“You mean, you told him this to his face?” As he spoke, Bullfinch rose half out of his chair, pointing at the paper, shouting so loudly that Cromwell knew that every officer and sailor in the outer office was most likely standing stock still, soaking in every word.
“Yes, sir. He was the first to know. Him and the president. I have discussed it with no one else since, other than now with you. If some”-he paused for a second and then let it spill out, raising his voice so that the unseen audience could hear his reply-“damn loose-mouthed pencil pusher in Congress ran and told the press about it, I can assure you, sir, it did not come from me. I resolved that no one other than Lieutenant O’Donald’s father would ever know of what happened out there, and I kept that promise to myself and to him.”
Bullfinch settled back slightly. His features were still red, though, so that it looked like he was barely containing his temper.
“You better pray for war, Lieutenant,” he said, his voice low, “and pray damn hard, because if it doesn’t come, I’ll have you shoveling shit in the most godforsaken outpost I can find, and remember, sir, you owe the Republic eight years service for your education, so you can’t resign and get away from me.”
“Sir, I will pray for exactly that to happen. I’d rather shovel shit for the next eight years than see my comrades blown out of the water.”
Bullfinch, taken aback by the reply, looked at him with obvious surprise, and Richard decided to press in.
“And they will be blown out of the water, Admiral, if we go at them in a ship-of-the-line fight, trading broadsides at three thousand yards. As I told you before, the Gettysburg lasted barely ten minutes against one of their lightest ships. You asked for an opinion, sir, and that is it, and it is the opinion of the president and the Naval Design Board as well.”
There was the slightest flicker of a smile on Bullfinch’s face, but his gaze was still hard, features red.
“Damn you, Cromwell,” he said. “At least I’ll say this, unlike your father, you have some guts.”
Richard sensed his control slipping. He lowered his eyes, and that triggered even more anger within, knowing that Bullfinch would see the action as a backing down.
“Sir.” He took a deep breath, struggling to maintain his composure. “The issue here is my report and the response from Suzdal. I’d prefer if any allegations you might have about my father remain outside this conversation.”
Bullfinch blinked and, if possible, his features reddened to the point that it seemed as if he would explode. He exhaled noisily and then sat back.
“I’ll be damned if a lieutenant tells me what I can and cannot discuss in my own office.”
“As a commander in the service of the Republic,” he replied, unable to contain being called lieutenant one more time, “I believe I have every right to object to a personal insult, sir, as long as that objection is done in a professional manner.”
Bullfinch reached up, rubbing the ugly scars that creased his right cheek and forehead. “I’ll be damned, sir. Now you are quoting the rules of the service to me, no less.”
Richard was tempted to add that Bullfinch had helped to write them, but he was back in control of himself again. Getting into a shouting match with an admiral at a time like this served no useful purpose, either to the navy or to himself, or to the memory of his father, a man whom he had never even known.
Bullfinch cleared his throat, opened the topmost envelope on his desk, and slowly read through the first few pages.
He finally looked back up, acting as if Cromwell had not been standing there waiting patiently for him to continue.
“Insane,” Bullfinch sighed, and he almost seemed to collapse as if all wind had been taken out of his sails. “This whole thing is insane.”
Richard remained silent.
“Do you know what they are ordering us to do?”
– “No, sir, not officially, but I had a sense of it. I attended three meetings with the president and two with the Design Board before being detailed back here.”
“And you actually saw these ships, these Kazan battleships, as they are called here?”
“Yes, sir. Eight of them were anchored in the harbor at Kazan, as was most of the rest of the emperor’s fleet.”
“I hope to God you weren’t behind the mad scheme to tear Shiloh and her sister ships apart, because if so, orders or no orders”-he tapped the papers on his desk-“you will most definitely be handed that shit shovel before you get out of this office.”
“No, sir. I was at the meeting at the dockyard when Professor Ferguson raised the subject.”
“Did you influence that woman at all?”
Richard hesitated. “Sir, she asked my opinion, sir.”
“And that was?”
“Shiloh would go to the bottom inside of ten minutes once their battleships got within range. If we had thirty, forty ships like Shiloh, maybe enough would survive to close in and make a kill, but twenty thousand men under your command would die doing it.”
Bullfinch looked back at the papers, picked them up, and riffled through them again.
“I’ll say this at least,” he announced slowly, “she has saved our asses more than once.” He looked up again at Cromwell. “You didn’t know her husband. I did. He was a damn good friend, even if he was strange. His mind always seemed to be off somewhere else even when you talked with him. But good God, when you got into things technical, he just exploded with ideas and plans that, damn me, always seemed to work. If he hadn’t disobeyed Andrew with that rocket scheme, we’d have lost the war at Hispania, and that’s a fact.” He smiled wistfully, the tension gone for a moment as he remembered things past.
“Varinnia was a real beauty, she was, tragic what happened in that fire. But maybe it was a blessing for us all. Ferguson had the strength and moral character few men have to look beyond the flesh, to see and discover a mind as brilliant as his own beneath. No, perhaps even more brilliant because she was a perfect match, a mind that could organize and bring to completion all his mad schemes.
“And when he died, Lord, how we were terrified. He’d always been our ace up the sleeve. But he had unleashed something within her. In those last months when he knew he was dying, he crammed in years of training, and after he was gone she took off like a blazing comet. She was able to find others like herself, train them, point them in the right direction, and let them loose.”
He sighed again and then seemed to be embarrassed with his mental wandering. “Still, even if it came straight from her, I’d tell her right to her face that this time she is out of control. She’s trying to do in days what should take months. Hell, that inane decking on Shiloh will raise the center of gravity a good three feet. The ship will be so top-heavy she’ll roll in the first good gale.”
“She knows that, sir, and the response is, don’t sail into a gale.”
Bullfinch laughed. “In another month the cyclones start.”
“In a cyclone even our best armored cruisers have gone under.”
The admiral slammed an open palm on the papers. “The president orders and I obey, but by heavens, Andrew Lawrence Keane was an infantry officer before he became president. He and that Design Board, and even the damned secretary of the navy, who couldn’t figure out which railing to piss over when the wind is up, don’t know what it is to fight a battle at sea, and I do.”
“Sir, that was conveyed to me quite clearly by the president just before I left. What you have in those files”- Cromwell pointed at the papers on the desk-“are undoubtedly recommendations and proposals for ship changes, transfers of command such as the air corps, and overall strategic suggestions. The president told me to inform you that you have his full confidence, and how the battle is to be fought is under your control, not his.”