“Bridge to CSP! Stand by to process RAOB data. Balloon launch minus sixty seconds and holding.”
On the narrow deck in the inadequate lee of the after stack, Ben Munceford was aiming his camera at Ensign Bascomb and two seamen who were struggling with the meteorological balloon, which was threatening to destroy itself as it whipped about in the wind. In a recklessly caustic mood, he had come up to the pilothouse after breakfast and, after making sure Finlander was not within earshot, loudly asked: “Volleyball, anyone?” The wisecrack brought no laughter, but Commander Allison had come out of the chartroom to inform him the captain wanted film of the meteorological officer at work to show TV viewers that “we also perform a vital peacetime service.” Another dull subject! And one which would have to be shot in inadequate light with snow flying around to fog up the lenses. Why the hell couldn’t Finlander and Allison let him handle this story in his own way? Yet, when Munceford found out that Ensign Bascomb was actually going to try to launch an instrument-carrying balloon in this weather, he became interested and did his best to line up some usable pictures of the operation.
The seamen clawed at the wildly buffeted gasbag, trying to hold it down while the met officer struggled to clear the coils of nylon cord which supported the radiosonde and radar target. Hands were made clumsy by thick, sopping gloves on which ice had formed in stiffly articulated globs. Eyes winced half-shut from the sting of flying brine. The slick deck canted dangerously with the ship’s steep rolls. As the collar of his camouflage jacket beat against his frozen cheeks, Munceford braced himself with one arm hooked around a stanchion and squinted at the scene through his camera’s viewfinder. Behind him, the ubiquitous Pinelli clung to a lifeline and wearily shouted into his ear: “F-one-point-five, sir!”
Suddenly a wild thrust of wind tore the balloon from the grip of the two seamen, shooting it off horizontally along the deck. The nylon cord snaked out of Bascomb’s fumbling hands and snapped tight with a bowstring twang as the instrument package and target were yanked aloft. “Keep it from fouling!” the met officer bawled and in the next instant slipped and fell. “Munceford! Fend it off!” he screamed from his sprawled position.
Munceford was directly in the path of the box dangling from the cord and could easily have shoved it clear of the obstructions, but he kept grinding away with his camera instead. It was Pinelli who leaped forward in the nick of time and kept it from tangling. The big orange ball was momentarily sucked downward in the turbulence to leeward of the speeding destroyer, its cargo skipping the wave tops and making a series of white splashes in the gray walls of water. Then it shot upward and remained a bright blob astern for only a few seconds before fading into the scud. Munceford swung his camera around and shot a few additional feet of Bascomb as he lay on the deck, staring after the balloon with an expression of relieved misery. “Say! That was a good bit!” the correspondent exclaimed gleefully. “Let’s do some more of that!”
Bascomb gave him a disgusted look. “You’re a gutsy son of a bitch, Munceford, for a TV reporter . . . but mostly son of a bitch!” Then he gratefully said to Yeoman Pinelli: “Thanks for the hand, sailor! You saved that instrument package from smashing to hell.”
In the Communications Center, Lieutenant Beeker briefly checked the telemetry signals coming from the balloon as it soared up unseen through the icy muck covering the ocean, then assigned Lieutenant Packer to monitoring the tape and feeding the data down to the CSP room. The Beek was anxious to keep the Englishman busy. He wanted no emotional upsets in his department, especially since he had been made the key figure in the hunt for Moby Dick. Using this vital job as an excuse to leave Packer abruptly to the routine RAOB duty, he quickly retreated to the EDA room, where the direction finders and emission sensors had been on stand-by since 2300 hours of yesterday.
Twice during the night Beeker had been routed out of his cabin to monitor intercepted transmissions from the Novo Sibirsk, each time having to report to Finlander with a rough translation of what appeared to him to be pseudo-scientific oceanographic gibberish. At 0328 a fragmentary signal, too brief for either taping or a HUFF-DUFF bearing, had been picked up on a frequency often used by Soviet submarines, and this had ended all chance for sleep. Ever since then he had been on continuous duty in the EDA room, waiting and listening in vain and fending off Finlander’s frequent impatient calls. Evidently the captain too was spending a sleepless night, his mind uneasy and enervated by the suspected proximity of his enemy. An hour ago he had sent Lieutenant Burger, the Bedford’s oceanographic expert, to go over the translations of the Novo Sibirsk intercepts, and that officer was still seated next to The Beek, painstakingly plowing through the text, questioning this and that word or sentence for possible Russian double meaning, slang or colloquialism. Burger did not have a quick mind or much imagination and was redundantly thorough — a plodder, The Beek thought as he was diverted from concentrating on the sounds in his earphones to explain to him for the third time that he would be responsible for nothing but literal translations. And at that moment the same mysterious signal which they had heard during the night came crackling through in a short, staccato burst of Morse.
Chief Benton lunged for the HUFF-DUFF and Lieutenant Beeker jumped to pinpoint the frequency on the MESS-PLEX, but the signal lasted for less than five seconds. They waited for over five minutes, tensely poised to plot it if it was repeated. But it was not. Benton let fly the kind of four-letter expletive which Finlander had prohibited on the Bedford. The Beek slumped back into his chair, thought for a moment while rubbing the swarthy stubble on his jaw, then picked up the phone and called the captain. “We just intercepted another one, sir. Stronger than the last, but still too quick for a bearing.”
“Well, could you read the signal?” Finlander’s edgy voice demanded.
“No, sir. They put something like two five-letter groups through a scrambler.” The Beek had thought he recognized two of those letters, but he was the kind of officer who hated to commit himself without being absolutely sure. Especially not with Finlander.
There followed a short, disappointed silence on the line, then: “I want you and Mr. Burger to report to my day cabin at once, please.”
Captain Finlander was seated at his desk, the scar on his throat pulsing a stark red over the collar of a non-regulation sweater, his eyes cold glints beneath the heavy lids. The lines in his face were rigidly set like those of an angry, inanimate mask, but his voice had that soft, dispassionate quality which made his sarcasm all the more biting. “Our Soviet adversaries must know this ship carries one of the navy’s top radio-intelligence officers aboard and are deliberately setting out to make a fool of him,” he observed when Lieutenants Becker and Burger presented themselves in the day cabin.
The Beek’s face remained expressionless. “You may certainly count on them knowing we are in the area, sir,” he answered. “And they must realize we are well equipped to intercept their signals.”
“Are we?” Finlander countered.
“Neither of those intercepts lasted over five seconds,” his communications officer patiently explained. “We need twenty seconds for the sensors to register a frequency and twelve seconds for the HUFF-DUFF to take a bearing with any kind of reliability factor, and —”
“I have acquainted myself with the technical capabilities of my ship’s detection gear,” Finlander interrupted him. “They are fascinating gadgets on the whole, Mr. Beeker. But they can’t play a hunch. I have asked you up here to find out if you can excel them in this respect.”
“I know you want me to suggest those signals came from Moby Dick, Captain, and indicate he is somewhere near us,” The Beek answered, then adamantly added: “I regret I have no way of supporting such a premise.”
Finlander gave a disgusted snort. “Can your mind only react to a given, measurable set of impulses, like your machines? Couldn’t you just plain guess occasionally, Mr. Beeker? On whether or not this last signal was of Russian origin, for instance?”
The Beek’s face flushed slightly, but he still resisted being drawn out. “Even that would be rash with only a couple of scrambled five-letter groups to go on, sir. I have ordered the suspected frequency continuously guarded by recorder, so if they come on again, perhaps . . .” He stopped, wavering under the piercing gaze, and after a painful hesitation suddenly blurted out: “Well . . . as a ball-park guess, Captain . . . I’d say they were Russian.”
Finlander’s black eyebrows cocked upward as he pounced. “Aha! Assuming so, it is also reasonable to assume they were intended for the Novo Sibirsk — right? Then why did she not acknowledge?”
Lieutenant Beeker fell into the trap. “It could be that the Novo Sibirsk would only query Moby Dick if she did not receive the signal. In other words, sir, silence constitutes an acknowledgment that the message was received according to a predetermined schedule.”
The captain’s face became animated by a quick, caustic grin of triumph. “My goodness, Mr. Beeker! You are given to playing purely human hunches after all! So don’t look so sheepish about it, boy! That casts aspersions on my own judgment, because I happen to agree with your hunch.” He turned from the discomfited communications officer and sharply scrutinized his oceanographic expert. “Well, Mr. Burger. Have you been able to make anything interesting out of the translations of the Novo Sibirsk intercepts?”
Lieutenant (J.G.) Kurt Burger cleared his throat with a series of hacking little coughs. “I have it all here, sir,” he answered, holding out a neat file folder.
Finlander made no move to accept it. “Please don’t shove paperwork in my face, Mr. Burger. Simply give me as short-winded a verbal rundown as you can.”
Another series of coughs rattled out of Burger’s throat, betraying his nervousness. But he had decided to act in contrast to Lieutenant Beeker and come out with an opinion without being coaxed. “It seems quite clear that these transmissions are coded tactical intelligence reports disguised as oceanographic observations.”
“How do you arrive at that conclusion?” the captain inquired with a frown.
“They contain data supposedly gathered by Nansen bottle and bathythermograph, sir,” Burger explained. “This is quite normal stuff for a research vessel, but it isn’t normal to send back the information by radio to home base. It would simply be logged and held for evaluation at the end of the cruise. Then there is another, far more important discrepancy, sir.” He paused for an exaggerated dramatic effect which merely made Finlander impatient. “The data contained in the transmissions is just enough at variance with the conditions up here to be highly suspect. Assuming the Soviets would not man a research vessel with incompetent oceanographers, it is a reasonable conclusion that their reports actually convey information of a completely different kind.” His round face took on a self-satisfied expression which quickly returned to one of nervousness when the captain tartly asked:
“Such as what?”
“Well, sir . . . that is difficult to determine without thoroughly analyzing a whole series of such reports. It could be, ah . . . well, regarding submarine operations in this area, or possibly airborne telemetric analyses of our radar emissions, or even tactical hydrographic information.” No longer sure of himself, Burger became fidgety and his eyes flicked from the captain to The Beek, who had been listening with a detached interest. “I’m not a cryptographer, you know, gentlemen,” he added defensively.
“I am aware of your limitations, Mr. Burger,” Finlander told him. “What I am wondering is whether the Commies would be stupid enough to send out obviously faked scientific data over the air.”
“Yes, but . . . they would hardly expect to have their transmission monitored by a fully qualified oceanographer,” Burger answered with a timidly smug tone.
The captain looked into the lieutenant’s, blue eyes, which were permanently bloodshot from too much reading, and wondered about the effectiveness of this strange new type of naval officer. Burger had graduated near the top of his class at Annapolis, been detached for postgraduate work at M.I.T., detached again to serve on the scientific staff of a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution research ship, then assigned to the Office of Naval Research, from where he had been sent to the Bedford for the purpose of “determining the efficacy and practical usefulness of including an oceanographic specialist on the manning table of an ASW vessel under operational conditions” — or so the orders had read. Maybe Bureau of Personnel simply didn’t know what the hell to do with this overeducated genius! Finlander would personally have preferred to be given another all-round young line officer like Ensign Ralston, or if it had to be a narrowly specialized type, then another Merlin Queffle, who seemed to get more results out of the scientific apparatus aboard the ship than the scientists who were actually responsible for them. But Queffle had barely managed to graduate from high school, while this Burger had his Master’s degree, so the captain had to be cautious about allowing himself to be influenced by his natural prejudices. “Thank you,” he said to the oceanographer. “I’ll think over your ideas, Mr. Burger.”
After dismissing the two officers, Finlander went out into the navigation office, where he thoughtfully leaned over the chart table, his face darkly inscrutable. Commander Allison came up behind him, waited to be noticed and, when he was not, spoke up: “Anything new for the tactical plot, sir?”
“Yes,” Finlander answered loudly and with a firm conviction. “Moby Dick is here!” he slammed his hand down on the chart with fingers spread wide, sweeping it along the Greenland coast from Scoresby Sound to Cape Hildebrandt.
Allison looked surprised. “You mean The Beek stuck his neck out on those signals?”
The hand on the chart rose in a contemptuous flourish. “The sticking out of necks remains the exclusive privilege of commanding officers, Buck. No hemming ‘n’ hawing. No equivocations. No academic procrastinations. One just weighs all the evidence, the solid and the nebulous, the educated guess and the pure hunch, then turns all the ifs, buts and maybes into a definite tactical proposition. Moby Dick is here!” The hand slammed down again. “Let’s go nail him . . . after we intimidate his illegitimate mother, the Novo Sibirsk.”
Wheeling away from the chart table, Finlander swept through the blackout curtain into the wheelhouse, stalked up to a snow flecked window and peered out at the javelin-shaped bow as it streamed a plume of white spray. Beyond it, the massive slopes of the swells turned milky and blended into the leaden clouds which had dropped lower and become more turbulent as they were whipped along by the freshening nor’easter. Neither sea nor sky had a drop of color to relieve the oppressive, all-pervading sullen drabness which seeped through the clouded windows to fill the wheelhouse with gloom. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, yet as dark as if day were failing to shake off the grip of winter night. Finlander turned away from the depressing view, brushed past the OOD and moved over to the communications panel. “Quartermaster! I want to address ship’s company, please.”
After the piercing notes of the taped bosun’s pipe faded on a melancholy minor key, Finlander’s voice permeated every part of the Bedford. “This is the captain speaking. I have every reason to believe that within the next twenty-four hours we shall close with our enemy. I am referring to the Russian submarine we call Moby Dick and I openly call him our enemy because he is intruding upon this part of the ocean with the objective of softening our defenses against the avowed Soviet purpose of burying us. While we are aware of our responsibility as part of NATO forces, we must primarily act as American sailors faced with a threat against our home shores. If any of you doubt this threat and are tempted to give the Russian leaders’ protestations of peaceful intentions the benefit of doubt, then ask yourselves why his submarines prowl submerged through these waters attended by naval auxiliaries masquerading as innocent research vessels. Make no mistake about this! Their presence here is by nature of a clandestine operation preparatory to an eventual attack against our country. Any other interpretation is nothing but wishful thinking. But I am not
going to deliver an orientation lecture on the evils of the Communist conspiracy, gentlemen. Suffice it to reaffirm that we are the professional complement of a United States warship — the only ship standing between our country’s safety and that particular phase of Soviet aggression represented by the operation of Moby Dick and its charlatan consort, the Novo Sibirsk. I intend to show them that we are as ruthlessly determined upon thwarting their purpose as they are in committing it. I intend to hunt down Moby Dick, lock him in our sonar beams and hang on to him until he has no choice but to surface in our full view, then sneak home with no other truth to report than the certain prospects of defeat.”
The captain paused to allow his words to sink home. When he resumed his speech, a slight — very slight — note of irony had crept into his tone.
“It was written about a hundred years ago that a certain Captain Ahab hunted a demon whale called Mocha Dick — or Moby Dick — and that he nailed a gold coin to the mizzenmast of his ship, promising this reward to the man who first spotted that whale and brought about a final reckoning with it. If I dealt in gold coin, or if you yourselves sought such, then none of us would be here, so I will make no such offer to the man who puts me on to our Moby Dick. All I will promise him is some slight favor over his shipmates when Christmas leaves are being allotted . . . and an emphatic ‘well done’ which I will put down in his record with my own hand. To ensure equal opportunity for all hands in gaining this sailor’s reward, I am ordering my departmental commanders, including Engineering and Commissary, to rotate their men into stand-by tactical assignments with the regular sonar, radar and eyeball watches. I am convinced that this will be all the incentive you need to excel the already high standards of duty aboard this ship during the critical week ahead. Thank you.”
The Bedford Incident Page 15
