“I would say that it would take her two or three days to read the files here,” Dancy said.
“In the meantime, she can stay with me.”
“That’s very kind,” Charity said.
“Not at all,” Captain Dancy said.
“I’m going to run you by the bar in the Dorchester. Maybe I can latch on to one of your rejects.”
Charity laughed with delight. They smiled at each other.
Womanly smiles, Bruce thought. Even girlish.
But there was more to both of them than that. He reminded himself that another of his weaknesses was underestimating the female animal.
“I’ll go fetch Colonel Stevens, Sir,” Capt. Dancy said.
[SIX]
Pearl Harbor U.S. Naval Base
Commander Edwin R. Lennox, wearing the trousers and shirt of a tropical worsted uniform–the blouse hung from a protruding bolt on the Drum’s conning tower–watched as the last of the fresh food was carried aboard. An hour before, an officer courier had delivered his sailing orders. They were in two sealed envelopes, numbered “I” and” 2.”
The first order, by authority of COMSUBFORPAC, directed Lennox to take the Drum to sea at 0600 16 February 1943. He was to sail to coordinates that would put him two hundred miles south-southwest of Pearl. Upon arrival there, he was directed to open envelope “2.” The second envelope would define the area the Drum was to patrol, engaging enemy naval forces and shipping “until such time as the expenditure of torpedoes, fuel and victuals, in your sole judgment, dictates your return to Pearl Harbor.”
As soon as the last of the fresh food was stowed aboard, it was Lennox’s intention to go ashore, mail his last letter to his wife, and then go to the officers’ club for a steak and as many drinks of Kentucky sour mash bourbon as he could handle and still make it back to the Drum under his own power by midnight.
A Navy gray Plymouth sedan came onto the wharf and stopped beside the ton-and-a-half rations truck. A white hat jumped out from behind the wheel, opening the rear door and then standing to attention as a full commander in a crisp white uniform got out and walked to the center of three gangplanks laid from the wharf to the deck of the Drum. The thick golden rope of an aide to a flag officer hung from the shoulder of the crisp white uniform.
The admiral’s aide walked down the gangplank, stopped, and crisply saluted the officer of the deck, who was wearing, shorts, a T-shirt, an incredibly dirty brimmed cap he thought was a lucky piece, and a.45 in a holster slung low on his hip like a gunfighter’s.
“Request permission to come aboard. Sir,” the admiral’s aide said in the prescribed nautical manner.
“Permission granted,” the officer of the deck said, returning the salute far more casually than it had been rendered. There was in it faint overtones of the scorn felt by submarine officers about to go back on patrol for officers who walked around Pearl Harbor in crisp white uniforms dog-robbing for an admiral.
The admiral’s aide saluted the colors and stepped onto the deck.
“I wish to see the captain, Sir,” the aide said.
“Ask the commander to come up,” Lennox called down. He didn’t want to go into the hull. It was hot down there, and he was freshly showered and in a fresh uniform.
Very carefully, so as not to soil his uniform, the admiral’s aide climbed the ladder welded to the side of the conning tower.
“What can I do for you, Commander?” Lennox asked.
“I have two documents for you, Captain,” the admiral’s aide said.
“Your operational order has been revised. May I suggest we go to your cabin?”
“Yes, Sir,” Lennox said.
“You want the original back?”
“Please,” the admiral’s aide said.
“Watch yourself,” Commander Lennox said as he entered the conning tower.
“It’s pretty greasy in here.”
They made their way to the captain’s cabin, which was the size of a small closet. Lennox worked the combination of the safe and exchanged envelope “2” in it for an identical envelope handed him by the admiral’s aide.
“Can I lock it?” Lennox asked.
“You said “two documents’?”