Who's on First

by William F. Buckley

  “As far as we can tell, what’s in it for us is what we’ve been after throughout this whole operation: the first satellite, and all that signifies about strategic missile capability and other countries’ belief in us.”

  “Theirs would follow soon?”

  “Theirs would certainly follow. How soon we can’t say. Anywhere from two to six months later would be my guess.”

  The former Secretary twirled his glass. “Talk to me about Khrushchev.”

  “Khrushchev is now pretty much the whole ball game, but he leaned heavily on the military to get there, especially on Zhukov, who would like a fresh war with breakfast every day. Khrushchev is hot-tempered, wily, ambitious, ruthless—but, we have reason to believe, cautious. Anybody who survived Stalin has gifts of guile, and caution.”

  The Secretary held his snifter to his lips without tilting it. After an interval he said, “Here’s what bugs me at that end. If they had simply stolen our machine, we had caught them in the act, and then had sunk the ship that was carrying it away, their reciprocal gesture would tend to be formalistic. But in this situation we’re the aggressors. We abducted a Soviet scientist and got the fruit of Soviet research from him.”

  “Remember, he gave it to us: We didn’t torture it out of him, or anything like that.”

  “A nice distinction. But not one that Khrushchev would be likely to dwell upon. As far as he’s concerned, the satellite technology developed by Russians is Russian property—and we took it. Whatever professional admiration he may have for the way you got it, he is unlikely to be mollified. How did they find out about the scientist?”

  “We don’t know. Torture, I suppose. We were given no reason to believe they didn’t buy the whole Algerian cover. Hell, they delivered a shipful of arms to Algeria! But anyway, what then happened—to back up—is that our old Russian defector got word they were going to string up his old friend, so he himself told them about the machine, and where they could get one—which they promptly did, and loaded it on a Soviet freighter.”

  The former Secretary whistled. “Ah well. We shouldn’t be surprised when men act on emotion.”

  It occurred to the Director that, in another setting, he’d have commented that no doubt the defector took the position that he would not turn his back on his old friend in Russia. “Never mind him, though you can imagine what life was like when Ike was told a Russian defector in the United States turned over to the Communists our principal technological secret—but to go back: I agree. The Soviets would look about for retaliatory opportunities. And hell, there’s no way of predicting where they’d act or how. We need to speculate on the probable ferocity of their response—”

  “Hold that for a minute, Allen. Let’s suspend that, and think domestic for a moment. Now I’m going to tell you something that’s been on my mind, gnawing away, since the election. It has a very direct bearing …”

  He rose and clasped his hands behind his back, a posture habitual with him when lecturing presidents, judges, congressmen, students, or grandchildren.

  “In my judgment, the domestic mood is dangerously flabby. Hungary proved that. If I may say so without offending you, your brother’s rhetoric, going back to 1952, is now either not heard at all or confined to rallies at the American Legion, and dismissed as rodomontade. Now up to a point I personally welcome this: I am, I suppose, one of the architects of the doctrine of coexistence. What I do not welcome is something I fear is happening. And,” he sighed rather self-consciously, “it is happening within the womb of my own party.”

  “The party of brains …”

  “Precisely. And precisely because it is the party of brains, its strategic consequences are the more to be feared. What is happening is the crystallization of a blend of superiority-and-disengagement, based on the assumption that because we have hydrogen bombs we can drop on Moscow, we are safe. Never mind Hungary. Never mind—when you come right down to it—Berlin: people and places that can’t be saved with hydrogen weapons.

  “Now”—he lifted his hands to protest any interruption—“I am not saying that attitude has prevailed among thoughtful Democrats. I say it is inchoate in the writings, the attitudes, the acts, of some extremely influential Democrats and not a few Republicans—you saw what they almost did to the military budget? In the Senate, and in the House? It took everything Ike could throw at them to get it stitched together again. There is a kind of post—World War, post-Korean, post-Wilsonian languor. Never mind the editorial thunder; it can’t really be said that the public—or the intellectuals—were deeply moved by the Hungarian repression. That same lethargy wafted the whole Suez venture, however misbegotten in the first place, into nothingness. What this country needs is one hell of a jolt, and I’m here to tell you that under the circumstances, a satellite might very well be the kindest thing that ever happened to us. A Soviet satellite.” Again he raised his hand to keep from being interrupted. But the Director was merely staring at him. For a moment both men were silent. The former Secretary resumed, “Obviously it would be different if in that little Russian freighter we had packaged an entire intercontinental ballistics technology. But we know—you told me—what advances they’ve made, advances we can’t undo by one sinking in the North Atlantic. That fact hasn’t entered the U.S. consciousness.” Again, there was a silent moment. “Why not let them go ahead and wake us up by firing their blasted satellite?”

  After a third silence, the Director spoke. “You make the point very well. But you leave out, don’t you, the factor of world opinion? I am, as you know, as liberated as any man in America from the usual cant about world opinion. But at certain levels it is an overwhelming palpable force, and nobody knows that better than you. You created NATO. It was do-able only because these people felt the need and the comparable size of our muscle. Can we survive a Soviet satellite?”

  “I don’t deny the event would shock. I deny that anything that would immediately issue from the event would have conclusive strategic consequences. By contrast, a continued erosion of American resolution, sheltered by technological complacency, would inevitably show up in those little hard encounters three, four, five years from now. I would rather, I am saying, take the jolt now and recover than continue in the direction I think we’re headed.”

  The Director drew a deep breath. The two men sat sipping for a moment.

  The former Secretary rose. “Allen, think it over. Call me at any hour. Indeed, perhaps I should leave it that I will expect a call from you before dawn tomorrow. I’ll come back, or you can come to me; or, if there is nothing more to discuss, we’ll leave it at that.”

  The Director stood and clasped his friend’s hand. “Foster’s having breakfast with the President. I’ll have a prebreakfast breakfast with Foster.”

  “Has the President made up his mind?”

  “I would say that his mind has been made up subject to its being dramatically reversed.”

  “Is your mind made up?”

  “I hear what you say, Dean. Good night.”

  30

  The radio officer wrote down the message in the special code and whistled at its length. It was unusual for Washington to use the Captain’s Code; indeed he could remember only a single other occasion when it had been done, and that turned out to have been the prelude to the Inchon landing, seven years earlier in Korea. Well, he figured, that’s what captains are for. He dialed 001.

  The telephone rang on the desk of Y. Upsilon Jones, who was reading Forever Amber, and wondering whether the current mission, whatever it would prove to be, could conceivably take longer than it would take him to get through the book since he read slowly. “Charlie Stagg, sir. There’s a long message from CINCLANT in Captain’s Code. Shall I bring it down?”

  “Yup.”

  He hid his novel in the desk drawer, and pulled out the most recent volume of Samuel Eliot Morison’s naval history of World War II. A long cable in the special code … He wasn’t all that surprised. Since receiving, a day before, instructions to change
course and head 080 degrees, with no further explanation, he had been expecting clarification. There was a knock on the door.

  “Come in.”

  Warrant Officer Charles Stagg, wearing a navy shirt, the sleeves rolled up, and light blue gabardine pants, opened the door, recoiling instinctively at the thick cigar smoke inevitably associated with Captain Y. Upsilon Jones. The captain turned in his revolving chair, title page of his book conspicuous. Puffing on his cigar, he put the book aside and reached for the envelope.

  “A long one, eh Charlie?”

  “Several hundred words, sir. You don’t suppose there’s been a coup d’etat and General Curtis LeMay has overthrown the President?”

  The captain looked up frostily at the radio officer and blew smoke in his general direction. “Obviously, the communication is intended only for higher authority.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Stagg. “Will that be all?”

  “That will be all.”

  Captain Jones went to the wall safe but then realized he had to start all over again. He had forgotten the combination number. Never mind. He had written it down in the Bible, right by the Ten Commandments, where he knew he could remember to look. He went to his little bookshelf, brought out the Bible, thumbed through Exodus, and saw the little penciled numbers, which would mean nothing to any stranger who happened to find himself in the private quarters of Captain Y. Upsilon Jones, aboard the Indianapolis, reading Exodus in the Bible. 5 … 26 … 21 … 5. Once upon a time he had tried to commit the sequence to memory, and although he had done poorly at math in Annapolis, he had devised a little mnemonic aid, based on the difference between 26 and 21 being 5, or something of the sort—he couldn’t bother to recall. Above the 5, he had sketched in a tiny arrow pointing to the right, which was to remind him that he should turn the knob clockwise when beginning. Four turns clockwise past 0 ending at 5, three turns counterclockwise past 0 ending at 26, two turns clockwise past 0 ending at 21, one turn counterclockwise past 0 ending at … 5. The safe door clicked open, and he reached for the black leather book, sat down, opened it, and looked down the mimeographed table to September 12. Opposite it was written IZN. On another page he found, and jotted down, the corresponding keys. He was left with an alphabetic sequence with which he now painfully wrestled. A pity he couldn’t have Charlie do it, because Charlie had a way with codes. After a few minutes, he would have memorized that on this day, an “i” represented a “b,” and an “a” represented an “n,” and within five minutes he’d be writing out the message almost at dictation speed. But Uppy Jones had to keep referring back to the master code, and it was eleven before he had finished. He reread it whole in stupefaction and then dialed 002 for Joe Jenks, his executive officer. Jenks did not answer, so he bawled out on the general communication system: “Commander Jenks! This is the captain! Report immediately to my quarters.” After putting down the microphone he wondered whether that had been wise. Was there an edginess in his voice? There was a hell of a lot to be edgy about. Had Washington gone out of its fucking mind? If only they had somebody at the White House with a solid military background. Suddenly he remembered that, in fact, the incumbent President did have a solid military background. No doubt one of those Harvard kooks in there giving him this wild idea—the knock on the door was peremptory.

  “Come in.”

  “What’s up, Uppy?”

  Silently, Captain Jones handed his subordinate the penciled transcription of the message. Jenks began reading it while standing, but slowly eased himself down in the chair alongside the captain’s.

  The message began with the Eyes Only Top Secret Immediate Action coding reserved for what they called, at the National Staff and Command School, “decisive actions.”

  The message read: “YOUR MISSION IS TO SINK NINE THOUSAND TON RUSSIAN FREIGHTER MECHTA AT MOMENT OF YOUR CHOOSING BETWEEN 0300 AND 0400 GMT TOMORROW FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 13. THE MECHTA WILL BE AT APPROXIMATELY LATITUDE 45° 11’ NORTH LONGITUDE 50° 47’ WEST. TRAVELING AT 086 DEGREES SPEED 16 KNOTS. THE SINKING IS TO BE EFFECTED BY MEANS OF COLLISION. IMPERATIVE THE MECHTA GO DOWN BEFORE DAWN. EFFECT OPERATION WITH MINIMUM CASUALTIES. RESTRICT KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR MISSION TO FEWEST PERSONNEL FEASIBLE AND PLEDGE THEM TO SECRECY. SUCCESS OF OPERATION VITAL TO NATIONAL INTEREST. DEVISE APPROPRIATE SUBTERFUGE AND CHECK OUT DETAILS WITH CINCLANT ATTENTION BURKE CODE IZN BY 1500 GMT TODAY.” The cable was signed, “CINCLANT BURKE.”

  Jenks looked up and discerned the gloomy features of the beefy captain through the cigar smoke.

  “Mind if I turn on the fan, Uppy?”

  “I wouldn’t mind if you took command of the whole goddam ship, to tell you the truth.”

  Joe Jenks, who stayed on in the Navy after the war and had served four years with Jones, knew that the sentiment was wholly sincere. If there was anything Upsilon Jones abhorred more than exercising command, it was the thought of losing it. In two years he would be retired in any case, it having been made clear he would not be promoted. When they gave him the Indianapolis, he inherited a prestigious boat and—and Jones knew this—an executive officer who was always there when Jones needed him, which was whenever there was anything to do that required a little coordination. It was not true, as a classmate at Annapolis had once been heard to remark, that Uppy Jones couldn’t pilot a boat through the Strait of Gibraltar without hitting either Africa or Spain. But Jones was no Horatio Hornblower, and it suddenly occurred to Joe Jenks that under the circumstances this was providential. He had better be formal for a minute:

  “Well, Captain. How do you want to proceed?”

  Jones took a deep draft from his cigar.

  “I want to proceed by proceeding to assign you the task of working out the details of this dumb-ass assignment.”

  “All right, Uppy. Let me go back to my quarters, try to think up something, and try it out on you.”

  “When?”

  “An hour?”

  “Not later.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  At Washington, in the Situation Room of the Pentagon, the chief of Naval Operations, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency looked at the long cable, which they passed one to another.

  The Director, who was the last man to read it, looked up at the stern face of the chairman. Since neither of the military men had spoken, the Director broke silence. “I like it.”

  “So do I,” said the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

  “So do I,” said the chief of Naval Operations.

  The chief of Naval Operations picked up the telephone and reached his deputy. “Jim, cable the Indianapolis: ‘YOUR PLAN APPROVED. GOOD LUCK.’”

  The Director said, “It’s pretty ingenious. Who is the captain of the Indianapolis, Arleigh?”

  “Fellow called Y. Upsilon Jones. Happens to be the biggest asshole in the Navy. It’s too good to be true that he’s going to be the guy who ran into a Russian merchant in the middle of the Atlantic. Oh, the plan? That would be the work of his exec. Jenks. Smart feller.”

  There were four men sitting in the little office of the captain. Jenks had what amounted to a director’s script in his hand.

  “All right, we’ll go over it. ‘X’ designates the moment of impact. Just how many minutes and seconds after 0300 X will take place is a decision that will be made approximately ten minutes before X.

  “All right. We are at present on a course that should bring the Mechta into our radar screen at 0200, possibly earlier. We will have turned 180 degrees, to head west, one hour earlier, so that we’ll be approaching the Mechta bow to bow.

  “At 0300”—he turned to Lieutenant J. G. Plummer, who looked nineteen years old, and in fact was—“what do you do, Plummer?”

  “I tell Walker, who’ll be at the helm, to go to my cabin and work out the dawn star positions, that the exercise will be good for him, that I’m feeling a little lazy tonight, and I’ll take the helm. I’ll instruct Ensign Goodbody, who’ll have the CONN, to go with him and supervise the work. As
soon as they’ve gone down, I’ll tell the helmsman, the lee helmsman, and the watch quartermaster to go below—it’s a quiet night, and the new watch will be coming along in a few minutes.”

  “Correct. That will clear the bridge, and the two lookouts forward will be caught up in the general chaos. Now at that point we’ll be three miles east of the Mechta, one half mile north of it, on a westerly course of 265 degrees. At that point, we will calculate X—the minutes and seconds to impact—and turn off the running lights and the masthead lights.

  “At X minus five minutes, I’ll begin to reduce the parallel distance between our courses, but always maintaining sufficient distance so as not to alarm the Mechta’s radar guy if he happens to be tracking us.

  “Charlie, what do you do?”

  “I’m at the radio. If there is any sound out of the Mechta, anything at all, I start transmitting a continuous Mayday on that channel blocking out their transmission.”

  “Correct. And if there is no transmission, as I expect there won’t be?”

  “I stand by the set—until the moment of impact.”

  “And then?”

  “I send out a signal.”

  “Saying?—and don’t forget the foreign accent.”

  “Saying: CALLING IZ FREIGHTER MECHTA ENNY SHIP AT SEA. OUWER POHZISHUN—LATITUTE X, LONGITUTE Y. WIITH US ON BOART IZ ILL SAILORR WHOO NEETS EMERGENCY TREETMENT BY DOKTOR RIGHT AWAY. EEF YOU ARE IN REGION AND HAV DOKTOR ON BOART, CALL PLEES. WILL REPEAT …”

  “Correct. And then?”

  “Assuming their radio survives the collision, I’ll crowd it out with strong Mayday signals citing position.”

  “And assuming their radio is knocked out?—which is likelier?”