Winter of the World

‘If you’re appointed ambassador somewhere, do you expect me to drop everything and go with you?’

‘I expect you to say: ‘My darling, this is a wonderful opportunity for you, and I’m certainly not going to stand in your way.’ Is that unreasonable?’

‘Yes!’ Woody was baffled and angry. ‘What’s the point of being married, if we’re not together?’

‘If war breaks out, will you volunteer?’

‘I guess I might.’

‘And the army would send you wherever they needed you – Europe, the Far East.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘So you’ll go where your duty takes you, and leave me at home.’

‘If I have to.’

‘But I can’t do that.’

‘It’s not the same! Why are you pretending it is?’

‘Strangely enough, my career and my service to my country seem important to me – just as important as yours to you.’

‘You’re just being perverse!’

‘Well, Woods, I’m really sorry you think that, because I’ve been talking very seriously about our future together. Now I have to ask myself whether we even have one.’

‘Of course we do!’ Woody could have screamed with frustration. ‘How did this happen? How did we get to this?’

There was a bump, and the plane splashed down in Hawaii.

(ii)

Chuck Dewar was terrified that his parents would learn his secret.

Back home in Buffalo he had never had a real love affair, just a few hasty fumbles in dark alleys with boys he hardly knew. Half the reason he had joined the navy was to go places where he could be himself without his parents finding out.

Since he got to Hawaii it had been different. Here he was part of an underground community of similar people. He went to bars and restaurants and dance halls where he did not have to pretend to be heterosexual. He had had some affairs, and then he had fallen in love. A lot of people knew his secret.

And now his parents were here.

His father was invited to visit the signal intelligence unit at the naval base, known as Station HYPO. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Dewar was let into many military secrets, and he had already been shown around signals intelligence headquarters, called Op-20-G, in Washington.

Chuck picked him up at his hotel in Honolulu in a navy car, a Packard LeBaron limousine. Papa was wearing a white straw hat. As they drove around the rim of the harbour, he whistled. ‘The Pacific Fleet,’ he said. ‘A beautiful sight.’

Chuck agreed. ‘Quite something, isn’t it?’ he said. Ships were beautiful, especially in the US Navy, where they were painted and scrubbed and shined. Chuck thought the navy was great.

‘All those battleships in a perfect straight line,’ Gus marvelled.

‘We call it Battleship Row. Moored off the island are Maryland, Tennessee, Arizona, Nevada, Oklahoma and West Virginia.’ Battleships were named after states. ‘We also have California and Pennsylvania in harbour, but you can’t see them from here.’

At the main gate to the Navy Yard, the marine on sentry duty recognized the official car and waved them in. They drove to the submarine base and stopped in the parking lot behind headquarters, the Old Administration Building. Chuck took his father into the recently opened new wing.

Captain Vandermeier was waiting for them.

Vandermeier was Chuck’s greatest fear. He had taken a dislike to Chuck, and he had guessed the secret. He was always calling Chuck a powder puff or a pantywaist. If he could, he would spill the beans.

Vandermeier was a short, stocky man with a gravelly voice and bad breath. He saluted Gus and shook hands. ‘Welcome, Senator. It’ll be my privilege to show you the Communications Intelligence Unit of the fourteenth Naval District.’ This was the deliberately vague title for the group monitoring the radio signals of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

‘Thank you, Captain,’ said Gus.

‘A word of warning, first, sir. It’s an informal group. This kind of work is often done by eccentric people, and correct naval uniform is not always worn. The officer in charge, Commander Rochefort, wears a red velvet jacket.’ Vandermeier gave a man-to-man grin. ‘You may think he looks like a goddamn homo.’

Chuck tried not to wince.

Vandermeier said: ‘I won’t say any more until we’re in the secure zone.’

‘Very good,’ said Gus.

They went down the stairs and into the basement, passing through two locked doors on the way.

Station HYPO was a windowless neon-lit cellar housing thirty men. As well as the usual desks and chairs, it had oversized chart desks, racks of exotic IBM machine printers, sorters and collators, and two cots where the cryptanalysts took naps during their marathon codebreaking sessions. Some of the men wore neat uniforms but others, as Vandermeier had warned, were in scruffy civilian clothing, unshaven, and – to judge by the smell – unwashed.