A half hour later he thought he was beginning to see a way out of the problem. The wind speed had increased another three knots and the seas were running to swells nearly sixty feet high. The wind was blowing steadily from the north-northwest quarter, deviating little from 10° north, which was what he had been half hoping for. For the past twenty minutes he had’ observed little or no deviation either in direction or speed. When he fed the new information into the course computers, it worked out perfectly. By falling off two points from the wind direction, he could bring the RFK farther to the west in a shallow arc that would increase the distance toward the Cape lee. Feeling very much like a skipper of a sailing ship, he ordered the course change to take advantage of the wind. The RFK rolled far to starboard as the two rudders inched over in response to the instructions from the bridge. The roll went on through thirty, then forty, then fifty, to fifty-seven degrees. Folsom watched the inclinometer with apprehension, and when the needle’ began to move back toward vertical, he let out a pent-up breath. Good lord, he thought, if she would go over that far with just a minor change with the wind, how would she handle when it came time to reverse course. He glanced around the bridge and saw that the others on watch were also looking at the inclinometer and were just as apprehensive as he.
At 1200, Larkin came onto the bridge. He nodded to the officer of the watch, signed the log, and came over to Folsom’s console. He turned, before saying anything to Folsom, and said, “Mr. Peterson, please stay on the bridge for a few minutes. I would like you to relieve me while Mr. Folsom and I go below.”
The second officer nodded and sank back into his high seat and began flipping through ship’s status report forms. Folsom unbuckled his seat belt and followed Larkin off the bridge, wondering what the captain had on his mind. Neither said a word until they entered Larkin’s quarters.
“Sit down, Pete.” He indicated a comfortable chair against the bulkhead. Folsom took the seat and glanced around at the comfortably appointed room. Larkin had thrown out the regulation Navy furniture as one of his first official acts on assuming command of the RFK, in the belief that a new skipper should assume all prerogatives in setting new traditions on a new ship. Certainly, the comfortable living-room-style furniture was much more relaxing than the hard-backed steel and plastic furniture that had been furnished by the shipyard.
He accepted the coffee that Larkin ordered and sat back in the chair to watch his commanding officer pouring his own coffee. Folsom really knew little about Larkin, and he doubted that many men did. Larkin was old Navy, relaxed but steeped in tradition; he probably would have been more at home in the more easygoing Australian or Canadian navies if he were to be judged by his command style. In two years he had yet to hear the captain raise his voice to give an order. And he could not ever remember Larkin having to give an order twice.
But the man kept his own counsel. Never had there been an exchange of personal information between them. What little he knew about Larkin had been gleaned from his service record, to which Folsom, as executive officer, had access, and from talk around the various officers’ clubs. The service record had been exceedingly dry, as always, but at the same time was an intriguing document, more from what it had implied rather than described. Folsom knew, for instance, that Larkin had commanded a destroyer during the Vietnam conflict and had been decorated with the Navy Cross for bravery under fire. But it had remained a noncommittal note in a record until he ran into a chance acquaintance in San Francisco who had been communications officer on the cruise for which Larkin earned the decoration.
The story was that Larkin had taken his destroyer to within a hundred yards of fringing reefs off the South Vietnamese coast just below the Demilitarized Zone. He was to lay down pointblank covering fire for a Korean patrol driven back and pinned down on the beach by a superior and well-dug-in North Vietnamese Army unit. Larkin had moved in so close that he had come under intensive mortar fire. The destroyer took three mortar rounds, one directly through the fan tail, which had exploded against the rudder controls, blasting them out of action. In spite of the damage, Larkin had remained on the scene, in fact moving in even closer to bring antiaircraft guns into broadside position to lay down a sweeping barrage for twenty minutes while army helicopters moved in to pull the Koreans out. The service record for some reason missed noting the award of the Republic of South Korea Distinguished Service Medal.
Folsom’s friend had many other tales of Larldn’s skill and bravery, which he was more than happy to relate to Folsom during a long two-fifths-of-gin afternoon and evening. All were in a similar vein. But what stuck most deeply in Folsom’s memory was his friend’s description of Larkin as an aloof, although quite personable, and lonely man. Exactly Folsom’s own conclusion.
Even Larkin’s face bore out his manner. It was a face that was at once alive but closed to outsiders. The gray eyes stared out at you from under straight, medium thin brows with a direct stare that forbade anything except the exact truth. Larkin was a tall man, but spare, almost to the point of gauntness in some respects. His face was thin, with the skin stretched tightly across the brow and nose. But the shoulders were broader than would have been expected for a man so tall and lean. There was something about the man, something in the posture, that Folsom could not isolate, that belied the personal aesthetism that really existed. The furniture in the cabin may have been comfortable and pleasantly arranged, but it was certainly not opulent. The color scheme matched the paneled and steel walls, but that was all. The desk, set under the air vent, was clean and neat. A choice selection of books could be seen in the barred rack over the desk and the titles were intriguing, indicating a disciplined mind.
Larkin settled into a chair facing him and balanced his coffee cup on the arm. He glanced at Folsom, who sipped at his coffee and waited. It was characteristic of Larkin, he thought, to unknowingly make you wait uncomfortably until he started to speak. The gray eyes peering out from the calm face gave the impression that Larkin was measuring your character and strength, It was not intentional, he knew. It was only that Larkin was marshaling his own thoughts.
Larkin cleared his throat “I noticed that you made a course correction. Good thinking. These seas are going to get rougher.”
Folsom nodded. “I had engineering rig up strain gauges on the bow patch. If it starts to weaken, we’ll want to know about it in plenty of time.” Larkin smiled briefly. “Yes we will at that.” He sat for a moment sipping his coffee. “I just got word from Virginia that our Russian friends are onto the system.” Folsom sat up. He really knew very little about the supersecret games they had been playing lately. Between themselves they always used the name Virginia to refer to the agency that directed their actions. Although he did not know really who “Virginia” was, he could pretty well guess that it meant the forty-two-acre complex in the hills just outside Washington that was Central Intelligence
Agency Headquarters. But what was the game the Russians were onto?
Larkin pulled a sealed envelope off the desk top and handed it to Folsom. “Open it.” Folsom tore the end off and extracted the folded papers. He spread them on his lap and picked up the top sheet. DOD 630-29K. That was one he had not seen before. He looked up questioningly at Larkin, but Larkin was gazing in deep absorption at the design on his coffee cup.