Hardy shook his head. “Not yet. Let me get used to this...”
Heading aft, they passed through the galley and into the crew’s mess. This compartment was devoid of personal gear—no deliberate plants or anything.
They stepped through the bulkhead into the crew’s quarters. All the bunks were folded back snug against the inner walls of the hull. Clanking sounds again drew Hardy aft, and he went to the next connecting bulkhead. He stared in surprise at main engine number one, still thrust out at an angle, blocking the entrance to the forward engine room.
McClusky, obviously frustrated with his task, cut loose with a blast of invective directed toward the Navy in particular and the world in general. Hardy smiled.
“At least that hasn’t changed in thirty years.”
Frank relaxed. Hardy was loosening up; his defenses were dropping. In the crew’s quarters, his roaming eyes caught the Ann Sheridan pinup posted on one of the lockers. “We had one guy... I can’t remember his name, but he was nuts about Ann Sheridan.”
“That Was Jones,” said Frank. “We found two scrapbooks loaded with pictures.”
“Right! Corky Jones. Hey—what about Walinsky’s pipes?”
Frank was puzzled a moment; then he remembered the carved shelf. “You mean that rack over main engine number two? Still there.” He pointed back toward the forward engine room.
Hardy muttered the name of his friend. “Chief Walinsky. Anton. The pipes—they were...” He stopped, drifting off, remembering the off-duty hours he used to spend with the Chief, chatting while he shined up those bloody pipes. Once in a great while he would even smoke one.
Frank smiled; at least Hardy’s memories were pleasant. This was the time to steer him to his old quarters.
Favoring his leg as they walked forward, Hardy kept up a steady stream of chatter. Passing back through the control room, he stopped to examine a duty roster posted on the bulkhead. Silently he mouthed the names, reaching deep within his memory to match them up to faces. His eyes did a tour of the bulkheads, searching, listening for voices he hadn’t heard in thirty years.
In officers’ country Hardy stuck his head into the wardroom and glanced at the silhouette charts of the various classes of Japanese shipping displayed on the bulkheads. He pointed out the old 78-rpm record player on the overhead shelf. Another of Cook’s contributions. “We had about the best collection of Glenn Miller records in the entire fleet.”
“Yes, sir. They’ve been removed and stored.”
Hardy ignored him. “Stanhill,” he murmured, “that’s all he ever played. Glenn Miller. Remember ‘Moonlight Serenade’?” Frank gave him a patronizing smile.
With a last look, Hardy moved down the corridor. Frank watched him step into the officers’ stateroom, then followed and stood by the door while he explored the curtained sections inside. Frank waited until Hardy slid back the curtain covering his own berth, then stepped in and came up behind.
“Small, isn’t it?” Hardy’s smile did not match his voice. He was hurting—a deep, long-ago hurt. Frank refrained from comment; he was doing a little soul-searching of his own. Maybe Cook was right. This was like calling the cadence for Hardy’s march through hell. He waited, sensing the anguish building inside the old man.
Hardy was staring at the pillow at the head of his bunk. Slowly, as if in a trance, his hand crept under the pillow and felt around.
“It’s in your locker, sir,” Frank said quietly. “We didn’t know quite where you kept it.”
Hardy looked up at him and examined the younger man’s face, then turned and opened the locker. He took out a framed photograph. The Elena of many years ago smiled at him. Frank watched him struggle to keep the tears back.
“Your wife?”
“Yes. I lost her in 1963.”
The two men stood in silence. Even McClusky’s gang had stopped their frantic activity aft. Hardy sighed, his emotions finally in check. “May I take this with me?”
“Everything in here belongs to you, Professor.”
“Not quite.” Hardy put the picture on his bunk and reached back into the locker. “I never had enough money for two of these.” He pulled out one of two officer’s caps hanging on hooks and tried it on. Frank smiled at the obvious misfit. Hardy slipped it off and flipped it over to look at the inner plastic lining. There was a fleeting look of anger and distaste.
He handed the cap over, and Frank read the name stenciled on the lining: BATES, W.
Frank silently cursed the stupidity of whoever it was on the cleanup crew who had stowed Bates’s cap in Hardy’s locker.
“How about the forward torpedo room, Professor?”
Hardy simply shook his head. “I’ve had enough for one day.”
Cook and Frank walked the Professor to a waiting car. Hardy accepted Frank’s invitation to dinner, then sat back in the seat and stared at his wife’s picture as the car drove off.
Cook finally relaxed. “Must have been pretty rough down there.”
Frank shot him a dirty look and handed him Bates’s cap. Cook was effusive in his apology. “Jesus! Talk about mixing oil and water...”
Frank nodded. A stupid mistake like this could have set Hardy off like a skyrocket. This time they were lucky. Next time... He felt drained. The tour of the boat was not enough. It was going to take a hell of a lot more to get Jack Hardy involved.
Frank and Hardy took an early dinner at the Officers’ Club. Just the two of them. As if by mutual agreement, neither mentioned the Candlefish, so the conversation was light, at times bantering.
Halfway through dessert, it dawned on Frank: The wrong man was doing all the talking. In the course of an hour plus, Hardy had managed to pump out of Ed Frank nearly his entire background, from the six-year-old boy who learned of his father’s death at Omaha Beach on D-Day, to the early years at the Academy, through Submarine School and then sea duty. A little alarm went off just before Frank started to recount his posting to NIS. What amazed and amused him was Jack Hardy’s deftness. He could have been a natural interrogator. His questions were direct without putting Frank on his guard. Hardy gave the impression that he really cared. He was a great listener. For the first time since his return from Washington, Frank was completely relaxed. He pushed away his coffee cup and refused a second refill.
Hardy, polishing off a dish of chocolate ice cream, was busy watching the room fill up with officers and their women. He grew reflective again. “I’ll make a purely scientific observation, Commander.”
“What?”
“The ladies are getting prettier. Maybe it’s the setting, or maybe I’m starting to slip into senility, but they’re definitely prettier.”
“Whatever you say, sir... but since we could do without those distractions, what do you say we go off to a place where we don’t have so many of the fairer sex?” He called for the check and hustled Hardy out into a balmy Hawaiian evening.
Hardy sat quietly, as Frank slowly toured the car through the base. Hardy smiled now and then as he saw something he remembered from the past. Frank didn’t intrude. Let the man come down off his high, he thought. The fun and games were over. Business was about to begin. The car rolled to a stop, and Hardy chuckled when he saw where they were. “The Clean Sweep, huh? Very subtle, Commander.”
“If you’d rather not—”
Hardy waved it aside. He got out and waited while Frank retrieved his attaché case from the trunk.
In the wartime parlance of the Submarine Service, “clean sweep” meant a successful return from a war patrol: all torpedoes expended and, hopefully, all targets, sunk. A broom lashed to the periscope of a sub slipping back into home base was a signal to others that the boat had “swept the seas clean” of enemy shipping.
The bar was a favorite haunt of SubPac officers. Its walls bore a collage of photographs of the great sub skippers: Lockwood, Grenfell, Morton, O’Kane. From lofty perches they looked down on a new generation. There were photos of crews, old supply ships, and exotic stations, along
with other memorabilia. Equipment used by submariners was scattered throughout the bar. It almost qualified as a museum—an ongoing tribute to the thousands of men who wore the Golden Dolphins.
Frank listened as Hardy slid back into recollections. But the Professor was still shutting out the Candlefish.
Frank decided on a new tack. “What made you get into submarines, Professor?”
Hardy, a cagey look on his face, cocked an eyebrow at Frank. “You just said it.”
“What?”
“The movie Submarine, with Jack Holt and Ralph Graves.”
Frank, who had never heard of either Submarine or Jack Holt, nodded as if he understood perfectly.
Hardy saw through him. “I guess I better explain.”
He told Frank about growing up in Connecticut, on Long Island Sound; how he had developed a love for boats, all boats. When he became old enough, he went sailing every chance he could get—mostly with friends whose fathers had sloops, yawls, or ketches that put out from West Haven every weekend. His own parents ran a small dockside market which, during the spring and summer, did landslide business when the weekend sailors came up from Manhattan and Long Island to race and drink beer. Jack’s knowledge of the local waters, plus his ability to handle his share of the work, made him a welcome addition to the crew of many a fine boat. His parents, sensing his enjoyment, never tried to tie him down to the store. Besides, he was great public relations for their business.
In 1929, as an eleven-year-old boy, he saw his first submarine movie. For an hour and a half he sat motionless, and when the film was over he knew where his life was headed. But, just to make sure, he sat through the next performance.
The Great Depression made a big gouge in his sailing time. Men who had once owned boats suddenly found themselves hard-pressed to keep jobs. His parents barely eked out a living during those hard times, and he was obliged to spend his spare hours helping in the store. Still, the dream persisted. And still he sailed—when he could.
In 1936, just before he graduated high school, he began to pay attention to the fact that the Navy’s Submarine School was at New London, Connecticut—barely thirty miles from his home. But he decided it would be better to become a Navy officer first, then later volunteer for submarine training. So he applied to tile U.S. Naval Academy. His appointment came about through the help of one of the families who still sailed during the season. He then promptly failed the entrance exams.
Humiliated, frustrated, but refusing to give up, Jack Hardy finagled himself into a prep school for a year, took the exams again, and finally entered Annapolis in the fall of 1938.
“And then?”
Hardy became interested in a toothpick. He held it out in front of him, studying it. Finally he locked at Frank. “I imagine your department has a pretty good fix on what I’ve been doing since 1938, Commander. Not everything, but... we all have our little secrets.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“No. I don’t think I would.”
Their attention was diverted by a group of young officers apparently celebrating the last night of bachelorhood for one of their number. Shouts of condolence and advice reverberated around the room. After much milling about, it was decided that they would all go to a certain house off the base. Amidst much confusion, the party left.
Hardy, who had been enjoying the scene, turned back to Frank. “Why is it that men who are about to get married feel obliged to go out and tie one on? That never changes.”
It was a piece of cognac philosophy, and Frank neatly dovetailed it into what he wanted to be the topic of the evening. “I’ll tell you something else that hasn’t changed, sir.” Hardy looked up woozily. “Candlefish. After thirty years, still the same. No age, no rust, no crew. Any ideas?”
Hardy pushed his brandy snifter away. “I don’t know why... but I have some theories on the how,” he ventured. “But then, I don’t think they’d do you any good. You’re not a scientist.”
“Try me.”
Hardy leaned back in his chair and, steepling his hands, tapped his index fingers together. “Suppose the boat was sealed up tight. Complete hull integrity. No leakage.”
“All right.”
“That could account for the lack of deterioration.”
Frank recalled Nails’s description of the bridge when he had boarded her at sea. The hatches had been dogged tight. “Go on,” he said.
“Some of the subs carried nitrogen flasks. I forget what they were for, but suppose one of them popped loose, broke, causing a nitrogen atmosphere to fill the boat. Suppose? Okay, it would act as a preservative—everything aboard would be pickled—if there was a vacuum. If all the air had been sucked out, the interior of the sub could have remained intact.”
“What about the outside hull?”
“If she’d sunk to the bottom...” He started to wave his hands. “If she’d been buried up to her bridge in silt all these years, given the coldness of the waters in those latitudes, she could have survived without any sea growth at all.”
“That’s not bad, Professor. In fact, it’s damned good.”
“It’s just a lot of ifs, Commander.”
“Granted, but it sure sounds better than some mysterious Japanese secret weapon.” He regretted his words as soon as they were out. Hardy looked at him through a half smile; he wasn’t angry, just a little hurt.
“That’s what you get for my twenty-five years in oceanography.” He paused, tapped his glass, and added, “Anyway... we never carried any nitrogen.”
There was silence for a few moments, while Hardy ordered another round from the waitress and refused to talk until it arrived.
Frank tried to regain lost ground. “What about the crew?”
“Well... if they rode out the final dive, they could have tried to escape later. The fishing boat that picked me up had a radio. I could hear them sending, but it was obvious they never even sighted the Candlefish” He paused and took a big swallow of cognac. “Did you check the ship’s log? See if there were any entries after December eleventh?”
“We haven’t been able to find it, Professor. It’s missing.”
“Well, Basquine kept his own day-to-day log.”
Frank reached down and opened his attaché case. He pulled out Basquine’s logbook and handed it to Hardy.
“You check it,” he said.
Hardy gingerly flipped it open and thumbed through to the date he remembered. “Let’s see... we left Pearl on the twenty-first of November... Here.” He read from the top of the page: “ ‘0800. Underway from Pearl, proceeding under orders to general area Kuriles, Pacific.’“ He lapsed into silence.
He stared at the rest of the blank page.
Frank concentrated on Hardy’s reaction as he turned to the next page and surprise grew on his face, turning quickly to incredulity. He thumbed the next page and the next. Finally he closed the book and sat very still for a long time, before handing it back to Frank.
“That’s right, Professor. They’re all blank. After the first day—nothing!”
“But Basquine never missed. I tell you, he was a fanatic! There must be a mistake.”
Frank returned the log to his case and snapped it shut. He knew Hardy felt uncomfortable, unsure of himself.
“You don’t believe me.”
“Yes, I do. Your theories are just as valid as anyone else’s, but this log—it says more where it says nothing. Do you see what I mean? The Candlefish, Professor, is one hell of a puzzle.”
“What are you going to do with her?”
Frank paused, choosing his words carefully. “I’m going to refit the boat and reshape a crew. Then I’m going to retrace the last patrol—from start to finish.”
Hardy was astonished. “You can’t do that.”
“If I get the authorization, Professor, I can and I will.”
“For what reason?”
Frank sat up and looked him in the eye. “Because after thirty years, it came back! And it’s just aching to tell us
what happened. You’re not only a scientist but you served aboard her! Don’t you want to know?”
Hardy didn’t answer, but No was written all over his face. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to complete the missing twenty days in Basquine’s log.”
Hardy laughed; he couldn’t believe it. “I’m flattered, but... you said it yourself, Commander: after thirty years... ?” His voice trailed off, waiting for Frank’s reply.
“I’ve thought of that, sir. Two men that I have sent for will meet you tomorrow morning. They’ll help you.”
“To do what?”
“To remember.” He saw the fleeting look of pain. “Just the portions that I need to fill out the log. Nothing else.”
“How? Do they use drugs?”
“I’m going to have to depend on you for that answer,” Frank smiled. “I don’t even know. But I know they get results, and that’s what we want.”
The harsh, official tone went out of his voice, and he became softer, more pleading. “It’s what we need, sir.”
Five minutes later, he paid the bill and they left the Clean Sweep. Hardy was quiet during the drive back to the BOQ. Frank kept the car idling while Hardy lurched up to the building, a slightly plastered list to port compensating for the limp.
During the drive back to the Imperator, Frank said a silent prayer. Cohen and Slater had better come through. Hardy was right: Thirty years was a long time.
October 22, 1974
At 1230, Frank headed for the Candlefish.
Cook met him at the foot of the gangplank. “Just coming to get you. Mac passed the word. Number one is in, seated and hooked up to the main shaft.”
They went down the after hatch and swung through to the forward engine room. They hovered over McClusky. “Gimme another half-hour or so, Commander, and you can fire her up. But keep everything crossed.”
Frank’s eyes surveyed the” huge engine. The once oil-spattered Fairbanks-Morse, now wiped clean, was receiving last-minute adjustments. Frank went off to inspect the damaged bulkhead. In a few moments he was satisfied that those repairs would be minimal.
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