Edward L. Beach
Cold is the Sea
There are some who go down to the sea in ships, and some who go under the sea. The causes of catastrophe can be subtle as well as manifold, but fortunately only a few fail to come back to port. To them and to their valiant memory, this story is dedicated.
1
To most of the outside world, the Pentagon, is a huge five-sided pile of cement, looming squat and commanding on the Virginia bank of the Potomac River across from Washington, D.C. It contains the offices of the Secretary of Defense, the Secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military Chiefs of the three Services. Behind their windows in the impressive, four-story, two-block-wide façade, these important personages can doubtless draw inspiration from the wide patriotic vista spread before them: it encompasses the mighty Potomac River in a single grand panorama from its confluence with the shallow Anacostia to Georgetown (the colonial “head of navigation”). The Lincoln Memorial on its banks, the spire of the Washington Monument and the Capitol dome all rise as if from a garden above the low screen of green bordering the river. One can visualize the high councils taking place behind those severe windows, the critically important, low-voiced briefings, the great decisions by which United States military policy is determined.
The Pentagon was built to be the world’s largest office building, and it presides over the world’s biggest parking lot. Some 30,000 people are housed in it from eight to twelve hours a day, more than eighty hours a week in many cases. Its life never ceases, for there are watch officers and duty sections all over it, most especially, but not solely, in the secure operational command areas. It is not one building but about fifty, all interconnected, and they actually form five complete pentagons, placed one inside another in a series of concentric five-sided “rings.”
The outermost and largest of the five pentagonal rings, the E-ring, is sumptuously finished, with marble columns, terrazzo floors, escalators and even a private elevator serving the most high-level offices. The favored office suites are all on the E-ring, with outside windows looking to the west, north and east. The smallest ring, the A-ring, is favored in a different way by having its hallway along its innermost side, so that the passerby may enjoy the view of the pentagonal central court from its windows. Between these two extremes there are rows upon rows of hallways interconnecting, rows upon rows of identical doors opening into rows upon rows of cubiclelike interior rooms occupied by the owners of most of the cars in the parking lot. Some of the interior rooms have no windows. Most, of course, do, but there is very little to look at. Through these windows, the occupants of the warrenlike spaces — that is, most of the Pentagon’s 30,000 inhabitants — have a flat view of the rough-finished facing of the outside of the ring opposite. They are given an excellent opportunity to inspect, in depth, the impressions of the wooden concrete forms which held the cement in its designed place while it was hardening and also preserved imperishably the shape of every board, the pattern of its grain, its occasional knotholes, nailholes and splinters, for the ages yet to come.
The window gracelessly lighting Captain Richardson’s office faced more or less to the west, but except for the direction taken by the sun’s rays it held identically the same view as all the other interior windows: the casemented window frame and venetian blind of the equally drab cubicle opposite. Rich had been gazing through it more abstractedly of late, and more frequently, now that he had relatively little to do. It was raining gently, a warm, flower-benefiting rain. Outside the Pentagon a presidential campaign was in its early flowering stages as well, with nominating conventions only a few months away, and the news every day was full of learned discussion as to who might succeed the war hero who had held the post for nearly eight years.
As was the case with the real flowers which Laura tended so lovingly at home, however, Rich had had little opportunity, until very recently, to follow the blooming, or nonblooming, of the national political scene. He had had no leisure time to follow anything else, either, including the growing needs of thirteen-year-old Jobie.
Now, for the past week and a half, it was different. Jim Barnes, designated by the Bureau of Naval Personnel to relieve him, had been aboard for a month. He had used the time under Rich’s tutelage well, had formally taken over his job and, technically, his “desk” (although by courtesy he was temporarily using another) ten days ago, and was already enmeshed in the latest short-fuse requirement of the Navy Secretary. He had even showed some eagerness to take over the responsibility; well, he would soon learn, just as Rich had.
Three years in the Pentagon, in the office concerned with Navy Programs and Plans, were about enough for any naval officer who would rather be at sea. Three years preparing specifications for the forces required to meet constantly changing national commitments, of endless weeks practically living in his office, responding desperately to the sudden demands of a Secretary of Defense whose habit, about 4:30 in the afternoon, was to say, “Have it on my desk at eight o’clock tomorrow morning,” had given Rich a jaundiced view of Washington political officialdom and its inconsiderate demands on its minions. More than once he had worked all night because it would have been disloyal to the Navy not to, all the while wondering if the document being prepared at such personal sacrifice would actually be read by anyone, least of all by the minor official in someone’s office up the line who had been the real source of the urgency keeping him there.
But all this was over now, had been for ten days, and there was nothing for Rich to do but catch up on personal business, lend a hand if his successor asked, in general try to occupy himself usefully — for the first time in his Pentagon career he was able to leave the office at the so-called “regular” hour — and wait. He was noticing, perhaps for the twentieth occasion during his three years in this particular cubicle but only now with genuine interest, that when it rained a regular river of water cascaded down the cement facing his window — when female footsteps approached his desk. Without looking, he knew it was the secretary he shared with another captain and two commanders, not to mention Jim Barnes, now, as well.
The rain did not continue down the outside wall of the building, however. Instead, much of it suddenly disappeared into the concrete through a hidden flaw in the structure. Doubtless some wretch on the floor below, perhaps an Army colonel also “program planning” for his own Service, was wondering what he had done to deserve this. If he didn’t have enough sense to come up a flight and inspect the wall above his office, as Rich, however fortuitously, was doing at that very moment, he deserved to be flooded out once in a while.
“Captain, here’s something from BuPers…” Rich turned, his dampened opposite number in the U.S. Army forgotten, seized the bulky envelope.
“Thanks, Marie,” he said, extracting a thick sheaf of paper from the envelope she had already slit open. It was immediately evident there was but a single typed sheet, with numerous copies clipped to it.
“From: Chief BuPers,” the paper said — it was not a letter but one of those forms of official gibberish by which unnamed bureaucrats protect their jobs by confusing everyone else—“To: Captain Edward G. Richardson, USN. Subj: Orders. Herdet Prorep ComSubRon Ten Porich USS Proteus Delrep 10 …” There was more gibberish and a series of numbers that meant something to someone in the Bureau of Personnel, but for the moment he needed no more.
“Are those your orders?” Marie asked. “We know you’ve been waiting for them, but we’ll be terribly sorry to lose you …” Her polite words trailed off. Everyone in the office had been painfully aware of Richardson’s restlessness the past few days, and the reason.