Rickabee was standing in a corridor that led to a large sitting room furnished with what looked like museum-quality antiques. Rickabee waved him toward it. Banning saw a Navy captain and wondered who he was.
“Gentlemen,” Rickabee announced, “Major Edward F. Banning.”
Banning nodded at the Navy captain. A stocky man in a superbly tailored blue pin-stripe suit walked up, removing his pince-nez as he did, and offered his hand.
“I’m Frank Knox, Major. How do you do?”
“Mr. Secretary.”
“Do you know Captain Haughton, my assistant?” Knox asked.
No. But I’ve seen the name enough. “By Direction of the Secretary of the Navy. David Haughton, Captain, USN, Administrative Assistant. ”
“No, Sir.”
“How are you, Major?” Haughton said. “I’m glad to finally meet you.”
“My name is Fowler, Major,” another superbly tailored older man said. “Welcome home.”
“Senator,” Banning said. “How do you do, Sir?”
“Right now, not very well, and from what Fleming Pickering said on the phone, what you have to tell us isn’t going to make us feel any better.”
“Major, you look like you could use a drink,” Frank Knox said. “What’ll you have?”
“No, thank you, Sir.”
“Don’t argue with me, I’m the Secretary of the Navy.”
“Then scotch, Sir, a weak one.”
“Make him a stiff scotch, Rickabee,” Knox ordered, “while your captain loads the projector.”
“Yes, Sir, Mr. Secretary,” Colonel Rickabee said, smiling.
“Sir, I had hoped to have a little time to organize my thoughts,” Banning said.
“Fleming Pickering told me I should tell you to deliver the same briefing you gave him in Hawaii,” Senator Fowler said. “And I thought the best place to do that would be here, rather than in Mr. Knox’s office or mine.”
Banning looked uncomfortable.
“You’re worried about classified material?” Captain Haughton asked. “Specifically, about MAGIC?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Haughton looked significantly at Secretary Knox, very obviously putting the question to him.
“Senator Fowler does not have a MAGIC clearance,” Knox said. “That’s so the President and I can look any senator in the eye and tell him that no senator has a MAGIC clearance. But I can’t think of a secret this country has I wouldn’t trust Senator Fowler with. Do you take my meaning, Major?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Rickabee handed Banning a drink.
Banning set it down and took the photographs and the two cans of 16mm film from his bag. He handed the film cans to Sessions and the envelope of photographs to Secretary Knox.
“We brought these with us when we left Guadalcanal. The photographer handed them to Major Dillon literally at the last minute, as we were preparing to take off.”
“My God!” Frank Knox said after examining the first two photographs. “This is Henderson Field?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“It looks like no-man’s-land in France in 1917.”
“General Vandegrift believes the fire came from fourteen-inch Naval cannon. Battleships, Sir.”
“I saw the After-Action Report,” Knox said. It was not a reprimand.
Banning took a sip of his drink. He looked across the room to where Sessions was threading the motion picture film into a projector. A screen on a tripod was already in place.
“Anytime you’re ready, Sir,” Sessions reported.
“OK, Major,” Frank Knox said. “Let’s have it.”
“Just one or two questions, Major, if I may,” Frank Knox said after Banning’s briefing was finished.
“Yes, Sir.”
“You’re pretty sure of these Japanese unit designations, I gather? And the identities of the Jap commanders?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“They conform to what we’ve been getting from the MAGIC people in Hawaii. But there is a difference between your analyses of Japanese intercepts and theirs. Subtle sometimes, but significant, I think. Why is that?”
“Sir, I don’t think two analysts ever completely agree….”
“Just who are your analysts?”
“Primarily two, Sir. Both junior officers, but rather unusual junior officers. One of them is a Korean-American from Hawaii. He holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from MIT, and was first involved as a cryptographer-a code-breaker, not an analyst. He placed… a different interpretation… on certain intercepts than did Hawaii; and more often than not, time proved him correct. So he was made an analyst. The second spent most of his life in Japan. His parents are missionaries. He speaks the language as well as he speaks English, and studied at the University of Tokyo. You understand, Sir, the importance of understanding the Japanese culture, the Japanese mind-set…”