WW III

giving a hundred and ten percent at Fulda, General.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are we holding them?”

“I don’t honestly know, Mr. President. It’s an hour-by-hour situation — their tanks are breaking down faster than ours, but we’re getting hurt, too. At Fulda we need a six-to-one kill ratio just to stay even.”

The use of the phrase “kill ratio” got the attention of the secretaries present. Up until then, things had been so frantic, the war meetings were much like any other major White House crisis — hostage taking, attacks on embassies — but “kill ratios” was not the usual pre-press-conference banter.

In all, the meeting was short and gloomy, each service giving its report. The central front was sagging but holding here and there. The question was, for how long. But Korea was all bad, ROK and U.S. units still in what reports were pleased to call “retreats in force.”

“Which means,” the president responded, “we’re getting our ass kicked.” He turned to Admiral Horton. “Can you give us what we need, Admiral?”

“We’ve been practicing this one for a long time, as you know, Mr. President.”

“And what were your casualties during practice, Admiral?”

“High, sir. Considerably higher than we anticipated.”

“Well, fill me in. Is anything moving out there?”

“There’s a convoy under way this minute, sir. Out of Southampton. NATO escorts, which we will take over from halfway, northeast of Newfoundland.”

“Our sub fleet?”

“Already at sea.”

“Very well.” The president stood up and left the room. One thing he had learned in politics was that it was essential you husband your time. Right now, this night, there were vast armies of men locked in mortal combat, and until the situation changed sufficiently to warrant his intervention, there was only one sensible thing to do.

“I’m going to bed, Bill. Wake me if it’s Code One.”

“Will do, sir.”

CHAPTER FORTY

William Spence was a cook’s helper aboard HMS Peregrine— not yet a chef, but determined to become one. Cooking was the thing he loved to do best because he’d seldom seen people happier than when they were enjoying a good meal. His parents, Richard Spence, an industrial chemist for a large heavy industrial adhesive company in London, and Anne Spence, a retired grammar school teacher, lived in one of the upper-middle-class green belt housing estates near Oxshott in the south of England — forty minutes by train from Waterloo. Young William had never intended to join the navy — certainly it had not been his father’s intention for him. But with the middle class increasingly distrustful of the secular state schools, demand and fees for private schools had gone up dramatically. Richard and Anne Spence had scraped and saved early in their marriage so that their two eldest children could go to private school. For Rosemary, now thirty, it had been the school best equipped to get her into teacher’s training college, and for Georgina, now twenty-five, the school best suited to win her entry, via scholarship, to the markedly secular but reasonably prestigious LSE, the London School of Economics and Political Science.

William, on the other hand, had not been “planned,” and when Anne in her early forties had found she was pregnant, there had been a frightful row between her and Richard, but one conducted in the absence of the two girls. Anne finally decided not to abort, but now Richard, on the verge of his sixties, when both he and Anne had anticipated early retirement, was faced with paying the bills for William to be at a private school. It meant delayed retirement for Richard for at least another five years. Resentment of his predicament, however, had long ago given way to a love for his son that he had not thought possible, and certainly the kind he had achingly missed with his father.

Then one day shortly after his eighteenth birthday, William announced he didn’t want to go to university — he wanted to be a cook.

“A chef!” corrected Richard in astonishment. Even then William could see his father was at once disappointed and relieved. Relieved because, erroneously, Richard Spence expected it would cost less money to train his son in the culinary arts, and disappointed because the Spences had always been of professional stock — solicitors, doctors, even the odd barrister. No criminal briefs, of course, mainly mercantile law. It was one of these relatives who, before the war broke out, had advised Richard of a “solicitous compromise” which he believed would satisfy both Richard’s desire to see his son in a respectable profession, rather than merely a trade, and William’s choice. Richard demurred, however, on the subject of a child of his being in, well — manual work.

“Being a chef’s not like being in a trade these days, Richard,” William’s great-uncle had advised in High Church tone. “More of a guild, I should think. Point is, if you want both, he’ll have to don uniform. Have to pass the entry exam, of course, but he’ll get his O levels.”

“Shortly,” Richard assured him. “What do you mean by uniform?”

“Not a bad arrangement at all,” the uncle had continued.

“And they’re desperate these days. No offense, Richard. But they do want volunteers if they can get them. William seems bright enough. I see no reason why after a while he couldn’t apply for officer training school. Rather rushing them through these days, I should think, with all this talk of trouble brewing in Europe.” The uncle had looked satisfiedly into his dry sherry. “Yes, I should think it would suit him admirably. End up with a commission and—” he sipped the sherry “—I shouldn’t be surprised if he was running a large hotel in years to come. Could do worse.”

“I suppose,” began Richard, “if he wanted—”

“Richard, old boy, once he gets his one stripe, he’s way ahead of other applicants for any hostelry business. Officer, cordon bleu, and all that. Doesn’t do any harm, Richard. I do think that given his rather limited aspirations, it would be best for him.”

Richard was coming around, slowly. “Any of the services will do, I expect?” asked Richard.

The uncle came as near as he ever had to swallowing sherry without savoring it first. “Certainly not. I strongly suggest the senior service.”

“The air force,” said Richard.

“Don’t be fey, Richard. The navy, of course.”

“I wasn’t trying to be fey.”

“Then your ignorance on these matters is lamentable.”

“But I’ve never thought of William as a sailor. Anne won’t go for it,” Richard had said. “I can tell you that now. All this business about the possibility of war breaking out…”

“War? Richard, old man, you’ve been watching too many of those dreadful ‘Insight’ programs. Either that or reading the Mirror.” The uncle took his brolly and hat from the front stand, using the unfurled umbrella as a pointer. “You send him to the navy, mark my words.”

Richard was right — Anne didn’t like it — but he told her it was most likely that, unless the unthinkable happened, William would be posted to a shore establishment. In any case, if there was a flare-up, with modern weapons it would be like the Falklands so many years ago — over very quickly.

* * *

Eleven months to the day, William Spence was Leading Seaman Spence, cook’s helper, aboard the destroyer escort HMS Peregrine. After a very rushed, rather peremptory training drill ashore, he now found himself aboard one of the latest DD escorts, his job one of the least glamorous, most important jobs in war: to prepare food for convoy under attack, to guarantee, no matter what the conditions, that everyone in the ship’s company got his NATO-required three thousand calories a day.

For all the destroyer’s modern technology, hot meals were, as the cook quickly explained, ill-advised at most and “sheer bloody impossible” in the maelstrom of an engagement: hot stoves, soup tubs spilling despite their gimbals mountings, steaming coffee and tea that would burn, and ovens that unattended could cause a fire — as lethal as any missile. Yet if morale was to be kept up, food was fundamental, providing the high-sugar, high-