Gomel watched the strangling with his lips pursed studiously and primly. He belched. “Pardon me,” he said to no one at all.
Raymond let the body drop, then walked along the line of men to the end of the row, rounded it, and returned to his chair. There was a rustle of light applause which Yen Lo ignored, so it stopped almost instantly, as when inadvertent applause breaks out during an orchestral rest in the performance of a symphony.
“Very good, Raymond,” Yen said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Raymond, who is that little fellow sitting next to the captain?”
The sergeant looked to his right. “That’s Bobby Lembeck, sir. Our mascot, I guess you could call him.”
“He doesn’t look old enough to be in your Army.”
“Frankly, sir, he isn’t old enough but there he is.”
Yen opened the only drawer in the table in front of Raymond and took out an automatic pistol. “Shoot Bobby, Raymond,” he ordered. “Through the forehead.” He handed the pistol to Raymond who then walked along the front of the stage to his right.
“Hi, Ben,” he said to the captain.
“Hiya, kid.”
Apologizing for presenting his back to the audience, Raymond then shot Bobby Lembeck through the forehead at point-blank range. He returned to his place at the table, offering the pistol butt to Yen Lo who motioned that it should be put in the drawer. “That was very good, Raymond,” he said warmly and with evident appreciation. “Sit down.” Then Yen turned to face his audience and made a deep, mock-ceremonial bow, smiling with much self-satisfaction.
“Oh, marvelous!” the shorter Chinese, Wen Ch’ang, cried out in elation.
“You are to be congratulated on a most marvelous demonstration, Yen Lo,” said the other Chinese, Pa Cha, loudly and proudly, right on top of his colleague’s exclamation. The Russians broke out into sustained applause and were tasteful enough not to yell “Encore!” or “Bis!” in the bourgeois French manner. The young lieutenant who had been picking his nose shouted “Bravo!” then immediately felt very silly. Gomel, who was applauding as heavily and as rapidly as the others, yelled hoarsely, “Excellent! Really, Yen, really, really, excellent!” Yen Lo put one long forefinger to his lips in an elaborate gesture. The line of soldiers watched the demonstration from the stage with tolerance, even amusement. Yen turned to them. The force of the bullet velocity at such close range had knocked little Bobby Lembeck over backward in his chair. His corpse without a forehead, never having known a fat lady or a tall one, sprawled backward with its feet still hooked into the front legs of the overturned chair, as though it were a saddle which had slipped off a running colt.
Mavole’s body had fallen forward. The color of the face was magenta into purple and the eyes seemed to pop out toward Yen in a diligent effort to pay him the utmost attention.
The other men of the patrol sat relaxed, with the pleasant look of fathers with hang-overs who are enjoying watching a little girls’ skating party in the moist, cool air of an indoor rink on a Saturday morning.
“Captain Marco?” Yen said briskly.
“Yes, sir.”
“To your feet, Captain, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Captain, when you return with your patrol to your command headquarters what will be among the first duties you will undertake?”
“I will submit my report on the patrol, sir.”
“What will you report?”
“I will recommend urgently that Sergeant Shaw be posted for the Medal of Honor, sir. He saved our lives and he took out a full company of enemy infantry.”
“A full company!” Gomel said indignantly when this sentence was translated to him. “What the hell is this?”
“We can spare an imaginary company of infantry for this particular plan, Mikhail,” Berezovo said irritably.
“All right! If we are out to humiliate our brave Chinese ally in the newspapers of the world we might as well go ahead and make it a full battalion,” Gomel retorted, watching the Chinese representatives carefully as he spoke.
“We don’t object, Comrade,” the older Chinese said. “I can assure you of that.”
“Not at all,” said the younger Chinese official.
“However, thank you for thinking of the matter in that light, just the same,” said the first Chinese.
“Not at all,” Gomel told him.
“Thank you, Captain Marco,” Yen Lo told the officer. “Thank you, everyone,” he told the audience. “That will be all for this session. If you will assemble your questions, we will review here in one hour, and in the meantime I believe General Kostroma has opened a most pleasant little bar for all of us.” Yen motioned Raymond to his feet. Then, putting an arm around his shoulders, he walked him out of the auditorium saying, “We will have some hot tea and a chat, you and I, and to show my appreciation for the way you have worked today, I am going to dip into your unconscious and remove your sexual timidity once and for all.” He smiled broadly at the young man. “More than that no man can do for you, Raymond,” he said, and they passed from the room, out of the view of the patient, seated patrol.
There was a final review for the patrol that evening, conducted by Yen Lo’s staff as a last brush-up to recall the details of the imaginary engagement against the enemy that, in fantasy, Raymond had destroyed. In all, Yen Lo’s research staff provided four separate versions of the overall feat of arms, as those versions might have been witnessed from four separate vantage points in the action and then later exchanged between members of the patrol. Each patrol member had been drilled in individual small details of what Raymond had done to save their lives. They had been taught to mourn Mavole and Bobby Lembeck who had been cut off before Raymond could save them. They had absorbed their lessons well and now admired, loved, and respected Raymond more than any other man they had ever known. Their brains had not merely been washed, they had been dry-cleaned.
The captain was taught more facets of the lie than the others because he would have observed the action with a schooled eye and also would have assembled everyone else’s report. Raymond did not attend the final group drill. Yen had locked in his feat of valor personally, utilizing a pioneer development of induced autoscopic hallucination which allowed Raymond to believe he had seen his own body image projected in visual space, and he had given the action a sort of fairy-tale fuzziness within Raymond’s mind so that it would never seem as real to him as it always would remain to most of the other members of the patrol. By seeming somewhat unreal it permitted Raymond to project a sense of what would seem like admirable modesty to those who would question Raymond about it.
The patrol, less Ed Mavole and Bobby Lembeck, was loaded aboard a helicopter that night and flown into central Korea, near the west coast, not too far from where they had been captured. The Soviet pilot set the plane down on a sixteen-foot-square area that had been marked by flares. After that, no more than seventy minutes after they had been pointed on their way, the patrol came up to a U.S. Marine Corps outfit near Haeju, and they were passed back through the lines until they reached their own outfit the next afternoon. They had been missing in action for just less than four days, from the night of July 8 to the mid-afternoon of July 12. The year was 1951.
In the deepening twilight hours after the Americans had been sent back to their countrymen and his own work in the sector had been completed, Yen Lo sat with the thirty boys and girls of his staff in the evening circle on the lovely lawn behind the pavilion. He would tell them the beautiful old stories later when the darkness had come. While they had light he made his dry jokes about the Russians and amused them or startled them or flabbergasted them with the extent of his skill at origami, the ancient Japanese art of paperfolding. Working with squares of colored papers, Yen Lo astonished them with a crane that flapped its wings when he pulled its tail, or a puffed-up frog that jumped at a stroke along its back, or a bird that picked up paper pellets, or a praying Moor, a talking fish, or a nun in black and gray. He would
hold up a sheet of paper, move his hands swiftly as he paid out the gentle and delicious jokes, and lo!—wonderment dropped from his fingers, the paper had come to life, and magic was everywhere in the gentling evening air.
Three
THE NATION GUARDS ITS HIGHEST TRIBUTE for valor jealously. In the Korean War only seventy-seven Medals of Honor were awarded, with 5,720,000 personnel engaged. Of the 16,112,566 U.S. armed forces mobilized in World War II, only two hundred and ninety-two Medals of Honor were awarded. The Army reveres its Medal of Honor men, living and dead, above all others. A theater commander who later became President and a President who had formerly been an artillery captain both said that they would rather have the right to wear the Medal of Honor than be President of the United States.
After Abraham Lincoln signed the Medal of Honor bill on July 12, 1862, the decoration was bestowed in multitude; on one occasion to every member of a regiment. The first Medal of Honor was awarded by Secretary of War Stanton on March 15, 1863, to a soldier named Parrott who had been doing a bit of work in mufti behind enemy lines. Counting medals that were later revoked, about twenty-three hundred of them were awarded in the Civil War era, up to 1892. Hundreds were poured out upon veterans of the Indian campaigns, specifying neither locales nor details of bravery beyond “bravery in scouts and actions against the Indians.”
In 1897, for the first time, eyewitness accounts were made mandatory and applications could not be made by the candidate for the honor but had to be made by his commanding officer or some other individual who had personally witnessed his gallantry in action. The recommendation had to be made within one year of the feat of arms. Since 1897, when modern basic requirements were set down, only five hundred and seventy-seven Medals of Honor have been awarded to a total of 25,000,000 Americans in arms, which is why the presence of a medal winner can bring full generals to their feet, saluting, and has been known to move them to tears.
In 1904 the medal was protected from imitators and jewelry manufacturers when it was patented in its present form by its designer, Brigadier General George L. Gillespie. On December 19, 1904, he transferred the patent to “W. H. Taft and his successor or successors as Secretary of War of the United States of America.” In 1916, the Congress awarded to Medal of Honor winners a special status, providing the medal had been won by an action involving actual conflict with the enemy, distinguished by conspicuous gallantry or intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty. The special status provided that the Medal of Honor winner may travel free of charge in military aircraft; his son may get Presidential assistance in an appointment to West Point or Annapolis; if he is an enlisted man two dollars extra per month is added to his pay, and when he reaches the age of sixty-five he becomes eligible to receive a pension of $120 per year from which, if he smokes one package of cigarettes a day, he would have $11.85 left over for rent, food, hospitalization, entertainment, education, recreation, philanthropies, and clothing.
An Army board was convened in 1916 to review all instances of the award of the Medal of Honor since 1863 to determine whether or not any Medal of Honor had been awarded or issued “for any cause other than distinguished conduct involving actual conflict with the enemy.” Nine hundred and eleven names were stricken from the list, and lesser decorations were forthwith created so that, as Congress had demanded, “the Medal of Honor would be more jealously guarded.”
There was every reason for the awe in which Medal of Honor men were held. Some of their exploits included such actions as: had taken eight prisoners, killing four of the enemy in the process, while one leg and one arm were shattered and he could only crawl because the other leg had been blown off (Edwards); had captured a hundred and ten men, four machine guns, and four howitzers (Mallon and Gumpertz); wounded five times, dragged himself across the direct fire of three enemy machine guns to pull two of his wounded men to safety amid sixty-nine dead and two hundred and three casualties (Holderman); singly destroyed a fourteen-man enemy ambush of his battalion and, in subsequent actions, with his legs mangled by enemy grenade and shot through the chest, died taking a charge of eight enemy riflemen, killing them (Baker); held his battalion’s flank against advancing enemy platoons, used up two hundred rounds of ammunition, crawled twenty yards under direct fire to get more, only to be assailed by another platoon of the enemy, ultimately firing six hundred rounds, killing sixty and holding off all others to be one of twenty-three out of two hundred and forty of his comrades to survive the action (Knappenburger); a defective phosphorus bomb exploding inside his plane, blinding and severely burning him, the radio operator scooped up the blazing bomb in his arms and, with incalculable difficulty, hurled it through the window (Erwin).
Raymond waited in the Rose Garden of the White House while an assistant press secretary tried to talk to him. It was a bonny sunny day. Raymond was stirred by the building near him; moved by the color of the green, green grass. Raymond was torn and shamed and he felt soiled everywhere his spirit could feel. Raymond felt exalted, too. He felt proud of the building near him and proud of the man he was about to meet.
Raymond’s mother was across the garden with the press people, pulling her husband along behind her, explaining with brilliant smiles and leers when necessary that he was the new senator and Raymond’s father. Raymond, fortunately, could not hear her but he could watch her hand out cigars. They both handed out cigars whether the press people wanted cigars or not. Raymond’s mother was dressed up to about eight hundred dollars’ worth of the best taste on the market. The only jarring note was the enormous black purse she carried. It looked like a purse. It was a portable cigar humidor. She would have given the press people money, Raymond knew, but she had sensed somehow that it would be misunderstood.
All the cameras were strewn about in the grass while everybody waited for the President to arrive. Raymond wondered what would they do if he could find a sidearm some place and shoot her through the face—through that big, toothy, flapping mouth? Look how she held Johnny down. Look how she could make him seem docile and harmless. Look how she had kept him sober and had made him seem quiet and respectable as he shook hands so tentatively and murmured. Johnny Iselin was murmuring! He was crinkling his thick lips and making them prissy as he smirked under that great fist of a nose and two of the photographers (they must be his mother’s tame photographers) were listening to him as though he were harmless.
The airport. O Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. She had got the AP photographer by the fleshy part of his upper right arm and she had got Johnny by the fleshy part of his upper left arm and she had charged them forward across that concrete apron at the National Airport yelling at the ramp men, “Get Shaw off first! Get that sergeant down here!” and the action and the noises she made had pulled all thirty news photographers and reporters along behind her at a full run while the television newsreel truck had rolled along sedately abreast of her, filming everything for the world to see that night, and thank God they were not shooting with sound.
The lieutenant had pushed him out of the plane and his mother had pushed Johnny at him and Johnny had pulled him down the ramp so he wouldn’t look too much taller in the shot. Then to make sure, Raymond’s mother had yelled, “Get on that ramp, Johnny, and hang onto him.” Johnny gripped his right hand and held his right elbow, and towered over him. Raymond’s mother didn’t say hello. She hadn’t seen him for over two years but she didn’t say hello and neither did Johnny. Thank God they were a family who didn’t waste a lot of time on talking, Raymond thought.
Johnny kept grinning at him insanely and the pupils of his eyes were open at about f.09 with the sedation she had loaded into him. The pressmen were trying to keep their places in a tight semicircle and, as always at one of those public riots where every man had been told to get the best shot, the harshest, most dominating shouter finally solved it for all the others: one big Italian-looking photographer yelled at nobody at all, “Get the mother in there, fuh crissake! Senator! Get your wife in there, fuh crissake!” Th
en Raymond’s mother caught on that she had goofed but good and she hurled herself in on Raymond’s offside and hung off his neck, kissing him again and again until his cheek glistened with spit, cheating to the cameras about thirty degrees, and snarling at Johnny between the kisses, “Pump his hand, you jerk. Grin at the cameras and pump his hand. A TV newsreel is working out there. Can’t you remember anything?” And Johnny got with it.
It had taken about seven minutes of posing, reposing, standing, walking toward the cameras, then the photographers broke ranks and Raymond’s mother grabbed Johnny’s wrist and took off after them.
The assistant press secretary from the White House steered Raymond to a car, and the next time Raymond saw his mother she was handing out cigars in the Rose Garden and paying out spurts of false laughter.
Everybody got quiet all of a sudden. Even his mother. They all looked alert as the President came out. He looked magnificent. He was ruddy and tall and he looked so entirely sane that Raymond wanted to put his head on the President’s chest and cry because he hadn’t seen very many sane people since he had left Ben Marco.
He stood at attention, eyes forward.
The President said, “At ease, soldier.” The President leaned forward to pick up Raymond’s right hand from where it dangled at his side and as he shook it warmly he said, “You’re a brave man, Sergeant. I envy you in the best sense of that word because there is no higher honor your country has to give than this medal you will receive today.” Raymond watched his mother edge over. With horror, he saw the jackal look in her eyes and in Johnny’s. The President’s press secretary introduced Senator Iselin and Mrs. Iselin, the sergeant’s mother. The President congratulated them. Raymond heard his mother ask for the honor of a photograph with the President, then moved her two tame photographers in with a quick low move of her left hand. The others followed, setting up.