The radioman second had seen the base commander only once before, and then he had been riding by in his Navy gray Packard Clipper with its three starred vice admiral’s plate.
And now here he was, in the radio room, looking right at him.
“Stand at ease, son,” the Admiral said, almost kindly.
“This is Chief Ellis, and he wants to ask you some questions.”
“You picked up a message from somebody calling themselves MFS, right?”
“That’s right, Chief.”
“You heard them again?”
“They’re on every day, for ten, sometimes twenty minutes,” the radioman second said.
“They were on, oh, hell, twenty minutes ago.”
“See if you can raise them,” Ellis said.
The Vice Admiral’s eyes went up, but he said nothing. He had seen the card signed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“Go on,” Ellis repeated.
“See if you can raise them.”
The radioman second turned to his key and moved it quickly.
“I sent “KSF calling MFS,”” he replied.
“I read code,” Ellis said, not arrogantly.
There was no immediate reply.
The radioman second tapped his key again. When the transmitter was activated, the receiver was automatically shut down. When he turned the transmitter to standby, the receiver was issuing a series of dots and dashes.
The radioman second, without thinking, tapped it out on his typewriter.
The Vice Admiral leaned over to read:
MFS STANDING BY FOR KSF
“Send this,” Ellis said, and handed the radioman a sheet of paper, on which was typed
KSP TO MFS SEND ENCRYPTED FOLLOWING FIRST NAME OF PERTIG
SECOND NEXT OF KIN NAME AND DATE OF BIRTH KSF BY
“Send it twice, and then wait,” Ellis ordered.
“If he’s using one of these things, it’ll take him a minute.”
He held up a Device, Cryptographic, M94. He’d had a hell of a time finding one and had annoyed the Presidio of San Francisco no end by requisitioning theirs.
Five minutes later, MFS came back on the air, and the radioman second quickly typed it.
MFS TO KSF QEWRG SJTRE SDIQN SPUD CVKQJ MFS BY
It didn’t take Ellis long to work the Device, Cryptographic, M94; there had been one on the Panay.
“Hot damn!” he said, after a minute. Then he ordered: “Send “We are ready for your traffic,”” and then he corrected himself.
“No, send “Welcome to the net, we are ready for your traffic.”” Then, without asking permission. Chief Ellis picked up the telephone and told the Navy operator to get him Mrs. Mary Fertig in Golden, Colorado.
The telephone operator said that no long-distance calls could be placed
without the authority of the communications officer and an authorization number.
“I’m going to need an authorization number,” Ellis said to the communications officer.
The Admiral motioned for Ellis to hand him the telephone.
“This is Admiral Sendy,” he said to the telephone.
“Put the call through.”
In Golden, Colorado, Mrs. Mary Fertig answered her telephone.
“Ma’am,” Ellis said.
“This is Chief Ellis. You remember me?”
Of course she remembered him. He had telephoned late the night before and said he couldn’t tell her why he wanted to know, but could she give him the full name and date of birth of her oldest child? He had waked her up, and she hadn’t been thinking too clearly, so she had given it to him. Later, she had worried about it. There were all kinds of nuts and sick people running loose.
“Yes, I remember you, Chief,” Mrs. Fertig said somewhat warily.
“What do you want now?”
“Ma’am,” the salty old chief bosun’s mate said, “we’re in contact with your husband. I thought maybe you’d want to say something to him.”
“Where is he?” she asked, very softly.
“Somewhere in the Philippines, that’s all we know,” Ellis said. Then he said, “Wait a minute.”
The radioman second had handed him a brief decrypted message.
FOR MRS FERTIG QUOTE PINEAPPLES FOR BREAKFAST LOVE END
QUOTE
Ellis read it over the telephone.
It took Mrs. Pertig a moment to reply, and then, when she spoke, it was with an audible effort to control her voice.
“My husband, Chief Ellis,” she said, “is on the island of Mindanao. We used to go there to play golf at the course on the Dole Plantation. And we ate pineapples for breakfast.”