"How are you, Ken?" Pickering asked, getting free of Ernie to offer him his hand.
"You're the last person in the world I expected to see, General," McCoy said.
" `General' was a long time ago, Ken," Pickering said.
There's something wrong here. What did I do, walk into the middle of a family squabble?
"Did I drop in uninvited at an awkward time?"
"Don't be silly, Uncle Flem," Ernie said. "Come on in the house."
"It's just that... you're the last person in the world I ex-pected to see," McCoy repeated.
"Pick'll be along in a while," Pickering said. "He just set another speed record getting us here, and he and Charley Ansley are in the process of making it official."
"Great!" McCoy said.
His enthusiasm and his smile seemed strained.
That's strange. You usually never know what he's thinking.
That's the mark-not being able to tell what they're thinking-of good poker players and intelligence officers. And Ken McCoy is both.
What did Ed Banning say that day in Washington ?
"It's as if he was born to be an intelligence officer."
Obviously that doesn't apply to poker players or intelli-gence officers when they're fighting with their wives.
Well, what the hell, married people fight. This is just an-other example of your lousy timing, showing up in the mid-dle of one.
Ernestine Sage McCoy was the closest thing Fleming Pick-ering had to a daughter. Her mother and Patricia Foster Fleming had been roommates at Sarah Lawrence. He had literally walked the floor of the hospital with Ernie's father the night she was born.
Although he had never put it into words, Pickering thought of Kenneth R. McCoy as a second son, and he was sure that Pick thought of Ken as his brother. Patricia Flem-ing liked Ken, but she was never quite able to forgive him for marrying Ernie. Elaine Sage, Ernie's mother, and Patri-cia had decided, when both of their children were still in diapers, that Ernie and Pick would-should-marry.
But Pick had met Ken in Marine Corps Officer Candi-date School, and become buddies, and then Pick had intro-duced his buddy to Ernie, and that had blown the idea of Ernie marrying Pick out of the water.
Fleming Pickering had inherited newly promoted First Lieutenant Kenneth R. McCoy when he had been given command of the U.S. Marine Corps Office of Manage-ment Analysis.
And quickly learned far more about him than Pick had ever told him, probably because Pick had decided the less said about Ken's background the better.
Ernie had almost immediately announced on meeting Ken that she had met the man with whom she intended to spend the rest of her life, a declaration that had done the opposite of delighting her parents, and Patricia Fleming.
For one thing, he had neither a college education nor any money. That was enough to make the Sages uncomfort-able. Learning that "Killer" McCoy was something of a legend in the Marine Corps, and why, would only make things worse.
Brigadier General Pickering had gotten most of the de-tails of Lieutenant McCoy's background from another offi-cer assigned to the Office of Management Analysis, then Major Ed Banning, who was himself something of a leg-end in the Marine Corps.
Pickering had gotten the details of Banning's exploits first: He had been the 4th Marine Regiment's intelligence officer in Shanghai and gone with it to the Philippines, where he had been temporarily blinded in action against the Japanese. He-and a dozen other blinded men and offi-cers-had been evacuated from the island fortress of Corregidor in Manila Harbor just before Corregidor fell.
When his sight returned, Banning had, perhaps pre-dictably, been assigned to the Office of Management Analysis, where he immediately set about looking for Lieutenant McCoy to have him assigned to the intelligence unit.
He had found Second Lieutenant McCoy in the Naval Hospital at Pearl Harbor, recovering from wounds suffered with the Marine Raiders during their daring attack on Makin Island.
It had taken some doing to pry the details of McCoy's background from Banning, who felt-and said-that they should be allowed to remain obscure. But finally Pickering had gotten Banning to open up.
Then-Captain Banning had met then-Corporal K. R. McCoy in Shanghai. He had been appointed "in addition to his other duties" to serve as defense counsel for the ac-cused in the court-martial case of The United States vs. Corporal K. R. McCoy, USMC.
There were several charges, with murder heading the list.
As the case was explained to Captain Banning, a tough little corporal in one of the line companies had knifed an Italian Marine to death, and damned near killed two other Eye-Tie so-called Marines in the same fight.
It never was said in so many words, of course, but what would be clearly in the interests of the Marine Corps would be to sweep the international incident as quickly as possible under the diplomatic rug. To that end, if Banning could get the troublemaking corporal to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter, the colonel "on review" would reduce whatever the sentence was to a relatively mild five to ten years in the Portsmouth Naval Prison; he could be out of prison in two, maybe three years.
Before actually going to see McCoy, Banning first went over the official reports of the incident and the evidence. There was no question at all that one Italian Marine had died of knife wounds, and that McCoy had wielded the knife. Then he went over McCoy's records. He learned that McCoy had enlisted in the Corps at seventeen, immedi-ately after graduating from high school in a Philadelphia industrial suburb. He hadn't been in trouble previously, and had in fact made corporal in a remarkably short time, before his first enlistment was over. Normally, it took six to eight years-sometimes even longer-to make corporal.
Finally, Banning had gone to see Corporal McCoy in the brig, and had seen that McCoy was indeed a tough little streetwise character. And smart, but not smart enough to realize the serious trouble he was in.
A conviction for murder would see him sent to Portsmouth for twenty years to life.
McCoy, making it obvious that he trusted Banning not quite as far as he could throw the six-foot, 200-pound offi-cer, his tone bordering on the offense known as "silent in-solence," had rejected the offer.
`No, thank you, sir, don't try to make a deal for me for a light sentence, sir. With respect, sir, it was self-defense, sir, and I'll take my chances at the court-martial, sir."
Banning admitted to Pickering that he had managed only with an effort not to lose his temper with the insolent young corporal.
"But it wasn't stupidity, General," Banning said, now smiling about the incident. "McCoy was a step-a couple of steps-ahead of me."
"How so?" Pickering had asked.
"When I got back to my office, there was a message ask-ing me to call Captain Bruce Fairbairn. Does the general know who I mean?"
"The English Captain Fairbairn? The head of the Shang-hai Police?"
Banning nodded.
"And the inventor of scientific knife-fighting," Banning said. "And the Fairbairn knife. Does that ring a bell, Gen-eral?"
"I've had drinks and dinner with Fairbairn several times in Shanghai, and I've heard of his knives, of course, every-one has, but I've never seen one."
"The third one I had ever seen I had seen that morning," Banning said, with a smile. "When examining the evidence against Corporal McCoy."
Pickering had thought: Now that he understands that he has no choice but to tell me all about Killer McCoy, he seems to be enjoying it.