by Jeff Noonan
Maggie finally agreed to the plan. But she made it conditional. He was allowed to find a house and have it available when she got there. But he was not to get any furnishings or decorations until she was there to help. “I do trust you with a lot of things, Lee. But interior decorating isn’t one of them. I’ve seen your apartment in San Diego, remember?”
They both laughed at this comment. They went on to talk for over an hour before signing off.
CHAPTER TEN - DRYDOCK MYSTERY
ee woke early and decided to get back to running before breakfast. Donning his jogging clothes, he ran down Broad Street to where it ended at the riverfront, then he turned left and found himself running along a tree-lined street with huge older homes on one side and the river on the other. This was where the senior married officers lived, he realized. He quickly passed through this area and soon found himself running on an old air field. It looked like it had been abandoned for some time, so it made an ideal place for him to stretch out and do some real running. Trotting around the air strip perimeter, Lee soon realized that it was bounded on two sides by the river, while the third side boasted a big chain-link fence that separated the base from South Philadelphia. The fourth side opened back to the occupied portion of the base, the area he had come here from. It was an ideal place for his morning exercise.
After a shower and quick breakfast, he headed back to work. This day was to be totally devoted to his combat systems duties. When he got to the office, Jane let him know that there was a meeting of all the division managers every Thursday morning that he was required to chair it as one of his official duties. During this meeting, the division managers all came to the conference room adjacent to his office and presented the status of their work on the ships in overhaul. There were a myriad of problems, each of which was discussed and resolutions proposed. The weapons division head, Edward Dicks, reported that they had engineers from Western Electric, Sperry Gyroscope, Vitro, and Ford Instrument Corporations reporting on Monday to work on the USS King missile systems. Lee thanked him for the rapid response to the requirement. He beamed. Lee had the feeling that Mr. Dicks didn’t get many compliments.
But Lee’s compliment to Dicks wasn’t well-received by the boss of the coordination division, who had been sitting at the table holding his head in his hands. He looked up at the weapons boss and glared at him. “It’s damned well about time that you did something. We’ve been telling you for over two months that King was in the shits. You didn’t get off your ass to do a damned thing until the blue-suiters got involved. Your brown-nosing bullshit disgusts me.” Lee, startled, swiveled to look at this new voice, a man called Fred Mercier. But before he could say anything, the chief engineer, Roy Eckert, stepped in.
“That’s enough. Fred, we’re in this together. We don’t need an internal squabble. The job is getting done and that’s enough for now.” He was sharp and firm. Lee’s opinion of Eckert went up immediately. He obviously was in control of the civilians who reported to him.
Mercier put his head back in his hands and mumbled, “Yeah, okay, whatever.” He obviously had a bad headache and was trying to nurse it while still remaining alert at the meeting. Lee made a mental note to ask Tim about this guy later.
When the meeting was over, Lee concentrated on routine paperwork that was getting backed up. By the time he finally finished, most of the workday was behind him. He decided to walk around the office and get to know some of the people who now worked for him.
The office building was very old, dating well back into the 1800s. It was a two-story building that had once been stable for the shipyard’s draft horses. Later it had been a bank. Then it had fallen into disarray, being rescued when the Navy’s facilities command had found dollars to renovate it into offices. The combat systems office had moved into it only recently.
Directly across a hall from the front reception area was a large room that held the typing pool. Lee went in and introduced himself and joked a bit with the older lady who ran the typists. Then he went farther back in the building and came to a huge walk-in vault that he hadn’t seen before. Curious, he walked in and found himself facing a desk that obviously guarded the access to the interior of the vault.
A tall woman was sitting behind the desk, typing on one of the new IBM Selectric typewriters that were just being distributed through the government. She must have some pull to have one of those babies. Lee was properly impressed. He held out his hand and greeted her. “Hi, I’m the new combat systems officer, Lee Raines. How are you?” She stayed seated behind the desk and looked at him with a frosty stare. “I know who you are, of course. I am Sheila Novak. I take care of the classified documents assigned to the office. What can I do for you?” She was all business.
Lee was taken slightly aback, but kept his poise. “I’m glad to meet you Sheila. Thomas Sloan told me about you. I understand that you do a wonderful job with the security work here.” Sloan hadn’t said any such thing, of course. But a little schmoozing never hurt. It worked. The woman actually cracked a smile. “Thank you, sir. I try. But it’s hard staying organized in this shipyard atmosphere. These people just don’t understand the need for government secrets.”
Lee smiled sympathetically.
“This is quite a work space you have here, Sheila. Most places don’t have a security vault this size.”
By now, Sheila was anxious to show off her empire and she stood, waving her arm to indicate the whole vault. “This was once the bank vault for the entire base. Now it’s a security vault for our office. But the documents that you see on the shelves are only classified to the Confidential level. We have another safe for Secret and Top Secret things.” She pointed at a large steel safe that occupied one corner of the vault. Peering through the vault’s gloom, Lee noticed that the safe was welded to the wall of the vault.
“Wow! That is truly some security. I assume that this vault is closed when you aren’t here?”
“Yes sir. The safe is only opened when both Thomas and I are present and the vault is only opened when I’m here.”
Again, Lee was impressed and he said so. “I’ve never seen better security. But what happens if you or Thomas are on vacation?”
“We never go away at the same time. If he goes on vacation, we don’t open the safe. If I’m on vacation, Thomas sits in my desk and guards the vault. We take our security seriously.”
“Boy, you certainly do, Sheila. I can see that this is one thing that I won’t have to worry about while I’m here. Thanks for showing it to me.” He eased his way out into the hall as she finally admitted that she was happy to have met him. He turned back toward the office. He wanted to ask Tim some questions about this security arrangement.
He found Tim in the reception area, an armload of papers in his hands, talking and joking with Jane. “Hey, Tim. Could I talk to you for a minute?”
“Certainly. Just a minute while I dump these papers on my desk.”
Lee followed Tim into his office, saying, “It’s no big deal, Tim. We can talk here.” He pulled a chair close to Tim’s desk, and both took seats.
As Tim sorted the papers in front of him into several neat stacks, Lee opened the conversation. “Tim, I was just back in the vault with Sheila . . .”
Tim interrupted him with a chuckle. “Oh, you lucky devil!”
Lee grinned and then continued. “I’ve never seen such a tight security arrangement. What’s the story there?”
The warrant officer turned serious and leaned back in his chair. Before he answered, he reached over and turned on a radio behind his desk. The twangs of country music filled the room. He smiled at Lee’s questioning look. “You can never be too careful. Sometimes I think these walls have ears. If you notice, Roy always has elevator music playing in his office.”
Lee nodded thoughtfully as Tim continued,“I don’t know a lot about the security business here, other than to check the paperwork over for all the normal security precautions. I’ve done that twice as a kind of pre-inspection before
the annual security checks that the Navy does on shipyards. The inspections always come out perfect, with kudos for all concerned. Sloan and Sheila run a really tight ship back there. Plus, that old vault is a real winner. No one can ever believe the level of security that it allows us.”
Lee thought for a moment. “But why do we need the level of information that’s in that safe? Am I missing something here? I just don’t know why the office needs a Top Secret -crypto clearance. Do you?”
“I dunno, Lee. I’ve always left that stuff up to Thomas. He is a real expert in his field. He’s always getting calls from other Navy technical groups asking him detailed engineering questions about the shipboard equipment he deals with. I’ve just always assumed that if Thomas said he needs something, he probably does.”
Lee absorbed that. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I don’t know a hell of a lot about communications or electronic counter-measures. I’d probably do best if I follow your lead there.”
He changed the subject. “Tell me about this guy Fred Mercier. What is his story. You saw him at the meeting this morning. Is he always like that?”
Tim nodded. “I figured you’d be asking about him. The truth is that he is one of the best men in the office. But he always has those headaches - at least half the time. He’s been to doctor after doctor, and no one can seem to find out his problem. So he lives with it. But it does make him irritable and he doesn’t take any crap from anyone. But when he speaks, I listen. He’s sharp as hell. The guys that work for him, love him.”
“Tim, tell me about this group that Fred leads. He’s the head of the coordination division, I know. But exactly what does the coordination division do for us?”
“Well, where to start? First, for info, there are only six people in his group. They’re all senior technical people who have years of experience in ship overhauls. They were hand-picked for these jobs by Fred. When a ship is assigned to the shipyard, Fred assigns one of these people to the ship. It’s their job to follow the ship’s overhaul from the get-go through to its finish. They even go to the ship before the overhaul to check out the planned work and meet the key Navy guys aboard the ship. They spend every day aboard their assigned ships, watching the weapons and electronic work as it progresses. If a problem arises, they either fix it or bring it back to Fred so we can take action to get it fixed. I swear by these guys. Not all shipyards have a group like this, but I wouldn’t want to have to do our jobs without them.”
“All right, Tim. That answers all of my important questions. But I do have one miscellaneous, gossip-type question that has been bothering me all day. Last night I was talking to some guys over dinner at the officer’s club and they started talking about some planner who fell into a drydock last month. Do you know about that?”
“Oh yeah. It was a major subject around here when it happened. What do you want to know?”
“Well, last night they were saying that he stumbled and fell into the dock while he was wandering around out there. So today, when I was walking around, I went by that drydock and took a look at it. I’m having trouble understanding how a man could fall from the lip of the dock all the way to the bottom. It looks to me like the walkway would get in the way. What have you heard? Was this guy some kind of athlete or something?”
Tim laughed aloud at that. “No. No way. I knew him slightly - mainly because he was an electronic planner who wrote job orders for work on the equipment we’re responsible for. He wasn’t very good. I had to go chew him out and get job orders changed several times. As far as being athletic, he definitely wasn’t. He was a little dried-up kind of guy with a pot belly who always smelled like cheap booze and cigarettes.” Tim paused for breath, then continued, “How he got from the top to the bottom has been, as they say, the subject of much conjecture. Everyone has a theory. I don’t have a clue as to what the truth really is. I think the base cops just whitewashed the whole mess so the guy’s wife could get benefits. He was married and had a bunch of rug-rats.”
Again, Lee nodded. “Sounds right. Well, ye font of all knowledge, I thank you for sharing your wisdom. I guess I’d better knock off the gossip and get back to work.”
Tim laughed. “Anytime, boss.”
Lee crossed the reception area to his office, walking past the chief engineer’s office on the way. As he passed it, he heard the soft sounds of Julie Andrews’ singing drifting out the door. He smiled thoughtfully. There’s the elevator music. Maybe I should get myself a radio.
That evening, Lee bought a newspaper and studied the real estate section. Unsure of himself, he drove across the Walt Whitman Bridge into New Jersey and spent the evening looking at communities. Several people had recommended that he find a home in the Cherry Hill area, but he wasn’t sure. It was a nice area, but he remembered living in a more hilly, forested area when he was a boy. He just didn’t feel at home in the flat land of South Jersey. He decided he’d take another drive, either tomorrow or over the weekend, and check out the Pennsylvania suburbs on the other side of Philadelphia. Anyway, he should go see his uncle and aunt. They didn’t even know he was in the area. Lee had a sudden guilty feeling. Yes, it was time that he visited them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN - THE INHERITANCE
ee and Tim made the rounds of the ships the next morning. There wasn’t much new except that the King’s missile crew was happy. They’d heard about the engineering team that was arriving next week and their relief was very obvious.
Since they were out of the office, Lee asked Tim to show him the office of the electrical/electronics group superintendent, Ed Carvell. Tim was happy to oblige. It turned out that Ed’s office was in a newer building, Building #1000, close to where the King was berthed. The two Navy men walked over and found their way to Ed’s office, an island of administrative lushness in an otherwise no-nonsense industrial facility.
True to his word, Ed got out the coffee cups for them, and the three men sat for a time talking about the ships and their status. Lee had the feeling that Ed was glad to see them and was going out of his way to make them comfortable here. This was confirmed after they had talked for a while about the ships and their progress. Lee and Tim were getting ready to depart when Ed stopped them. “This may sound strange to you, but I have a request. Can we meet like this once every week?”
Both Lee and Tim were surprised by the request. Tim looked at Lee for the answer. “Certainly, Ed. I’m not sure that both of us can make it every week, but at least one of us could meet with you every Friday if that’s all right with you. But why?”
Ed answered with more straightforward honesty than Lee had expected. “I don’t have enough time in my day to see every ship and shop project every week. I have to depend on my two shop heads for status information. But, as you saw the other day, I don’t always get an honest assessment from them. I guess it’s a bit hard to admit that you’re screwed up sometimes. But whatever the reason, I do need an honest evaluation of progress. I trust the two of you. You don’t have any axes to grind and just want the best for the Navy. Me too. I can use your help.”
Lee, genuinely touched by this request, held out his hand. “Ed, you can count on us. At least one of us will be here every Friday morning at about ten.”
As the two walked back to the office, they talked some about this unusual turn of events. They both knew that often the relationship between Navy people and yard workers was very strained. It was highly unusual for them to form an alliance. But they both felt good about what had just happened. Somehow they knew that they had made a new friend.
Back at the office, all was quiet. Lee took care of some routine paperwork, then went back to searching the newspaper for homes to rent or buy. He wanted to have something nice when Maggie showed up. It would be another six weeks or so before she could get here, but he knew how long it could take if he decided to buy a home, and he was feeling anxious. He’d never owned a home, other than the one left to him by his family, but he knew it would be smarter to buy than to rent, if he could afford it.
Lee had money in the bank, left from the long year he had spent in Viet Nam and the recuperation period after that. The money had accumulated when he was unable to spend it, and he hadn’t touched it since. So he knew that he could afford a home if he saw one he liked. He scoured the paper but just wasn’t sure of the areas. He’d been gone a long time.
When lunchtime came around, the office was quiet, so he decided to take the afternoon off and drive down to Media to see his uncle. At the same time he could he would look around that area for neighborhoods and houses that looked livable.
He put on his hat and went to the outer office to let Jane know his plans. But just as he got to her desk, she looked up from the telephone and said, “Lee, you have a call. He says that he’s your Cousin Tom.”
“Okay, Jane. I’ll take it in my office. When I’m done, I’m going to leave for the day. Going out to Media to see my uncle who lives there.” He turned to go back to his office.
His quiet response to Jane didn’t reflect the inner turmoil that the phone call was bringing to him. “Cousin Tom” was the pseudonym they had chosen for the FBI agent, Tom Wright. They had agreed to not contact one another unless something serious occurred. What in hell has happened?
He answered the phone casually, just in case someone was listening. “Hi, Tom. What’s happening?” The answer came back immediately.
“Not much, Cousin Lee. But I’m in the area and thought I’d drop by and let you know what the family’s doing. When is good for you?”
“Tom, I was just leaving the office to go see Uncle Mike out in Media. I guess we could meet there, or maybe on the road out that way.”
“Okay I’m just coming up I-95 right now. Just passed the Pennsylvania state border.”
“That works, Tom. Take the Chester exit. The one that has the signs for Widener University. Go left on Route 352 and find a wide spot to wait for me. I should get there a bit after you. I’m driving my Mustang.”