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.
“Loud, isn’t it?” I said when Captain McCrea had finished speaking to the lieutenant. “The telephone, I mean. I could hear every word.” I looked more closely at the phone, which was made by Western Electric. “About how many of these are there on board a ship of this size?”
“About two thousand, sir,” the lieutenant replied, trying to contain a stammer that was accompanied by a fit of blinking.
I whistled quietly. “That’s a lot of phones. And all this equipment.” I waved my hand at more than a dozen receivers and transmitters. “What do we have here? Talk between ships, ship-to-shore, direction-finding equipment, transmitters, receivers, all on different frequencies, am I right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, Lieutenant, let’s talk about submarines. German submarines.”
“Sir, the North Atlantic is ringed with a network of radio direction-finding stations. Using Adcock direction- finding antennae-”
“Spare me the textbook tour. I’m talking about German subs in the immediate vicinity. What happens? How do all these toys function to keep us safe?”
“Operators listen in on assigned frequencies. These frequencies are listed in numbered sets called a ‘series.’ The U-boats tend not to change their frequencies very often. On hearing a U-boat transmission, the intercepting operator presses a foot pedal, which activates his microphone. He then shouts a coded warning to other ships in the convoy to tune in to the intercepted frequency. Bearings are then obtained, at which point the idea is to chase down the bearing and take countermeasures.”
I nodded. His succinct explanation had earned a nod at least. “Those countermeasures being depth charges and other assorted fireworks. I see. And did any of this take place last night?”
Lieutenant Cubitt’s swivel eyes swiveled like they were on gyroscopes.
“Um… up to a point.”
“Explain, please.”
“Sir, our destroyer escort ships picked up a transmission on a key. You know, Morse code. They started to get a bearing, but before a fix could be obtained the signal stopped. So they tried to get a handle on the U-boat’s own homing beacon, but nothing doing there, either. That’s not uncommon; the homing beacon diffuses quite rapidly.”
“Am I correct in thinking that had this RT room been manned, you would have been able to triangulate the bearing and get a fix on the U-boat?”
“Yes, sir. Only, the radio seaman on duty at the time, Radio Seaman Norton, had left his post without orders.”
“Why did he do that?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Let me put it another way. What was his explanation?”
“He claims that there was a telephone call from me, summoning him urgently to the radar room.”
“Strange, don’t you think, Lieutenant, that he should have been summoned away at that particular moment?”
“In point of fact, it was just before the first transmission was picked up on the key.”
“Exactly what bearings were obtained for the U-boat, before the signal stopped?”
Lieutenant Cubitt showed me a map. “Here are the two escort destroyers, the Iowa, and the bearings, sir,” he said.
“These bearings would seem to indicate that the U-boat was in the immediate vicinity of the Iowa. ”
“Yes, sir.”
“In which case I can quite understand why the captain wanted this kept quiet. On the face of it, we’ve had a lucky escape.”
Cubitt’s stammer kicked in again. So did the blinking eyelids and the swiveling eyeballs.
“Take your time, Lieutenant,” I told him gently.
“A U-boat would be ill-advised to attack three warships in close formation, sir. That would be to risk being destroyed. They’re after much easier prey. Merchant shipping, mostly. That doesn’t fight back.”
“Worth the risk, I’d have thought.”
“Sir?”
“A chance to kill the president and the Joint Chiefs. That is, if one of our own escort destroyers doesn’t do it first.”
One of the radio seamen thought that was pretty funny.
There was a knock at the door of the RT room and a small, slim, pale man with blond hair and a hunted, furtive look came in and saluted smartly. He wasn’t much older than twenty, but there were some worry lines on his forehead that looked like the grille on a Chevrolet. Someone had been giving the boy a hard time.
“This is Radio Seaman Norton, sir,” said Cubitt. “Norton, this is Major Mayer. From Intelligence. He has one or two questions for you.”
I lit a cigarette and offered one to Norton. He shook his head. “Don’t smoke,” he said.
“Last night at 0200 you were the only man on duty,” I said. “Is that standard practice? To have just one man on duty?”
“No, sir. Normally there would be two of us on the night watch. But just before we came on duty, Curtis went sick. Food poisoning, it looks like.”
“Tell me about the telephone call you claim you received.”
“The man on the phone said he was Lieutenant Cubitt, sir. Honest. I’m not making this up. Maybe one of the guys was winding me up, I don’t know, but it sounded just like him. What with the stammer and-” Norton stopped speaking and glanced at the lieutenant. “Sorry, sir.”
“Go on,” I told him.
“Whoever it was ordered me to report immediately to the radar room. So I did.”
“You left your post,” said Cubitt. “Contrary to orders. But for you we might have got a fix on that sub. Instead of which, it’s still out there.”
Norton grimaced with the pain of his guilt and nodded.
“Radio Seaman Norton,” I said. “I’d like you to take me to the radar room.”
“What- now, sir?”
“Yes, now.”
Norton glanced at Cubitt, who shrugged and then nodded.
“Follow me, please, sir,” Norton said and hurried to comply with my request.
It took us the best part of six minutes to get down to the main deck, walk aft of the second uptake, and then climb several stairs to the rear conning tower, where, underneath the main battery director, the radar room was
