W E B Griffin - Corp 08 - In Dangers Path Read online

  "I see."

  "What I think would be best would be for youse two to get together once I'm gone."

  "Whatever you think is best," Milla had said. She smiled at Zimmerman's woman, who did not smile back.

  Sergeant Zimmerman put out his hand.

  "Captain Banning told me I would like you," he said, and added, "Would it be okay if I told you I think he's one hell of a fucking officer?"

  "Of course."

  "And if anybody can get you out of this fucking place, Mrs. Banning, the Captain can. That's the real reason I wanted youse two to meet."

  Could that possibly mean that Ed thought this woman, this Chinese peasant, could help me ?

  Sergeant Zimmerman nodded at her, gestured for his woman to turn, and then walked away from Milla's door.

  [SEVEN]

  For reasons she didn't quite understand, Milla got all dressed up before driving Ed's red convertible Pontiac to the Yangtze River wharf to watch the 4th Marines sail away from Shanghai aboard the President Madison.

  She was not, she saw, the only Marine's woman to come to the wharf to watch her man-and her future-sail away. At least twenty Chinese women were there, many of them with children, as well as four white women, two of them with children. She recognized two of them, and presumed all four were Russians. They looked as desperate and pathetic as she felt.

  She also saw Sergeant Zimmerman, leaning on the rail of the ship, and his woman and their three children on the wharf.

  As the lines tying the ship to the wharf were loosened and picked up, and the President Madison began, just perceptibly, to move away, a sudden impulse sent Milla out of the Pontiac, and she found herself walking to Sergeant Zimmerman's woman.

  The woman nodded to her but didn't speak.

  When Sergeant Zimmerman waved, Milla waved back. His woman-Milla remembered her name now, Mae Su-waved just once, and then just stood there, watching as the distance between the ship and the wharf grew.

  "Come with me, I'll drive you home," Milla said.

  Mae Su looked at her and nodded her head, just once, but didn't speak.

  The current of the Yangtze River finally moved the President Madison far enough away from the wharf to allow her engines to be engaged. There was a sudden powerful churning at her stern, under the American flag hanging limp from a pole, and she began to move, ever faster, both farther away from the wharf and down the Yangtze.

  Milla and Mae Su watched until it was no longer possible to make out individual Marines on her deck, and then Mae Su looked up at Milla, and they walked to the Pontiac and got in.

  The Zimmerman apartment was far larger and better furnished than Milla expected. Did a Marine sergeant make enough money to support something like this, she wondered, or did they have a second source of income?

  "You have a very nice apartment," Milla said, as Mae Su changed the diaper of her youngest child.

  "Thank you," Mae Su said, and then as if she were reading Milla's mind, went on: "My man is without education and crude, but he is not stupid. We supplied all the houseboys who took care of the Marines in their barracks. And had other enterprises."

  Milla nodded politely.

  Mae Su thought of something else. "'And, after much instruction, he became a very good poker player. There was always a little something extra in the pot after payday."

  "Oh, really?" Milla asked, smiling.

  "I will really miss all of this." Mae Su said. "We were here five years."

  "You're going to leave?"

  "Sell everything and leave," Mae Su said. "Before the Japanese really get bad. I have already made some arrangements."

  Milla nodded again.

  "I went with my man to your apartment because he wanted me to," Mae Su said. "He thought we could help each other. I had the feeling you did not agree."

  "How could we help each other?" Milla asked.

  "Much would depend on how much money you have, in gold or pounds or dollars-gold would be best-and on how much you could get for Captain Banning's possessions in these circumstances."

  The circumstances were, Milla knew, that the only potential purchasers of a westerner's property were Chinese, and the Chinese were fully aware it was a buyer's market. Ed's things would not bring anything close to what they were worth. Milla seriously doubted she could find a buyer for the Pontiac at all. Who would want to pay good money for an expensive American automobile when it would almost certainly-under one pretense or another-be confiscated by the Japanese?

  "Specifically, what do you have in mind?" Milla said.

  "At first, I am going to return to my village," Mae Su said. "I have a tractor, a Fordson, and a small caravan large enough for a stove and to sleep in on the road."

  Milla could see that in her mind. Tractors pulling rickety four-wheel carts were a common sight outside the city, rolling along at five miles an hour on bare tires mounted on axles from ancient automobiles.

  She was also suddenly aware that she was talking to Mae Su as an equal. The woman wasn't nearly as stupid as she looked.

  "And then?"

  "Then I think I shall do what my man said to do. Go north and then west, and try to make it through Tibet and into India. Or perhaps even further north into Mongolia, and then into India through Kazakhstan."

  "Kazakhstan is in Russia," Milla said with a sense of terror.

  Her father had refused to return to what had become the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics-for good reason. As a former general in the White Army, he would have been imprisoned, or more likely shot, if he did. His refusal had stripped him and his family of Russian citizenship; and the Russians, like the Americans, did not permit holders of stateless person Nansen passports to cross their border.

  "Kazakhstan is Kazakhstan," Mae Su said. "It is possible to get through it to India. Gold opens all borders."

  "Why India?"

  "My man said for me to find an American consulate, and give them our marriage paper, and the papers he has signed saying he is the father of our children. Maybe they will be able to help us. They would probably help you. You are the wife of an American Marine officer."

  Yes, I am, Milla realized, somewhat surprised.

  "But I only have enough money for us," Mae Su said. "If you want to come with me, you will not only have to pay your own way, but, if necessary, to share what you have with me."

  "I have some money," Milla said, thinking out loud. "All that my husband had here. And a little of my own. And the car, and the furniture in the apartments. I don't think any of that will bring very much."

  I sound as if I'm willing to go with this woman, by tractor-drawn cart, to some nameless village in the interior of China, and entrusting her with all I have in the world.

  But she sounds so confident, and what other choice do I have, except to stay here and hope the Japanese officer who wants me for his woman will be kind to me? Or to end it all, once and for all?

  "If you would like," Mae Su said. "I could deal with the disposition of your property. I know some people. I might be able to get you more for it than you think."

  "All right," Milla said. She knew a Chinese could strike a better deal than she could.

  "I have two guns," Mae Su went on. "A shotgun and a pistol. My man took them from the Marine armory."

  "My husband left a pistol with me."

  "And do you know how to use it? If necessary, could you use it?"

  Milla nodded. "Yes," she said. "I know how to use it."

  "That may be necessary," Mae Su said. "Now, if you will stay here and watch the children, and give me the keys to your apartments, I will see about selling your things."

  "All right," Milla said, and added: "Thank you, Mae Su."

  Mae Su, for the first time, smiled at her.

  Milla wondered if she would ever see Banning again.

  Chapter One

  [ONE]

  Apartment 4C

  303 DuPont Circle

  Washington, D.C.

  0905 8 February />
  Fourteen months later, and half a world away, Major Ed Banning, USMC, opened his eyes, aware of the phone ringing. The next thing he noticed was that he was alone in bed.

  As he swung his feet out of bed and reached for the telephone, he read his clock, remembering that Carolyn had told him she absolutely had to go to work, which meant catching the 6:05 Milk Train Special to New York. Which meant she had silently gotten out of bed at five, dressed without waking him, and gone and caught the goddamned train. The kindness was typical of her, and he was grateful for it, but he was sorry he missed her.

  He was-especially when she showed him a kindness-shamed by their relationship. Even though she had known from the beginning about Milla, the truth was that Carolyn was getting the short end of the stick. They could be as "adult" and "sophisticated" as they pretended to be about their relationship, but the cold truth was Carolyn was doing all the giving, and he was doing all the taking, and Carolyn deserved better than that.

  "Damn!" he said aloud, as he picked up the telephone. He had the day off- he had worked the Sunday 1600-2400 shift in the cryptographic room, and would not be expected at work again until 0800 tomorrov morning. It would have been nice to spend that time with Carolyn.

  "Liberty Four Thirty-four Thirty-three," he said into the telephone. It was standing operating procedure in the U.S. Marine Corps' Office of Management Analysis to answer telephones-in the office and in quarters-with the number, not the name. That way a dialer of a wrong number would learn only that he had the wrong number, not the identity of the person or office he had called by mistake.

  "Sorry to do this to you, Ed," his caller said, without wasting time on a greeting. He recognized the voice. It was his boss, Colonel F. L. "Fritz" Rickabee,

  USMC, Deputy Director of the U.S. Marine Corps Office of Management Analysis. After Ed had been evacuated from the Philippines, just before they'd fallen to the Japanese, Banning had been assigned to the little-known unit.

  Even its title was purposely obfuscatory-it had nothing to do with either management or analysis. It was a covert intelligence unit that took its orders from, and was answerable only to, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox.

  "Oh, no!" Banning said.

  "One of the sailors apparently has a tummy ache," Rickabee said.

  "When?"

  "Right now," Colonel Rickabee said. "A car's on the way."

  "Oh shit!"

  " 'Oh, shit'?"

  "Aye, aye, sir," Major Banning said.

  There was a final grunt from Colonel Rickabee and the line went dead.

  Banning marched naked to his bathroom and stepped under the shower. Five minutes later, he stepped out, having made use of time normally wasted standing under the shower by shaving there. He toweled himself quickly and then paused at the washbasin only long enough to splash aftershave cologne on his face. Then he went into his bedroom to dress.

  He took a uniform from a closet still-in-its-fresh-from-the-dry-cleaners-paper-wrapping, ripped off the paper, and laid the uniform on the bed. With a skill born of long practice, he quickly affixed his insignia and ribbons to the tunic. His ribbons indicated, among other things, that he had seen Pacific service, during which he had twice suffered wounds entitling him to the Purple Heart Medal with one oak-leaf cluster.

  Next he took a fresh, stiffly starched khaki shirt from a drawer and quickly pinned a gold major's oak leaf in the prescribed position on its collar points. He slipped on the shirt, buttoned it, tied a khaki field scarf in the prescribed manner and place, and put on the rest of his uniform. The last step before buttoning his tunic was to slip a Colt Model 1911 Al.45 ACP pistol into the waistband of his trousers at the small of his back.

  The entire process, from the moment the telephone rang until he reached the apartment building's curb where a light green Plymouth sedan was waiting for him, had taken just over eleven minutes.

  Though the car had civilian license plates, the driver, a wiry man in his thirties just then leaning on a fender, was a Marine technical sergeant. He was in uniform, which told Banning that when the call from the crypto room came in, no one around the office had been wearing civilian clothing-and there'd been no time to summon somebody in civvies. Standing operating procedure was that the unmarked cars were to be driven by personnel in civilian clothes. The sergeant straightened up, saluted, and then opened the door for him.

  "Good morning, sir," he said.

  "That's a matter of opinion," Banning said, smiling, as he returned the salute.

  "The Colonel indicated you might be pissed, sir," the sergeant said.

  "I left that goddamn place nine hours ago," Banning said. "And now another eight hours!"

  "War is hell, isn't it, sir?"

  "Oh, screw you, Rutterman," Banning said.

  Sergeant Rutterman drove Major Banning to the Navy Building, where Banning underwent four separate security screenings before reaching his destination. The first was the more or less pro forma examination of his identity card before he could enter the building. The second, which took place on the ground floor, required him to produce a special identity card to gain access to the Secure Area. When this was done, he was permitted to enter the elevator to the second sub-basement. Once he was in the second sub-basement, armed sailors carefully matched a photo on his Cryptographic Area identification card against a five-by-seven card that held an identical photograph. The successful match allowed them to admit him to the area behind locked steel doors. The final security check was administered by a Navy warrant officer and a chief petty officer at a desk before still another heavy, vaultlike door.

  Although they both knew Banning by sight, and the warrant officer and Banning had often shared a drink, they subjected him to a detailed examination of the three identity cards and finally challenged him for his password. Only when that was done, and the chief petty officer started to unlock the door's two locks- the door also had a combination lock, like a safe-did the warrant officer speak informally. "I can see how delighted you are to be back."

  "Is he in there?" Banning said.

  "Oh, he's been in there, Major, waiting for you."

  There was no identifying sign on the steel door, and few people even knew of the existence of the "Special Communications Room." Even fewer had any idea of its function.

  In one of the best-kept secrets of the war, cryptographers at Pearl Harbor had broken several of the codes used by the Japanese for communications between the Imperial General Staff and the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy, as well as between Japanese diplomatic posts and Tokyo. Most, but not all, of the cryptographers involved in this breakthrough had been Navy personnel. One of the exceptions was an Army Signal Corps officer, a Korean-American named Lieutenant Hon Song Do.

  Intercepted and decrypted Japanese messages were classified top secret- magic. The magic window into the intentions of the enemy gave the upper hierarchy of the United States government a weapon beyond price. And it wasn't a window into the Japanese intentions alone, for some of the intercepted messages reported what the Japanese Embassy in Berlin had been told by the German government. In other words, magic also opened a small window on German intentions as well.

  But it was a window that would be rendered useless the moment the Japanese even suspected that their most secret messages were being read and analyzed by the Americans.

  The roster of personnel throughout the world who had access to magic material fit with room to spare on two sheets of typewriter paper. It was headed by the name of President Roosevelt, then ranged downward through Admiral William Leahy, the President's Chief of Staff; Admiral Ernest King, Chief of Naval Operations; General George C. Marshall, the Army Chief of Staff; Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the Navy Commander in Chief, Pacific; General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, South West Pacific Ocean Area; and Major Edward J. Banning, USMC; then farther downward to the lowest-ranking individual, a Marine Corps Second Lieutenant named George F. Hart.

  Almost as soon as the system to encrypt and transmi
t magic messages had been put in place, the senior officers with access to it-from Roosevelt on down-had realized that magic also gave them a means to communicate with each other rapidly and with the highest possible level of security. The result was that nearly as many "back-channel" messages were sent over the system as there were intercepted Japanese messages.

  "Okay, Major," the chief petty officer said to Banning, and swung the vaultlike door open. Banning stepped inside and the chief swung the door closed after him. Banning heard the bolts slip into place.

  Inside the room were two desks placed side by side, a safe, and two straight-backed chairs. The magic cryptographic machine was on one of the desks, along with a typewriter and three telephones, one of them red and without a dial.