“I didn’t know if you’d want to see me again,” she responded, pushing her Ray Bans on top of her hair which today was a little windblown. Not so long ago she would have regarded going out in public without her hair severely clipped and banded as being positively brazen. “I only got back this morning,” Caroline went on, seizing the moment. “I wanted to see you before I looked for somewhere to stay… ”
“Oh, right,” the man muttered. “You know you can stay here as long as you need… ”
“You’re okay with that?”
Nathan nodded jerkily. “Sure…”
Caroline reached for the handle of her case; the man got there first.
“I should shower,” Nathan said once they were inside the house.
“You go ahead. I’ll make coffee, yes?”
“Yeah, sure… ”
The woman realized she was trembling.
What am I doing?
She started to boil water, and to check through the cupboards. Nathan was an Air Force creature, Spartan by nature and most of the shelves were empty. Tidy, very tidy, everything in its place, clean. He would make some girl a perfect husband.
She listened to the plumbing knock and rumble before the shower kicked in. The dry board inner walls, partitions really, of war-built house meant every sound travelled virtually unimpeded to every corner of it.
Caroline realized she had not moved for about a minute, possibly longer.
This is a stupid time to be having a panic attack!
She badly needed to put things in order in her head; she was missing something important. She was letting her fears tell her what was going on around her, not her eyes, not her hopes…
The kid had been pleased to see her.
He had carried her case inside…
She was not his physician now.
Oh God, this is ridiculous…
Nathan had shut the bathroom door.
In the gloom of the corridor she hesitated and then, as if in a dream, kicked off her shoes, squirmed out of her dress, dropped her brassier and knickers onto the floor and pushed open the door.
“Nathan?”
The shower screen was only part drawn.
His lean frame, his head and shoulders, lower arms and legs were tanned, and his torso unnaturally pale in the steamy light.
He looked at her nakedness.
She edged closer.
Shrugged her shoulders; hesitated for in that moment she was on the cusp of humiliated flight.
And then he smiled and hesitantly held out his hand.
Chapter 25
Fifty-one year old Rear Admiral William Floyd Bringle had been wondering why the US Navy’s biggest carrier — the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) was a few feet longer and a few tons heavier than the flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet, the Independence (CV-62) — and the cream of the Pacific Fleet had been sent to the Indian Ocean on an extended, utterly pointless, ‘goodwill tour’ ever since he had received his sailing orders two months ago. The news that the Chief of Naval Operations, David McDonald, whom he had known for many years and personally liked and respected, wanted to speak to him as soon as Kitty Hawk dropped anchor in Harbor Bay in the murky, swirling waters of the Ulhas River, had given him hope that his nagging questions would, albeit belatedly, be answered.
A native of Covington, Tennessee, Bringle had graduated from the US Navy Academy at Annapolis in the class of 1937, serving on the flat top Saratoga until 1940 when he commenced his career as a naval aviator. After a busy war, a good war, his career had progressed with a predictable certainty. Promoted to flag rank after commissioning and taking the Kitty Hawk to sea for the first time in 1961, command of Carrier Division Seven was precisely the sort of posting that was liable to lead him one day, possibly before the end of the decade, into the chair currently occupied by David McDonald.
“Things in the Gulf are coming to a head, Bill,” the Chief of Naval Operations prefaced. There was a resigned weariness in McDonald’s manner that was anything but characteristic of the straight-talking Georgian and this instantly put Bringle on his guard. The two men were alone in a cool, air-conditioned white walled room that overlooked the grey waters of the Mithi River. In the quietness they might have been a hundred miles away from the bustle and commotion of the great port city, not less than a hundred yards from the nearest quay.
Bringle found no fault with the CNO’s summation.
“The British, the Australians and the New Zealanders have scraped the bottom of the barrel to put together their ‘Persian Gulf Squadron’,” he told his Chief. “HMS Centaur, their light carrier, is an unmodified World War II build. The pilots flying off her must be brave guys. How the Brits operate big fighters like their Sea Vixens off a deck that size is beyond me!”
McDonald forced a smile, tried to veil his misgivings. No matter the purpose of his visit protocol demanded that the fleet commander report to his superior officer before they got down to business.
“The British commander, a guy called Davey is a pleasant enough fellow and seems to know what he’s about,” Bringle went on. “He’s got a couple of cruisers, and half-a-dozen destroyers and frigates. The British are dug in on and around Abadan Island. They seem to have a pretty good local air defense radar coverage and co-ordination in that part of Iraq. If they make a stand they’ll hurt the Russians; that’s for sure. Of course, with us at their backs, together we’d do a lot more than just hurt the bastards!”
“Yeah,” the Chief of Naval Operations grunted. Unable to contain his roiling unease he stood up and began to pace, frowning to disguise his moral qualms. “Well, we’re not going to be getting into that sort of… territory, Bill.”
Bringle had also risen to his feet.
The men might be old acquaintances, friends of a sort; but a junior officer did not remain seated when a senior man was on his feet unless specifically ordered to sit down. He and McDonald were pre-war — pre-1941 — officers and they were unashamedly old-school about these things. Presently, the two men stood in the window, hands clasped behind them, staring out across the hazy waters of the Mithi River.
“The reason I came out to Bombay was because you’ve got a right to hear the orders I’m about to give you from the horse’s mouth, Bill.”
Bringle knew that was not good news.
“Oh, sir?”
“And after I’ve given you your orders I will understand if you feel yourself to be unable, for whatever reason, to obey them. In that event, I would have no alternative but to, with great regret, replace you in command of Carrier Division Seven.”
The other man began to color with hurt.
“The President has decided to make his peace with the Soviet Union,” McDonald continued, his voice a deadened monotone. “Peace at any cost. Peace as soon as possible for as long as possible. Unless or until there is a direct attack on the North American continent with nuclear weapons the President has absolutely ruled out the future employment of such weapons in any circumstances against the Soviet Union, or the armed forces of that country.”
Bringle glanced sidelong at the professional head of the Navy.
Did I just hear what I thought he just said?
McDonald stared fixedly to his front.
“Currently,” the Chief of Naval Operation bored on, “an apparently immovable obstacle stands between the US and the USSR declaring a bilateral armistice and signing a binding non-aggression pact. Despite the Administration’s repudiation of the US-UK Mutual Defense Treaty, and the effective disbandment of the old North Atlantic Treaty Alliance, the Russians still regard the United Kingdom and its Commonwealth ‘friends’ as allies of the United States. Negotiations have reached the stage whereby a commitment, in principle, to the staged withdrawal of sixty percent of all American naval and air assets from the Mediterranean by the fall has satisfied the Russians as to our intentions west of Suez; but the ongoing situation in the Persian Gulf is beginning to look like a game-breaker. Given that we have no boots on the ground in the region, Carrier Division Seven is the only card we have left in the game.”