my surprise, he was a U.S. Treasury Agent-not from the FBI at all.
“I’m Agent Rowley,” he said. “From the Presidential Secret Service detail. We’ve come to escort you on board ship.”
Relieved that I was not going to be arrested, I laughed and waved my hand at the empty dock. “That I’d like to see, Agent Rowley. The boat is gone.”
Agent Rowley managed a sort of smile. His four teeth were small and sharp and far apart. I could see why he hadn’t put his mouth into the smile before. “I’m sorry about that, Professor. The Iowa had to offload oil to allow her draft to make it up the Chesapeake. So now she’s gone on to Hampton Roads to take on more fuel. I’m afraid you’d left home before we had a chance to inform you this morning.”
It was true. I’d left just before eight o’clock that morning. After my romantic evening in Chevy Chase, I’d made an early start. Which was easy enough, given that I hadn’t actually gone to bed.
“But that’s on the other side of the bay. Is there another boat to take us there?”
“I’m afraid not, sir. We’re going to have to drive. One of these agents will take your car back to Washington. If you don’t mind, sir, we’ll hold on to your identity card for now. It’ll make things easier for us supernumeraries when we go on board the Iowa. ”
“You’re going, too?”
“Four of us. Ahead of the president, who’s going aboard after midnight. The boss is an old Navy man and he’s kind of superstitious. Friday-night sailings are bad luck.”
“I’m not so crazy about them myself.”
Three hours later we passed through a naval security checkpoint and were directed to the quay where the Iowa was to be found. All of us fell silent as, turning onto the quay, we caught our first sight of the Iowa ’s distinctive clipper bow and, behind it, the forecastle and fire-control tower that rose a hundred feet above a deck bristling with gun batteries. But the height of the Iowa ’s superstructure looked compact compared to its enormous nine-hundred-foot length, which, together with the 212,000-horsepower engines, gave the battleship its high speed.
Alongside the battleship, last-minute stores and other supernumerary passengers were going aboard under the watchful eyes of a group of armed sailors. A couple of tugs spewing smoke were attaching lines alongside the crocodile’s nose that was the bow. Above all these, on three different decks, sailors leaned on rails observing the comings and goings below. As I walked up the port gangway underneath the massive antiaircraft battery, I felt as if I had arrived in an oceangoing shanty town built of armored steel. A strong smell of oil filled my nostrils, and somewhere above the primary conning position flue gases were venting noisily into the gray November sky. The ship felt alive.
At the end of the gangway, one of the Secret Service agents was already handing over my bags and my ID to a waiting officer. Consulting a clipboard, he ticked a sheet of paper and then waved another sailor toward me.
“Welcome aboard, sir,” the sailor said, collecting my bags. He had the kind of Brooklyn mutt’s face you got in a choir, but only if the choir was in Sing Sing. “If you’ll follow me I’ll show you to your quarters. Please watch your step-the deck is a little wet-and your head.”
The sailor led me along a passageway. “We got you in a wardroom one level below the flag and signal bridge. Just so you can remember where that is, that’s underneath the main battery detector and behind the second uptake.”
“Uptake?”
“Funnel. If you get lost, just ask for the second uptake 4A. Four A is the forty-millimeter magazine.”
“That’s a comforting thought.” I ducked to follow him through a doorway.
“Don’t you worry, sir. The face armor on this ship is seventeen inches thick, which means the Iowa is meant to go in harm’s way and take that shit.”
We ducked through another doorway, and somewhere behind us a heavy door clanged shut. I was counting myself lucky that I didn’t suffer from claustrophobia.
“Up here, sir,” the sailor said, heading up a flight of stairs. “In there you got the head. You’ll be messing forward of here, sir, with the other supernumeraries, in the captain’s pantry. That’s in front of the first uptake, underneath the secondary battery detector. Meals are 0800, 1200, and 2000. If you want to throw up, I advise you to do it in the head and not over the side. On this ship someone’s liable to get a face full if you go puking in the wrong place.”
Mutt-face put my bags down in front of a polished wooden door and knocked hard. “You’re sharing with another gentleman, sir.”
“Come,” said a voice.
The sailor opened the door and, saluting out of habit, left me to make my own introduction.
I put my head into the cabin and saw a face I recognized, a guy from the State Department named Ted Schmidt.
“Willard Mayer, isn’t it?” said Schmidt, rising from a narrow-looking bunk and advancing to shake my hand. “The philosopher.”
“And you’re on the Russian desk at State. Ted Schmidt.”
Schmidt was a pudgy man with dark curly hair, thick horn-rimmed glasses, and eyebrows to match. I had known him briefly at Harvard and recalled a slightly thinner man with a good sense of humor and a taste for expensive wine. He was smiling, only the smile didn’t sit right beside the sadness in his twitching, bloodshot eyes, the patches of stubble he’d missed with his Rolls, and the liquor on his breath. Two o’clock in the afternoon was a little early to be hitting the cabin bottle, even for a star-crossed lover like me. He was wearing a pair of corduroy trousers, a thick checked shirt, and a pair of English brogue shoes. In his hand was an unlit nickel cigar. Apart from what he was wearing, he looked and sounded like almost anybody you might see at State. He sounded like a character in a novel by Edith Wharton.
“Welcome to second class. I suspect there are better cabins than this one. And I know there are worse ones.” Schmidt picked up Donovan’s blue leather suitcase and brought it into the wardroom. “Nice luggage. Did you steal it?” Seeing me frown, he pointed to the initials WJD.
“It belongs to General Donovan. I’m taking it to Cairo for him.” I threw my own case onto the bed and closed the door.
“There’s another guy from State, fellow named Weitz, John Weitz, who’s somewhere ahead of the chimney stack. By the look of it, he’s sleeping in a closet. There’s just me and him, from State. We’re along to translate what the Rooskies are saying. Not that I think we’ll even get near the table. Harriman’s flying into Cairo from Moscow with his own guy. Fellow named Bohlen. So Weitz and I are on the bench, I think. Until Bohlen breaks his neck or fumbles the ball. The State Department’s in pretty bad odor right now.”
“So I hear.”
“And you? What’s your function on this little mystery tour?”
“Liaison officer from General Donovan to the president.”
“Sounds suitably vague. Not that anyone’s saying very much at all. Even the crew don’t know where we’re going. They know it’s somewhere important. And that some VIPs are coming aboard. Did that sailor give you the crap about the effectiveness of our armor?”
“As a matter of fact he did. I imagine the purser on the Titanic gave his passengers the same spiel.”
“You better believe it.” Schmidt laughed scornfully and lit the cigar. It stunk up the room as if he’d put a match to a skunk. “I haven’t met a sailor yet who understands the principle guiding the Iowa ’s immune zone. Put simply, our armor is compromised by the effective range of our guns. We have to get in closer to a target to use them, and the closer we get, the more likely it is that a shell will cause some real damage.
“Then there are the torpedoes. German torpedoes, that is, not ours. The kraut fish are more powerful than the Iowa ’s designers allowed for. Oh, I’m not saying we’re at risk or anything. But a direct hit is a direct hit, and no amount of armor is going to stop the effect of that. So the next time you hear some guy blowing off about the impregnability of this ship, ask him why the crews manning those gun turrets carry derringers in their boots.”
“Why do they carry derringers in their boots?” I asked. I didn’t imagine it was because they played a lot of poker.
“Take a look inside one of those turrets and you’ll understand. It takes quite a while to get out of one. They probably figure that it would be better to shoot themselves than be drowned like rats.”
“I can understand that.”
