Pickering's solution to that was to add Moore to the MAGIC listen his own highly questionable authority. Pickering's decision caused Banning not a few problems, especially after Pickering left Australia. For instance, because the First Sergeant and Company Commander of the Headquarters Company could not be told that Moore was analyzing intercepted Japanese messages for the Supreme Commander, these men often decided that Sergeant Moore's contribution to the war effort should be as Charge of Quarters or Sergeant of the Guard. To spare Moore from these tasks, and to get him as far as possible out-of-sight-out-of-mind, Banning moved Moore into Water Lily Cottage.
It took the thorough agents of the CIC only a few days to learn that Mrs. Feller was taking Sergeant Moore into her bed.
Indeed, the agents were aware that she had taught him sexual acts that were specifically proscribed by military regulation.
When CIC informed Banning of this illicit relationship, he did nothing to end it. For one thing, it didn't surprise him. For another, maybe getting a little would improve the bitch's personality. For another, calling her attention to it would make it obvious to her that she was under CIC surveillance. For another-and this was the deciding factor:
Mrs. Feller arrived in Australia on the same day Captain Pickering left for Guadalcanal. According to CIC, on that day Mrs. Feller went straight from the airport into Captain Pickering's bed. After learning this, Banning realized that his hands were tied where Mrs. Ellen Feller was concerned. He could complain to only one person about her, and that person was Fleming Pickering, and that was a hornet's nest he decided not to disturb. He told this to no one, not even Pluto.
It didn't take Mrs. Feller long to prove that she was not only very skilled in protecting her ass, but dangerously ruthless in doing so.
Shortly after the Guadalcanal invasion, the First Marine Division G-2 and most of the Japanese-language interpreters of the division were killed in action. The Marine Corps liaison officer at SWPOA received orders to go to Guadalcanal as the G-2's replacement. Because he was a Japanese linguist, similar orders went to Sergeant John Marston Moore. No one in Headquarters, USMC, knew that he was privy to MAGIC and should be kept far away from any place where there was the slightest risk of his falling into enemy hands.
Mrs. Feller, meanwhile, saw in his sudden transfer the chance to end a potentially sticky situation. As nice a boy as he was, John was only a sergeant; and senior civilian employees with the assimilated rank of lieutenant commander should really not be cavorting in bed with common enlisted men. She was only too aware that eventually someone would find out.
Knowing full well that Moore should not be sent anywhere near Guadalcanal, Mrs. Ellen Feller not only kept her mouth shut about his MAGIC access, but ordered Moore to say nothing about it either. By the time Pluto Hon and Banning (who was in Townsville with Commander Feldt) learned what was going on, Moore was on a plane for Guadalcanal. And by the time Moore could be ordered off Guadalcanal, he'd been seriously wounded.
That was bad enough. But in Banning's view, this very bad situation just missed becoming a disaster. If Moore had been captured, MAGIC would have been compromised and shut down.
When it was over, Banning fully expected to be relieved or even court-martialed. He was the senior officer of the Office of Management Analysis in Australia, and the responsibility for the failure was clearly his. But Colonel Rickabee had apparently determined that since Moore's transfer was a fluke and that MAGIC was not compromised, he would leave things the way they were.
After the Moore fiasco, Pluto Hon and Ed Banning devised a system for dealing with Mrs. Feller: Her responsibility would now include only the delivery of MAGIC to MacArthur and Willoughby. She would no longer work the decoding machine or produce analyses of MAGIC intercepts. That suited her fine. The cryptographic facilities, known as the dungeon, were in the basement of the Commerce Hotel. She didn't like it down there, anyway. And she could still present Hon's analyses as her own and thus bask in General Willoughby's appreciation of her genius.
If anything came up that Banning or Hon thought should be delivered to MacArthur personally, they did so. Usually Pluto would slip whatever it was to MacArthur before or after a bridge game.
The message from KCY to HWS came in like any other: HWS, KCY. HWS, KCY.
SB CODE.
SWPOA Radio, this is CINCPAC Radio. Standby to copy an encoded message.
The high-speed operator, an Army staff sergeant, reached for his telegraph key and tapped out KCY, HWS, GA.
CINCPAC Radio, this is SWPOA Radio, go ahead.
He then turned from the radio equipment on the table before him to a fairly large, black device equipped with a typewriter keyboard and put his fingers on the keys.
As the message came in, in five-character blocks, he typed it out. The five-character blocks made no sense at all; and the next stage in the process was equally odd; for his typing did not form letters on a sheet of paper. Rather it made perforations, like Braille, on a narrow strip of paper. This fed out of the side of the machine into an olive drab wastebasket.
Finally the message was finished.
The SWPOA operator turned back to his key and tapped out: KCY, HWS, UR 09 x 27 x 34 AK.
CINCPAC Radio, SWPOA Radio acknowledges -receipt of your message number 34 of 27 September.
Pearl Harbor immediately replied: HWS, KCY, SB CODE.
Pearl Harbor had another coded message to transmit.
The operator tapped: KCY, HWS, HI CINCPAC, SWPOA, hold one moment, please.
"Charley," the high-speed operator called to another highspeed operator, "can you take KCY Code on Six?"
The other operator checked his equipment, called out, "Got it," and tapped out, KCY, HWS, GA on his key, and then turned to the tape device by his side.
The staff sergeant who had taken Message 09 x 27 x 34 left his chair, retrieved the perforated tape from the wastebasket, walked across the room to another machine, turned it on, and fed the tape into a slot in the side of the device.
This device was something like a Teletype machine. It had a roll of paper feeding onto a platen, and the keys (but not the keyboard) of a typewriter. After a moment, with a clatter, the decoded message began to appear on the paper.
FROM CINCPAC RADIO PEARL HARBOR
TO SWPOA RADIO BRISBANE
27SEP42 NUMBER 34
TOP-SECRET PKFDD DSDTS HSJS POWST MNCOI SCHRE
"Shit!" the staff sergeant said softly, and then reached up and pushed the BREAK key. The machine stopped clattering. He pushed the EJECT TAPE button, and the strip of perforated paper began to back out of the device.
He walked to the desk of the officer on duty.
"Sir, I've got a MAGIC," he said.
The officer, a Signal Corps captain, nodded and looked around the room.
"I don't know where the hell Swift is," he thought aloud.
"Can you run it down?"
"Yes, Sir," the staff sergeant said. Actually he was glad that PFC Swift, the messenger, was fucking off someplace. It gave him an excuse to get out of the radio room for a few minutes, if only down to the dungeon.
He walked to the steel door of the radio room, took from a peg a.45 in a leather holster on a web belt, strapped it on, and then left.
The radio room was on the roof of what had been the Commerce Hotel. It was necessary to walk down a flight of stairs to reach the elevators. When an elevator came, he rode it to the basement. After that, he went down a long, brick-walled corridor until he reached another steel door. This one was guarded by two soldiers armed with.45 pistols and submachine guns.
"Lieutenant Hon in there?" he asked, jerking his thumb toward the steel door.
"Yeah," the guard said and reached for a telephone. It was a direct line. When he picked it up, the other end-in the cryptographic room behind two more- steel doors-rang.
"Lieutenant, there's something out here for you," the guard said, adding "Yes, Sir," and then hanging up. "He'll be right out." Ninety seconds later, a first lieutenant of the Army Signal Corps, a tall, muscular, heavyset Oriental, came through the door. His sleeves were rolled up and his tie was pulled down.
"Hey, Sergeant," he said in a thick Boston accent, "when did they turn you into an errand boy?"
"When they couldn't find Swifty, Lieutenant," the staff sergeant said.
"Swifty is probably out spreading goodwill, or maybe pollen, among the indigenous population," Lieutenant Hon said.