“Oh, no you’re not,” Roosevelt said. “With me gone, you three political crustaceans can sit here in my apartment and say unkind things about me.”
There was the expected dutiful laughter.
“I hear laughter but no denials,” Roosevelt said. “But before I leave you, I’d like to ask a favor of you, Fleming.”
“Anything within my power, Mr. President,” Pickering said.
“Could you find it in your heart to make peace with Bill Donovan?”
Is that what this is all about? Did that sonofabitch actually go to the President of the United States to complain about me?
“I wasn’t aware that Mr. Donovan was displeased with me, Mr. President.”
“It has come to his attention that you said unkind things about him to our friend Douglas MacArthur,” Roosevelt said.
“Mr. President,” Pickering said, softly but firmly, “to the best of my recollection, I have never discussed Mr. Donovan with General MacArthur.”
Frank Knox coughed.
“Then tell me this, Fleming,” the President said. “If I asked you to say something nice to Douglas MacArthur about Bill Donovan, would you?”
“I’m not sure I understand you, Mr. President.”
“Frank will explain everything,” Roosevelt said. “And when you see Douglas, give him my very best regards, won’t you?”
The President rolled himself away before Pickering could say another word.
Chapter Three
[ONE]
Guadalcanal
Solomon Islands
0450 Hours 13 October 1942
Major Jack (NMI) Stecker, USMCR, commanding officer of 2nd Battalion, Fifth Marines, woke at the first hint of morning light. He was a large, tall, straight-backed man who could look like a Marine even in sweat-soaked utilities-as the Commanding General of the 1st Marine Division recently noted privately to his Sergeant Major. The rest of the Division, including himself, the General went on to observe, looked like AWOLs from the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Major Stecker had been sleeping on a steel bed and mattress, formerly the property of the Imperial Japanese Army. A wooden crate served as Stecker’s bedside table; it once contained canned smoked oysters intended for the Japanese garrison on Guadalcanal.
The “tabletop” held a Coleman lantern; a flashlight; an empty can of Planter’s peanuts converted to an ashtray; a package of Chesterfield cigarettes; a Zippo lighter; and a U.S. Pistol, Caliber.45 ACP, Model 1911, with the hammer in the cocked position and the safety on.
On waking, Major Stecker sat up and reached for the pistol. He removed the magazine, worked the action to eject the chambered cartridge, and then loaded it back into the magazine. He let the slide go forward, lowered the hammer by pulling the trigger, and then reinserted the magazine into the pistol.
It was one thing, in Major Stecker’s judgment, to have a pistol in the cocked and locked position when there was a good chance you might need it in a hurry, and quite another to carry a weapon that way when you were walking around wide awake.
Before retiring, he had removed his high-topped shoes-called boondockers- and his socks. Now he pulled on a fresh pair of socks-fresh in the sense that he had rinsed them, if not actually washed them in soap and water-and then the boondockers, carefully double-knotting their laces so they would not come undone. When he was satisfied with that, he slipped the Colt into its holster and then buckled his pistol belt around his waist.
He pushed aside the shelter-half that separated his sleeping quarters from the Battalion Command Post.
The Battalion S-3 (Plans & Training) Sergeant, who was sitting on a folding chair (Japanese) next to a folding table (Japanese) on which sat a Field Desk (U.S. Army), started to get to his feet. Stecker waved him back to his chair.
“Good morning, Sir.”
“Good morning,” Stecker said with a smile, then walked out of the CP and relieved himself against a palm tree. He went back into the CP, picked up a five-gallon water can, and poured from it two inches of water into a washbasin-a steel helmet inverted in a rough wooden frame.
He moved to his bedside table and reached inside for his toilet kit, a battered leather bag with mold growing green around the zipper. He lifted out shaving cream and a Gillette razor. Then he went back to the helmet washbasin, wet his face, and shaved himself as well as he could using a pocket-size, polished-metal mirror. He had come ashore with a small glass mirror, but the concussion from an incoming Japanese mortar round had shattered it.