“That sounds pretty unlikely,” Banning said.
“She’s a White Russian. She’s been through this sort of thing before. I’ll bet she’s all right.”
What the White Russians did to survive when their money gave out, and they had nothing left to sell, was to sell themselves. Preferably to an American or a European. But when that wasn’t possible, to a Chinese. Now that the Japanese are running things in China…
Banning had a very sharp, very clear picture of Milla, sweet goddamned Milla, who’d already survived so goddamned much… desperately hanging on to his hand as they were married in the Anglican Cathedral in Shanghai… seven hours before the goddamned Corps ordered him out of Shanghai for the Philippines, with no goddamned way to get her out.
“Shit,” Banning said softly, bitterly.
McCoy looked at him.
“Drink your martini. There’s nothing you can do about anything.”
“Fuck you, Killer,” Banning said.
McCoy let that particular “Killer” pass unnoted. And Banning, meanwhile, picked up his martini and drained it, then held it over his head, signaling he wanted another.
“So what brings you to the Big City, Lieutenant?” he asked, closing the subject of the former Baroness Milla Christiana Lendenkowitz, now Mrs. Edward F. Banning, present address unknown.
“I’ve been down at the Armed Forces Induction Station,” McCoy replied. “What about you?”
“Rickabee ordered me to take a week off,” Banning answered. “The week’s over tomorrow.”
“That figures. I paddle the goddamned rubber boat into the jaws of danger, while the Major sits on his ass in the Port Moresby Aussie O Club bar. And the Major gets a week off.”
Does he mean that? Or is he pulling my leg?
“Didn’t Rickabee offer you time off?”
McCoy smiled. “Rickabee suspected, correctly, that the goddamn Navy has been grabbing everybody who speaks Japanese and Chinese. He said if I could grab as many as I could for our side in a week or less, he’d call it duty and pay me travel and per diem. He knew my girl lives here.”
“I presume, then, Lieutenant, that you’re on duty?”
“Yeah,” McCoy said, and gestured around the 21 Club. “Tough, huh?”
“And then you go back to Washington?”
“To Parris Island. They’ve got a dozen boots down there who are supposed to speak Chinese. You know what we need them for.”
Banning nodded: As soon as arrangements could be made, McCoy was to be sent to China-to Mongolia, specifically-where he’d set up a weather-reporting radio station. It was of course hoped that he’d find a way to keep the Japanese from finding it and shutting it down.
Considering that no one was sure the Marines could hold on to Guadalcanal, it seemed pretty farfetched that the top-level planners were already considering the problems of long-range bombing of the Japanese home islands. But in one sense it was encouraging; somebody thought the war could be won.
“When does that start?”
“They don’t confide in me,” McCoy said. “Rickabee probably knows, but he won’t tell me.” He laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“Do you know what an oxymoron is? Sessions just told me.”
Banning thought it over a moment. “Yeah, I think I do.”
“Rickabee had him in his office while he told me who to look for at Parris Island: Boots who would volunteer for this thing. ‘The important thing to find there,’ he said, ‘is intelligence. I don’t just want volunteers; I want smart volunteers.’ And Sessions said, ‘Colonel, that’s an oxymoron.’ I thought it meant sort of a supermoron or something. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. But Rickabee was pissed and threw him out of his office. Sessions told me later that an oxymoron is something like ‘military intelligence.’ Anybody intelligent who volunteered for this thing would prove by volunteering that he was pretty stupid.”
Banning laughed.
But you volunteered, didn’t you, Killer? And you’re not stupid. Or are you? What is the difference between valor and stupidity?
Carolyn Howell met Ernestine Sage’s eyes in the ladies’-room mirror.
“I know about Mrs. Banning,” she said.
“I thought maybe you did,” Ernie said as she repaired her lipstick. “According to my Marine, your Marine is a man of great integrity.”