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McCoy's apartment was twice safe. When he was in town, he continued to gamble regularly with both Detective Sergeant Lester Chatworth of the Shanghai Police, and (not at the same time, of course, but when the local celebrity honored the Golden Dragon with his presence) with Lon Ci'iang, head of the Po'Ti Tong.

On the crowded street, he stopped first to buy a rice cake, and then flagged down a rickshaw.

He told the boy, a wiry, leather-skinned man of maybe twenty-five, to please take him to the Hotel Metropole, and the boy swung around to look at him in unabashed curiosity. It always shocked the Chinese to encounter a white face who spoke their language.

When the rickshaw delivered him in front of the Hotel Metropole, there were several Europeans (in Shanghai, that included Americans), among them a quartet of British officers, standing on the sidewalk there. The civilians looked at him with distaste, the officers with curiosity. When McCoy saluted crisply, one of the officers, as he returned the salute with a casual wave of his swagger stick, gave him a faint smile.

He is giving me the benefit of the doubt, McCoy thought, deciding that I wouldn't be coming here unless I were on duty. The civilians just don't like a place like this under any circumstances fouled by the presence of a Marine enlisted man.

He went to the desk and asked for the room number of the Reverend Mr. Feller. Captain Banning had been specific on the telephone about that. The missionary named Sessions was really a Marine lieutenant, but McCoy was to deal with a Reverend Feller and not the lieutenant.

As he crossed the lobby to the elevators, one of the bellboys offered to relieve him of the spare uniform, but McCoy waved him away.

The elevators were contained within an ornate metal framework, and the cage itself was glassed in. As it rose, it gave McCoy a view of the entire lobby: the potted palms, the leather couches and chairs, the hotel guests, the men already in linen and seersucker suits, and the women in their summer dresses. He could see the outlines of underwear beneath some of the dresses; and in the right light, some of the women-the younger ones mostly-showed ghostly, lovely legs.

McCoy saw few European women. He hadn't, he thought, spoken to a European woman in over six months, the only exceptions being the General's two Russian whores, and they didn't really count.

He walked down the wide, carpeted corridor to 514, and knocked at the door.

"Who is it?" an American female voice called after a moment.

"Corporal McCoy, ma'am," he called out. "Of the Fourth Marines. I'm here to see Reverend Feller."

"Oh, my!" she said. He heard in the tone of her voice either displeasure or fright that he was here. He wondered what the hell that was all about.

The door opened.

"I'm Mrs. Moore," she said. "Please come in. I'll have to fetch the Reverend. He's with Mr. Sessions."

She was a large woman, big boned, just on the wrong side of fat. She was, McCoy judged, maybe forty. With the well-scrubbed, makeup-free face of a woman who took religion seriously. She had light brown hair, braided and pinned to the side of her head. And she wore a cotton dress, with long sleeves and buttons fastened up to the throat. Hanging from her neck was a four-inch Christian cross, made of wood.

"Thank you," McCoy said.

"Are you the man who was originally supposed to come?" she asked.

"I don't think I understand you," McCoy said.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "I'll go fetch the Reverend Feller," she added, smiling uneasily at him. She slid past him to the door, as if she were afraid he would pick her up, carry her into the adjacent bedroom, throw her on the bed, and work his sinful ways on her. The thought amused him, and he smiled, which discomfited her further.

He decided he'd have a word with the people in the convoy to watch what they said and did with her around. If somebody said "fuck," she would faint. Then her husband would bitch to the lieutenant in civilian clothes, and he would make trouble.

A minute later, the Reverend Glen T. Feller entered the room. He wore a broad, toothy smile, and his hand was extended farther than McCoy believed was anatomically possible.

He was of average height, slim, with dark hair plastered carefully to his skull, and a pencil-line mustache. He was immaculately shaven, and McCoy could smell his after-shave cologne.

"I'm the Reverend Feller," he said. "I'm happy to meet you, Corporal, and I'm sorry I wasn't here when you came."

"No problem, sir," McCoy said. The Reverend Feller's hand was soft, clammy, and limp. McCoy was a little repelled, but not surprised. It was the sort of hand he expected to find on a missionary.

Mrs. Moore moved around -them, so as to stand behind the Reverend and put him between herself and McCoy.

There was a rap at the door, and then "Mr." Sessions entered the room.

Even in the civilian clothes, McCoy decided, this guy looks like he's an officer. But like a regular platoon leader, not a hotshot intelligence officer from Headquarters, USMC, in Washington.

"You're Corporal McCoy?" Sessions asked, surprised. "The one they call 'Killer'?"

"Some people have called me that," McCoy said, uncomfortably.

"You're not quite what I expected, Corporal, from the way Captain Banning spoke of you," Sessions said.

Well, shit, Lieutenant, neither are you.

"Well, I'm McCoy," he said.

He was aware that Mrs. Moore was looking at him very strangely; he decided she had heard all about the Italian marines.

"How long have you been in the Corps, Corporal?" Lieutenant Sessions asked.

"About four years," McCoy said.

"There aren't very many men who make corporal in four years," Sessions said. "Or as young as you are."

McCoy looked at him, but said nothing.

"How old are you, Corporal?"

"Twenty- one, sir," Corporal Killer McCoy said.

"Presuming Captain Banning was not pulling your leg, Ed," the Reverend Feller said, laughing, "we must presume the Killer's bite is considerably worse than his bark."

I don't like this sonofabitch, McCoy thought.

"Killer," the Reverend Feller said, "we place ourselves in your capable hands."

"I said some people call me that, Reverend," McCoy said.

"I didn't mean you could."

"Well, I'm very sorry, Corporal," the Reverend Feller said. He looked at Sessions, as if waiting for him to remind Corporal McCoy that he was speaking to a high-ranking missionary. When Sessions was silent, Feller said, "I don't want us to get off on the wrong foot. No hard feelings?" "No," McCoy said.

(Two)

Motor Pool, First Bn, 4th Marines

Shanghai, China

14 May 1941

The Christian Missionary Alliance vehicles had been taken from the docks to the motor pool of the First Battalion, 4th Marines, where they were carefully examined by Sergeant Ernst Zimmerman, who was the assistant motor transport supervisor and would be the NCOIC (Noncommissioned Officer In Charge) of the Peking convoy.

The vehicles were greased and their oil was changed. And just to be on the safe side, Ernie Zimmerman changed the points and condensors and cleaned and gapped the spark plugs. Zimmerman, at twenty-six, was already on his third hitch, and had been in China since 1935.

He was a phlegmatic man, stocky, tightly muscled, with short, stubby fingers on hands that were surprisingly immaculate considering that he spent most of his duty time bent over the fender of one vehicle or another doing himself what he did not tryst the private and PFC mechanics to do.

He lived with a slight Chinese woman who had born him three children. She and the children had learned to speak German. Though he understood much more Chinese than he let on, Zimmerman spoke little more than he had the day he'd carried his sea bag down the gangway of the Naval Transport U.S.S. Henderson more than six years before.