His gloomy thoughts were interrupted by The Beek, who came out of the EDA room and called an order to his chief radio technician: “Benton! Patch in a tape and record the transmission on three-point-nine megacycles while I take a HUFF-DUFF on it!”
Lieutenant Packer quickly put away Shebeona’s letter and jumped up to reach the bank of recorders ahead of Chief Benton. “You got something hot?” he called to Beeker.
“I think it’s a bogey — that so-called research ship Novo Sibirsk which always seems to indicate the presence of Moby Dick. The transmission is about three hundred miles off.” He quickly vanished back inside the EDA room.
“I’ll take care of the recording, sir,” Chief Benton told the English officer, respectfully but firmly nudging him aside.
Packer watched him for a moment, then slumped back into his chair and began to shuffle absently through the file copies of the morning’s dispatches. He did not bring out the letter again, but his mind could not tear itself away from it. What would his mother say about the broken engagement? She always looked forward so much to the weekends when Shebeona would drive out to the old house in Surrey and keep her company for a few hours — the two waiting women, the old widowed one and the young engaged one who had so much of that kind of waiting ahead of her. There would be no more visits now, because Shebeona would, of course, be with Alan Sternway.
Peter’s anger boiled up as he thought of Alan Sternway and it almost broke the blank surface expression on his face. The Sternways had once been a distinguished service family too, but Alan believed that the dissolution of the British Empire had relieved him from any obligation to conform to tradition. Instead of going into the navy, he had joined the merchant marine, and instead of going to sea, he sold tickets in block lots to other Englishmen who were also severing their ties with history and emigrating out of the country. Alan’s ships did not even fly the Red Duster, but were refurbished tubs under Panamanian registry, owned by Italians who fronted for Greek-American financiers. Old Admiral Sir Percival Sternway would be tossing restlessly in his grave over his son’s doings, but all Alan tossed was money. Enough money for a flat in Mayfair, an American Thunderbird, vacations on Capri — and Shebeona! Damn her! If there were lines eating into her beautiful face, they were those of dissolution of character, of failure to Endure, not the attrition of abiding with her heart’s true love. To reject him and marry a man like Alan Sternway was as bad as . . . as bad as marrying a man like Ben Munceford! Well — he had been attracted to her, hadn’t he! Maybe that was her type, after all!
“Sir, I have an action signal from Narwhale!” one of the radiomen announced, yanking a sheet out of his typewriter and sailing it over onto Packer’s desk. Narwhale was the code name of the Norwegian destroyer Fritiof Nansen, and when the NATO communicator ran her message through the decoder, he found that she too had picked up the Russian transmission on 3.9 megacycles and was drawing the Bedford’s attention to it.
“Do they think we are asleep?” Lieutenant Beeker dryly asked when he read the signal.
“Rather trying to show us they aren’t,” Packer answered. “Shall we call the bridge about this, Beek?”
“No. Let’s wait a moment and give Captain Finlander a nice complete package of information.” During the next couple of minutes Beeker listened to the tape recording which Chief Benton had made of the transmission, then checked it against a master recording of sample transmissions he had compiled of all the known Russian vessels frequenting the area. Only his trained ear could pick up subtle differences and likenesses, and finally he announced with absolute certainty: “It’s the Novo Sibirsk, all right. Now we had better keep our ears glued to their submarine frequencies for Moby Dick.” He sat down and quickly typed out the information on a message sheet, including the exact position as determined by his HUFF-DUFF bearing, clipped the signal from Narwhale to it and called for a messenger.
“Wait — let me take it to the bridge, Beek,” Packer pleaded, then impulsively explained: “I want to ask to speak to the captain, anyway.” The Beek looked a little suspicious. “You do? Why?”
“It’s a personal matter. I need his permission to send a telegram to . . . er, ah, home.” He suddenly felt himself blushing as the American officer scrutinized him with a puzzled curiosity.
“That’s only permitted in emergencies, you know, Pete. Did you have bad news in the mail yesterday?”
“You might say so,” Packer answered, making a desperate attempt to sound casual about it.
“Nobody’s died, have they?”
“Yes — I suppose 1 have a little.” He said it with a shrug and a bitter little laugh. Then, with a sudden switch to complete indifference, he reversed himself and exclaimed: “Never mind. I’ll catch the skipper this evening if I still feel like getting in touch with home.”
He started to return to his desk, but Beeker stopped him, shoved the papers into his hand and swung him around toward the door as if suddenly anxious to get rid of any kind of problem which was beyond the scope of radio technology. As Packer left, he settled down to make a translation of the intercepted Russian transmission.
Outside the Communications Center the sun had climbed higher into the clear sky and begun to counter the terrible cold left by the long winter night; given more time, its rays might have driven the temperature upward to somewhere close to mere freezing, but another night was due only three hours past high noon and the thermometer would soon start another downward plunge. In the meanwhile the Arctic Ocean had lost the dazzling shimmer of dawn and taken on the spectacular deep blue color it wears on its rare fine days. The slick parts where a flat calm prevailed were like undulating sheets of polished steel; other parts ruffled by cat’s-paws of icy zephyrs changed their hue to a gunmetal patina which spread, contracted, vanished and reappeared on the slopes of the restlessly quiescent swells. On the eastern horizon, sea and sky met in a sharp unbroken line, but to the west the frosted pinnacles and crags of Greenland’s mountains stood out with a startling clarity which made them seem much closer than they actually were. Between them and the ship, remnants of an icefield drifted in strangely orderly columns, like flattened snowmen floating down an invisible stream within the sea. The Bedford’s wake curved away from their course, cutting a softer emerald swath through the hard blue of the surface.
Lieutenant Packer stopped on his mission to the bridge to allow his eyes to take all this in and his mind to savor the remoteness of it from the troubles assailing him from faraway England. It made Shebeona and Alan Sternway and their trite little love triangle seem utterly unreal and unimportant. This ship and this bleak but protecting sea were all that mattered and all that was real for him, as it had been for all the Packers before him. No! He would send no pleading message. Certainly not! Let them have each other and let him have this. But, God, it was so cold! And lonely!
A quickening of the pulse from the engine room, together with a slight heeling of the deck as the Bedford tightened her turn, brought Packer out of his brooding. The ship was being put through some kind of seemingly erratic maneuver, but undoubtedly it had a calculated purpose which had to do with the frequent ASW exercises which Captain Finlander devised to keep the CIC in a constant state of alertness. Remembering the papers fluttering in his gloved hand, Packer hurried to the bridge, where he reported to Commander Allison inside the wheelhouse:
“Sir, I have a radio-intelligence report for the captain.”
Finlander was only ten feet away, but with his ear close to the sonar monitor’s speaker, listening intently as CIC kept relentlessly on top of the hapless whale. Packer was hoping he would notice him and step over to circumvent the through-channel procedure, but his attention was completely absorbed in the persistent ping-ying . . . ping-ying. Allison took the report and checked through it to determine whether it warranted immediately disturbing the captain — which he decided it did. Holding it up in front of Finlander’s face, he silently put one finger against the significant words: “Novo Sibirsk” �
� and had the report snatched out of his hand. When the captain finished reading it, there was the fire of excitement smoldering in his eyes. “Excellent! This may mean the hunt is on. Let’s start a tactical plot and do some figuring, Buck.” Beckoning his executive officer to follow him into the chartroom, he hurried off without ever noticing Packer — who felt a pang of frustration. Well, the captain would be too busy for a while to bother about anybody’s personal problems. And, anyway, hadn’t he decided not to send a message to Shebeona . . . not immediately, at least?
“What’s the big deal, Pete?” Lieutenant Harwell had sidled up alongside him to find out what was so important it had been brought up by the NATO liaison officer instead of by ordinary messenger.
“The Beek sniffed out Moby Dick’s mother — that’s all.”
“That’s all!” Harwell let out a meaningful whistle, then slapped his hands together. “That’s all, he says! So let’s cut out this horsing around and get going! What’s holding the skipper back?”
“Maybe the fact that the emission originated from somewhere three hundred miles northeast. It’s my guess H.M.S. Obdurate is in a better position to do something about it.” Even as he spoke, he heard the scuttlebutt start its whispering course through the wheelhouse and knew that in a matter of minutes it would permeate the entire ship.
Harwell made a disparaging snort which was only part joking. “We’ll never give up Moby Dick to any Limey can, boy!” he exclaimed. “Not as long as the Bedford is in the same ocean.”
Packer flashed a grin and needled him back. “Yes — and maybe that’s why nobody ever catches him.”
Harwell recoiled with a horrified expression. “Jesus, Peterpacker!” he whispered with an uneasy glance toward the curtained entrance to the chartroom. “What’s happened to make you no longer want to go on living? Only a desperate character would say anything like that on this bridge!”
He was joking, of course, but the Englishman nodded seriously. “You don’t know how desperate, Dick.” With a wry grimace he turned and went out onto the open bridge. He had decided to take his time about returning to the Communications Center. Maybe Captain Finlander would quickly break off whatever exercise was taking place, lay a course toward the Novo Sibirsk, then come out here to restlessly join the lookouts in watching the sea. Maybe engage him in conversation. A conversation which could lead up to the subject of home. A casual request for permission to send a personal telegram. But supposing he wanted to know the nature of the telegram — that would be perfectly within a commanding officer’s right, of course. Could he think up something innocuous which would still convey his anguish to Shebeona? He noticed that, besides the lookout, the only other person on this side of the bridge was Ben Munceford, who was leaning over the windscreen, clutching his camera and staring at the sea beyond the bow.
“Hello, Ben,” he greeted him, placing himself next to him. “You look like you expected a chorus line of mermaids to pop out of the sea.
Munceford looked up with a start. “Well, well!” he exclaimed with a pouting smile. “It’s the jealous English lover boy. How’re you today? Still mad at me?”
“All right, Ben — I guess I deserve that,” Packer answered after gritting his teeth together for an instant. “I’m sorry I acted so badly last night.”
“Well, okay, Pete! Like 1 told you, 1 had no business with your girl’s photograph.”
For a moment they both silently watched the sea. Then the English officer asked: “You found her very attractive, didn’t you?”
“Damned handsome broad. I’m not going to stick my neck out with you by saying any more than that. Say, where is that silly whale? It’s been fifteen or twenty minutes since it was up last.”
“Oh, is that what we’re doing? The old Ahab stuff. If it’s a humpback whale, which it probably is, it’s good for about a thirty-minute dive. Much less if badly scared. . . . She’s about to be married, you know.”
“Yeah. I got that message. To you.”
“No. Not to me. To somebody else.” Packer horrified himself as much over actually putting the calamity into words as over whom he was saying them to. He made it much worse by adding: “So, you see, it doesn’t really matter to me whether you are interested in her or not.”
Ben Munceford looked at him sharply, his freckled face wrenching itself into sardonic surprise. “Say! Don’t tell me that was a Dear John letter you got yesterday. The old kiss-off?” He spoke so loudly that the lookout in the wing might have heard it. The Englishman’s face remained inscrutable, his eyes still on the coldly sunlit sea, so it was not his reaction which made Munceford abruptly switch his manner to one of genuine concern. It was the fact that he suddenly realized this was the only person aboard the Bedford who was trying to act like an ordinary mortal human being with him. “Listen, Pete!” he said in a much lower and more sympathetic voice. “Don’t let them get you down! All women are emotionally unstable opportunists. I ought to know — I’m just shedding my third wife, so I’ve learned in the school of hard knocks, believe you me. Like if you love cats, you’re going to get yourself clawed from time to time. It hurts, but it heals. So don’t let it get you down.”
Packer nodded, but toward the sea. “There is your whale,” he said.
“Damn! Skunked again!” Munceford exclaimed and fumbled with his camera. However, this time the whale did not immediately sound. The long frantic chase had so exhausted it that it wallowed on the surface, painfully spouting vapor through its blowhole, a weirdly scalloped flipper waving listlessly in the air as it half rolled, showing a pale, fluted belly. There was something pathetic about its floundering effort to get out of the way of the Bedford’s sharp prow, and only in the nick of time did the fluke make a churning stroke to propel its hulk clear of the slicing column of steel bearing down upon it. With his camera still grinding away and his eye glued to the viewfinder, Munceford raced to the edge of the bridge, photographing an unsteady but dramatic sequence as the huge, half-submerged blimp of a beast was buffeted by the wash of the passing ship. He did not stop shooting until it had fallen astern and floundered in the foaming wake which stretched in a pale blue, crazily looping serpentine track across the sea behind them. Then he looked up with a grin of satisfaction which almost immediately changed into a frown. “Say!” he said to Packer, who had followed him across the bridge, “couldn’t you call this cruelty to a dumb animal? I don’t know if I like it being done on my account.”
Before the Englishman could answer him, Lieutenants Spitzer and Krindlemeyer came out of the wheelhouse and stared astern through binoculars at a swirl where the whale was attempting to sound. They both looked very pleased and Spitzer gleefully exclaimed: “Boy! Human and system control were all go on that run! We got a perfect trace too. Those hypersonic pulses drove him crazy!”
Munceford heard him quite clearly and although he did not fully understand what he was talking about, it somehow further offended one of his few sensitivities — an almost maudlin love of animals. “How would you like to be chased with hypersonic whatnots anyway — eh?” He lifted the movie camera, pointed it at the two officers and shot a quick sequence of their faces as they gaped at him in confused amazement. It must have been a very unflattering shot.
Lieutenant Peter Packer was suddenly amused by the incident and became full of suppressed laughter. “Look here, Ben, old boy,” he said after Krindlemeyer and Spitzer had slunk back into the wheelhouse, “if you think they were chasing that whale for your benefit, forget it. Destroyermen and submariners hate whales because they bugger up their sonar systems with false echoes. I dare say more depth charges have been wasted on whales than on real targets, and it’s still damned hard to tell the difference, even with our latest models. So, you see, partly out of spite and partly for necessary practice, Finlander frequently allows the CIC to make runs on them like this.”
“Are you saying they can’t tell the difference between a whale and a submarine even with all the high-priced brains and equipment on this
ship?” Munceford asked with a sneer. “That’s great! And I think maybe it’s news.”
Packer’s amusement turned to alarm. “I didn’t say that, so don’t quote me on it,” he answered, keeping his eyes on the wheelhouse door. “What I do say is that it is sometimes difficult. Every creature in the sea, from whale to plankton, makes a noise of some kind and can give a return echo on sonar. It is a matter of gaining experience in making proper identification, of learning thousands of separate sounds and characteristic echoes, often picking them out of the confusion. The deep isn’t always silent and still. It can be as uproarious as an Italian street riot. And, speaking of underwater sounds, here’s the Bedford’s special magician at sorting them out!”
Munceford followed his gaze and saw what appeared to be an ordinary seaman come out of the wheelhouse and step to the after bulwark of the bridge to scan the sea astern of the ship, evidently searching for a sign of the whale which had finally managed to dive out of sight. He was a very young, very skinny boy, bareheaded except for a pair of earphones clamped to his head, the oversized cups bulging out, but above his ears, and with the connecting cord dangling around his knees. He was wearing an unzipped windbreaker which bore no insignia of his rating, and, instead of the usual heavy boots worn in this climate, he had a pair of ordinary navy oxfords on his feet. In one hand he clutched a black notebook, in the other a ballpoint pen. After squinting at the empty sea for a moment, he made an almost effeminate gesture of annoyance, looked about the bridge and, spotting Lieutenant Packer, trotted toward him with a peculiar skipping gait.
The Bedford Incident Page 12