"Get in the car, you sodding bastard," Feldt said. "You drive. The sodding steering wheel is on the wrong side."
Lieutenant Commander Eric Feldt rose somewhat unsteadily to his feet.
"If you will excuse us, gentlemen," he said, "the time has come for me to tell Captain Pickering to bugger off before I am too pissed to do so."
"Ed," Pickering said, as he stood up from the dinner table, "you and Wing Commander Foster, too."
Feldt looked, not at all friendly, at Wing Commander Foster.
"You, too, Wing Commander?" he asked. "I wondered what the hell a Wing Commander was doing chauffeuring Pickering around."
Wing Commander Foster was aware of Lieutenant Commander Feldt's reputation even before Air Vice-Marshal Devon-Jaynes and Captain Fleming Pickering warned him that Feldt was difficult. As they all ate dinner, while Feldt bitterly criticized everyone involved in the war except the Japanese, Foster had managed to keep his mouth shut- though with an effort.
But now, momentarily, he lost control.
"One does what one is ordered to, Commander," he said icily. "In this instance, I am here at the direction of Air Vice-Marshal Devon-Jaynes."
"Air Vice-Marshal Devon-Jaynes?" Feldt replied. "Well, sod him, too."
He turned and marched out of the room. Pickering shook his head and made a gesture with his hand to Wing Commander Foster, signifying both an apology for Feldt and an order to say nothing more.
"Sorry, Sir," Foster said.
"Commander Feldt," Pickering said, touching Foster's arm, "is both a remarkable man, and a man whose contributions to this goddamn war cannot be overstated."
"Yes, Sir," Foster said, and then followed Pickering into Feldt's office. Banning brought up the rear.
Feldt was standing behind his desk, pouring scotch into a glass.
"I presume," he said nastily, "that since the Wing Commander is here at the direction of Air-Vice Marshal Whatsisname that he has the sodding Need to Know whatever it is we're going to talk about?"
"Wing Commander Foster has a TOP SECRET OPERATION PESTILENCE clearance," Pickering said evenly. He took a business-sized envelope from his inner jacket pocket and handed it to Feldt. "That's an authorization from Admiral Boyer to give Wing Commander Foster access to Coastwatcher classified information through TOP SECRET."
Feldt looked at the envelope, and then tossed it unopened on his desk.
"I'll take your word for it," he said. "Ok. Let's get to it."
"Why don't we uncover the map?" Pickering said.
"Why don't we?" Feldt said. He turned around and faced the wall behind his desk. A four-by-six-foot sheet of plywood, hinged at the top, lay against the wall. With some difficulty, Feldt raised it, then attached a length of chain which held it horizontally, exposing the map beneath.
The map displayed the Solomon Islands area from New Britain and New Ireland in the North, through Santa Isabel and Guadalcanal in the Southeast, and the upper tip of Australia to the Southwest. It was covered with a sheet of celluloid, on which had been marked in grease pencil the location of the thirty or more Coastwatchers, together with their radio call signs.
"Why don't you have a look at that, Wing Commander?" Pickering said.
Foster went to the map and studied it carefully in silence for more than a minute.
"This is the first time I've seen this..." he said.
"We don't publish it in the sodding Times, for Christ's sake," Feldt said.
"... and I had no idea how many stations you have," Foster concluded, ignoring him.
"Not as many as we would like. Or had," Feldt said. "Note the red Xs."
There were a dozen or more locations which had red grease pencil Xs drawn through them.
"No longer operational, I gather?" Foster said.
"No longer operational, for one reason or another," Feldt said. "Betrayed by natives. Or felled by one sodding tropical disease or another. Or equipment failure. Or the sodding Japs just got lucky and found them."
"We are going to land on Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Gavutu on August first," Pickering said. He stopped and then went on. "Actually, I don't think there is any way they can make that schedule. There's going to be a rehearsal in the Fiji Islands first. And then they'll probably land on Guadalcanal on seven August or eight August."
"If then," Ed Banning said, a little bitterly. "I heard what a mess things are in in New Zealand."
"It'll have to be by then," Pickering replied. "If the Japanese get that airfield near Lunga Point on Guadalcanal operational-even for Zeroes, not to mention bombers-I hate to think what they could do to an invasion fleet."
"The point of all this?" Feldt asked.
"At the moment, the bulk of Japanese aerial assets are in- or around-Rabaul. When they attack the invasion fleet, or the islands themselves after we land, they will use planes based at Rabaul. The more warning we have, obviously, the better. I am concerned with Buka."
"Buka is up and running," Feldt said.
Foster searched on the map and found Buka, a small island at the tip of Bougainville.
"Here?" he said, but it was more of a statement than a question.
"Buka is the only Coastwatcher station, Wing Commander," Feldt said, "manned by U.S. Marine Corps personnel. Do you suppose that has anything to do with Captain Pickering's concern?"
Banning looked at Pickering and actually saw the blood drain from his face.
"There is a point, Eric," Pickering said icily, "when you cross the line from colorful curmudgeon to offensive horse's ass. At that point I will not tolerate any more of your drunken, caustic bullshit. You have passed that point. Do you take my meaning?"
"Not really," Feldt said, unrepentant. "Explain it to me."
"Let me put it this way: How would you like to spend the rest of this war counting life preservers in Melbourne?"
"Don't you threaten me!"
"If I don't have an apology in thirty seconds, I'm going to pick up that telephone and call Admiral Boyer and tell him that I have reluctantly come to agree with him about the necessity of relieving you."
"Sod you, Pickering."
'"We're not going to need the thirty seconds, I see," Pickering said. He walked to the desk and reached for the telephone.
He had it halfway to his ear when Feldt stayed his hand.