Byron pointed. “That’s where we used to sit, right there under that tree, when you’d tutor me. Remember, Dad? Look how thick that trunk is now!”
“Oh, you recall that? I wouldn’t think that would be a pleasant memory either.”
“Why not? I missed all that school. You had to do it.”
“But I was a lousy tutor. Maybe your mother should have taken it on. But in the morning she liked to sleep late, and in the afternoon, well, she was either shopping, or getting her hair done, you know, or fixing herself up for some party. For all the times I lost my temper, I apologize.”
Byron gave his father a peculiar glance through half-closed eyes and scratched his beard. “I didn’t mind.”
“Sometimes you cried. Yet you didn’t cry when you got hit by the truck. Pain never made you cry.”
“Well, when you put on that angry voice, it scared me. But it was all right. I liked studying with you. I understood you.”
“Anyway, you got good marks that year.”
“Best I ever got.”
They looked through the fence without talking for a couple of long minutes. “Well, now we’ve seen the place,” Pug said. “How about lunch?”
“You know something?” Byron’s gaze was still on the house. “Except for the three days I had in Lisbon with Natalie, I was happier here than I’ve ever been in my life, before or since. I loved this house.”
“That’s the worst of a service career,” Pug said. “You never strike roots. You raise a family of tumbleweeds.”
The crab cocktail at the Army and Navy Club was still served with the same bland red sauce in the same long-stemmed cups, with one purposeless green leaf sticking up in the crabmeat. The roast beef from the steam table was lukewarm and overdone, much as it had been in 1928. Even the faces of the people eating lunch seemed the same—all but Byron’s. The thin little boy who had eaten with such exasperating slowness was now a bearded tall young man. He still ate too slowly; Pug finished his meat first, though he was doing nearly all the talking.
He wanted to probe Byron a bit about Pamela, and about Jochanan Jastrow. He described Jastrow’s sudden incursion into Slote’s Moscow flat, and his spectral reappearance in Spaso House out of a snowstorm. Byron exploded in anger when his father mentioned Tudsbury’s refusal to use the Minsk documents, and his guess that Jastrow might be an NKVD emissary. “What? Was he serious? Why, he’s either a hypocrite or an idiot! What he said about people not wanting to help the Jews is true, God knows. Hitler paralyzed the world for years by playing on that chord. But nobody can talk to Berel for five minutes without realizing that he’s a remarkable man. And dead on the level, too.”
“You believe the story about the massacre?”
“Why not? Aren’t the Germans capable of it? If Hitler gave the order, then it happened.”
“I wasn’t that sure myself, Byron, but I wrote to the President about it.”
Byron stared openmouthed, then spoke in a low incredulous tone. “You did what, Dad?”
“Well, those documents got shunted aside in the embassy as probable fakes. I thought they deserved more investigation than that. It was an impulse—probably a stupid one—but I did it.”
Byron Henry reached out, covered his father’s hand, and pressed it. The bearded face took on an affectionate glow. “All I can say is, well done.”
“No. I believe it was a futile gesture, and those are never well done. But it’s past. Incidentally, have you ever met Tudsbury’s daughter? Natalie mentioned in the Rome airport that she knew her.”
“You mean Pamela? I met her once in Washington. Why?”
“Well, the Tudsburys and I travelled in the combat area together. She struck me as an unusually brave and hardy sort. She endured a lot and always remained agreeable and well-groomed. Never whined or crabbed.”
“Oh, Pam Tudsbury’s the original endurer, from what Natalie says. They’re not too unlike in that way, but otherwise they sure are. Natalie told me a lot about her. In Paris Pamela was a hellion.”
“Really?”
“Yes, she had this Hemingwayish boyfriend who used to room with Leslie Slote. She and this character raised Cain all over Gay Paree. Then he dropped her and she went into a bad spin. I’m ready for some dessert, Dad. You too?”
“Sure.” Victor Henry could not help persisting. “How—a spin?”
“Oh, can’t you imagine? Sleeping around, trying to drink up all the wine in Paris, driving like a maniac. She wrapped a car around a tree outside Marseilles and almost killed this French writer she was with. What’s the matter? You look upset.”
“That’s an upsetting story. She seems a fine girl. I’ll be here a week,” Pug said abruptly, “unless the Clipper changes its schedule. Can we get in some tennis?”
“Sure, but I’m not in shape, the way I was in Berlin.”
“Nor am I.”
They played early in the mornings to dodge the heat, and after showering they would breakfast together. Victor Henry did not mention Pamela again. At night, lying awake in warm humid darkness under the moaning fan, he would think of ways to reopen the subject. But facing his son at the breakfast table, he couldn’t do it. He could guess what Byron would think of a romance between his staid father and Pamela Tudsbury. It would strike the youngster as a pure middle-aged aberration—disconcerting, shabby, and pathetic. Victor Henry now had spells of seeing it the same way.
One day Branch Hoban prevailed upon him to visit the house in Pasay for lunch. Byron mulishly would not join them. Pug took a long swim in a pool ringed by flowering trees, and enjoyed a superb curry lunch; and after a nap he beat Lieutenant Aster at tennis. It was altogether a satisfying afternoon. Before he left, over rum drinks on a terrace looking out on the garden, Hoban and Aster talked reassuringly about Byron. They both considered him a natural submarine man; only the military bone, they said, seemed to be missing in him. Transfer to the Atlantic was his obsession, but Hoban tolerantly pointed out to the father that it was impossible. The squadron was far under complement now, and the Devilfish could not put to sea if it lost one watch officer. Byron had to make up his mind that the Devilfish was his ship.
Victor Henry brought up this topic at what he hoped was a good time—just before breakfast next morning after their game and shower, when they were having coffee on the lawn. On other days Byron had been in the highest spirits over this early cup of coffee. As casually as possible, Pug remarked, “Incidentally, Byron, you said Natalie’s flying to Lisbon—when? The fifteenth of this month?”
“That’s right, the fifteenth.”
“Do you think she’ll make it this time?”
“God, yes. She’d better! They’ve got every possible official assurance and high priority.”
“Well now, the fifteenth isn’t very far off, is it? This transfer request of yours—” Victor Henry hesitated, for a look came over Byron’s face which he knew only too well: sullen, vacuous, remote, and introverted. “Isn’t it something you can table, at least until then?”
“Table it? It’s tabled, don’t worry. I’ve been turned down by Hoban, Tully, and Admiral Hart’s personnel officer. What more do you want?”
“I mean in your own mind, Briny.”
“Listen, I’m assuming she’ll get home with the baby. Otherwise I’d probably desert and go fetch her out. But I still want to be transferred. I want to see them. I want to be near them. I’ve never seen my own son! I’ve spent the sum total of three days with my wife since we got married.”
“There’s another side to it. Your squadron is desperate for watch officers, we’re in a war alert, and—”
Byron broke in, “Look, what is this, Dad? I haven’t asked you to go to Tully and use your influence with him, have I?”
“I’m sure glad you haven’t. Red Tully can’t do the impossible, Byron. He stretched a point, taking you into that May class, but that was different—”
Byron broke in, “Jesus, yes, and I’m eternally grateful to both of you. That’s w
hy my son was born in Italy, and that’s why I’m separated from my wife by the whole wide earth.”
“Maybe we’d better drop it,” said Victor Henry.
“That’s a fine idea, Dad.”
Byron turned genial again over the bacon and eggs, but Victor Henry felt that in the short bitter exchange he had lost all the ground he had been gaining with his son.
Yet Byron could not have been more amiable when he saw his father off on the Clipper next day. On the pier he threw his arms around Pug. Impulsively Pug said, as the beard scratched his lips, “Is Natalie going to like all this shrubbery?”
It was a pleasure to hear Byron laugh. “Don’t worry. The day I leave the Devilfish, off it comes.”
“Well, then—I guess this is it, Byron.”
“The tumbleweeds blowing apart,” Byron said.
“That’s exactly right. The tumbleweeds blowing apart.”
“Well, you’ll be seeing Warren and Janice in a few days, anyhow. That’s great. Give them my love.”
The loudspeaker called for passengers to board the huge flying boat.
Victor Henry looked in his son’s eyes and said with great difficulty, “Look, I pray for Natalie and your boy.”
Byron’s eyes were steady and inscrutable.
“I’m sure you do, Dad. Thanks.”
When the Clipper wheeled away for the long takeoff the son still stood on the pier, hands thrust in his back pockets, watching.
The Japanese fleet at that moment was well on its way to Hawaii.
The Kurile Islands, a chain of volcanic rocks more than seven hundred miles long, loosely linking Japan and Siberia, had made a good secret rendezvous. Japan’s six aircraft carriers had met in a setting of black snow-patched island crags, flecked with the gnarled vegetation that can survive in high winds and long freezes. Through rain and sleet, their fliers had practiced shallow torpedo runs while battleships, cruisers, destroyers, oilers, and supply ships came straggling in. Nobody knew of this gathering armada except the men in the ships and a few of Japan’s leaders. When the force set out eastward, only a few flag officers had been told where they were going, and why.
They had no set day or hour to attack. They were not sure the attack would go. The fleet was sailing in case the Washington talks broke down. Japanese peace envoys were trying to work out a modus vivendi, a “way of living,” a sort of cease-fire in the Pacific before the guns could go off. The Japanese modus vivendi called for the United States to resume sending oil and scrap iron, and to recognize Japan’s right to rule East Asia and colonize China. If the Americans granted this, the fleet on signal would turn back.
But the modus vivendi of the United States called for the Japanese to abandon the Chinese war and get off the southeast Asian mainland, in return for normal economic relations. The Japanese leaders had already decided that if this was the last word, they would fight. In that case, on signal, the timing of an enormous simultaneous assault, planned to burst out of Japan like red rays all over the South Pacific, would be locked on to one irrevocably appointed hour: the time for a surprise air strike against Hawaii.
The three strong points held by the white race in the South Pacific were Pearl Harbor, Manila, and Singapore. The plan was to knock out United States air and sea power at Pearl Harbor from the air; to capture Singapore by seaborne assault; to land troops in the Philippines and take Manila, and then to sweep up the chips in the East Indies; and thereafter to use these new resources for a strong drive to finish China, while beating off Anglo-American counterattacks. The ultimate gamble was that Germany would either win the big fratricidal white man’s war that was giving Japan her chance, or would so use up American and British strength that Japan would in the end keep what she had seized, no matter what happened to Germany.
The Japanese leaders, including the emperor, doubted that this risky plan would come off, but they thought they had no choice. Japan’s predicament was much like Germany’s before the attack on the Soviet Union. Both countries, in the hands of their militarists, had started wars they couldn’t finish. As time ran out and supplies dwindled, both turned to strike elsewhere, hoping to mend their fortunes.
Three reasons were forcing the Japanese to a showdown now. Their oil was running out. The weather would soon turn bad for military operations. And the white men, alarmed at last, were strengthening their three bastions every week with more and more planes, warships, antiaircraft guns, tanks, and fortifications. Japan’s temporary advantage in the South Pacific and East Asia was melting away. Unless President Roosevelt suddenly relented in Washington, she had to go, or give up her drive for empire.
And so, on the day before the Army-Navy game, the armada had sortied into the black stormy waters off the Kuriles, and set out for Hawaii.
And as the Japanese task force steamed east, a much smaller American task force sortied from Pearl Harbor, headed west. Admiral William Halsey was taking twelve marine fighter planes to Wake Island in the Enterprise. Japan had long since illegally fortified every island and atoll it held on trust in the Pacific. Time after time, President Roosevelt had failed to get money out of Congress for counter-fortifying American islands. Now, at the end of November 1941, the funds had come through. The work was being wildly rushed. At Wake it was half finished, but the atoll still had no air defense.
The second day out, on a sunny crystalline morning, Warren Henry returned from the dawn search and came slanting around to land on the Enterprise. The deck rose up at Warren, the hook caught the number two cable, his stomach thrust hard against the safety belt, and he was down and stopped among deck force sailors in brilliant red, green, and yellow jumpers, doing their frantic gesticulating dance around landed planes. Warm sea air eddied in from his rear gunner’s open canopy. Disconnecting belts and cables, gathering up his charts and log sheets, Warren awkwardly climbed out into the brisk wind over the deck, as another scout plane roared in and jerked to a stop.
The landing officer shouted at him, holding his paddles on either side of his mouth, “Hi. All pilots to Scouting Six ready room at 0900.”
“What’s up?”
“The old man wants a word with you all.”
“The captain?”
“Halsey.”
“Christ.”
In the ready room the deep comfortable chairs were already full, and pilots in khakis, or flying suits and yellow lifejackets, lined the bulkheads. Halsey entered with the ship’s captain and the squadron commanders, and stood in front of the scored plexiglass panels up forward, where orange grease marks showed search patterns and assignments. Warren was only a few feet from him. Seen this close, Halsey’s face looked patchy and aged, and now and then he grimaced, showing his teeth in a nervous tic.
The squadron commander waved a green mimeographed sheet. “Okay, now all you fellows received and discussed this yesterday, but the admiral has asked me to read it again, out loud.
“BATTLE ORDER NUMBER 1.
The Enterprise is now operating under war conditions.
At any time, day or night, we must be ready for instant action.
Hostile submarines may be encountered…. ‘Steady nerves and stout hearts are needed now.’
Commanding Officer,
U.S.S. Enterprise.
Approved: W. F. Halsey
Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy
Commander Aircraft, Battle Force.”
The captain stepped back among the squadron commanders behind the admiral. Halsey squinted around the room, contracting his flaring gray eyebrows. “Thank you, skipper. I’m told there were questions yesterday. I’m here to accommodate you, gentlemen.”
Not a word or a raised hand.
Admiral Halsey involuntarily grimaced, glancing over his shoulder at the ship’s captain and the squadron commanders. He addressed the pilots again. “Cat got your tongue?” This raised an uneasy titter. “I’m reliably informed that someone said this paper gave every one of you carte blanche to put the United States of America into the world war.
Now would the brave soul who said that care to stand?”
Warren Henry took a step forward from the bulkhead. Faces turned to him.
“What’s your name?”
“Lieutenant Warren Henry, sir.”
“Henry?” Halsey looked a shade less grim. “Are you related to Captain Victor Henry?”
“He’s my father, sir.”
“Well, he’s a fine officer. Now then. You think this order permits you to plunge the country into war, do you?”
“Sir, I added yesterday that I was all for it.”
“You’re all for it, hey? Why? What are you, one of these bloodthirsty killer types?” The admiral raised his outthrust jaw.
“Admiral, I think we’re in the war now, but fighting with both hands tied behind us.”
Halsey’s face twitched and he motioned Warren to step back. Clasping his hands behind his back, the admiral said in harsh tones: “Gentlemen, this force stripped for action weeks ago. There’s nothing loose, dispensable, or inflammable left aboard the Enterprise that I know about, except the wardroom piano. I made that exception myself. Now, our mission is secret. There will be no vessels of the United States or of friendly powers in our path. They have been warned away. Ships we encounter will belong to the enemy. Unless we shoot first, we may never have a chance to shoot. Therefore, this force will shoot first and argue afterwards. The responsibility is mine—Questions?”
He slowly looked around at the young sober faces. “Good day, then, and good hunting.”
Later, Warren’s wing mate, lying naked on the top bunk, said, “Well, give him one thing. He’s a fighting son of a bitch.”
“Or a trigger-happy old nut,” said Warren, rinsing lather from his razor. “Depending on events.”
On the day that the Japanese steaming east and Halsey’s ships steaming west made their closest approach, Warren Henry flew the northern search pattern, more than two hundred miles straight toward the Japanese fleet. The Japanese routinely sent a scout plane due south about the same distance. But in the broad Pacific Ocean the game was still blindman’s buff. Hundreds of unsearched miles of water stretched between the two scouting planes at their far reach, and the two forces passed in peace.