Hitler's peace

I stepped into my cabin and closed the door behind me. I stood perfectly still, or as still as I could manage with the swell that was under my feet. The minute I saw dry land again I was going to kneel down and kiss it, like it was Ithaca and my middle name was Odysseus. I didn’t remove my coat. I was too busy trying to decide if someone other than me had been in there. The door was not locked. Santini, the sailor who brought me a cup of coffee in the morning, might have come in and dusted some, I supposed. Or could Weitz have come in and searched it while I was up on deck? Not that he would have found anything of importance. Donovan’s suitcase remained locked. And Debbie Schmidt’s letter to her husband, detailing her affair with Thornton Cole, was safely in my pocket. None of this concerned me unduly. It was what Weitz had said about the German sub in the area that really interested me now.

Leaving the cabin again, I went to look for Captain McCrea and found him on the bridge, behind turret two, with his phone talker and watch officer. “I wonder if I might have a word with you, Captain. In private.”

“I’m a little busy right now,” he said, hardly looking at me.

“It might be important,” I said.

McCrea let out a tutting, matronly sort of sigh, as if I had told him I’d thrown up on my bedroom slippers, and led me back through the control room and into the corridor beyond. “All right, Professor. What is it?”

“Forgive me, Captain, but I’m curious about this submarine.”

He sighed again. It was bed for me with no supper if I wasn’t careful.

“What about it?”

“It’s my understanding that our two escort destroyers picked up a German broadcast in the area at around 0200 hours this morning.”

McCrea stiffened perceptibly. “That’s right.”

“I don’t mean to be impertinent,” I said, enjoying my impertinence, “but it was my understanding that the Iowa is equipped with the very latest sonar and radar technology.”

“It is,” he said, inspecting his shiny fingernails. Probably he had a young sailor polish them and the ship’s brass every morning at six bells.

“Which makes me wonder why it was that the Iowa did not pick up the same broadcast?”

McCrea glanced over his shoulder and then ushered me into the head. As he closed the door behind him, I toyed with the idea of saying that he had made a mistake, that I wasn’t one of the pansies and cookie pushers employed by the State Department he’d heard about from FDR and Harry Hopkins. Instead I kept my mouth shut and waited.

“I’ll be frank with you, Professor,” he said. “It seems that the radio seaman on duty at the time left his post without authorization. The man has been disciplined and I consider that the matter is now closed. In view of what happened with the Willie D. Porter, I decided that confidence in this voyage would best be served if the incident was not mentioned to the president or the Joint Chiefs.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Captain,” I grinned. “And you have my word that I won’t mention it to anyone. Most of all to Admiral King. All the same, I’d like to satisfy myself with one or two questions I have regarding what happened.”

“Such as?”

“I’d like to speak to the radio seaman who left his post.”

“May I ask why?”

“I’m a specialist in German intelligence, Captain. It’s my job to scratch an itch when I get one. I’m sure you understand. So if you could send the man in question along to the radio transmitter room? Don’t bother to escort me there. I know the way.”

McCrea could see the ace sticking out of my sleeve. And there was nothing he could do about it. The last thing he wanted was Admiral King hearing about this latest incident. His voice dropped a couple of fathoms.

“Very well. I trust that you’ll keep me informed of your observations.”

“Of course, sir. Be my pleasure.”

McCrea nodded curtly and returned to the bridge.

I went along to the RT room and knocked at the door. Entering, I explained my mission to the radio communications officer on duty, a twenty-five-year-old lieutenant named Cubitt. Tall, swivel-eyed, with a wooden sort of expression-which is to say no expression at all-a sharp nose, pale skin, and a woman’s red lips, he looked like Pinocchio’s smarter brother. But only just.

The lieutenant was on the point of asking me to leave when the telephone rang. He answered it and I overheard McCrea ordering him to cooperate with “the asshole” and, when “the son of a bitch” was through, to come and tell him what I had wanted to know.

I smiled at one of the two radio seamen who were in the room with Cubitt. Each man sat in a swivel bucket seat in front of one of six operating positions and was wearing headphones and a microphone around his neck. It was like a hotel switchboard. As well as a set of bookshelves, I could see a safe where I guessed the codebooks were stored, and a large battery cabinet.