The Winds of War

to get left by that Clipper.”

“No problem.” Kip’s voice rang with magisterial authority. “They won’t leave without you. I’ll see to that.”

Pug found the palace depressing, for all the handsomely tiled spaces and rich dark furniture. Under the slow-turning fan, the bed in his room was covered in gold-and-silver brocade. New nickel plumbing in the vast bathroom gushed wonderful hot water. But the silence! The Guamanian stewards in their snowy mess jackets stole around like spirits. He and the governor seemed to be the only white men here, for the marine lieutenant had driven off to the bars. From the other end of the palace, Pug could hear the clink of silver and china as he dressed.

In a sombrely magnificent Spanish dining room, at one end of a long gleaming black table, the two Americans ate a dinner made up wholly of frozen or canned stores from home. Kip Tollever maintained his gubernatorial dignity through the first course or two, asking polite questions about his old friends in Berlin and about the situation in Manila. But as he drank glass after glass of wine, the facade cracked, then fell apart. Soon he was expressing friendly envy of Pug and admitting that his assignment was dismal. The younger officers could go to The Bucket of Blood, or drink and play cards at the club. The governor had to sit it out alone in the palace. He slept badly. He missed his wife. But of course the women had had to go. If the Japs moved, Guam could not be held for a week. At Saipan and Tinian, a half hour away by air, Jap bombers lined the new air strips and big troop transports swung to their anchors. Guam had no military airfield.

As dessert was being served, four young officers in white appeared, led by the marine aide-de-camp.

“Well, well, here’s company,” said the governor. “These tender lads come in every night after dinner, Pug, and I educate them in the subtler mysteries of hearts. What do you say? Care for a game, or would you rather just shoot the breeze?”

Pug saw the youngsters’ faces light up at the mention of an alternative. Shading his voice toward lack of enthusiasm, he said, “Why, let’s play, I guess.”

The governor of Guam looked irresolutely from his visitor to the young officers. He held himself very straight, talking to his juniors; the thick gray hair, lean long-jawed face, and bright blue eyes should have made him formidable. Yet he seemed only tired and sad, hesitating over this small choice between habit and courtesy. The hearts game evidently was the high moment in the governor’s isolated days.

“Oh, what the hell,” Tollever said. “I don’t get to see a classmate very often, especially such a distinguished one. You young studs run along and amuse yourselves. See you tomorrow, same time.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said the marine officer, trying to sound disappointed. The four young officers vanished in a rapid tattoo of heels on tile.

Captain Tollever and Captain Henry sat long over brandy. What did Pug really think, Kip asked; would the Japs go, or was this buildup at Saipan just a bluff for the Washington talks? He had once served as attache in Tokyo, but the Japs were an enigma to him. The wrong people had gotten in the saddle, that was the trouble. The army had gained the power to confirm or veto the minister of war. That meant the army brass could overthrow any cabinet it didn’t like. Ever since then Japan had been going hell-bent for conquest; but would they really attack the United States? Some Japanese he had known had been the finest imaginable people, friendly to the United States and very worried about their militarists; on the other hand, Clipper travellers had been telling him blood-freezing stories of Japanese cruelties in China, especially toward white people who fell into their hands.

“And have you ever read about what the Jap army did, Pug, when they captured Nanking in ‘37? We were so steamed up about their sinking the Panay, we hardly paid attention. Why, they ran amuck. They raped twenty thousand Chinese women, so help me, and butchered most of ‘em afterward. I mean butchered — just that. Women’s thighs, heads, and tits, for God’s sake, were strewn in the streets! This is the truth, Pug. And they tied Chinamen together by the hundreds and mowed ‘em down with machine guns. They hunted kids in the street and shot ‘em like rabbits. They murdered maybe two hundred thousand civilians in a few days. All this is in official reports, Pug. It happened. I’ve had occasion to check into the facts, being somewhat personally interested, as you might say. And here I sit,” he went on, sloshing his fourth or fifth brandy into a shimmering balloon glass and rolling white eyeballs at his old classmate, “here I sit, with no aircraft, no warships, no ground troops, just a few sailors and a few marines. The Navy should order me to evacuate, but oh no, the politicians wouldn’t stand for that! The same politicians who refused to vote the money to fortify the island. No, here we’ll sit till they come. The fleet will never get here in time to save us.

“Pug, remember what the Lucky Bag said about me when we graduated? ‘Any one of Kip Tollever’s classmates would like to be in his shoes today, and even more, thirty years from today.’ Funny, isn’t it? Isn’t that the biggest laugh of all time? Come on, let’s have one more and listen to the midnight news from Tokyo.”

In the wood-panelled library, the governor manipulated the dials of a Navy receiver: a big black machine seven feet high that winked red, green, and yellow lights and emitted whistles and moans. A Japanese woman’s voice came through clearly. After recounting gigantic German victories around Moscow and predicting the early surrender of the Soviet Union, the voice went on in tones of glee to report a great uproar in the United States over the unmasking of Franklin Roosevelt’s secret war plans. The Chicago Tribune had obtained a document known as the Victory Program — Victor Henry sat up as the dulcet voice drawled “Vic-to-ly Plo-glam” — calling for an army of eight million men, a defensive war against Japan, and an all-out air attack on Germany from bases in England, to be followed by invasion of Europe in 1943. The newspaper, she announced, had patriotically printed the whole plan!

Roosevelt’s devilish schemes to drag America into war on the side of the colonialist plutocracies were now exposed; so the woman said. The American people were rising in anger. Congressmen were calling for impeachment of the White House deceiver. The White House was maintaining shameful silence, but the fairness and peaceful intent of the latest Japanese proposals — especially in the light of this secret warmongering Roosevelt plot — were being hailed throughout the United States. On and on the woman went, reading whole passages of the document from the Tribune. Pug recognized them. Some sentences were his own.

“What do you make of that, Pug? It’s a lot of poppycock, isn’t it?” Tollever yawned. “Some reporter got hold of a contingency staff study maybe, and blew it way up.”

“Sure. What else?”

Pug felt sick to the heart. If this could happen, the United States was infected bone-deep with decay. The Japs could grab the East Indies, even the Philippines: America would not fight. This betrayal of the highest national secret in a newspaper was a collapse of honor, it seemed to him, unlike anything in history. The only relieving aspect was that so bald and amazing was the treason, the Germans and the Japanese could probably not bring themselves to believe it, though of course they would make heavy propaganda of it.

“Time for me to go to bed.” Victor Henry shook his head and stood up.

“Hell, no, Pug. Sit down. How about an omelette, or something? My chef makes fine omelettes. In a half hour we’ll get the 8 A.M. news from San Francisco. This beast picks it up like it was next door. Let’s see if there’s anything to all this Chicago Tribune business. It’s always fun, checking Tokyo against San Francisco.”

Pug insisted on going back to the Pan American Hotel. The sense of doom enveloping him was thick enough without the added black misery emanating like a smell from the trapped governor of Guam, the faded hotshot of his Naval Academy class, maundering over his brandy. Tollever ordered up the omelettes all the same, and kept Victor Henry for another hour, talking about the old days in Manila when they had been next-door neighbors. His dread of loneliness was stark and terrible.

Sadly Tollever went at last to a telephone and summoned the marine officer, who arrived in the car in a few minutes. Four Guamanian stewards busied themselves with Pug’s valise and two handbags.

From the top of the palace stairway, Kip raised his voice. “Say, how about giving Kate a ring from Pearl? She’s back in our house in La Jolla. Tell her you saw me and that everything’s fine. She’s very interested in the Guam schools, you know. Tell her the enrollment’s way up for next term. And, you know, tell her I love her and all that stuff.”

“I sure will, Kip.”

“And say, you give my love to Rhoda, too. Will you? Of all the Navy wives I knew, she was the prettiest and the best — excepting my Kate, naturally.”

“I’ll tell her you said that, Kip,” Pug replied, chilled by Tollever’s use of the past tense about himself.