Buried Caesars Read Free

understand the game. He would ask me questions and I would keep my mouth shut. What I saw was a lawn, a big green lawn lined with tropical trees. Across the lawn, the tip of the sun barely touched the distant hazy horizon.
    “You see,” he said, not disappointing me, “the lush, trim solitude of the Pacific Coast. This tranquility stretches along the coastline of California and north into Washington and Oregon. Our President and our European allies would prefer to ignore this vital Edenic garden of America, but the Jap is not ignoring it. A Japanese submarine has shelled the coast of Oregon at Fort Stevens. Japanese airplanes have dropped incendiary bombs on southern Oregon. At my urging, antiaircraft batteries and barrage balloons are going up around defense plants in California.”
    He paused to watch the effect of all this on me. I tried to look affected.
    “General Douglas MacArthur,” he went on, “commands the troops of nations with inadequate supplies diverted to an assumed victory in Europe. My ships, my men, battle vigorously. Today we turn back the Japanese at Guadalcanal and hold our own in New Guinea. The tide has begun to turn. The Battle of Midway will prove to be the pivot, and the world will have to recognize what I have accomplished and with how little. General Douglas MacArthur will have protected the coast, won the war. Of that I have no doubt.”
    I grunted and looked at MacArthur, whose hands were folded behind his back. He looked at the lawn and trees for a few minutes with a small smile, and ended with a sigh.
    “Funds have been quietly raised to mount a political campaign in my name at a point in the future when such a campaign will be appropriate,” he said, resuming his pacing. “A civilian aide of mine, Andrew Lansing, has stolen these funds.”
    “How much did he take?” I asked, moving to pour myself another glass of iced tea. The speech was over. We were getting down to business now. I didn’t know anything about war and armies, but I’d spent a lifetime with thieves.
    “One hundred and eighty thousand dollars in cash,” MacArthur said. “But he took something much more valuable: a pouch of documents outlining my political campaign and a list of donors to that campaign. Present donors and those who have pledged support in the future.”
    “You want me to find Lansing and get the money and the papers back,” I said.
    “Precisely,” MacArthur said. His eyes were probing now. He was trying to decide something. I had the feeling he had more to say but wasn’t quite sure it was safe to say it to me. So I went on.
    “Why not have some of your own people to do it? The army. The F.B.I. The cops.”
    “And risk the information getting out that I am actively pursuing the office of President of the United States? Roosevelt would have an excuse for removing me from command in the Pacific, and I tell you, Mr. Peters, without Douglas MacArthur, who has the respect of the people of the Pacific Islands and knowledge of that theater, this war might be prolonged for years.”
    “What aren’t you telling me, General?” I asked.
    MacArthur’s face went tight and taut. A flash of anger opened his eyes and passed and when the anger passed MacArthur took a deep breath.
    “You have no children?”
    “No,” I said.
    “I have a son,” he said. “I want my son to be proud of his father, his country. Arthur is the complete center of my thoughts and affection. I feel I am very fortunate in having him and my wife, Jean, in the twilight period of my life. Do you follow me, Peters?”
    “Right into battle,” I said. “But something’s still missing.”
    “All right,” MacArthur said with a deep sigh. “About five months before I was named Chief of Staff in 1930 I met a young woman in Luzon. I was divorced from my first wife, Louise, and … I met Isobel Rosario Cooper, the daughter of an Oriental woman and a Scottish businessman living in the Philippines. Isobel came to Washington and with