Knox looked at him. “But?”
“I would like to get Pickering out of sight for a few weeks. Is he up to travel?”
“If you asked him, he would gladly go. But he was badly wounded, and he had a bad bout with malaria. Where do you want me to send him?”
“Let’s decide that after we decide what shape he’s in. Are you free for lunch?”
“I’m at your call, Mr. President.”
“You, Richardson Fowler, Admiral Leahy, and General Pickering. If nothing else, presuming he doesn’t have a wiretap in this room, Bill Donovan could really presume we’ve called Pickering on the carpet, couldn’t he?”
Knox didn’t reply. He gestured to the steward for more coffee.
[THREE]
The Foster Lafayette Hotel
Washington, D.C.
1150 Hours 12 October 1942
It had suddenly begun to rain, hard, as the 1940 Buick Limited convertible sedan passed the Hotel Washington and continued down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House.
“This goddamn town has the worst weather in the world,” the driver, alone in the car, observed aloud.
He was a tall, distinguished-looking man in his early forties, wearing a superbly tailored United States Marine Corps brigadier general’s uniform.
He passed the White House, made a right turn, then a U-turn, and pulled up before the marquee of the Foster Lafayette Hotel, arguably the most luxurious hotel in the capital. Beyond question, it was the most expensive.
The ornately uniformed doorman pulled open the passenger-side door.
“Your choice,” Brigadier General Fleming Pickering said, “you park this or loan me your umbrella.”
“I think the Senator’s going with you, General,” the doorman said, with a smile.
At that moment, Senator Richardson K. Fowler (R., Cal.), a tall, silver-haired, regal-looking sixty-two-year-old, appeared at the car and slipped into the passenger seat. He had been waiting for the Buick to appear, standing just inside the lobby, looking out through the plate glass next to the bellboy-attended revolving door.
“You made good time, Flem,” he said.
The doorman closed the door after him.
“Let’s have it,” Pickering replied curtly.
“Let’s have what?”
“You said, quote, ‘as soon as possible.’ ”
“We’re having lunch with the President and Frank Knox,” Fowler said. “And, I think, Admiral Leahy.”
“That’s all?” Pickering asked suspiciously.
“Most people in this town would be all aflutter at the prospect of a private luncheon with the President, his Chief of Staff, and the Secretary of the Navy,” Fowler began, and then saw something in Pickering’s eyes. “What did you think it was, Flem?”
“You know damned well what I thought it was,” Pickering said.
“Pick’s going to be all right, Flem,” Fowler said gently. “He’s a Pickering. Pickerings walk through raindrops.”
The last time General Pickering heard, his only son, Second Lieutenant Malcolm S. “Pick” Pickering, USMCR, was flying an F4F4 Wildcat off Henderson Field on Guadalcanal.
“Get out,” Pickering said. “Open the door.”
“We’re due at the White House in twenty minutes,” Fowler said, looking at his watch.
“That’s plenty of time,” Pickering said. “It’s right across the street. All I want is a quick drink.” He met Fowler’s eyes, and confessed, “I’ve been frightened sick ever since you called. You sonofabitch. You should have told me that it was lunch with Roosevelt.”
“I’m sorry, Flem,” Fowler said, genuinely contrite.
Fowler opened his door, and Pickering slid across the seat to follow him.
“Don’t bury it,” Pickering said to the doorman, who hurried back to the car. “We’ll be out in a minute.”
The doorman walked around the front of the Buick, got in, and drove it fifteen yards. He parked it by a sign proclaiming, NO PARKING AT ANY TIME, then walked back to his post.
General Pickering was always well treated by the staff of the Foster Lafayette. For one thing, he occupied a five-room suite on the sixth floor, adjacent to Senator Fowler’s somewhat larger suite. More important, Pickering’s wife, Patricia, was the only child of Andrew Foster, the owner of the Foster Lafayette and forty-one other Foster hotels.
Inside the lobby, Fowler turned to Pickering and asked, “You want to go upstairs?”
In reply, Pickering pointed toward the door of the Oak Grill. There a line of people waited behind the maitre d’hotel’s lectern and a velvet rope for their turn to enter the smaller and more exclusive of the Lafayette’s two restaurants.