by Robb White
Ken glanced out the window. “Yes, sir … I’ve made up my mind, sir.”
The admiral waited a moment, looking at him. “Yes? Or no?”
“Yes,” Ken said.
“Are you sure?” the admiral asked quietly.
Ken nodded.
The admiral said slowly, “You know that you may not come back, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
The admiral stood for a long time looking out the window. At last, with a quick movement, he turned, picked an envelope off his desk, and held it out. “All right, Braden, here are your orders. As soon as Shark is ready for sea I’ll come down and give you more details. Since you’ll be leaving very soon, I advise you to write home. But, please, leave your letters with the commander here for censoring.” Then, although his voice was still pleasant, he added, “Nothing else you write will ever leave this island.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“And here,” the admiral went on, “are some Japanese language books and a dictionary with a special list of Jap ideographs for time, location, places, ship types, movement, and geography. Bone up on them; I’ll tell you why later.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The admiral shook hands without saying anything.
Ken went back out into the blazing sunshine and walked down the hill to the sub base. Around the Shark there were now even more trucks. Ken hunted out Malone. “I’m reporting aboard for transportation,” he said, showing him the orders.
Malone glanced at them. “Oh, so you’re the mysterious j.g. controlling my pitiful fate. Where’re we going? What we gonna do? Maybe capture Tokyo Rose, hunh?”
“I don’t know,” Ken said.
“They tell me she’s a dish.”
“Never heard of the gal,” Ken admitted.
Malone glanced at him. “You will,” he said quietly. “Well, come aboard. Let’s see if we can find the captain.”
“You lead the way, will you?” Ken asked. “I don’t know anything about submarines.”
“The blind leading the blind,” Malone said, jumping over on the Shark’s deck.
Ken, feeling clumsy and in the way, followed through the working parties, narrowly escaping being knocked into the water by a crate in a sling.
They climbed a steel ladder going up to the surprisingly small, cramped bridge of the boat, and then Malone disappeared down a hatch.
Ken followed, barking his shins on the sharp edge of the deck.
It was almost like climbing down into a can full of fishing worms. As far as Ken could tell, there was no open space anywhere. There was nothing but machinery; controls, valves, handles, wheels, dials, levers, lights, pipes, wires, tubes, switches, engines, motors, bells, horns, batteries, boxes. Moving in and around and through all this were men, so that it was hard to get anywhere.
The thing that surprised Ken the most, however, was the brightness. After seeing the dull, dirty, rusty outside of the boat he had not expected to find this blazing fight, this spotlessly clean, shining interior. Everything was painted or varnished or polished so that it sparkled.
Going down through another hatch, Malone at last turned and wormed his way along past men carrying meat, vegetables, pieces of machinery, belts of ammunition, boxes, tools, or past men working on things.
They ducked through a vertical hatch and came out into a narrow passageway with, on both sides, tiny rooms filled from deck to overhead with built-in metal bunks.
At last Malone stopped at one of the rooms with a gray curtain for a door. He knocked and a voice answered, “Come in.”
This was the only room having just one bed. It wasn’t any bigger than a closet, but it had a small desk, the bed, and a washbasin which folded back against the wall.
A lieutenant commander was sitting at the desk studying some papers. For a moment he didn’t look up as Malone pulled the curtain aside.
Ken could see that the commander was angry about something.
Malone said, “Captain Stevenson, here’s our passenger.”
“Very well,” the commander said, not looking up.
Malone made a gesture of farewell to Ken and went on down the corridor.
Ken, waiting, pressed himself against the wall so that people could get by. He wished that the commander would at least ask him to come in so that he could get out of the way but, for some minutes he went on studying the papers.
A man in dungarees with a beard almost as huge as Malone’s came by carrying a box which knocked Ken’s papers out of his hand. Before he could pick them up another man kicked them down the corridor and stepped on them.
Ken was scrambling around, picking up the papers, when the commander at last said, “Well, let’s see your orders.”
Ken handed him the papers, which were now covered with the print of a big, oily foot.
“I can’t read through all this gook,” the commander complained.
“They order me to report to you for transportation, sir,” Ken told him.
“What do they think this is, the Queen Mary?’ He looked at Ken’s orders. “I can’t even read your name.”
“Braden, sir. Kenneth M.”
“Very well. What’s this mission all about?”
Ken had assumed that the admiral would have told him. This must be, he decided, another test. “I don’t know, sir.” The commander seemed outraged. “Mister Braden! In the Navy you don’t say, I don’t know.’ Now what’s this mission all about?”
Ken had heard of these hard-rock skippers but this was the first one he’d run into. Trying to control his own anger, he said, “The admiral said he would come down just before we go to sea and give us some details, sir. I imagine he’ll explain then what the mission is all about.”
“You certainly do imagine a great deal, Lieutenant. Very well. Shove off.”
Ken hesitated, then said, “Sir, I’ve got some gear.”
“Have you?” the commander asked, not looking up.
“Yes, sir. It’s fairly heavy, sir.”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
“I’d like to get it aboard, sir.”
The commander looked wearily up at him. “Do you want me to bring it down here piggy-back, Lieutenant?”
Ken could feel the blood hot in his face. “No, sir. I thought perhaps I could borrow a jeep or something.”
“Submarines are not equipped with jeeps or something.”
Ken gave up. Saluting, he turned.
Trying to get out of the boat, he lost his way. He found a vertical hatch identical to the one Malone had led him through and climbed into a compartment as full of working men as the rest of them. Making his way slowly, he eased past some pipe berths, machinery and valves, went down a short flight of steps, and came at last to a solid wall covered with gadgets, pipes, dials, wires, and tubes.
Turning around, he asked a bearded sailor in nothing but shorts how to get out.
“Not that way,” the man said. “Unless you want to go out through the torpedo tube.”
Ken at last got back on the dock. He felt as though he had just come through a football scrimmage—and he wasn’t playing on either team.
As his anger at the submarines commander died a wave of depression and fear swept over him. He had never in his life felt so completely alone, completely left out of everything.
Chapter 4
Ensign Malone had stripped to the waist and was helping a chief petty officer rig the forward gun for sea. When he saw Ken come up out of the boat and walk dejectedly over to the dock, he stopped working for a moment and watched him. “Take over, will you, Chief. We’ve got trouble,” Malone said quietly. Then he jumped over to the dock.
“How’d you make out with the Skipper?” he asked.
“Not very well.”
“Too bad. Maybe he’s just bushed after fifty-seven days at sea. That’s a long time in a submarine.”
“So is five minutes,” Ken said. “Look, I’ve got to get some gear aboard. Is there any chance of g
etting some transportation for it?”
“How much gear you got?”
Ken measured off the size of the crates with his arms.
Malone looked horrified. “Where can we put them? Oh well, me for the jolly sailor’s life. Let’s see if we can beat somebody out of a jeep.”
The best they could do was a weapons carrier, which Malone drove over to BOQ. When he saw the two crates he stared. “Son—I mean, Lieutenant, sir—we can’t get things that size in the Shark. They’re bigger’n Grant’s Tomb. Can’t you unpack them and get them so we can stow the pieces?”
Ken shook his head.
“Spy stuff, eh?” Malone asked quietly.
“Something like that.”
Still grumbling, Malone helped him load them into the carrier then unload them and get them down through the Shark’s forward hatch.
Down in the boat Malone and Ken looked at the crates cluttering up the forward torpedo room. In the submarine they looked even bigger and more awkward.
Behind them a voice snapped, “Attention!”
Malone and Ken turned. Coming through the hatch were Stevenson and another officer. Stevenson walked up to Ken’s crates and said, “May I ask what this hurrah’s nest is doing here?”
No one answered so he turned to Malone. “What’s in these boxes, Mr. Malone?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Malone told him.
“In the Navy we don’t say, T don’t know,’ Mr. Malone. We say, I’ll find out.’”
Ken said, “Captain, that’s my gear, sir.”
The commander stared at him. “Yours? What do you think this boat is, a transatlantic finer? Get this stuff out of the boat.”
“I’ll need it, sir,” Ken said.
Stevenson said coldly, “Officers in my ship are allowed to stow only sufficient work and dress uniforms for a war patrol, toilet articles, stationery, and necessary professional books.”
Then he turned to Malone. “Get these crates up on the dock and open them. You can then advise Mr. Braden as to what clothing he will need. Since he is a passenger I want his gear kept to an absolute minimum. Do you understand?”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Ken knew that to unpack the crates on the dock where there were all sorts of civilians as well as military people would tell a simple story—the submarine was taking an Underwater Demolition man somewhere. The admiral wouldn’t like that.
On the other hand, the commander had a right to order the stuff out of his boat.
Ken had felt from the first that Stevenson didn’t like him; that he blamed him for having to go to sea again so soon; that he considered him, at least, a nuisance.
None of this would help him, Ken knew. And to have the commanding officer’s enmity might even hurt him—hurt him enough to make his job harder, make it impossible.
“May I talk to you alone, sir?” Ken asked.
“What for?” the commander asked. “There aren’t any secrets on my boat, Lieutenant.”
“This isn’t a secret, sir, I’d just like to talk with you alone.”
“Oh, very well,” Stevenson said. “In the meantime, Mr. Malone, get this junk out of here and opened up on the dock.”
“Would it be all right to leave it here until we finish talking, sir?” Ken asked.
Stevenson seemed to be extremely annoyed. “Mr. Braden, has it occurred to you that I, and not you, am the commanding officer of this ship?”
“I’m sorry, sir. But could I talk to you for just a minute?”
Stevenson wheeled and marched aft. Before Ken followed him he whispered fast to Malone, “Leave that stuff alone. Don’t open it, please.”
Stevenson had gone back to his cabin. Ken knocked and pushed the curtain aside.
“All right, what is it?” Stevenson snapped at him.
“Sir, what’s in those crates is necessary to the mission,” Ken told him. “But the admiral doesn’t want anyone to know what it is until we’re at sea.”
“What is this mysterious gear, Mr. Braden?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
The commander put both hands over his face. “T don’t know! I don’t know!’ That’s all I hear since the reserves joined the Navy.” He started to say something else but a dark-haired, serious-looking officer knocked and pushed the curtain aside. “Boat’s ready for sea, sir. Except for some crates in the forward torpedo room which haven’t been stored.”
Stevenson said, “They belong to our dashing young hero. Leave ’em where they are.”
“In a seaway they might shift and do some damage, Captain,” the lieutenant said.
Stevenson didn’t even look at him. “I said leave ’em.” Then he reached for the phone. In a moment he said, “This is the commanding officer of the Shark reporting ready for sea. Yes, sir. Aye, aye, sir.”
He hung up and looked at the serious lieutenant. “The admiral will be aboard in five minutes. Have the crew stand by, he may inspect the boat.”
The lieutenant saluted and left.
Stevenson said, “You are to wait in the wardroom, Mr. Braden.”
“Yes, sir. Where is it, sir?”
“Right behind you, Mr. Braden.”
Ken walked across the corridor into a tiny, well-lighted room. A table covered with a green cloth almost completely filled it, so that he had to slide sideways to get around to a built-in seat on the outboard side. On the walls there were racks with technical books, a complicated-looking radio, and various dials and gauges. In the wall at one end of the tiny room there was an opening through which he could see a kitchen so small he wondered how anyone could get into it to cook.
It didn’t take the admiral long to get down there. He and Stevenson came into the wardroom. The admiral tossed a sealed envelope on the table. Ken saw that it had only the single word SCAN on it.
The admiral waited for Stevenson to pull the curtains across the entrances to the room, then he sat down. “Is your gear aboard, Braden?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you opened it?”
“No, sir.”
“Good… . Now, Paul,” he said, turning to Stevenson, “we’ve got an unusual setup here, but this is turning out to be an unusual war. Now none of what I’m going to tell you is on paper. We don’t want any information leaks. So let’s keep all this between the three of us.”
Lying on the green cloth of the table was a Coca-Cola bottle cap. Stevenson frowned toward the galley as the admiral picked it up.
“Here’s Pearl Harbor,” the admiral said, putting the bottle cap down in the center of the table. “The war plans room.” Then he put a pencil down at the edge of the table. “And here’s Japan—Tokyo. About three thousand miles away.”
He touched the bottle cap. “All right, here in the war plans room Admiral Nimitz and his staff discuss how they can stop the Japanese march across the Pacific and, once it’s stopped, how to slam them back to here.” He touched the pencil. “Those discussions are absolutely top secret and known only to a few men.
“And yet,” the admiral said, “what was said in the war plans room was reaching Tokyo in a few days, sometimes within a few hours.” The admiral looked first at Ken and then at Stevenson. “You see, we had a traitor in there. A man who was costing us the fives of ships and men. We still have him but—now—we know who he is.”
The admiral got a penny out of his pocket and put it down close to the bottle cap. “Here’s a radio transmitter. It’s run by Japanese spies and is somewhere in the Hawaiian Islands. Our traitor feeds it information which it sends out. This transmitter is using a code which we’ve broken and can read. From here”—he tapped the penny—“our secrets are being beamed straight across the Pacific. But—and this is where you, Paul, and Braden come into the picture—this transmitter is not capable of getting its messages all the way to Tokyo. Our electronics people figure that it has a maximum range of two thousand miles, which leaves it a thousand miles short.”
The admiral put a twenty-five-cent piece down halfwa
y between the bottle cap and the pencil. “Here’s what happens. Within an hour or so after the transmitter in Hawaii finishes a message another transmitter out in the middle of the Pacific—here—opens up. We’ve had a submarine out there for weeks now and this mid-Pacific transmitter never broadcasts until after the one in Hawaii does.
“The trouble is that this baby”—he tapped the twenty-five-cent piece—“uses a different code. The cryptanalysts have about given up on it and doubt if it can be broken in under six months. That’s too long, gentlemen.”
The admiral stopped and looked at Ken. Quietly he said, “We want you to go get that code.”
Ken looked at the twenty-five-cent piece and then at the admiral. There wasn’t anything to say.
Stevenson spoke for the first time. “Admiral, wouldn’t it be a lot easier to concentrate on this spy transmitter in Hawaii? Just eliminate that and the whole network collapses. Put some radio direction finders on him, nail him down from three points, then go in and knock him off.”
“That’s one way, Paul. But we don’t want the network destroyed. We want to use this setup ourselves—from traitor to Tokyo. Only from now on the information he gets will be information we want him to have. In order to do that we’ve got to know two things: where is this transmitter?” He touched the twenty-five-cent piece. “We believe it’s on an island rather than in a ship or submarine. But we’d like to know exactly so we can put a monitor on him and be sure he’s sending along the information we want him to send. Then, number two, we’ve got to have his code so we can read him. Once we know that we can go ahead with the second phase of the plan.
“What we’re doing is this: although he doesn’t know it, the traitor has already been isolated completely. He still sits in on planning sessions, as usual, but the war plans discussed with him are not our real plans. They are similar enough in detail so that he won’t get suspicious but they are not only useless to Tokyo but will, we hope, trick units of the Jap Navy into positions where we can knock them off.”
The admiral picked up the bottle cap, the penny, and the pencil, but left the twenty-five-cent piece lying on the green cloth. Then, turning to Ken, he said, “It’s up to you, Ken. I can’t even help you with the details because we don’t know any more about this transmitter setup than you do. You’ll just have to work it out when you get there. One more thing, the Japs on that island must never even suspect that we know they’re there. If they do they’ll change codes or move somewhere else. You must not be caught, Ken, nor even seen.” Ken nodded but didn’t say anything.