McHugh’s prematurely gray hair was cut in a “flat top.” On his wrist was a Rolex “Oyster” with a stainless steel bezel for noting dive time. Taking his ever-present cigar from its resting place in the corner of his mouth, McHugh studied the starched, ramrod-stiff Ensign that had been sent to be his assistant. Sizing up the new Ensign before him, McHugh thought to himself that they sure are making them younger every year.
As the young Naval officer would soon find out, the ever present cigar would always look as if it had just gone out. No one could recall ever having seen it lit. There was, however, a persistent memory of stale cigar smoke in McHugh’s office.
McHugh’s office was pretty much what one would find in the Navy, no matter where you were in the world. The gray steel desk and the green leather, gray steel chairs were standard issue. An American flag stood in the corner of the room, behind McHugh’s desk. On the gray steel bookcases that served as his credenza were mementoes of McHugh’s Naval service: brightly colored crests on walnut shields bearing the names of the various Navy vessels on which McHugh had served, one silver crest from his Annapolis days, a small brass anchor, and assorted pens and pencils.
The books in his bookcase bore diverse titles such as Celestial Navigation, Nautical Engineering, Marine Engine Repair, the Zen of Volkswagen Repair, Johnston’s Handbook on Ocean Engineering, and Royce’s Sailing Handbook. In addition, many official-looking black vinyl notebooks were crammed into every nook and cranny of his small office. The only jarring note was what seemed to be a fully loaded M-1 Carbine magazine, sitting on McHugh’s desk, on top of a pile of paper.
The Ensign cast a furtive glance at the M-1 clip.
A photograph mounted in a sterling silver frame showed a very attractive brunette woman with two smiling tow-headed boys who couldn’t have been older than four. Over the credenza hung an inexpensive print of the HMS Beagle — Charles Darwin’s sailing ship.
On another wall, hung a color photograph of a much younger Robert McHugh in a white shirt with rolled up sleeves standing in front of an ocean going tug. The nameplate on the tug said, R/V Wayward Wind. The young McHugh was smiling. The office was brightly lit and had a view of the busy docks at the Naval Station in Port Hueneme, California.
“I hear tell you have some training in side scan sonar.”
“Yes, Sir. Sir, my master’s research at Stanford was on the effect that thermal inversions have on surface towed arrays. As part of my research, I experimented with narrow beam side scan sonar, Sir.”
“First off, Mr. Liu, stand at ease, you are making me nervous. Second, if you are going to be my assistant, my name is Bob, not Commander McHugh or Sir.”
“Yes Sir.”
“What do they call you — not Aloysius; I hope.”
“Most of my friends call me Mike.”
“O.K., Mike it is. Why don’t you pull up that chair,” said McHugh as he motioned to one of the steel gray metal chairs with green leather seats.
“Mike, about four months ago one of our oceanographic survey flights taking fairly standard background magnetometer readings over the Hatteras Abyssal Plain in the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Bermuda came up with a marked magnetic anomaly. Nothing like we’ve ever seen before.”
“Maybe it is a large iron ore deposit like they have in the Northeastern part of Minnesota. They have been known to cause magnetometers to go crazy.”
“Nope, we’ve thought about that and this one is different. The magnetometer spiked; nothing natural could have caused that. We thought about sending in Alvin, but the depth is too deep for anything but the Trieste; we think the source of the anomaly is over 3000 fathoms.”
“Is the Trieste available?”
The Trieste, a bathysphere, was the deepest diving vessel, manned or unmanned, in the Navy’s inventory. Although the Trieste had plumbed the deepest depths of the ocean in the Marianas Trench, it suffered from one very big problem. It had no propulsion system, whatsoever.
“No.” responded McHugh.
“NAVFAC doesn’t want to commit the Trieste unless we can pinpoint the exact location. The Trieste, after all is little more than an elevator — incapable of any lateral movement. NAVFAC thinks there may be another system that might work better.”
McHugh continued, “I understand that Western Light’s ocean research laboratory in Annapolis has a towed platform with cameras, lights and side scan sonar. NAVFAC thinks that side scan sonar might be able to assist in finding the anomaly.”
“I’m familiar with that system,” said Mike. “Western Light nicknamed it, ‘Nematode,’ after some microscopic marine parasite because the package is so small and has to be towed. Didn’t the Navy use something like the Nematode to find those H-Bombs off of Palmores, Spain?”
“Yes, but not as sophisticated or proved to the depths that we need to go,” responded McHugh. “An old friend of mine, Ted Sevson, is the project manager. I’ll give him a call and tell him to expect you. I’d like you to coordinate the use of the Western Light system. Have you ever been to Annapolis?
“A couple of times,” responded Mike shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
McHugh took notice. His look prompted Mike to continue.
“Annapolis was my girlfriend’s home and I visited there several times while I was at the University of Virginia. Her father was in the Coast Guard.”
“Good, maybe you can drop in to see her.”
“Can’t sir, we are having some problems right now.”
“Oh,” answered McHugh. “Well, you got to keep those problems contained, son.”
“Yes, Sir,” replied Mike as he noticeably flushed. “You won’t have to worry about that.”
“O.K. familiarize yourself with the Orion report, get a billet at the BOQ and let’s talk tomorrow. Welcome aboard.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
1967: Mike
“I fall to p-ieces — Each time I see you ah-gain….” sang Patsy Cline on the car radio.
Tuned to the only country western station that came in clearly, Mike hummed along, reminiscing about his college days in Charlottesville, Virginia, as he drove along Route 50 to keep his appointment with Tom Sevson at the Western Light facility in Annapolis, Maryland.
Born in China and brought up in urban Washington, D.C., one would not have thought that Mike would be hooked on country and western music. However, his college years were spent in the piedmont of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Albemarle County, Virginia.
Mike had grown up in Washington during the fifties when the capital was a steamy intersection of international sophistication and deep Southern prejudice. It had been with great trepidation that Mike enrolled in that bastion of southern schools, the University of Virginia, on a NROTC scholarship, but he was destined for a big surprise.
Mike found the University to be a far different place from the dirty, throbbing neighborhoods of non-diplomatic Washington in which he had grown up. Growing up in Washington, D.C. had been painful. Some of the slights had been obvious, like the rednecks that would not let Mike’s family onto Calvert Beach, Maryland, during the Fifties. The confusion of growing up in a white person’s world had left an impression on the young Mike Liu.
It wasn’t right that someone could tell you that you could use this fountain or that, changing their decisions not so much from person to person but from time to time depending on how they felt. Sometimes, the rednecks would say Chinese could use white facilities, other times they could not. In some perverse way, the uncertainty was worse than the clear barriers that blacks had to endure in the same places. Prejudices were delivered personally to Chinese, not impersonally through placards. Racism was arbitrary with Orientals depending on the mood of the next redneck you met.