Vandergrift looked at Pickering, and then smiled. "I think they call that the fortunes of war, Captain," he said, in mock solemnity, and then went on, changing the subject, "There's something I feel I should tell you: How well do you-perhaps that should be, 'did you'-know Lieutenant Cory?"

"You're speaking of the 5th Marines Japanese language officer?" Vandergrift nodded. "Not well, Sir."

"He is another of your Four-Months-in-the-Corps Marines, Pickering. He came in April. Direct commission. He was previously employed by the Navy. In Washington. Something to do with communications intelligence. Something hush-hush. I received a special message about him. I was directed to take whatever action was necessary to keep him from falling into Japanese hands."

"Jesus!" Pickering said, not aware he had spoken.

My God, he might have known about MAGIC! What idiot assigned him to an infantry regiment here?

"From your reaction, I gather you might know what that's all about," Vandergrift said. " 'Whatever action' was not defined. Did it mean that I should make an effort to see that he did not go on patrols like this one? Or was more unpleasant action on my part suggested?"

"Sir, there are some classified matters which would justify any action to keep people privy to them out of enemy hands."

"Are you in that category, Captain?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Then it won't be necessary for me to tell you not to put yourself in a position where you might fall into enemy hands, will it?"

"No, Sir."

"Unless there's something else going on that I don't know about, I think the thing for you and me to do is try to get some sleep. There's nothing else that can be done about Goettge and his people tonight."

"Yes, Sir," Pickering said. "Sir, is our communications in to Pearl Harbor?"

"As far as I know."

"I have a message to send," Pickering said. "I have authority, Sir..."

"I know all about your authority, Pickering: You don't have to ask my permission to radio the Secretary of the Navy, and I don't have the authority to ask what you're saying to him."

He thinks, Pickering thought, that I am going to radio Washington that Cory may have been captured by the Japanese. I hadn't even thought about that. But I'll do that, too.

"With your permission, Sir?" Pickering said.

Vandergrift smiled, nodded, and waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal.

"For what it's worth, I share Colonel Hunt's sentiments about you, Pickering," Vandergrift said.

(Two) The duty officer in the communications section of Headquarters. 1st Marine Division was a second lieutenant. He was dozing, but woke up when Pickering entered the small, sandbag walled room.

"May I help you, Colonel?" he asked, getting to his feet.

"I'm Captain Pickering. I need to send a radio, classified TOP SECRET. Are you a crypto officer?"

"Yes, Sir, I am, but... Captain, what's your authority?"

Pickering took his orders, wrapped in waterproof paper, from his pocket and showed them to the young officer.

"If that won't do it for you, Lieutenant, call General Vandergrift."

"This will do, Sir. Where's the message?"

"I haven't written it yet," Pickering said. "Sergeant, you want to get up and let me at that typewriter?"

The sergeant, who had been monitoring his radio, waiting for traffic, looked at the lieutenant for guidance. The lieutenant nodded. The sergeant got up, and Pickering sat down at the typewriter. There was a blank sheet of paper in it.

Pickering looked at the lieutenant.

"The priority immediately below 'Operational Immediate' is 'Urgent,' right?"

"Yes, Sir."

Pickering tapped the balls of his fingers together impatiently as he mentally composed the message, and then he began to type. He typed with skill. He had taken up typing to pass time as a junior officer at sea. It wasn't too much later than that when he learned that doing the typing himself was much faster than dictating to a secretary.

URGENT.

FROM: HQ FIRST MARINE DIVISION.

TO: CINCPAC.

0045 13AUG42.

FOLLOWING CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET FROM CAPTAIN FLEMING PICKERING USNR FOR EYES ONLY SECNAVY.

WASHINGTON DC.

1. LOSS IN COMBAT OF COLONEL FRANK GOETTGE 1ST MARDIV G2, CAPTAIN WILLIAM RINGER 5TH.

MARINES S2 AND 1ST LT RALPH CORY 5TH MARINES LANGUAGE OFFICER REQUIRES IMMEDIATE ACTION TO AIRSHIP QUALIFIED REPLACEMENT PERSONNEL.

2. DESPITE URGENT NECESSITY TO FURNISH 1ST MARDIV WITH QUALIFIED PERSONNEL I URGE IN.

STRONGEST POSSIBLE TERMS THAT EXISTING POLICIES PROHIBITING ASSIGNMENT OF PERSONNEL WHO HAVE HAD ACCESS TO HIGHLY CLASSIFIED INFORMATION TO DUTIES WHERE THEY MAY FALL INTO ENEMY HANDS BE STRICTLY OBSERVED.

3. PENDING ARRIVAL OF QUALIFIED REPLACEMENT, THE UNDERSIGNED HAS TEMPORARILY ASSUMED.

DUTIES OF 1ST MARDIV G2.

SIGNED FLEMING PICKERING CAPTAIN USNR.

END TOP SECRET EYES ONLY SECNAV FROM PICKERING CAPT USN G2 1ST MARDIV.

He tore the paper from the typewriter and read it.

If that second paragraph doesn't tell Haughton that some damned fool assigned Cory, who almost certainly knew about MAGIC, to an infantry battalion, he's not as smart as I think he is.

He handed the sheet of paper to the lieutenant.

"Encrypt it and get it out as soon as you can," he said.

"Yes, Sir," the lieutenant said. He read the message.

"My God, they're all dead? What the hell happened?"

"It's a long, sad story, Lieutenant," Pickering said and walked out of the commo bunker.

(Three) SUPREME HEADQUARTERS SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREA.

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA 13 AUGUST 1942.

On the plane from Pearl Harbor, Lieutenant Colonel George F. Dailey, USMC, seriously considered doing something about the pristine newness of his silver oak leaves. The problem was that he didn't know what would do the job... He didn't think that rubbing them-on a carpet, say-would effectively dim their gloss. And working on them with, say, a nail file, would probably produce a silver lieutenant colonel's leaf that looked like somebody had worked it over with a nail file.

Before he fell asleep, he thought that when he got to his new billet in Australia, before he actually reported in, he would find some sand and rub it into his insignia with his Blitz cloth. The idea was amusing. After eight years in the Corps, he'd worn out probably twenty Blitz cloths in practically daily use putting a high shine on his insignia. He would now use one to dull it.

Lieutenant Colonel Dailey's concern was based less on personal vanity than on his belief that he could function better in new duties if it was not immediately apparent that he had been promoted so recently. After all, he reasoned, he had been a lieutenant colonel only thirteen days. And he wanted to do well in his new billet.

When he actually reached Brisbane, so many things happened so quickly that he forgot about taking the shine off his new silver oak leaves.

For one thing, there was a general's aide-de-camp, a lieutenant, waiting for him at the airport, with a 1940 Packard Clipper staff car, a driver, and an orderly.

"Colonel," the lieutenant said, "on behalf of Supreme Headquarters, SWPA, and General Willoughby specifically, welcome to Australia. The General asked me to express his regret that he couldn't meet you here himself, but he's tied up with the Supreme Commander at the moment."

The Supreme Commander, of course, was General Douglas MacArthur. General MacArthur was a full, four-star general. Dailey had never seen a four-star general. There were no four-star generals in the Marine Corps. The Commandant of the Corps was only a three-star lieutenant general. And until recently, his title had been Major General Commandant, and he had had but two stars.

"It's very good of you to meet me," Dailey said.

"I'll have the sergeant get your luggage, Sir," the aide said, "and then we'll try to get you settled. General Willoughby hopes we can do that by sixteen hundred, so there will be a chance for him to have a quick word with you before you see the Supreme Commander-he'll take you to see him- which we have penciled in for sixteen forty-five."

My God, I'm going to meet MacArthur!

"If I'm to see the General," Dailey said, "either general, I really am going to have to have a uniform pressed."

"No problem, Sir," the aide said. "There's a valet service in Lennon's. I'll have a word with the manager and explain the situation."

"Lennon's?"

"Lennon's Hotel, Sir. Sometimes irreverently known as 'The Lemon.' It's the senior staff officer's quarters, Sir."

"Splendid," Dailey said. He was human. He was not yet really accustomed to being addressed as "colonel," and liked the sound of it; and the phrase "senior staff officer" had a nice ring to it, too, especially since it had been made clear that he was regarded as such by at least one general officer of General Douglas MacArthur's general staff.

Lennon's Hotel turned out to be very nice. It was a rambling, turn-of-the-century structure with high ceilings and a good deal of polished brass and gleaming wood. As General Willoughby's aide led him across the lobby, Dailey saw a bar, and then smiled when he saw the brass sign above its door: GENTLEMEN'S SALOON.

It was well patronized in the middle of the afternoon, Dailey saw, by men wearing a wide variety of uniforms. He did not see a Marine uniform, however, and wondered how many-if any-other Marines were assigned here. The subject had not been mentioned in the briefings he had been given in Washington and at CINCPAC in Pearl Harbor.

At 1555 hours, General Willoughby's Packard Clipper deposited Lieutenant Colonel Dailey at the main entrance to Supreme Headquarters, South West Pacific. It was a modern office building. Dailey wondered what it had originally been, but a new sign, reading SUPREME HEADQUARTERS, SOUTH WEST PACIFIC AREA, had been placed on the building wall over the spot where he was sure the building's name had been chiseled into the marble.

General Willoughby's aide read his mind: "It used to be an insurance company, Colonel. The Aussie military does things right. When they need a building, they just tell the occupants to get out." "I see," Dailey said.

He saw one more thing of interest before an Army Military Policeman in a white cap cover pushed open the door for them. He saw a Studebaker President pull into a parking spot marked RESERVED FOR SENIOR OFFICERS. A Marine Corps emblem was on its door, and the letters USMC were painted on the hood. A Marine sergeant, carrying a briefcase, got but and headed for the entrance. Obviously, there was at least one other Marine officer assigned here, one senior enough to have his own staff car and driver.

"I see that I am not alone," he said to the aide. "There's a Marine."

"He's one of the cave-dwellers, Colonel."

"I beg pardon?"

"Classified documents and cryptography are two floors underground. They call the people who work down there in the dark 'cave-dwellers.'"

"I see."

"I think I heard someone say that that sergeant is a Japanese-language linguist."

"I see," Dailey said. He was about to ask how come a sergeant had a staff car when the obvious answer came to him. It belonged to a Marine officer of appropriate rank. He wished they'd gotten into that in the briefings. He would have liked to know if he was junior to or senior to the other Marine officer. Or officers.

The elevator took them to the eighth floor.

Brigadier General Charles Willoughby greeted Dailey cordially, offered him coffee, quite unnecessarily apologized for not having met him personally at the airport, and asked if he found his quarters satisfactory.

And he asked an odd question: "Does the phrase MAGIC mean anything to you, Colonel?"

"No, Sir. I can't say that it does."

"It's of no importance," Willoughby said.

Dailey was no fool. He knew that General Willoughby had not asked him about MAGIC, whatever the hell that was, because it was "of no importance," but very probably because it was important, and he expected Dailey to know what it was.

I wonder what the hell MAGIC is, and why haven't I been told about it?

At 1643, they were in General Douglas MacArthur's outer office. General Willoughby introduced Dailey to Lieutenant Colonel Sidney Huff, MacArthur's aide-de-camp. Dailey was reminded again what august company he was now keeping. A lieutenant colonel for an aide-de-camp!

At 1645 exactly, Colonel Huff formally announced, "The Supreme Commander will see you now, gentlemen."

General Douglas MacArthur looked exactly like the picture of him that had been on the cover of Life magazine. When he rose from behind his huge, mahogany desk, he was wearing a khaki shirt open at the neck and pleated khaki trousers. The famous, battered, heavily gold embroidered cap was sitting in MacArthur's IN basket. Dailey looked for but did not see MacArthur's famous corncob pipe.

"General, may I present Lieutenant Colonel Dailey? Colonel, the Supreme Commander."

Dailey remembered that it was the Army's odd custom to salute indoors, and did so. MacArthur returned it with a vague gesture toward his forehead and then offered that hand to Dailey.

"We are very pleased to have you here, Colonel," he said.

"I am honored to be here, Sir."

"To clear the air between us, Colonel..." MacArthur said, interrupting himself to say, "Please, be seated. There's coffee of course, but it's nearly seventeen hundred-what is it you sailors say? Time to sink the main brace?-and at that hour I always like a little pick-me-up."

"Thank you, Sir."

"There is no naval officer for whom I have higher professional or personal regard than Admiral Chester Nimitz," MacArthur said, coming very quickly to the reason why Dailey was there. "I regard him as a brother."