Annapolis, page 59
During the Great Depression, Japan, like so many other nations, had given herself to her militarists. To preserve Japan’s sovereignty, and their own ascendancy, the militarists had decided to drive white colonialism out of Asia, replacing it with something they called the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. This was a fancy name for the yellow colonialism of Japan, and the millions of Chinese who were slaughtered in the decade before Pearl Harbor could distinguish it only by its savagery.
Finally, in the summer of 1941, the Japanese occupied the capital of French Indochina, with the approval of their German allies, and President Franklin Roosevelt decided that enough was enough. It was the first time that many Americans had ever heard the name of the capital—Saigon—or the other name for French Indochina—Vietnam—and already they heard trouble.
Roosevelt froze Japanese assets, banned the sale of raw materials, and stopped the flow of American oil, which had been fueling the Japanese war machine.
“Now,” intoned the narrator of the film, “Japan’s back was to the wall.”
“Oh, really?” Susan’s husband said out loud. He was the kind of guy who liked to show how smart he was by talking back to movie screens and television anchors, and that alone made him divorceable, but in this case, he was right.
“All they had to do,” he whispered, “was stop their aggression and get out of Indochina, and the oil would have flowed.”
So, she wondered, who was telling this story, the winners or the losers, or someone trying to placate both?
And then the Arizona exploded on screen—an astonishing piece of color footage taken at the moment when a five-hundred-pound bomb detonated in the forward magazine, lifting the ship from the water and in a single flash killing over a thousand sailors—more U.S. Navy men than were killed in the Spanish-American War and World War I combined.
Susan found herself getting angrier—at the film and, almost irrationally, at the Japanese tourists in the audience around her. What was wrong with her? It was a guy thing. She was not supposed to be so susceptible to this kind of emotion. She had studied haiku in college. She loved sushi, for God’s sake.
Then the audience was ushered out into the blinding sunshine to board the launch that would take them to Battleship Row.
Little was left of the ships that had been sitting there on the morning that America changed forever. The Arizona’s crumpled foremast had long ago been removed, along with three of her four gun turrets. Now the only things that could be seen above the water were the moorings to which the Arizona had been tied, the rusting barbette from her C turret, and the white marble memorial that looked like a gentle wave rolling over the wreck.
Susan read the list of men who had died on the ship and were still entombed within her. She thought briefly of her own uncle Eddie, who had been on one of the battleships and had never spoken about it until the day he died.
From the deck of the memorial, she looked down at the rusted hull. She watched the tide rushing out, making little riffles above the barbettes and the hull fittings, and a Japanese tourist threw flowers onto the water.
Then Susan saw the oil, rising near the rusted remnants of a ventilation shaft, rising and spreading in an iridescent minor-key rainbow of colors, rising every few seconds from a ship that had been dead for half a century and was still bleeding.
This was no guy thing. This was about the families those men had left behind and the future they’d never had. It was about the concussions of a blast that had traveled through time. And most of all, it was about the decisions people made to make history. It did not have to happen like this. It never did.
And the oil had mingled with the flowers, and the tide had carried them both away.
And she had thanked her husband for bringing her.…
Jogging down Prince George Street to the harbor, she thanked him again for getting out of her life six months later, leaving her with their daughter and her films.
And this film would have to include that: the USS Annapolis, still sitting out there, because Pearl Harbor had led to that, too. Americans had resolved that they would never let something like Pearl Harbor happen again. Submarines like the Annapolis all but guaranteed it. And groups like the Institute for Advanced Naval Planning tried to make sure that the guarantees were backed up in green American cash.
IN A SUBMARINE, four men in black wet suits synchronize watches. Then, one by one, they climb into the forward escape trunk. The hatch closes beneath them.
“Now, the water floods the trunk while on the surface, all is quiet.”
The ocean is gray-black. The lights of the enemy target can be seen in the distance. And now, rising like spirits from the sea, two small motorized contraptions that look like a cross between a jet ski and a torpedo, begin to speed silently across the water toward the enemy target, each carrying two of the SEALs.
Now the music, which sounds like the music for all of these films—dull, obvious, generic—begins to pound.
“The new Sea Sprite ultra-silent jet ski insertion vehicle, from Danson-Crafting, the leaders in swimmer-delivery vehicles.”
Blank screen.
Steve Stafford flipped on the lights in a little video viewing room at CHINFO. There were televisions tuned to CNN everywhere in the place. The whole Pentagon was wired into CNN. But there were also rooms for the private examination of film footage like this.
The reporter from the Baltimore Sun had asked to speak with someone who had commanded a sub in World War II but still had a modern perspective. Steve had called on the best broad-range expert he could think of.
And the admiral did not disappoint. He even came all the way to Washington, bringing that little film and plenty of charm for someone who would help get the story out. “That piece of film is the kind of thing we’re being asked to consult on at the institute these days, at least those of us who were Op 02.”
“That’s Navy Department talk for the Submarine Warfare Division,” explained Steve Stafford.
The reporter, a young guy on his first big feature piece, jotted down a few notes, and the admiral suggested they continue their talk in the park at the center of the building. “That way, I can watch for my next appointment.”
Once they were settled on a bench in the shade, the admiral went to war, taking the reporter through World War II, the Cold War, the moment in the Cuban Missile Crisis when he joined the picket line of submarines and destroyers stopping the Russian ships, right through the 1980s, “when the money flowed like water.”
“How would you categorize the present?” asked the reporter.
The admiral said, “You know, there’s an old joke: after John Paul Jones, who were the two greatest heroes in U.S. Navy history? Admiral Yamamoto and Admiral Gorshkov.”
The reporter chuckled politely at that.
“It was true,” said the admiral. “They gave us something to build against. Now, it’s us against the chaos theory.”
Steve chuckled at that because it was one of the admiral’s favorite phrases. It was also true.
“Chaos demands a versatile response. Now, my World War Two boat, the Nautilus, sank enemy shipping, conducted periscope intel missions, and put marines on beaches at night. The current SSNs take that same versatility and enhance it a thousandfold.”
Just then Steve noticed an old man in a shiny brown suit and skinny brown tie appearing at the south entrance corridor: Lloyd Shank.
Lloyd Shank was a retired Defense Department lifer. He and the admiral had met at a seminar of Civil War enthusiasts in 1963, familiar Pentagon faces recognizing each other off-campus. They had talked, Lloyd had mentioned that his great-uncle, Gabriel Shank, had been with the Twentieth Maine. Tom had recalled the name from his own family’s past, and they had been friends ever since.
Steve Stafford liked old Lloyd, who wore black-framed eyeglasses that had gone out of style in the sixties, smoked three packs a day, punctuated his talk with a cynical seen-everything insider’s chuckle, and, according to scuttlebutt, knew the location of more buried bodies than there were in Arlington National Cemetery.
The admiral saw Shank, too, and with the polished grace of a smooth-talker, he quickly summed up for the reporter: “The point is that we’re less worried about the Russians in deep water today and more concerned with projecting our power through the littoral zone. So we need a new generation of submarines to meet the new challenges. And all those exotic swimmer-delivery vehicles are part of the program. It’s called forward thinking.”
Then he shook hands and excused himself.
“Don’t forget lunch,” Steve reminded him.
“Absolutely. Your grandmother is thrilled that you’re bringing that PBS gal down to the Patuxent.… She’s hoping you’re sweet on her.”
“She’s ten years older, Grandpa.”
BY NOON, WHEN Steve Stafford’s car ran in under the sycamores, the admiral was galloping Wildair across the Patuxent fields.
“He sees us,” said Susan, who was sitting in Steve’s back seat.
“Looks like he’s been waiting,” said Jack. “I think it’s going to be all right.”
Steve did not tell them that the admiral was not expecting Jack.
Betty was talking before she even opened the door. “You’re early, Steve. And Cousin Susan, so good to see you again.”
“It’s good to see you, Betty,” said Jack.
“Oh, Jack…” She gave him a quick hug. “It’s been too long.”
Susan glanced into the dining room, where the old Filipino houseboy was hurriedly setting another place at a luncheon table set for four. Susan did not know Betty Stafford well enough to read the nervousness in her gestures. The extra place was the first inkling Susan had that the admiral was going to be surprised by Jack.
“So,” Betty was saying to Jack, “where do you plan to live in Annapolis?”
“At the Fine Folly, if all goes well.”
Betty’s plastered-on smile crumbled, and she looked at Steve. “I guess he doesn’t know?”
“Know what?”
“The institute is moving very quickly to buy the house.”
“The Institute for Advanced Naval Planning?” said Jack.
“I didn’t know,” said Steve. Then he realized why the admiral had been at the Pentagon that morning.
Jack’s whole body seemed to sag. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this fast.”
“I called Lloyd Shank as soon as I heard you were in town.” The admiral now appeared in the doorway from the dining room. He was wearing a brown turtleneck and a brown tweed jacket. His face was flushed after his long gallop. “I told Lloyd to bypass the damn lawyer who’s handling the ancillary probate in Maryland. Go straight to the Maine lawyer who’s the administrator of the estate, make a preemptive bid. Four million.”
“My typical brother.” Jack glanced at Susan. “Instead of calling me to say hello when I come to town, he gets about the business of screwing me. Has the offer been accepted?”
“Lloyd Shank is contacting the other blood relatives. We can’t get a purchase-and-sale agreement until the estate clears probate, but we’ll have something on paper by tomorrow.”
“Do you know who the Maryland lawyer is?” asked Jack.
“Why should I? I’m just an overseer of the institute. The day-to-day running—”
“His name is Oliver Parrish,” said Jack.
Betty brought her hand to her face. “Oh, my. Our Jimmy’s friend.”
The admiral’s flush deepened.
Susan was trying to make sense of it all, and not doing a very good job of it. But before she tried very hard, it was over.
“I’m sorry, Steve, and Cousin Susan, but I’ve lost my appetite,” said the admiral. “The minute he comes here, he starts bringing up things that we don’t want to talk about. And it takes my appetite right away.”
“I came here to try to talk with you, Tom. To try to make you understand what I’m doing in this book.”
“I’ve read it, Grandpa,” said Steve. “Or at least part of it.”
“Tell me about it sometime. I have a new horse I want to exercise.”
“You’re a stubborn bastard,” Betty said to her husband. “And I hope Cousin Susan puts that in her film.”
“I don’t care.” And he stalked out.
“Miz Stafford, I got a nice lunch ready,” said Juan from the doorway. “Nice crab cakes for everybody. I don’t want ’em to go to waste just ’cause the admiral a stubborn bastard.”
“I’ve told you before, Juan… you’re not supposed to swear.”
Jack calmed down over the crab cakes.
He wouldn’t talk about the book any more. He told Betty that he would give her the first seven chapters before he said another word about it. And maybe she could talk some sense to her husband. “I can’t get the story right until I’ve interviewed him.”
And Betty promised to see what she could do.
What amazed Susan through the rest of the meal was the way all of them could avoid the big problems sitting right there on the table looking at them—just chitchat their way around everything. Maybe it was a learned skill.
By the time they were leaving, Betty was going on about this and that, and Jack was chuckling at all her jokes.
Steve, however, had run out of things to say.
And his silence took on weight as they went past the front room on the way out. He stopped in the doorway, then stepped into the room, as if he could not resist. In a moment, he was standing in front of the picture of his father and the framed Purple Heart beneath it, studying them as if he had never seen them before.
“Steve visits his father’s medal whenever he comes,” explained Betty. “I think it comforts him to see his father here among all the other Staffords. Makes him feel rooted.”
Susan could see why. She had sensed it before but not really taken it all in: the room was a shrine to all the characters in Jack’s book. Black Jed, painted by Charles Willson Peale, hung over the fireplace. On the opposite wall, painted by some long-forgotten Chesapeake artist, was Captain Jason Stafford. There was a portrait of Abraham Stafford in one of those front-to-back cocked hats that admirals had worn in full dress until the thirties. And familiar photographs filled in every space between doorframes and windows.
She was drawn to a photograph of three brothers in the bright sunshine on Waikiki, with Diamond Head behind them. It looked like it had been taken sometime before the Second World War. She recognized Jack and the admiral, both young and powerful, but—
“That’s their brother Billy,” said Betty, anticipating Susan’s question.
“Is Billy in the book?” It was the admiral. He had appeared at the screen door, as though he could not stay away from an argument.
“Of course he is,” said Jack.
So the admiral opened the door and came inside. “Tell me one thing, Jack. This book of yours, do you tell the truth about what you did in 1942, when you were tramping around Honolulu with Eddie Browne?”
“Uncle Eddie?” said Susan. “My uncle?”
“Your family drops in and out of our story a lot,” Jack explained. Then he said to his brother, “I want to write the truth about everything. That’s why I write about myself in the third person. And that’s why I’m here.”
“All right, then,” said the admiral. “Let me read what you have. If you tell the truth about 1942, I’ll sit down and talk with you.”
And Susan saw what might be her only chance. “I’d love to get that on tape.”
The admiral said, “If I agree to talk, you can film us under a tree right on the Academy grounds.”
“If you agree to talk,” said Jack, “will you agree to stop the purchase of the Fine Folly?”
To that, the admiral shook his head.
“If I can’t get the house, then at least I’ll get the truth out of you, you old son of a bitch.”
“I’ll see what truth I get out of your book, first, you older son of a bitch.”
The Stafford Story
Book Eight
Dispatches from Armageddon
December 7, 1941
“Yes, Mr. and Mrs. America, the lights have gone out all over Europe.” Jack Stafford brought his mouth closer to the microphone. “But our peacetime cities still illuminate the Atlantic night and silhouette Britain-bound freighters.”
The microphone wiggled its toes.
“While somewhere out there, the U-boats lurk.” Jack kissed the microphone, right on the pad of the big toe. From the other end of the bed came a giggle.
“Hey,” he said, “you wouldn’t laugh at Edward R. Murrow.”
“Edward R. Murrow wouldn’t kiss my big toe.”
“He’s not trying to get a job at CBS.”
Lois Hoyt leaned on her elbows and looked down at him. She was no beauty. All the makeup in the world couldn’t do a thing about the bent nose or the army of crows that had gone stomping over her face. Maybe that was why he was working down here, where the view was better.
What a bastard. But what a life—suite at the Plaza… lunch from room service… pink panties and boxer shorts rumpled in the sheets.
She gave his ass a squeeze. “Come up here, lover boy.”
He was only twenty-three, but he wasn’t quite ready. He’d done it twice the night before, once already today, and it wasn’t even quarter of two.
“Let me finish my audition,” he said.
“Honey, you’ve been auditioning since last night. An executive secretary can do a lot for a guy with good pipes. And I don’t just mean the voice.”
He brought his mouth to the sole of her foot and scratched his stubbled cheek along the smooth skin, making her twitch.…
AT ABOUT THE SAME time, Lieutenant Bill Stafford was coming home at fifteen thousand feet, piloting a Douglas Dauntless SBD, with the beauty of Oahu unfolding before him and a beautiful wife waiting at home.
His plane was one of eighteen dispatched by Admiral Halsey from the Enterprise shortly after 0600. They had flown to scout sectors a hundred and fifty miles ahead of the task force. Now they were pushing on to the Ford Island Naval Air Station. Enterprise had been due back at Pearl the night before, but bad weather had delayed her in transit from Wake Island.
