“That business concluded, can we finally join Cletus’s guests?”
The No-Longer-Virgin Princess’ knee found Clete’s knee within thirty seconds of their taking their seats at the dinner table. Her hand followed a moment later.
Anticipating this move, Clete caught it with his own hand and held it.
She turned to him in surprise.
“You look very nice in your dinner jacket,” she said innocently.
“And you are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life,” Clete said.
[FOUR]
Radio Room
USS Alfred Thomas, DD-107
100 Nautical Miles Due East of Punta del Este,
Uruguay
0615 30 December 1942
Ensign Richard C. Lacey, USNR, the Communications Officer of the Thomas, a short, somewhat pudgy twenty-two-year-old, had spent most of the night trying to familiarize himself with the intricacies of the ship’s cryptographic machine. Though all of his effort had resulted in virtually no success, he was hoping he’d be able to muddle through when he had to.
When Chief Schultz was still aboard, he politely suggested more than once that while only the supervision of shipboard cryptographic activity was among the communication officer’s duties, not the actual operation of the equipment, it might be a good idea for him to show Mr. Lacey how the equipment actually worked.
Lacey declined the Chief’s offer, thinking that as long as the Chief was aboard, the Chief could handle the decryption operations. And he would of course supervise them.
Captain Jernigan himself made it crystal clear that Chief Schultz would remain aboard. “When you get a good chief, Mr. Lacey,” Captain Jernigan said, “any good chief, but in particular a good Chief Radioman, you do what you can to keep him. Chief Schultz will leave the Thomas only over my dead body.”
Captain Jernigan was still alive. But Chief Schultz was gone, replaced by Radioman First Class Henry Clatterman, who was younger than Ensign Lacey. Clatterman promptly announced that he really didn’t know diddly-shit about the cryptographic machine when he came aboard, and that despite Chief Schultz’s on-the-job training on the voyage, he was still baffled by most of what he was supposed to do.
With a little bit of luck, however, Mr. Lacey felt that the professional inadequacies of the communications section might not be brought to Captain Jernigan’s attention. Or at least delayed: The first attempt to communicate with the Devil Fish was scheduled for 0615. At this hour, the Captain, following his routine inspection of the ship after rising, normally took his breakfast.
At 0612, Captain Jernigan entered the radio room.
“We all set up, Mr. Lacey?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Clatterman?”
“We’re ready, Sir.”
Precisely at 0615, Clatterman started pounding his key in an attempt to communicate with the US submarine Devil Fish, which was somewhere on the high seas between the coast of Africa and the coast of South America.
There was no reply after three attempts.
Mr. Lacey was enormously relieved. They would try again, according to the schedule, at six-hour intervals hereafter—at 1215, 1815, 0015, and 0615. Eventually communication would be established. Between each try, there would be an additional six hours for him to learn how to operate the cryptographic machine.
“Clatterman, try to contact the Nantucket,” Captain Jernigan ordered. “They should be monitoring the frequency. If you reach them, send Contingency Code Six in the clear, and then stand by for a crypted reply.”
“The Nantucket, Sir?”
“The Devil Fish, I hope, has by now made a rendezvous with, and is being accompanied by, a fleet tanker,” the Captain explained. “I only know the names of two fleet tankers operating out of Panama, the Nantucket and the Biloxi. We’ll try both of them; a fleet tanker will have better communications than a submarine. What have we got to lose?”
“The call sign, Sir?”