Launch Code

FORTY-NINE

‘Hey, Bill! How are you doin’, man?’

I turned to see the familiar figure of Lars fighting his way through the crowd to the bar where I had nabbed a seat for him. We were in an Irish pub in the East Village, and I hadn’t seen Lars since he had left Groton for Wisconsin three months before.

‘Good, Lars, good. Can I get you a Rolling Rock?’

‘You want me to drink that Pennsylvanian shit?’

‘It’s good beer. You know that. I’ve seen you drink enough of it.’

Lars perched himself on the bar stool. ‘Hey. We’re in an Irish bar. Get me a Guinness.’

So I got him a Guinness. ‘What’s the beer like in Brazil?’ I asked him.

‘Nothing special. They have this stuff they call “beach beer”. Tastes like piss, it’s very weak, but you can drink a lot of it, especially when it’s hot. Which it is. A lot.’

Lars was on his way to Brazil. He had decided to travel via New York, so he could see me. And I had been looking forward to seeing him.

‘What are you going to do when you get there?’

‘I’ll crash with my grandparents in Rio to start with. Then I’m going to get a job on the water. Sailing if I can. I should’ve done that in the first place rather than join the Navy. It’s got to be possible: there’s a lot of water around Rio.’

‘Do you speak much Portuguese?’

‘A bit. I’ll learn. It’ll be fun.’

‘What’s cheers in Portuguese?’

‘Damned if I know. Wait. Felicidades?’

‘Felicity Tarts!’ I raised my glass and drank my beer. Deeply.

It was good to see Lars. It was really good to see Lars. Although I was enjoying living in New York, and I loved living with Donna, I missed male friendship. I missed Lars. I missed living cheek-by-jowl with a hundred and forty men in the Hamilton. How sad was that? Pretty sad.

One day I would get to the point where I had gotten the Navy out of my system, where I had my own friends, male and female, and my own career that had nothing to do with blowing the world to smithereens. I was looking forward to that point, but I wasn’t there yet.

We drank a lot of beer. We talked about our folks. Lars’s father had been quietly pleased that he was going to Brazil, his mother less so. I told him about Donna and our plans to go to graduate school. We were on our six or seventh beer, when the rush of words paused for a moment.

‘We did the right thing, didn’t we?’ said Lars in a low voice.

I nodded. ‘Yeah. We did the right thing.’

Lars looked me in the eye and raised his glass. ‘To Craig.’

I smiled. Lars understood. Understood that although I had killed Craig, he had been my friend. He was still my friend. ‘To Craig.’

‘You know, a weird thing happened last week,’ Lars said. ‘Back in Wisconsin. A woman showed up at our house asking for me. She came from New York. Said she knew Donna. And you.’

‘Pat Greenwald?’ I blurted in surprise.

‘So you do know her?’

‘Yeah. Kind of. Donna knows her really. They’re involved in the peace movement together. She came all the way to Wisconsin to see you? What did she want?’

But actually I could guess what she wanted.

‘She wanted me to talk about the near-launch. I remember you asking me back at the base whether you should tell the peace movement about that. I guess you decided you should.’

I hesitated. Looked around the bar, which had emptied a little, but there was no one listening. ‘Donna told her about it. Then I spoke with her.’

‘Did you tell her much?’ Lars asked.

I felt uncomfortable. ‘A bit. What about you?’

Lars sipped his beer. ‘A bit. Did you speak with the Russians? You asked me whether you should speak with the Russian peaceniks?’

‘And you said you didn’t know.’

‘I did.’

I sighed. ‘Yeah, I did. Spoke to a physicist. In Paris. I didn’t give her any real secrets.’ I glanced at Lars, to see how he took this information.

He breathed in. We were both quite drunk at this point, and struggling to focus on something we knew was really important.

‘You know,’ he said. ‘When some other dumb boomer launches a couple of birds by mistake at somewhere in Russia and the Russians decide not to blow up the world, we’ll know you did the right thing.’

‘That’s why I wanted out of the Navy, Lars. I don’t want to have to think about this shit anymore.’

‘That’s for sure,’ said Lars, raising his glass. ‘Here’s to freedom. And Copacabana Beach.’

I got a phone call a month later in Donna’s apartment. I had the night off from the bar, and we had just finished a lasagne she had cooked.

‘It’s for you.’ She passed me the phone.

‘Hello?’

‘Bill, it’s Glenn Robinson.’

‘Oh, hello, XO,’ I said. It seemed weird to call him by his first name.

‘I’ve got some bad news.’

Something had happened to Lars, I thought right away. Although if it had, I wasn’t sure how the XO would have found out about it.

‘Yes?’ I said neutrally.

‘Commander Driscoll died suddenly two days ago.’

‘The captain? That’s terrible! What happened?’

‘He took his own life,’ said Robinson. ‘Blew his brains out.’

‘Oh my God.’ The news sank into my consciousness slowly. ‘That’s awful.’ He had a wife, or an ex-wife. And children. ‘Does anyone know why?’

‘There’s an investigation, of course,’ said Robinson. ‘And they haven’t come up with anything yet. He didn’t leave a note. It may have been his marriage. Or…’

‘The near-launch,’ I said.

‘He didn’t take it well,’ said the XO. ‘He found it difficult to accept what he had done. Ordering a nuclear launch. What both of us had done.’ The XO’s voice was flat. ‘I’ve found it difficult too, to tell you the truth.’

‘But it wasn’t his fault!’ I protested. ‘Or yours. He listened to Lars’s objections. He did things by the book.’

‘Da Silva didn’t do things by the book,’ said Robinson. ‘And neither did you. Which is why we are all alive today.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘He was a good man. I respected him. I admired him.’

‘He was,’ said Robinson. ‘I only served with him on that one patrol, but I could feel how much the crew respected him. It’s such a shame.’

We were silent on the phone together. Sharing regrets at the loss of a life.

‘Well, thanks for telling me, XO.’

‘Do you know how to get in contact with da Silva?’ Robinson said. ‘I’d like to call him.’

‘Yeah. Wait a second, he gave me his grandparents’ number in Brazil.’ I found it in my address book and read it out to Robinson.

‘XO? One thing before you go. Has a woman called Pat Greenwald been in touch?’

‘Pat Greenwald? Who is she?’

‘Oh, no one. A friend of Donna’s,’ I said.

‘I hope this doesn’t have anything to do with what we discussed at the fort?’ Robinson said.

‘Oh, no. No, not at all. Thanks, XO.’

I put down the phone.

I felt Donna come up behind me and wrap her arms around my chest.