Time and Tide

by Thomas Fleming

  "They're turning my ship into a freighter," McKay said. "If I'd gone into the merchant marine, we'd be a lot richer."

  "You just can't stand the thought of taking orders from Duke Pearce."

  "That's true. Why do I dislike that arrogant son of a bitch so much?"

  They laughed simultaneously. In other years, Rita would have given him a lecture on the importance of charming someone with Duke Pearce's influence and charisma.

  The orders that had sent Captain McKay rushing back to the ship were the strangest he had ever received in his thirty-two years in the Navy. Admiral Tomlinson, still cracking the whip over the yardbirds at Terminal Island, said they were the strangest he had seen in his forty-two years of service.

  The Jefferson City was to be ready to sail in four days. This meant the skeleton crew on board had to spend the next twenty-four hours sending telegrams to men on leave or attending service schools in various specialties. The moment a man returned, he found himself in a working party, lugging stores or ammunition aboard. The Terminal Island yardbirds cursed and tore their hair as they worked nights to complete the repairs and clear the ship of hoses, tools, debris.

  Instead of a leisurely shakedown cruise to make sure the repairs had been properly done, McKay was to take his ship to sea and give it the standard tests en route to San Francisco. There, at the Hunters Point Navy Yard, he was to pick up Captain Warren Pearce, USN, known to his friends as Duke, the cocky genius who had brought them the proximity fuse. He would supervise the loading of two objects of crucial importance to the war effort, for transportation to the island of Tinian.

  Neither Captain McKay nor his crew would be told what was inside the two objects. They were not to inquire. Both objects would be guarded by the ship's Marines twenty-four hours a day. In case of an emergency at sea, Captain Pearce would assume command and the crew of the Jefferson City would join him in doing their utmost to guarantee the survival of these two objects, which was more important than the survival of the ship.

  "What the hell have they cooked up in the laboratory now?" McKay said. "It must have something to do with stopping the kamikazes. Maybe we're transporting a high-speed printing press. They're going to drop copies of Fanny Farmer's cookbook in Japanese on the aircraft factories. Drive the poor starving bastards crazy."

  "Maybe," Rita said.

  He suddenly sensed she knew the nature of his cargo. Or at least suspected. It was not all that surprising. She had spent half the war listening to Ernest J. King talk away his sleepless nights.

  "What is it?"

  "I promised I'd never mention it to anyone."

  "I'm not anyone."

  "It's a new kind of bomb. They've been working on it for years. It's made from uranium. It's the most powerful weapon ever invented."

  "I'll be damned," Arthur McKay said.

  Commander Robert Mullenoe raised his champagne glass. "To eternal happiness," he said.

  His wife, Christine, who had flown to California the moment she heard the Jefferson City was going there, joined him. "I believe in it, for some ridiculous reason," she said.

  Montgomery West and Ina Severn, aka Joey Shuck and Gwen Pugh, accepted the best wishes. They were drinking champagne in a private room at the Brown Derby. It was a small party by Hollywood standards. Only a dozen people, but they were very carefully selected by Uncle Mort.

  Mayer was there. So was Louella Parsons. Preston Sturges and a few others were West's personal friends.

  Uncle Mort looked as if he were drinking carbolic acid instead of champagne. But he managed to get through the marriage ceremony and the party without collapsing from apoplexy. A certain picture, displayed in the privacy of his office, had persuaded him to stage this rapprochement with his hero nephew. They had actually planned a bigger wedding, but the sudden announcement of the ship's revised departure date forced them to settle for this smaller but possibly more effective affair.

  Lolly Parsons gushed about West's future. Mayer, who was getting more senile by the minute, told him to name his picture and his price. He would leave the contract blank. West informed the great man he was through with acting. He wanted to direct. "So direct!" Mayer cried, with an impresario's wave.

  "My only regret is I have a honeymoon to give for my country," West said. He gazed mournfully at Gwen. They had planned on two weeks at Lake Tahoe.

  "It's a good thing you're marrying a sailor's daughter," she said.

  Suddenly she started to cry. It was the damnedest thing. She lost her marvelous English self-control. She cried and cried. "I guess I'm going to miss the honeymoon more than I thought," she said.

  Nobody believed a word of it.

  At the Pico Avenue landing, Captain McKay and Rita got out of the car and walked to the edge of the dock. His gig was waiting. The coxswain grinned up at him. "Ready to go when you are, Captain."

  He turned to Rita. "Goodbye, wife."

  "Goodbye, husband."

  They kissed. It was supposed to be a gallant flourish, no more. But it became something much deeper and somehow sad. He did not understand the sadness; it had a new, hard edge.

  It was coming from Rita. She clung to him in a fierce almost angry way. Had a glimpse of the future reached her in a daydream or a nightmare? Had she seen a kamikaze plunging into the Jefferson City's bridge?

  He climbed down to the gig and the coxswain barked the orders to cast off the bow and stern lines. They headed toward the ship, far out in the harbor. Captain McKay turned in his seat. Rita was waving and crying. Behind her the flat suburban roofs of Long Beach spread out toward the brown California hills. In his mind's eye McKay vaulted those hills and the mighty Rockies beyond them to stand for a moment in America's heartland, on the vast plains of Kansas, where his grandfather had fired the first shots in a war to make the United States truly the land of the free. He felt a rush of love and pride and longing. He wondered if he was seeing his wife, seeing his country, for the last time.

  They sat in Martha's old rusting Chevrolet at the Pico Avenue dock. She had insisted on driving him from Seattle.

  "I don't even want to look at it," Martha said.

  "Why not? It's a handsome ship," Flanagan said.

  "You know why."

  "I don't know why.”

  He assumed she was thinking about Jack Peterson. It made him feel forlorn. He had hoped they had gotten beyond Jack. Now he wondered if they could ever escape him. He never imagined himself matching Jack's magic with a woman.

  "Because I love you, you big Irish jerk. And that miserable tin tub is taking you away from me —maybe for good."

  "I'll come back. If I have to swim all the way."

  "Promise."

  "Promise. Then we're getting married."

  "We'll see. You may change your mind about a lot of things once you're out of that monkey suit."

  He kissed her. "Nothing's going to change my mind about you.

  "Oh, shit. Oh, Christ." She wiped the tears from her cheeks and let him kiss her again. "Go fight your goddamn war."

  He had the salt taste of her tears on his lips all the way out to the ship.

  Mission Imponderable

  "All hands. Stand by for full backdown," boomed the boatswain's mate of the watch.

  The Jefferson City was boiling north from Long Beach at flank speed, thirty-two knots. "All engines back full," Executive Officer George Tombs said, grabbing an overhead stanchion.

  The engine telegrapher shoved the annunciator to reverse. The big ship shuddered as if she had run into a brick wall. Metal shrieked and groaned. Water boiled up over the fantail. Slowly, steadily, she began to back down. The propellers were still on their shafts.

  "All engines ahead one third," Tombs said. He smiled at Captain McKay. "Looks like the yardbirds did a good job, Art. I've never seen her running better."

  "It just shows what getting paid triple overtime will do," McKay said.

  Darkness was falling when, they stood into San Francisco's magnificent bay. As 'they
steamed under the Golden Gate Bridge, McKay got on the PA system. "This is your captain. I know it hurts, men, but there will be no liberty in San Francisco. We're sailing at dawn tomorrow, and I don't want anyone getting in trouble by missing the ship. I'm proud of the hundredpercent return you made as we left Long Beach. I don't want to take a chance on spoiling the record."

  Admiral Tomlinson had told him many ships were sailing with a hundred to a hundred and fifty men missing from their crews. A lot of sailors were having second thoughts about facing the kamikazes. George Tombs said the crew's hundred-percent showing on such short notice was a tribute to Captain McKay and no one else.

  "Stop it, George. You're making me feel venerable," McKay said. "If that gets back to Rita, she'll divorce me for sure."

  At the Hunters Point Navy Yard, the pier at which they docked seemed strangely deserted. A closer examination revealed at least a dozen husky men in the shadows. Duke Pearce and two men in Army uniforms came aboard. Pearce introduced them as artillerymen. McKay thought they looked uncomfortable with the word.

  "When does the cargo come aboard?" McKay said.

  "About 0300."

  "This must be important, Duke."

  "It is."

  Pearce seemed strangely subdued. His cocky grin was gone. "I trust there's no problem about our occupying flag plot," he said.

  "None whatsoever."

  "How's Rita?"

  "Good."

  "I heard about Sammy. I was sorry as hell."

  "Thanks."

  The cargo arrived on two trucks at 0400. McKay had ordered reveille sounded at 0300. A working party from Deck Division One was ready. Quickly they threw straps around the first object, a big rectangular crate. A team of shipfitters secured it to the deck amidships. Two other sailors took the second object off another truck. It was a cylinder about eighteen inches in diameter and two feet high. On orders from Pearce, they slipped a crowbar through a ring and tried to pick it up. Grunts of surprise. The thing was very heavy. They finally got it off the truck and followed Pearce up the gangway into Officers' Country.

  In the cabin normally used by the admiral's chief of staff, Commander Moss was waiting with another team of shipfitters. They welded pad eyes to the deck and fitted them with steel straps on hinges. The cylinder was placed in the middle and the straps were closed over it. Duke Pearce secured the cage with a padlock and dropped the key in his pocket.

  Back on the main deck, Pearce handed McKay a piece of paper. "Here's what I'd like to tell your crew, Art."

  EVERY DAY THAT WE CAN SAVE GETTING THIS CARGO TO ITS DESTINATION WILL SHORTEN THE WAR BY A DAY.

  In the crew's mess, the scuttlebutt specialists were working overtime. Everyone recognized Pearce. He was the wizard who had brought them the proximity fuse in the Solomons. Flanagan had nicknamed him Commander Death. What sort of weapon was in the crate and the cylinder? The mesquiteers told Flanagan they and their fellow Texans were sure it was a death ray like the one Ming, the evil emperor, used in Flash Gordon.

  Flanagan maintained it was a machine that would blow air from Secaucus, New Jersey (contained in the cylinder in concentrated form), on the Japanese and asphyxiate the whole country.

  "Maybe it's a new kind of engine that runs on some special fuel," Marty Roth said, trying to be a voice of sanity. "If we had twice our present speed, the kamikazes couldn't touch us."

  "I don't like it," Homewood said. "It looks too goddamn much like a coffin. The other thing looks too much like a bomb. We're sendin' the wrong message to the good spirits."

  "These good spirits of yours aren't very bright," Flanagan said.

  "I ain't kiddin'," Homewood said. "I don't feature sailin' to finish off the Japs with a fuckin' coffin on deck."

  "I've got the answer," Flanagan said. "We'll dress Semple up to look like an albatross and park him on the main yardarm." Homewood shook his head in despair. "Wise guy," he said.

  In the wardroom, the conversation was more intellectual. The prevailing wisdom was biological warfare. The majority was sure the cylinder contained the germs and the crate contained the machine for spewing them on the Japs. A furious debate erupted between Commander Moss, who was violently opposed to the idea, and Lieutenant MacComber, who applauded it. George Tombs simply refused to believe the United States would use such a weapon.

  Montgomery West listened with less than total detachment. "I say anything that ends this war and gets us all back in one piece is justified," he said, thinking of his ruined honeymoon.

  "What difference does it make how you kill someone? If we have to invade those fanatics, we'll have to kill five million of them, minimum. And they'll kill a million of us. If we've got a weapon that saves our million, let's use it."

  "I don't agree, West," Bob Mullenoe said. "I think it does make a difference how you kill someone. If you don't give him a fighting chance to kill you, it's not right."

  "We're not giving them much of a chance with those fire raids over Tokyo and Yokohama."

  "I don't think they're right either. We're killing women and children in those raids."

  "My mind doesn't make such fine distinctions."

  "Yes it does. You're just pissed about your honeymoon."

  When Robert Mullenoe spoke, it was the voice of the U.S Navy. Was he supposed to listen? West wondered. Was he really a part of this leviathan now? Did he subscribe to its eighteenth-century code of honor, its idiotic class system, its ancient rigmarole of saluting flags and reciting formulas for coming aboard and relieving watches?

  Yes. The answer stunned him. But it was still yes.

  "Okay," he said. "Bring on the kamikazes."

  As usual, MacComber was not giving an inch. "General Sherman had it right," he said. "War is hell. The hotter you make it, the quicker it's over. Let's give them the same kind of hell they've been givin' us."

  A mess steward leaned over his shoulder. "Would you like some more ice cream, Lieutenant?"

  On the second night of the voyage, Captain McKay invited Captain Pearce to dinner. "Well, you got the promotion," McKay said. "Congratulations."

  "General Groves, the head of the project, got it for me. The Navy fought him every step of the way. The same old story. Not enough sea duty. It's kind of ironic. This weapon will end the war. That will shut down the project and end my chances of making admiral."

  "You're sure about this miracle weapon? The proximity fuse didn't exactly end our worries about air attacks."

  "We're sure about this one. We've tested it. But"— Pearce stared gloomily at the sirloin steak on his plate —"not everyone agrees on the best way to use it."

  "But you've got orders."

  Pearce. nodded. "Very explicit orders.”

  "The fog of war's closing in a little?"

  Pearce grimaced at the old War College term. "More than a little."

  "You've got the mechanism of an atomic bomb in that crate. The cylinder's got uranium. 235 in it, right?"

  "Jesus Christ! Where did you hear that? I could have you taken off this ship and put under arrest in Pearl Harbor. I could have you court-martialed on the spot."

  "There wouldn't be much point to that, would there?"

  Pearce subsided. "I saw the test at Alamogordo. The night before you got to San Francisco. It flattened everything within three square miles. It blinded a man ten miles away. I've got film in my suitcase to show Nimitz and Spruance."

  "What are you going to do with it?"

  "Drop it on a Japanese city."

  "You think that will knock them out of the war?"

  "If it doesn't, we're going to drop another one."

  Arthur McKay sat there listening to the throb of the Jefferson City's engines, seeing his ship, her guns, her magazines, her engine rooms. Seeing this warship, returning to battle under his command, her prow cleaving the Pacific. "I don't like it," he said.

  Pearce stared at his half-eaten steak.

  "You don't like it either."

  "I'm proud of creating it. We wo
rked eighteen and twenty hours a day for months at a stretch. But I'm not proud of dropping it. Especially when I'm going to arm it. I'm going to be up in the plane arming it."

  Captain. McKay leaned back in his chair and gazed up at the overhead. "Let me tell you what I'm thinking. This thing gives us a chance to save the lives of my men, the lives of thousands of men on other ships who might die if the Japanese throw six thousand kamikazes at us in an invasion — but it simultaneously deprives them of a victory they've won with their courage, their seamanship, their loyalty. It gives the. Japs a chance to claim, some day, that we'd never have beaten them without this weapon. When in fact we've sunk just about every goddamn ship in the Combined Fleet. That's a hell of a choice. I wonder what the men would say about it if they were given a chance."

  "You think they'd vote in favor of an invasion?" Pearce said, an edge of scorn in his voice. He was not enjoying this conversation.

  "Probably not. Why don't you drop it in an open field? Blow a three-mile-wide hole in the ground. That might convince them to quit."

  "We've only got enough uranium for two bombs. We won't have any more for six months. The invasion goes in three months. You've seen the kamikazes. Do you really think these fanatics can be scared into surrendering?"

  "The kamikazes aren't fanatics. They're kids who've been told they should die for the Emperor. It's rampart of the tradition of gratitude to family, ancestors, country. The Japanese are only spooky if you don't understand them."

  "I'm afraid a lot of people in Washington don't understand them."

  "How many people do you think this bomb will kill?"

  "With the blast — about thirty thousand. Radiation will kill a couple of thousand more. The radiation part is messy. We really don't know what the hell it will do."

  "And you're going to arm it."

  "Yes. There's a B-29 all set up for it, the Enola Gay. I've helped train the crew."

  "I can see why you're upset, Duke."

  "Orders are orders, aren't they?"