Ghostboat (12 page)

“Shattered. All through the boat.” Frank watched, the look of puzzlement on the Professor’s features, then saw it disappear as he was distracted by something in the corner.

The first plant. Hardy picked up a military pamphlet and weighed it in his hand. He mouthed a name and held the book a moment, reflecting. Then he dropped it “Hell of a guy— Jenavin,” he said. “Breaking his ass to get into OCS.” He fell silent and stood in the center of the conning tower a moment. Frank could almost sense the memories swarming in on the old man.

Hardy turned abruptly into the well and dropped down the ladder to the control room. Frank followed, and halfway down saw the Professor jump as a series of metallic thumps, followed by a muffled stream of profanity, reached the control room from somewhere aft.

“That’s just the crew in the forward engine room, Professor,” Frank said quickly. He moved to the plotting table, opened his manila folder, and spread the pictures out. Hardy’s attention was drawn to the source of the sounds. Frank had to tug on his sleeve. “I think you should look at these.”

Hardy slowly drifted back to reality and studied the black-and-white stills. Revealing the chaos compartment by compartment, they were far more eloquent than anything Frank could have said. Hardy stared at them and asked, “Was it like this everywhere?”

“All through the boat. Without exception. We’ve cleaned her up since these were taken. Most of the personal gear has been removed and stored, but your quarters haven’t been touched. Would you care to have a look?”

Hardy shook his head. “Not yet. Let me get used to this...”

Heading aft, they passed through the galley and into the crew’s mess. This compartment was devoid of personal gear—no deliberate plants or anything.

They stepped through the bulkhead into the crew’s quarters. All the bunks were folded back snug against the inner walls of the hull. Clanking sounds again drew Hardy aft, and he went to the next connecting bulkhead. He stared in surprise at main engine number one, still thrust out at an angle, blocking the entrance to the forward engine room.

McClusky, obviously frustrated with his task, cut loose with a blast of invective directed toward the Navy in particular and the world in general. Hardy smiled.

“At least
that
hasn’t changed in thirty years.”

Frank relaxed. Hardy was loosening up; his defenses were dropping. In the crew’s quarters, his roaming eyes caught the Ann Sheridan pinup posted on one of the lockers. “We had one guy... I can’t remember his name, but he was nuts about Ann Sheridan.”

“That Was Jones,” said Frank. “We found two scrapbooks loaded with pictures.”

“Right! Corky Jones. Hey—what about Walinsky’s pipes?”

Frank was puzzled a moment; then he remembered the carved shelf. “You mean that rack over main engine number two? Still there.” He pointed back toward the forward engine room.

Hardy muttered the name of his friend. “Chief Walinsky. Anton. The pipes—they were...” He stopped, drifting off, remembering the off-duty hours he used to spend with the Chief, chatting while he shined up those bloody pipes. Once in a great while he would even smoke one.

Frank smiled; at least Hardy’s memories were pleasant. This was the time to steer him to his old quarters.

Favoring his leg as they walked forward, Hardy kept up a steady stream of chatter. Passing back through the control room, he stopped to examine a duty roster posted on the bulkhead. Silently he mouthed the names, reaching deep within his memory to match them up to faces. His eyes did a tour of the bulkheads, searching, listening for voices he hadn’t heard in thirty years.

In officers’ country Hardy stuck his head into the wardroom and glanced at the silhouette charts of the various classes of Japanese shipping displayed on the bulkheads. He pointed out the old 78-rpm record player on the overhead shelf. Another of Cook’s contributions. “We had about the best collection of Glenn Miller records in the entire fleet.”

“Yes, sir. They’ve been removed and stored.”

Hardy ignored him. “Stanhill,” he murmured, “that’s all he ever played. Glenn Miller. Remember ‘Moonlight Serenade’?” Frank gave him a patronizing smile.

With a last look, Hardy moved down the corridor. Frank watched him step into the officers’ stateroom, then followed and stood by the door while he explored the curtained sections inside. Frank waited until Hardy slid back the curtain covering his own berth, then stepped in and came up behind.

“Small, isn’t it?” Hardy’s smile did not match his voice. He was hurting—a deep, long-ago hurt. Frank refrained from comment; he was doing a little soul-searching of his own. Maybe Cook was right. This was like calling the cadence for Hardy’s march through hell. He waited, sensing the anguish building inside the old man.
 

Hardy was staring at the pillow at the head of his bunk. Slowly, as if in a trance, his hand crept under the pillow and felt around.

“It’s in your locker, sir,” Frank said quietly. “We didn’t know quite where you kept it.”

Hardy looked up at him and examined the younger man’s face, then turned and opened the locker. He took out a framed photograph. The Elena of many years ago smiled at him. Frank watched him struggle to keep the tears back.

“Your wife?”

“Yes. I lost her in 1963.”

The two men stood in silence. Even McClusky’s gang had stopped their frantic activity aft. Hardy sighed, his emotions finally in check. “May I take this with me?”

“Everything in here belongs to you, Professor.”

“Not quite.” Hardy put the picture on his bunk and reached back into the locker. “I never had enough money for two of these.” He pulled out one of two officer’s caps hanging on hooks and tried it on. Frank smiled at the obvious misfit. Hardy slipped it off and flipped it over to look at the inner plastic lining. There was a fleeting look of anger and distaste.

He handed the cap over, and Frank read the name stenciled on the lining: BATES, W.
 

Frank silently cursed the stupidity of whoever it was on the cleanup crew who had stowed Bates’s cap in Hardy’s locker.

“How about the forward torpedo room, Professor?”

Hardy simply shook his head. “I’ve had enough for one day.”

Cook and Frank walked the Professor to a waiting car. Hardy accepted Frank’s invitation to dinner, then sat back in the seat and stared at his wife’s picture as the car drove off.

Cook finally relaxed. “Must have been pretty rough down there.”

Frank shot him a dirty look and handed him Bates’s cap. Cook was effusive in his apology. “Jesus! Talk about mixing oil and water...”

Frank nodded. A stupid mistake like this could have set Hardy off like a skyrocket. This time they were lucky. Next time... He felt drained. The tour of the boat was not enough. It was going to take a hell of a lot more to get Jack Hardy involved.

Frank and Hardy took an early dinner at the Officers’ Club. Just the two of them. As if by mutual agreement, neither mentioned the
Candlefish,
so the conversation was light, at times bantering.

Halfway through dessert, it dawned on Frank: The wrong man was doing all the talking. In the course of an hour plus, Hardy had managed to pump out of Ed Frank nearly his entire background, from the six-year-old boy who learned of his father’s death at Omaha Beach on D-Day, to the early years at the Academy, through Submarine School and then sea duty. A little alarm went off just before Frank started to recount his posting to NIS. What amazed and amused him was Jack Hardy’s deftness. He could have been a natural interrogator. His questions were direct without putting Frank on his guard. Hardy gave the impression that he really cared. He was a great listener. For the first time since his return from Washington, Frank was completely relaxed. He pushed away his coffee cup and refused a second refill.

Hardy, polishing off a dish of chocolate ice cream, was busy watching the room fill up with officers and their women. He grew reflective again. “I’ll make a purely scientific observation, Commander.”

“What?”

“The ladies are getting prettier. Maybe it’s the setting, or maybe I’m starting to slip into senility, but they’re definitely prettier.”

“Whatever you say, sir... but since we could do without those distractions, what do you say we go off to a place where we don’t have so many of the fairer sex?” He called for the check and hustled Hardy out into a balmy Hawaiian evening.

Hardy sat quietly, as Frank slowly toured the car through the base. Hardy smiled now and then as he saw something he remembered from the past. Frank didn’t intrude. Let the man come down off his high, he thought. The fun and games were over. Business was about to begin. The car rolled to a stop, and Hardy chuckled when he saw where they were. “The Clean Sweep, huh? Very subtle, Commander.”

“If you’d rather not—”

Hardy waved it aside. He got out and waited while Frank retrieved his attaché case from the trunk.

In the wartime parlance of the Submarine Service, “clean sweep” meant a successful return from a war patrol: all torpedoes expended and, hopefully, all targets, sunk. A broom lashed to the periscope of a sub slipping back into home base was a signal to others that the boat had “swept the seas clean” of enemy shipping.

The bar was a favorite haunt of SubPac officers. Its walls bore a collage of photographs of the great sub skippers: Lockwood, Grenfell, Morton, O’Kane. From lofty perches they looked down on a new generation. There were photos of crews, old supply ships, and exotic stations, along with other memorabilia. Equipment used by submariners was scattered throughout the bar. It almost qualified as a museum—an ongoing tribute to the thousands of men who wore the Golden Dolphins.

Frank listened as Hardy slid back into recollections. But the Professor was still shutting out the
Candlefish.

Frank decided on a new tack. “What made you get into submarines, Professor?”

Hardy, a cagey look on his face, cocked an eyebrow at Frank. “You just said it.”

“What?”

“The movie
Submarine,
with Jack Holt and Ralph Graves.”

Frank, who had never heard of either
Submarine
or Jack Holt, nodded as if he understood perfectly.

Hardy saw through him. “I guess I better explain.”

He told Frank about growing up in Connecticut, on Long Island Sound; how he had developed a love for boats, all boats. When he became old enough, he went sailing every chance he could get—mostly with friends whose fathers had sloops, yawls, or ketches that put out from West Haven every weekend. His own parents ran a small dockside market which, during the spring and summer, did landslide business when the weekend sailors came up from Manhattan and Long Island to race and drink beer. Jack’s knowledge of the local waters, plus his ability to handle his share of the work, made him a welcome addition to the crew of many a fine boat. His parents, sensing his enjoyment, never tried to tie him down to the store. Besides, he was great public relations for their business.

In 1929, as an eleven-year-old boy, he saw his first submarine movie. For an hour and a half he sat motionless, and when the film was over he knew where his life was headed. But, just to make sure, he sat through the next performance.

The Great Depression made a big gouge in his sailing time. Men who had once owned boats suddenly found themselves hard-pressed to keep jobs. His parents barely eked out a living during those hard times, and he was obliged to spend his spare hours helping in the store. Still, the dream persisted. And still he sailed—when he could.

In 1936, just before he graduated high school, he began to pay attention to the fact that the Navy’s Submarine School was at New London, Connecticut—barely thirty miles from his home. But he decided it would be better to become a Navy officer first, then later volunteer for submarine training. So he applied to tile U.S. Naval Academy. His appointment came about through the help of one of the families who still sailed during the season. He then promptly failed the entrance exams.

Humiliated, frustrated, but refusing to give up, Jack Hardy finagled himself into a prep school for a year, took the exams again, and finally entered Annapolis in the fall of 1938.

“And then?”

Hardy became interested in a toothpick. He held it out in front of him, studying it. Finally he locked at Frank. “I imagine your department has a pretty good fix on what I’ve been doing since 1938, Commander. Not everything, but... we all have our little secrets.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“No. I don’t think I would.”

Their attention was diverted by a group of young officers apparently celebrating the last night of bachelorhood for one of their number. Shouts of condolence and advice reverberated around the room. After much milling about, it was decided that they would all go to a certain house off the base. Amidst much confusion, the party left.

Hardy, who had been enjoying the scene, turned back to Frank. “Why is it that men who are about to get married feel obliged to go out and tie one on? That never changes.”

It was a piece of cognac philosophy, and Frank neatly dovetailed it into what he wanted to be the topic of the evening. “I’ll tell you something else that hasn’t changed, sir.” Hardy looked up woozily.
“Candlefish.
After thirty years, still the same. No age, no rust, no crew. Any ideas?”