Chapter 8

Victor, surely it's dangerous and silly for a British girl to go rattling aimlessly around in Moscow, with the Huns closing in on all sides." "Yes, it is. Why don't you go to Kuibyshev with her, Talky? Every foreign correspondent in Russia was on that train, except you." "They're all idiots. Getting news right here in Moscow was hard enough. What the devil will they find to write about in that mudhole on the Volga? They'll just drink themselves into cirrhosis of the liver and play poker until their eyes give out. Mine are bad enough. I'm skedaddling. If the Russkis hold Moscow, I'll come back. I hope and believe they will, but if they don't, it's all over. England's at the end of her rope, you know that. We'll all throw in our hands. It'll be the great world shift, and your FDR with his brilliant sense of timing can then face a whole globe armed against him." Victor Henry stumbled to the yellowed mirror and rubbed his bristly chin. "I'd better talk to Pamela." 'Please, dear fellow, please. And hurry!" Pug came outside to fresh snow, bright sunshine, and a ragged burst of Russian song by male voices. A formation of old men and boys, shouldering picks and shovels and lustily shouting a marching tune, was following an army sergeant down Maneznaya Square. The rest of the Muscovites appeared to be trudging normally about their business, bundled up and shawled as usual, but the sidewalk crowds were much thinner. Perhaps, thought Pug, all the rats had now left and these were the real people of Moscow. He walked up to Red Square, past an enormous poster of the embattled motherland, embodied as a shouting robust woman brandishing a sword and a red flag, and smaller posters of rats, spiders, and snakes with Hitler faces being bayonetted by angry handsome Russian soldiers or squashed under Red Army tanks. The square was deserted; white thick snow almost unmarked by footprints carpeted the great expanse. In front of the Lenin tomb outside the Kremlin wall, its red marble hidden by layers of snow-=sted sandbags, two soldiers stood as usual like clothed statues, but there was no line of visitors. Far on the other side, Victor Henry saw a bulky figure in gray walking alone past Saint Basil's Cathedral. Even at this distance he recognized the swingy gait of the Bremen deck and the way she moved her arms. He headed toward her, his overshoes sinking deep in snow speckled black with paper ash. She saw him and waved. Hurrying to meet him across the snow, she threw herself in his arms and kissed him as she had on his return from the flight to Berlin. Her breath was fragrant and warm. "Damn! The governor went and told you." 'That's right." "Are you exhausted? I know you were up all night. There are benches by the cathedral. What are your plans? Are you all set for Kuibyshev? Or will you go to London?" They were walking arm in arm, fingers clasped. "Neither. Sudden change. I've gotten orders, Pam. They were waiting for me here. I'm going to command a battleship, the California." She stopped and pulled on his elbow to swing him toward her,clasped both his arms, and looked in his face with wide glistening eyes. "Command a battleship!' "Not bad, eh!" he said like a schoolboy. "My God, smashing! You're bound to be an admiral after that, aren't you? Oh, how happy your wife will be!" Pamela said this with unselfconscious pleasure and resumed walking. "I wish we had a bottle of that sticky georgian champagne, right here and now. Well! That's absolutely wonderful. Where's the California based? Do you know?" 'Pearl Harbor." She glanced inquiringly at him. 'Oahu. The Hawaiian Islands."Oh. Hawaii. All right. We'll start plotting to get me to Hawaii. No doubt there's a ]British consulate there, or some kind of military liaison. There has to be." 'Aren't you on leave from the Air Force? Won't you have to go back on duty if Talky returns to London?" "My love, let me take care of all that. I'm very, very good at getting what I want" 'I believe that." She laughed. They brushed snow from a bench outside the rail of the bizarre cathedral. Its colored domes shaped like onions and pineapples were half-hidden, like the red stars on the Kremlin towers, under drapings of thick gray canvas. 'When do you leave for Hawaii, and how do you get there?" 'I'll leave as soon as I can, and go via Siberia, japan, and the Philippines." He clasped her hands as they sat down. "Now, Pam, listen-" "Are you going to lecture me? Don't bother, please, Victor. It won't work." "You mentioned my wife. She'll probably come to Pearl." "I should think she would." "Then what have you in mind, exactly?" "My, love, since you ask me, I have in mind that you and I deceive her, decently, carefully, and kindly, until you're tired of me. Then I will go home." This blunt declaration shook Victor Henry. It was so novel, so outside the set rules of his existence, that he only replied with clumsy stiffness, "I don't understand that kind of arrangement." "I know, darling, I know it must seem shocking and immoral to you. You're a dear nice man. Nevertheless I don't know what else to propose. I love you. That is unchangeable. I'm happy with you, and not happy otherwise. I don't propose to be separated from you any more for long stretches of time. Not until you yourself dismiss me. So you'll have to put up with this bargain. it's not a bad one, really." "No, it isn't a bad bargain, but you won't keep it."Pamela's face showed shocked surprise; then into her eyes came an amused glow, and her lips curved in a mature clever smile. "You're not so dumb." "I'm not in the least dumb, Pamela. The Navy doesn't give battleships to dumbbells." A line of olive-painted trucks marked with large red stars came roaring up into the square, rolling past the red brick museum and the shuttered GUM building, and pulled up side by side facing the Lenin tomb. 'We're in a time bind here," Pug went on, raising his voice. 'For the moment I'll put Rhoda aside, and just talk about you-' She interrupted him. "Victor, love, I know you're faithful to your wife. I've always feared you'd think me a pushing slut. But what else can I do? The time has come, that's all. Ever since I was forced to tell Talky this morning, I've been flooded with joy." Henry sat leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands Clasped, his eyes half closed in the sun glare off the snow, looking at her. Soldiers began piling out of the trucks. Obviously new recruits, they were lining up in ragged ranks in the snow under the barking of sergeants in ankle-length coats, while rifles were passed and handed out. After a long pause Henry said, in a matter-of-fact way, "I know this kind of chance won't roll around again in my life." 'It won't, Victor. It won't!" Her face shone with excitement. "People to whom it happens even once are very lucky. That's why I must go with you. it's a mischance that you can't marry me, but we must accept that and go on from there." "I didn't say I can't marry you," Henry said. She looked astounded. "Let's be clear. If I love you enough to have an affair with you behind my wife's back, then I love you enough to ask her for a divorce. To me the injury is the same. I don't understand the decent kindly deception you talked about, There's a right name for that, and I don't like it. But all this is breaking too fast, Pam, and meantime you have to leave Moscow. The only place to go is LOndon. That's common sense.-hardened tone as he "I won't marry Ted. Don't argue," she said in a started to talk, "I know it's a beastly decision, but it's taken. That's flat. I didn't know about your battleship. That's thrilling and grand, though it complicates things. I can't make you take me along across Siberia, of course, but you had better forbid me. right now, or I'll manage to get to Hawaii myself-and much sooner than you'd believe possible." "Doesn't it even bother you that you're needed in England?" "Now you listen to me, Victor. There's no angle of this that I haven't contemplated very, verythoroughly and long. I wasn't thinking of much else on that four-day auto ride, if you want to know. If I leave old England in the lurch, it will be because something stronger calls me, and I'll do This was dire Ian ag that at gu c t Victor Henry understood. Pamela's gray coat collar and gray wool hat half hid her face, which was pink with cold; her nose was red. She was just another shapelessly bundled-up young woman, but all at once Victor Henry felt a stab of sexual hunger for her, and a pulse of hope that there might conceivably be a new life in store for him with this young woman, and her alone, in all the world. He was overwhelmed, at least for the moment, by the way she had pitched everything On this one toss. 'Okay. Then let's get down to realities, he said gently, glancing at his watch. "Youpve got to make a move today, in a couple of hours. And I have to attend to this little matter of going around to the other side of the world to take command of my ship." Pamela smiled beautifully, after listening with a formidable frown. 'What a nuisance I must be, suddenly draping myself around your neck at this moment of your life. Do You really love me?" "Yes, I love you," Pug said without difficulty and quite sincerely, since it was the fact of the matter. "You're sure, are you? Say it just once more." "I love you." Pamela heaved a thoughtful sigh, looking down at her hands. "Well! All right. What move shall I make today, then?" "Go back with Talky to London. You have no choice, so go quietly. I'll write you or cable you. "When?" "When I can. When I know." They sat in silence. The Kremlin wall, painted to look like a row of apartment houses, echoed the shouts of the sergeants and the metallic clash of rifle bolts, as the recruits clumsily did some elementary drill. "Well, that will be a communication to look forward to," Pamela said lightly. "Can't you give me some hint of its contents now?" "No." For some reason this pleased her, or seemed to. She put a hand t'o his face and smiled at him, her eyes full of naked love. "Okay. I'll wait." Her hand slipped down to the ripped shoulder of his coat.
"Oh, I wanted to mend that. What time is it?" ,it's after ten, Pam." 'Then I must get cracking. Oh dear, I honestly don't want to travel away from you again." They rose and began walking arm in arm. Among the recruits they were walking past stood Berel Jastrow, newly shaved. He looked older so, with his scraped skin hanging in reddened folds. He saw Victor Henry, and for a moment put his right hand over his heart. The naval officer took off his hat as though to wipe his brow, and put it back on. "Who is he?" Pamela said, alertly watching. "Oh! Isn't that the man who burst into Slote's dinner?" 'Yes," Victor Henry said. "My relative from Minsk. That's him. Don't look around at him or anything." In the unlit hallway outside her suite, Pamela unbuttoned her own coat and then unbuttoned Victor Henry's bridge coat, looking into his eyes. She pressed herself hard to him, and they embraced and kissed. She whispered, "You'd better write me or cable me to come. Oh God, how I love you! Will you drive with us to the airport? Will you stay with me every second to the last?" "Yes, of course I'll stay with you." She dashed tears from her face with the back of her hand, then miped her eyes with a handkerchief. "Oh, how glad I am that I dug in my nasty little hoofs!" Tudsbury came limping eagerly toward the door as she opened it. "Well? Well? What's the verdict?" "I was being silly," Pamela said. "I'm going home with you." Tudsbury looked from her face to Henry's, for the tone was sharply ironic. 'Is she going with me, Victor?" 'She just said she was." "Gad, what a relief! Well, all's well that ends well, and say, I was about to come looking for you. The R.A.F lads are being flown out half an hour earlier. There's a rumor that a German column's breaking through toward the airport and that it may be under shellfire soon. The Nark says it's a damned lie, but the boys had rather not take a chance." "I can pack in ten minutes." Pamela strode toward her room, adding to Pug, "Come with me, love." Victor Henry Tudsbury'eyes flash and a lewd smile curl the thick lips under his mustache. Well,P(saw) amelawas(s) human, Pug thought, for all her strength. She couldn't resist exploding the possessive endearment like a firecracker in her father's face. He said, 'Wait.
There's a report Talky must take to London for me. I'll be right back." 'What do you think, Talky?" Pug heard her say gaily as he went out. "Victor's got himself a battleship command, no less, and he's off to Pearl Harbor. That's in Hawaii!" He returned shortly, breathing hard from the run up and down the hotel staircase, and handed a manila envelope, stapled shut, to Tudsbury. "Give this to Captain Kyser, the naval attache at our embassy, hand to hand. All right?" "Of course. Top secret?" Tudsbury asked with relish. "Well-be careful with it. It's for the next Washington pouch." "When I travel, this case never leaves my hand," Tudsbury said, "not even when I sleep. So rest easy." He slipped into a brown leather dispatch case Pug's envelope, which contained two other envelopes, sealed. One was the long typed report for Harry Hopkins, and the other was the letter to the President about the Jews of Minsk. (from WORLD EMPIRE LOST) The Bouleversement One week in May 1940 sufficed to upset a balance of power in Europe that had lasted for centuries; and one week in December 1941 sufficed to decide the outcome of World War II and the future global balance of power. on December 4, our Army Group Center was driving through blizzards into the outskirts of Moscow, and from Leningrad to the Crimea Bolshevik Russia was tottering. The French Empire was long since finished. The British Empire too was finished, though the British Isles still hung feebly on, more and more starved by our ever-expanding U-boat arm. No other power stood between us and world empire except America, which was too weakened by soft living and internal strife to make war. Its industrial plant, half paralyzed by strikes, was still geared to producing luxuries and fripperies. Its military strength lay in an obsolescent navy centered around battleships, riskily based in Hawaii in order to overawe the Japanese, and quite impotent to affect the world-historical German victory that loomed. Seven days later, on December 11, we were at war with an America transformed into an aggressive military dictatorship, united with one will under a fanatical enemy of the Reich, converting its entire industry on a crash basis to war, and conscripting a vast fresh army and air force in order to crush us. The Red Army on the Moscow front, stiffened with Anglo-American supplies and fresh, primitive, hard-fighting Siberian divisions, had swung over to the counterattack. Elsewhere Soviet troops were forcing us to retreat from Rostov-the first German retreat since Adolf Hitler had risen to lead us in 1933. One step from the pinnacle of world empire on December 4, the German people on December11 found themselves plunged into a total two-front war, fighting for their lives, menaced from the east and from the west by two industrial giants with five times our population and twenty times our territory. History offers no parallel for this gigantic military bouleversement. The chief cause of it was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Sir Winston Churchill records frankly that when he got the news of this attack, he shed tears of thankful joy, for he knew then and there that the war was won. He wasted no tears, of course, on the American sailors caught by surprise and slaughtered. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: Here is the passage in Churchill: "No American will think it wrong of me if / proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. I could not foretell the course of events. / do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after at//" No tears are mentioned. As previously noted, Genera/ von Roon is not dispassionate in his references to Winston Churchill.-V.H. The Japanese Blunder The Japanese attack was of course quite justified, but it was a hideous strategic mistake. The fall of French and British power had left the far eastern European colonies almost undefended. Japan was the natural thief of this wealth. She needed it to fight her war against China to a finish. The Europeans had come halfway round the earth a few generations earlier to subjugate East Asia and plunder its resources. But now all that was over. Japan was the only strong presence in East Asia. It was far more moral for this Asiatic people to take over administration of this rich sphere, than for a few drunken white civil servants of defunct European empires to continue their pukka-sahib parasitism. Adolf Hitler had sought only friendly ties with this clever hard-working people of destiny. In the General Staff we assumed that Japan would march at the time best suited to her. We approved of this on every basis'of world philosophy. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was tactically an excellent operation, comparable in many ways to Barbaross,3. In both cases a small poor notion caught a big wealthy nation off guard, despite a tense war atmosphere and all manner of advance warnings and indications. In both cases surprise was exploited to destroy on a great scale the enemy's first-line forces. The Barbarossa surprise depended on the nonaggression treaty, then in force with soviet Russia, to lull the enemy. The Japanese went us one better by attacking in the middle of peace parleys. At the time of both attacks, of course, there were loud outcries of "infamy" and "treachery," as though these terms of private morality had any relevance to historical events. A poor nation seeking to supplant a rich one must use the best means it can find; moreover Thucydides saidlong ago that men by a natural law always rule where they are strongest. In history what is moral is what works. The will of God, Hegel taught, reveals itself only in historical outcomes. So viewed, Barbarossa and Pearl Harbor were both idealistic thrusts toward a heroic new world order. The difference was that Barbarossa was strategically impeccableand would have resulted in victory if not for unlucky and unforeseen factors-including this very Japanese attack five and a half months later, which, contrariwise, was such a strategic miscalculation that for once Churchill speaks no more than the truth in calling it suicidal madness. One violation of a cardinal rule is enough to invalidate a strategic plan. The Japanese surprise attack violated two. The two iron laws of warfare that Japan disregarded were: 1. Strike for the heart. 2. Know your enemy. "Strike for the Heart" The rule "Strike for the heart" is only a corollary of the first principle of warfare, the Concentration of Force. This was what Japan's military leaders overlooked. From the moment they correctly decided that the war in Europe was their big chance to take East Asia, a hard choice confronted them: should they first move north against the Soviet union by invading Siberia; or south, to scoop up the weakly held treasures of the European colonies? The move south was the the more tempting, of course. But in warfare one must not be misled by mere easy loot or the line of least resistance. The stakes of the war comprised nothing less than political redistribution of the world's landmasses. It was a radical global conflict, the first true World War. The lineup was classical-the rich against the poor, gold against iron. Germany was the only first-class power on the ascendant side, the side that was seeking to draw a new world map, and her attack on the Soviet union was her great bid. Once master of Russia, Germany would have been invincible. It followed that the Japanese should have moved to help Germany crush the Soviet union. With Germany triumphant, Japan could have taken and held anything in East Asia she wanted. But with Germany beaten, Japan had small hope of keeping even the vastest gains. Had Japan invaded Siberia in 1941, the German drive to Moscow would have succeeded. The Russian counterattacks in December would not have been mounted. The Bolshevik regime would either have fallen or made a second peace of Brest-Litovsk. For what saved Moscow in December was only Stalin's desperate denuding of the Siberian front for reserves to throw into the battle, tipping the scales at the last second by a hair.
Moreover, if Napoleon's maxim holds that the moral is to the physical in warfare as three to one, the mere fact of a Japanese assault on Siberia in the autumn might have brought on a Russian collapse. In mid-October panic gripped the Bolsheviks to the highest levels of government, with whole departments fleeing Moscow in disgraceful tumult, and the frightened dictator issuing shrill orders for a levie en masse to save the city. There is even an unconfirmed story that Stalin himself secretly fled, secretly returned when the panic subsided, and had everybody shot who knew of his disgraceful act. Russian rulers operate inside a Byzantine maze, and there is no way of checking this episode. In any case, this was surely the psychological moment of World War II, the once-in-athousand-years opportunity for the Japanese nation. Its irresolute leaders, poorly trained in military thinking and subject to the strange Oriental character mixture of excessive rashness, caution, and emotion, let the moment slip through their fingers to all eternity. History, like a woman, must be firmly taken when she is ready. Otherwise she scorns the fumbler, never forgives him, and never offers him another chance. "Know Your Enemy" The first mistake, then, was to go south instead of north, and to snatch booty instead of triking at the heart. But the Axis might still have won the war despite this dispersion of effort, had Japan not compounded the blunder with a second one that verged on true insanity. Granted the southward strategy, the obvious course was to move into the East Indies with maximum speed and force, consolidate rapidly, and prepare to defeat any American countermove. The Americans might not have moved at all. Tremendous opposition existed in the United States to sending American boys to die for the pukka sohibs in Asia. Roosevelt might have just sputtered harsh words, as he had after all of Adolf Hitler's triumphs. Roosevelt never moved one visible step beyond the range of public opinion. This was the master key to the nature of the enemy. Japan was oblivious to it, because of the distortions of Oriental thinking. Even if Roosevelt had sent his navy, defying half his public, against the entrenched Japanese in East Asia, this fleet would have fought its showdown battle at the end of a long supply line, in enemy waters, within range of Japan's land-based air force. It would have been another Battle of Tsushima Strait, with air power added. This humiliating slaughter in an unpopular cause might have brought on the impeachment of the none too popular Machiavellian in the White House. But even this was not the worst aspect of the Japanese blunder. America had the largest and most advanced industrial plant on earth. This mercenary nation, devoted to the almighty dollar and blessed with wonderful mineral resources stolen from the Indians, had reared an mmense plant capacity for making toys and trifles. But it was a capacityreadily convertible to munitions manufacture on the most fantastic imaginable scale. The whole hope of Axis victory in World War II lay in keeping America divided and soft until the time come to deal with her as an isolated unit without allies. This prospect was in sight. Half of America would have rejoiced at a German victory over the Soviet union. The Lend-Lease program was bogged down in red tape and inertia the day before the Pearl Harbor attack, reflecting the discord and confusion in the people. For this, great credit goes to Adolf Hitler. He was a narrow-minded man, appallingly ignorant of the United States. But his almost female intuition warned him that he must give his blood enemy, Roosevelt, no chance to unite the Americans against him. That is why the Fuhrer swallowed all the President's scurrilous public abuse and compelled the U-boat arm to endure appalling provocation. This wise strategy of the fuhrer was blown to smithereens by Pearl Harbor. Overnight a hundred thirty million quarrelsome, uncertain, divided Americans become one angry mass thirsting for battle. Roosevelt rammed through Congress gigantic war plans and expenditures which a few days earlier would have been utterly inconceivable. The Congress, which in August had extended a mild draft law by a single vote after weeks of debate, now unanimously passed fierce declarations of war, and all Roosevelt's long-plotted stupendous war programs, in a matter of hours. This was the chief result of Pearl Harbor, for the fleet was soon repaired and expanded. In one week Germany passed from the strategic offensive, with world empire in her grasp, to the strategic defensive, with no long-range prospect but to be crushed unless our enemies did something just as stupid and selfdestructive. Nonexistent "Axis" If one asks, "How did Germany permit such a catastrophe to occur?" the answer is that we were not consulted. We found out that Pearl Harbor was the target when the Americans did-when the torpedoes and bombs exploded. The "Axis" of Germany, Japan, and Italy never existed as a military reality. It was a ferocious-looking rubber balloon blown up by propaganda. Its purpose was bluff. The three nations went their own ways throughout the war, and usually did not even inform their partners in advance about attacks, invasions, and strategic decisions. Thus, when Hitler attacked Poland, Mussolini suddenly declined to fight and did not jump in until France was toppling. The Italian dictator invaded Greece without notifying Hitler. Hitler did not inform 11 Duce of the attack on Russia until just before the event. But for this he had good reason. Our intelligence had advised us that anything Mussolini knew went straight to the British via the Italian royal family.
Not once did real staff talks take place among the "Axis" armed forces. England and America were having such conferences a year before Pearl Harbor/ They followed a combined strategy throughout in close cooperation with the Bolsheviks. Now they can reflect at leisure on the wisdom of helping Stalin destroy us, and losing the Slav flood to the Elbe. But Allied operations were a model of combined strategy, while "Axis" strategy was a nullity. It was every man for himself, and unhappy Germany was tied to second-rate partners who made rash wild plunges that ruined her. Yomamoto's Role Why did Japan take this aberrant, foredoomed course? She had burst into modern history with the sneak attack on the Russian navy at Port Arthur in 1904, and perhaps was obsessed with this way for yellow men to beat white men. The Japanese Naval Staff favored the right move: a seizure of the indies, and a showdown with the United States Navy-if one should occur -in Japanese waters. But Pearl Harbor was conceived by one Admiral Yamamoto, the commander-in-chief of the fleet, who forced it on his navy and government by threats ' to resign. Yamamoto opposed the war with the United States entirely, on the grounds that against an enemy with an industrial superiority of seven to one, the attempt was hopeless. But he insisted that if he had to fight, he wanted to knock out the American fleet at the outset. To the broader effects of the attack, he was blind. The Naval Staff considered the attack too risky a gamble, but Yamamoto prevailed. Tactically, of course, he was vindicated. As long as men read and write, "Pearl Harbor" will be a synonym for successful surprise attack. it is as much a part of world language as "Waterloo." How, indeed, could the Japanese fleet assemble, steam across the Pacific to within two hundred miles of Hawaii, elude all United States intelligence efforts and all its sea and air patrols, and catch its Army and navy by surprise? This mystery is doubled and tripled by the postwar revelation that the United States had broken Japan's codes and was reading her secret diplomatic cables! The record of the Pearl Harbor investigation by the American Congress runs to millions of words. Still the mystery remains. As a German staff officer, I look upon Pearl Harbor as an abstract battle problem like Salamis or Trafalgar. Yamamoto's operation surprised the Americans precisely because it was such a foolish thing to do, such an outrageous gamble, such bad strategy, such muddled politics, and such unsound psychology, Even if it succeeded, it was just about the worst move the Japanese could try. Therefore the Americans made the mistake of shutting it from their minds. The Japanese irrationally went ahead and did it, and it happened to work.
A little-noted passage in the hearings, from the interrogation of the cashiered Admiral Kimmel, may provide a key to the mystery. Aerial torpedoes in those days needed to be dropped in deep water in order to straighten out and make their run. The minimum depth, according to American technical opinion, was about seventy-five feet. Pearl Harbor is thirty feet deep. The danger of a torpedo plane attack on the battle fleet was therefore called "negligible," and no torpedo nets were rigged. On December 7, aerial torpedoes hit seven battleships and wreaked vast havoc in Pearl Harbor. For the Japanese had devised a torpedo that could be launched in less than thirty feet, and their pilots had practiced shallow launchings from May to December! This sums up the mental difference in 1941 between the two nations. Did Roosevelt Plan It? The historical suspicion arose, and still lingers, that Roosevelt and his top aides conspired to cause the Pearl Harbor defeat. On this theory, they concealed from the Hawaiian command their certain knowledge that Japan was about to strike, obtained from decoded diplomatic telegrams, so as to keep the armed forces there unprepared for the blow. Roosevelt, on this view, decided that getting America solidly into the war was more important militarily than the loss of his battleships. This conjecture originated with the military leaders who were caught napping. They and their supporters maintain it to this day. Roosevelt was, of course, capable of this dastardly action. He was capable of anything. But the record shows that the Pearl Harbor command, and all the United States forces in the Pacific, certainly knew that war was imminent. Indeed, all they had to do was read the newspapers. In any case, there is no acceptable excuse for professional military leaders ever to be surprised, even under the most lulling and peaceful of circumstances. it happens, but it is not excusable. No evidence has turned up, in exhaustive investigations, that Roosevelt knew where the blow would fall. The Japanese kept the secret of the intended target perfectly. Their own top diplomats did not know it. Our Supreme Headquarters did not know it. it was never entrusted to a coded cable. The American military men were surprised because, like the Red Army in June, they were psychologically unprepared for war. On the eve of the attack, the officers at Pearl Harbor no doubt observed the sacred American Saturday night ritual of getting stinking drunk, as did most of their men, and so when the first bombs fell, they were incapable of manning their numerous planes and A.A. guns to defend themselves. Here the rule "Know the enemy" definitely helped the Japanese. If American forces, wherever stationed, are ever attacked again, the proper time will always be Sunday morning. National character changes very slowly. Roosevelt would have been far better served by a victory at Pearl Harbor than by a disaster. Success in repelling the blow would have raised the martial spirit higher. The Americans werea long time recovering mentally from the Pearl Harbor defeat. Roosevelt was not an imbecile, and only an imbecile would have forgone a chance to countersurprise the oncoming exposed Japanese fleet and sink it. Roosevelt did not warn the Pearl Harbor command of an imminent air strike because he, like everybody else, did not know and could not guess that the Japanese would act as grotesquely as they did. The Conspiracy theory of Pearl Harbor is a trivial excuse for professional failure. It is of course absolutely the case that by cutting off Japan's oil supply and then brusquely demanding, as the price of restoring it, that the Japanese make peace in China and stay out of East Asia, Franklin Roosevelt forced Japan to attack. There was no other honorable escape for this proud warlike notion from the Corner into which he squeezed them. But these global political maneuvers, at which he was a grand master, he performed openly. The newspapers were full of the diplomatic exchanges, so talk of conspiracy is silly. Roosevelt probably hoped to the last that he could bully and bluff this smaller, weaker nation into obeying him without war. Hitler would have played that situation exactly the some way. However, there was this difference: the German armed forces would not have let him down by being surprised, as Roosevelt's did. We were soldiers. TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: Roon's professional acumen is most striking when German conduct is not in the picture. With his appraisal of the Pearl Harbor surprise, I unhappily concur. He neglects the reo/ bungling and stupidity that went on in Washington during those days, as well in Hawaii; but his conclusion must be accepted that there is excuse for co(as) mmandersinthefieldtobesurPrised-Asimilarfailurebyourarmedservic(never) esin(an) the nuclear age will spell the end of American history. There will be no margin for recovery next time.
V.H. as he sat on the back la" S'ENS-n of lost time haunted Victor Henry three o'clock in the morning, Aof the Army and Navy Club in Manila at en thousand listening to a broadcast of a football game going on elev miles away. Overhead, as always on Army-Navy game night, Orion sprawled brilliantly across half the heavens. On the roads outside Moscow the constellation had blazed brightY, too, but far down toward the southern horizon. crowd of officers from both services, and a Pug sat on the grass amid a sprinkling of their Filipino girlfriends. Wives had long since been sent -Navy night-fresh-cut lawn grass, from home. The old smells of Army Spam, rum, women's perfume and the rank smell of harbor water-the gi o, the heat, the sweaty feeling even in a cotton shirt and paper lanterns, to interservice jokes and insults, all pulled him back in spirit slacks, the old amazingly unchanged. The jumpy overa dozen years. life in Manila was wrought embassy people in Tokyo had been speculating that there might be no Army-Navy game, that either the Japanese would go to war by Thanksgiving, or that at least the American armed forces would be on hA alert. Yet there stood the same old display board, with the flat white football that would slide back and forth on a string across the painted gridiron.
There were the mascot animals-Army mule in a brown blanket, Navy goat in a blue one-tethered and waiting for the comic moments. It might just as well be sleepy 1928, Pug thought. Only the floodlights blazing across the bay at the Cavite Navy Yard for all-night repair work suggested that it was November 1941, and that the Navy was slightly bestirring itself for an emergency. The loudspeakers bellowed above the chatter on the lawn, and the radio reception tonight was better than in some years. This game still had its old ritual fascination for Pug; he was following it tensely, smoking a cigar. Once his nostalgia had been keen for the tough youthful combat on the grass, the slamming of bodies, the tricky well-drilled plays, above all for the rare moments of breaking free and sprinting down the field, dodging one man and another with the stands around him a roaring sea of voices. Nothing in his life had since been quite like it. But long ago that nostalgia had departed; those grooves of memory had worn out. To think that lads much younger than his own two sons were out on that chilly field in Philadelphia now, made Victor Henry feel that he had led a very long, multilayered existence, and was now almost a living mummy. "Pug! I heard you were here." A hand lightly struck his shoulder. His classmate Walter Tully, bald as an egg and deeply tanned, smiled down at him; Tully had left the submarine school to take command of the undersea squadron at Manila. He gestured at a crowded table near the &splay board. "Come and t with us." "Maybe at the half, Red." It was decidedly an anachronism, but everybody still used the nickname. "It's more like the old days, sitting on the grass." "You're dead right. Well, I'll join you." "Now you're talking. Sit you down." Tully had played Academy football too, and he listened to the broadcast as intently as Pug. After a while the white football slid all the way for an Army run to a touchdown. Amid yells, cheers, and groans, a young lieutenant unloosed the mule, jumped on its back, and galloped around the lawn. "Oh, hell," Pug exclaimed. Tully shook his head. "We're going to lose this one, old buddy. They've got a fine backfield. We could use Pug Henry in there." "Ha! Fifteen-yard penalty for illegal use of wheelchairs. Say, Red, you're the original Simon Legree, aren't you?" "How do you mean?" "I mean sending the Devilfish out on exercises the night of the ArmyNavy game. What's the matter, you think there's a war threatening or something?"Tully grinned at the heavily ironic tone. "It was Branch Hoban's idea. they're going alongside for two weeks starting today-they're due in at noon-and he wanted to get in some drils. You'll see plenty of Byron." clilli only be here till the Clipper leaves."Yes, I hear tell you've got the California. That's just great, Pug." The game resumed. After some dull skirmishing the white -shap shot far across therm ball board; Navy had intercepted a pass and run it deep into Army territory. Pug and Tully got to their feet and joined in the Navy Yells of "Beat Army! Goal! Goal!" while an ensign happily paraded the goat around. The half ended righth after the touchdown. Cheerily Red Tully ordered drinks from a passing steward. itlet's stay here on the grass, Pug. Tell me about Romhia.His happy grin changed to a tough sober look as Victor Henry described the tank battle he had observed and the October 16 panic in Moscow. "Jesus, you've really been in there! I envy you. And here we sit, fat, dumb, and happy. They told me you flew here via Tokyo." "That's right." "What's the straight dope, Pug? Are those bastards really going to fight? We're getting some scary alerts here, but at this point we're kind of numb." "Well, our people there are worried. The ambassador talked to me at length about Japanese psychology. They're a very strange nation, he said, and hara-kiri is a way of life to them. The odds don't matter much. They're capable of executing a suicidal plan suddenly, and he fears they will." Tully glanced around at the nearby couples on the grass or on folding chairs, and dropped his voice. "That checks out. Admiral Hart received a straight war warning today, Pug. But we've been hearing nervous chatter from Washington, on and off, all summer and fall. In July when ihey landed in Indo-China and Roosevelt shut off their oil, we all thought, here goes! The squadron ran dawn and dusk GQ's for a week, till it got kind of stilly. Should I start that up again?" Pug gestured his puzzlement with turned-up palms. "Look, I talked to some businessmen one night at a dinner party in the embassy, Americans, British, and one jap, a big-time shipbuilder. The jap said the straight word, right from the Imperial Court, is that war with the USA is unthinkable. Everybody there agreed. So-you pays your money and you takes your choice." "Well, all I know is, if they do go, we're in trouble. The state of readiness in the Philippines is appalling. The people themselves don't want to fight the japs. That's my opinion. The submarine force is so short of everything-torpedoes, spare parts, watch officers, what have you-that it's simply pitiful. Speaking of which, when did you see Byron last?" 'I guess about six months ago. Why?""Well, he has more damn brass! He walked into my office the other day and asked for a transfer to the Atlantic command. His own skipper had turned him down and Byron was trying to go over his head. I sure ate him out about that. I told him, Pug-I said this, word for word-that if he weren't your son I'd have kicked his ass out of my office." Victor Henry said with forced calm, "His wife and baby are in Italy. He's worried about them." 'We're all separated from our kinfolk, Pug. It just isn't in the cards to transfer him. I'm trying to comb submarine officers our of tenders and destroyers. I'd do anything within reason for a son of yours, but-"- "Don't put it that way. Byron's just another officer. If you can't do it, YOU can't "Okay. I'm glad you said that." "Still, his family problem is serious. If it's possible, transfer him." "There is this little problem of the japs, too." "No argument." Victor Henry was taking some pains to keep his tone light and friendly. A crowd roar poured from the loudspeakers, and he said with relief, "Okay! Second half." When the game ended, many people were stretched out asleep on the grass, under a paling sky streaked with red. White-coated boys were still passing drinks and huddled Navy officers were bawling "Anchors Aweigh," for their team had won. Pug declined Captain Tully's invitation to break and went up to his room for a nap. He had stayed in a room like it-perhaps in this very one-on first reporting to Manila, before Rhoda had arrived with the children to set up housekeeping. High-ceilinged, dingy, dusty, with featureless old club furniture and a big perpetually turning and droning fan, the room hit Pug again with a strong sense of lost time and vanished days. He turned the fan up high, stripped to undershorts, opened the french windows looking out over the bay, and sat smoking cigarette after cigarette, watching the day brighten over the broad blue harbor and the busy traffic of ships. He was not sleepy. He sat so for more than an hour, scarcely moving, while gathering sweat trickled down his naked skin. thinking of what? Seeing pictures generated by his return to Manila. Pictures of himself and Byron under a poinciana tree at the white house on Harrison Boulevard, working on French verbs; the boy's thin face wrinkling, silent tears falling at his father's roared exasperation. Of Warren winning a history medal, an English medal, and a baseball award at the high school; of Madeline, fairylike in a gossamer white frock, wearing a gold paper crown at her eighth birthday party. Pictures of Rhoda crabbing about the heat and the boredom, getting drunk night after night in this club, falling on her face at the Christmas dance; of the quarrel that put an end to her drinking, when he coldly talked divorce. The smell of the club's lawns and halls, and of the spicy Manila air, gave him the illusion that all this was going on now, instead of belonging to apast more than a dozen years dead. Pictures of Pamela Tudsbury in Red Square. Of the dreary mud streets of Kuibyshev, the all-night poker games, the visits to farm communes, the stagnant slow passing of time while he waited for train tickets; then the two-week rail ride across Siberia; the beautih Siberian girls selling fruits, flat circular bread, sausage, and hot chickpeas at tiny wooden stations; the single track of the railroad stretching backward from the last car, a dark straight line through a pink snow desert, pointing straight at a setting sun that flattened like a football as it sank to the horizon; the long stops, the wooden benches in the "hard" coach, the onion breaths and body smells of the local travellers, some white, some Mongol, in queer fur hats; the awesome three-day forest stretches; the ugly miles on miles of huts in Tokyo; the wretchedness of the Japanese, the hate you could feel in the back of your neck on the street, the war weariness and poverty so much worse even than Berlin; the half-dozen letters to Pamela Tudsbury he had drafted and torn up. Through all these strange scenes Victor Henry had preserved a happy sense that he was moving toward a new life, a fulfilled life he had almost despaired of, a life delayed, postponed, almost lost, but now within grasp. When he thought of Rhoda it was usually as the effervescent Washington girl he had courted. He could understand falling in love with that girl and marrying her. The present-day Rhoda he pictured with detachment, almost as though she were somebody else's wife, with all her faults and all her charms seen clear. To divorce her would be cruel and shocking. How had she offended? She had been giving him an arid, half-empty existence -he now knew that-but she had been doing her best. Yet the decision evidently lay between being kind to Rhoda and seizing this new life. He had written the letters to Pamela as he had written the one about the Minsk massacre-to get a problem on paper for a clear look at it. By the time he arrived in Tokyo, he had decided that letters were too wordy and too slow-travelling. He had to send one of two cables-come, or DOre'T comis. Pamela needed no more than that. And he had concluded that Pamela was wiser than he, that the first step should indeed be a love affair in which they could test out this passion or infatuation before wounding Rhoda; for it might never come to that. In bald fact the prescription was a shackup. Victor Henry had to face the novel notion-for him-that in some circumstances a shackup might be the best of several difficult courses. In Tokyo he had actually hesitated outside a cable office, on the point of cabling: come. But he had walked away. Even if it were the best course, he could not yet picture himself bringing it off; could not imagine conducting a hole-in-corner affair, even if with Pamela it did not seem a squalid or immoral idea. It was not his style. He would botch it, he felt, and weaken or tarnish his work as the new captain of the California. So he had arrived still undecided in Manila. And in Manila, for the first time since his talk with Pamela Tudsbury in Red Square, an awareness of his wife Rhoda began to overtake him and the reality of Pamela to fade. Manila was saturated with Rhoda, the good memories and the bad memories alike, and with his own hardened identity. Red Tully, his classmate, a bald commander of all the submarines of theAsiatic Fleet; the Army-Navy game, in which he had last played twenty-eight years ago, when Pamela had been an infant a few months old; the dozens of young Navy lieutenants on the club lawn, with girlfriends Pamela's age-these were the realities now. The wild Siberian scenery was a fading patchwork of mental snapshots. So was the incandescent half hour on Red Square. Was it really in the cards for him to start over, to have new babies learning to talk, little boys playing on grass, a little girl twining arms around his neck? Manila above all recalled to Pug the pleasure he had taken in his children. Those days he looked back on as the sweetest and best in his life. To do it all once again with Pamela would be a resurrection, a true second life. But could a rigid, crusty man like himself do it? He had been hard enough on his kids in his thirties. He was very tired, and sleep at last overtook him in the chair, as it had in the Tudsburys' suite in the Hotel National. But this time no cold caressing fingers woke him. His inner clock, which seldom failed, snapped him awake in time to drive out to Cavite and watch the Devilfish arrive. Byron was standing on the forecastle with the anchor detail, in khakis and a life-jacket, but Pug failed to recognize him. Byron sang out, as the Devilfish nosed alongside the pier, 'Holy smoke, it's my father. You Dad! Dad!' Then Pug perceived that the slim figure with both hands in his back pockets had a familiar stance, and that his son's voice was issuing from the lean face with the curly red beard. Byron leaped to the dock while the vessel was still warping in, threw his arms around Victor Henry, and hugged him hard. Kissing that scratchy hairy face was a bizarre sensation for Pug. "Hi, Briny. Why the foliage?" 'Captain Hoban can't stand beards. I plan to grow one to my knees. God, this is a monumental surprise, Dad." From the bridge an officer shouted impatiently through a megaphone. jumping back on the moving forecastle like a goat, Byron called to his father, "I'll spend the day with you. Hey, Mom wrote me you're going to command the California! That's fabulous!" When the vessel was secured alongside, the Devilfish officers warmly invited Victor Henry to lunch at a house in the suburbs which they had rented. Pug caught a discouraging look from Byron, and declined. 'I live aboard the submarine," Byron said. They were driving back to Manila in the gray Navy car Pug had drawn from the pool'. "I'm not in that setup." 'y not? Sounds like a good thing." "Oh, neat. Cook, butler, two houseboys, gardener, five acres, a swimming pool, and all forpeanuts when they split up the cost. I've been there for dinner. They have these girls come in, you know, and stay ovemightdifferent ones, secretaries, nurses, and whatnot-and whoop it up and all that." "Well? Just the deal for a young stud, I should think." "What did you do, Dad, when you were away from Mom?" "Think I'd tell you?" Pug glanced at Byron. The bearded face was serious. "Well, I did a lot of agonized looking, Briny. But don't act holier-than-thou, whatever you do." "I don't feel holier than thou. My He's in Italy. That's that. They can do as they please." 'What's the latest word on her?" "She's flying to Lisbon on the fifteenth. I've got a picture of the kid. Wait till you see him! It's incredible how much he looks like my baby pictures." Pug had been poring over the snapshot in his wallet for two months, but he decided not to mention it. The inscription to Slote was an awkward detail. "God, it's rotten, being this far apart," Byron exclaimed. "Can you picture it, Dad? Your wife with a baby you've never even seen, on the other side of the earth-no telephone, a letter now and then getting through by luck? It's hell. And the worst of it is, she almost got out through Switzerland. She panicked at taking a German airplane. She was sick, and alone, and I can't blame her. But she'd be home by now, if there'd been any other way to go. The Germans! The goddamned Germans." After a silence he said with self-conscious chattiness, "Hot here, isn't it?" "I'd forgotten how hot, Briny." "I guess it was pretty cold in Russia." "Well, it's freezing in Tokyo, too." "Say, what's Tokyo like? Quaint and pretty, and all that?" "Ugliest city in the world," Pug said, glad for a distracting subject. "Pathetic. A flat shantytown stretching as far as the eye can see. Downtown a few tall modern buildings and electric signs, and crowds of little Japanese running around. Most of the people wear Western clothes, but the cloth looks to be made of old blotters. You see a few women dressed Japanese doll-style, and some temples and pagodas,. sort of like in San Francisco's Chinatown. It's not especially Oriental, it's poor and shabby, and it smells from end to end of sewage and bad fish. Biggest disappointment of all my travelling years, Tokyo. Moreover, the hostility to white men is thick enough to cut with a knife." "Do you think they'll start a war?""Well, that's the big question." Victor Henry's fingers drummed the steering wheel. 'I have a book on their Shinto religion you'd better read. It's an eye-opener. The ambassador gave it to me. Here are people, Briny, who in the twentieth century believe-at least some do-that their kings descended from a sun god, and that their empire goes straight back two thousand six hundred years. Before the continents broke apart, the story goes, japan was the highest point on earth. So she's the center of the world, the divine nation, and her mission is to bring world peace by conquering everybody else-you're smiling, but you'd better read this book, boy. Under the religious gibberish it's exactly like Nazi or Communist propaganda, this idea of one crowd destined to take over the world by force. God knows why this idea has broken out in different forms and keeps spreading. It's like a mental leprosy. Say, how hungry are you? Let's look at the old house before lunch." Byron's smile, framed in the neatly trimmed red beard, looked odd but no less charming. "Why, sure, Dad. I've the r mi ve done that. I don't know why." As they drove along Harrison Boulevard and approached the house, Byron exclaimed, "Ye gods, is that it? Someone went and painted it yellow.)# "That's it." Pug parked the car across the street and they got out. The unpleasant mustardy color surprised him too. It was all over the low stone wall and the wrought-iron fence, as well as the house-a sun-faded old paint job, already peeling. On the lawn lay a tumbled-over tricycle, a big red ball, a baby carriage, and plastic toys. "But the trees are so much taller and thicker," Byron said, peering through the fence, "yet the house seems to have shrunk. See, here's where Warren threw the can of red paint at me. How about that? There's still a mark." Byron rubbed his shoe over the dim red splash on the paving stone. "I had a bad time here, all in all. Warren laying my head open, and then the jaundice-2 'Yes, and that truck hitting you on your bicycle. I wouldn't think you'd remember it pleasantly." Byron pointed. "That's where we used to sit, right there under that tree, when you'd tutor me. Remember, Dad? Look how thick that trunk is now!" "Oh, you recall that? I wouldn't think that would be a pleasant memory either." "Why not? I missed all that school. You had to do it." "But I was a lousy tutor. Maybe your mother should have taken it on. But in the morning she liked to sleep late, and in the afternoon, well, she was either shopping, or getting her hair done, you know, or fixing herself up for some party. For all the times I lost my temper, I apologize." Byron gave his father a peculiar glance through half-closed eyes and scratched his beard. "I didn't mind.""Sometimes you cried. Yet you didn't cry when you got hit by the truck. Pain never made you crypt "well, when you put on that angry voice, it scared me. But it was all right. I liked studying with you. I understood you." "Anyway, you got good marks that year." 'Best I ever got." They looked through the fence without talking for a couple of long minutes. "Well, now we've seen the place," Pug said. "How about lunch?" "You know something?" Byron's gaze was still on the house. "Except for the three days I had in Lisbon with Natalie, I was happier here than I've ever been in my life, before or since. I loved this house." "That's the worst of a service career," Pug said. "You never strike roots. You raise a family of tumbleweeds." The crab cocktail at the Army and Navy Club was still served with the same bland red sauce in the same long-stemmed cups, with one purposeless green leaf sticking up in the crabmeat. The roast beef from the steam table was lukewarm and overdone, much as it had been in 1928. Even the faces of the people eating lunch seemed the same-all but Byron's. The thin little boy who had eaten with such exasperating slowness was now a bearded tall young man. He still ate too slowly; Pug finished his meat first, though he was doing nearly all the talking. He wanted to probe Byron a bit about Pamela, and about Jochanan Jastrow. He described Jastrow's sudden incursion into Slote's Moscow flat, and his spectral reappearance in Spaso House out of a snowstorm. Byron exploded in anger when his father mentioned Tudsbury's refusal to use the Minsk documents, and his guess that Jastrow might bean NKVD emissary. "What? Was he serious? Why, he's either a hypocrite or an idiott Vnat he said about people not wanting to help the Jews is true, God knows. Hitler paralyzed the world for years by playing on that chord. But nobody can talk to Berel for five minutes without realizing that he's a remarkable man. And dead on the level, too." "You believe the story about the massacre?" 'y not? Aren't the Germans capable of it? If Hitler gave the order, then it happened." wasn't that sure myself, Byron, but I wrote to the President about Byron stared openmouthed, then spoke in a low incredulous tone. "You did what, Dad?" "Well, those documents got shunted aside in the embassy as probable fakes. I thought they deserved more investigation than that.
It was an impulse-probably a stupid one-but I did it." Byron Henry reached out, covered his father's hand, and pressed it. The bearded face took on an affectionate glow- "All I can say is, well done." "No. I believe it was a futile gesture, and those are never well done. But it's past. Incidentally, have you ever met Tudsbury's daughter? Natalie mentioned in the Rome airport that she knew her." "You mean Pamela? I met her once in Washington. Why?" "Well, the Tudsburys and I travelled in the combat area together. She struck me as an unusually brave and hardy sort. She endured a lot and always remained agreeable and well-groomed. Never whined or crabbed." "Oh, Pam Tudsbury's the original endurer, from what Natalie says. They're not too unlike in that way, but otherwise they sure are. Natalie told me a lot about her. In Paris Pamela was a hellion." "Really?" ' "Yes, she had this Hemingwayish boyfriend who used to room with Leslie Slote. She and this character raised Cain all over Gay Paree. Then he dropped her and she went into a bad spin. I'm ready for some dessert, Dad. You too?" 'Sure." Victor Henry could not help persisting. "How-a spin?" . "Oh, can't you imagine? Sleeping around, trying to drink up all the wine in Paris, driving like a maniac. She wrapped a car around a tree outside Marseilles and almost killed this French writer she was with. What's the matter? You look upset." "That's an upsetting story. She seems a fine girl. I'll be here a week," Pug said abruptly, "unless the Clipper changes its schedule. Can we get in some tennis?" "Sure, but I'm not in shape, the way I was in Berlin." 'Nor am I." They played early in the mornings to dodge the heat, and after showering they would breakfast together. Victor Henry did not mention Pamela again. At night, lying awake in warm humid darkness under the moaning fan, he would think of ways to reopen the subject. But facing his son at the breakfast table, he couldn't do it. He could guess what Byron would think of a romance between his staid father and Pamela Tudsbury. It would strike the youngster as a pure middle-aged aberration-disconcerting, shabby, and pathetic. Victor Henry now had spells of seeing it the same way. C)the day Branch Hoban prevailed upon him to visit the house in Pasay for lunch. Byronmulishly would not join them. Pug took a long swim in a pool ringed by flowering trees, and enjoyed a superb curry lunch; and after a nap he beat Lieutenant Aster at tennis. It was altogether a satisfying afternoon. Before he left, over rum drinks on a terrace looking out on the garden, Hoban and Aster talked reassuringly about Byron. They both considered him a natural submarine man; only the military bone, they said, seemed to be missing in him. Transfer to the Atlantic was his obsession, but Hoban tolerantly pointed out to the father that it was impossible. The squadron was far under complement now, and the Devilfish could not put to sea if it lost one watch officer. Byron had to make up his mind that the Devilfish was his ship. Victor Henry brought up this topic at what he hoped was a good time-just before breakfast next morning after their game and shower, when they were having coffee on the lawn. On other days Byron had been in the highest spirits over this early cup of coffee. As casually as possible, Pug remarked, 'Incidentally Byron, you said Natalie's flying to Lisbonwhen? The fifteenth of this month?" "That's right, the fifteenth." "Do you think she'll make it this time?" "God, yes. She'd better! They've got every possible official assurance and high priority." "Well now, the fifteenth isn't very far off, is it? This transfer request of yours-"-Victor Henry hesitated, for a look came over Byron's face which he knew only too well: sullen, vacuous, remote, and introverted. 'Isn't it something you can table, at least until then?" "Table it? It's tabled, don't worry. I've been turned down by Hoban, Tully, and Admiral Hart's personnel officer. What more do you want?" "I mean in your own mind, Briny." "Listen, I'm assuming she'll get home with the baby. Otherwise I'd probably desert and go fetch her out. But I still want to be transferred. I want to see them. I want to be near them. I've never seen my own son! I've spent the sum total of three days with my wife since we got married." "There's another side to it. Your squadron is desperate for watch officers, we're in a war alert, and-" Byron broke in, "Look, what is this, Dad? I haven't asked you to go to Tully and use your influence with him, have I?" "I'm sure glad you haven't. Red Tully can't do the impossible, Byron. He stretched a point, taking you into that May class, but that was different-" Byron broke in, "Jesus, yes, and I'm eternally grateful to both of you. That's why my son was born in Italy, and that's why I'm separated from my wife by the whole wide earth." "Maybe we'd better drop it," said Victor Henry.
'That's a fine idea, Dad." Byron turned genial again over the bacon and eggs, but Victor Henry felt that in the short bitter exchange he had lost all the ground he had been gaining with his son. Yet Byron could not have been more amiable when he saw his father off on the Clipper next day. On the pier he threw his arms around Pug. Impulsively Pug said, as the beard scratched his lips, "Is Natalie going to like all this shrubbery?" It was a pleasure to hear Byron laugh. "Don't worry. The day I leave the Devilfish, off it comes." "Well, then-I guess this is it, Byron." "The tumbleweeds blowing apart," Byron said. 'That's exactly right. The tumbleweeds blowing apart." dwell, you'll be seeing Warren and Janice in a few days, anyhow. That's great. Give them my love." The loudspeaker called for passengers to board the huge flying boat. Victor Henry looked in his son's eyes and said with great difficulty, "Look, I pray for Natalie and your boy." Byron's eyes were steady and inscrutable. 'I'm sure you do, Dad Thanks." When the Clipper wheeled away for the long takeoff the son still stood on the pier, hands thrust in his back pockets, watching. The Japanese fleet at that moment was well on its way to Hawaii. The Kurile Islands, a chain of volcanic rocks more than seven hundred miles long, loosely linking japan and Siberia, had made a good secret rendezvous. japan's six aircraft carriers had met in a setting of black snowpatched island crags, flecked with the gnarled vegetation that can survive in high winds and long freezes. Through rain and sleet, their fliers had practiced shallow torpedo runs while battleships, cruisers, destroyers, oilers, and supply ships came straggling in. Nobody knew of this gathering armada except the men in the ships and a few of japan's leaders. When the force set out eastward, only a few flag officers had been told where they were going, and why. They had no set day or hour to attack. They were not sure the attack would go. The fleet was sailing in case the Washington talks broke down. Japanese peace envoys were trying to work out a modus vivendi, a "way of living," a sort of cease-fire in the Pacific before the guns could go off. The Japanese modus vivendi called for the United States to resume sending oil and scrap iron, and to recognize japan's right to rule East Asia and colonize China. If the Americans granted this, the fleet on signal would Turn back.
of the United States called for the Japanese But the modus vivendi to abandon the Clinese war and get off the southeast Asian mainland, in return for normal economic relations. The Japanese leaders had already decided that if this was the last word, they would fight. In that case, on signal, the timing of an enormous simultaneous assault, planned to burst Out of japan like red rays all over the South Pacific, would be locked on to one irrevocably appointed hour: the time for a surprise air strike against Hawaii. The three strong points held by the white race in the South Pacific were Pearl Harbor, Manila, and Singapore-The plan was to knock out United States air and sea power at Pearl Harbor from the air; to capture Singapore by seaborne assault; to land troops in the Philippines and take Manila, and then to sweep up the chips in the East Indies; and thereafter to use these new resources for a strong drive to finish China, while beating off Anglo-American counterattacks. The ultimate gamble was that Germany would either win the big fratricidal white man's war that was giving japan her chance, or would so use up American and British strength that japan would in the end keep what she had seized, no matter what happened to Germany. The Japanese leaders, including the emperor, doubted that this risky plan would come off, but they thought they had no choice. japan's predicament was much like Germany's before the attack on the Soviet union. Both countries, in the hands of their militarists, had started wars they couldn't finish. As time ran out and supplies dwindled, both turned to strike elsewhere, hoping to mend their fortunes. Three reasons were forcing the Japanese to a showdown now. Their oil was running out. The weather would soon Turn bad for military operations. And the white men, alarmed at last, were strengthening their three bastions every week with more and more planes, warships, antiaircraft guns, tanks, and fortifications. japan's temporary advantage in the South Pacific and East Asia was melting away, Unless President Roosevelt ,ddenly relented in Washington, she had to go, or give up her drive for empire. And so, on the day before the Army-Navy game, the armada had sortied into the black stormy waters off the Kuriles, and set out for Hawaii. And as the Japanese task force steamed east, a much smaller American task force sortied from Pearl Harbor, headed out. Admiral William Halsey was taking twelve marine fighter planes to Wake Island in the Enter s -japan had long s e ince illegally fortified every island and atoll it held on trust in the Pacific. Time after time, President Roosevelt had failed to get money out of Congress for counter-long American isIan Now, at the end of November 1941, the funds had come through. The work was being wildly rushed. At Wake it was half finished, but the atoll sO had no air defense. The second day out, on a sunny crystalline morning, Warren Henry returned from the dawn search and came slanting aroundthteo land on the EnterPise-The deck rose up at Warren, the hook caught number two cable, his stomach thrust hard against the safety belt, and he wasdown and stopped among deck force sailors in brilliant red, green, and yellow jumpers, doing their frantic gesticulating dance around landed planes. Warm sea air eddied in from his rear gunner's open canopy. Disconnecting belts and cables, gathering up his charts and log sheets, Warren awkwardly cumd out into the brisk wind over the deck, as another scout plane roared in and jerked to a stop. The landing officer shouted at him, holding his paddles on either side of his mouth, "Hi. All Pilots to Scouting Six ready room at ogoo." "What's up?, "The old man wants a word with you all." "The captain?" "Halsey." "Christ." In the ready room the deep comfortable chairs were already full, and pilots in khakis, or flying suits and yellow lifejackets, lined the bulkheads. Halsey entered with the ship's captain and the squadron commanders, and stood in front of the scored plexiglass panels up forward, where orange grease marks showed search patterns and assignments. Warren was only a few feet from him. Seen this close, Halsey's face looked patchy and aged, and now and then he grimaced, showing his teeth in a nervous tic. The squadron commander waved a green mimeographed sheet. "Okay, now all you fellows received and discussed,this yesterday, but the admiral has asked me to read it again, out loud. (4 BATTLE ORDER NUMBER 1. 1. The Enterprise is now operating under 'War conditions. 2. At any time, day or night, we must be ready for instant action. 3. Hostile submarines may be encountered. ... 'Steady nerves and stout hearts are needed now." Commanding Officer, U.S.S. Enterprise. Approved: W. F. Halsey Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy Commander Aircraft, Battle Force." The captain stepped back among the squadron commanders behind the admiral. Halsey squinted around the room, contracting his flaring gray eyebrows. 'Thank you, skipper. I'm told there were questions yesterday. I'm here to accommodate you, gentlemen."Not a word or a raised hand. Admiral Halsey involuntarily grimaced, glancing over his shoulder at the ship's captain and the squadron commanders. He addressed the pilots again. 'Cat got your tongue?" This raised an uneasy titter. 'I'm reliably informed that someone said this paper gave every one of you carte blanche to put the United States of America into the world war. Now would the brave soul who said that care to stand?" Warren Henry took a step forward from the bulkhead. Faces turned to him. "what's your name?" 'Lieutenant Warren Henry, sir." 'Henry?" Halsey looked a shade less grim. "Are you related to Captain Victor Henry?" "He's my father, sir." "Well, he's a fine officer. Now then. You think this order permits you to plunge the country into war, do you?" "Sir, I added yesterday that I was all for it." 'You're all for it, hey? Why? What are you, one of these bloodthirsty killer types?" The admiral raised his outthrust jaw. "Admiral, I think we're in the war now, but fighting with both hands tied behind us." Halseys face twitched and he motioned Warren to step back. Clasping his hands behind his back, the admiral said in harsh tones: "Gentlemen, this force stripped for action weeks ago. There's nothing loose, dispensable, or inflammable left aboard the Enterprise that I know about, except the wardroom piano. I made that exception myself. Now, our mission is secret. There will be no vessels of the United States or of friendly powers in our path. They have been warned away. Ships we encounter will belong to the enemy. Unless we shoot first, we may never have a chance to shoot. Therefore, this force will shoot first and argue afterwards. The responsibility is mine-Questions?" He slowly looked around at the young sober faces. "Good day, then, and good hunting." Later, Warren's wing mate, lying naked on the top bunk, said, "Well, give him one thing. He's a fighting son of a bitch." "Or a trigger-happy old nut," said Warren, rinsing lather from his razor. "Depending on events." On the day that the Japanese steaming east and Halsey's ships steaming west made their closest approach, Warren Henry flew the northern search pattern, more than two hundred miles straight toward the Japanese fleet. The Japanese routinely sent a scout plane due south about the same distance. But in the broad Pacific Ocean the game was still blindman's buff. Hundreds of unsearched miles of water stretched between the two scouting planes at their farreach, and the two forces passed in peace. The light was failing over Guam. From the window of the descending Clipper, Victor Henry glimpsed in the sunset glow the island's mountain ridges and broken sea cliffs to the south, levelling northward to a jungle checkered with terraced fields. The shadowy light flattened perspectives; Guam was Bke a painted island on a Japanese screen. Sharp on the red horizon jutted the black lump of Rota, an island held by the Japanese. The passengers were standing in a sweaty weary cluster outside the immigration shed in the twilight, when a gray car drove up, fluttering on its front fenders an American flag and a starry blue jack. "Captain Henry?" The white-clad marine officer saluted and handed him an envelope, confidently picking out the Navy four-striper in a seerof sucker suit from among the ferry pilots and civilians. "Compliments the governor, sir." The note was scrawled on cream-colored stationery cres THE GOVERNOR OF GUAM rt Tollever, Jr Captain, U.S.N. Clifton Norbe Hi, Pug-t hearts player, and as long asies not Sunday, Greetings to the world's wors how's for coming around for drinks, dinner, and a game Kip Pug smiled at the tired joke about his minor Sabbath abstinence. "NG, Lieutenant. Sorry. By the time I check through here, go to the hotel, and get cleaned up and whatnot, len be way past the governor's dinner hour." "No, sir. Let me expedite this. The governor said I'm to bring you out to the palace, bags and all. He'll give you a room to freshen up in." The gold loops on the starchy white shoulder of the governor's aide conjured away difficulties. Victor Henry was entering the governor's car within five minutes, leaving the other Clipper passengers behind, enviously staring. Driving across the island in gathering darkness on a narrow winding tarred road, the lieutenant skillfully avoided some potholes but struck others with bone-jarring jolts. "You folks short of road repair equipment?" Pug asked. 'Sir, the governor's been cadging money from public works for gun emplacements and pillboxes. He says maybe he'll hang for it, but his first duty is not to patch roads but to defend this island. Insofar as it can be defended." The headlights shone on green jungle and a few tilled fields most of the way. "Well, here's the metropolis at last, sir." The car passed down a paved block of shuttered shops, and dimly lit bars with names like Sloppy Joe's and The Bucket of Blood. Here lonesome-looking sailors meandered on the sidewalk, some with giggling brown girls in flimsy dresses. The car emerged on a broad, handsomely gardened square, formed by four stone structures in antique Spanish style: a cathedral, a long barracks, an immense jail, and an ornate building that the lieutenant called theGovernor's Palace. Kip Tollever waved as Victor Henry mounted a broad staircase to the palace terrace. Wearing stiffly starched whites, he sat in a large carved Spanish armchair, in yellow fight cast by a wrought-iron chandelier. Natives in shirt-sleeves and trousers stood before him. "Sit you down, Pug!" He motioned at a chair beside him. "Welcome ted in gold: aboard. This won't take long. Go ahead, Salas. What about the schoolchildren? Have they been drilling every day?" It was a conference on defense preparations. Tollever addressed the Guamanians in English or Spanish, with condescending kindness. One or two spoke a queer dialect that the others translated. The men were taller than Filipinos, and very good-looking. "Well, Pug Henry!" The governor lightly slapped his guest's knee as the natives bowed and went off down the stairs. "Quite a surprise, seeing your name on the Clipper passenger list! that's always the big news item on this island, you know. Kate used to fall on the list like a love letter twice a week, when she was still here. Well! What's your pleasure? A drink, then a shower? Come on, let's have just one. Where have you been? What brings you to our island paradise?" They drank excellent rum punches there on the terrace, in tall curiously carved green glasses, and Pug talked about his travels. Tollever seemed far more interested in the Russian war than in japan. His response to Pug's remark that he had spent four days in Tokyo was, "Oh, really? Say, incidentally, you'll stay overnight, won't you? I'll assign a boy to look after you. You'll be very comfortable." "Well, Kip, thanks. I'd better bed down in the Pan Am Hotel. Takeoff depends on weather, and I don't want to get left by that Clipper." "No problem." Kip's voice rang with magisterial authority. "They won't leave without you. I'll see to that." Pug found the palace depressing, for all the handsomely tiled spaces and rich dark furniture. Under the slow-turning fan the bed in his room was covered in gold-and-silver brocade. New nickel plumbing in the vast bathroom gushed wonderful hot water. But the silencer The Guamanian stewards in their snowy mess jackets stole around like spirits. He and the governor seemed to be the only white men here, for the marine lieutenant had driven off to the bay. From the other end of the palace, Pug could hear the clink of silver and china as he dressed.
In a sombrely magnificent SPanish dining room, at one end of a long gleaming black table, the two Americans ate a dinner made up wholly of frozen or canned stores from home. Kip Tollever maintained his gubernatorial dignity through the first course or two, asking polite questions about his old friends in Berlin and about the situation in Manila. But as he drank glass after glass of wine, the facade cracked, then fell apart. Soon he was expressing friendly envy of Pug and admitting that his assignment was dismal. The younger officers could go to the Bucket of Blood, or drink and play cards at the club. The governor had to sit it out alone in the palace. He slept badly. He missed his wife. But of course the women had had to go. If the japs moved, Guam could not be held for a week. At Saipan and Tinian, a half hour away by air, jap bombers lined the new air strips and big troop transports swung to their anchors. Guam had no military airfield. As dessert was being served, four young officers in white appeared, led by the marine aide-decamp. "Well, well, here's company," said the governor. "These tender lads come in every night after dinner, Pug, and I educate them in the subtler mysteries of hearts. What do you say? Care for a game, or would you rather just shoot the breeze?" Pug saw the youngsters' faces light up at the mention of an alternative. Shading his voice toward lack of enthusiasm, he said, "Why, let's play, I guess." The governor of Guam looked irresolutely from his visitor to the young officers. He held himself very straight, talking to his juniors; the thick gray hair, lean long-jawed face, and bright blue eyes should have made him lodable. Yet he seemed only tired and sad, hesitating over this small choice between habit and courtesy. The hearts game evidently was the high moment in the governor's isolated days. 'Oh, what the hell," Tollever said. "I don't get to see a classmate very often, especially such a distinguished one. You young studs run along and amuse yourselves. See you tomorrow, same time." "Aye aye, sir," said the marine officer, trying to sound disappointed. The four young officers vanished in a rapid tattoo of heels on tile. Captain Tollever and Captain Henry sat long over brandy. What did Pug really think, Kip asked; would the japs go, or was this buildup at Saipan just a bluff for the Washington t? He had once served as attache in Tokyo, but the japs were an enigma to him. The wrong people had gotten in the saddle, that was the trouble. The army had gained the power to confirm or veto the minister of war. That meant the army brass could overthrow any cabinet it didn't like. Ever since then Japan had been i going hell-bent for conquest; but would they really attack the United States? Some Japanese he had known had been the finest imaginable people, friendly to the United States and very worried about their militarists; on the other hand, Clipper travellers had been telling him blood-freezing stories of Japanese cruelties in China, especially toward white people who fell into their hands. "And have you ever read about what the jap army did, Pug, when they captured Nanking in ' king 37? We were so steamed up about their sin the Pamay, we hardly paid attention. Why, they ran amuck. They raped twenty thousandChinese women, so help me, and butchered most of 'em afterward. I mean butchered-just that. Women's thighs, heads, and tits, for God's sake, were strewn in the streets! This is the truth, Pug. And they IL tied Chinamen together by the hundreds and mowed 'em down with machine guns. They hunted kids in the street and shot 'em like rabbits. They murdered maybe two hundred thousand civilians in a few days. All this is in official reports, Pug. It happened. I've had occasion to check into the facts, being somewhat personally interested, as you might say. And here I sit," he went on, sloshing his fourth or fifth brandy into a shimmering balloon glass and rolling white eyeballs at his old classmate, "here I sit, with no aircraft, no warships, no ground troops, just a few sailors and a few marines. The Navy should order me to evacuate, but oh no, the politicians wouldn't stand for that! The same politicians who refused to vote the money to fort4 the island. No, here we'll sit till they come. The fleet will never get here in time to save us. 'Tug, remember what the Lucky Bag said about me when we graduated? 'Any one of Kip Tollever's classmates would like to be in his shoes today, and even more, thirty years from today." Funny, isn't it? Isn't that the biggest laugh of all time? Come on, let's have one more and listen to the midnight news from Tokyo." In the wood-panelled library, the governor manipulated the dials of a Navy receiver: a big black machine seven feet high that winked red, green, and yellow lights and emitted whistles and moans. A Japanese woman's voice came through clearly. After recounting gigantic German victories around Moscow and predicting the early surrender of the Soviet union, the voice went on in tones of glee to report a great uproar in the United States over the unmasking of Franklin Roosevelt's secret war plans. The Chicago Tribune had obtained a document known as the Victory Program-Victor Henry sat up as the dulcet voice drawled "Victory Plot-calling for an army of eight million men, a defensive war against japan, and an all-out air attack on Germany from bases in England, to be followed by invasion of Europe in 1943-The newspaper, she announced, had patriotically printed the whole plan! Roosevelt's devilish schemes to,drag America into war on the side of the colonialist plutocracies were now exposed; so the woman said. The American people were rising in anger. Congressmen were calling for impeachment of the White House deceiver. The White House was maintaining shameful silence, but the fairness and peaceful intent of the latest Japanese proposals-especially in the light of this secret warmongering Roosevelt plot-were being hailed throughout the United States. On and on the woman went, reading whole passages of the document from the Tribune. Pug recognized them. Some sentences were his own. "What do you make of that, Pug? It's a lot of poppycock, isn't it?"Tollever yawned. "Some reporter got hold of a contingency staff study maybe, and blew it way up." "Sure. What else?" Pug felt sick to the heart. If this could happen, the United States was infected bone-deep with decay. The japs could grab the East Indies, even the Philippines; America would not fight. This betrayal of the highest national secret in a newspaper was a collapse of honor, it seemed to him, unlike anything in history. The only relieving aspect was that so bald and amazing was the treason, the Germans and the Japanese could probably not bring themselves to believe it, though of course they would make heavy propaganda of it. "Time for me to go to bed." Victor Henry shook his head and stood up. "Hell, no, Pug. Sit down. How about an omelette, or something? My chef makes fine omelettes. In a half hour we'll get the 8 A.M. news from San Francisco. This beast picks it up like it was next door. Let's see if there's anything to all this Chicago Tribune business. It's always fun, checking Tokyo against San Francisco." Pug insisted on going back to the Pan American Hotel. The sense of doom enveloping him was thick enough without the added black misery emanating like a smell from the trapped governor of Guam, the faded hotshot of his Naval Academy class, maundering over his brandy. Tollever ordered up the omelettes all the same, and kept Victor Henry for another hour, talking about the old days in Manila when they had been next-door neighbors. His dread of loneliness was stark and terrible. Sadly Tollever went at last to a telephone and summoned the marine officer, who arrived in the car in a few minutes. Four Guamanian stewards busied themselves with Pug's valise and two handbags. 44 From the top of the palace stairway, Kip raised his voice. Say, how about giving Kate a ring from Pearl? She's back in our house in La Jolla. Tell her you saw me and that everything's fine. She's very interested in the Guam schools, you know. Tell her the enrollment's way up for next term. And, you know, tell her I love her and all that stuff." "I sure will, Kip." "And say, you give my love to Rhoda, too. Will you? Of all the Navy wives I knew, she was the prettiest and the best-excepting my Kate, naturally." "I'll tell her you said that, Kip," Pug replied, chilled by Tollever's use of the past tense abouthimself. "Good hunting with the California, Pug." Tollever stood watching as the car left, a white straight mark in the warm night. The Clipper took off from Guam at dawn. On the day that Victor Henry left Manila, the Japanese embassy in Rome gave an unexpected party for Japanese and American newspaper correspondents. The purpose seemed to be a show of cordiality to counteract all the war talk. A New York Times man asked Natalie to come along. She had never before left her baby in the evening; none of her clothes fitted her; and she did not like the man much. But she accepted, and hastily got a seamstress to let out her largest dress. On leaving the hotel she gave to motherly chambermaid an enormous list of written instructions for bathing and feeding him(a) , which made the woman smile. The rumors of war in the Pacific were eating away Natalie's nerves, and she hoped to learn something concrete at the party. She came back with a strange tale. Among the American guests had been Herb Rose, a film distributor who maintained his office in Rome. Herb had somewhat enlivened the cold, stiff, pointless party by speaking Japanese; it'turned out that he had managed a similar office in Tokyo. Herb was a tall gOOd-looking California Jew, who used the best Roman tailors, conversed easily in Italian, and seemed a most urbane man until he started talking English. Then he sounded all show business: wisecracking, sharp, and a bit crude. This Herb Rose, who was booked to leave for Lisbon on the same Plane as Natalie and her uncle, had approached her at the party and walked her off to a corner. In a few quiet nervous sentences, he had told her to go to Saint Peter's with her -uncle the following morning at nine o'clock, and stand near Michelangelos Pieta statue. They would be offered a chance to get out of Italy fast, he said, via Palestine. War between American and Japan was coming in days or hours, Herb believed; he was departing that way himself and forgoing the Lisbon plane ticket. He would tell her no more. He begged her to drop the subject and not to discuss it inside the walls of the hotel. when she returned from the party she recounted all this to her uncle, while walking on the Via Veneto in a cold drizzle. Aaron's reaction was skeptical, but he agreed that they had better go to Saint Peter's. He was in a testy mood next morning. He liked to rise at dawn and work till eleven. Sleep put an edge on his mind, he claimed, that lasted only a few hours, and to spend a morning on such a farfetched errand was a great waste. Also, the chill damp in the unheated hotel had given him a fresh cold. Hands jammed in his overcoat pockets, blue muffler wound around his neck,head drooping in a rain-stiffened old gray felt hat, he walked draggily beside his niece down the Via Veneto to the taxi stand, like a child being marched to school. "Palestine!" he grumbled. "Why, that's a more dangerous place than Italy." "Not according to Herb. He says the thing is to get out of here at once, by hook or by crook. Herb thinks the whole world will be at war practically overnight, and then we'll never get out." 'But Herberes leaving illegally, isn't he? His cidt visa is for Lisbon, not Palestine. Now that's risky. When you're in a touch-and-go situation like this, the first principle is not to give the authorities the slightest excuse'-Jastrow waved a stiff admonitory finger-'to act against you. Obey orders, keep your papers straight, your head down, your spirits up, and your money in cash. That is our old race wisdom. And above all, stay within the law." He sneezed several times, and wiped his nose and eyes. 'I have always abominated the weather of Rome. I think this is a wild goose chase. Palestine! You'd be getting even further from Byron, and I from civilization. It's a hellhole, Natalie, a desert full of flies, Arabs, and disease. Angry Arabs, who periodically riot and murder. I planned a trip there when I was writing the Paul book. But I cancelled out once I'd made a few inquiries. I went to Greece instead." There was a long queue at the taxi stand, and few taxis; they did not reach Saint Peter's until after nine. As they hurried out of the sunshine into the cathedral, the temperature dropped several degrees. Jastrow sneezed, wound the muffler tighter around his neck, and turned up his collar. Saint Peter's was quiet, almost empty, and very gloomy. Here and there black-shawled women prayed by pale flickering candles, groups of schoolchildren followed vergers, and tourist parties listened to guides, but these were all lost in the grand expanse. "My least favorite among Italian cathedrals," said Jastrow. "The Empire State Building of the Renaissance, intended to overpower and stupefy. Well, but there's the P, and that is lovely." They walked to the statue. A German female guide stood beside it, earnestly lecturing to a dozen or so camera-bearing Teutons, most of whom were reading guidebooks as she talked instead of looking at the Pieta, as though to make sure the woman was giving them full value. "Ah, but what a lovely work this is after all, Natalie," Jastrow said, Ll as the Germans moved on, "this poor dead adolescent Christ, draped on the knees of a Madonna hardly older than himself. Both of them are so soft, so fluid, so young in flesh! How did he do it With stone? Of course it's not the Moses, is it? Nothing touches that. We must go and look at the Moses again before we leave Rome. Don't let me forget."'Would you call that a Jew's Jesus, Dr. Jastrow?" said a voice in German. The man who spoke was of medium height, rather stout, about thirty, wearing an old tweed jacket over a red sweater, with a Leica dangling from his neck. He had been in the group with the guide and he was lingeeing behind. He took a book from under his arm, an old British edition of A Jew's Jesus in a tattered dust jacket. With a grin he showed Jastrow the author's photograph on the back. "Please," said Jastrow, peering curiously at the man. "That picture gives me the horrors. I've since disintegrated beyond recognition." "Obviously not, since I recognized you from it. I'm Avram Rabinovitz. Mrs. Henry, how do you do?" He spoke clear English now, in an unfamiliar, somewhat harsh accent. Natalie nervously nodded at him. He went on, "I'm glad you've come. I asked Mr. Rose what other American Jews were left in Rome. It was a great surprise to learn that Dr. Aaron Jastrow was here." "Where did you pick up that copy?" Jastrow's tone was arch. Any hint of admiration warmed him. "Here in a secondhand store for foreign books. I'd read the work long ago. It's outstanding. Come, let's walk around the cathedral, shall we? I've never seen it. I'm sailing from Naples on the flood tide tomorrow at four. Are you coming?" "You're sailing? Are you a ship's captain?" Natalie asked. The man momentarily smiled, but looked serious again as he spoke, and rather formidable. His pudgy face was Slavic rather than Semitic, with clever narrow eyes and thick curly fair hair growing low on his forehead. "Not exactly. I have chartered the vessel. This won't be a Cunard voyage. The ship is an old one, and it's small, and it's been transporting hides, fats, horses, and such things along the Mediterranean coast. So the smell is interesting. But it'll take us there." Natalie said, "How long a voyage will it be?" "Well, that depends. The quota for the year was used up long ago, so the way may be roundabout." "What quota?" Jastrow said. The question seemed to surprise Rabinovitz. "Why, the British allow only a very small number of Jews into Palestine every year, Professor, so as not to get the Arabs too angry. Didn't you know that? So it creates a problem, depending on the current situation about that. De roblem-I want to be frank v. or we may go to Turkey, we may sail straight to Palesine anyway Syria, the Lebanon, and through the mown and then proceed overlandtains into the Galilee." An illegal entry,then"' Jastrow sounded severe. alking about a so. In "You're t a jew to go home yes, We don't think "If it can be illegal for s. They're refugees from the there , s no choice for my passenger them, including any case, barred the doors to all other countries have Germans, and tates- they can , t just lie down and die." your United States d , and what you're proposing that isn't our situation," " Jastrow says unsafe." " 're not safe here." "Professor, you you with? And what would you charge?" i'What organization are p. We move Jews out of Europe. s a long stOrY What's "MY organization? That - Th one can talk about that. You can ask Mr. Rose of As for paying-well, oney. I came to Rome in fact f ways use m seconclaryp though we can al Rose." s how I met MT money. Thee estine-then what?" why not just g'And once we get to Pal eeable look. 'Vel' 9) Rabinovitz gave him a warm, agr t jewish historian among us. d to have a great stay? We would be honored o--OICI infant.) Natalie put in, "I have a two month eyes, so Mr. Rose said." the 'could a small baby make that trip?y altar, Rabinovitz stared in admiration at Halting at the main ful. It's overwhelm ,Inis cathedral is so rich and beautiful twisted pillars, where Jew executed e ort, just to honor one p ma if 00 isn't it? Such a gigantic hun n" dominates all Rome, 1 guess we by the Romans. And now this builcli. in a forceful should feel flattered." He looked straight in Natalie's eyes Pobaven't you heard the stories coming from way. irwell, Mrs. Henry, you should take some risk to get your baby out land and Russia? Maybe of Europe." "One hears all kinds of stories in war Aaron JastrOW Said benignly, aid. time." vi eeks," Natalie Rabinovitz, we're leaning in less than two w Mr. R s, all our documents. We were at tremendous pains "We have all our ticket P) to get them. Were flying home. d his head swayed, Rabinovitz put a hand to his face an ed his arm. "Are you all right?tp Natalie touch d smiled painfully. "I have a headHe uncovered a knotted brow, an erbert Rose had an airplane ticket ache, but that is all right. Look, Mr. H too, and he's coming to Naples with me. If you join us, you'll be welcome. What more can I say?""Even if we did want to consider this drastic move, we couldn't get our e idt visas changed," Jastrow said. "Nobody will have an exit visa. You will just come aboard to pay a visit. The ship will leave, and you will forget to go ashore." "If one thing went wrong, we'd never get out of Italy," Jastrow per it sisted, until the war ended." Rabinovitz glanced at his watch. 'Let's be honest. I'm not sure you will get out anyway, Dr. Jastrow. Mr. Rose told me about the difficulties you've been having. I don't think they're accidental. I'm afraid you're what some people call a 'blue chip"-he used the American slang haltingly'and that's your real problem. The Italians can trade you someday for a lot of 'white chips," so something can always go wrong at the last minute when it's time to leave. Well, meeting you was a great honor. If you come along we'll talk some more. I have many questions about your book. Your Jesus had very little to do with this, did be?" He swung both his hands around at the cathedral. 'He's a Jew's Jesus," said Jastrow. "That was my point." 'Then tell me one thing," said Rabinovitz. "These Europeans worship a poor murdered Jew, the young Talmud scholar you wrote about so well-to them he's the Lord God-and yet they go right on murdering Jews. How does,a historian explain that?" In a comfortable, ironic, classroom tone, most incongruous in the circumstances, Jastrow replied, "Well, you must remember theyre still mostly Norse and Latin pagans at hart. They've always chafed under their Jewish Lord's Talmudic morals, and possibly they take out their irriration on his coreligionists." "Now that explanation hadn't occurred to me," Rabinovitz said. "It's a theory you should write up. Well, let us leave it this way. You want to think it over, I'm sure. Mr. Rose will telephone you tonight at six o'clock and ask you whether you want the tickets for the opera. Tell him yes or no, and that will be that." 'Good," Natalie said. 'We're deeply grateful to you." 'For what? My job is moving Jews to Palestine. Is your baby a girl or a boy?"Boy. But he's only half-Jewish." With his crafty grin, and an abrupt handwave of farewell, Rabinovitz said, 'Never mind, we'll take him. We need boys," and he walked rapidly away. As his plump figure merged into a tourist group leaving Saint Peter's, Natalie and her uncle looked at each other in puzzlement. "It's freezing in here," said Dr. Jastrow, "and very depressing. Let's go outside." They strolled in the sunshine of the great piazza for a while, talking the thing over. Aaron tended to dismisss the idea out of hand, but Natalie wanted to give it thought andperhaps discuss it with Rose. The fact that he was going troubled her. Jastrow pointed out that Rose was not as secure as they were. If war should break out between the United States and Italy-and that was the threat in the Japanese crisis-they had the ambassador's promise of seats on the diplomatic train, with the newspaper correspondents and the embassy staff. Rose had no such assurance. Earlier in the year, the embassy had given him seaming after seaming to leave. He had chosen to stay at his own risk, and now he had to face the consequences. If he wanted to chance an illegal exit, that did not mean they needed to. At the hotel, Natalie found the baby awake and fretful. He seemed a frail small creature indeed to expose to a sea voyage uncertain even in its destination, let alone its legalities; a voyage in a crowded old tub-no doubt with marginal food, water, sanitation, and medical service-that might lead to a rough trip through mountains; the goal, a primitive and unstable land. One look at her baby, in fact, settled Natalie's mind. Rose called promptly at six. "Well, do you want the opera tickets?" His voice on the telephone was friendly and, it seemed, anxious. Natalie said, 'I think we'll skip it, Herb. But thank your friend who offered them." "You're making a mistake, Natalie," Rose said. "I think this is the last performance. You're sure?" "Positive." "Good luck, kid. I'm certainly going." Janice Henry left her house and drove toward Pearl City in a cool morning echoing with distant church bells. Vic had wakened her at seven o'clock, coughing fearfully; he had a fever of almost 105-Yawning on the telephone, the doctor had prescribed an alcohol rub to bring the baby's temperature down, but there was no rubbing alcohol in the house. So she had given the fiery, sweat-soaked little boy his cough medicine, and set out for town, leaving him with the Chinese maid. From the crest of the hill, under a white sun just climbing up from the ocean rim, the harbor wore a Sabbath look. The fleet was in, and ranged at its moorings in the morning mist: a scattering of cruisers, oilers, and tenders, clusters of gray destroyers and minesweepers, nests of black submarines. Off Ford Island the battleships stood in two majestic lines with white sun-awnings already rigged; and on the airfield nearby dozens of planes touched wings in still rows. Scarcely anybody was moving on the ships, the docks, or the airfield. Nor was any large vessel under way to ruffle the glassy harbor. Only a few church party boats, with tiny sailors in whites, cut little foamy Vs on the green still water. Janice got out of the car to look for her husband's ship. To her disappointment, the Enterprise was not only absent from the harbor, it was nowhere in sight on the sea. She had been counting on a Sunday morning return. She took binoculars from the glove compartment andscanned the horizon. Nothing: just one old four-piper poking around, hull down. Tuesday would be two weeks that Warren had been gone; and now here she was with a sick baby on her hands, and a hangover. What a life! What a bore! She had gone to the Officers' Club dance the night before out of loneliness and boredom, accepting the invitation of a lieutenant she had dated long ago, a Pensacola washout who now served on Cincpac's staff. Vic had had a cough for days, but his temperature had remained normal. Of course she would never have stayed out until after three, cavorting and boozing, had she known he would Turn so sick. Still she felt guilty, irritated, and bored to the bone with this idiotic existence. Since her return from Washington, she had been growing more and more bored, realizing that she had married not a dashing rake after all, but a professional Navy fanatic, who made Marvelous love to her now and then and otherwise almost ignored her. Uvemaking at best took up very little time. What an end for Janice Lacouture-at twenty-three, a Navy babtsitterl She had taken a half-day coding job at Cincpac to avoid being evacuated with the service wives, but that was dull drudgery too. Janice had spells of deep rebellion, but so far she had said nothing to Warren. She was afraid of him. But sooner or later, Janice meant to have it out, even if divorce ensued. A small general store in a green wooden shack at a crossroads stood open, with two fat Japanese children playing on the rickety porch. That was lucky; it stocked a strange jumble of things, and she might not have to drive clear into town. As she went in, she heard gunfire pop over the harbor, as it had been popping for months off and on in target practice. The storekeeper, a black-haired little Japanese in a flowered sport shirt, stood behind his counter drinking tea. On shelves within reach of his arms, goods were neatly stacked: canned food, drugs, pans, brooms, candy, toys, soda pop, and magazines. He bobbed his head, smiling, under hanging strips of dried fish. "tubbing acoho? Ess, ma'am." He went through the green curtain behind him. The gunfire sounded heavier and louder, and planes thrummed overhead. A funny time for a drill, she thought, Sunday morning before colors; but maybe that was the idea. Going to the doorway, Janice spotted the planes flying quite high, lots of them, in close order toward the harbor, amid a very heavy peppering of black puffs. She went to her car for the binoculars. At first she saw only blue sky and clouds of black smoke, then three planes flew into the field of vision in a shining silvery triangle. On their wings were solid orange-red circles. Stupefied, she followed their flight with the glasses.