The Passage

by David Poyer

  Dan stood on the flying bridge, looking down and forward over the venturi bulwark. Behind him, two enlisted were cracking jokes as they greased the rotating barrels on the Phalanx.

  “So the boatswain’s mate gets a blow job from this fireman in the after machine shop. And when he’s finished, the fireman spits the come into a jar. The boatswain asks him why he did that, and he says, ‘One of the radiomen’s doing the same thing, and whoever gets his filled first gets to drink them both.’”

  He moved away, feeling sick, but not just at the joke. He’d felt that way for the last two days, since the night Sanderling went overboard.

  He’d read the diary, read it unwillingly, but he didn’t see any other choice now that he’d taken custody. He’d thought he might send it back to the seaman’s next of kin with the rest of his personal gear, maybe with a page or two missing. But now he’d read it, he knew he couldn’t do that. He’d have to tear out most of the diary. He couldn’t send it back to Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Sanderling, Eugene, Oregon—not with the things it described.

  How strange that he knew the young seaman better dead than he’d ever known him alive.

  Shit, he wished he could stop thinking about it. He leaned over the bulwark as Barrett passed between the two points that guarded the entrance to Guantánamo Bay and wheeled slowly right. Burdette Shuffert had the watch. Shuffert would be the general quarters officer of the deck during the training. Dan, of course, would be TAO most of the time.

  Now he looked down as Barrett felt her way in, the world rotating about her pivot point, Leeward Point Field and Hicacal Beach walking down the port side. A freighter came into view upriver, steaming down from the upper bay. The hills gradually moved apart to starboard, revealing behind them the buildings and water tanks of the harbor proper, inside Corinaso Point.

  He’d been here before, and looking up at the dry steep hills, he remembered the history. Guantánamo was a small but strategically situated harbor on Cuba’s southeast coast. The U.S. presence was a relic of the war of 1898, when the marines had landed to support operations against the Spanish at Santiago. A few years later, Teddy Roosevelt had leased the bay, not for a hundred years, like the bases in the Philippines, but without any terminating date, as long as the Navy needed it and paid the rent.

  The gates dividing the base from the rest of Cuba had closed the day Fidel Castro took power. But the Navy had stubbornly maintained its toehold, building desalinization and power plants when the Cubans cut off electricity and water, and both sides had fortified and mined the boundary between the base and the rest of hilly, dry, sparsely populated Oriente Province.

  Since it lay on both sides of the harbor entrance, the base was divided into Leeward and Windward sides. The main piers and repair facilities lay along the east, shielded from hurricanes. It wasn’t entirely an armed camp. Dependents lived here; there was a high school and a fishing tournament. But it wasn’t like being in Charleston or San Diego, either. The base only covered forty-five square miles, most of that water or rugged hills. And it was the only U.S. military installation actually in a Communist country.

  That isolation made it a good place to train, and that was Gitmo’s primary mission. Ships could go out in the morning, train and shoot all day in deep water, then be back pierside the same night—something they couldn’t do anyplace else on the East Coast. Every ship in the Atlantic Fleet had to complete refresher training here before it deployed, shaking down crew and systems into a battle-trained whole. And as almost any sailor would tell you, deployment usually turned out less stressful than the four to six weeks at the hands of the Fleet Training Group.

  The marks of the Hicacal Beach range began to diverge as the bow swung slowly right. The piers came into view, with another destroyer, a Coontz-class, and a Newport-class LST with its unmistakable “horns” at the bow. An oiler lay opposite the destroyer, and a small craft that looked like a PT or hydrofoil, but not a type he recognized.

  As Barrett shaped her course the last few hundred yards to the pier, the freighter upriver grew larger. Dan saw the hammer and sickle on its stack. On its bridge, a stocky woman focused a camera. Dan glanced down; Barrett’s officers, Shuffert, Leighty, Vysotsky, were on the starboard wing, concentrating on the pier.

  He lifted a hand as the merchant swept past. He’d seen Russians at close range before, in the Med. Usually, you could get a wave and sometimes a grin out of them. But the stolid round faces looked through him as the stocky woman snapped off pictures. Then they were past, dwindling away, the wake rolling Barrett as she lined up for the final approach.

  Sanderling’s diary was a look into a world Dan hadn’t known existed: of furtive couplings in bus station toilets, night-shrouded beaches, cheap motel rooms; of fear and longing, but also a kind of desperate joy, a passion that sometimes transcended itself into an existential freedom.

  Some of it, Dan couldn’t imagine. But some was the way he’d felt himself at Sanderling’s age, the desperate, awkward, searching time when you looked for everything you needed outside yourself.

  What he found strangest was the anonymity, the rapid succession of partners—strangers, maybe not even seen clearly. He couldn’t understand it at first. Then he remembered Sibylla Baird. He’d met her … gone out to the garden … . What was so different?

  No, the only real distinction was that Sanderling had loved men.

  He wished now he’d tossed the diary overboard with the magazines. But Harper and Oakes knew he had it. If it had been purely a matter of Sanderling, he wouldn’t have hesitated. He’d have called the other witnesses back to the fantail, shown them the diary, pitched it into the white boil of screw wash.

  But it wasn’t just Sanderling now.

  And he had to decide what to do about it.

  He resolved to do it now, today—to bite the bullet and get it over with just as soon as the lines went over and the brow went into place.

  A battered white pickup was waiting for them at Pier L. Dan stood by it, waiting for Oakes. He looked down the side of the ship, under the ship. There were the twin rudders, the twin screws. Incredible how transparent the water was. He could see every pebble on the bottom. Barrett seemed to hover, not float, suspended in a medium only a little denser than air. From there, he glanced up at drylooking bluffs dotted with cactus. The palms and the verandas gave the harbor a tropical feel.

  “Ready, sir?” Senior Chief Oakes, already sweating, was coming down the brow carrying Sanderling’s gear. Dan took the suitcase from him and threw it into the bed of the truck.

  Commander, Naval Base headquarters, was a mile south of the piers, up the hill from the Blue Caribe Club. It was a World War II—era two-story, white paint flaking, with a tower that must have had something to do with the airfield once. The duty driver dropped them in front of the concrete-roofed entranceway. Dan told him to go back to the ship, figuring they could walk back once they got rid of the luggage.

  A female petty officer was typing at a steel desk on the quarterdeck. He said, “Lieutenant Lenson, USS Barrett. We just pulled in. Is there a legal officer here?”

  “Do you want that for a will, power of attorney—”

  “No, this is official. We have to turn in some personal effects of a man who died en route, and I need to ask a couple of legal questions.”

  “That would be the judge advocate general on the staff. Lieutenant Commander Arguilles is the officer in charge.”

  ARGUILLES was a mountain in sloppy khakis. He had a big mustache and dark hair. Looking at Dan’s name tag, he said as they shook hands, “Lenson. Lenson … You know a guy name of Johnstone? Stanley Fox Johnstone?”

  “Yeah. The Ryan inquiry. He was the counsel for the court.”

  “I served with him on the COMNAVFORCARIB staff. He mentioned you—the guy who asked to be punished, after they told him to go and sin no more. What do you think about that, Senior Chief?”

  “The Navy ain’t that big of an organization, sir.”

  “I don’t
mean … well, never mind.” The JAG officer told them to sit down, said they could smoke if they wanted. “What can I do for you?” he said, propping his shoes on the desk.

  “Well, sir—”

  “Call me José.”

  “Sir—José—I think we’ve got a problem aboard Barrett. And I thought maybe I’d better get some advice.”

  “We got your message. About the kid who went missing, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This his gear? You sanitize everything? Take out the rubbers and cunt books?”

  Dan took the inventory and forwarding letter out of its messenger envelope and handed it over. Arguilles glanced down it, nodded, and flipped it into his in box. “Page two, next of kin’s address, beneficiary form, looks good. Stack the stuff in the corner, my evil dwarfs will take it from here. That all?”

  “Senior Chief, I’ll see you back at the ship, okay?”

  Oakes looked disappointed, but he stubbed out his butt. When he was gone, Dan cleared his throat.

  “Ice water?”

  “No thank you, sir. I don’t know how to start this. I’m not sure I ought to be here. But I don’t think keeping quiet is the right thing to do, either. And it might have a bearing on why Sanderling jumped.”

  The phone rang. Arguilles picked it up, listened, said, “Tell her to come in. No, I can’t advise her over the phone. Hold my calls, okay? Sorry, go ahead,” he said to Dan.

  “Yeah, well … I don’t know, like I say, if this is the right thing to do or not.”

  “Why don’t you tell me in confidence,” said Arguilles. “You say it’s related to Sanderling’s death.”

  “It might be. We found … homosexual literature in the kid’s effects.”

  “You mean cock books—naked guys with big, big hard-ons.”

  “Right. We also found a diary.”

  “Go on.”

  “The diary describes his acts with other people.” He cleared his throat again. “Including the captain.”

  “Go on.”

  He was puzzled by the lawyer’s lack of reaction. “Well … that’s about it.”

  “Was there a final message, a note or letter? Anything that mentioned his intention to do away with himself?”

  “No.”

  “What did your commanding officer say when he saw this diary?”

  “He hasn’t.” Dan took it out of his pocket and placed it on the edge of the desk. “I didn’t tell him or the XO about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I wasn’t sure it wouldn’t disappear.”

  “What happened to the other material?”

  “I had it thrown overboard.”

  “You this kid’s division officer?”

  “Department head.”

  “He a good sailor?”

  “Not the best I’ve ever seen. But not the worst, either.”

  “Why do you say it might be related to his death? Does he write that in the diary?”

  “No. The last entry was four days before he jumped. The diary was kept in the luggage room, by the way. So he couldn’t get to it every day. He must have gotten the key now and then and brought it up to date.” Dan shifted in the chair. “The relationship to his death … well, it seems like you could make that inference.”

  “That he committed suicide because he fucked the captain? Or that the captain fucked him? Or that the captain fucked him once but wouldn’t do it again?” Arguilles grimaced. “Let’s go back to why you didn’t turn the diary in. Why did you think it might ’disappear’?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t trust your CO or XO not to destroy evidence.”

  “I guess not,” Dan said. “Did you want to look at it?”

  “No,” said Arguilles.

  “You don’t want to see it?”

  “For the moment, I want to be able to say I’ve never seen it. Okay?”

  “I guess.”

  “So what do you want me to do?”

  “I need some advice. That’s why I came in.”

  “Advice? Let’s not say I did that. I can point out some choices, though.”

  “Okay.”

  “One: You go out the door, then turn around and come back in here with it officially. Turn the diary over to me, get a receipt, and file Article One twenty-five charges against your commanding officer.”

  For some reason, Dan remembered his interview with Jack Byrne just then. “What’s Article One twenty-five?” he asked cautiously.

  “Sodomy.”

  “Whew.”

  “Yeah. Make yourself popular, plus, if he’s found guilty, all he’s got to do is call you a jealous lover and down you go with him. Choice number two: Lose this hot potato over the side next time you get under way. Punch a hole through the middle of it, get a shackle from the boatswain’s mates, make sure it never sees the light of day again.”

  “Any other choices?”

  “You can make an anonymous complaint.”

  “What happens then?”

  “The Naval Investigative Service investigates anonymous complaints of homosexuality. They’ll come in like a ton of bricks if it’s the CO, an alleged participant.”

  “What’s your feeling on that?”

  “I don’t want to put anybody down,” said Arguilles. “But they’re not bound by rules of evidence on homosexuality investigations. They get one pansy, they lean on him for names. And I mean, they lean hard. There’s gonna be enough mud flying around to splatter everybody aboard. You start a witch-hunt, you’re gonna lose some of your best people.”

  “None of those sounds like good choices, sir.”

  “I hate faggot cases,” said Arguilles. “Avoid ’em whenever I can. The first case I ever handled—‘the Night Crawler.’ Guy used to crawl into guys’ racks after taps and blow them. Never alluded to it in daylight. He said he did it for years and nobody ever turned him in. Finally he went down on this nigger boilerman and the guy just about killed him with a piece of wire rope. You think your CO’s really a fag?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does anybody else think so? Or are you a voice in the wilderness?”

  “I’ve heard remarks.”

  “Is it affecting good order and discipline?”

  “It might be starting to, sir. That’s really why I’m here.” He looked at a colored print on the wall: sailing ships in battle, powder smoke billowing above shattered spars. “If I didn’t, I might not think it was any of my business.”

  “Is it your business? Order and discipline are the captain’s and XO’s responsibility.”

  “They’re everybody’s responsibility.”

  “Yeah, but who appointed it specifically yours? Oh, I get it.” Arguilles peered at him. “Same as with the Ryan thing, huh? You appointed yourself.”

  Dan said, irritated, “Call it whatever you want. What should I do about it?”

  Arguilles leaned back and locked his hands behind his head. “Well, there’ll be an investigation of the suicide. Diehl is wrapped around the axle now on this bad-check ring over at the marine barracks; it might take him a few days, but he’ll be over. Is this diary evidence leading to suspicion that the captain or others named or unnamed contributed to that suicide? I’m not sure. The thing is, from the legal point of view, anything in it is either hearsay or unsubstantiated—if not fiction. The kid’s not around to answer for it. Does he name anybody else aboard the ship?”

  “No.”

  “No other partners?”

  “He mentions a couple, but no names. The only one he names is the captain—and actually he doesn’t use his name either, just calls him ‘the captain.’ Most of his uh … activity seems to center around a bar in Charleston. That’s our home port.”

  “Uh-huh. You realize he might have made this up? Whatever he says he did with your skipper? Like you or me daydreaming about going to bed with Farrah Fawcett, okay? A sex fantasy, power fantasy. He might even have put it in on purpose, to protect himself if anybody else
ever got hold of the diary. See what I mean? I’ve seen that before in cases like this. First thing defense counsel is going to bring up.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” said Dan. He’d started to say, “I don’t think Sanderling would do that,” but he knew now he’d never known the first thing about Sanderling. Maybe he didn’t know any of his shipmates, or any human being, not deep down, as they really were. It was a bitter knowledge. He reached out for the diary, weighed it for a moment, then slipped it back into his pocket.

  “I ask you one question?” said Arguilles. “In confidence.”

  “Sure.”

  “Are you gay?”

  “No!”

  “Take it easy … . I know, soon as you start talking about them, that’s like the next question, isn’t it? But there’s something else eating you, isn’t there? Other than this Sanderling thing. You got something against ’em?”

  Dan sat hunched over, giving it a few seconds’ thought. He didn’t like homosexuals … didn’t like the idea; it made him feel ill to think about doing the things Sanderling had described … but sometimes it got to be too much, the jokes, the sniggers that were common currency aboard ship, the relentless official indoctrination about their undependability, their vulnerability to blackmail, their danger to discipline. Then he remembered Byrne, what he’d told him about the torpedoman on the Threadfin. So maybe it was true that they could be dangerous aboard ship. But Sanderling hadn’t seemed dangerous, just immature and screwed up. He honestly didn’t know how to answer the lawyer’s question. So he just muttered, “I don’t know, not particularly.”

  “Then why fall on your sword over it?”

  “I just want to do what’s right.”

  Arguilles blew out like a surfacing dolphin as he hoisted himself to his feet. “Ohhkay. You just wanna do what’s right … . Well, Lieutenant, do us all a favor. You let us know when you figure out what that is.”

  THE sun outside was incredible—like a tanning salon. By the time he got back down to the pier, his khakis were soaked.