"Now, show me exactly what you do with all this."
She examined the two cards, poised herself over the computer teletype, then asked, "You don't want me to send it through, do you?"
"No. Just write it out exactly the way it would go in."
She copied down names and numbers and, when she was through, showed him a card:
9805CGN-166
YABLONSKI, C.L. 2194557 USNR
HAMMOND, N. 573-58-6641 USN NIS
"The first line is the routing," she said. "The second is the subject, and the third is the person making the inquiry."
"Where does the information go?"
"I'm sorry, sir. I just don't know."
"Oh, come on." He smiled. He tried charm, but she really had no idea who was on the other end of that routing.
"The computer does it all," she said. "All I ever get is an acknowledgment of the message."
"Look, would you demonstrate for me? But let's use another name." He gave her Harold Fletcher's data and she punched through:
9805CGN-166
FLETCHER, HB. 2193209 USNR
HAMMOND, N. 573-58-6641 USN NIS
He waited patiently with her until a few moments later the screen jxinted out:
9805CGN
STANDBY
"Looks like we touched a nerve," he said.
Ensign Cokeland was perplexed. "Usually it comes back with just that number and the word 'received,' then signs off. I think there's going to be someone up here in a minute."
She sat back and stared at her machine, two fingers pursing her lips.
"Look," said Hammond, "I'm going over there to talk to someone else. Let me get a look at whoever's coming in before you point the finger. Okay?"
She looked at him as if he were about to leave her to the wolves. Bravely, she nodded. Hammond strode over to another computer and struck up a conversation with another operator. Two minutes later, the doors opened and a female lieutenant came in and went straight to Ensign Cokeland.
Hammond watched the supervisor give the ensign the business. Cokeland put up a front of ignorance until she saw Hammond coming over.
He looked at the lieutenant's nameplate and smiled pleasantly. "Lieutenant Frankel, my name is Hammond. I'm from NIS, doing a little research, and I think you can help."
Lieutenant Frankel eyed him suspiciously. "In what way?"
"Well, it appears my request set off a little burglar alarm. Would you care to fill me in?"
She hesitated, then spoke defiantly. "There must have been something irregular..."
"Irregular to whom?"
"The people receiving your request called for a spot check."
"Who called?"
"The computer."
Hammond blinked. "No telephone?"
"The computer," she repeated, enunciating firmly. "They wish to remain anonymous."
"Then who do you report back to?"
"The computer."
Hammond almost laughed out loud. "Let me get this straight," he said. "Details of my inquiry go through your computer to notify someone unknown to you. And if the party doesn't like what he gets, he buzzes you and asks for a check. And you go through a whole security rigmarole without ever knowing who you're doing it for?"
Lieutenant Frankel sighed with annoyance. "That's it, yes."
"What the hell is this?" Hammond barked. "You're like Pavlov's dog! They ring a bell and you salivate on cue!"
She got defensive. "That's the procedure," she said, then went into a lengthy explanation of how the Navy computers have routings that crisscross the country, how computerization has become the most secure method of setting up notification procedures. Hammond ignored her: he was trying to figure out what had happened. He had sent through the same request on Fletcher as before, only "this time, the second time, it hadn't gone through smoothly.
Maybe because it was the second time.
He interrupted Lieutenant Frankel, thanked her for the information, thanked Ensign Cokeland, and left. Stepping into the elevator, he was conscious of the most obvious fact of all:
Somebody had to have programmed the damned thing.
Hammond was back in his office before 0930, checking with Ensign Just-Ducky to see if the admiral had been through yet. "No, sir," she said, "but he wants to meet with you and your special team at lunch today."
A voice sang out from the aisles, "Okinawa is calling me-hee-hee-hee! I hear Okinawa calling meeeee!"
Lee Miller posed in Hammond's doorway. "Never been there, Nicky. Is it anything like Fire Island?"
"I don't remember requesting you," growled Hammond.
"Good Lord, you mean I don't have to go?" Miller dropped his pose and looked relieved.
"Well, we shouldn't let your enthusiasm go to waste—"
"Let it! Let it, my boy. I would rather push my pencil."
"Where are the other guys?"
"Waiting for you to call a meeting."
"Tell them lunch with the admiral. And listen, Miller—I would appreciate it if you would take over filing the usual papers with NAVINTCOM."
"Sure—"
"And Hold mine aside. Write them up, but don't send them through."
"You're not going?"
"I'm not sure." Hammond picked up the phone and gave him a steady look. Miller took the hint and left. Hammond called Admiral Gault and waited patiently until the secretary got him to the phone.
"Hullo, Nick. Got your boys together?"
"Yes, sir, but I have a problem."
"Don't we all. Make it swift."
"Sir, do you recall I spoke to you about a man who was having a problem with his service records—?"
"Jan" Hoyle's husband."
"Yes, sir. Well, I met with them and he gave me a wild story about some nightmare he's been having for twenty years in which he—well, some of the details are a bit much—but it's led him to believe there are discrepancies in his Naval records. So I did some checking and I've uncovered a few irregularities." Gault was silent, so Hammond continued: "He believes he was discharged in 1955, but the record shows he's still on inactive reserve. The forms he's carrying differ from the forms on file. I think there's been some altering. And in the file I came across this flag...a red card bearing a code of some sort. Maybe you'll recognize it, sir. Nine-eight-zero-five- C-G-N-dash-one-six-six."
"No. Means nothing to me."
"Yes, sir. Well, I thought maybe it was just a single isolated incident, but then I stumbled over another file with the same card in it—"
"All right, Hammond—"
"And the second man has a similar military record. Same years of service, and he's also carried on inactive reserve."
Gault made some inarticulate remark, then was silent a long moment. "Well, it does sound strange. A lot of cloak-and-dagger shit. The Navy doesn't usually operate that way. But, Nicky, why are you spending NIS time on this? It's not really our business."
Hammond was taken aback. "I think it has far-reaching implications."
"Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't. So far, it involves two men who have been out of the Navy for more than twenty years. If they're in the Reserves and don't know it, I think there's little chance they'll ever be called up. To get the Correction Board involved would only release a steamroller that could bury these guys."
Hammond wilted. The admiral was right. Sticking his nose into this was a mistake. It would be better to close the book and forget it, Jan's feelings notwithstanding. He was tempted.
"Excuse me, Nicky, for getting personal, but this whole thing is kind of funny."
"How so, sir?"
"Your ex-girl friend's husband—and you're going out of your way to help him? That's what I call chivalry."
"Would you mind, sir, if I spend some time on it?"
"And what am I supposed to do with Okinawa? Certainly not!"
"Spare time, sir."
"You have spare time?" Gault chuckled in his throat.
"I'll give up going to the can." Hammond ha
ted having to resort to jokes, but Gault wouldn't take this seriously.
"Exactly what do you want to do?"
"Run down that code number."
Gault grunted. There was a silence as he covered the mouthpiece, then Hammond heard him come back. "You leave for Okinawa in forty-eight hours. What you do until then is your business, but if it doesn't turn out to be NIS business, drop it."
Hammond hung up, unnerved, and turned his attention back to the code number. He studied it for a few minutes, trying to shake Gault's warning from his mind, then called the Office of Naval Research and asked for the Code Division. A young civilian bureaucrat politely informed him, "Sorry, sir, that doesn't come under ONR jurisdiction. Better check with NAVINTCOM."
Hammond groaned and hung up, then ripped through the directory. Under NAVINTCOM there were two possibilities: Intelligence Research Department and Internal Cryptography. He mumbled to himself about the idiotic proliferation of bureaus within bureaus, then tried Internal Cryptography. Dead end. They turned out to be a merry little band whose job it was to create codes for Naval Intelligence use only, not for the Navy at large.
A lieutenant in the Intelligence Research Department listened to him describe the code, then said in hushed tones, "Can't handle that over the phone, Commander."
"For Christ's sake," yelled Hammond, "this is the fucking Pentagon!"
"Sorry, sir. You'll have to appear in person."
Hammond stormed down one floor to the offices occupied by Naval Intelligence Command. He found the Research Department and confronted the lieutenant, who looked to be a recent college graduate. Fresh-faced, crew-cut, crisply uniformed, Lieutenant Armbruster completely disregarded Hammond's demands and asked why he wanted to have the information.
Hammond restrained himself and said calmly, "Before you decide that it's classified, why don't we find out what it is?"
With Hammond breathing over his shoulder, Lieutenant Armbruster researched the code-number digits and came up empty-handed, and deeply concerned.
"This is a special setup," he admitted. "Obviously designed to be closed to scrutiny."
"That's what a code usually is," cracked Hammond.
"Well, I've never come across a designation quite like it."
What? In all your years? Hammond was tempted to ask. Instead he said, "Then how was it set up in the Navy computers?"
Armbruster was upset. He had no idea.
"Sorry I ruined your day," said Hammond. "If you do come up with the answer, let me know. And, Armbruster, keep it at your level. Don't let it get any higher."
"Yes, sir. I'll track it down if it takes me a week."
A week, thought Hammond. The guy could be on this job till he retires.
Hammond was in a dark mood as he returned to the NIS complex. The receptionist held up several sheets of Xerox paper. "Someone from NAVSEACOM dropped these off for you," she said.
Hammond examined them as he walked back to his cubicle, his stomach growling for lunch. Now he had the list of ships he had requested, the names "and numbers of every destroyer escort stationed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard between 1951 and 1953. He sat at his desk and pored through them, looking for something even vaguely familiar. It seemed hopeless.
He was staring at the last group of numbers on page four;
DE 162 Levy
DE 163 McConnell
DE 164 Osterhaus
DE 165 Parks
DE 166 Sturman
DE 167 Acree
Something seemed to jump right out at him. At first he wasn't sure, then he was excited. He whipped out the red card he had liberated from BUPERS and looked at the code number again.
9805CGN-166.
166. Could the last three digits refer to DE-166, the USS Sturman, stationed in Philadelphia in—he checked the date—1953?
He felt adrenaline" pumping as he frantically called the chief he had spoken to at NAVSEACOM. "DE-166, USS Sturman," he said. "Can you tell me where she is now?"
"The last page in that group I sent you shows current disposition on all those numbers—"
Hammond threw the other sheets aside and ran a finger down the last page, stopping at DE-166 and moving across. "Struck from the registry as of 1957," he said.
"Then that's where she is."
"Well, yeah, but was she sunk, scrapped, sold—what?"
"Don't know, sir. It's likely she was sunk for target practice."
"Okay...thanks."
He didn't need the Sturman anyway. He just needed the name and number. He hung up and stared at the scant information on the Sturman. She was an escort ship of the "Cannon" class, constructed at Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, Kearny, New Jersey, contract awarded 18 January 1942. She was commissioned on July 4th of the following year.
Could she be the ship Fletcher was dreaming about?
If so, the connection was held together by the flimsiest of threads—from the man's dream to his contradictory files to the code number on the red flag to a destroyer escort built over thirty years ago.
Hammond was just about to reach for the phone again to dial the Watergate when it rang. He blinked in surprise, picking it up, half-expecting to hear Fletcher's voice on the other end.
It wasn't Fletcher. It was Jan.
She was hysterical. Hammond was immediately exasperated. Now what? Then, in the jumble of words mixed with sobs, he managed to comprehend that she had just received a call from the Washington office of Tri-State Insurance. Hammond's eyes widened as the rest of what she was saying registered.
Harold Fletcher was dead.
4
"He missed a meeting this morning. Tri-State couldn't reach him by phone, so they sent someone over to the Watergate. He was already..." She stumbled over the words. "It was a heart attack."
"Jan...I'm sorry..."
"I can't believe it!" She covered the phone and he heard a muffled sob. He waited patiently until she came back, breathing hard, barely able to speak. "He wasn't...wasn't that old...."
"Where are you calling from?"
"My mother's house in New York."
"Is there anything I can do?" He heard her cover the phone again. "Jan?" he repeated.
"Yes..." she finally replied. "Would you go to the Watergate...and take care of...?" She broke off in a choke and he heard another muffled outburst of crying. This was getting impossible. He swore under his breath. He was jealous; she had never shown him this kind of emotion.
"Nicky?" She was back on the line.
"Yes, I'll go over there, if that's what you want. But shouldn't Tri-State handle it? They know him a lot better."
"Nicky," she said haltingly, "if you could just be there..."
"I'll do what I can," he found himself saying. "Are you coming back to Washington?"
"Yes. The company is making arrangements..."
"What flight? I can meet you."
"I don't know yet. Not even sure...where I'll be staying." Her voice quavered. "If I can't reach you at your office...is your home number still the same?"
"Everything's the same," he said. He was immediately sorry—she might take that the wrong way. Everything is different, he wanted to say. Don't come! For God's sake, don't come. "Try the office first. There's always someone on duty."
There was a long silence, then, "Thank you, Nicky."
The connection was broken before Hammond could answer. He returned the receiver to its cradle and sat there, stunned. It's too pat, he thought. Too goddamned neat. He dialed Fletcher's apartment at the Watergate.
It was picked up after the third ring. "Medacre," rumbled a disembodied voice.
Hammond used his most authoritative tone: "This is Commander Hammond of the Naval Investigative Service." He waited in vain for an acknowledgment. "I'm calling about Harold Fletcher. Who am I speaking to?"
The man grunted. "Detective Lieutenant Medacre, Metropolitan PD. What can I do for you?"
Hammond shot back, "Would you confirm a report we just got that Harold Fletcher i
s deceased?"
"Very deceased. Was he one of yours?"
"No, but we had an interest in him. Lieutenant, I would appreciate it if you would leave everything as is until I've had a chance to look it over. Tell Watergate Security to expect me. I'll be there in twenty minutes."
If Medacre was impressed, his voice didn't show it. "Hammond, right? I'll leave your name, but make it snappy."
Hammond tried to reach Gault by phone, but the admiral was already on his way to the lunch meeting. He grabbed Lee Miller in the hallway and gave him a message for Gault: "Tell him a friend has died and I've been called away."
"He's not gonna believe it," Miller smirked.
On his way out the door, Hammond shot back, "Miller, you better make him believe it."
Hammond hit traffic once he crossed the Potomac and felt impatience rising again, his instinctive reaction to pressure situations. He parked his car with a slam of brakes and a squeal of tires, then hurried across the little shopping mall.
The security desk was expecting him. He was whisked up to a cop on the eleventh floor. Medacre met him in a small anteroom just inside the door at the end of the hall. He was big, with a plain, open face, but his eyes had the weary look that comes from seeing too much death in all its forms. His handshake was firm and strong, blunt fingers wrapping around Hammond's outstretched hand. "He's in the living room, Commander. We'll hold off until you're finished. "
"I shouldn't be too long. Is the coroner here?"
Medacre nodded. "Yeah, inside with the deceased."
There were six other men in the living room. Two of them were unfolding a body bag; another was on his knees drawing a chalk circle around an ashtray that lay on the carpet, while a fat little man sat in an armchair busily working a toothpick in and out of his mouth. He was watching a photographer taking pictures of the corpse.
Fletcher's body was knee-down on the carpet in front of the couch. The torso was slumped over a low, glass-topped coffee table. His head, framed by an outstretched left arm, rested across a pile of scattered playing cards. His face was turned sideways, features contorted, a blue tinge to the slack skin. One bulging eye stared dully into unseeing space.
Thin Air Page 4