MELBOURNE, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA.

1600 HOURS 1 JULY 1942.

When Lieutenant Pluto Hon heard the key turning in the steel door, he quickly covered what he was working on with its TOP SECRET cover sheet and stood up. There were only three people with a key to the room, and he had told Sergeant John Marston Moore to stay at The Elms until he sent for him. Ergo, whoever was unlocking the door had to be Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR.

"How are you, Pluto?" Pickering greeted him with a smile. "What can I do for you?"

"Sir, I just asked your clerk to let me know when you had a free minute. You didn't have to come down here."

"So she said," Pickering said. "What's up?"

"Well, first, did Major Banning get to you?"

"About tonight?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Yes, he did. And you're invited, too, of course. Is that what you wanted to ask?"

"No, Sir," Hon said, and then with obvious reluctance he plunged ahead: "Sir, I'm sorry I let my mouth run away from me and asked you for Sergeant Moore."

"Oh? How come?"

"Sir, and it's obviously my fault, it's already gotten out of hand."

"How?" Pickering asked evenly. Hon felt the normal warmth leave Pickering's eyes.

"Sir, he's already guessed that what I gave him to analyze was an intercept."

"Guessed?"

"I suppose 'deduced' would be a better word."

"How was his analysis?" Pickering asked.

Hon hesitated.

"Well?" Pickering asked, impatiently.

"Sir, what popped into my mind sounds flippant. And I realize this is not the place to sound flippant."

"What popped into your mind?"

" 'The true test of a man's intelligence is how much he agrees with you,'" Pluto quoted. "I gave him the MAGIC intercept from Homma to IJAGS, and the reply about prisoner rations in the Philippines."

"Refresh my mind?"

"The one Pearl Harbor thought was a reprimand to Homma, and wondered what about."

"And the one you thought meant, 'prisoners have no right to eat'?"

"Yes, Sir."

"And he agreed with you?"

"Yes, Sir. I had to prompt him a little. But just a little. I didn't give him any..."

"I'm sure you didn't," Pickering said. "And he went from that to figure out where it came from?"

"Yes, Sir. I probably handled that badly. I'm very sorry, Sir. I decided I had better tell you."

"Yeah, sure," Pickering said. He reached inside his uniform jacket and came out with a cigar case. He took a long time removing a narrow, black cigar; he then carefully trimmed it with a pocket knife and lit it with a wooden match.

Finally, he exhaled through pursed lips, examined the coal at the end, and said, "We both-me especially-should have seen that coming. Now that I really think about it, it was inevitable. OK. So where does that leave us? Worst possible scenario: What's the greatest damage?"

Pickering paused, not long enough for Pluto to respond, and then answered his own question. "We have added one more man to the loop. I mean the cryptographers at Pearl and here. They know about the existence of MAGIC. So now Moore does too. The only difference between him and them is that he is now analyzing instead of decrypting. They don't have to know that. We won't tell Pearl Harbor... we won't volunteer the information, in other words. If we did they would shit a brick. If they find out, I'll take the heat. I'll tell them I ordered you to bring him in on this. I'll say I did so because it occurred to me that if you were unavailable, broke your leg or something, I would need an analyst. That's true, come to think about it."

"Yes, Sir," Pluto said uneasily.

"In for a penny, Pluto, in for a pound," Pickering said. "I'll tell Banning what I've done, and tell him to bring Moore in on anything he thinks Moore should know. As far as Moore is concerned, just let things go as they are. As far as you're concerned," he paused and smiled, "since we now have proof positive that he's highly intelligent, just put him to work. To coin a phrase, two minds are better than one."

"Yes, Sir," Hon said.

(Three) THE ELMS DANDENONG, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA 1805 HOURS 1 JULY 1942.

Sergeant John Marston Moore helped Mr. Cavendish carry Colonel Goettge's and Major Dillon's luggage to their rooms, and then went to his. Obviously, a sergeant was out of place with visiting brass hats, even under the strange circumstances he was now in.

When I get hungry, he decided, I'll go down the back stairs and see what there is to eat in the refrigerator.

He had just taken his shoes off and settled himself on the bed when there was a knock at the door.

They probably want me to drive somebody somewhere- maybe go get Captain Pickering or Lieutenant Hon-or maybe serve drinks.

It was Major Banning.

"Yes, Sir?"

"Come with me," Banning said. "I want to show you something. Save your questions until I tell you."

"Aye, aye, Sir. Give me a moment to get my shoes on."

He followed Banning down the back stairs to the kitchen, and then to a small room off the kitchen he had not known existed.

It was not much larger than a closet, and it held a small table with a lamp on it and a simple cushioned chair. Banning put his finger over his lips, ordering silence, and then pointed to foot-square ducts in the walls. Moore realized first that the other end of one of the ducts opened into the library, and then he remembered seeing it when he had been browsing among the books. It had been hardly visible among the books. He remembered that there was another duct in the dining room.

Banning touched his ear and pointed toward the duct opening on the library. Moore realized that he could hear, faintly, but clearly, Major Dillon talking to Colonel Goettge about Captain Pickering's estate in San Francisco. Obviously, anything said in the library and dining room could be heard in the small room.

Banning signaled that they should leave the room, and when they had done so, he closed the door after them. He went to a coffee pot, helped himself, and then leaned against a work table under a large rack of pots and pans.

"I think that's where the butler sat," Banning said. "So he could hear when the lord of the manor needed more ice or when it was time to serve dessert."

"Interesting," Moore said.

"When you sit in there and listen, you're probably going to hear all sorts of interesting things."

The notion of eavesdropping on people, especially on Captain Pickering, made Moore uncomfortable.

"Sir?"

"I want you-as a matter-of-fact, Captain Pickering wants you-to sit in there and listen."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"Put your trench coat away," Banning said, laughing. "This is not high level espionage. You made quite an impression on Pluto-Lieutenant Hon. He told Captain Pickering he thought you have a good analytical mind and that with your knowledge of how the Japanese think and behave, you were probably going to be damned useful. Obviously, the more you know, the more useful you will be. There will be things discussed in there tonight that you should know, and which would not be discussed if you were in there, even serving drinks, which was my original idea. Understand? Or would you rather pass canapes?"

"No, Sir," Moore said with a chuckle.

"There are certain things you should keep in mind," Banning said. "Priorities, primarily. And something you should always have in the back of your mind when you're involved with intelligence: Who knows what, and who isn't supposed to know what. You work for Captain Pickering. Or you work for PI-Lieutenant Hon, which is saying the same thing. Captain Pickering's interests are therefore your highest priority. Captain Pickering is here as the Secretary of the Navy's personal representative. That means he is authorized access to any information the Navy has. He has also become quite close to General MacArthur, who has given him" access to everything in Supreme Headquarters. If you think that through, you'll understand that there's damned little he does not know.

"I don't know-it's none of my business-what information he's been getting from the Secretary of the Navy, or how much of that, if any, he is authorized to pass on to General MacArthur. Or-frankly-since he has apparently decided MacArthur is right and Admiral King is wrong, how much he has passed on to MacArthur without being specifically authorized to do so.

"Colonel Willoughby, who is MacArthur's intelligence officer, will be here in a little while. He is not authorized to know what Pickering may or may not have told MacArthur, but what MacArthur has decided to tell him anyway will be interesting.

"And finally, Colonel Goettge: He is obviously not privy to what either Pickering knows or what MacArthur knows. He has no Need to Know, for one thing, and for another, in a sense, at least as far as MacArthur and Willoughby are concerned, he's the enemy. The First Marine Division is under COMSOPAC..."

"Excuse me?"

"COMSOPAC. Commander, Southern Pacific-Admiral Ghormley. And Admiral Ghormley is under Admiral Nimitz. Admiral Nimitz is the senior Naval officer in the Pacific and is thus MacArthur's opposite number. There are two wars out here: between us and the Japanese, and between the Army and the Navy to see who fights the war, and where it is fought, and how."

Banning could see in Moore's face that the kid was both a little stunned by what he'd just been told and was suppressing only with an effort the urge to ask questions.

"And there is one more thing," Banning said, somewhat reluctantly. He was a good officer, and good officers do not criticize second lieutenants, much less lieutenant colonels, before enlisted men. But this was the inevitable exception that proved the rule. It had to be done.

"There are intelligence officers and intelligence officers," Banning went on. "Colonel Goettge is very good at what he does-Division Intelligence Officer. What that means is that he advises the Division Commander of his assessment of enemy capabilities and intentions, based on what information he has been given, and what he's been able to develop himself, say from prisoner interrogation, that sort of thing.

"But he has not been trained in, and has no experience with, the kind of-I guess the word is 'strategic'- intelligence that we're dealing with here..."

He stopped when he saw confusion clouding Moore's eyes. He realized that he'd been beating around the bush; this was not the place to be doing that.

"To put a point on it, Moore," he said. "In my opinion, Colonel Goettge is not as good an intelligence officer as he thinks he is... nor as knowledgeable, nor for that matter as bright. Keep that in mind."

"Yes, Sir," Moore said. Astonishment was all over his face. He never imagined he'd hear an officer say such a thing about another officer.

"Question?" Banning asked. "Questions?"

"Several hundred," Moore said.

"But one in particular?"

"Why am I being told all this?" Moore asked, and then remembered to append, "Sir?"

" 'In for a penny, in for a pound,'" Banning quoted Pickering. "You're now part of the team, Sergeant. In Captain Pickering's judgment, since you have been made aware of the price of a loose mouth, it makes more sense to bring you in on anything and everything that will help you do your job-which you now know is analysis of intercepted enemy messages-than it would be to make a decision every time something came up whether or not you should be told about it."

"I see," Moore said thoughtfully.

"Just one more thing: You are never, under any circumstances, to tell anyone that you have been given access to MAGIC."

(Four) Even after all that Major Banning had explained to him in the kitchen earlier, Moore sat for a long time in the butler's cubicle listening to the conversation in the library before he even began to understand what was going on. But finally, it began slowly to make sense: In about a month the 1st Marine Division would invade several islands in the Solomons. Colonel Goettge, who was the Intelligence Officer of the 1st Marines, had very little intelligence information, maps or anything else, that the Division would need in order to launch the invasion. So he was understandably desperate for whatever information he could get. He'd come to Melbourne after Major Dillon told him that he and Captain Pickering were old friends, and that Pickering could be prevailed upon to use his influence at MacArthur's SHSWPA (Supreme Headquarters, South West Pacific Area).

That wasn't all Moore learned that evening. There were fireworks too.

"Hell, it's all over Washington, Flem, that you and Dugout Doug are asshole buddies," Major Dillon said at one point.

And Captain Pickering jumped all over Major Dillon almost before the words were out of Dillon's mouth.

If Captain Pickering's furious defense of MacArthur's brains and personal courage and his outrage that Major Dillon would dare call him "Dugout Doug" was not so intense, actually frightening, the ass-chewing he gave Dillon would have been funny. Moore was almost pleased to learn that the dignified Naval officer who was now his boss had a completely unsuspected flair for obscenely colorful phraseology. It would have been the envy of any Parris Island Drill Sergeant. Among other things-and there were many other things-he told Major Dillon that he wouldn't make a pimple on a real Marine's ass.

But the ass-chewing he gave to Major Dillon was frightening... so frightening that at one point Colonel Goettge even tried to apologize and leave.

Probably, Moore decided, because he didn't want to risk exacerbating the already hostile relations between SHSWPA and the Navy, which of course included the Marines.

"No, Colonel, you stay," Captain Pickering told him. "I certainly don't hold you responsible for Diarrhea Mouth here. Let's have another drink to calm down, and then try to figure out how to help the 1st Division."

Five more people came in the library before they all went in for dinner: Colonel Willoughby, who spoke-Moore noted-with a faint German accent and who was introduced as the SHSWPA G-2; then two women, a U.S. Navy Nurse and some kind of Australian Navy enlisted woman; and finally two Australian Navy Officers.

One of them was introduced as "Commander Feldt."

"Commander Feldt, Colonel," Pickering explained to Goettge, "commands the Royal Australian Navy Coastwatcher Establishment."

Moore tried to get a look at Commander Feldt through the duct, but was unable to see him. He decided that the other Australian officer worked for Feldt, or with him anyhow.

The women baffled him for a long time; but from what was said, he eventually understood that they were the girlfriends of two Marines who were off on some island with the Coastwatchers. And that answer raised another fascinating question: What were these women doing at a dinner where all sorts of classified information was being discussed?

The answer to that, when he finally thought of it, was quite simple. Captain Pickering decided who could be told what. In this case, obviously, he had decided that these two women-who were in uniform themselves and whose men were off on a secret mission-could be trusted to keep their mouths shut about that mission, and for that matter, about anything else.

Proof of that came a little later, just before they went into dinner and the women went to "powder their noses."

"Nice girls," Colonel Willoughby said approvingly.

"Women, Colonel," Commander Feldt corrected him, somewhat nastily. "Daphne has already lost one man, her husband, to this sodding war."

"He was a Coastwatcher?"

"No," Feldt answered. "He was a sergeant in the sodding Royal Signals. Our sodding politicians sent most of our men to sodding Africa, which is where he caught it."

He paused, apparently having seen something on Willoughby's face. "Did that remark offend you, Colonel?"

By now Moore was convinced that Feldt was more than a little drunk.