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“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” she said, laughing at his theatrical self-pity. “Can’t you boss them all around now?”

“When you’re an officer in the navy, your entire career, you strive to be the commanding officer of a warship. There’s no higher calling. Everything after that, no matter what rank they give you, is just bullshit. Excuse my language.”

“Well, at least you’ve got this beautiful office,” she said. She could tell he hadn’t completely unpacked, but he did have the plaques from seven submarines in a line on the wall behind his desk: Sunfish, Skipjack, Baton Rouge, Jacksonville, Archerfish, Omaha, and the last one from SSBN731, USS Alabama.

“I’d rather be driving ships and leading men,” he said. “You’ll see what I mean someday, when Danny takes command of a boat.”

She froze her smile at that, and looked down at the polished surface of his desk.

“Isn’t that the plan?” he said.

She cleared her throat. “It seems I can’t keep any secrets from you, Mario.”

He patted her hand. “Has he turned his letter in yet?”

“I think so — needs to do it soon, before he hits the four-year point.”

“Are you doing it because of the baby?”

“No! I mean — I hope not. Lots of reasons. Danny just wants to do something different.”

The captain looked genuinely stricken, and Angi noted again the difference between how Captain Soldato seemed to feel about Danny in her presence, and how her husband perceived it. Danny would come home and relay the tirades he’d endured from Soldato, sometimes alone and sometimes as part of a group. On Mario’s last patrol, during a botched firing of an exercise torpedo, he’d said, “Jabo, how do you keep the ants off your candy ass?”

But whenever Mario mentioned Danny in front of her, he was like this: pure paternal concern and professional admiration. She thought it a shame that the captain could never show this side of himself to Danny, but after three patrols together, she’d assumed it was impossible, because of some combination of nautical tradition and masculine inhibition.

“Well, Angi, take comfort in this: whatever Danny decides to do, you’re going to have this child in a Navy hospital. And Cindy and I are here to help in every way possible. Now that they’ve taken me away from the boat, I’ve got plenty of time on my hands.”

“Thanks Mario, I really do appreciate it. I do feel sometimes like I need someone to help guide me through the insurance process…”

He waved his hand. “Consider it done. I know all the people at Group Nine who manage this stuff, and I went to the Academy with the CO of the hospital in Bremerton. Everything will be fine.”

“I know it will, but thanks for the offer. There’s a chance, depending on how long this patrol is, that Danny may be home before my due date…” The Captain immediately shook his head, and she knew with sudden certainty that he would not.

“We’re going to take care of you Angi,” he said. “You and your baby.”

To Angi’s complete and utter surprise, she began to cry.

• • •

At home that night, Angi got on their computer and studied Taiwan and China. She had been avoiding the news up to that point, afraid to learn what was going on, but she suddenly wanted to know as much as she could, no matter how unsettling. It had seemed odd to her all along that the tensions between these two distant countries would so urgently involve the United States. And it seemed downright bizarre that it might affect her, and her nascent family. Now she wanted to know why.

She had to scan several historical overviews before she found one that seemed relatively untainted by politics. She learned that that China had been fighting for the island of Taiwan for five centuries, and that this tortured history was impossible to separate from the current crisis.

In 1662, the Chinese went to Taiwan and expelled the Dutch, its first European colonial masters. The Dutch treasured the island they named Formosa, for its rice, its large native deer population, but mostly for its commanding position on the Asian sea lanes it contested with Spain and Portugal. Not only Europeans coveted Taiwan, however, and in 1895 the Japanese defeated the Great Qin in the first Sino-Japanese war, leading to a long Japanese occupation. Japanese rule of the island lasted until their 1945 defeat in World War II, when the victorious allies deeded the island back to the Chinese.

Clarity was avoided, however, by the Chinese Civil War. That conflict pitted the Communist Peoples Republic of China, led by Mao Zedong, against the Republic of China, led by Chiang Kai-Shek. The war had raged since 1927, stalling briefly during World War II. As soon as World War II ended the Civil War resumed, until the 1949 defeat of Chiang Kai-Shek. With about two million of his supporters, he retreated to Taiwan, where the ROC declared itself to be the sole, legitimate government of China.