He simply let her meld herself against him, his cracked lips nuzzling her hair. All the troubles, the lies, the perils were as nothing in that instant because they both understood that no ship manoeuvred like this unless it was under attack.
They felt the underwater explosion before they heard it.
The shockwave punched the charging carrier’s flank; the dull, faraway boom of the detonation was a thing almost imagined. Something sensed through intimate contact with the very fabric of the ship.
Then there was another big explosion, closer than the first.
And a silence of a loud kind as they strained to catch the next detonation.
When it came it was not alone
Whump! Whump! Whump!
Three detonations at a great depth, like the steps of a giant walking towards them. And again there was a peculiar silence in which only the roaring of the carrier’s great engines and the noise of her battering ram progress through the water filled the quietness.
Whump! Whump! Whump!
Farther away this time.
The manoeuvring bell clanged.
The ship’s motion altered; she was taking the seas on her starboard stern quarter for the first time since she’d gone to Air Defence Condition One. Five minutes later the pulse of her screws slackened and she rode the swells more easily. High above their heads an aircraft slapped down onto the flight deck, its engines briefing roaring like a great enraged beast before the arrester wire caught and stopped the plane dead on the deck, and the pilot throttled back.
“Back to normal again,” the man said, thinking out aloud.
Later they were disturbed by a knock at the door. Clara started in alarm; she’d been dozing contentedly in her lover’s arms. The hatch opened.
“Excitement over,” said the same bearded Petty Officer who’d mandated the closing of the hatch earlier that morning. He was wearing a grim face. “The chopper boys will probably be bringing us more casualties soon. Surgeon Commander McKitterick’s compliments, ma’am, but he’d appreciate your presence in the sick bay at your earliest convenience…”
Chapter 9
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy awakened with a start, calmed a little when he remembered where he was. He’d fallen asleep at his desk, probably only for a few minutes. He tuned into the agitated, low voices of the men snapping at each other in the comfortable chairs nearby. He looked at his wristwatch. It was just after midnight; in England it would already be five in the morning.
One of his secretaries, a new dour, homely middle-aged woman who seemed on the verge of swooning every time he smiled at her, had placed a fresh cup of black coffee on his blotter and was in the process of making good her escape.
“It is Mrs Zabriski, isn’t it?” The thirty-fifth President of the United States of American inquired of her retreating back.
The woman turned and in an agony of indecision nodded like a hen pecking the ground for grain.
“Why yes, Mister President.”
“Your coffee is always the best, Mrs Zabriski,” Jack Kennedy said, flashing the killer smile that had seduced heiresses, movie stars, shop girls and the occasional gangster moll alike for over a quarter of a century. “Thank you, ma’am.”
The poor woman sprinted from the Oval Office in disarray.
Bobby Kennedy approached the presidential desk wearing his serious face.
“Don’t go puritanical on me, Mr Attorney General,” his older brother cautioned him, still basking in the afterglow of the pleasure and the exquisite — entirely harmless — embarrassment he’d caused Mrs Zabriski. “That lady makes a dammed fine cup of coffee. That’s not a thing to be underestimated.” He sniffed. “Not the way things are at the moment.”
The Vice-President stamped into the Oval Office ten minutes later.
“The British Ambassador says he’s been waiting to speak to you for four hours, Mister President,” Lyndon Baines Johnson stated irascibly without bothering with the normal greetings and salutations. Storms in the mid-west and the tail end of an Atlantic hurricane system had delayed his flight back to Washington from Houston. “What in God’s name is Dean playing at? And whose idea was it to light a fire under that arsehole Franco’s arse? And while I’m on my feet what in the name of fucking…” Not a man usually given to profanity in his dealings with the President or his closest advisors, the Vice-President, realising that he had lost his temper, shut his mouth until he decided he’d got a grip on his ire. “Is it true about the B-52s out of Barksdale?”
“We don’t know anything for sure,” Bobby Kennedy said quickly.
“Don’t give me that lawyer shit, Mister Attorney General,” the tall Texan snapped, leaning towards the younger man as if he was bracing himself against a strong wind. LBJ was notorious for his tendency to loom over an opponent and stare them down until they wilted or backed off. Other members of the Administration were usually exempt from ‘the treatment’, especially when the President was anywhere in the vicinity. Tonight the Vice-President was beyond caring. “I swear to God you Ivy League rich kids have screwed the pooch this time!”
Jack Kennedy cleared his throat.
“Welcome back to Washington, Mr Vice-President.”
The older man glared at the man behind the huge desk.
“Gentleman,” the President declared, “the Vice-President and I need to have a frank exchange of views. Would you leave us for a few minutes please?”
The only other person in the room who thought that was a remotely good idea was LBJ. Nevertheless, within a minute Jack Kennedy was waving his Vice-President — the man who was never farther than a heartbeat away from the chair he’d just vacated — to sit down. The two men studied each other across the divide above the giant American Eagle woven into the carpet at their feet.
“This is my fault,” Jack Kennedy confessed.
“That ain’t no lie,” his Vice-President agreed; but without sourness or censure. “I heard you got sick after that dammed fool trip to Rice two weeks back. I told you it was a mistake. If the Republicans can find somebody with the balls to run against you next year who is worth his salt, it’ll cause us a lot of trouble we can do without. Now is too early for all that inspirational campaign trail shit.”
Jack Kennedy nodded thoughtfully, took a series of long, slow breaths.
“I will not be running for a second term,” he said.
The older man didn’t respond immediately. For one thing he didn’t actually believe he’d heard what he’d just heard, and for another, he didn’t believe in Santa Claus. Or for that matter, the Tooth Fairy. He’d been in politics — dirty, no holds barred winner takes all politics — most of his adult life and if he’d learned anything it was that nothing was ever quite what it seemed. First impressions were the most dangerous things in Christendom and he never, ever trusted his or anybody else’s first take on a thing at face value.
“Last time I checked your name was on the ballot for the New Hampshire Primary in nine weeks time?”
“I was diagnosed with Addison’s disease in England in 1947,” the younger man replied. “Back in the mid-thirties when I was in my teens I almost died twice on the operating table when they tried to fix on my back.”
The revelation about Addison’s disease hadn’t come as news to the Vice-President. However, LBJ’s left eyebrow twitched with interest at the second admission.
“Getting bust up in the war covered up the back thing,” the younger man went on. “Ever since that night in 1943 when the PT109 got rammed by the Amagiri I’ve had the perfect get out every time somebody asks me a question about my health. I was an all-American hero, wasn’t I?”