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service should he be forced to plot a route of escape using the stars as navigational reference points. Mackiernan also noted that a new jeep was slowly making its way by truck from Chungking. Within a month or so it would arrive in Tihwa, still in its crate. This could provide him with a means of escape.
    â€œSo much for business,” he wrote. “How are you now and how are Mike and Mary . . . I’ll bet I wouldn’t recognize them now. Give them both a kiss from me and tell them they will be up here soon.” Mackiernan asked for a recent picture of the twins. The only one he had was of himself cradling son Mike as a newborn.
    Mackiernan could be playful, self-effacing, and romantic. “I am sporting a beautiful (to me only probably) curly black beard and as soon as I get my photo stuff set up will send a picture of me in my hirsute glory,” he wrote. “Have sworn a great swear not to shave it off till you arrive, so hurry before I have to braid the thing (like a Sikh).”
    â€œWell honey bunch,” the letter went on, “I will close this down now since they are sealing the pouch. Remember that I love you my darling, and only you, and that I want you up here close to me as soon as possible. Keep writing and soon we will be together again. Give my love and kisses to Mike and Mary, and all my love for you darling sweetheart. Good night for now, darling . . . All my love—Doug.”
    Two months later, on April 13, 1949, Mackiernan formally asked the State Department to grant his wife and twins permission to join him in Tihwa. Two weeks later came the reply: “Regrets conditions China make impossible authorization Mackiernans family proceed Tihwa this time.” A month later, undeterred, Mackiernan informed his wife of the bad news but offered up an alternative plan: “Peggy return through China out. Trying India. No mail service now. Love, Doug!”
    At her end, Pegge was trying to persuade the State Department to allow her to return to China. On June 8, 1949, she wrote Walton Butterworth, director for Far Eastern Affairs: “My husband, vice-consul at Tihwa, Sinkiang, has written me an urgent letter to make every effort to return to China, if need be through India . . . Doug and I are parents of twin infants. I would intend to take them with me . . . I realize the undertaking at first consideration seems quite complicated. Offsetting this is my own personal knowledge of Sinkiang, the Russian language, the problems presented—and the fact that my husband has just begun his tour in China. It is worth all the difficulties and hardships to keep our family together . . .”
    Two weeks later, on June 21, 1949, Pegge sent a cable through the State Department’s Division of Foreign Service Personnel: “Please cable my husband following: PAA [Pan American Airlines] Calcutta every Saturday planning arrival when you can meet us impossible navigate alone advise supplies love Pegge.” But the State Department refused to send the cable: “I regret that it is my unpleasant duty to inform you that the Department cannot at this time approve of your proceeding to Tihwa with your twin infants.”
    Desperate to see her husband, Pegge turned to the influential Clare Boothe Luce, whom she had come to know during her days as a reporter. She asked if Luce might intervene on her behalf and have her husband reassigned to a less perilous environment. On July 7, 1949, Luce wrote back: “I cannot possibly
promise
to get your husband moved to a consulate a little more accessible to a mother and twins than Chinese Turkestan—but I just might be able to get him transferred to a spot as wild and woolly but a little more on the flat for an approaching caravan with cradles!”
    Luce acknowledged that as a Republican during a Democratic administration, her influence was limited. “My bridges, tho’ not burned, are badly bent!” she wrote. The letter closed,