When Todd was again seated, Winters continued carefully, “Now spare me the hysteria and your personal conclusions. I want you to give me the facts, only the facts, slowly and without prejudice. The accusations you made a few moments ago are very very serious. In my eyes, if you have jumped to unsubstantiated conclusions too quickly, your fitness as an officer may be in doubt. So start at the beginning.”
There was a flash of anger in the lieutenant’s eyes and then he opened his notebook. When he spoke, his voice was a monotone, carefully modulated to be free of all emotion. “At precisely 0345 this morning,” he began, “I was awakened by Ensign Andrews, who had been working most of the night on the telemetry dumps that we recalled both from the Canaveral station and the tracking ship near Bimini. His assignment had been to go through the scheduled sequence of events onboard the Panther missile and determine, from the scattered telemetry if possible, if any anomalous events had occurred onboard just before the missile went off course. We thought that this way we might have a chance to isolate the cause of the problem.
“Basically Ensign Andrews was a detective As you know, the data system is quite constrained by the limited downlink bandwidth. So the packets of telemetry data come out in a somewhat artificial way, meaning that many of the data values governing the behavior of the bird at the time it changed direction would not have been sent to the Earth until several minutes later, after the missile had gone awry and the tracking stations had already dropped and regained lock a couple of times.
“Ensign Andrews showed me that in the intermittent data there were four discrete measurements taken from the command receipt counter, a simple buffer in the software that increments by one every time a new command message is correctly received by the missile. At first we did not believe what we were seeing. We thought perhaps someone had made an error or that the decommutation maps were wrong. But by 0700 we had both checked the values from the two tracking sites and verified that we were indeed looking at the correct channel. Commander, in the 1.7 seconds after the APRS was activated, the command receipt counter registered over three hundred new messages. And then the missile swerved away from its intended target.”
The commander was writing in a small spiral notebook while Todd was talking. It took him almost half a minute to finish his notes. Then he looked up at Todd and Ramirez. “Am I to believe then,” he said, his voice heavy with sarcasm, “that this is the entire data set upon which you wish to base your indictment of the Soviet Union and put our Navy intelligence community on alert? Or is there something else?”
Todd looked confused. “You think it’s more likely,” Commander Winters continued, his voice now rising, “that the Russians knew the code for the command test set and transmitted three hundred messages in less than two seconds, exactly at the right time and from somewhere off the Florida coast, than it is that somewhere in the 4.2 software system there is an error that is improperly incrementing the command receipt counter? My God, Lieutenant, use your head. Are you seeing bogeymen at night? This is 1994. There is virtually no tension on the international scene. You believe that the Russians are so colossally stupid that they would risk detente to command a Navy cruise missile off course while it is still under test? Even if they could somehow command the missile to a specific location and then recover it and understand it thoroughly by reverse engineering, why would they take such a horrendous chance for such a comparatively small return?”
Todd and Ramirez said nothing during the commander’s harangue. Ramirez was starting to look uncomfortably embarrassed toward the end. Todd’s boyish self-confidence had faded as well and he began to wring his hands and pop his knuckles absentmindedly. After a long pause Winters continued, firmly but without some of the exasperation of his initial speech.
“We assigned some specific work items yesterday, Lieutenant. They were supposed to be addressed by today. Look again at the 4.2 software, particularly to see if there were any errors in the interface with the command test set that showed up during module or integration testing. Maybe there was a bug in the command receipt counter subroutine that did not get corrected in the new release. And for the meeting this afternoon, I want you to show me a list of possible failure modes that would explain the telemetry data, other than commands being sent from a foreign power. And then show what you are planning to do to analyze each failure mode and reduce the length of the list.”
Ramirez stood up to leave. “Under the circumstances, Commander, I feel that my presence here is a little, uh, improper. I have briefed a couple of my men already and have kicked off some investigative work to see if there is now or has been recently any Russian military or civilian activity in the area. I had put a top priority on the effort. In view of this conversation, I feel I should suspend — ”
“Not necessarily,” Commander Winters interrupted him. “It might be very difficult for you to explain at this juncture.” He looked at both of the squirming young lieutenants. “And it is not my wish to be vindictive and put you both on report, although I think you both acted hastily and outside regulations. No, Lieutenant, continue with the intelligence gathering, it may eventually be of some importance. Just don’t make a big deal out of it. I’ll accept the responsibility.”
Ramirez walked toward the door. He was clearly grateful. “Thank you, Commander,” he said sincerely, “for a minute there I thought maybe I had crapped in my mess kit. I’ve learned a very valuable lesson.”
Winters saluted the intelligence officer and motioned Todd, who was apparently also preparing to leave, back to his seat. The commander walked over in front of the Renoir painting and appeared to be studying it. He spoke quietly, without turning to face the junior lieutenant. “Did you say anything to that reporter Miss Dawson about a missile, or did she mention a missile to you while you were talking to her?”
“No, sir, there was nothing like that,” Todd asserted. “She was even vague when I asked her what she had heard.”
“She either has some inside information or is very very lucky,” the commander said abstractedly, almost to himself. He walked over closer to the painting and imagined that he could hear the piano being played by the younger of the two sisters. Today he heard a Mozart sonata. But it was not the right time to listen. This young man needs a good lesson out of all this, Winters thought as he turned around.
“Do you smoke. Lieutenant?” he asked, offering Todd a cigarette and placing one in his own mouth. The younger man shook his head. “I do,” said Winters, lighting his Pall Mall, “even though there are a thousand reasons why I shouldn’t. But I almost never smoke around people who don’t. It’s a question of consideration.”
Winters walked over to look out the window and blew the smoke slowly out his mouth. Todd looked puzzled. “And right now,” Winters continued, “I’m smoking, strangely enough, also out of consideration. For you. You see, Lieutenant Todd,” he said, wheeling around dramatically, “I’m calmer after I smoke. That means I can deal better with my anger.”
He walked directly over in front of the lieutenant. “Because I’m goddamn mad about this, young man. Make no mistake about that. There’s a part of me that wants to make an example of you, maybe even court martial you for not following regulations. You’re too cocky, too sure of your own conclusions. You’re dangerous. If you had slipped and made some of the comments you made in here to that woman reporter, then it would be Katie bar the door. But” — Winters walked around behind his desk and stubbed out his cigarette, — “it has always been my belief that people should not be crucified for a single mistake.”
The commander sat down and leaned back in his chair. “Just between us guys, Lieutenant, you’re on probation with me. I don’t want to hear any more nonsense about an international incident. This is a simple case of a malfunctioning test missile. Do your job thoroughly and carefully. Don’t worry, you’ll be noticed if the work is done properly. The system is not blind to your ambition or your talent. But if you run off half-cocked one more time on this problem, I
will personally see to it that your personnel file is ruined.”
Todd could tell that he was being dismissed. He was still angry, now at himself mostly, but he knew better than to let any of it show. He considered Commander Winters to be a marginally competent old fart, and he hated being lectured by him. As of now, however, I have no choice but to accept it, he said to himself as he left the commander’s office.
6
NICK’S message light was blinking when he walked into his townhouse after the meeting with Amanda and the encounter with Greta. He put the bag with the trident back in the closet and turned on the answering machine. Julianne appeared on the small three-inch monitor. Nick smiled to himself. She always left all of his messages, no matter how small, in video.
“Sorry to tell you this, Nick, but your Tampa charter for tomorrow and Sunday just called up to cancel. They said they heard a weather forecast calling for thunderstorms. Anyway, all is not completely lost ‘cause you get to keep their deposit.” She paused a couple of seconds. “By the way, Linda and Cotinne and I are going to Sloppy Joe’s tonight to hear Angie Leatherwood. Why don’t you stop by and say hello? I might even buy you a drink.”
Shit, said Nick to himself. I needed the money. And Troy did too. He automatically entered Troy’s name on the small keyboard near the phone and waited for Troy to pick up the receiver and turn on the video switch.
“Why hello, Professor. What are you doing on such a beautiful day in the tropics?” Troy was in a good humor as usual. Nick could not understand how anyone could be in such a perpetually good mood.
“I have bad news and bad news, my friend,” Nick replied. “First, Amanda Winchester says our trident is modern and almost certainly not a part of any ancient treasure. For my part, I’m not completely convinced. But it doesn’t look promising. Second, and probably more important for the short term, our charter has cancelled. We have no work for the weekend.”
“Ouch,” Troy said, a frown sweeping over his face. “That do present some problems.” For a moment it seemed that Troy couldn’t figure out what to say. Then the normal Troy was back, smiling cheerfully, “Hey, Professor, I have an idea. Since we now both have nothing to do this afternoon, why don’t you come over here to the Jefferson sanitarium for some chips and beer? I want to show you something anyway.” His eyes were twinkling.
Under almost any circumstances Nick would have declined Troy’s offer and spent the afternoon reading Madame Bovary. But the morning had already been heavy with emotion and Nick was acutely aware that he needed some levity. He smiled to himself. Troy was a very funny man. An afternoon of booze and mirth sounded appealing. Besides, Troy had been working for him for four months and they had not yet taken any time to socialize. Even though they had spent many hours working together on the boat, Nick had never once visited Troy’s apartment. “All right,” Nick heard himself respond, “you’re on. I’ll bring the food and you get the beer. I’ll see you in twenty to thirty minutes.”
When Nick stopped his car in front of the small frame duplex in one of Key West’s oldest sections, Troy was just arriving himself. He had apparently walked to a nearby store, for he was carrying a large brown paper bag containing three six-packs of beer. “This ought to hold us for the afternoon.” He winked as he greeted Nick and led him up the walkway to his front door. A paper sign was taped to the door. It said, PROF — BE BACK IN A JIFF — TROY. Troy took the sign down and reached up to a small ledge above the door to find a key.
Nick had never wondered what Troy’s apartment would be like. But he certainly would not have imagined the living room that he found when he followed Troy inside. The room was laid out neatly and furnished in what could only be called early grandmother style. The motley array of old couches and easy chairs purchased at neighborhood garage sales (none of which was the same color, which was of no importance to Troy — he thought of furniture in terms of functional units, not as pieces of decoration) were arranged in a rectangle with a long wooden coffee table in the middle. An assortment of electronics and video magazines were neatly stacked upon the table. Dominating the room was a state-of-the-art sound system whose four tall speakers were carefully placed in the corners so that all the sound was focused toward the center of the room. As soon as the two men were inside, Troy went over to the compact disc player on thc top of the stereo equipment rack and turned it on. A wonderfully rich, black, female voice backed by a piano and a guitar filled the room.
“This is Angie’s new album,” Troy said, handing Nick an open beer. He had been to the kitchen and the refrigerator while Nick was looking around the room. “Her agent thinks this one will go gold. Love Letters just barely missed, but she made more than a quarter of a million off it anyway. Not counting the money from the concert tour.”
“I remember your telling me that you knew her.” Nick said, taking a long drink from his beer. He had walked across the room to a box next to the stereo rack where sixty or seventy discs were neatly arranged. On the front of an open disc jacket on the top of the box was a beautiful young black woman, softly backlit. She was wearing a long dark cocktail dress. Memories of Enchanting Nights was the title of the album. “Is there more to the story of Miss Leatherwood?” Nick said, looking up at Troy. “This is one magnificent lady, if you ask me.”
Troy came over beside him. He programmed the disc player to cut eight on the album. “Thought you’d never ask,” he grinned expansively. “This song probably says it the best.” Nick sat down in one of the strange easy chairs and listened to a soft ballad with an easy beat in the background. The title of the song was “Let Me Take Care of You, Baby.” It told the story of a gifted lover who made the songstress laugh at home or in bed. They were compatible, they were friends. But he couldn’t talk commitment because he hadn’t made it yet. So in the last stanza the woman singing the song appeals to him to swallow his pride and let her make it easy for him.
Nick looked at Troy and rolled his eyes while he shook his head. “Jefferson,” he said, “you’re too much. I never know when you’re telling the truth and when you’re slinging bullshit with both arms.”
Troy laughed and stood up from the couch. “But, Professor,” he protested, “that’s what makes it more interesting.” He came over and took Nick’s empty beer can. “It’s hard for you to believe, isn’t it?” he said, still smiling while he looked directly at Nick, “that maybe your funny black first mate has a few dimensions you haven’t seen.”
Troy turned and walked toward the kitchen. Nick could hear him opening beer cans and putting the chips in a bowl. “So,” Nick hollered, “I’m waiting. What’s the scoop?”
“Angie and I have known each other for five years,” Troy said from the kitchen. “When we were first dating she was only nineteen and completely naive about life. One night we were over here, right after I first moved in, and we were listening to a Whitney Houston album. Angie started singing.”
Troy came back in the living room. He put the bowl of assorted chips on the little wood coffee table and sat down in a chair next to Nick. “The rest, as they say in Hollywood, is history.” He waved his arms. “I introduced her to the owner of a local night club. Within a year she had a recording contract and I had a problem. She was my woman. But I couldn’t afford to keep up with her.” Troy was uncharacteristically quiet for a few seconds. “It’s really shit when your pride stands in the way of your feelings for the only woman you’ve ever loved.”
Nick was surprised to discover that Troy’s intimate revelation had touched him. Nick leaned forward in his chair and dropped his hand lightly on Troy’s shoulder in a gesture of understanding. Troy changed the subject quickly. “And what about you, Professor? How many broken hearts are hanging in your closet? I’ve seen the way Julianne and Corinne and even Greta look at you. Why haven’t you ever married?”
Nick laughed and guzzled his beer. “Christ, this must be my lucky day. Do you know, Jefferson, that you’re the second person today to ask me about my love life? And the first o
ne was a seventy-year-old woman.”
Nick took another drink. “Speaking of Greta,” he continued, “I ran into her this morning — and it wasn’t an accident. She was waiting for me while I was talking to Amanda. She knew that we found something yesterday and wanted to talk about a partnership deal. Do you know anything about this?”
“Sure do,” Troy answered easily. “Homer must have had her spying on us. When I finished up with the boat last night, she was waiting to pump me for information. She had watched you leave with your exercise bag and either guessed or knew that we had found something. I didn’t tell her anything, although I didn’t deny it either. Remember, Ellen saw Carol and me in the marina office with all that snazzy equipment.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Nick, “and I really didn’t expect to keep it entirely under wraps forever. I just wish we could find more of the treasure, if it exists, before those snoops start to follow our every move.”
The two men sat in silence, drinking their beer. “But you’ve managed to avoid my question,” Troy said at length with a mischievous smile. “The subject was women. How come a guy like you, handsome, educated, apparently not gay, does not have a steady woman?”
Nick thought for a moment. He studied Troy’s friendly, guileless face and decided to take the plunge. “I’m not sure, Troy,” he said seriously, “but I think maybe I push them all away. I find something wrong with them so I have an excuse.” A new idea crept into Nick’s mind. “Maybe I’m getting even in a way. You asked about broken hearts? The biggest one in the closet is my own. Mine was torn to shreds when I was a kid by a woman who probably doesn’t even remember me.”