“And, Jesus, we can’t allow any noise on this ship,” Munceford muttered between clenched teeth. He got up and took his empty glass to the sideboard, where he debated with himself whether to switch over to the pitcher containing the red juice. The yellow had left an unpleasant sour-sweet taste in his mouth. He was standing there contemplating the problem with a morose indifference when Lieutenant Commander Porter entered the wardroom and saw him.
“Hello, Ben. Having withdrawal pains?” he quipped with a sadistic smirk.
“You tell me, Doc,” Munceford shot back. “I’ve been seeing blondes and palm trees, and it hurts right here.” He patted his rump.
“I prescribe a bland diet and plenty of fresh ocean air,” Porter answered, reaching for the red jug. “The captain has asked me to tell you he will see you in his cabin now.”
“God! And here I am reeking of fruit juice! Oh, well — I might as well have everybody aboard on my tail. Where do I go?”
“Turn left outside this door, stagger twenty feet along the passageway and knock on the door marked CAPTAIN,” the surgeon directed him dryly, then turned toward the other officers and loudly introduced himself: “Hello, gentlemen. I am Commander Porter, your new medical officer.”
Lieutenant Peter Packer looked up with a start and jumped to his feet, quickly shoving his letters into a pocket. As Munceford left the wardroom, he saw Krindlemeyer and Spitzer rise and briefly come out of their technical trance with the same vaguely amazed expression they had shown when they met him.
9.
Captain Erik J. Finlander was a man of medium build but with an unusually large head — or perhaps it was the very heavy jaw and pronounced brows which made it appear that way. Or maybe the thin neck with the very prominent arteries, one of which was crossed by the scar of what must once have been a nearly fatal wound. His hair was cropped short and the color and texture of a steel brush; the eyebrows were the same and joined together over the bridge of a nose which had been broken a long time ago. His eyes were the greenish-gray of the North Atlantic, set deep under heavy lids and among many little wrinkles etched by a combination of humor, temper and driving winds. He was ugly. He was also handsome. And when he smiled, all the hardness in his face vanished — except in the eyes, which merely mellowed from a cold gleam to a mischievous twinkle.
“Very glad to meet you at last, Mr. Munceford,” he exclaimed in a voice which had a quiet, husky quality. “I wanted us to get together much sooner, but this has been kind of a busy day.”
“That’s okay, Captain. Quite okay,” Munceford answered, wondering whether or not this was the sort of looking man he had expected.
“I also want to apologize for the shaking up you got on the highline,” Finlander told him, still keeping a strong grip on his hand. “Was that an expensive camera you lost?”
“About five hundred, new,” Munceford lied, managing to sound casual.
Captain Finlander winced and transferred his grip to Munceford’s elbow, steering him into the middle of his cabin. It was not as large as Munceford had expected, but a luxurious touch was provided by the same plastic “paneling” used in the wardroom, and by a bulkhead-to-bulkhead carpet of deep red color. Munceford was surprised to find another man standing at the desk and his first impression was that he was a civilian. He wore a black leather jacket without any insignia, and his trousers were tucked into a pair of non-regulation black rubber boots. When he looked up from the papers he was examining, the face was either that of a young sixty- or old forty-year-old; it was heavily lined, hard and somewhat melancholy.
“I’d like you to meet Commodore Wolfgang Schrepke of the DBM,” Finlander said. When he saw Munceford’s blank expression, he smiled and added: “That’s the Deutches Bundes Marine — West German Navy to you.”
“How do you do?” Schrepke said, giving him a quick, hard handshake. He spoke with a harsh German accent.
“The commodore and I have a matter to discuss for a minute or two,” Finlander apologized pleasantly. “In the meanwhile, have yourself a drink and sit down.” He pointed toward a chest on which stood a tray with two pitchers — one containing red, the other gold-colored fluid.
This time Munceford picked the Bloody Mary and sat down in a chair to wait. He felt himself hopefully impressed by Finlander, but confused by the presence of the German. The rank of commodore he associated with yacht clubs and had a vague recollection that it had been discontinued in the American navy since World War II. But he remembered it was just below admiral — more rank than Finlander! Yet the man looked like a chief bosun of a freighter. After his low conversation with the captain was ended — it was about something they called low-frequency returns — he put on a battered naval officer’s cap with gold on the visor, excused himself with a polite military formality and stalked out of the cabin.
Finlander put the papers away in a drawer of his desk and came over to pour himself a drink. He seemed to be closely appraising Munceford and also reading his puzzled thoughts. “Commodore Schrepke is an anti-submarine warfare expert with NATO naval forces,” he explained after the door had shut behind the German. “You have heard of him, of course? No? Well, during the war he was one of Dönitz’s ace U-boat commanders. Sank over two hundred thousand tons of Allied shipping. It’s funny how things turn out, but we find it’s probable that I depth-charged him while escorting a convoy to Murmansk. Now here we are sixteen years later, serving together against the Russians.”
“That is a story,” Munceford said, really impressed.
“Yes, but I don’t know that it should be publicized. A lot of our Congressmen and their constituents are sensitive about foreigners serving on our ships, especially Germans. Sometimes I don’t think we are at all ready for the NATO concept. Yet we’ve got to make it work. Frankly, I myself still have an ingrained dislike of all U-boat crews, a hangover from my younger days when I fought them with more passion than science. But now I control my feelings, get along with men like Schrepke and try to do a strictly professional job.” He raised his drink of tomato juice, his eyes boring into Munceford over the rim of the glass. “Cheers! . . . Well, now . . . back to the matter of the lost camera. I suppose, like all press people, you’ve got cases full of assorted replacements, so you’ll be able to carry on.”
“As a matter of fact, no,” Munceford answered, then found himself lying to Finlander in spite of an uneasy feeling that the man could see right through him. “I accidentally smashed my spare aboard the Tiburon Bay. Didn’t even bother to bring it with me to the Bedford.”
“Then, to put it exactly, you are in a fix,” Finlander exclaimed, his bristling eyebrows curving into a Mephisto expression.
“Can’t shoot any movies. But I have a tape recorder, which means I can produce something for radio, at least.”
Captain Finlander had been about to sit down, but now he went back to the desk, dialed a number on the telephone and ordered whoever answered: “Send Yeoman Pinelli to the captain’s quarters at once, please.” Almost the instant he hung up, the ship’s PA system could be heard paging that individual. As Finlander came back to sit down, he said: “The destroyer service is nothing if not versatile, so we’ll probably be able to put you back in business, Munceford. In the meanwhile, give me your first impressions of my ship.”
Munceford remembered what Commander Allison had said about the Bedford and assumed it would be pleasing to her captain. “She’s damn near as big as a cruiser. Much more impressive than the little DE I once did a story on.”
“My first command was a DE during World War II,” Finlander informed him. “I built a reputation as a U-boat killer, you know, and did it with that type of ship, one of the best classes ever designed. So don’t be overly impressed by size, which in itself means little. For instance, not far from where we are steaming right now lies the sunken remains of the largest battle cruiser ever built, H.M.S. Hood. A single hit from the Bismarck blew her to pieces in 1942 during the first minute of the hour she and her two-thousand-m
an crew were supposed to justify their existence. Incidentally, and to speak of strange coincidences which seem to devil the Bedford, a son of one of the Hood’s officers is aboard this ship — Lieutenant P. L. M. Packer of the Royal Navy.”
“I’ll be damned!” Munceford exclaimed. “Why, I’m sharing a cabin with him. Seems like a —”
“Yes, yes . . . he’s a good boy,” Finlander interrupted him with a certain impatience. “The Packers have been in the British navy since they stopped the Armada. Between then and the Bismarck action, not a single one has ever found a dry grave for himself — something which would worry me if I were superstitious. Well, anyway, the point I was trying to make before getting sidetracked was that the most impressive thing about the Bedford is not her size, but the sophistication of her weaponry, which gives her the contradictory characteristics of specialization and flexibility. She’s an engineering marvel and a scientific miracle; she is also a cranky and complex bitch at times, which means she can still make an old destroyer man feel at home. All right — what’s your impression of her crew?”
Munceford decided to try to be candid. “The few I’ve met are kind of puzzling characters. I’m mostly impressed by their absence and silence.”
Captain Finlander laughed softly. “Well, for one thing, we have automation to eliminate much of the manpower which used to be necessary to operate a ship of this size. For another, we are hunters — stalking kind of hunters — who track by ear a foe who is also intently listening for us. To be quiet and stealthy becomes second nature under the circumstances; I deliberately instill this in my men. The fact that we are fighting a nebulous cold war without decisively obtainable tactical objectives has a lot to do with creating some puzzling characters among us. Take myself, for instance. . . .” He leaned forward in his chair, thrusting his face toward Munceford, who found himself staring back almost as though hypnotized.
“As captain, I must key all my men to an intense fighting pitch and keep them keyed that way through hundreds of boring sweeps through an ocean most of them can’t even see, only feel through bruised and wrenched muscles. Then, if we get a contact, I must key them to an even finer pitch so they hang on, close up and drive in for a kill they know will end in nothing but the dull mockery of an anti-climax. The same man who extracted every last measure of their skills, who numbed their minds to the fact that this is nothing but a sadistic game, must belay all their efforts with a few bellicose words over the ship’s PA. ‘Well done, men! You’ve given those Commies down there an inkling of what it is like to die in a submarine. Now stand down from General Quarters. The movie in enlisted mess tonight will be Liz Taylor in Butterfield 8.’ . . . The truth really is that the Commie submariners have learned more from the operation than we have and will be twice as hard to pin down next time. But we’ve got to oblige them with this training, and that’s the sort of thing which strains the minds of officers and thinking men on destroyers in this cold-war zone — understand?”
Munceford was not sure that he did, although Finlander was eloquent to the point of being spellbinding. “I get the idea that there’s a lot more Russian submarine activity here than is generally realized.”
“It’s a free ocean,” the captain answered with a bitter chuckle. “Technically, they can come and go as they please, cold war or no cold war. So can we. Contrary to certain scuttlebutt, we aren’t out to spy on each other’s missile ranges or atomic tests. That kind of work can be done cheaper and easier by one man in a U-2 type of aircraft. It is DEW-line and NORAD emissions Soviet subs are recording and checking out to help them penetrate our defenses when the time comes. I also suspect scouting and ranging of submarine missile-firing positions. These are objectives worth tremendous risks. They are worth killing over.”
“You actually attack them?”
Those wiry eyebrows arranged themselves into a sly expression. “Do you mean officially?”
“I mean . . . does anybody get hurt, Captain Finlander?”
“Fear hurts. Unrelenting tension becomes a physical pain. Uncertainty and frustration can turn into a crippling agony. But I suppose that to you, actual killing is the ultimate hurt, so I can truthfully answer: no, nobody has been hurt — so far.” His eyes left Munceford’s face for a moment, flicking to the gyro-repeater and clock attached to the bulkhead above his desk. “Where is Pinelli?” he asked with sudden irritation. “It’s been four minutes since I called him.”
Munceford was trying to correlate in his mind the implications of what Finlander had told him. “Jesus! I may be on to a real hot story for a change!” he exclaimed. “What’s going on out here will come as a hell of a shock to a lot of people.”
Finlander’s eyes snapped into him. “I’m giving you background material, not a story, Munceford. This is not a piece of political taffy to be pulled and fingered by pundits and politicians, like they are doing with Berlin and Laos. Those items have at least a certain sticky elasticity. This is the hard-core, war part of the cold war. Here we clash in the privacy of a black, empty ocean with no audience but our own conscience; both parties want to keep it that way because the stakes are such that no compromise is possible. If you doubt me, then ask yourself what the United States has left if its DEW-line and NORAD systems are cracked. What have the Soviets got if they never crack them? So both parties need secrecy to protect their freedom of maneuvering against each other. So don’t expect to run wild with your story.”
Munceford hunched down in his chair. “You feel, like Commander Allison, that I shouldn’t be here, Captain?” he countered defensively.
Finlander laughed, but with a cold light in his eyes. “Did Buck hurt your feelings already?” he asked. “Well, you’ve got to understand that an exec who is privy to too many of his captain’s darkest secrets becomes tense and cautious with strangers. His responsibilities make him more conscious of simple, tactical requirements than subtleties of strategy. And, believe it or not, Munceford, your being aboard is a matter of strategy.”
Munceford blinked. “What?”
“Take my word for it and leave it at that. Go anywhere you like on my ship except in the CIC, where I’d want you escorted. Please be careful on deck and only move out there when the crew are around. You’ll find that we’ve got a lot in common with the subs in that we travel buttoned up most of the time. Too cold outside, for one thing; too rough, for another.” He reacted to a knock on the door, glanced at the clock and shouted: “Enter!”
A yeoman came in, saluted and remained stiffly at attention as he announced himself: “Yeoman Pinelli reporting to the captain as ordered, sir.” He was much out of breath.
“Good evening, Pinelli,” the captain greeted him with a pleasant gruffness. “What took you so long? Were you up in the crow’s-nest?”
“In the shower, sir.”
“In that case, you did well,” Finlander told him, bringing relief to his worried face. “I’m sorry to break into your off-watch period, Pinelli, but it seems Mr. Munceford has already managed to lose or break all his movie cameras. Do we have any we can spare?”
“We have three, sir. Two Model Seventy-H’s and an Arri.”
Finlander turned to Munceford. “Seems you have a choice. Which would you like?”
“The Seventy-H is fine,” Munceford told him. He would have preferred an Arri, which was a two-thousand-dollar camera, but he was afraid he would show his ignorance by being unable to operate it.
“All right, Pinelli, let him have one of those. And I want you to assist Mr. Munceford in every way you can. Maybe you will learn something from him.” With a very subtle gleam of malice, he informed Munceford: “Yeoman Pinelli is the Bedford’s official photographer, but he only gets pictures of ASROC launchings, the inside of boilers, hedgehog patterns and dull things like that. I hope you’ll be patient with him.”
Munceford instantly knew that this ordinary-looking sailor was probably a very skilled professional photographer. This put him on his guard because he was a rather sloppy one himsel
f and sensitive about it. But he said: “I’m sure we’ll get along fine and I’ll be glad to show him any tricks I know.” The yeoman gave him a somewhat baleful look, and after the captain had dismissed him, Munceford observed: “You certainly have a variety of talents aboard.”
Finlander nodded his big head. “Time was when a destroyer could be run by nothing but a gang of ham-fisted sailors with their guts in gimbals. Today, men like that would be about as effective as a crew of Vikings plucked out of the tenth century.”
“Still takes guts, I bet,” Munceford injected.
“Sure, sure! Listen to me. I can’t give you much more time.” Captain Finlander seemed bent upon delivering a monologue, speaking with a quiet intensity which discouraged the conversational form. “Something less than forty per cent of my complement are seamen in the strict sense of the term. The rest could staff the science department of a medium-sized college. Take your pick of subjects! Thermodynamics, microwave analysis, submarine ultrasonics, computer circuitry, guidance systems, dielectric telemetry, doppler and inertial navigation systems, meteorology, physical oceanography — I have specialists in all these fields.” His face darkened and he added beneath his breath, more to himself than to Munceford: “I even had a psychiatrist to muddle in all that brain-power.”
Munceford almost asked him if he were referring to Lieutenant Hirschfeld, but remembered Packer’s warning in the nick of time and said nothing. Finlander continued:
“We carry a million dollars’ worth of education on a ship like this, and have to fight for every nickel of it. For the first time in history, the navy has to contend with press gangs from colleges and industry who are out to pick off our people for their own classrooms and labs. Instead of plying them with booze in water-front dives, they lure them into fancy hotel suites and cajole them with promises of wealth, status and fringe benefits. They get Annapolis men to resign their commissions after the navy has put them through M.I.T. post-graduate courses; they secretly sign up enlisted technicians with a year still to go on their hitches. We can’t afford to lose these men, especially since they are three times as hard to train for the navy as for any civilian job, where all they’ve got to do is to sit on their rumps with a slide rule or computer. We’ve got to make halfway decent seamen and fighters out of them, too. It’s very hard to find men with all three qualifications: fighter, seaman and scientist. For instance, after our last patrol I had to ship home a genius on sonar gear, simply because he could not stop vomiting all over the Combat Information Center when the going got rough — which it inevitably does up here. Then I had a guidance-systems man with an IQ of one-sixty-three who got to brooding about warheads and started infecting his division with pacifistic ideas. He had to go too. If I can’t keep a fighting spirit in this ship, or keep her scientific gear operating at peak efficiency, or keep her steaming through anything this ocean can throw at me — then, for any one of those reasons, I might as well open her seacocks and scuttle her. Are you beginning to grasp some of the problems, Munceford?”
The Bedford Incident Page 7
