Old Joe Blunt was impressed, I could see that. He pulled the pipe out of his mouth, palmed the bowl lovingly, slid it into pocket. "We'll see what can be done about it, Rich," he said as he rose to go, and I knew I had won. At the door he paused.
"We'll have to give Bledsoe a new Exec," he said. "Leone is good, but he's pretty junior too. Besides, the next patrol will be his fifth, and he ought to be coming off pretty soon for rotation."
One victory was all I could legitimately hope for, and I had to let that one drop. Keith was not at all disappointed, however, when I told him about it. He'd be tickled pink to be Jim's Number Three, he told me. Knowing him, I knew he would.
I had several long conversations with Jim before he took the Walrus to sea, and told him, among other things, everything I knew or guessed about Bungo Pete. In the process I described my fears that there might be some kind of security leak in our submarine command headquarters here in Pearl Harbor.
Despite my good relations with Captain Blunt, I had not yet quite felt up to bringing that matter up with him, I told Jim, but would do so at the first opportunity.
Jim and Keith were the most faithful about coming to see me, though the rest of the crew and officers made honest efforts to come also. Shortly after they had returned from the Royal Hawaiian rest period, Kohler, Larto, and a group of others touched me deeply by bringing in a small metal model of Walrus which they had all had a hand in making. "She's made out of a CRS bolt," explained Kohler, CRS being the Navy equivalent of stainless steel and valuable for ships because of its noncorrosive properties. "Yah," grinned Larto, his magnificent teeth flashing, "they still wonder what happened to that main induction gag bolt."
"You guys ought to be in jail," I growled in an attempt to register anger I did not feel. "You'd steal your own grand- mother blind!"
Russo had the answer for that one. "This ain't stealing, Captain. You're still in the Navy, ain't ya?"
Quin, more thoughtful, said, "We thought you'd like some- thing to remember the Walrus by, Captain, and this seemed to be the best idea-it came off the ship, and we made it on a shaper in the sub base machine shop."
When they had trooped noisily out, a few minutes later, they had left not only the model of the Walrus but also a gaudy commercial "get well soon" card and a round-robin testimonial signed by every member of the crew to the same effect. And Russo, with considerable smirking and bashful hemming and hawing, hauled out his own personal offering which had been temporarily left in the halclass="underline" a huge cake covered with thick varicolored frosting and surmounted by a frosted submarine.
The day before their departure for patrol, all the wardroom came to see me, and I bade them good-by with a lump in my throat. As they filed out, Jim hung back. "Skipper," he began.
"Call me 'Rich,'" I said.
"OK, Rich then. I thought you'd be interested to know-we won't be coming back here for a while. We're going to Australia on this trip. Our patrol area is off Truk, the big Jap base down in the Carolines, and after we're relieved we'll head for Brisbane.
We'll do the same thing in reverse on the way back." Jim grinned faintly.
"Why, you lucky dog, you," I said. "That's all you've been thinking of ever since the war started. How did you manage it?"
"Just kept talking it up. I guess they needed a volunteer about the time I got there, and so we got the nod."
"They say it's wonderful country and has wonderful people "Especially the wonderful people," Jim agreed. The grin was a bit self-conscious as he said it.
Walrus had hardly been gone a day when Joe Blunt showed up suddenly, unannounced as before. I had already started to sink back into lethargy, hadn't even shaved that morning, and looked like hell in general, which is not the way for any junior to receive a senior, even if he is sick in bed. I pulled myself together.
"Rich, did you or Jim write this patrol report?"
"I did, most of it. I was keeping it up as we went along."
"Good. You mentioned that Tokyo Rose called the Walrus by name, did you hear her?"
"Yes, I sure did!"
"Well, as you know, we've been wondering where they got their dope. One other boat, before you, also heard Tokyo Rose call them by name, and of course old Bungo Pete apparently makes a point of showing us that he knows the names of all the boats which operate in AREA SEVEN. But this time something strange has happened. It's the first time he's missed like this, too. Another one of those intelligence reports I told you about arrived this morning, and it mentions the Japs as knowing Walrus had been in the area, but goes on to say that the old Octopus also made an attack on a convoy, and was sunk by shellfire from the destroyer Akikaze. Can you account for that? — What's so Goddamned funny!"
For I was laughing helplessly, pounding the bed in my mirth and relief, rolling my head from side to side with tears coming to my eyes: Gasping, I finally recovered myself sufficiently to tell him of my suspicions and of the garbage stunt. Old Blunt's eyes narrowed as I told him of my deductions regarding the security of ComSubPac, but 'when I told him about the Octopus and the garbage, he burst into a roar of laughter.
"Well, I'll be switched So that's how Bungo gets his dope.
The old son-of-a-bitch paws over our garbage! Why, he probably makes a business of picking it up!" Blunt joined in my renewed guffaws. "Wait until I tell the Admiral about this. This will relieve his mind greatly, and we'll pass it on to the boats.
That wily old bastard doesn't miss a trick, does he?"
"Old bastard," I repeated. "Do you know who he is?"
"Sure, we know who he is! His name is Tateo Nakame, and he's a Captain in the Japanese Navy. He was a submariner and was known for being a mean old cookie, too. I guess they had to be pretty hard-boiled in those days, but anyway, not many people liked him." So my deduction had been right! "The Akikaze, is that his ship, is that the one which landed me here? Why did he quit chasing us, then?"
Blunt chuckled. "You guess. I've been guessing three hours trying to figure out this Octopus brainstorm of yours." He waited. "How many destroyers were there in that convoy?" he asked.
"Four, counting Bungo."
"Right, and you sank one of them. Then there were three."
"Yes."
"And how many submarines were there?"
"Only us."
"Guess again. There were two, the Walrus and the Octopus.
From the hell you raised in that convoy he was certain there must have been two subs attacking. When he saw the shell explode on your bridge he figured he had done for one of them especially when Walrus dived immediately afterward. All the rest of the night, and next day too, I think, he collected what was left of his outfit and waited for the other submarine to show up again." Old Blunt's grin threatened to split his face right in two. "This makes twice you've outsmarted him, Rich.
He knows the Walrus by now, and unless I miss my guess by a mile he knows you also by name. He'd like nothing quite so much as to have your scalp to hang on his belt. He was a mean one in the Jap Navy, remember, and that was during peace- time."
"I'll remember," I promised. But a sickbed and a traction splint in the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard Hospital seemed a million miles away from Tateo Nakame and His Imperial Japanese Majesty's ship Akikaze.
Lying in the hospital, I lost all track of time. The hot days came and went. So did the nights. I got a few letters, finally got up the energy to answer them. Hurry Kane wrote me a nice long letter, wishing me quick recovery. She had heard from Stocker in Australia, and expected to get another series of letters any time now. Laura had written her from New Haven and was fine.