Annapolis, page 37
“All those months in chains, Uncle,” said John. “They opened my eyes.”
“Besides,” added Antonia with a little smile, “it’s a fair question.”
Jason let the carriage rock a moment. “Do you honestly think old Zeke is in chains? And where would he go if I gave him his freedom?”
“The insoluble question,” said Antonia. “Now tell me, Jace, how are Margaret and that dear little baby I’m hoping to see today?”
Jason laughed. Her talk of slavery could slide into family chitchat as easily as that. “They’re wonderful. Being a father at fifty-six has made me young again.”
“Traveling to Washington has made me feel five years older,” she answered. “I hope this is worth it.”
“Gideon would have approved.”
The carriage stopped at the State, War, and Navy Building, a Georgian brick edifice next to the White House.
Antonia commented on the beauty of the White House grounds, a far cry from the days when they used to visit Tom Jefferson there.
“A pity we have that damn Tennessee Democrat Polk sitting inside,” said John, “and no hope of ending slavery.”
“But Polk has appointed a Massachusetts man as secretary of the navy,” said Jason, holding his sword at his side as he climbed out after them. “His ancient association with your parents is our only concern today.”
Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft had founded the Round Hill School in Northampton, Massachusetts, and in 1830, he had hired a one-legged veteran of the War of 1812 for the faculty. Long after he left Round Hill, Bancroft had remained in touch with the Brownes.
He was a big man with a fine-trimmed display of white side-whiskers and a gaze that could slice like a saber through lazy students or lazy ideas. He invited them to sit facing the windows so that they could look out at the White House. “I couldn’t let the Brownes come to Washington without giving them time for a visit. I trust, John, that you’ve found a career to make up for the… unpleasantness.”
“Yes, sir. My father would be proud.”
“His mother is proud,” said Antonia.
“And his uncle,” said Jason, “is proudly using both of them to reach you, sir.”
“I suspected as much, Captain,” said Bancroft.
Jason placed an envelope on the table. “This is from William Chauvenet, director of the naval school at the Philadelphia Asylum. He sent us both copies, I believe, but he asked me to see that you received it personally. It’s a letter that outlines his opinions about a two-year course of naval study.”
Bancroft glanced at John Browne. “I see a good reason sitting right here.”
“My son has found his life’s work,” said Antonia, “but Gideon would have been happy to know that our misfortune may contribute to a better system of naval education.”
“We can have no more Somers incidents.” Bancroft leaned back in his chair. “Chauvenet’s letter reached me the week I was sworn in. My only criticism is that it doesn’t go far enough.”
“It doesn’t?” Jason restrained himself from smiling. Smiling lessened an officer’s air of authority. But this news was better than he had hoped.
“We need this school,” Bancroft went on. “We need a place to house these boys. But we have to do it in a way that leaves the Congress out.”
“Is that proper in a democracy?” asked Antonia. “Keeping Congress out of it?”
“Still asking the hard questions, Antonia?” Bancroft chuckled. “The president appoints me. Not Congress. They only supply the money. If I can find a way to spend what I have and do something better with it than was done before, I’ll do it.”
“Have you heard of Fort Severn, Mr. Secretary?” asked Jason.
“Fort Severn, in Annapolis?”
“Yes, sir. The state of Maryland wants this naval school, and Fort Severn sits right on the spot where God would put a naval school, sir, if God were secretary of the navy.”
Bancroft considered this, wrote a note to himself, then another. And right before them, a plan began to evolve. “Put Chauvenet together with the best shipboard schoolmasters. Persuade the army to give over Fort Severn before Congress can stop it…”
“Sir,” said Jason, “you’ve read my mind.”
THAT NIGHT THE Staffords and Brownes drank champagne at the Washington Navy Yard, and Antonia met Jason’s new son. His name was Ethan, and he was afflicted with one of the worst cases of two-year-old troublemaking she had ever encountered.
“Is this a son for the soil or for the sea?” Antonia asked as Ethan lifted up her skirt.
“For whatever he wants,” said Margaret. “He’s our prize boy.”
Gently Antonia pushed him away. “I hope you’ll let me see him regularly. It’s not often that I have males so interested in my skirts.”
“Whenever you visit,” said Jason.
“Well, I’m moving back.” Antonia sat on the settee. “I decided while I was looking out Bancroft’s window at the White House. There’s a great crisis rushing toward us. This city will be the pivot point.”
“If Bancroft gets his way,” said Jason, “I hope to move back to Annapolis.”
“With Stafford’s Fine Folly as your home?” Antonia sensed something moving near her leg. She kicked absent-mindedly.
Jason sipped his champagne. “That would be a nice way to end up.”
“Do you think that the Parrishes will—” Suddenly an excruciating pain shot up her leg, and she let out a shout. Whatever she had kicked was biting her ankle.
Margaret ran behind the settee and dragged little Ethan out from under it.
“My God,” cried Antonia, “that little bugger drew blood!”
And John Browne began to laugh. It was a strange sound, because he seldom laughed. “Another rebellious spirit… in need of naval discipline.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Submarine
October 10
Did Antonia really say the things that Jack Stafford put in her mouth? Was she really that prophetic?
It was early morning in Annapolis. Time to get a little exercise. Susan left the bed-and-breakfast and jogged down the street.
Where was this story coming from? How much was Jack’s imagination and how much of it had happened? He was calling it a novel, and that was a problem, because PBS would never let her use anything that wasn’t documented.
The more she read, the more she wanted to get her hands on Jack’s research, and the more convinced she was that she wanted to do this film.
Antonia was her own ancestor, and that boy chained to the deck of the Somers. They were part of her own memory stream. They belonged in her dreams, as surely as her dead grandmother did.
Susan jogged past the marine guard at Gate One, then out along Fleet Landing, to get a look at the big gray submarine tender sitting out there. She backtracked past LeJeune Hall.
She never stretched before she ran. She knew that she should, especially on a chilly October morning. So after a few more yards, she stopped and loosened those hamstrings, stretched out the Achilles’ tendons.
Midshipmen, faculty, and staff were always jogging along the perimeter of the Academy, so Susan didn’t look out of place.
Neither did that guy in the navy sweatshirt, who stopped to stretch when she did. She’d seen him out on King George Street. And he was right behind her when she came through Gate One.
So… he was lazy, too, and didn’t stretch when he should.
She stretched in front of Dahlgren Hall, the mass of granite built during the Academy expansion at the turn of the century. But she was more interested in finding Fort Severn, so she could imagine Jason and his son walking around it.
It had to be somewhere near here.
She ran down Cooper Road, which separated Mitscher Hall from Bancroft, the largest dormitory in the world. Mother B. made Cooper Road feel like a canyon cut through gray granite. And somewhere near the last wing, where supply trucks rumbled up to the back of the dormitory, she found a plaque that described the fort that had once stood there, when that spot was at the water’s edge instead of several hundred yards inland.
She read the plaque, looked at the picture, and noticed that the jogger in the navy sweatshirt had stopped to massage his calves.
Either he hadn’t stretched enough or he was following her.
Trying to spy on her? Or hit on her? She had been hit on before while jogging, but usually it took the hitter a few miles before he made his move.
She wouldn’t get any live shots of Fort Severn. So she headed toward the river, feeling looser and better as she went.
Then she glanced over her shoulder.
Still there.
Past the Santee Basin, around Dewey Field, a left turn at the bank.
Still there.
She looked at her watch. She was ten minutes into the run. This was where she usually gave a little kick, picked up her speed, and tried to sustain it for five or ten minutes. She liked the sensation of power she felt coursing through her at this point. Now was the time to test herself.
She turned away from the river, behind Nimitz Library, the modern cube of glass and concrete at the northwest corner of the campus.
Still there. Keeping pace.
She knew he wouldn’t try anything funny on the Academy grounds. All she needed to do was whimper for help, and she’d have protection descending from every corner.
But once she left the campus, who knew what he might do?
So she jogged almost to the gate at Preble Hall, then turned and ran right toward him and then right past him, just to see what he’d do.
He didn’t hesitate or disguise his intentions. He lowered his head and shoulder, like a square dancer leaning into a turn, and followed.
He looked in his late forties, blondish hair, and as fit as any midshipman stepping off to class. Then he shocked her by calling her name.
She ran about five steps and stopped, right in front of the entrance to the Naval Institute Book Store. “Who are you?”
“Historians would say I’m a Stafford’s worst nightmare—a Parrish with the keys to Stafford’s Fine Folly.” He loped up to her and offered his hand. “Ollie Parrish.”
“Why did you chase me?”
“I was jogging past your guest house, the one you listed with the business card you gave to Simpson Church, my caretaker, and there you were, fitting his description—short brown hair, pretty face, and nice legs… uh, those are his words.”
He gave her an appraising once-over that would have made her flesh crawl, except that she realized she was looking into that other gene pool, the one that included Rebecca Parrish.
So she gave him an appraising once-over right back: broken nose, squint lines, no wedding band, a nice friendly smile, but something about him… something very intense. Maybe that was the reason for no wedding band.
“You and I should talk,” she said, trying to sound as though she had not been intimidated.
“There’s not much to say. I’m handling the ancillary probate in Maryland for the Shank estate. The Maine attorney has ordered me not to allow anyone into the house until the probate business is concluded and all the members of the estate weigh in on what they want done with the house. That means no one from any military think tanks, no PBS film crews, no dinner-hour snoops.”
He knew. But Susan continued to play dumb. “Who’s snooping?”
“You and old Jack Stafford.” He gave her a kind of cold-steel smile. “And you could be arrested for trespassing.”
She thought about admitting her guilt, just so she could ask him why that old office had been restored and hung with Rebecca’s portrait. But it did not pay to pull the strings on someone who seemed so tightly wrapped. “Do you have a card?”
“Not in my sweats. I live here in Annapolis and have an office in D.C. And if you get it into your head to sneak into that house again—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She leaned down and massaged the cramp she felt coming in her calf. “But while we’re on the subject of the house, will there be a time when you’ll let us in?”
“Not any time soon. But if you’re making a film about the Staffords, you’ll have to come to me at some point, just to get the truth, so… how about lunch?”
The mood change surprised her. So did the remark. Of course, surprising people was probably something this lawyer was very good at. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m touring the Annapolis at lunchtime, today, but if—”
And he surprised her again by rattling off a few facts: “Annapolis. SSN 760. A marvel. Faster under the water than most things are on the surface. Sonar so good it can hear a fish fart. Mark forty-eight torpedoes, six hundred thousand dollars each. Tomahawk cruise missiles, a million dollars each. Not navy-certified to carry nuclear warheads, thank Christ, but don’t forget”—he raised a finger, like a schoolmaster—“man hasn’t made a weapon yet he hasn’t used. I know. I’ve used a lot of them. So… how about breakfast tomorrow. Chick and Ruth’s, on Main Street?”
Whew. All of that without ever taking a breath. She wouldn’t miss breakfast with this guy for anything. She said so, a bit more subtly, and Oliver was off, jogging back across the yard, then running, then all but sprinting… like a man twenty years younger.
A LITTLE BEFORE eleven, with Oliver Parrish still rattling around in her head, Susan arrived at Fleet Landing and was surprised again: Jack Stafford had finagled an invitation to tour the Annapolis, too. He was schmoozing the Baltimore Sun writer and photographer. And standing off to the side, letting his uncle do the talking, was someone who could only have been a Stafford.
Dark, square-jawed, wearing short-sleeved working khakis with his lieutenant’s bars on the collars and a fine spray of campaign ribbons across his chest: Steve Stafford.
She liked his smile. He seemed a little cocky, which they said about fighter jocks, but not so cocky as he might have been, which they said about ex–fighter jocks. For a fleeting second, she calculated his age versus her own, mid-twenties to mid-thirties. He was still a boy.
And then he said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”
No one she could recall had ever called her “ma’am.”
They headed out in a Naval Academy cabin cruiser. The two guys from the Baltimore Sun sat up on the bridge. Jack, Steve, and Susan sat in the cockpit at the stern, so that they could look back at Annapolis.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Jack.
“No, you don’t,” said Susan.
“You’re wondering why I’m along on this little junket. Well, this submarine is the future of the navy, so it has to be in the book somewhere, probably toward the end, after the part where Steve punches out over Iraq.”
“That means ejected, ma’am,” said Steve.
“Please, call me Susan. ‘Ma’am’ makes me feel like I’m about fifty years old.”
“Yes… and let me correct what Jack said. The submarine is part of the navy’s future. But like a good football team needs a ground game and a passing attack, the navy will always need aviators to go along with the submariners.”
“But, Steve, you’re on the sub warfare account,” said Jack. “Your job is to make submarines sound like the only things that deserve any more funding.”
“We all could use more funding,” said Susan.
• • •
SHE WAS AMAZED at how small the Annapolis was: three hundred and thirty-five feet, but most of it close to the waterline, the lowest profile you could find.
“Not much to it, is there?” said Jack as they descended the gangplank from the sub tender.
“The surface ship drivers call this the sewer-pipe navy,” explained Steve. “You climb in a big pipe crammed with electronics and torpedoes and bunks and food, along with a nuclear reactor, and you go looking for bad guys.”
They boarded at the weapons loading hatch, the largest entrance on the sub. And Susan was struck, the moment she descended, by the almost luxurious feeling of the air—cool, dry, perfectly monitored. Then her eyes adjusted. She realized that the companionway was just wide enough for one person, and the two cabins that she peeked into—one for the captain, the other for the executive officer—were just large enough for one person. She wondered if fresh air might be the only luxury aboard.
The executive officer greeted them and led them to the control room, which was about the size of a big living room, crammed with gauges, consoles, navigation tables, and two big periscopes. “This is where everything happens, the brain of the boat, if you will.”
He showed them the fire control computers, the sonar tracking systems, the control stations for the helmsman and planesman. Susan had been expecting a bridge like something from Star Trek. This looked more like the control room of a power plant. And not a grace note anywhere in what the XO called “the most perfect war-making machine afloat.”
The first thing the Baltimore writer asked was, “How much did this perfect machine cost the taxpayers?”
“Eight hundred million,” said Steve Stafford with a professional and not at all defensive snap to his voice.
“Eight hundred million!” cried Susan, surprising herself. “Jesus! For what?”
Things went downhill from there.
JACK WAS STILL laughing when he and Susan sat down with Steve in Buddy’s Crabs and Ribs after the tour. “Honey, if you think those Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarines are expensive—”
“Which they aren’t,” said Steve, “considering what they can do.”
“Spoken like a public affairs officer,” said Jack. “Tell her how much the new Seawolf and her sisters are costing.”
“Uh… two billion.”
“For what? The Soviets are gone, and we have war in the streets. What are we spending our money on those things for? How many do we need?” asked Susan.
“It’s a big ocean,” said Steve. “Sixty attack submarines don’t go very far.”
“‘A nuclear submarine fleet is the future of the armed forces,’” said Jack.
“Do you really believe that?” asked Susan.
“No, but the Russian Minister of Defense does. He said it a couple of years ago. And the Russians are still putting their money where their mouth is. While their surface navy rusts, they’re building subs even quieter than that monster you saw this morning. And countries like Iran are buying submarines. And China is building them. We need more vigilance, not less. But we need to be vigilant about the way we spend our money, too.”
