‘Right,’ replied Homer Ashford. He nodded his head in Troy’s direction and started to leave. ‘We’ll be ready for you. Bring plenty of tape. It’s a long story.’ He made a peculiar clucking sound with his mouth. ‘And plan to stay for a little party afterwards.’
Homer was already halfway down the steps when Troy walked up beside Carol. ‘Hello, Captain Homer. Goodbye, Captain Homer,’ he said quietly, still playing the comic. He leaned over to kiss Carol on the cheek. ‘Hi there, angel….’
‘Yuch,’ Carol pulled her cheek away. ‘You smell like a brewery. No wonder I’ve had to look all over town for you two.’ She saw Nick coming toward them across the parking lot. He was carrying the exercise bag. She raised her voice. ‘Well, Mr. Williams, what a pleasant surprise. How nice that you and your brother here could climb down from your bar stools long enough to keep our appointment.’ She looked at her watch. ‘My, my,’ she said in her most sarcastic voice, ‘we are certainly fashionably late. Let’s see, if one waits fifteen minutes for a full professor, how long does one wait for a fake professor?’
‘Knock off the bullshit, Miss High-and-Mighty,’ Nick said, responding angrily to her barbs. He joined Carol and Troy and then caught his breath. ‘We have a few bones to pick with you as well,’ he continued. ‘Just what were you doing talking to that asshole Ashford?’
Nick sounded threatening. Carol recoiled. ‘Listen to him,’ she said, ‘the typical macho male. Always shifts the blame to the woman. “Hey bitch,” he says, “forget I’m late, forget I’m an arrogant bastard, it was your fault anyway….”’
‘Hey, hey… hey,’ Troy interceded. Carol and Nick were glowering at each other. They both started to speak but Troy interrupted them again. ‘Children, children, please,’ he continued, ‘I have something important to say.’ They both looked at him. Troy raised his arms for quiet. Then he adopted a stiff pose and pretended to be reading. ‘Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation….’
Carol cracked up first. ‘Troy,’ she said, smiling despite her anger, ‘you are something else. You are also ridiculous.’
A grinning Troy punched Nick on the shoulder. ‘How did I do, Professor? Would I make a good Lincoln? Could a nice young black boy play Lincoln for the white folks?’
Nick smiled reluctantly and looked down at the tarmac while Troy talked. When Troy was finished, Nick’s tone to Carol was conciliatory. ‘I’m sorry we were late,’ he said in measured tones, ‘we forgot what time it was. Here’s the trident.’
Carol recognized how difficult it had been for Nick to apologize. She accepted gracefully with a short smile and a gesture with her hands. ‘You keep the trident for a little while longer,’ she said after a brief silence. ‘We have a lot of other things to talk about.’ She looked around. ‘But this may be the wrong place and the wrong time.’
Both Nick and Troy were giving her questioning looks. ‘I have some very exciting news,’ she explained, ‘some of which is here in your copy of the pictures that I developed this morning. Bottom line is that the telescope picked up an infrared signal coming out of the fissure from some kind of large object or objects.’ She turned to Nick. ‘It may be more treasure. We can’t be certain what it is based on the images.’
Nick reached for the envelope. Carol pulled it away. ‘Not here, not now. Too many eyes and ears. Take my word for it. What we have to do now is make plans. Can you two take me out again tomorrow morning early, and be prepared to salvage objects possibly as big as two hundred pounds? Of course, I intend to pay for chartering the boat again.’
‘Wow,’ whistled Nick, ‘two hundred pounds! I can hardly wait to see the pictures.’ He was sobering up rapidly. ‘We’ll need to borrow a dredger and—’
‘I still have the telescope, so we can use it again,’ Carol added. She looked at her watch. ‘It’s almost five o’clock now, how much preparation time do you need?’
‘Three hours, four hours at the most,’ Nick said, calculating swiftly. ‘With Troy’s help, of course,’ he added.
‘Gladly, my friends,’ Troy replied. ‘And since Angie has reserved a special table for me at Sloppy Joe’s for her ten-thirty show tonight, why don’t we meet there and go over the details for tomorrow?’
‘Angie Leatherwood is a friend of yours?’ Carol said, obviously impressed. ‘I haven’t seen her since she made the big time.’ She paused for a second and handed the envelope to Nick. ‘Look at these images in private. The whole set was taken just under the boat where we were diving. Some are obviously blowups of others. It may take a little time for your eyes to adjust to all the colours. But it’s the brown object or objects that we’re after.’ Carol could tell that both of the men were eager to see the pictures. She walked with them toward Nick’s car. ‘So I’ll see both of you tonight at Sloppy Joe’s at about ten-fifteen.’ She turned to head for her own parking place.
‘Uh, Carol, just a minute.’ Nick stopped her. Carol waited while Nick, suddenly awkward, tried to figure out a nice way to ask his question. ‘Would you mind telling us why you were talking to Captain Homer?’ he at last said tactfully.
Carol looked at Nick and Troy for a minute and then laughed. ‘I ran into him while I was in the office trying to call you guys. He wanted to know about the piece we retrieved yesterday. I put him off the track by telling him I was doing a feature article on the members of the crew that found the Santa Rosa treasure eight years ago.’
Nick glanced at Troy with mock disgust. ‘You see, Jefferson,’ he said with exaggerated emphasis, ‘I told you there was a legitimate explanation.’ The two men waved at Carol as she headed for her car.
8
‘Lieutenant Todd,’ the commander said with exasperation, ‘I am beginning to think that the US Navy has overestimated your intelligence or experience or both. It is beyond me how you can continue even to consider the possibility that the Panther was commanded off course by the Russians, particularly in light of the new information you presented this afternoon.’
‘But, sir,’ the younger man answered stubbornly, ‘it is still a viable hypothesis. And you yourself said in the meeting that a good failure analysis does not exclude any reasonable possibility.’
The two men were in Commander Winters’s office. The commander walked over to look out the window. It was almost dark outside. The air was heavy, still, and humid. Thunderstorms were building over the ocean to the south. The base was nearly empty. At length Winters looked at his watch, heaved a sigh, and came back across the room toward Lieutenant Todd. He was smiling only slightly.
‘You listened well, Lieutenant. But the operative word here is “reasonable”. Let’s review the facts. Did I or did I not hear correctly that your telemetry analysis unit found this afternoon that the commands rejected counter on the bird also incremented during the flight, beginning as early as off the coast of New Brunswick? And that, apparently, over one thousand command messages were rejected as the missile made its way down the Atlantic Coast? How do you propose to explain all this in terms of your scenario? Did the Russians deploy an entire fleet of ships along the flight path, just to confuse and capture one solitary Navy test missile?’
Commander Winters was now standing directly in front of the taller young lieutenant. ‘Or maybe you believe,’ he continued sarcastically, before Todd could respond, ‘that the Russians have a new secret weapon that flies alongside a missile going at Mach 6 and talks to it en route. Come on, Lieutenant, on what reasonable grounds do you consider this bizarre Russian hypothesis of yours still viable?’
Lieutenant Todd did not yield. ‘Sir,’ he answered, ‘none of the other possible explanations for the missile’s behaviour makes any more sense at this stage. You now say that you believe it’s a software problem; however, our very brightest programmers cannot imagine how the only external indication of a major, system-level software malfunction could be that two, and only two, command counters go haywire. They have checked all the internal software diagnostic da
ta that was telemetered to the ground and they can find no problems. Besides, the pre-release checkout indicates that all the software was working fine just seconds before the flight began.
‘And we know something else. Ramirez has learned from Washington that there have been peculiar movements in the Russian submarine fleet off the Florida coast in the last forty-eight hours. I’m not saying that the Russian hypothesis, as you call it, is the answer. Just that until we have a more satisfactory explanation of a failure mechanism that could cause both command counters to increment, it makes sense to carry one option that assumes maybe the Panther was actually commanded.’
Winters shook his head. ‘All right, Lieutenant,’ he said finally. ‘I will not order you to take it off the list. But I will order you to concentrate this weekend on finding the missile in the ocean somewhere and identifying a hardware and/or software problem that could have caused either the command counter anomaly or the change in the flight path or both. There must be an explanation that does not involve operations on a massive scale by the Russians.’
Todd started to walk around Winters and leave. ‘Just a minute,’ the commander said, his eyes narrowing. ‘I don’t believe it’s necessary, is it, Lieutenant, to remind you of who will be held responsible if the outside world gets wind of this Russian business?’
‘No, Commander… sir,’ was the answer.
‘Then carry on,’ said Winters, ‘and let me know if there are any significant new developments.’
Commander Winters was in a hurry. He had called the theatre immediately after Todd had left and told Melvin Burton that he was going to be late. He drove quickly into a hamburger stand, wolfed down a burger and chips, and headed for the marina area.
When he arrived at the theatre most of the rest of the cast were already dressed. Melvin met him at the door. ‘Quickly now, Commander, we have no time to spare. The make-up must be correct the first time.’ He looked nervously at his watch. ‘You’re in the pulpit in exactly forty-two minutes.’ The commander entered the men’s dressing room, took off his Navy uniform, and put on the dour black and white regalia of an Episcopal priest. Outside the door to the dressing room, Melvin paced back and forth, going through a final checklist in his mind.
Commander Winters was in the pulpit when the curtain rose. He had a strong case of normal opening night jitters. He looked across the three rows of his stage congregation to the full audience in the theatre. He saw his wife Betty and son Hap in the second row. Winters smiled at them quickly before the applause died down. Then his nervousness disappeared as he launched into Shannon’s sermon.
The short prologue sped by quickly. The lights again dimmed for fifteen seconds, the set changed automatically, and he was in the final, walking into his hotel room in Mexico and still mumbling to himself phrases from his letter. Shannon/Winters sat down on his bed. He heard a noise in the corner of the room and looked up. It was Charlotte/Tiffani. Her gorgeous auburn hair was down over her shoulders. She was wearing a light blue silk nightshirt, cut low in the middle, which her ample and upright breasts filled completely. He heard her say, ‘Larry, oh Larry, finally we’re alone together’, and she came to sit beside him on the bed. Her perfume filled his nostrils. Her hand was behind his head. Her lips pressed against his, insistent, hard, searching. He pulled back. Her lips followed, then her body. He fell back on the bed. She crawled on top, her kisses continuing, her breasts pushed against his pounding chest. He put his arms around her, slowly at first, and then, lying on his back, he enveloped her with a deep embrace.
The lights flashed off and on for several seconds. Charlotte/Tiffani slid off of Winters and lay beside him on the bed. He could hear her laboured breathing. A voice was heard, ‘Charlotte!’ Then again, with a loud knock on the door, ‘Charlotte, I know you’re in there.’ The door sprang open. The two lovers half sat up in bed. The lights went off and the curtain came down. The applause was loud and sustained.
Commander Vernon Winters pushed open the door and stumbled outside. He was at the back entrance to the theatre. The door, over which was a single light bulb covered with insects, opened on to a small wooden platform a few steps above the pavement. Winters walked down the three steps and stood beside the red brick wall of the theatre. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
He watched the smoke curl upward against the red brick. In the distance there was a burst of lightning, then a pause before the sound of rolling thunder. He inhaled deeply again and tried to understand what he had been feeling during those five or ten seconds with Tiffani. I wonder if they could tell, he thought. I wonder if it was obvious to everyone. When he had changed clothes for the first full act of the play, he had noticed the telltale tracks on his underpants. He expelled some more smoke and winced. And that little girl. My God. She knows for sure. She must have felt it when she was on top of me.
Despite himself, he recaptured for an instant his excitement when Tiffani had pressed herself against him. His breath shortened. A first tinge of guilt began to manifest itself. My God, he thought again. What am I? I’m a dirty old man. For some reason he found himself thinking of Joanna Carr, of a night almost twenty-five years ago. He remembered the moment when he took her….
‘Commander,’ he heard a voice say. He turned around. Tiffani was standing on the platform in her T-shirt and jeans, her long hair down over her shoulders. Now she was walking down the steps toward him. ‘Commander,’ she said again with a mysterious smile, ‘may I have a cigarette?’
He was dumbfounded, stupefied. He said nothing. Winters automatically reached into his pocket and pulled out his pack of Pall Malls. The girl took one, packed it against her fingernail, and slid it into her mouth. She waited a second, maybe two. Then she gave him another smile. Winters at last woke up and produced his cheap supermarket lighter. She cupped his trembling hand and inhaled vigorously on the cigarette.
Winters watched her, fascinated, as she pulled the smoke into her lungs. He studied her mouth, her white neck, her uplifted chest as she caressed the smoke. With the same rapt attention, he watched her diaphragm subside and the smoke curl out of her pursed lips.
They stood there together, quietly smoking, neither speaking. Over the ocean there was another flash of lightning, another roll of thunder. Each time that Tiffani would put the cigarette in her mouth, the mesmerized Winters would follow her every move. She would inhale deeply, intently, pulling hard on the cigarette for the nicotine her body cherished. He was only vaguely aware of his jumbled thoughts.
She’s beautiful, so beautiful. Young and fresh and full of life. And that hair. How I would love to wrap it around my neck… but she’s not a little girl. She’s a young woman. She must sense what I’m feeling, my fascination for her… She smokes as I do. With complete concentration. She caresses….
‘I love stormy nights,’ Tiffani broke the silence as still another distant flash of lightning lit up the sky. She moved closer to him and then craned her neck to see around a group of trees that was blocking her view of the cloud formation where the lightning was occurring. She brushed against Commander Winters ever so slightly. He was electrified.
His mouth was dry. His body was suffused with desire, a desire he barely recognized. He could not answer her comment. Instead he stared off at the growing storm and took the final drag from his cigarette.
She too finished her cigarette and dropped it on the pavement. As she turned to face him and their eyes met, the last wisps of smoke were playfully wandering across her lips. She gave a quick, flirtatious blow with her mouth and Winters felt a burst of lust in his groin. He retained his self-control and they entered the theatre in silence.
The applause continued. Commander Winters brought the women who had played Maxine and Hannah forward, one on either side of him, for their final bow, just as they had planned before the performance began. The applause intensified. Again he stared at the empty seats where Betty and Hap had been before the intermission. He heard a voice from the audience shout ‘Charlotte Goodall�
� and Winters improvised. He took the two ladies back to the line of the assembled cast and walked down the line to Tiffani. For a moment she did not understand. Then her face broke into a radiant smile and she took his hand.
He walked forward with her to the front of the stage, their hands wrapped together in a tight hold. This was her special moment. She was near tears as she heard the applause grow again. He stood aside and she bowed gracefully to the audience. She finished her bow, took his hand again with a delightful squeeze, and backed up into the line with the cast.
Melvin, Marc, and Amanda were all backstage while they were dressing. Enthusiastic congratulations were everywhere. Melvin particularly seemed ecstatic. He admitted that he had had some misgivings during rehearsals, but said everyone had been wonderful. The director confided to Winters that the bedroom scene with Tiffani had been ‘superb—couldn’t have been better’, as Melvin literally danced out of the dressing room door.
Winters was overwhelmed with a myriad emotions. He was pleased with his performance in the play and the audience reception, but other more personal things were on his mind. What had happened to Betty and Hap? Why had they left at intermission? In his mind’s eye, Winters imagined Betty watching his love scene with Tiffani. He had a momentary panic as he convinced himself that she had known, from out in the audience, that her husband was not acting at all, that he was every bit as aroused as the character he was playing.
What had occurred with Tiffani he could not begin to understand and could not even think about without starting to feel guilty. While he was putting back on his Navy uniform, he allowed himself to taste again her kisses on the bed in the play and to feel the sexual tension while they smoked together in the alley. But beyond his awareness of his arousal he would not go. Guilt was a depressing emotion, and on his successful opening night he did not want to be depressed.
When Commander Winters walked out of the men’s communal dressing room, Tiffani was waiting for him. Her hair was back in pigtails, her face scrubbed free of makeup. She looked again like a little girl. ‘Commander,’ she said, almost with servility, ‘would you do me a favour, please?’ He smiled his assent. She beckoned to him and he followed her out into the hall adjacent to the backstage quarters.
Cradle Page 21
