walked toward the showers and the camera, carrying a washcloth and a bar
of soap and wearing nothing but her sandals.
“Okay, Chief,” he told the MAA. “You want to tell me about this?”
“Yes, sir. Last night, one of my men, Boatswain’s Mate First Class
Motely, was making his rounds in the enlisted berthing compartments when
he noticed two men, PH2 Margolis and one other, looking at something and
acting in what he considered to be a suspicious manner. As he
approached, the second sailor, who could not be identified, hurried
away, while Margolis attempted to hide something under his blanket at
the foot of his rack.
“Upon further investigation, PH2 Margolis was found to have in his
possession a manila envelope containing five black-and-white
photographs, all showing various female officers aboard this ship in the
nude. Obviously, the photos were taken in the junior flight officers’
shower, and during times when the shower area and head were restricted
to female personnel only. Margolis was placed on report and the
photographs confiscated.”
“I see.” He looked at the Chief of the Boat. “Master Chief?”
“The MAA and myself were brought in on this last night, Captain. When
we questioned Margolis, he admitted to having a number of other, similar
photographs in his possession. When asked to do so, he opened his
locker and turned over to us seventy-two negatives and twenty-five
additional eight-by-ten photos.
“He confessed that he thought it might be fun to get what he called
‘skin pics’ of female officers while they were in the shower. He told
me that last Thursday afternoon he entered the shower area before it was
secured to male personnel, and gained access to the piping and
electrical spaces above the locker room by removing an overhead
insulation panel and pulling himself up, then replacing the panel behind
him.
“As a photographer’s mate in the carrier’s OP Department, he had routine
access to both necessary equipment and the developing and enlarging
facilities aboard ship. He says that he processed the photographs in
the ship’s darkroom during his free time. Developing pictures,
incidentally, is one of his regular duties.” Weston reached out and
picked up the pencil-slender tube on the podium. “To take the pictures
without the ladies’ knowledge, he used this. It’s called an endoscope,
and it’s a special lens attachment for his 35mm camera. As you can see,
it has an extremely narrow bore, allowing him to take photographs
through a thumbnail-sized hole poked through an overhead panel without
the subjects’ knowledge.”
Brandt held out his hand, accepting the endoscope from Weston.
“Chief, is this thing government property?”
“No, sir. It’s a surveillance device sometimes used by the police or
FBI personnel ashore, but it is not illegal for other people to own
them. He says he got this one from a friend in Norfolk. He was keeping
it in his locker.”
“I see. Go ahead.”
“Margolis told me that he lay hidden in the overhead crawl space for the
two hours while the shower area was secured to male personnel, watching
the women and taking pictures of them. He says he shot two rolls,
seventy-two shots in all, but that since then he’s only had time to make
these twenty-eight enlargements.”
“I see.” To give himself time to think, Brandt returned his attention to
the photos in the folder once more. None of the shots, not even that
one of Flynn, had the same erotic quality as, say, a photo spread in a
typical man’s magazine. All were simply hidden-camera pictures of naked
or half-dressed women in a locker room, and there was nothing seductive
or sexy about their expressions or their poses. Hell, Brandt had seen
more exciting stuff in Playboy, and there were certainly plenty of
copies of that publication already aboard.
The real excitement, he thought, and the worst aspect of the problem,
was generated by the fact that these photographs were not of some
anonymous pretty face and body in the pages of a magazine but were
all-too-identifiable images of real people, of women literally living
and working right next door. Any of Jefferson’s men who saw Margolis’s
pictures would know that it was, say, Lieutenant Joyce Flynn that they’d