Sex and the High Command (23 page)
Suddenly the admiral turned and walked over to Lindenberry. “General, we’re ready to assume quarters in Shiloh.”
Via jet-propelled snow cab, it was an hour’s drive to the bunker, and after the high-speed elevator had dropped them to the 5,000-foot level, Hansen was surprised at the size of the carpeted wardroom which acted as a reception hall.
From a diagram spread on the wardroom table, General Lindenberry showed them the layout and their accommodations. The wardroom was at the hub of three projecting spokes which radiated under the ice. Along one spoke were aligned the staterooms of the Presidential party. Along another were the administrative offices, communications facilities, and enlisted men’s quarters. The third was designed for rest and recreation, but the R&R spoke ended in a huge storeroom, large enough to house a blimp.
“I hope. General,” the admiral commented, “that your supply sergeant can find my preserved pineapple rings in that hangar.”
“Preserved pineapple rings must be a new fad in the States, sir,” the general said. “Those nurses you sent to celebrate the election with the headquarters crew were…”
“What nurses?”
“Those fifty Navy nurses. Of course, we realized we didn’t need a physical…”
Admiral Primrose, leaning over the chart, broke in. “Your communications room. Ah, here it is.”
General Ware said, “What have Navy nurses to do with canned pineapples?”
“Well, sir, the girls insisted on a can of preserved pineapple rings apiece…” Lindenberry began.
“Did you meet the pilot of NATS number twelve?” the admiral asked.
“Yes, sir. Commander Howells.”
“Did the crew pilfer the pineapples for the girls?” General Ware asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“General Lindenberry,” the admiral said, “those were bogus nurses with bogus orders.”
“Sir, I didn’t doubt your orders…”
“But you did doubt the nurses?” General Ware snapped.
“Well, sir, you had to see them to believe them… For a can of pineapples…”
“Never mind, General Lindenberry,” the admiral said, and glanced at his watch. “General Ware, only three persons knew the purpose of Shiloh, you and I and the President. Isn’t that correct. General?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then one of us is responsible for this security leak.”
“Self-evident, sir.”
“Only two persons were aware that the Cherokee Cluster needed inertial guidance devices. Isn’t that true. General?”
“Correct, Admiral.”
“You and I were those two persons, so the President is eliminated as the source of the leak.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Only one person was aware that the IGD’s were being shipped as candied pineapple rings. Correct, General?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You were that person, so I’m eliminated as the source of the security leak.”
“Yes, sir.”
“General, you’re under arrest for treason.”
“Well, I’ll be shot at sunrise.”
If it had been August over Greenland, General Ware would have been approximately correct. His trial took fifteen minutes.
Admiral Primrose did not go topside to observe the execution, but summoned Hansen and Lindenberry to the communications shack where Lindenberry telephoned Thule to get the call letters of NATS number 12.
Over shortwave radio, Admiral Primrose contacted the pilot, and introduced himself. “Commander, will you circle at forty fifteen north, seventy-three west, until you pick up Air Force Two, and provide Veep with an honorary escort into Kennedy?”
“Aye, aye, sir,” came the voice of the NATS pilot.
“Incidentally, Commander Howells, the pilot of the Veep’s plane is a Gyrene. You have my permission to buzz him a couple of times to show him the Navy still has wings.”
“Thank you. Admiral!”
“That’s the spirit, Commander. Report when you sight the Veep.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Twenty minutes later, through a crackle of static that could not conceal the Navy pilot’s enthusiasm, he reported: “I have him on my screen, sir. I’ve got the altitude and the guts, Admiral. I’m going in. Tallyho.”
“Keep transmitting,” the admiral said. “I want to hear this.”
There were three long minutes of static, and then there was silence.
“General, will you send a dispatch to CNO, Washington, reporting that NATS number twelve crashed on arrival at Thule with the loss of all hands?”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
As the general telephoned the base in compliance. Primrose ushered Hansen into the passageway.
“Well, Ben,” he said, “we’ve denied the old girl proof that she got our guidance devices, and when she sees that second sun rising in the northeast, Mother Carey’s going to chicken.”
A subdued group of witnesses returning from the execution greeted them in the wardroom. Each man sat apart, oppressed by what he had seen and by the knowledge that the doom of all had been sealed.
Admiral Primrose shattered their gloom. “I know, gentlemen, that you mourn the regrettable death of General Ware. His execution will not be entered on his service record.
“I mourn General Ware because he loved to bluff, and he’s not here to see us pull the greatest bluff in history. Gentlemen, I’ve just learned that the plane bearing Dr. Carey’s nurses crashed at sea. That old biddy doesn’t know our Cherokee Cluster is not activated, and we’re going to bluff her out of one thousand seven hundred prime pieces of poontang.”
It had been a wedding of champagne and tears. Women whom McCormick had never seen used his marriage to Cora Lee as their last chance at a sentimental binge. After the ceremony, Dr. Carey’s all-girl crew got the yacht away from the dock at Newport News with a minimum of scraped paint and the loss of only one bollard off the dock. They sailed for the West Indies.
While hauling in a tarpon off Martinique, McCormick fell into the sea and caught a cold. The cold grew worse and finally settled in his groin, so McCormick put in for Charlotte Amalie and its naval infirmary.
He put on his uniform to call at the medical facility, which was being phased out, and went in to see the medical officer, an old commander with the air of a family physician.
“Doctor,” McCormick apologized, “I don’t usually make a sick call out of a bad cold, but this one keeps hanging on, and it’s settled in my privates. I got a runny nose fore and aft.”
After the inspection, the doctor nodded his head in sympathy and wrote out a prescription. “Now, Commander, I’m writing you a prescription for gonorrhea. If it doesn’t clear up the trouble in two or three days, you come back and we’ll start treating that bad cold.”
“You telling me I got a dose of clap, Doctor?”
“Don’t sound disappointed, Commander. You may go down in medical history as the last case on record.”
McCormick went back to the
Miss Vita
. The quartermistress on watch told him Cora Lee was sunbathing on the fantail. He gave the girls liberty for the afternoon, cast off all lines, and went to the bridge to set the automatic pilot on a course that would clear the harbor. Then he went below, opened the throttle to flank speed, and unhooked all engine-room fire hoses. He set the auxiliary fire pump going and opened the main sea valve to the fire hoses. The valve was now a scuttlecock. He climbed the ladder to topside and went aft.
Bikinied to the sunlight, Cora Lee had been drowsing on the after deck. She awakened to the throb of engines, and looked up into the angry face of her husband. “What’s the matter, honey?”
“Woman, I trusted you. Pure and undefiled, I came to you and courted you. I gave you flowers. I gave you candy. I gave you love. I gave you my name. Then, you turn right around, Jezebel, and give me a dose.”
“That dose something like the drizzles?”
“It’s something you caught when you let another man do it to you.”
“Honey, no man’s ever done it to me but you.”
Her unfeigned bewilderment drew him up short. She might be a liar, but she was not an actress.
“Cora Lee, are you telling me you’ve never done it with another man?”
“I didn’t say that. I said no man ever did it to me.”
Her remark confused him. “Are you telling me that you did it to a man without him doing it to you?”
“Angus, I’m not certain sure I ever did it to a living man.”
“Cora Lee, you either did or you didn’t. You can be sure of that.”
“No. I can’t be sure I did it to a living man, and the one I’m sure of, I’m not sure was living.”
McCormick’s anger subsided into confusion. Cora Lee was honestly trying to explain something to him. He could almost see her mind groping for words. He drew up a deck stool beside her chair and forced calmness into his voice. “Let’s take this one at a time. First, who was the living man you’re not sure of?”
“That FBI man, I might have done it to him, but I was all doped up. As I recollect, we were talking in Chaucer. Now that don’t seem right to me, does it you, Angus, for folks to haul off and start talking Chaucer?”
He nodded agreement. It didn’t seem right for two people to start talking in Chaucer when he had never heard of the language, and he’d heard a lot of languages.
“Now, I thought I did it to him,” she continued, “but I could have dreamed it all along. All I can remember of that boy was his eyes. Seems to me I’d remember more than just his eyes.”
McCormick knew how to clear up her puzzlement on the first man very easily. “Tell me, Cora Lee, did this FBI man ever come back?”
“He never did, Angus.”
“If he didn’t come back, you just dreamed him. So we can forget him. Now, how about the man you wasn’t sure was alive?”
“When I was in that monastery where you met me, the nurse told me a dead monk was laid out in the next room. One day I took a shower, and I didn’t have anything else to do so I opened the door and peeked in. There he was, stretched out on some planks and cold as clay. All the time I’d been there, I’d been wondering if them monks wore bloomers under their skirts. I was naked as a jaybird, but he was dead, so I slipped into his room and felt up under his skirt. He didn’t have nary a stitch underneath that skirt, Angus, and when I touched him, Lo and Behold! Part of him was resurrecting. I remembered from the Scriptures how they put a virgin in with King David to see if he was alive or not. There I was, a virgin, with that poor old monk lying there cold and dead, maybe, with nobody to take care of him. So I got up on the plank and squatted. Then I heard somebody coming and I figured I’d better get out of there, so I jumped down. But Brother Johannis jumped up, and he started grabbing at me, yelling, ‘Come back, you angel of Babylon.’
“Now, Angus, you know I never been in Babylon in my whole life, so I got scared. About that time, that Father fellow came through the door with a little man they said came from Rome, except he didn’t talk like anybody from Georgia I ever heard talk. I reckon I knocked the little fellow down, and maybe Brother Johannis tromped him a little bit, because Brother Johannis was after me to a fare-thee-well.
“I reckon I ran half a mile down that hall, with Brother Johannis right behind. Then I ducked into a big room where some of them brothers was eating and I scooted around their table. Not one of them had ever said a word before, but they all started yelling pretty things at me and cheering Brother Johannis on. But I reckon he must have got winded because I gained on him. I got back to my room and shut the door. Next morning, they took me to Camp David.
“Now, Angus, they said Brother Johannis was dead, and he sure looked like it, lying there as cold as ice with his eyes open. What I can’t figure is this: Did he come alive before, during, or after?”
She shook her head in mystification, and McCormick knew she spoke the truth. Poor judgment, he thought, was all she could really be blamed for. In her innocence, curiosity, and compassion, she lost sight of the kind of person she was trying to do a good deed for.
“Cora Lee,” he said in a gentle voice, “you caught gonorrhea from that monk. The reason why they go to that place is because they’re sinners. You ought not ever trust a monk, Cora Lee, not even a dead monk.”
“Believe me, Angus, I won’t anymore. The only men I’d trust are sailors because my Angus is a sailor.”
No man could resist such innocence.
He leaned over and embraced her. Her tale of romantic pursuit must have put her in a mood, for she wrapped him in her arms and would not let him go. Soon, she was making the low, liquid sounds he liked to hear. He was so wrapped up in her love and her arms that, at first, he was unaware that her gurgle had changed to a gargle. When McCormick remembered he had scuttled the ship, it was minutes too late and fathoms too deep for him to do anything but drown in ecstasy.
Had it not been for a slow rise in tension, life might have been pleasant in the bunker.
Television reception was excellent, via satellite, and news programs commanded the greatest interest after Flugel exploded. On the afternoon of little D-Day, Dr. Carey herself appeared on television to exhort her constituents to remain calm and stay in their living rooms, as she was doing. Her exhortations brought smiles to the viewers because they recognized the battle lamp above her living-room sofa.
Ten days after the arrival of the U.S. Government in Exile, Thule radar was jammed from Labrador and all television transmissions ceased. Drexel had delivered the ultimatum.
More oppressive than the loss of television, to Hansen, were the uncoded radio signals they picked up on the command frequency. The fleet was being called in from foreign bases. Hansen listened with heavy heart as the familiar names came over the air:
Wasp
and
Ticonderoga
,
Enterprise
and
Essex
,
Robert E. Lee
and
Patrick Henry
. In his mind’s eye he could see the great gray ships butting arctic seas or slicing tropic dawns, sailing back to scrapheaps. Hansen did not suffer the poignancy of loss, alone. Talliaferro confided to him that at night he could not sleep because he fancied he heard, through 5,000 feet of ice, the thunder of jets in the polar night heading for their final touchdown.
As days passed, the radio silence oppressed Shiloh. Cabinet members and the military command played poker in the wardroom, read or told stories that colored progressively from light gray to smutty and to black. For the most part, President Habersham remained in his suite writing his memoirs. Primrose stayed in his communications office waiting for radio messages that never arrived. Even the Thule phone on the wall never rang.