The Last Ship (35 page)

There was another thing. Something told me as of an absolute, something about the very essence of the man I was coming to realize I was dealing with across the table, that the deal must be made now; now or not at all. That discussion—starting with how the thing was to work—would only open the door to such vast and impervious complications, such an immensity of obstacles, even traps, in the idea as to kill it from their very weight: the deal, the offer, even withdrawn; snatched back. Once suspicion got in the door, it would corrupt the entire cabin. The idea—offer—must be taken in its purity—or refused point-blank; complex negotiations left for another time, another sea; for the reason that the offer’s essential was trust, on both sides, and without that there would be no reason to proceed in any case. Hardly realizing I was saying it, seeming as much listener to as speaker of my own words, I said:

“Let’s do it, Captain. Yes, I’ll have some more tea.”

What followed was simply two seamen at work in the most methodical, emotionless fashion. We might have been a couple of young navigation officers bent over a compass rose plotting the most favorable course between, say, Charleston and Bermuda. An actually enjoyable interlude, both of us natural sailors, liking hands-on work, especially the marvelous art of navigation. Teacups placed aside, charts brought out, spread, pored over; the two separate routes, for submarine and destroyer, sketched in; the most pragmatic working out of details, as to communications, as to frequencies. Even prescribed times laid on for his surfacing, raising antennae to receive, as I had seen him do two nights ago. He would report progress; as would I. My explaining to him that I intended to keep the matter secret from my ship’s company in order not to raise false hopes should he come up empty, his messages would be sent in Russian. Thurlow—whom I had brought along on some of my visits to the submarine—himself sworn to secrecy, bringing them directly to me, doing the translations. Each would keep the other informed of his position; of what he found; ourselves, if the Mediterranean yielded nothing, headed on a S. by S.E. course for the Pacific (kept submerged in my consciousness, other than that one allusion, the one great incertitude of whether ship’s company would take choice out of my hands);
Pushkin,
having completed the West Africa reconnoitering, setting a course N. by N. by N.E., up through the North Atlantic into the Norwegian Sea; the Barents; the East Siberian Sea—and Karsavina. Already become a hallowed word to me, I first saw the place then on the charts. It seemed in all truth a place in nowhere. Actually looking at it, it seemed the center of the universe. I was almost carried away, had to fight back the soaring emotion of the idea. Finally even working out a code word should he in fact find the nuclear fuel. It appeared a very obvious, natural choice. Turgenev.

We talked a little more. I prepared to go; came back to civilities.

“Captain, I want to thank you for the dental work,” I said. “Those nine men, three women—they’re enjoying life considerably more now. Oh, yes: if you can wait for our boat before casting off.”

“Your boat?” he said, not understanding.

“It’ll be alongside in a half hour.”

I stood up, he with me. It came out of me, suddenly, quietly.

“What went wrong, Captain?”

He waited. Then a hand came up and touched my shoulder, rested there for a moment, fell away. An almost wistful smile.

“Who was ahead of whom?”

“It didn’t make much difference, did it?”

“None at all.”

He waited a moment. “Captain, together we could start the world over.”

Cigarettes. I had discerned that this was what they missed more than anything. They were completely out. I could help but little. Cutting into our precious stores by twelve cartons—a pack for each hand aboard the sub. Our boat carrying them returned, hoisted aboard; he had blinkered his thanks as we stood away from each other, each vessel heeling gently. A rain had begun to fall and I could see his long gray shape beginning to move through the mists, the flashing light just decipherable. Then he was gone, headed around Morocco’s curve on his course down the west coast of Africa. Then over the top of the world . . . Karsavina. Then I was thinking about another Russian place-name. Orel. The crew must never know; know what a waste it was.

As I said, other than Thurlow, I told but one officer of all this in regard to the nuclear fuel, that one sworn to secrecy. I informed Lieutenant Girard. I felt almost, as leader of the women, that she had a right to know. Otherwise I alerted Lieutenant Bainbridge, my communications officer, to the fact that we would be keeping contact with the
Pushkin
and gave him the frequency, doing all this in a routine matter, his patent acceptance that it was but natural that the two ships should do so; as to the Russian’s course, the cover story he and I had come up with to explain the points on his journey from which we would be hearing from him, and now passed on to Bainbridge, was that he had decided after all to take a look at his homeland. Aside from all that, the high emotion at the prospects: These I felt dampening down, perhaps my making them do so, in the more somber realization, now that I was back on the
Nathan James,
of the outside chance of the thing.

Nevertheless, the deal having been made concerning a place called Karsavina . . . this, and perhaps even more, the idea of another ship out there: the world seemed a less lonely place.

We stood east toward Suez.

S
hipboard, that intact palatinate bounded so tightly by the forbidding walls of the great sea, more than most places minds can imagine things, a condition compounded in an order of magnitude by present circumstances, where even the outright hallucination is not entirely stranger to us. Nevertheless, a captain’s tendency is to err on the side of caution. There are so many necessary risks to take at sea—why take unnecessary ones? It was something I had had in mind for some time to see done, recent events somehow seeming to instill in me an urgency about it; not to put it off any longer. Propelled, I felt, into the decision by two particulars not in any way connected in my mind. One, a captain’s sense of the beginnings of a certain disquietude abroad on the ship, the possibility that it might enhance, heading in directions no one could predict in the tight world of a ship at sea, notably one in our situation. The other, something in his behavior that kept nagging at me. The last-named stimulus for the action of course never to be communicated to him by the slightest hint, a scrap of intimation. Among other reasons, that all my thoughts concerning him and that subject were imprecise as could be, conjectures as to causes and possible intent quite likely imaginary—“imaginary” things were virtually endemic in ship’s company these days, and even a ship’s captain was by no means immune, nothing in the remotest tangible to support them. Nevertheless, I would ask him—in effect order him to do it. He would not like it. When that was the case, my method had always been to make it short and sweet, to the point, a direct order.

 *  *  * 

He was an unlikely leader of dissenting men. Yet if it ever came, I thought, it would come from him; the only officer I in any way looked upon as dangerous: some of this deriving from the fact that, short only of the captain, he was the most powerful officer aboard. Combat systems officer. Some to that captain’s compass, that inner voice which in my years of command I had learned to listen to as to the sounds of the sea itself, in respect to a ship’s company and conditions aboard my ship; both giving off signals, scents, intimations as to imminent behavior.

He was a man virtually without humor; rather difficult to talk with on any subject outside his field. But there, in his specialty—immensely complex, replete with consummate dangers, some esoteric in the extreme—he was an absolutely first-rate officer. I felt all the luck in the world to have him on the
Nathan James.
I had always given him the highest fitness reports the Navy allows, always recommending accelerated promotion. He seemed not to like or at least to enjoy people very much—not necessarily an absolutely negative trait. Perhaps as replacement, he clearly had a feeling kindred to love for the missiles, using the word in the sense applied to some men who might love to a certain obsession gardening or a particular sport, extending in his case, I had sometimes felt, to harboring an almost prescriptive right to them as belonging in fee simple to himself, a touch of arrogance in his proprietorship; something I had once found vaguely disturbing, even ominous, before deciding it was but a fancy of mine, nonsense in fact, facilely interpreting a necessarily meticulous and commendable care as a somehow sinister or suspect fondness, attachment, to them. As I continued to observe Chatham at his duties, I had come full about from this view to one of being profoundly grateful that they were the direct charge of one so immersed in their behavior and every aspect, a dedication which included the resolve that their presence—sometimes they seemed like sentient members of the crew—should not be allowed to threaten others of ship’s company. In part due surely to his superlative mastery of his field, the enlisted men appeared to have a special respect for him—a common circumstance aboard men-of-war at work here, and one little known outside the seagoing world. One of the most distinguishing aspects of the shipboard life from the land life is that sailors care far less than do landsmen about the so-called “popular” aspects of the people set over them. The tradition is deep and ancient, for a reason: In the sea way, a man’s very life often depends directly on an officer’s ability, and there has never been a sailor but who, given the choice of a captain or an officer with somewhat hard-nosed “tight ship” tendencies who knows his seamanship and an excessively lenient and pleasing one who does not, will instantly choose the former. Lieutenant Commander Chatham was a superbly qualified sea officer, a natural leader of men.

Chatham, among naval officers of my acquaintance, had been one of the most vigorous in his opposition to the introduction of women into ships. This was not anything against him, or in any way unusual. If there had been a fleet-wide plebiscite on the matter, no woman would have got within a thousand leagues of a ship, and she would have had to swim that. So had I been counted in their number. My attitude after they had been aboard awhile had become more complex than formerly. Chatham, I was certain, had changed not in the smallest degree in this matter. On the other hand—and this was much to his credit—once they arrived, he had neither said nor done anything against them; in the realization, I felt, that their being here at last and nothing in the world to be done about it, however stupid the entire idea, not to accept it and work with the fact would threaten, perhaps disastrously, the welfare and even the mission of the ship. He was much too much a sailor to allow himself to behave in that direction; and especially embodying as he did that mission on this particular ship more than any other single officer. One could observe in him no difference whatsoever between his conduct toward the men and the women officers aboard, or in his treatment of the men and the women enlisted personnel; if anything, aware of them, perhaps compensating for his own now-suppressed opinions, being less abrupt with the latter than he sometimes was with the former. So circumspect was he in the matter of the women—the bending over to be fair, to display no antagonism toward them that might be taken as related to the fact of their not being men, almost as if to say they couldn’t help that—that I was as certain as I could be of anything that the dislike Chatham and Girard had, and just of late, taken to each other had nothing to do with their gender difference.

As to its actual cause I had given little thought, had but indifferently wondered why. A ship’s captain is a busy man. He has little time for nonsense. Such dislikes, as a rule temporary, between members of a ship’s company, especially officers, enlisted men being much more sensible in this area, are not all that unusual, may crop up from time to time in the best of ships, often as not from unbelievably trivial causes, as suddenly disappear. A captain’s wisest course is often not to interfere, to let the matter work itself out—until if and when it begins to affect the operations, the essential harmony of the ship. If that happened, you undertook to straighten it out by bringing the two officers together in your cabin, closing the door, and knocking their heads together: That, in my experience, usually put a stop to it. If that didn’t work, you saw to it that one or both were transferred. Hardly an available option now.

I had commenced by telling him that I wished to go over the inventory of all the weaponry, the armory and ammunition list, from sidearms to missiles, in his books and also on-site inspections, a routine duty of a ship’s captain to be carried out from time to time, not done lately due to the press of circumstances, and had set a date. We had completed the on-site part. It was late in the day, the sun moving down the sky and not far from its nocturnal home in the expectant waters. We were about to return to my cabin, over the weather decks rather than down to the main deck and inside. For no reason we paused a moment to gaze at the after missile launcher, its honeycomb of blast doors closed, its capability scarcely touched, only six cells empty. Fifty-five missiles—Tomahawks, ASROCs, Harpoons, Standard SM-2’s—remaining. The same with the forward missile launcher. We continued forward to the cabin. I shut the door and we settled in.

When one thought of Chatham physically the adjective “round” immediately occurred: moon-faced, imbedded in it close-set eyes seeming also perfectly round and as unrevelatory as an owl’s, a ball of a head on which grew a burry meadow of buff-colored needles kept always so close-cropped as each individual hair to seem razor-sharpened, atop a body whose further suggestion of roundness probably came from the feeling that he could lose twenty pounds of weight. That part, anyhow, had begun to change lately, as it had with all of us, I thought as I looked at him, on the reduced rations I had instituted. That decidedly circular appearance further accentuated by his being distinctively short. He was one of those men who carry through life the high advantage of looking much less intelligent than they actually are; the gift of appearing far less formidable than is in fact the case. In Navy terms he would be thought of as an officer who went by the book; while fair, an officer not to be messed with. If matters came to that, ready to hit back about twice as hard as he had received. He was as much of a loner as life on a destroyer will permit. Where other officers off-watch might be found in the wardroom shooting the breeze, Chatham was likely to be in his stateroom or the department office, studying tactics or systems, always attending everlastingly to his lethal charges. Even on liberty—when we had had that luxury—where both officers and bluejackets customarily go ashore in pairs or more, he went alone if he went at all, and as to whether his destination in Naples, for example, was the Museo Nazionale or a whorehouse off the Galleria I don’t think anyone on the ship could have said. He was not easy company. I often had no idea what he was thinking. And never the slightest notion of what his inner life might be; his cautious air, not infrequently verging on the hubristic, effectively shutting off any remote view of such a territory. He projected a sense of seeming a rather uncomplicated, readable human being where I knew the opposite to be the case. I had long since given up on insofar as “knowing” him as I did my other officers. He was not to be known. Talking with him one had the feeling that he himself knew exactly what was in his own mind; that he was thereby entirely freed up to concentrate exclusively on what was going on in yours, your purpose, with the object of turning matters, whatever they might be, to his own preferences. He was unusually successful at these intricate, talent-requiring exercises. I got right to it.

“The small arms,” I said. “I note how accessible they are, ready to use.”

“Accessible? Yes, sir.” Chatham had a habit of repeating the operable word one had just used. “So they can be got at in an emergency. To repel invaders. Hostile boarding parties.”

I could hear my voice modulate if only a notch from ease to firmness.

“Hostile boarding parties?” I said. I decided, rather small-mindedly, to use it on him. What an odd phrase it seemed anyhow, I thought, in respect to any members of the race of human beings thus far encountered—for some reason a memory of those helpless wretches on the beaches of Amalfi for a moment stabbing at me. “I don’t think we’ll have many of those to repel. I want the small arms put under lock and key. Along with the ammunition. Remove them from the ready service lockers and put them in the high security lockers in the armory.”

I could see the quick startlement in his eyes, a flash of anger, both as quickly, consciously, it seemed, quelled, return to impassive countenance. One advantage of being a captain is that one does not have to give reasons.

“As you say, sir.”

I wished he did not say, “As you say, sir.” Somehow it came across as a faintly reluctant compliance, especially so in that uninflected, mono-tonic voice he possessed that drilled in a kind of inflexible droning on the ear. It occurred to me how petty I was becoming in regard to Chatham, and made a note to watch that.

“When you’ve done that,” I said, “bring me the locker keys.”

It lasted but a moment, came and went as lightning does. But during it something malignant seemed to hang in the air, naked, a palpable tenseness, suggestive of something anarchic not just here but loose on the ship, exhaling the scent of menace, and but personified by the officer across from me. The response not coming with quite the automatic alacrity to which ship’s captains are accustomed. For one suspended instant I felt he might be about to step across that most rigid of all Navy lines, insubordination. Not the first time for this series of impressions, of speculations—suspicions—from this same source, but more intense, stronger now, than ever before. I should have known better. Whatever lay in him, Chatham would never be the one to act rashly, let anger betray him into letting out a thing before the time he, not another, chose for it to be let out; far too self-controlled—and shrewd—an officer for that. I had caught myself fancifying, I decided. It was not exactly the kind of order any officer would find excessively pleasing. His reaction was but a natural one. He said only, “As you say, sir.”

For that moment the cabin had been filled with a tense atmosphere so discernible as to surprise me. Then it was I who, sensing the possible high danger an inch away, pulled back from it. I added, wanting actually to soften it for him, to bend in his direction by a gesture of emollience, to give him a perfectly plausible and false reason for my action, face-saving for himself: “I intend that the keys shall at all times be in the custody of the officer of the deck. If needed suddenly.”

He remained solemn; unspeaking; fooled, I knew, not in the slightest.

Keys. Perhaps reaction from that inner stab, perhaps partly from his attitude, his suppressed belligerence, it came surging up then from my mind. Other keys. That fact that only he held in his possession the key necessary to launch our missiles, jointly with myself, the familiar dual-key system, protection alleged against derangement or accident. And that in respect to those we carried for a total now of 704-H’s, and whose fate and disposition I had not yet decided upon . . . I would not want them to come under Lieutenant Commander Chatham’s control. For one implosive moment I fancied to ask for that second essential key; then stepped back, astonished at having it, frightened myself of the thought. That shared custody: It stood protected by the most inflexible of Navy directives, so that even for his captain to make such a request—demand—would be unthinkable, and should he do so, he entirely in his right to refuse—indeed, would normally face a GCM if he did not; and himself wholly aware of this circumstance. I dared not risk the confrontation. I was too certain that, the matter put to him, refuse he would. Indeed it would take a general court-martial instituted by myself to separate him from the key; some extreme act on his part, nothing remotely like any he had shown. I was startled to hear him say: