uniforms.”
“Okay, I’ll find out. What’s the job tonight?”
“Installing the transceiver in the storeroom behind the bar. We can’t erect the antenna tonight because the lights on the roof would attract too much attention. We’ll put up the antenna at sundown tomorrow when it will look to anyone watching as if we’re adjusting the TV antenna.”
I had moved in behind him until I was looking over his shoulder. A stencil was in the typewriter. In widely spaced letters at the top of the stencil it said CONFIDENTIAL. Below that it said HEADQUARTERS, CINC ATLANTIC FLEET, UNITED STATES NAVY, NEWPORT NEWS, VA.
The small neat type of Erikson’s typewriter had filled in most of the stencil. Beneath the heading it read:
1. The following named officers and enlisted ranks, organizations indicated, (Expense and Account Code: 4181303), will proceed on or about 1 September from Charleston, West Virginia, to Key West, Florida, and Guantanamo Naval Station on TDY for approximately 25 days to accomplish an administrative mission, and upon completion will return to proper organization and station for duty. Travel by military aircraft and/or surface vessel authorized. Commercial air, rail, and/or bus transportation authorized for that portion of travel from Charleston, West Virginia, to Key West, Florida.
Travel by private conveyance authorized. 100 lbs. baggage including excess authorized. Classified crated equipment and documents totaling no more than 260 lbs. authorized for transport via surface vessel as hold baggage. UTNOTREQ TDN: 5803400 074-5020 P458 S668300 0211 0212; 4 4 074 4580 668300. NFM 173-30 and JTR apply. Disbursing Officer making payment on this order …
It went on for another half-page, but I stopped reading. “What’s all that?”
“It’s the master stencil of our supposed orders getting us onto the Naval Station here and to Guantanamo by destroyer.” Erikson picked up his pipe and set it down again. “Let’s get that transceiver set up.”
“Right.”
He sorted out a pile of equipment from the array in the corners of the room. “You carry this,” he said, handing me a rectangular, boxy-looking object. It was a double armful. From the looks of the dials, switches, and knobs on the front of the panel, it looked like we were planning to set up communications with the next space flight.
I watched as Erikson filled an empty box with smaller pieces of electronic gear. “Looks like you’ve been spending money as if it came out of the Pentagon budget,” I said.
“If this set doesn’t work properly, money won’t do us much good where we’ll be,” he replied.
There wasn’t any answer to that. Erikson balanced the loaded box on his right shoulder, picked up a gunmetal gray tool kit in his left hand, and led the way out of his room. Downstairs I raised the flap in the bar so he could walk behind it en route to the storeroom. The bar’s night light made it possible to see in the bar proper, but inside the storeroom it was dark except for a square of comparative light from the single window.
“Grab a couple of tablecloths from the linen closet and black out that window,” Erikson told me. He handed me a card of thumbtacks to do the job. He waited until I had the window covered before he removed a mechanic’s light from the toolbox and plugged it in. Then he laid out an array of wrenches, pliers, and screwdrivers like a doctor getting ready to perform an operation.
He turned to the transceiver, which I’d set down upon a counter, and rapidly added several components to it from the box he’d brought downstairs. He took a thick coil of antenna wire and fitted one end of it to the side of the radio, using finger-tightened set screws. His huge hands had a surprising delicacy of touch. He tossed the coil of antenna wire under the counter and began to put his tools back in the kit. “Tomorrow we’ll run this up the back wall onto the roof,” he said. “That’s all we can do tonight.”
We hadn’t been together ten minutes, and I had contributed zilch. “What the hell,” I protested. “You didn’t need me.”
“I had a reason for bringing you down here,” Erikson said. He had turned out his mechanic’s light and I couldn’t see his face.
“What’s the reason?”
“I want to say it again. I want no trouble between you and Wilson.”
“I’m not taking my eye off the target.”
“I can’t expect him to use judgment, so I have to tell you.” He sounded like a schoolteacher with a backward pupil. “It won’t be easy on either of you if the project is jeopardized.” He handed me the box with the diminished load of electronic equipment and started from the storeroom. Outside, he set down his tool kit while he swiftly bolted a hasp-and-hinge arrangement to the storeroom door. He slipped a shiny-looking padlock through it, snapped it shut, and handed me the key. “Give that to Hazel.”
In view of what he’d been saying about possible conflict between Wilson and me, I’d been half-expecting him to tell me to get rid of Hazel. Not that I was about to do it anyway, but now here he was handing me a key to give to her as though her presence were perfectly all right.
I followed him upstairs with no more being said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Fifteen hours later I found myself climbing the slippery rungs of an aluminum ladder in Erikson’s wake. We climbed it to the almost flat roof of The Castaways. It was only forty-five minutes to twilight, but the sun’s rays were still so strong I was squinting despite my dark glasses. During the day the roof had absorbed heat until it felt like the bottom of a roasting oven.
Erikson didn’t seem to mind the heat. He set down his toolbox and the coil of antenna wire he’d carried up the ladder, then removed his outer shirt. He set to work rapidly, paying no attention to the discomfort I knew he must be feeling. In seconds the white T-shirt covering his broad back was dark with perspiration.
“This will be a lash-up installation, so don’t judge its effectiveness by how it looks,” he said over his shoulder. “The important thing is to get the antenna oriented so it will pick up our signal strongly. I’ve already cut it to a harmonic of the frequency we’ll use to bring it in with all the zip possible.”
I didn’t bother telling him I didn’t know a harmonic from a hernia. The heat was getting to me. The sweat ran off my chin in rivulets, and I wasn’t doing anything. Erikson moved busily around the roof, checking a hand compass, unreeling and threading wire, then snipping off excess ends. There was nothing I could do except hand him tools, friction tape, and more wire as he called for them.
He stepped back to survey his work. His eyes were narrowed to slits as the low-lying sun reflecting from the burnished copper wire turned it into a thread of flame. “That should do it,” Erikson said. “All we need now is to anchor down the lead-in and we’ll be ready to hook up tonight and test it.”
With deft movements he mated the wire from the end of the wooden spool with the antenna. When it was secure, he stepped to the edge of the roof and tossed the spool of wire to the ground behind the building. He fed the lead wire through an insulator, and with two apparently effortless blows from a mallet-headed hammer, he anchored the wire at the roof’s edge.
He tossed me the hammer in an underhand motion, and I dropped it into the toolbox with the other tools I had collected. Erikson picked up the kit and swung himself onto the ladder, which descended to the alley in the rear of the building. I went over the edge after him. The tall, vertical neon sign spelling out THE CASTAWAYS was glowing steadily. I hadn’t noticed it, but it had grown almost dark.
It was cooler behind the building. Erikson secured the lead wire into another insulator, which he placed on the frame of the storeroom window. By the time I removed the ladder and put it in the basement, he had disappeared. I walked around to the front and went inside. The air conditioning hit me like a blow in the chest.
Hazel’s always-smiling Mexican boy was behind the bar. Wilson was installed on the end stool with a runty- looking type I hadn’t seen before. Slater was hunched over a bottle of beer at a table. Even when all five of us were upstairs, Slater and Wilson acted like two strange dogs. I had figured them to hit it off. So far it hadn’t taken.
Hazel was just ready to leave our room when I reached it. She had rented a sewing machine and attached the insignia to the uniforms. A single rainstorm would make hand-sewn insignia look tacky, she’d insisted. “Is that Wilson’s first mate with him at the bar? I hope he’s more capable than he looks,” I said.
“Should I discourage you by saying that he’s even less attractive at close range?”
“All he’s got to do is run the boat,” I said hopefully. “What about Slater? He’s down there with a big
