The admiral finished his coffee very casually. “No, senator. I’m going to come back to life and really retire this time, but otherwise all of the personnel of this operation are going to remain unheralded and unsung. We always hope for a better world, but we don’t have any guarantees — not yet. So we are going quietly to break up except for a few maintenance personnel and go on about our separate businesses, but our organization will still be there if it’s ever needed again. The same goes for all of our backup people, and you have no idea how many there are.”
The senator was not fully satisfied. “Consider history…” he began.
The admiral firmly shook his head. “You take the bows, senator; you’ve earned them. Publicity isn’t our business, in fact in our kind of operation it could be fatal to us. You go and make the Actor look good, then you can come home and run for President.”
“I don’t want to be President,” Fitzhugh said.
Two hours out of port the U.S.S. Ramon Magsaysay rendezvoused on the surface with a supply vessel which passed over several packages of soft goods. The men of the submarine received them gladly and with their aid prepared themselves more suitably for an appearance at a United States naval facility. For a short while the captain disappeared from the bridge; when he returned he was in proper uniform and, what was more, he had been well fitted and his decorations were correctly displayed. Underneath him his ship rolled slightly in the water, a welcome change from the monotonous steadiness while submerged. As he walked back and forth on the small area available, he drew in deep lungfuls of air and glanced up every few seconds at the sky. When the lookout announced landfall he pulled down the edges of his coat and began to check that his ship was fully prepared to enter port in a smart and proper manner. He passed some orders and verified a number of things to the point where Chief Summers remarked that he had never seen the old man in such a testy mood.
It did not last for long. The New England coastline grew nearer and then the familiar outlines of the New London-Groton area. The Magsaysay cut cleanly through the water, her speed exactly right to ride the tide in. The navigator passed up a message that she should make her berth within two minutes of her ETA.
“Improve that,” the captain replied.
At the proper time smartly uniformed members of her crew came on deck and formed an impressive line of seagoing fighting men. The captain looked them over from the bridge with an eagle’s eye, but he could find no fault. He nodded to the Officer of the Deck and once more adjusted the edges of his coat.
Those who were waiting on the pier, from the three-star admiral on down, watched with a mixture of pride and well-founded emotion as the narrow black submarine came slowly in under her own power, her crewmen lining her rail in the finest tradition of the Navy. From her first sighting the television cameras had been on her, now as she drew closer they trained on her deck and then panned up to her bridge where only heads and shoulders were visible.
It took longer than many present had expected for her to berth, for she came in well away from the pierside to avoid fouling her screw and was properly snubbed in with the minute slowness that the very careful operation demanded. Then at last the short brow was put into position that led from the dock over to her deck and Magsaysay was officially in port.
Following the orders that he had been given, Commander Ishiro Nakamura, the son of a central California strawberry grower, came down from the bridge. Under the direction of Chief Summers a small formal party took its place on the quarterdeck on each side of the brow and a pipe sounded. “Magsaysay, leaving,” came from the ship’s speaker system.
The captain crossed the brow as the television cameras recorded his every movement and then tightened in on his handsome dark features as he saluted the vice-admiral who stood waiting for him.
The admiral held out his hand. “Welcome back, commander,” he said. “How was your cruise?”
Commander Nakamura shook hands with proper dignity.
“Routine, sir,” he reported.
In response to the summons he had received Hewlitt crossed the hotel lobby and took an elevator to the fourteenth floor. As he walked down the corridor he was aware of the fact that one area had been sealed off — not obviously, but any casual visitors would have been stopped and asked their business. A few months earlier he might not have noticed this; now his sensitivity to such matters had been considerably sharpened. He was not surprised, therefore, when he had to produce an identity card before he was able to stop in front of one door and knock.
Feodor Zalinsky himself opened it. Hewlitt had not seen him since they had had their meeting in the hospital and his appearance was a surprise. He was a good ten pounds lighter, possibly even a little more. He had on a new suit which had some pretensions of fitting him. His face too, had changed. It was essentially the same, but there was a different cast to the features. As a first guess Hewlitt decided that he looked less harried.
“Come in, come in,” Zalinsky said and there was a change in his voice too, the built-in challenge which had characterized it was at least modified. Hewlitt entered, glanced at the view out of the window, and then sat down.
“I have discovered that you make very good beer,” Zalinsky said, “and I like beer. Will you have one with me?”
As he accepted, Hewlitt noted the fact that Zalinsky was speaking his own language; apparently the enforced English practice had been discarded.
At the small wet bar with which the apartment was equipped Zalinsky poured out the two drinks in pilsner glasses and then set one of them in front of his guest. Then he dumped himself into a chair and tasted his brew. “From time to time many different peoples have tried to conquer China,” he observed, “but it was too big and cumbersome; they could not digest it.”
Hewlitt nodded.
“This country, it is hopeless. I do not know how you run it yourselves.”
“Sometimes we can’t,” Hewlitt conceded. “We make a mess of things every now and then.”
“I could give you some very good suggestions,” Zalinsky said and then took a long drink from his glass that left foam on his lips. “But I do not have the time for all that; I am going home.”
Hewlitt shifted his position slightly, and waited.
“You may have in your mind many reasons for this: the submarine, the Thomas Jefferson business, the death of Gregor Rostovitch. I do not deny these, but the whole truth is not there either. We could have answered the submarine if Gregor had not gotten so far ahead of himself with the hostage business; there are too many other people in the world who would have recoiled from that, and we would have been left outside the church. We could have pretended to negotiate for a period of weeks and each day that passed…” He shrugged his shoulders and left the remark unfinished. “Anyhow, that is all over, you still have your high diver and there is perhaps less work for him to do now.”
“I hope so,” Hewlitt said.
“I will tell you this,” Zalinsky continued, “long before the submarine left San Francisco I advised my government that the occupation of the United States was a great mistake and that we should withdraw as soon as we could. We did not have the multitudes of skilled people that it would have taken and not very many of us can speak English; it is not a natural language for us. So when the submarine appeared on the scene, I urged that we use this fine excuse to get out of an impossible situation.”
Hewlitt drank his beer.
“So anyhow, it is finished. A little sooner than it would otherwise, perhaps, but we would not have been here too long no matter what happened; it simply wasn’t practical. We cannot occupy your country indefinitely, and you could not occupy us, for many of the same reasons.”