Ghosts of Bungo Suido

THIRTY-FOUR

The chief of staff, now Rear Admiral Mike Forrester, welcomed Gar into the SubPac headquarters conference room. An aide Gar hadn’t met before brought coffee and then withdrew.

“Well, Gar, how are you?” Forrester asked after they’d fixed their coffees.

Gar was hard-pressed to answer that as he stirred his coffee. His hands still shook a little, but that was getting better. He’d been driven over that morning to Pearl in a staff car. The top floors of the Pink Palace were still in the hands of ComSubPac, but Gar was currently the only resident. The marine guards and the concertina wire barriers were all gone, and the hotel was making preparations to close for a year’s worth of major renovations, after which it would reopen as a true luxury resort. Gar had arrived back in Pearl on an army transport ship from Guam only three days ago, and even after all the downtime aboard the transport and the medical attention in Guam, he was still very tired. He knew he was one of the lucky ones, actually. Too many of the men who’d been POWs for as long as three years had not survived liberation, ground down by tropical diseases, slave labor in dank coal and copper mines, constant brutality at the hands of Japanese guards and officers, unending starvation, and the sheer hopelessness of their situation. One of the last things Gar had done at the coal mine camp was to collect all those tin medallions from the tree next to the camp crematorium.

He’d learned that the Japanese army general staff had indeed issued standing orders to kill all the prisoners throughout Japan at the first sign of an invasion on the part of the Americans and their allies. When the atom bombs forced them to surrender, they didn’t know what to do, so they simply abandoned the camps and let the prisoners fend for themselves. Allied planes tried to supply the camps via parachuted food and medical supplies for the first two weeks until ships could arrive, but much of that material ended up strewn over surrounding countryside, where starving civilians naturally helped themselves. Even after nearly eight months of captivity, Gar was one of the stronger ones, although he’d lost 35 pounds and three of his teeth were in questionable shape.

The following thirty days became a blur — liberation from the camp, the first triage stations, then truck transport to a safe harbor, a voyage to Guam followed by medical treatment, SubPac debriefings, the restoration of service records, ID card, pay account, basic uniforms, and all of that, followed by passage back to Pearl. Gar was sure that most of them had gone back into the POW endure-mode until the navy finally declared them relatively fit for limited duty.

It was in Guam where he finally learned the fate of Dragonfish. She’d made it out of the Inland Sea and back to Guam, where she’d received a hero’s welcome, both for the penetration of Japan’s inner waters and the damage done to Shinano. Joe Enright and his Archer-fish claimed the kill, and with that one sinking, Enright became the third-highest-tonnage scorer of the Pacific War. What Dragonfish had managed to do at Kure had slowed her down on the run to Yokosuka, and that allowed Enright, whose persistence was legendary, to finally torpedo her. That was the good news. The bad news was that on the next patrol out to empire waters, Dragonfish had disappeared.

There was simply no information on what had happened. Gar was saddened beyond belief to hear it, while at the same time relieved that his getting caught on the bridge in a crash dive hadn’t been the proximate cause of her loss. Then he felt guilty about feeling that way. The senior submarine captain who debriefed him in Guam, one of the division commanders, set him straight. “You didn’t lose your ship, Gar. Your exec, Russ West, who took over as captain, lost his ship. What you did by closing that hatch while you were still topside was a heroic thing, and you’re up for a Navy Cross for that and a second one for the attack on Kure. Other than that, it’s fortunes of war, Gar. Fortunes of war. Think about it any other way, you’ll go nuts.”

Now, home, sort of. Home had changed a lot since V-J Day. The Palace was practically empty. The submarine piers sported two, count ’em, two submarines. The pack of carriers, cruisers, battlewagons, and destroyers that used to crowd the 10–10 pier across the way was gone. The troop transports were all at sea, bringing GIs back from hellholes such as Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Saipan, Tinian, even Guadalcanal. The base streets were no longer humming with truck traffic, or any traffic, really. The shipyard across the lagoon was down to one shift. The O-club had closed for major renovations. All gone. Everybody had gone home. Except him, it seemed.

“Gar?”

“Sorry, Chief of Staff,” Gar said. “How am I? I’m very, very tired, and I’m mostly sad, I think.”

“Dragon?”

Gar nodded. “And what I went through as a POW. I knew war was a titanic waste of human life and material, but I saw things that beggared the imagination. Even so, I had it easier than a lot of other people, especially the Brits.”

“I understand you were at a camp near Hiroshima? A coal mine?”

“Yes, sir. There was a ridge between the camp and the city, maybe two thousand feet high. That’s the only reason we didn’t have all our skin fried off, too.”

“I’ve seen a picture,” Forrester said. “The one the B-29 took.”

“Didn’t do it justice,” Gar said. “That thing boiled up from behind that ridge and all we could think about was the end of the world, and here came Satan. When the liberation teams finally reached us, they took us to a ship anchored out in Hiroshima Bay. We went through the city in open trucks.”

“How’d you get through all the debris?”

“There wasn’t any. Just bare earth, bare streets, a couple of concrete buildings that looked like broken teeth, and no people. No birds, no dogs, nothing living down there, for as far as the eye could see. It was quiet as the tomb. There’s a river that goes through the city. It was filled to the banks with the wreckage of cars, bridges, telephone poles, and probably under all that ten or twenty thousand people, based on the smell.”

“Japs are claiming they lost sixty to seventy thousand people in one instant at Hiroshima.”

Gar nodded. “We saw some of them going up. Nothing came back down. Nothing.”

“Jesus.”

“Well, I went through the war saying ‘Remember Pearl Harbor’ every time I killed a ship. I guess they’ll remember it now.”

“You’re not alone in that sentiment,” Forrester said. “We’re still toting up our own butcher’s bill, but it looks right now like we lost fifty-two boats in this goddamned war. That’s three thousand five hundred people — one out of every five guys in the submarine force, killed.”

“I didn’t know that,” Gar said. “I guess nobody wanted to tote it up while it was still going on.”

The chief of staff sighed aloud. “I wept when the news came that they’d surrendered. Wept for joy, and then wept for all those ghost ships still on patrol, known but to God where or even why they went down. Uncle Charlie feels even worse than I do about it, and we were on the winning side!”

“Once we learned how, we hurt them, though, didn’t we. Hurt ’em bad.”

“That’s absolutely correct,” Forrester said. “We bled them white. The submarines more than anyone else destroyed their ability to wage war. We shortened the duration of the war. No one doubts that for a minute. But it cost us three and a half thousand of the best people the Fleet had to offer, officers, chiefs, and enlisted. Like you said, what a colossal waste.”

Gar remembered thinking the same thing when he watched Shinano go down. “When’s Admiral Lockwood getting back from Guam?” he asked.

“Early next week, assuming he can get a flight. Believe it or not, the logistics problem right now is bigger than it was during the actual hostilities. Thousands of people headed back stateside, most of the fleet boats headed for decom, commands and staffs being dissolved left and right. And of course, Emperor Doug MacArthur demanding everything and everyone so he can get set up as the regent in Tokyo. Washington’s yelling at everybody, and we’re jumping through our asses here.”

Gar thought that the chief of staff’s lament was just a bit surreal. These were all real problems, of course, involving real people. He himself was one of the problems. Still, compared to what the whole world had just gone through, starting with Hitler going into Poland way back in 1939? This was more a case of the big brass not knowing how to shut it down for a while. If they wanted to keep feeling important, than everything had to be a crisis. As for himself, the future was unclear. He’d eventually be assigned to some ship or station, but probably not in submarines, for the simple reason that almost all the fleet boats were going to be razor blades within the next two years. Only the newest boats would be kept, and not many of them. He voiced these observations to Forrester.

“You’ll be assigned here temporarily,” Forrester said. “BuPers is going crazy trying to deal with the demobilization while every naval officer who thinks he’s got a career ahead of him is jockeying for this and that job. Three of our COs were sent to commands back in the States that no longer existed when they got there. What do you think you want to do?”

That last question slipped in casually, but Gar knew it was an important one. He was, in more than one sense, homeless. No family other than his aged mother, back in Pennsylvania, whose mind had seeped away just before the war. No wife, no family, and absolutely no desire to ever go back to sea in a submarine. He had five more years to go before he could retire on twenty years at half-pay and start a second career, doing — what? Coal mining, perhaps?

“Am I promotable?” Gar asked.

“Oh, hell yes, I’d expect you to make captain on the next list,” Forrester said. “Your war patrols were successful, and your last mission was — extraordinary, to say the least. The real question is, what then? War College. Washington. An attaché job? Unless of course you want to stay with submarines?”

Gar shook his head.

“Right, I didn’t think so. In a way our COs are hoist on their own petards here. The acme of a submariner’s career is wartime command of a boat. After that, what compares?”

After what he had been through, Gar wanted to say, anything else compared most favorably. He’d achieved that bright shining zenith Forrester was talking about, with the net result that all his people were now asleep in the deep somewhere out in that vast Pacific Ocean. More ghosts.

The aide came back in, apologizing for disturbing their meeting. “This concerns Commander Hammond, Chief of Staff,” he said. He handed Forrester a piece of official correspondence, glanced at Gar, and then left the office. Forrester fished out his reading glasses, perused it, and frowned.

“Well, isn’t this is a fine kettle of fish,” he said. He looked over at Gar. “This is from the CincPacFleet JAG’s office. It says an army air force major who was a POW has accused you by name of collaborating with the Japanese, and that a court of inquiry will be convened to examine the merits of this accusation.”

Gar was stunned, until he remembered his discussion in the boxcar with — what was his name? Something Franklin.

“Collaborated? What the hell does that mean?”

“I guess we’re going to find out, Gar. Know any lawyers?”

I used to know one, he said to himself.

THIRTY-FIVE

At 1500 that afternoon he was sitting in the waiting room of the judge advocate general’s offices at Pacific Fleet headquarters. The headquarters building was a leftover from the scary days right after Pearl Harbor — three stories of ugly, bare concrete, a bombproof bunker underneath, and most of its corridors on the outside of the building masquerading as lanai walkways. It was built on the edge of the dormant crater called Makalapa. Gar had never been in the headquarters building — lowly three-stripers serving in the fleet ordinarily did not have any business even visiting the five-star’s head-shed.

“Commander?” the yeoman said. “Captain White can see you now. Right through there.”

Gar went into the PacFleet JAG’s office. Captain White was a severe looking four-striper with gray hair and piercing eyes behind steel-rimmed eyeglasses. Before the war every navy captain Gar had ever seen looked like that. Now most four-stripers were in their early forties, so this captain had probably been here since before the war. White pointed unceremoniously toward a chair in front of his desk.

“Commander Hammond,” he said. “Let me set the stage here before you say anything at all. You have been designated as an interested party to a court of inquiry, to be convened here in Pearl Harbor, in order to determine if certain accusations made by another officer regarding your conduct as a POW are true. Is this what you’ve been told?”

“More or less,” Gar said.

“Okay. I see here you’ve requested Lieutenant Commander DeVeers to represent you at a court of inquiry. Short answer: That will not be possible, and frankly, not advisable. She has been assigned to a long-term project while she waits for her discharge.”

“Discharge?”

“All the WAVE officers were temporary commissions in the Reserves. They will now all be discharged and returned to civilian life.”

“Why’d you say ‘not advisable’?”

White looked down at the pile of papers on his desk for a moment. “Lieutenant Commander DeVeers has a problem, Commander. A problem that, in my opinion, has affected her performance of duty. I would not want her as my defense counsel, and neither would you. If she were to have anything to do with this court, it would be in the capacity as counsel for the court. But like I said — she’s simply not available. In fact, I may have to do it myself.”

“Counsel for the court — the prosecution, in other words?”

Captain White leaned back in his chair. “No. This isn’t a court-martial. It’s a court of inquiry. Two very different things. A court of inquiry means a board of three line officers — captains, in all probability, since you’re a commander — chaired by the senior officer of the three. For admin purposes, the court will be convened by the 14th Naval District commandant. It’s a temporary entity — it’s convened for a specific case and then disbands once findings are made. The statute provides for a lawyer to be assigned to the court as counsel, since the members are all line officers. His job is to keep the court within bounds of proper legal procedure. To keep it fair, the ‘interested party’ gets one, too, assuming you want one. The whole point of a court of inquiry is to determine what further action, if any, needs to be taken in the matter.”

“And that further action could involve a court-martial?”

“Indeed it could.”

“So I do want a lawyer, right?”

“As I said, the court will have one, so I certainly would advise you to have one, and we will appoint one if you so request. You have rights in these proceedings. You get to confront your accuser, examine and cross-examine witnesses, if any, and introduce evidence. What you can’t have is Sharon DeVeers.”

Already have, Gar thought irreverently.

On the way out of the JAG’s office he asked the yeoman for a staff directory and found Sharon’s phone number. Once down at the front entrance he used an internal phone to call her. Her yeoman said she was busy, so he left a message asking her to meet him at the Pink Palace that evening, if possible. Being an orphan at the moment, he didn’t have a phone number, other than the front desk of the hotel. He told the yeoman he’d check back and said to tell Lieutenant Commander DeVeers that this was a business, not a personal, call. Then he took a shuttle bus back to the sub base. He needed to find more permanent digs at the BOQ now that the Pink Palace was shutting down. SubPac was releasing the requisitioned rooms in ten days, as most of the force’s submarines were already on their way to West Coast shipyards for demobilization. When it came to actual submarines, the sub base was becoming a ghost town.

He also needed to refill his seabag. He needed a complete set of uniforms and some civvies. He’d left the Dragon in a come-as-you-are exposure suit and work khakis. Unless they’d off-loaded his personal effects between getting back from the Kure operation and her last patrol, everything he owned went to the bottom with her, including his academy ring. Basically he had to reconstitute everything and, oh by the way, face a court of inquiry because of something he’d said to an army air force major in the back of a Jap boxcar. He still couldn’t believe this was happening. Having survived all of the things that had happened to him over the past nine months, he now had to face an investigation by his own superiors while everybody else was headed stateside for Christmas.

Sharon showed up in the lobby at six thirty. She tried unsuccessfully to hide the shock she felt when she saw Gar. She looked none the worse for wear and still wore that waterfall of blond hair pulled across her forehead. Gar found himself wanting to touch it.

“Goddamn, Gar Hammond,” she exclaimed. “You look like you got shot at and missed, shit at and hit.”

“You look pretty good, too,” he offered. They did a two-handed handshake and then just stood there for a moment. “My long lost, one true love,” he said.

“Hell, yes,” she replied, with that big grin. “Let’s get a drink, before they dismantle the bar.”

They spent the next two hours in a corner booth. The hotel wasn’t exactly deserted, but it had the air of a place that was going to close pretty soon, and the staff obviously knew it. He told her his story, soup to nuts, and she listened intently. When he was finished, she asked why he had said this was business tonight. That’s when he told her about the court.

“That’s bullshit,” she said. “A court of inquiry for a ‘he said, she said’ story? Bullshit. Total bullshit. I’ll tell you what a court of inquiry is for: Would you believe I’m working on setting up yet another high-level investigation and inquiry into the December seventh attack on Pearl Harbor? And they want to take you to a court of inquiry?”

Total bullshit, indeed, he thought. Besides, who didn’t know the answer to the question of who was responsible for the disaster that was Pearl Harbor? The fucking Japanese, that’s who. “That’s what they’re telling me.”

“For collaborating with the enemy?”

“I told this major that I talked to them. And I did talk to them, mostly to stop them from killing any more prisoners. They knew I’d been a CO, and they knew that I probably knew important stuff. That guy sat there and had a prisoner shot right in front of me when I did the name-rank-serial-number deal. Then they brought out another one — shot him, too, after I said I’d talk to them. They’re not human — they’re a bunch of medieval monsters from the tenth century.”

“What did you tell this major that you gave up to the Japanese?”

“I told him I’d talked to them. That I delivered a whole lot of bullshit, exaggeration, lies, and some truths.”

“Did you tell him exactly what you told them?”

“No.”

“Did you tell him that you talked to them to save other prisoners’ lives?”

“No. Well, maybe. I can’t remember.”

“Then here’s the answer: You request an admiral’s mast. You have that right when a court-martial is in the offing. Look, if a court of inquiry determines that whatever you did constituted collaborating with the enemy, you will be court-martialed and jailed until the end of time.”

“How does an admiral’s mast prevent that?”

“You were a CO — you did captain’s mast, right?”

“Rarely, but yes.”

“And if it actually came to bringing one of your crew before captain’s mast, is it true to say that you could have, under navy regs, sent him to court-martial?”

“Yes, although we almost never did that.”

“Listen to me, Gar Hammond — lady lawyer speaking now. You request an admiral’s mast within your chain of command — that’s ComSubPac. You have that right. You tell the truth about what you said to the Japs, and why, and everything that happened afterward. My view of collaborating with the enemy is a POW who trades information for better treatment, to the detriment of his fellow POWs. You didn’t do that, and any flag officer in SubPac will recognize that. An army or army air force colonel might not understand that.”

“You’re saying this court of inquiry might not be navy?”

“Absolutely. You could be looking at three army colonels, who haven’t the faintest idea of what it was like to be a submarine CO, or, for that matter, a POW. They’re more than likely to be professional staff officers, and they’ll have quaint notions like you only tell the enemy name, rank, and serial number, to the death, of course.”

“To the death,” he muttered. “Just like the Japs.” He leaned back in the booth and closed his eyes. This was too hard. He thought he’d done well. He thought he’d so dismayed that Jap intel officer that he’d even shot himself.

“Look,” she said. “You have to tell your story, the whole story. You said you’ve been put in for two very high decorations. What I’m saying is that the same people who put you in for those decorations should be the ones who hear the whole story — what you told the Japs, why you talked, how they didn’t believe any of it, what they did in the POW camp, what you did in the POW camp.”

“Do I need a lawyer with me at mast?”

“No, although White will probably appoint one for the court if that goes through. Request admiral’s mast within your own chain of command and just tell the truth. Go before Lockwood and tell him what happened. He’s a straight shooter, and he knows what you guys went through. It’s basic law: You’re supposed to get a jury of your peers. Doesn’t happen that way in civilian life, but you damned well can still get that in the navy. That’s my professional advice.”

“Whew,” Gar said. “I feel like stripping down to swim shorts and clacks and going native at the back of the island.”

“Gar, do you feel guilty about what you did out there in the Japanese prison camps?”

“Hell, no. Proud, if anything. I survived. I endured. That’s what POWs try to do.”

“Then do as I say.”

“If it goes to court, can you represent me?”

She paused. “I’m not sure,” she said finally. “Captain White makes those appointments, and he and I are not exactly on terrific terms.”

“So he indicated,” Gar replied.

“What?”

“He said that you had a problem and that he would not want you for his lawyer and neither would I.”

“That bastard.”

“He also said you were going to be sent back to the civilian world, along with all the other WAVES, now that the war was over.”

“Yes, that’s true,” she said. “I’ll be leaving here sometime next month.” She frowned. “He actually said that? He wouldn’t want me as his lawyer, and neither would you?”

“His words, not mine.”

She sat back in her chair. “If it does go to a court, you, as an interested party, can request a specific individual to act as your counsel. In a court-martial, they must agree to that request if at all possible. In a court of inquiry, that’s not always true. A court-martial can impose punishment. A court of inquiry is all about determining if there are grounds for a court-martial.”

“In English, then, will you represent me if I ask?”

“Let’s see what happens after you talk to Admiral Lockwood,” she said. “Hopefully he will interject some adult supervision here and make this whole thing go away.”

“New subject,” he said. “Fancy having dinner with me?”

She took his hand. “Sorry, Gar. Previous engagement. Whole different social scene now that the war’s over. Besides—”

“Yeah, I remember. Can’t blame me for trying.”

“I’d have been disappointed if you hadn’t. Let me know what happens.”

THIRTY-SIX

It took ten days. His request for an admiral’s mast had upset the apple cart at CincPacFleet. It turned out that the whole court of inquiry idea had come from none other than Captain White. He wasn’t pleased with Gar’s request, but Forrester managed to convince him to let Gar take a shot at mast. Now, almost a month after getting back to paradise, Gar was waiting in Admiral Lockwood’s outer office, wearing brand-new dress khakis, with a tie, even. Now that the boss was back from the advance headquarters out in Guam, the flow of staffers coming and going never abated. Gar got some strange looks from time to time; apparently they’d never seen a wartime sub CO sitting in the outer office awaiting mast. The faces were all new, and they seemed to be much younger than Gar remembered. Looking through the office windows, he was struck by how empty the finger piers looked. During the war there would have been a dozen or more boats out there, all beehives of activity. Now all he could see was palm trees. He’d moved to the sub base BOQ from the Pink Palace, and even the BOQ felt empty.

During the war. That was an expression that certainly would be coming into its own from now on. Back in my day, sonny … Gar smiled. The yeomen looked at him as if he were just a little bit nuts.

“The admiral will see you now, Commander,” a voice announced.

Gar got up, put his brand-new brass hat on, took a deep breath, and went into the inner sanctum. He expected to see Admiral Lockwood standing tall behind a podium, with a sergeant at arms on one side and the chief of staff on the other. Instead, Uncle Charlie was in his shirtsleeves and speaking loudly on his phone, probably on an overseas trunk call. Admiral Forrester was fixing himself a cup of coffee at the sideboard, and indicating to Gar to get some. They both sat down while waiting for Admiral Lockwood to finish. When he did hang up it was with a mild curse.

“We’re going to rue the day we let the goddamned Joint Chiefs of Staff have a vote on submarine policy, you mark my words,” he said to Forrester. Then he turned to Gar with a smile. “Gar Hammond, welcome back to the land of the living. What’s all this BS about an admiral’s mast and a court of inquiry? Who’d you piss off this time?”

Gar shook his head, aware that his uniform shirt didn’t fit very well at the collar. They apparently didn’t make neck sizes for ex-POWs. “Wish I knew, Admiral. Not my idea of a homecoming.”

“As I told you earlier, Admiral,” Forrester said, “this hairball originated up at Makalapa. The CincPacFleet JAG received an allegation from the 5th Air Force headquarters over on Hickam that Commander Hammond collaborated while a POW. Connie White decided a court of inquiry was in order.”

“Oh, hell,” the admiral said. “Connie White’s an old woman. Older than I am. A court is the only thing he knows. Gar, I’ve read your initial debriefing, the one taken out in Guam. That focused on operational stuff, your last patrol as skipper of Dragonfish, up to the point where you ordered the boat down while you were still on the bridge. Now I’d like to hear the whole story, from that moment on, and I’ve got as long as it takes. Just tell me what happened, and then we’ll address legal issues, if any, and for what it’s worth, I don’t think right now that there are any. And if it’s any comfort, I was very glad to see your name on the repat list. I only wish the Dragon were still alive so I could send you back to her. Now, relax, take your damned hat off, and tell your story. Please.”

Gar took a sip of flag mess coffee, put down his cup, sat back in the big upholstered chair, and closed his eyes. “Call me Ishmael,” he began, and heard Uncle Charlie chuckle.

“We thought we were just about home free,” he said. “Ready for Bungo Suido. Didn’t figure on wooden-hulled minesweepers.”

An hour later, he opened his eyes and came back to Lockwood’s office, a part of his mind prepared to find that they’d gone home for the day a few hours ago. They hadn’t. Gar had been back in Japan, of course, remembering things he wanted to forget, while knowing that that would never be possible. He hadn’t told them everything, choosing to skim over some of the details about his interaction with the Jap intel board and Charlie Chan. It took him a moment to focus on the room and the two flag officers sitting there, looking at him. Forrester deferred to his boss.

“That’s a pretty amazing odyssey, Gar,” Lockwood said. “And as to collaboration, it sounds to me more like a case of your screwing with their minds than giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Did you believe that the Priest, as you called him, would keep shooting prisoners until you answered his questions?”

“I certainly did. I think the fact that he had a second one shot after I agreed to talk to him proves that.”

“And when you appeared before that board of three intel types, when you told the colonel to call the Kure arsenal and ask if they’d had a good night — do you think they believed the things you were telling them?”

“The colonel did not, clearly, although he did go to make a phone call — or at least that’s what it looked like. One of the others indicated that what they knew about their situation and what they could say out loud were two very different things. I don’t think, on balance, that I was telling them anything they didn’t already know. They just couldn’t admit it.”

“Do you think that’s why the major killed himself there on the dry dock after the bombing raid on Kure?”

“After first trying to kill me?” Gar reminded him. “Yes. He’d just been through what was probably his first real bombing. I have to tell you, being depth-charged was always frightening — you never knew when one was going to bang down onto the forward hatch and then blow you all to kingdom come. The difference between that and a bombing raid is that you do know, especially if you’re out in the open. I was nearly flattened by the first bomb, and that one landed a half mile away. Then they came closer. I think he shot himself because he knew in his heart that this was the future, and that everything the top brass in Japan had been putting out was a lie. They were done. Finished. So was he. To tell the truth, while those bombs were falling, I just wanted to die. It would have been preferable to what I was going through.”

The admiral sighed, looked at his watch, and got up from his desk. “Lemme think about all this, Gar,” he said. “See if we can find a way to stomp out this little brushfire without causing even bigger problems.”

“Thank you, sir,” Gar said, also rising. “After everything that’s happened, I’m not sure what to do at this stage.”

Gar walked back to his BOQ room wondering if going to see the admiral had been a good idea or a big mistake. Lockwood had been friendly and concerned, but strangely, at the very end, noncommittal. There’d been no protestations of this all being total BS, no “just let me think about it.” Forrester hadn’t said a word, and that worried him. The chief of staff had been friendly enough, but Gar could never be sure where he stood with Forrester. He wanted to call Sharon and get a reading from her, but even she’d been a little standoffish about further contact, unless it came to a court, and even then, there was doubt. He thought about going to get some chow but decided he wasn’t hungry, perhaps for the first time in weeks. He went up to his BOQ room, lay down on the single bed, and tried not to think about what was coming.

Two days later, Gar found himself once again waiting in Admiral Lockwood’s outer office. His appointment was with Admiral Forrester, who made him wait fifteen minutes while he dealt with a small parade of staff officers coming in and out of his office.

“Commander?” a yeoman said, indicating he could go in.

When he went into the office, he found Forrester seated behind his desk and another officer, a lieutenant junior grade, standing to one side. The jay-gee was tall and thin and looked to Gar like he was maybe sixteen years old. There were no dolphins on his shirt, either.

“Come in, Commander,” Forrester said. “Take a seat. This is Lieutenant Falcone, from the CincPacFleet JAG office. Mister Falcone, this is Commander Hammond.”

They shook hands, and then both sat down. The fact that Forrester was calling him Commander and not Gar did not bode well.

“Commander Hammond, the court of inquiry is going to proceed. I know that’s not what you wanted, and, frankly, not what we wanted, either.”

“This is Admiral Lockwood’s decision?” Gar asked.

Forrester frowned, clearly not liking Gar’s insinuation that only Lockwood could make that decision.

“The admiral has considered the matter,” he said. “And he spoke to Vice Admiral Rennsalear, who’s moved up to chief of staff at PacFleet. The thinking is that you would be better served going before the court than if ComSubPac were to be seen interfering and perhaps papering over these allegations. Admiral Lockwood feels that you have more than a good case to refute the allegations, and that being cleared by the court is a much better outcome.”

“Not going before a court of inquiry would be an even better outcome,” Gar said. “Besides, I did ask for an admiral’s mast. He can certainly make a decision at mast, can’t he?”

“Yes, he could, but as I said, the thinking is—”

“The thinking is that if the submarine force’s reputation as the all-powerful Silent Service is to be impugned, better it come from some court of inquiry than from Uncle Charlie.”

Forrester stared at him. “Commander, watch yourself,” he said. “I know you’ve been through a lot, but there are limits to the amount of insolence I’ll tolerate, sir.”

“Especially now that the war’s over, right, Admiral?” Gar asked, standing up and picking up his hat. “Peacetime is back with a vengeance, isn’t it. Okay, why not? I’m glad to finally know who my real friends are.”

With that he strode out of the office before Forrester could say anything. When he reached the headquarters parking lot, he heard someone calling his name. He turned around to see the young lieutenant hurrying after him. That’s when it penetrated that Falcone was a JAG officer.

“Commander,” Falcone said, “I’m supposed to be your counsel, sir.”

“Lucky you,” Gar said.

“Sir, may I have a word? Or better yet, can I buy you a beer?”

“Do I look like I need a drink at eleven in the morning, Lieutenant?”

Falcone blinked. “Yes, sir.”

Gar laughed. “Sold,” he said. “Assuming the sub base O-club is still in business. The rest of the submarine establishment seems to have folded its tents.”

They found a corner table and ordered sandwiches and a beer each. Gar asked Falcone when he had been appointed.

“This morning, sir,” Falcone said. “They told me to get down here to the sub base for a meeting with the chief of staff.”

“So there’s definitely going to be a court of inquiry.”

“Oh, yes, sir. Monday, starting at 0900, at the 14th Naval District headquarters building.”

“That gives us, what, three days to prepare my defense?”

Falcone hesitated. “Sir, defense is the wrong word here.”

“Not from where I’m sitting, Lieutenant.”

“I know, sir. You’ve been accused of a serious infraction, collaboration with the enemy in time of war. But you’ve not been charged. There’s a big difference.”

“Sounds like lawyer talk.”

“It is. Lawyers have to be specific, sir. If you were charged, then by now you’d have been arrested and confined. We’d be looking at a general court-martial, with a prosecutor, who’s called the trial counsel, a defense attorney, who’s called the defense counsel, and the members of the court, who are the jury. The prosecutor would be presenting evidence against you, and I’d be trying to poke holes in that or present some kind of evidence to the contrary.”

“Isn’t that what’s going to happen Monday?”

“No, sir. Captain White, our senior JAG, will introduce the allegations made against you, and, if they can find him, they’ll get Major Franklin to testify as to what he heard you say.”

“And if they can’t find him?”

“Then they’ll just read the allegations out in the courtroom. Couldn’t do that in a court-martial, but this is an inquiry into the facts, not a trial.”

“I’ve been told all this, Lieutenant,” Gar said. “But from my perspective, it sure looks like a trial. Lawyers on both sides. Senior member equals judge and jury, assisted by two more line officers. Evidence against me and for me. If the court of inquiry finds that there’s sufficient reason to go to court-martial, that’s as good as a conviction. And after that I go to the brig.”

Falcone looked uncomfortable.

“What?” Gar asked.

“After that, sir, I regret to inform you that you could go to a firing squad,” Falcone said. “Collaboration with the enemy in time of war is a capital offense.”

Gar sat back in his chair. Welcome the fuck home, sailor. First a Navy Cross and now a firing squad? He should have taken his chances with that damned hatch. All those ghosts down in Bungo Suido would have been more sympathetic than any of these CYA staffies back here in Pearl. A capital offense. No wonder Lockwood and Forrester had run for cover. That wasn’t like Lockwood, so Gar figured this was Forrester’s recommendation.

“So what do we do now, Mister Falcone?”

“We begin by you telling me your side of this story, Commander, but not here. In my office conference room up at PacFleet, where I can record it, and then transcribe it.”

“How long have you been out of law school?” Gar asked.

“Harvard, ’43,” Falcone said.

“Well, that’s a good start,” Gar said. “I think.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

They did the transcription that afternoon. It took longer than it had in front of Lockwood because Lieutenant Falcone asked questions. A bulky RCA tape recorder went through two reels of tape in the process, while a stenographer sat in one corner typing silently into a desk-sized Ireland stenotype device that produced a continuous roll of paper. Gar was tired by the time they quit at five, both from the telling and the remembering. Lieutenant Falcone was obviously aware of this. He suggested that Gar go get some rest, and that they’d meet again Saturday afternoon to discuss strategy.

The following afternoon, Falcone surprised Gar with his first suggestion.

“We’ll ask for an immediate recess,” he said.

“Really?”

“Yes, sir. I’m going to ask for an immediate recess so that the members of the court can read the record of what you’ve been through. I’ll suggest to them that this will better prepare them to ask questions. It will also spare you the emotional labor of reliving your experiences by having to give three hours of testimony.”

“You think they’ll do that?”

“I certainly would. The only risk is that they will be much better prepared to ask questions, but from what I’ve heard and read, you’ve done nothing wrong.”

“A group of senior line officers might think differently,” Gar said. “I wish I could get a POW or two on this board. By the way, do we know who is going to be on the board?”

“Court, not board, sir. And no, we don’t. Probably won’t even be submariners. This isn’t about your conduct as the CO of a boat. This is about your conduct as a POW. I expect they’ll be captains, with a really senior captain in charge. If it’s any consolation, they won’t know what this is about until it convenes.”

Gar smiled. “You may have gone to Harvard, Lieutenant, but I guarantee they’ll all know exactly what this is about by opening day. Pearl’s a small place, really, and there’s not much a captain, USN, doesn’t know about what’s happening in the harbor.”

“That was probably true during the war, sir, but these days most of the faces around Makalapa are brand-new. I’m actually one of the few JAG officers who was here in early ’44 and who’s still here.”

“You know Sharon DeVeers?” Gar asked.

“Yes, sir, and she’s leaving soon, too. All the WAVES are going back to civilian life, from what I hear.”

“I wanted her as my attorney for this thing,” Gar said, “but Captain White said no. Said she had a problem, and that I’d be better off with someone else.”

Falcone stared down at the conference table and said nothing.

“Do you know what that problem might be?” Gar asked.

“Lieutenant Commander DeVeers is a pretty sharp lawyer,” Falcone said. “She was a state court judge back in ’41.”

“And?”

“I guess you should ask her, Commander,” Falcone said. “It’s not my place to—”

“Booze, isn’t it?” Gar asked. “She’s a hard-core alkie.”

Falcone blinked, then nodded.

“She’s damned good-looking, so I don’t guess that anyone senior up there cared when it came to liberty time. But if she showed up the next morning looking like the wreck of the Hesperus…”

Falcone nodded again.

“Let me speculate some more. She’s made some enemies up there, possibly by declining certain invitations in favor of other invitations. Or by surprising the shit out of opposing counsel who were focusing on her legs while she was focusing on their case.”

Falcone raised a hand. “Guilty,” he said. “She’s good, real good.”

“When she’s sober.”

“Yes, sir, when she’s sober.”

“May I ask a favor?”

“Sir?”

“Will you talk to her, tell her what you intend to do, see what she thinks?”

“Does she know this case?”

“She does. I met with her after White told me no. And you should know, we’d met before, socially, back before I left for my last patrol.”

Falcone gave Gar a speculative look. “Socially,” he said.

“Yeah, Lieutenant, socially. It’s what she’s really good at.”

Falcone blushed. “I’ll talk to her, sir, if that’s what you want.”

“Yeah, that’s what I want. What the hell, having been a judge, she may have an angle we haven’t thought of.”

“Anything’s possible, sir.”

On Monday, Gar arrived at the 14th Naval District headquarters building at eight thirty. He was dressed in service dress khakis, complete with tie. Except for his single appearance in Lockwood’s office, he hadn’t worn this dress uniform since leaving Pearl on the Dragon’s special mission to the Inland Sea. The one he had on now was his original uniform. Before departing on her final patrol, Dragonfish had put all of Gar’s personal effects in a seabag and handed it in to the SubPac admin in Guam, who’d sent it on to Pearl, where headquarters maintained a locker for the personal effects of the missing in action. He’d even retrieved his Naval Academy ring, which he’d presumed had gone to the bottom with the Dragon. The uniform fit him like a beach towel. Lieutenant Falcone told him to wear it anyway — it would accentuate his much-diminished physical appearance.

Falcone met him at the main entrance, and together they went to the courtroom on the second floor. It was a large room that looked more like a classroom than a court. There were the obligatory green-felt-covered tables, one for the witnesses and counsel, and a second for the JAG officer who would act as counsel to the court of inquiry. One long table was set up along the wall for the members of the court. Gar saw that there were three places set up on the long table, each with its own silver water carafe, glass, yellow legal pad, and two navy-issue pens. There was no witness box and no PA system. Overhead two large fans were listlessly stirring the humid Hawaiian air. There was one row of chairs against the back wall, which Gar assumed was for spectators.

Gar took a seat at the witness table while Falcone put a copy of the transcribed debriefing at each member’s place, plus one for the court’s counsel.

“Think they’ll grant the recess?” Gar asked.

“I prebriefed Captain White,” Falcone said. “He’s going to be court counsel. He thought it was a good idea and said he would so advise the court.”

“So did they find my good buddy Major Franklin?”

“He’s in a hospital in Oakland. He has a case of what they call black lung, whatever that is, complicated by pneumonia. He’s in bad shape. The docs don’t really expect him to make it.”

“Black lung is what you get from breathing coal dust down in a mine,” Gar said. “Most of us tried to wrap something over our nose and face when we were down there. Sometimes the guards wouldn’t allow it.”

Captain White came in at nine and informed them that the court would not convene this morning. He personally was going to take the transcripts to the president and each of the members, and they would convene formally once the members said they were ready. This arrangement saved everyone concerned the process of convening and then immediately adjourning.

“Commander Hammond,” White said. “You sure about this? I understand that you agreed to it?”

“I did. Why wouldn’t I — it’s my testimony.”

“Yes, it is. Let me ask you — does this transcript describe your interaction with the Japanese interrogators?”

“Peripherally,” Lieutenant Falcone said. “We figured that’s where the questions would focus, and we’d let Commander Hammond expand at that time.”

White thought about that for a moment. “You understand, Commander Hammond, that my role as court counsel is not to act like a prosecutor. The president and the members will ask the questions. My job is to referee — to make sure neither they nor you venture too far afield, and also to answer questions of law.”

“What’s your point, Captain?” Gar asked.

“The central issue here is whether or not you gave the Japs anything more than name, rank, and serial number. Do you admit doing that in this transcript?”

“I guess I do,” Gar said. “I didn’t given them anything of real value, but—”

White held up his hand. “Say no more, Commander. Let’s save it for the hearing. But as a point of law, you’ve admitted that you did what has been alleged. The president has the right to terminate the hearing based on that alone and then proceed directly to findings.”

Gar hadn’t known that. He looked at Falcone, who shrugged. “You’ve never denied it, sir,” he said. “Because it’s the truth. The truth is supposedly what we’re here for. I see the central issues differently from Captain White. I see two issues, actually. One, were you justified in doing what you did. I think that’s self-evident. Two, did you do damage to the American cause, and I think, once they read your testimony and discuss it, you did not.”

“You better hope so, Lieutenant,” Captain White said. “May I have the transcripts, please?”

“They’re right there, sir, on the table.”

After a day of waiting, Gar thought he was beginning to go crazy. He was deeply angry that he was being accused of treacherous conduct. If he’d made it back before the war ended, this would never have happened. Now that the war was over and the huge military establishment that had been needed to win it was being dismantled, it was a totally different ball game. Careers were at stake, with whole commands at risk of simply going away, and the legacy of senior flags at risk as investigations like this one ground through their paces. Gar knew that the submarine force had made something of a religion out of their Silent Service trademark. They didn’t brag, but they made sure the statistics were in plain view.

The silent, invisible menace presented by American submarines was one of the least-kept secrets of what they were already calling World War II. Admirals like Lockwood and Forrester were juggling two hot potatoes: how much of the submarine force would survive the massive demobilization, and how much of the force’s image would survive the inevitable explorations by historians over issues such as the torpedoes, the fact that the submarine force suffered the heaviest losses of any ship type in the navy, the sub captains who broke under the strain of command, and incidents like this one, where one of their skippers, honored as a hero for choosing to stay on the bridge during an emergency dive, was accused of aiding the enemy. Gar knew from years of experience that the submarine service wanted above all to solve its own problems in-house. So why had Lockwood acquiesced to this court of inquiry?

Lieutenant Falcone called the following morning, as Gar was getting ready to go back over to the naval district headquarters. The opening day’s session had been postponed for one more day. Apparently the members wanted more time to read, study, and prepare questions for the actual hearing. Great, he thought. Another day of stewing in the BOQ. Falcone, however, had a plan. He had provided each member with a legal yeoman, whose job it was to type up any notes or questions being made by the members regarding the transcript. Those same yeomen worked for him. He had arranged for them to show him what they were putting together, and he wanted Gar to be on call that afternoon so they could begin to assess the questions and prepare answers.

“Is that kosher?” Gar asked.

“Sure,” Falcone said. “If we wanted to, we could request a formal copy of all their questions, and then ask for our own continuance to get ready. This way we can get going.”

“What’s the hurry?”

“I think the longer this court takes, the more likely it’s going to metamorphose into a much bigger deal.” His voice became oracular. “Mr. President, grave matters of principle are at stake here.”

“So maybe telegraphing my testimony was not such a good idea?”

“Do you think you did anything wrong?” Falcone asked.

“No, I did not.”

“That’s your best defense, Commander. Tell the truth. It’s a pretty amazing story. You did the best you could. You saved some prisoners’ lives. You saved your ship by staying topside in an emergency dive. Besides, they have to be careful, too.”

“How so?”

“If they decide to recommend prosecution for you on the basis of some by-the-book-with-no-exceptions rule, they send a message to the entire fleet that anyone who becomes a POW is instantly in a no-win situation.”

“You think these captains will consider that?”

“If they don’t, rest assured I’ll be raising it. Oh, by the way, Lieutenant Commander DeVeers wants to see you if you have time. She suggests you meet her for lunch at the Cannon Club on Fort DeRussy.”

“If I have time?” Gar repeated. “I have nothing but time. Or maybe not.”

“Great,” Falcone said. “I’ll tell her you’ll be there at noon, then. I should have some stuff to talk about by three.”

Gar had never made it to Fort DeRussy during his time in Hawaii. During the war it had been a staging area for the transshipment of thousands of GIs to meat-grinder islands of the western Pacific. It had also been an army coastal artillery site, complete with a battery of two 14-inch naval rifles lurking inside massive concrete bunkers high on the slopes. The officers’ open mess, nicknamed the Cannon Club, had one of the best views on the island of Oahu, overlooking Waikiki Beach and a lot of Honolulu.

Sharon showed up at ten after twelve, looking smart in her WAVE lieutenant commander’s uniform. Gar felt almost shabby in his ill-fitting khakis, but she pretended not to notice. They got a table inside, as the day was humid.

Gar ordered a cold beer, Sharon a gin and tonic. Once they had their drinks, he offered her a salud. She returned the gesture. Her hairdo was perfect, and she was, if anything, looking even sexier than the last time he’d spent time with her.

“Good to be back?” she asked with a rakish smile.

“Oh, hell, yes. Got a wonderful welcome, a medal, maybe two, and a court of inquiry, all in the same week. Great to be back.”

“Tony Falcone told me about the transcripts. Good move, that. I haven’t read them, of course, but I think they should make quick work of this business.”

“I hope so,” he said. “Although Captain White had a different opinion on what’s possible. He seemed to have a very literal point of view on my talking to the Japs.”

“Tony told me about that, too,” she said. “Captain White is sixty years old; he spent the whole war up at Makalapa, overseeing the drudgery of military law. All the interesting stuff was done by reservists who came in for the duration, specialists, say, in international law, or law of the sea. He has to retire at sixty-two, and he’s just hanging on for dear life.”

“He told me he was going to be a referee, as opposed to a prosecutor. True?”

“Um.”

“Um?”

“Well, that’s what he should be doing, keeping the line officers on the court on the legal straight and narrow. But unless the president of the court has done this before, he’ll depend on Captain White for procedural matters — what questions to ask, how far he can go with an issue, and what the other members can ask.”

“And?”

“And he’s a golfing buddy of Captain, now Rear Admiral, Forrester. He’s the guy who advised Admiral Lockwood to let this go to the court. You two have history?”

Suspicions confirmed, Gar thought. “A little bit,” he said, then remembered his last office visit with Forrester. “Maybe more than a little bit now, I guess. How do you know this?”

“It’s a small island, Gar. When you requested admiral’s mast, Forrester asked White for a JAG opinion. White asked one of the procedural law specialists to research it. He had a golf date, so he gave it to me, since I’m leaving in a few weeks and have no active cases, and therefore nothing to do, essentially.”

“And?”

“I of course recommended the admiral’s mast route. For some reason White did not agree, and guess how that all came out?”

The waiter showed up, and they focused on ordering lunch. Once he left, Gar went back to the matter at hand.

“I get the feeling that the outcome of this case is being driven by factors way above my pay grade,” he said. “What do you think?”

“You’re the submariner, Gar,” she said. “Dues-paying member of the Silent Service, in more ways than one. During the war, you guys were untouchable, unless it was really bad, like the Awa Maru case. Now that the war’s over, there may be just a wee bit of resentment against the Silent Service in the upper echelons. The Royal Hawaiian Hotel. The best chow in the navy. The relief crews who took over the subs when you guys came back from patrol. The aviators and the surface ship — drivers weren’t treated like that.”

“Damn, Sharon, you know too much.”

“Despite the fact that I’m a full-blown alkie, hunh?”

Gat stared at her. His term. Shit! Falcone running his mouth?

She sighed. “Truth is, I am just that. I am an alcoholic. I love my booze. I want another G and T, and now would be nice. I wasn’t exactly straight with you when I told you how I came to be in the navy. I was a state court judge, but I lost that position due to a car crash. The crash was my fault. I was drunk. I thank God every day that no one was seriously hurt, but the chief judge told me in no uncertain terms that I needed to find new pastures. I chose the navy. Still want me to represent you, Commander?”

“Can you function sober?”

“I can,” she said. “Of course, that’s just my opinion, and alcoholics are reliably confident that they can handle their problem. But it’s an addiction. I crave the booze. Right now I’m sober, even after one G and T. My mind is clear. I could stand up in court right now and be effective. The whole time, I’m counting the minutes to happy hour.”

“Wow.”

“That’s how it is with this particular monkey, Gar.”

“What are you going to do when you get back to civilian life?”

She stared down at the plate for a long moment. “I have no fucking idea.”

“Well,” he said, with his first grin of the day. “Welcome to the club.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

“Gentlemen, let’s get started, please. Will the interested party please stand to be sworn. Captain White?”

Captain White stood and swore Gar in. Gar acknowledged his duty to tell the truth and sat back down.

The court’s president, Captain Martell, gathered up the pages of his copy of the transcript. There were two other members of the court, both captains. Captain Hooper had just been detached from duty as commanding officer of a heavy cruiser. Captain Wilson was currently commanding officer of an escort carrier. Gar listened to their names and promptly forgot both of them. He was more tired than he realized.

“Commander Hammond, I want to thank you for your deposition. I think this will save us a lot of time. It’s a remarkable story.” The members nodded their heads in obvious agreement.

“We’re here because another officer, a Major Franklin of the army air forces, has alleged that you collaborated with the enemy while a prisoner of war in Japan. “

“Why isn’t he here?” Captain Hooper asked. “If he’s going to make an accusation like that, doesn’t Commander Hammond have the right to hear it face-to-face?”

Captain White intervened. “In a trial, yes. This is not a trial, so the allegation stands. It’s an allegation, not charges and specs.”

“Commander Hammond,” Martell said. “Do you feel it’s unfair that your accuser is not here in court?”

“I understand he’s gravely ill in an Oakland military hospital,” Gar said. “The only reason I’d want him here would be to hear his definition of collaboration.”

“I can help with that,” Captain White said, reaching for a piece of paper. “He said, specifically, that you said you talked to them. Something more than name, rank, and serial number.”

“Commander Hammond?”

“I did say that. We were in a locked boxcar, on the way to some prison camp. But I did say that.”

“Did you tell him what you talked to them about?”

“No, sir. He seemed upset, and we stopped talking. He said he’d never give them shit. His words.”

“We noticed when we met last night that your deposition speaks to being taken to interrogation, but not what transpired there. Can we assume you’ll clarify that here?”

“Yes, of course.”

“With the clear implication that you shouldn’t be giving them — anything, either?” Captain White asked.

“Objection,” Lieutenant Falcone said.

White gave him an annoyed look. “Mister Falcone, this is not a trial, therefore you may not—”

“I agree, this is not a trial,” Falcone interrupted. “It’s a court of inquiry, which means your role in these proceedings is to speak to matters of law and procedure, not ask questions as if you were the prosecutor. Sir.”

White’s face went red. His expression forecast that there would be more to be said on this subject later, boss to subordinate.

“Moving right along,” the president said, uncomfortably. “Commander Hammond, the first Jap officer who formally took you into custody — he did not interrogate you, did he?”

“No, sir,” Gar said. “He already knew I was CO of a sub, and I think he knew that we were the ones who shot up the Kure base. He’s the one who told me I would be taken to Ofuna, which I later learned is — was — their naval interrogation center.”

“He did not question you?”

“No, sir. He said there would be specialists for that. Experts.”

“Torturers, you mean,” Captain Wilson said. “I’ve heard about Ofuna.”

“Did you reveal anything to him or anyone else while in his custody?”

“Yes, sir, I did. I spoke to the CO of the carrier when he offered me a gun so I could shoot myself.”

“He did what?”

“He said he was disgusted by the sight of a commanding officer being taken around the ship with a leash like a dog. Said I obviously knew nothing about the honor required of a commanding officer. He offered me his personal pistol so I could go out on the bridge wing and regain my honor. Words to that effect, anyway.”

“And what did you do?”

“I told him we didn’t do that. I also told him that there were some things I did know that he might find interesting. That in 1942, Japan was supreme in the western Pacific. Now, its armies were starving in Malaya, defeated in New Guinea, and expelled from the Solomon Islands, which even they called the Starvation Islands. Rabaul was lost. Tarawa was lost. Kwajalein was lost. Guam and Tinian were lost. The Philippines had been invaded. Okinawa had been bombed. In Japan, the flow of oil and food and rubber and tin and coal had been cut to ten percent of what they had coming in 1942.

“I told them that they had this one magnificent carrier, and that it was very impressive, but that it was one carrier. Admiral Halsey had forty-two big carriers and thirty-five smaller ones. He was coming with a fleet of five hundred ships. The American navy had more than ten thousand ships. Soon Japan itself would be lost. And finally, that he would run a gauntlet of American submarines if he even tried to get to Yokosuka.”

“Where did you get those numbers?” the president asked.

“Made ’em up,” Gar said. “And you know what he said? He said, nice try.”

“He didn’t believe you.”

“Not at all, except maybe for all the island bases that were gone. That pissed him off, I think. That’s when I was sent below to pound oakum.”

Captain Wilson raised his hand. “Commander Hammond, why did you try to save the life of the Jap officer who was your, what’s the word, handler on the Shinano?”

“I needed him,” Gar said. He told them of his efforts to free the other prisoners, and how Yamashita had actually helped him do it.

“Why the hell would he do that?”

“Because he was scared to death,” Gar said. “The first torpedo hit way aft. She was settling by the stern. The swells were already starting to break over the fantail, and he could not swim. There were no life jackets, or lifeboats, that I could see. I was his only lifeline.”

“Did you think that through, Commander? I mean, suppose you both made it. Wouldn’t he just arrest you again and send you to Ofuna?”

“I suppose he would, Captain,” Gar said. “But that beat being sucked down into the sea by a sinking aircraft carrier. I felt my job was to survive, whatever it took. And here, for better or for worse, I am.”

“Tell us about your encounter with the fisherman, Hashimoto. You indicated that you knew him?”

Gar spent the next twenty minutes reviewing the history of Hashimoto’s involvement in the mission. When he was finished, Captain Hooper had a question.

“You never figured out what Hashimoto’s mission to Hiroshima was all about?”

“I still don’t know. The paper rain business may have had something to do with the leaflets they dropped the day before.”

Captain White stood up. “Mr. President, may I suggest a recess for lunch? It’s nearly noon.”

“Okay, we can do that,” Captain Martell said. “Back in session at thirteen thirty.”

As the court got up and headed for the doors, Captain White pointed a finger at Lieutenant Falcone. “I want to talk to you,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Falcone replied.

When Gar didn’t join the other officers to go to lunch, White said, “Alone, if you please.”

“I don’t please,” Gar said. “He’s my legal rep, and anything you have to say to him you can say in front of me.”

“Commander Hammond, get out of the way, please.”

“No,” Gar said. “I’m beginning to think that you have an agenda here, Captain. And if you press this matter with Mister Falcone, I’ll expand on that when we reconvene.”

Captain White took a deep breath and then sighed. “Later for you, Mister,” he said to Falcone, and then left the courtroom.

“Thanks, sir,” Falcone said. “But he can’t do anything to me. I’m a reservist, and I’ll soon be back in the real world.”

“He can do something to me, Lieutenant,” Gar said. “Especially if he’s in cahoots with the flags at SubPac. And something else — did you notice how Captain White shut the testimony off as soon as they started asking detailed questions about Hashimoto? I think there’s a hidden agenda going on there, too.”

“If you really feel that way, Commander,” Falcone said, “I think I have a cure for that.”

The court reconvened at 1345. Captain White had been late getting back, and Gar wondered where he’d been and to whom he’d been talking. They were all getting settled when Sharon DeVeers came into the room.

Captain White looked surprised and then asked what she was doing there.

“Commander Hammond has asked me to act as co-counsel for this hearing.”

“I did not authorize that,” White said.

“Do I not have the right to the counsel of my choice at this hearing?” Gar interjected.

“We have appointed you counsel, Commander, and—”

“Not the counsel I asked for, Captain. I’m happy with Mister Falcone, don’t get me wrong, but he’s new at this, and I’d like the experience that Lieutenant Commander DeVeers can bring.”

White looked to Martell for help, but the president just shrugged. “I have no objection,” he said. “What could it matter?”

“We have a full docket of work at PacFleet JAG,” White said. “I cannot afford to dedicate two JAG officers to this hearing.”

“I’m detaching in two weeks, Captain,” Sharon said. “Per your orders, I have absolutely nothing on my plate right now, remember?”

Gar watched Captain White struggling for a reply. If he told the court why she had nothing on her plate, it would reflect badly on his office. He sat down and said nothing.

“Gentlemen, let’s get going,” Captain Martell said. “Commander Hammond, you indicated that you first went to a formal interrogation after the sinking of the Shinano. Was this another occasion where you ‘talked’ to the Japanese?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Would you please elaborate on what you talked about?”

“They wanted to know where I’d come from, popping up in the Inland Sea like that. I told them we came through Bungo Suido and then we went to Kure and shot the place up before the carrier was sunk. They scoffed at the notion that anything had happened at Kure or that Shinano had been sunk.”

“They denied it?”

“They were deluding themselves. I think the senior officer, the four-striper, knew that Shinano had been lost, but they were hard over on covering it up. I also told them that we could see their mines underwater.”

“Was that wise, Commander?” one of the members asked. Gar noticed that their expressions all changed when he admitted telling the Japanese about their new capability.

“By that time I was very tired, Captain,” Gar said. “I’d been captured, beaten, given very little food or water, then put on board a carrier, which then was torpedoed and sunk. That meant going back into the water, a second capture, more beatings, no food, and then a session with three professional intel officers. By then I wanted them to know that they were going to lose this war no matter what they did to me. That their minefields no longer protected them. That a submarine had managed to get into their version of the Chesapeake Bay and do some real damage — two destroyers blown in two, an enormous dry dock put out of commission, two ammunition barges blown up, with shells landing all over the yard—and get clean away. I was making the point that nothing they got out of me would make any difference because the end was coming and there wasn’t a single damned thing they could do about it.”

“How did they react?”

“The captain, the senior one, was scornful, said it was all lies. I challenged him to make a phone call, see how the cleanup was going down at Kure. He took me up on that, got up, left the room. When he came back he was really pissed off. In the meantime, one of the other officers told me to watch what I said, that some things were not allowed to even be mentioned.”

“Then there was an air raid?”

“Air raid sirens; no raid. After that I was put on a train. That’s where I spoke to Major Franklin. I had had another conversation with the interrogator I called the Priest. Same theme, really. You guys can’t win this war. You’ll be fighting our machines and not us. He finally just yelled at me, and then we went to Kure. They were going to put me on a tin can for transport to Yokohama.”

“That’s where he tried to kill you, after the bombing raid?”

“Correct.”

“Why didn’t you attempt to escape after he shot himself?” Martell asked.

“And go where? One shell-shocked American, wandering around the Kure shipyard right after the B-29s damn near leveled the place? Or wading through the bomb craters in the nearby rice paddies? I was in no shape to go anywhere. The destroyer I was supposed to ride to Yokohama took a bomb in her forward magazines while I was trying to hide between her and the sill wall.”

“After that you were taken to the coal mine?”

“Yes.”

“But you were a high-value prisoner — they just lost you?”

“I think they did,” Gar said. “The people at Ofuna probably assumed I was killed at Kure. Once I was in a cattle car with other POWs, I was just another round-eye. The Brits I eventually fell in with told me I was lucky to be there and not in Ofuna.”

“How could they know that?”

“They’d been in captivity since February ’42.”

“Were you interrogated in the coal-mine camp?”

“No, sir.”

“You were the only American, and they didn’t single you out for special questioning?”

“That camp was dedicated to the production of coal and nothing else. I was singled out for special treatment. They’d yell at another POW if he did something wrong. I’d get hit with a shovel. The guards were not too bright. They were glad to be assigned at home and not starving on some hellish island, but coal was everything — even they knew that if they beat us down too much, they’d be hauling coal.”

“Did anyone try to escape from this camp?”

“Not that I know of, sir. There really was nowhere to go. We were already starving, and most of the Brits were also seriously ill. No one had enough energy to even try.”

“Gentlemen,” the president said, “let’s get back on track. Commander Hammond has been accused of collaborating with the enemy. Anyone have a question directly about that?”

Neither of the other two captains said anything.

“Lieutenant Commander DeVeers, Mister Falcone, you are allowed to bring witnesses to support Commander Hammond. Do you wish to do that?”

“Yes, sir,” Sharon said. “I would like to have Vice Admiral Lockwood testify, please.”

“Um, Commander, that’s—”

“I believe he has information relevant to this accusation. The rules allowing the accused to present evidence on his behalf make no mention of rank.”

“That would be highly unusual,” Captain White offered. “Perhaps Commander Hammond’s division commander, as his immediate superior in command, could be made available, but ComSubPac himself? That’s reaching pretty high.”

“Commander DeVeers, I tend to agree,” Captain Martell said.

“Then deny my request, sir,” Sharon said.

That gave Martell pause. If he decided not to let Gar call Admiral Lockwood, Gar’s lawyers might claim he wasn’t given a fair hearing.

“I’ll take your request under advisement,” he said finally. “I want to talk to the members about this.”

Captain Hooper, the ex-cruiser skipper, raised his hand. “Nothing to talk about. I say bring him in.”

Captain Martell looked to his left at Captain Wilson, who nodded agreement with Hooper. With the members obviously not going to support him, he conceded. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll call the admiral to testify. Captain White, can you arrange that for tomorrow, please?”

White nodded glumly.

Sharon leaned closer to Falcone. “We have some work to do, shipmate,” she said.

THIRTY-NINE

Uncle Charlie did not look pleased when he entered the courtroom at 1000. Everyone stood up when he arrived, and he kept them standing while he went to the front of the room and took a chair. He was in dress khakis, and his golden three-star shoulder boards glinted in the morning light. Rear Admiral Forrester came in with him and took a seat in the spectator gallery at the back of the room, along with a captain from the CincPacFleet staff. Sharon told Gar that he was the public affairs officer.

“Admiral Lockwood,” Martell began, “thank you for coming so quickly, sir. We know you’re a busy man.”

“Good,” Lockwood said. He hadn’t even looked at Gar and his attorneys. “Let’s get on with it.”

“Commander DeVeers, Mister Falcone, are you ready to proceed?”

“Yes, sir,” Sharon said, standing to address the admiral. She introduced herself as Gar’s co-counsel and then asked the admiral if he had had a chance to read the transcript of Gar’s testimony. Lockwood said he had. Sharon picked up a piece of paper, on which she had a list of questions.

“Admiral, did the submarine force train its officers on the matter of surviving a Japanese prisoner of war camp? I’m talking formal training, not just people discussing it.”

Lockwood had to think for a few moments. “Formal training? Syllabus, trained instructors, practicals? No, we did not. Everyone knew the drill — name, rank, and serial number — but no, there was no formal, schoolhouse training on that.”

“There a reason for that, Admiral?”

“Yes,” he said. “If one of our boats tangled with a Jap warship and lost, there were usually no survivors, so formal training didn’t seem cost-effective.”

“Cost-effective?”

“Not worth establishing a formal course at sub school or out in the fleet. Like I said, everyone knew the basic rule.”

“The basic rule being driven by the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war?”

“Correct.”

“Were you aware that the Japanese never ratified the convention?”

“Yes, we all were aware of that. I thought that was a great incentive never to be captured.”

“Would it be true to say, then, Admiral, that Commander Hammond, who did become a prisoner of the Japanese, had no formal training or guidance as to what he could say if the Japanese applied force majeure?”

“I think he knew what not to say — that he should try to reveal as little as possible that could be useful to the Japanese.”

“But if they began to kill fellow POWs in front of him and told him that they’d keep doing that until he talked, would that in your opinion constitute sufficient reason to go ahead and talk to them, beyond name, rank, and serial number?”

Again Lockwood paused. He appeared to be choosing his words very carefully. “I think each individual would have to decide when enough was enough.”

“But it is true that you, as commander of all submarines in the Pacific, never specifically issued guidance to your officers, even along the lines you just mentioned, i.e., when enough was enough, as to what they were supposed to do when faced with overwhelming force?”

“Yes, technically, that’s correct. Look, miss, you haven’t walked in their shoes, or mine. We did not dwell on matters of POW behavior. It was, I think, simply understood. You resist doing any harm if they capture you, as best you can.”

“Do no harm, sir?”

“Yes. Do no harm. It was also understood that your chances of being captured were nil — we lost fifty-two boats and over thirty-five hundred submariners, and we had very few submariner POWs. So there it is.”

Sharon studied her list for a moment before continuing. “Commander Hammond has testified that when he did give them information, it was to discourage them more than benefit them, tactically speaking.”

“Such as?”

“He told them that we could ‘see’ their mines underwater, that we could penetrate their minefields with impunity.”

Lockwood seemed surprised. “That’s a significant revelation, I think.”

“Could you elaborate, Admiral? How would that benefit the enemy?”

“Well, toward the end they were using their minefields principally as defensive measures, specifically against submarines. Now they’d know that their defenses had been weakened.”

“And what could they do about that, sir? I’m talking about the minefields — what could they do differently to counter the fact that we had a sonar that could ‘see’ the individual mines?”

“I don’t know, double the size of their minefields? Triple the size? That sonar wasn’t perfect, and it was no cakewalk to get through a minefield even with the FM sonar.”

“As Commander Hammond did.”

“As Commander Hammond did. That was a major accomplishment, and what Dragonfish did at Kure was an equally major accomplishment. Captain Enright told me that the only reason he got a shot at Shinano was that she wasn’t making full speed. The Japs must have been beside themselves when they realized what had attacked their naval arsenal. But I think it would have been even scarier if they could not figure out how that boat got through.”

Gar began writing something on his pad of paper.

“So in your opinion,” Sharon continued, “he did collaborate with the enemy? I’m talking technically here, putting aside his reason for talking, to stop the murder of any more prisoners. Do you feel that he did harm to the American war effort?”

“It didn’t help.”

“Did any more submarines attempt to penetrate Japanese minefields after Dragonfish?”

“Yes.”

“Did they get through?”

“Most of them did.”

“Did you detect any changes in the way the Japanese deployed their minefields after the Dragonfish mission?”

“I’d have to research that. I don’t think we did.”

“So what harm ensued from Commander Hammond’s revelations?”

The admiral said nothing.

“And morally?” Sharon continued. “Given his reason for agreeing to talk to their interrogators in the first place? That other prisoners would be shot until he did agree to talk to them?”

“I guess I still can’t answer that, counselor. Each officer has to react to his own moral values, I suppose. I wasn’t in a prison cell watching Jap guards murder prisoners. I was here, in Hawaii, safe and sound. I can tell you that those moral values you’re harping on vary with rank. Sometimes we, or I, sent boats and crews on missions or into places where their chances of surviving weren’t good at all, but where the potential for hurting the enemy seemed to justify the risk.”

“To them, not you?”

Lockwood gave her a pained look but did not reply.

“Submarines were expendable, then?”

“Not in so many words, Miss DeVeers, but they existed to go on the offensive against Japan. Their mission was not to preserve the boat. It was to attack the enemy’s shipping. If we had a boat go out on patrol and come home empty-handed, we usually replaced the skipper.”

“And everyone understood that, correct?”

“After a while they did,” Lockwood said.

“But some missions were extremely dangerous? Over and above the usual hazards of submarine operations?”

“Yes.”

“Was Dragonfish’s mission into the Inland Sea one of those?”

“Yes, I suppose it was.”

“Is it true that you had previously proscribed the Inland Sea as an operational area?”

“Yes.”

Gar passed a note to Falcone. He read it, nodded, and handed it to Sharon. She glanced at it for a moment before resuming her questions.

“Was there more than one mission involved in Dragonfish’s Inland Sea operation?”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning Minoru Hashimoto, sir.”

“Oh, that. That was some kind of a sideshow, in my opinion. We weren’t told why PacFleet wanted him returned to Japan, nor were we encouraged to ask questions. Commander Hammond told me later that he thought it had something to do with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.”

“Did his instructions prioritize the elements of his mission?”

“The sealed instructions? I never saw them. Those came from Nimitz, CincPacFleet. We were focused on getting that carrier.”

“Would you be surprised, then, to learn that the sealed orders told Commander Hammond to get Hashimoto ashore before he attempted any other elements of the Inland Sea mission?”

“I guess I would. Would you be surprised to learn that Commander Hammond initially refused to do the mission if he had to take a Jap on the boat with him? I watched Admiral Nimitz convince him otherwise, but, again, I viewed it as a sideshow. The mission was the Shinano. After that, it was to escape back to sea.”

“Attack the carrier as best he could, and then escape?”

“Yes. And that’s another thing — it seems to me Commander Hammond had a couple of opportunities to escape, and for some reason decided not to try.”

“But the reason Commander Hammond was captured a second time was that he felt he could not expose Hashimoto to the threat of capture or exposure by continuing to hide in the village. He basically instructed Hashimoto to ‘catch’ him again and hand him over to the authorities.”

“If you say so.”

“Commander Hammond says so, sir. And it was because the sealed orders made it clear that whatever Hashimoto was supposed to do, it was actually more important than the Shinano. Which brings me to my question: He basically allowed himself to be captured again. Did this act constitute, in your opinion, collaboration with the enemy?”

“He made his decisions and he had his reasons,” Lockwood replied, angry now. “You’re new to this navy business, miss. Decisions have consequences, especially in wartime. Earlier in the war we had a submarine division commander intentionally go down with a badly damaged sub when he could have escaped, rather than expose himself to the possibility of being captured and tortured and then giving up crucial intelligence information. No one required him to do that, which is why he got the Medal of Honor, and probably why Commander Hammond got a court of inquiry!”

“Was that what drove your decision, Admiral?”

“What?”

“The case of Captain Gilmore and the Growler. Is that what drove your decision to let the court of inquiry proceed after Commander Hammond had requested an admiral’s mast to resolve this matter?”

Lockwood stood up, visibly furious. “Young lady, I do not have to justify any decision I make in the matter of an admiral’s mast. Not to you, not to Hammond, not to anyone. Besides that, I’m not on trial here. Commander Hammond is. You’re supposed to be finding out what he did and why.”

“No one is on trial here, Admiral,” Sharon said, smoothly. “But I think you just hit the nail on the head: what he did and why. And I would add one more dimension to this inquiry: what real harm did he do. You brought up his ‘failure’ to escape. After the bombing at Kure he was picked up by some guards and thrown in with a bunch of British prisoners. Because of this, he did not get taken to Ofuna, where the real interrogators and torturers worked. Naval interrogators, experts in making naval people talk. He ended up in a coal mine, doing slave labor. Was this a better outcome them his ending up in Ofuna?”

Lockwood slowly sat back down. “I suppose it was,” he said. “Are you saying that he did this on purpose? To avoid being sent to Ofuna?”

Gar had had enough. He stood up to face Lockwood. “I did not do that on purpose,” he said. “The Jap officer I called the Priest had just finished emptying a pistol at me. I was floating at the edge of a flooded dry dock, having been pummeled by a few hundred thousand-pound bombs and the exploding magazine of a destroyer fifty feet away. I was deaf. I was in shock. My brain had been turned to mush. I thought maybe I had died. When I realized otherwise, I wanted to die. Then some guards hauled my bloody ass out of the water and threw me in a truck. They took me to the nearest POW detention facility and threw me into a railroad car. That’s how I avoided Ofuna, Admiral. One more thing: That officer who’d tried to kill me in the water saved the last round for himself. He did that because I’d driven him crazy — he even said so. I didn’t collaborate with that guy. I drove him to suicide.”

“Commander Hammond,” White interrupted, “you will have your chance to make a statement when the time comes. In the mean—”

“I believe the time has come, gentlemen,” Gar said quietly. “I think this entire hearing happened for one reason and one reason only — someone is desperate to protect the image of the Pacific Fleet submarine force now that it’s peacetime again.”

“That’s not true,” Forrester shouted from the back of the room. Admiral Lockwood held up his index finger in Forrester’s direction, indicating that he should be quiet.

Gar stepped around from behind the table and looked straight at Lockwood. “A collaborator,” he said, “is a POW who does favors for the enemy in return for better treatment. To get food when the rest of the prisoners are being starved. To work in the office instead of at the bottom of a coal mine. To not be beaten on a daily basis. To get medicine if he needs it. A collaborator is someone who goes over to the other side. I did not do that.

“You seem to think that I could have escaped. I’m here to tell you that that was impossible. In Europe? Maybe. In Europe, the prisoners of war on both sides looked a lot like the enemy, didn’t they. In Japan, all POWs looked like gaijin, foreign devils, white-faced, round-eyed, bad-smelling, and much too tall. The general population knew damned well that it was these foreign devils that were killing their sons and husbands on faraway islands, sinking their ships, cutting off their fuel, medicines, and food, and burning down entire cities. The fact that they started it didn’t figure into how they felt at the local level. If an American flier parachuted into the countryside, he was cut to pieces with farm implements the moment he landed. Sorry, Admiral. There was no point to an escape.”

He paused to gather his thoughts. “I did not collaborate with the enemy. Everything I told them, much of which was fantasy, made it clear that they were going to be invaded and destroyed, that there was no way out of what was coming. I told the captain of that carrier that his ship was doomed if he tried to make it to Yokosuka, and it was. I could see it in their faces — they knew it, even if they couldn’t speak it. You want proof that they knew it? They had a plan, a plan they practiced at all the camps. Know what that plan was, Admiral?”

Lockwood shook his head.

“They had a policy in place throughout the prison camp system: When the Allies finally invaded Japan itself, all the POWs throughout the empire were to be executed immediately. All the POWs. Did you know that, sir?”

“I think I read that somewhere,” Lockwood said.

“I didn’t read about it, Admiral: I was there. I experienced it. Hell, I was next. We were all on the verge of being beheaded when the second bomb went off over Nagasaki. I think the only thing that saved us was the fact that the camp commandant’s entire family lived in Nagasaki and he just lost it out on the parade ground when he saw that cloud. The next thing we knew, a column of army regulars showed up, and the camp officers were ordered to abandon the camp.”

Gar took a deep breath. “There were no collaborators in the Jap prison camps, Admiral. There were only prisoners. Sick, starved, filthy, despondent, battered, and, in too many cases, dying prisoners. This inquiry that you and your chief of staff have allowed to happen is an outrage. The two of you have forgotten everything and apparently everyone you commanded during the war, and now you’ve reverted back to being the kind of navy that got caught with its pants down right here in Pearl Harbor.”

“Commander Hammond,” Martell said. “That’s enough. I can’t allow—”

“Wait,” Lockwood said. He turned to Captain Martell. “By what authority did you convene this court?”

“Well, by yours, Admiral,” Martel said, frowning. He waved a piece of paper. “ComSubPac. It’s on your letterhead, sir. The naval district is just the admin.”

Lockwood looked across the room at Forrester. “Mike, did you sign the convening order to proceed with this court of inquiry?”

“Yes, sir, I did,” Forrester said. “After you and I talked, of course, and—”

“Does that mean I can retract that decision? Aren’t I the convening authority within the submarine force?”

“Yes, sir, of course, but—”

“Captain Martell, since I started these proceedings, it seems to me I can stop them. I need some time to reconsider what I’m going to do about this allegation of collaboration. I believe I have two options: one, to proceed to a formal accusation and a general court-martial, or two, to dismiss the whole thing. In the meantime you and your members can stand down. I will be in touch. Mike, let’s go. Commander Hammond, don’t leave town.”

With that admonition, Lockwood and Forrester left the courtroom. Gar and his attorneys stood there, none of them sure what to do next. Captain Martell picked up his cap and told the other two captains to come with him. Captain White glared at everybody and then stomped out of the court after the members. The only one left was the CincPacFleet public affairs officer, who was staring in astonishment at the departing captains. “Can anyone tell me what the hell just happened here?” he asked the nearly empty room.

Sharon smiled at the PAO. “Commander Hammond here,” she said, “either just got himself off the hook or he did a lateral arabesque from the frying pan into the fire, if I can mix my metaphors, and all by speaking very convincingly and yet very much out of turn.”

“Not for the first time, either,” Gar said with a wry grin. “Anyway, what could go wrong now, hmm?”

FORTY

That afternoon Gar took a taxi downtown to Waikiki Beach. He rented a lawn chair and an umbrella and then found a beach huckster who could round up an ice bucket and a bottle of Scotch and make it appear beside his lawn chair right there on the beach. There were returning sailors and soldiers on the beach, along with a surprising number of young women. He wondered where they’d all been during the war. There it was, that phrase: during the war. Now that the war was over, he wondered how many men felt like he did, that there was a big-ass letdown gathering itself just over the horizon.

Earlier he’d gone to lunch at the O-club with his two lawyers. They talked about anything and everything except the proceedings at the court. Sharon kept smiling at him, but it was a sympathetic smile. She asked him what he was going to do for the rest of the day, and he said he was going down to the beach and get boiled. She thought that sounded like fun, but first the two of them faced the prospect of going back to headquarters for a séance with the indomitable Captain White. Lieutenant Falcone said he thought he’d go back to the BOQ and call in sick. Sharon said she was actually looking forward to it, as there were some things she wanted to say to the good captain.

The sun was warm, the breeze a comfort, and the Scotch was cold, but Gar’s efforts to get drunk fizzled out. In his weakened condition it wouldn’t take much whisky to make everything go away, but then he’d just end up sick and hungover. Besides, he had things to think about, like the future. Based on the general tenor of Uncle Charlie’s remarks at the end of the court session, he didn’t really expect a court-martial. That said, he knew he was finished in the navy. There’d certainly be no promotion now, and he’d probably get an assignment offer that would make it clear they wanted him to retire and simply go home. He didn’t want to go back to coal country in Pennsylvania, but there was an empty house and fifteen very pretty acres waiting for him to just turn on the lights and move back in. His parents had been able to hold on to the place only because of Gar’s Depression-era contributions, so he didn’t think any of his relatives would care. He’d have to buy a car — did he have the money for that? There was so much about life back in the States that he didn’t know. He could make a running surfaced attack on a Jap destroyer, but how was he going to get all the way back to Pennsylvania? Bus? Train? He thought about that and fell sound asleep.

He was startled awake by the sound of a beach chair scrunching down into the sand next to him. The sun was in his eyes as he woke up, but then he saw that it was Sharon standing in front of him, looking shapely indeed in a white bathing suit.

“You pass out or were you just napping?” she asked as she flipped a towel onto the chair and then sat down next to him.

He hefted the bottle of Scotch and saw that it was only one-quarter down. “I think I just fell asleep,” he said. “Couldn’t manage a proper drunk.”

“Here,” she said. “Let me help you with that.”

He grinned and passed her the bottle and one of the glasses the beach man had brought him. “Ice in the bucket,” he said.

“Straight’s the way to do Scotch,” she said. “Put water in it and you get a damn headache.”

“Spoken like an expert,” he said. “How’d it go with Captain White?”

“Oh, him. I went into his office, closed the door, took off my clothes down to my skivvies, and then screamed at the top of my lungs. His staffies came running in and I started crying hysterically and pointing at him. They were, how to put this — aghast?”

He laughed. “I’d like to have seen that,” he said. “But really — did you two part friends?”

“We parted on a highly professional basis,” she said. “Lawyer to lawyer. We spoke at length, as the expression goes, until I brought up Mrs. White.”

“That sounds to me like a spider fight,” he said. “But he’ll be polite from now on?”

“Oh, yes, I do believe he will,” she said. “And you were right about him and Forrester — they were trying hard to hang you out to dry. For the sake of the Service, as he so reverently put it, but I get the feeling there’s still more to this, and I’m still not sure what it’s about.”

“Minoru Hashimoto, perhaps?” he said.

“Yeah, what was all that? Hashimoto didn’t come up in our little tête-à-tête. Should he have?”

“Lockwood called it a sideshow, but the sealed orders were clear — Hashimoto first, then go raise hell if you can.”

“The admiral said he never saw those sealed orders.”

“I’ll bet there’s a copy up at CincPacFleet headquarters,” Gar said. “The orders were signed out by Admiral Rennsalear.”

“Christ, you’re thin,” she said, running her fingers over his rib cage. Her fingers lingered, but he was too tired to react.

“I’m positively fat compared to some to some of those guys,” he said. “The Brits had been in captivity since early ’42. They were walking cadavers. I heard that over a third of them died in Guam after liberation. Fucking Japs.”

“Wait till you read what they found in eastern Germany and Poland,” she said. “The Nazis were every bit as monstrous, only on a much bigger scale.”

“I’m tired of all of it,” he said. “Tired, tired, tired. And sad. We won. Whoopee. I can’t even look out onto the ocean without wanting to just weep.”

“Hey,” she said. “I booked a room nearby. Why don’t you and I go there right now and just, oh, I don’t know, lie down? Hold each other? You can let go and I’ll just keep you company. How’s that sound?”

“Like heaven,” he said, wiping his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, sea dog,” she said. “This whole thing has been a really big deal.”

It’s not over yet, either, he thought as they gathered up their towels. He could remember telling her how good he was at being a CO, and that he was something of a lone wolf. Well, there were two situations where you found a lone wolf: when he was a natural-born predator, and then again when the pack finally drove him out.

FORTY-ONE

The summons came at noon the following day. The BOQ front desk called him and told him that his presence was requested at SubPac headquarters at 1300, with his counsel. Gar had to assume SubPac had notified Captain White’s office, since he did not have a telephone. He showered, shaved, and put on his service dress khakis. He didn’t want to think about the previous night with Sharon. He’d ended up drinking too much, bawling like a baby, and then falling asleep. The good news was that she hadn’t seemed to mind very much in the morning. He was pretty sure they hadn’t made love. He liked to think he would have remembered that.

The yeomen in Admiral Lockwood’s office were very polite when he arrived. Gar couldn’t tell if that was because he was a condemned man and everybody already knew it, or they didn’t want whatever he had rubbing off on them. Five minutes after he got there, Sharon and Falcone showed up. Sharon looked fine, but Falcone looked like he wanted to try out the dive, dive command and simply disappear. While they waited in the anteroom, two very serious-looking captains arrived and were ushered directly into Lockwood’s office. The yeomen told them it would be just a few minutes more.

“Who are those guys?” Gar asked.

Sharon shook her head. “Not from PacFleet, that I know of,” she said. “Never seen them before.”

“Maybe they’re executioners,” Gar said.

“No,” Sharon said with a straight face. “Executioners are always enlisted.”

Gar chuckled. Falcone tried to smile but couldn’t quite pull it off.

Lockwood’s aide appeared in the doorway. “The admiral will see you all now,” he said, indicating that they should go in.

Gar went first, followed by the two JAG officers. Lockwood was at his desk. Forrester was standing behind him with a folder. The two captains were sitting in armchairs to one side, looking at Gar as if sizing him up for a coffin.

“Reporting as ordered, Admiral,” Gar said. He didn’t salute, because the navy never saluted indoors.

“Very well, Commander,” Lockwood said. Gar couldn’t exactly read Lockwood’s expression, but he sensed that it wasn’t Uncle Charlie sitting there anymore. Rear Admiral Forrester spoke.

“Commander Hammond, I have been authorized by the chief of naval personnel to propose a course of action to settle, as it were, this allegation of unlawful conduct by a prisoner of war during wartime.”

Gar blinked. Forrester was talking as if he weren’t standing right there.

“You are talking about me, Admiral?” Gar asked. He saw Lockwood roll his eyes.

“Yes, I am,” Forrester said. “The admiral has conferred with CincPacFleet, the chief of naval operations, and BuPers. They have agreed to the following … deal.” Forrester’s expression revealed his distaste at having to offer a deal. He took a deep breath before resuming. “There will be no court-martial. You will be allowed to retire immediately. You will be given five years’ constructive service in recognition of your time as a POW, so you will retire on full twenty-year retired pay. You will retire in the rank of captain, on a tombstone basis. Your retired pay will be computed at the rank of commander. The court of inquiry will issue a formal statement that there were no grounds for the allegations and that the entire matter has been settled to the satisfaction of the command authorities. Do you understand so far?”

“I do, so far.”

“Very well. That’s the navy’s offer. Here’s what you have to agree to do, in writing and under a sworn oath. You will never, ever, mention, talk about, write about, or in any way reveal the nature of your last mission to Bungo Suido and the Inland Sea of Japan, especially your additional mission of putting a Japanese national ashore during that mission. Especially that.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Forrester said. Then he turned to the two captains. “Gentlemen,” he said, “anything to add?”

The older of the two captains stared hard at Gar. “We are from the offices of Lieutenant General Groves, director of the Manhattan Project,” he said. “Our main concern, and the sole reason that the proceedings against you have been terminated, relates to Minoru Hashimoto. I can’t say this strongly enough: If you ever reveal what that was about, the United States government will find out and will smash you flatter than Hiroshima. Do I make myself clear?”

“Clear enough,” Gar said.

The captain turned to the two JAG officers. “That goes for both of you, too. I’m serious, serious as a heart attack about this.”

Sharon and Falcone said they understood.

“Commander Hammond, do you accept this offer?” Forrester asked.

Gar hesitated.

“He does accept this very generous offer,” Sharon said. “He would be a fool not to, no matter what this Hashi-whazzit stuff is all about.”

“I’m sorry, Commander,” Forrester said. “I know you’re his lawyer, but this has to come from him.”

Gar was looking at Lockwood. There was one more thing he wanted, and he knew Lockwood knew what that was. The admiral stared back at him for a long moment. Then he spoke.

“You want an apology from me, don’t you,” he said.

“That is not part of the navy’s offer,” Forrester protested.

“Well, it should be,” Lockwood said. “And I am sorry I put you through this, Gar. You were right about our dropping back into the peacetime mode of doing business. None of us knows what’s coming next, so we all reverted to type, I’m afraid. But that’s not the way I treated my COs during the war, and I shouldn’t have cast you to the wolves just to protect our so-called Silent Service mystique.”

“Thank you, sir. I appreciate your saying that, and of course I accept the deal. I know I’m lucky to get it.”

“Then we’re done here,” Forrester said. “The terms of this agreement have been written down and will be signed by Commander Hammond and Vice Admiral Lockwood and then countersigned by the chief of naval personnel in Washington.”

“And by his two lawyers here,” the stone-faced captain said. “Who have forgotten everything they’ve heard here today except my warning.”

Sharon had kept her hotel room at the beach, so they had a leisurely lunch out on the beachside verandah. They were both in uniform, he in khakis, she in whites. There were more civilians at the beach now. People wearing uniforms weren’t yet in the minority, but Gar knew it was only a matter of time.

“Relieved?” she asked.

“Overwhelmingly so,” he said. “Who’d a thought that one old man’s piece of this would end up saving my bacon.”

“I don’t believe they’d have gone to court-martial,” she said. “Your little speech there at the end hurt their feelings. Either way, I still think I could have torn them up.”

“You were eager to try, too, weren’t you?”

“Yup. I like a good court fight about as much as a good martini.”

“Mister Falcone did not look like he was ready for a good court fight.”

“Captain White broke his teeth when he tried to give me an ass-chewing, so I think Falcone took the brunt. He’ll rebound — he’s got a ticket from Harvard, and his future is going to be all about who he knows and where they all are now.”

“And you? Who do you know?” he asked.

“Oh, my regulars. John Walker, James Beam, the Beefeater … What was that tombstone business?”

Gar laughed. “It’s called a tombstone promotion. They usually do it when a captain retires. They retire him nominally in the rank of rear admiral so that when he dies his wife can put Admiral So-and-so on his tombstone.”

“That was a hell of a deal,” she said. “Do you actually know what that was all about?”

“Not anymore,” he said. “But someday I’d like to go back and see if the old man made it alive out of the war. I did tell him to do what he was supposed to do and then to get the hell out of there.”

“You witnessed Hiroshima, then?”

“Oh, yes. It’s a whole new day after that firecracker. But back to my question. What’re you going to do when they cut you loose? Where are you going to go?”

She shrugged. “I’ve saved some money these past few years,” she said. “I’ll find somewhere and start over. Not like I don’t have a trade.”

“I’ve saved a whole lot of money over these past four years,” he said. “Especially after the Japs picked me up. I’ll even be getting a retired paycheck somewhere along the line, and I have an actual house to go to back to in western Pennsylvania.”

“And?”

“And, well, maybe we could join forces? You have to admit, we make a good team. I regularly get myself into trouble, and you seem to be pretty good at getting me out of it.”

She smiled. “Is this a proposal, Commander?”

“It’s a proposition, Commander. A proposal implies marriage, and as you know—”

“Right,” she said. “Neither of us ever saw the need.”

“There you go.”

“I’ll think it over,” she said. “Some propositions need more time than others.”

“In the meantime, can I buy the lady a drink?”

She frowned. “That’s not going to change, Gar, at least not anytime soon. I know I have to do something about my boozing, but…”

“I understand, but I’ve always been told never to drink alone. Look — the war’s over, and the world has changed in so many ways I’m almost scared to face it. I’ve seen things, done things, lost too many friends and shipmates, and now they’ve put me on the beach and told me to go away. I’d be a really famous martyr if there weren’t several thousand other people just like me headed back to the land of the free and the home of the badly bruised.”

She reached across the table and gripped his hand, hard. “I may well turn out to be excess baggage, Gar. I wouldn’t want to hold you back down the line.”

“Back from what, Sharon?” He covered her hand with his. “For the past four years I’ve been looking at the world through a periscope, trying to kill people. This morning I was wondering how I’d get back to Pennsylvania from California, and I realized I didn’t know how people do that back in the States these days. It’ll never be a question of holding either one of us back — it’ll be all about holding each other up, and learning how to live again.”

She nodded. “I will think about it, kind sir. Sounds like we both have a couple of weeks.” She sighed and looked out to sea. “In the meantime,” she said. “How ’bout that drink?”

He laughed. “You’re bad,” he said. “Really bad. What are we going to do about you?”

She peered over at him through that waterfall hairdo. “We’ll think of something,” she said. “And if you’re not going to buy me that drink I’ll be forced to go back to my room, take off all my clothes, lie down, and — sulk.”

“Sulk.”

“Well what else could a girl do?”

“Like you said, we’ll probably think of something.”