Saying things we don’t really mean is one of the things that makes conversation so interesting. Something like this happens, it just reminds us to be more careful the next time we open our big mouths. That’s all.”
Despite what I had said to the Secret Service, John Weitz was near the top of my list of potential murderers. If someone had pushed Ted off the boat, then John Weitz looked as good a suspect as anyone else. The bow tie certainly didn’t help his case in my eyes.
Weitz stretched his lips back from his teeth. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.” He tried again for a little absolution.
“I feel pretty bad about it, all the same. There was no need for me to say what I said. Calling him a fellow traveler like that.”
“Yes, that was unnecessary,” I said. “It’s a horrible phrase. And under the present circumstances you might just as well call the president a fellow traveler.”
Weitz winced again. “That doesn’t seem so very far-fetched to me,” he said. “I’m a Republican. I didn’t vote for Roosevelt.”
“So you’re the one.”
He would not be drawn into another argument. “The worst part of it is that Captain McCrea has asked me to write to his wife.” He sighed. “Since I’m the only other guy on this ship from State.”
“I see. Did you know him well?”
“That’s the thing. No, I didn’t. We were colleagues, but never close.”
There was no movie theater on the Iowa. There was no radio in my room. And I didn’t much like the book I was reading. I decided to let out some line and play with him a little more.
“I’m not surprised. Since that Sumner Welles business in the summer, it doesn’t pay to be too close to anyone in the State Department. Especially on a crowded ship like this one.”
“Meaning?”
I shook my head. “You were telling me how you and Ted weren’t intimate friends.”
“He was a Russian affairs analyst. And I’m a linguist. As well as Russian, I speak Byelorussian and Georgian.”
“That explains everything.”
“Does it?”
“No. Actually, I’m puzzled. How is it that you don’t actually like Russians and come to speak these languages?”
“My mother is a White Russian emigre,” he explained. “She left St. Petersburg before the revolution and went to live in Berlin, where she met my father, a German-American.”
“Then we have something in common. I’m German-American, too.” I smiled. “We should find some leather shorts and drink some beer sometime.”
Weitz smiled. He must have thought I was joking.
“One of those damned Secret Service men virtually accused me of being a German spy. The Polack.”
“You must mean Pawlikowski.”
“That’s him. Pawlikowksi. Son of a bitch.”
“So that’s what Pawlikowski means. I wondered.” I shook my head. “They’re all kind of jumpy since the Willie D. incident.”
“Oh, that. That’s history. I was just speaking to the guy in the laundry.” He pointed his thumb back over his shoulder, up the gangway, in the wrong direction. I leaned against the wall and looked over his shoulder as if the laundry really had been where he was pointing. What was he doing so far from his own cabin, up forward, and equally far from the laundry, which was near the stern?
“It seems there’s a German sub operating in this area. Two of our escort destroyers picked up a German broadcast right in this area. At 0200 this morning.”
“That’s curious.”
“Curious? It’s damned alarming, that’s what it is. Apparently they’re going nuts about it up on the bridge.”
“No, I meant in a kind of why-didn’t-the-dog-bark sense.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Never mind. Look, I’ll write to Ted Schmidt’s widow, if you like.”
“Would you? I’d appreciate it. It’s kind of hard to write to a guy’s wife when you never really liked him, you know.”
“Are you married?”
His eyes flickered. “No.”
“Me neither. Ted wasn’t a bad guy, you know.”
“No, I suppose not.”
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
