To blackshirt cheers, the three figures on the balcony withdrew; Mussolini came out twice to bow, but the mob was dispersing as though a cloudburst had started.
The little knot of Americans stayed together, talking excitedly in low tense tones. Though the thing was no surprise, it felt strange now that it had happened; they stood on the soil of an enemy country. The debate among the correspondents, who kept glancing at policemen hovering nearby, was whether to go to their offices to clear out their desks, or head straight for the embassy. Several decided for the office first, arguing that once in the embassy they might be holed up for a long time, perhaps even until the diplomatic train left.
This put Aaron Jastrow in mind of his manuscript. He asked Father Spanelli to take them to the hotel before going on to the embassy. The priest was agreeable, and Natalie did not argue. She was in a shocked state. The baby was beginning to cry, and she thought of picking up some diapers and supplies for him. They returned to the car and drove to the Excelsior, but the priest suddenly braked, a block from the hotel; and he pointed through the windshield at two police cars pulled into the entrance driveway. Turning large, moist, worried brown eyes at Aaron Jastrow, he said, “Of course the manuscript is precious, Professore. Still, all things considered, had you not better go to your embassy first? If the worst comes to the worst, I can get your manuscript for you.”
“The embassy, the embassy,” Natalie said. “He’s right. The embassy.”
Jastrow nodded sadly.
But again, a couple of blocks from the embassy, Spanelli halted the car. A cordon of police and soldiers stood in front of the building. Across the street a small crowd of spectators stood waiting for some melodramatic occurrence. At the moment, from this distance, all looked quiet.
“Let us walk,” said the priest. “You should pass through that line with no trouble, but let us see.”
Natalie was sitting in back of the car. Jastrow turned to her and put a comforting hand over hers. His face was settling into a stony, weary, defiant expression. “Come, my dear. There’s not much choice now.”
They walked up the side of the street where the spectators were standing. On the edge of the crowd they encountered the Times man who had taken Natalie to the Japanese party. He was frightened and bitter; he urged them not to try to crash the cordon. The United Press correspondent had just attempted it, not five minutes earlier; he had been stopped at the gate, and after some argument a police car had appeared and had carried him off.
“But how can that be? That is not civilized, that is senseless,” exclaimed Father Spanelli. “We have many correspondents in the United States. It is idiotic behavior. It will be corrected.”
“When?” said the Times man. “And what will happen to Phil meantime? I’ve heard disagreeable things about your secret service.”
Holding her baby close, fighting off a feeling of sinking in black waters, a feeling like the worst of bad dreams, Natalie said, “What now, Aaron?”
“We must try to go through. What else is there?” He turned to the priest. “Or—Enrico, can we go to the Vatican now? Is there any point to that?”
The priest spread his hands. “No, no, not now. Don’t think of it. Nothing is arranged. It might be the worst of things to do. Given some time, something may be worked out. Surely not now.”
“Jesus Christ, there you are,” said a coarse American voice. “We’re all in big trouble, kids, and you’d better come with me.”
Natalie looked around into the worried, handsome, very Jewish face of Herbert Rose.
For a long while after that, the overpowering actuality was the smell of fish in the truck that was taking them to Naples, so strong that Natalie breathed in little gasps. The two drivers were Neapolitans whose business was bringing fresh fish to Rome. Rabinovitz had hired the truck to transport a replacement part for the ship’s old generator; a burnt-out armature had delayed the sailing.
Gray-faced with migraine, the stocky Palestinian now crouched swaying on the floor of the truck beside the burlap-wrapped armature, eyes closed, knees hugged in his arms. He had spent two days and nights hunting for the armature in Naples and Salerno, and then had tracked down a used one in Rome. He had brought Herbert Rose along to help him bargain for it. When Rose had first brought Jastrow and Natalie to the truck, parked on a side street near the embassy, the Palestinian had talked volubly, though he had since lapsed into this stupor; and the story he had then told had convinced Natalie to climb into the truck with her baby. After a few last agonized words with Father Spanelli about the manuscript, Aaron had followed her.
This was the Palestinian’s story. He had gone to the Excelsior at Herb Rose’s urging, to offer Jastrow and Natalie a last chance to join them. There in Aaron Jastrow’s suite he had found two Germans waiting. Well-dressed, well-spoken men, they had invited him inside and closed the door. When asked about Dr. Jastrow they had begun questioning him in a tough manner, without identifying themselves. Rabinovitz had backed out as soon as he could, and to his relief they had simply let him go.
During the first hour or so of the bouncing, rattling ride in this dark, malodorous truck, Jastrow vainly talked over all the possible benign explanations for the presence of Germans in his hotel suite. It was almost a monologue, for Natalie was still dumb with alarm, Rabinovitz appeared sunk in pain, and Herbert Rose was bored. Obviously the men were Gestapo agents, Rose said, come to pick up the “blue chip,” and there was nothing more to discuss. But Dr. Jastrow was having second thoughts about this precipitate decision to go with Rabinovitz, and he was having them aloud. Finally, diffidently, he mentioned the diplomatic train as a possibility that still existed. This roused Natalie to say, “You can go back to Rome, Aaron, and try to get on that train. I won’t. Good luck.” Then Jastrow gave up, curled himself in a corner in his thick cape, and went to sleep.
The fish truck was not halted on the way to Naples. A familiar sight on the highway, it was a perfect cover for these enemy fugitives. When it reached the port city, night had fallen. As it slowly made its way through blacked-out streets toward the waterfront, policemen repeatedly challenged the drivers, but a word or two brought laughter and permission to go on. Natalie heard all this through a fog of tension and fatigue. The sense of everyday reality had quite left her. She was riding the whirlwind.
The truck stopped. A sharp rapping scared her, and one of the drivers said in hoarse Neapolitan accents, “Wake up, friends. We’re here.”
They descended from the truck to a wharf, where the sea breeze was an intensely sweet relief. In the cloudy night, the vessel alongside the wharf was a shadowy shape, where shadowy people walked back and forth. It appeared no larger to Natalie than a New York harbor sightseeing boat.
Dr. Jastrow said to Rabinovitz, “When will you sail? Immediately?”
With a grunt, Rabinovitz said, “No such luck. We must install this unit and test it. That’ll take time. Come aboard, and we’ll find a comfortable place for you.” He gestured at the narrow railed gangway.
“What’s the name of this boat?” Natalie asked.
“Oh, it has had many names. It’s old. Now it’s called the Redeemer. It’s Turkish registry, and once you’re aboard you will be secure. The harbor master and the Turkish consul here have an excellent understanding.”
Holding her baby close, Natalie said to Aaron Jastrow, “I’m beginning to feel like a Jew.”
He smiled sourly. “Oh? And I’ve never stopped feeling like one. I thought I’d gotten away from it. Obviously I haven’t. Come along, this is the way now.” Aaron set foot on the gangway first. She followed him, clutching her baby son in both arms, and Rabinovitz plodded up behind them.
As Natalie set foot on the deck, the Palestinian touched her arm. In the gloom she could see him wearily smile. “Well, relax now, Mrs. Henry. You’re in Turkey. That’s a start.”
64
JANICE was awakened by the sound of a shower starting full force. Her luminous bed clock read five minutes past five.
She showered too, put on a housecoat, and combed her hair. In the living room Victor Henry sat buttoned up in white and gold, reading Navy correspondence by lamplight. His close-shaved face was ashen, which she more or less expected, after his dispatching a quart of brandy and passing sixteen hours in a stupor. Pencilling a note on a letter, he cleared his throat and said placidly, “Good morning, Jan. Did I disturb you? Sorry.”
“Morning, Dad. No, Vic often gets me up around now. Is it too early for some bacon and eggs?”
“Matter of fact, that sounds pretty good. Warren get back last night?”
“Yes. He’s in there.” Janice wanted to tell him about the loss of the Devilfish, but he scared her, sitting there livid and cool in his starched uniform. He would find out, she thought, soon enough. She made coffee, fed the baby, and started breakfast. As usual, the smell of frying bacon brought Warren out, humming and brushing his hair, dressed in a khaki uniform. He grinned at his father, and Janice realized that he was putting on an act and would not disclose the Devilfish news. “Hi, Dad. How’re you doing?”
“Not badly—all things considered.” Brushing a fist against his forehead, Pug smiled ruefully. “I seem to have slept around the clock.”
“Yes. Well, travel will do that to a fellow.”
“Exactly. Funny effect travel has. Did I empty the bottle?”
Warren laughed. “Bone dry.”
“I only remember drinking the first half.”
“Dad, it was just what the doctor ordered. How about a hair of the dog?”
Pug raised a hand. “That’s the road to perdition. This coffee’s excellent.”
Pouring himself a cup, Warren said, “You picked a good day to sleep through. Lots of news, none of it good.”
“For instance?”
“Hitler and Mussolini declared war on us.”
“They did? Then the lineup’s complete. They’re fools, making it easier for the President. Is that the worst of it?”
“Before you sacked out, had you heard about the Prince of Wales and the Repulse? The Japs got them both off Singapore.”
“What!”
“Air attack. Battleships versus airplanes again, Dad, and they sank ’em both.”
“God in heaven, Warren, they got the Prince of Wales? Did the British confirm that?”
“And the Repulse. Churchill admitted it. The Limeys are through in this ocean, right at the start. Australia’s naked. Looks like it’s all up to us out here.”
Victor Henry half buried his face in a hand. That great ship in its splashy camouflage, he thought, that dark elegant wardroom, those tired, gallant officers and sailors, that deck where Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt had sung hymns under the guns—gone, gone, sunk in the far Pacific! He said in a low mournful tone, “The changing of the guard.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Have they hit the Philippines yet?”
Warren took a moment to sip coffee. He knew little about Clark Field; the American command in Luzon was muffling information that might panic the people. Even the official account of the Cavite raid had been skimpy. He had picked up the Devilfish news from a secret dispatch, and he was hoping the report might prove wrong; or if not, that a later dispatch would at least show Byron among the survivors.
“Well, they sort of plastered Cavite.”
“Oh, they did?”
“Yes.”
Staring at his son, Pug said, “Any dope?”
“Not much. They apparently went for the shore installations.”
“The Devilfish was alongside.”
“So you told me.”
Warren was relieved when Janice called them to the table. Pug picked at the food. It was embarrassing, with his son and daughter-in-law eating heartily, but his throat was almost shut, and he had to force down the mouthfuls he ate.
“What’s the plan of the day, Dad?” Warren said, as the lack of talk grew awkward.
“Huh? Oh, I thought I might scare up a tennis game at the club.”
“Tennis? Are you serious?”
“Why not? Start getting back in some kind of shape.”
“What about going down to Cincpac Personnel?”
“Well, I’ll tell you, Warren, I’ve been wondering about that. At this point a thousand officers are looking for new assignments. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry of the battleship force must be warming chairs down at Personnel. The Navy will find work for me in due course, and maybe at this point I’d just better take what comes.”
“You’re dead wrong.” In his life Warren had never heard his father talk this way, and he reacted immediately and forcibly. “You’ve had a bad break, but you’re not Tom, Dick, or Harry. You’re entitled to the best ship command they’ve got left in this fleet. You’ve already lost a day. The Navy’s not going to come looking for you, Dad. You play tennis for a few days and you’ll end up back in War Plans. Is that what you want?”
Warren’s energetic tone and thinking, so much like his own younger self, drew a smile from Pug. “Jan, hand me the Cincpac roster. It’s there on top of that pile of mail.” She passed him the mimeographed sheets and he leafed through them. “Hm. Interesting. ‘Personnel Section—Captain Theodore Prentice Larkin, II.’”
“Know him?” Warren asked.
“Jocko Larkin? Biggest boozer in my Academy class. I pulled him out of the Severn once when he fell off a sailboat dead drunk. Quite a wingding—Thanksgiving, I think—and I was the only sober one aboard. I didn’t drink then.”
“Dad, our squadron’s got an officers’ meeting at 0700. I’ll drop you off at Cincpac. Let’s go.”
“Well, okay. Jocko sure won’t throw me out.”
At the overlook point where Janice had watched the Japanese onslaught, Warren halted the car. The sun had not yet risen. In the grayish-pink morning light far down in the harbor, there lay the incredible picture: seven United States battleships in a double row, canted, sunk, or turned turtle. Smoke rising from the wrecks still drifted heavily over the black flat oily water.
Bitterly Victor Henry muttered, looking out through the windshield, “The game board after the game.”
“After the first move,” Warren retorted. “Have you heard what Halsey said when they told him aboard the Enterprise about the attack? ‘Before we’re through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell!’”
With a cynical grunt, Pug asked, “Did that impress you?”
“It gave the crew a big charge. Everyone was quoting it.”
“Yes. Good talk for sailors. Beating the Japanese now is a tough battle problem. Especially with a bigger war on our hands in Europe.”
“Dad, we ought to do it handily, with the stuff we’ve got building.”
Pug said, “Maybe. Meantime we’re in for a rugged couple of years. How much stomach do the people back home have for defeat? Because they’re going to take plenty in this ocean. Maybe they’ll pressure the President to quit and make a deal. They don’t really give a damn about Asia, they never have.”
Warren started the car. His father’s low mood disturbed him. “They won’t quit. Not now. Not after this. Let’s get you down to Cincpac.”
He drove in his usual breakneck fashion. His father appeared to take no notice. Neither spoke. In this lame silence they arrived at the Cincpac building and pulled into a parking space.
“Well!” Pug Henry roused himself from a listless abstraction. “Here we are. Now, what about you? Will I be seeing you again?”
“Why, I hope so. Sometime during this war.”
“I mean tonight.”
“It’s hard to say. We were supposed to sortie yesterday. Maybe we will today. There’s a rather headless feeling in this fleet.”
“I completely understand. I feel sort of headless myself.”
“It’s still there on your shoulders, Dad.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to give an emphatic nod.”
This made Warren laugh. It was more like his father. “Don’t t
ake no from Captain Larkin, now. Better keep these car keys, in case I do leave.”
“Right. And in case you do—good luck and good hunting, Warren.”
The father and son looked each other in the face, and parted without more words. Victor Henry went straight to the Cincpac communications office and looked through the dispatches. In the long garbled battle report of the evening before about Cavite, he saw the Devilfish listed as sunk.
He went to Jocko Larkin’s office to wait. It was a quarter to seven, and nobody was there yet, not even the yeoman. Pug unceremoniously took a lounge chair in the inner office; Larkin would have done the same in an office of his. The large wide-windowed room had a panoramic view—the sunny sugarcane slopes, the blue ocean beyond the anchorage, and the hideous black-coated harbor, with its grotesque fringe of defeat and damage.
Victor Henry felt ill: nauseous, chilly, yet greasily perspiring. Consuming a bottle of brandy in a few hours had done this, of course; but after the letters from Rhoda and Madeline, the only safe immediate recourse had been oblivion. The news that the Devilfish was lost had struck an almost numb man, scarcely surprising him. As soon as he had heard of the Cavite attack, he had half expected evil tidings about his son. When things went bad, his long experience told him, they went very bad; and he seemed to be falling into a gulf of bad luck without a bottom.
But there was always a bottom to hit; meantime, he groggily thought, the main thing was to hold himself together. He did not know, after all, that Byron was really dead or injured. The Devilfish might not even be sunk. An excited first report was unreliable. The idea was to brace himself and hang on to hope until the straight word came.
On his wife and his daughter, however, the straight word was in. Rhoda wanted to divorce him and marry Fred Kirby; and his daughter had entangled herself with her employer, had probably been committing adultery, and it all might be in the newspapers any day. These were unchangeable facts, however hard to grasp. He had to absorb them and somehow act on them.