'The women aboard the Jefferson are our shipmates, Margolis. They deserve our respect and our consideration. By your actions, you have robbed them of their dignity and their privacy. By passing those pictures around, you make your friends thieves as well. What you have done is reprehensible.
It is conduct that cannot and will not be tolerated aboard this vessel.' He paused for a moment, watching Margolis. The kid's face was pinched and white, his eyes quite round behind his glasses. He was obviously terrified.
Brandt took a deep breath. 'Photographer's Mate Second Class Margolis, you are reduced in rate one pay grade, to Third Class. You will be taken immediately to the ship's brig, where you will be confined on bread and water for two days. Since you seem to have an excess of time on your hands, upon your return to duty you will report to your division officer for two hours' extra duty each day for the next forty-five days. You will also, at the earliest time your duties allow, report to the Chaplain's Office, where you will enroll in Commander Ferris's next available sensitivity training session on sexual harassment. You will attend all of those classes on pain of further and harsher punishment. Do I make myself quite clear?'
'Uh, Y-yes, sir.' His voice was scarcely above a whisper. His eyes looked haunted.
'I didn't hear that, son. Sound off!'
'Yessir!'
'If there is a repeat of this incident, if I find out you're holding out on us regarding how many of these prints you made or distributed to your friends, I swear by God that I willbounce you in front of a summary court so fast you won't know what hit you. You'll find yourself in jail back Stateside, and after that you'll be out on the streets with a BCD. Do you think the chance to play Peeping Tom in the girls' shower is worth a bad-conduct discharge?'
'No, sir!'
'I will not tolerate voyeurs, I will not tolerate harassment of the women under my command, and I will not tolerate grown men acting like giggling, sex-crazed adolescents instead of as professionals!
'Margolis, I am not assigning harsher punishment because your record has been exemplary up until now. I also strongly suspect that some of your shipmates put you up to this. I think you've just been listening to the wrong people, and I hope this episode will teach you to be responsible for your own actions.
'At the same time, I'm making your punishment as severe as I am because it is clear that you regarded this escapade as a prank, something that could harm no one. I gave you brig time because I want you to have some time to think about that 'prank' and maybe to think about just how precious a commodity privacy can be aboard ship. Understand me?'
'Yes, sir.' The voice was firmer now, though still low. The bread and water, Brandt thought, had jolted him hard, like something out of another time, another world.
The fact was, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Brandt could have hit him with up to three days in the brig and broken him by two pay grades and fined him half of his pay for the next two months, or given the nature of the man's offense, even recommended a summary court. Something like that would wreck the rest of the kid's Navy career.
'Very well,' Brandt said at last. 'Dismissed.'
For a long time after they led the kid out, Brandt stared after them.
The only part of the punishment he'd just meted out that he really regretted was the sensitivity counseling, but that was mandated by current Navy regulations. Back in the '70s, when the Navy's reputation had been blackened by several ugly race-related incidents, all hands had been required to attend consciousness-raising programs intended to stop prejudice and bigotry.
Seminars and programs to fight sexual harassment among naval aviators had been instituted in the wake of the infamous Tail-hook scandal.
Today, all officers and men were routinely put through such programs.
Hell, Margolis would have gone through one in boot camp and another upon his arrival aboard the Jefferson. Unfortunately, Brandt had yet to meet any Navy man who admitted that he'd learned anything from such sessions, and most regarded them as a complete waste of time. Men went into them with their attitudes and prejudices already fully formed. Increased awareness? Brandt grimaced at the thought. Too often, what increased was their resentment against women for the additional burden of bureaucratic micromanaging and official harassments collectively and colloquially known as 'Mickey Mouse.'
In two centuries of American naval history, the government had yet to find an effective way to legislate the way people thought, and attempts to try always made things worse.
'Never mind the Russians,' Brandt told Tombstone. 'God save us from adolescent hormones.'
'Yes, sir.'
Weston returned to the quarterdeck.
'Okay, Master Chief. What's next?'
'Fire Control Technician Third Class Frank Pellet, Captain,' the COB said, handing another folder to Brandt. 'Charged by Commander Frazier with negligence and inattention to duty.'
'The Dickinson.'
'Yes, sir.' He looked like he was about to say something more.
'Well? What else? Spit it out, Master Chief.'
'Captain, it has come to my attention that FCT3 Pellet is gay, and that there was an, um, incident the night before the battle. It was reported to me unofficially by a first class in the MAA's division.'
Brandt closed his eyes. 'Sex again. God damn it, sex and salt water…' He stopped himself, then slapped the folder down on the podium. 'Master Chief, this one gets held over for a court. We may have to wait until a full inquiry into the Dickinson incident is complete. Understood?'
'Yes, sir.'
'In any case, this'll be a matter for the CID. Pellet is confined to quarters until we can get him the hell off my ship.'
'Aye, aye, Captain.'
'Criminal investigation?' Tombstone asked, one eyebrow raised.
'I was there in CIC when it happened, sir. The kid got confused and threw the wrong switch.'
'Seventeen men died aboard the Dickinson, Tombstone. Can we tell their wives, mothers, and sweethearts that they died because a twenty-year-old kid got confused? Forty-three more were wounded. What do I tell them? The Dickinson is barely afloat and limping back to Narvik at a time when this battle force needs every anti-air and antisubmarine asset it can muster. That kid's inattention nearly cost us a ship, and it might have cost us a battle.
In any case, any time lives are lost, there has to be an inquiry… and criminal charges. It's out of my hands.'
'Yes, sir.'
'The hell of it is, even if he gets shipped back to the States for trial, we still won't be off the hook. You know, I've got a very unpleasant feeling that we haven't heard the last of either one of these affairs… Margolis or Pellet.'
Tombstone nodded slowly. 'I'm afraid I have to agree, sir.'
CHAPTER 16
Admiral Thomas Magruder took his seat in the White House Situation Room.
As a special Presidential Advisor on military matters, he'd been here plenty of times before. Ordered constructed by President Kennedy right after the Bay of Pigs, the carpeted, concrete-walled room in the White House basement was not as large, as glamorous, or as high-tech as popular fiction usually described it. There were
