVE TRAINING
CENTER
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI
1920 5 JULY 1950
Captain George F. Hart pulled his nearly new unmarked blue Chevrolet into a parking slot behind the building, stopped, and reached for the microphone mounted under the dash.
"H-l," he said into it.
Hart was thirty-two years old, nearly bald, and built like a circus strong man.
"Captain?" Dispatch responded. H-l was the private call sign of the Chief, Homicide Bureau, St. Louis Police De-partment. Dispatch knew who he was.
"At the Navy Reserve Training Center until further no-tice."
"Navy Reserve Training Center, got it."
"You have the number?"
"I think so."
" `Think' don't count. Know. Check."
"Yes, sir," the dispatcher said, his tone suggesting he didn't like Captain Hart's tone.
"I have the number, Captain," the dispatcher said, and read it off.
"That's it," Hart said.
"Yes, sir," the dispatcher said.
Hart put the microphone back in its bracket, turned the engine off, got out of the car, went in the backseat and took from it a dry cleaner's bag on a hanger, locked the car, and then entered the building through a rear door to which he had a key.
He often thought the U.S. Navy/Marine Corps Reserve Training Center looked like a high school gymnasium without the high school.
The ground floor was essentially a large expanse of var-nished wooden flooring large enough for two basketball courts, and there were in fact two basketball courts marked out on the floor, their baskets now retracted up to the roof. At one end of the floor was the entrance, and at the other rest rooms, and the stairway to the basement, which held lockers and the arms room.
On one side of the floor were the glass-walled offices of the Naval Reserve, and on the other, the glass-walled of-fices of the Marine Corps Reserve.
Hart unlocked the door with "COMMANDING OFFI-CER" lettered on the glass, then closed it, locked it, and checked to see that the Venetian blinds were closed. One was not, and he adjusted it so that no one could see into his office.
His office was furnished with a desk, a desk chair, two straight-back chairs, two chrome armchairs, a matching couch, and a double clothing locker.
He unlocked the doors to both, then started getting un-dressed. First he took off his jacket, which revealed that he was wearing a shoulder holster. The holster itself held a Colt Model 1911.45 ACP semiautomatic pistol under his left armpit. Under his right armpit, the harness held two spare seven-round clips for the pistol, and a pair of hand-cuffs.
So far as Captain Hart knew, he was the only white shirt in the department who elected to carry a.45. Only white shirts-lieutenants and higher; so called because their uni-form shirts were white-were allowed to carry the weapon of their choice. Sergeants and below were required to carry the department-issued handgun, either Smith and Wesson or Colt.38 Special five-inch-barrel revolvers. Plainclothes cops and detectives were required to carry two-inch-barrel.38 Special revolvers.
When Hart had come home from World War II to be-come a detective again, he had ignored that regulation, and carried a.45. As a detective, he had shot two people with a.38 Special, neither of whom had died, and one of whom, despite being hit twice, had kept coming at him until he hit him in the head with the pistol butt. The people he had shot in the Corps with a.45 had gone down and stayed down, usually dead. He had decided that he would rather explain to an investigating board how come he had shot some scumbag with a.45 rather than the prescribed.38 Special than have a police department formal funeral ceremony and his picture hung on the wall in the lobby of police headquarters.
As it turned out, he had been a captain five months be-fore he had to use the.45, and by then, of course, it was his business what he carried.
He put all of his civilian clothing on hangers and hung them, and the shoulder holster, in the left locker, then took a fresh Marine Corps khaki uniform from the dry cleaner's bag. He laid the shirt on his desk and pinned the insignia on carefully. His ribbons included the Bronze Star medal with V-device, and a cluster, indicating he had been deco-rated twice. He also had the Purple Heart medal, which signified he had been wounded. And he had, souvenirs of Parris Island, silver medals indicating he had shot Expert with the M-l Garand Rifle, the U.S. Carbine Caliber.30, the M-1911A1 pistol, the Browning Automatic Rifle, and the Thompson machine gun.
He put on the fresh uniform and examined himself in the mirror mounted on the door of the left locker.
He looked, he thought, like a squared-away Marine cap-tain, who had seen his share of war, and was perfectly qualified to be what he was, commanding officer of B Company, 55th Marines, USMC Reserve.
That was pretty far from the truth, he thought. Baker Company was an infantry company. Every Marine in Baker Company, from the newest seventeen-year-olds who had not even yet gone through boot camp at Parris Island through the non-coms, most of whom were really good Marines, many combat tested, to the other four officers, two of whom had seen combat, was absolutely delighted that the old man, the skipper, the company commander was a World War II veteran tested-and wounded, and deco-rated for valor-in combat.
The problem with that was that he wasn't an experienced, combat-tested, infantry officer. The first-and only-in-fantry unit in which he had ever served was Company B, 55th Marines, USMC Reserve. The only Table of Organization (TOandE) unit in which Captain Hart had ever served was USMC Special Detachment 16.
USMC Special Detachment 16 had been formed with the mission of supporting the Australian Coastwatchers, men left behind when the Japanese occupied islands in the Solomons, who at great risk to their lives had kept tabs on Japanese units and movements. He had been assigned to Detachment 16 because command of it had been given to Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, and then Sergeant Hart had been Pickering's bodyguard.
He'd won the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart fair and square with Detachment 16, going ashore on Japanese-held Buka Island, but that had been his last combat. Immediately after returning from Buka, he had been given a commission as a second lieutenant-not because he had done anything outstanding as a sergeant, but because his being an officer was more convenient for General Pickering.
The convenience had nothing to do with General Picker-ing's personal comfort, but rather with giving Hart access to one of the two most closely held secrets of World War II, MAGIC-the other was the development of the atomic bomb. Cryptographers in the United States and Hawaii had cracked many-by no means all-of the codes of the Im-perial Japanese Army and Navy. Second Lieutenant Hart's name had appeared on a one-page typewritten list of those who held a MAGIC clearance.