He smiled softly. “Unless you knew what my real feelings were, where I stood. Then I wouldn’t stand much of a chance, would I? You’d be careful.
“That’s why I want Joan Richards to be with you on this tour since I can’t go. Joan’s been around newspapers and reporters for years. She is a very smart broad. I mean smart! She knows the political leanings of every major publisher in this country and by the time we get rolling she’ll have a book on most of the others. All you’ll have to do is listen to her and I’d advise that you listen damned closely because she’s just as much an expert in her field as you are in yours. And she’s a hell of a good-looking woman, if that’s of any interest to you.”
“That’s of no interest to me,” Hinman said. “I’ll accept your statements that there are people in our nation who are against the war. I’ve heard a few things about that. It makes me sick at the stomach but if that’s the way it is then that’s the way it is.
“I’d like to say one thing, though, and I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Mr. Butler, because I appreciate what you have done for me so far. I still think that it might have been better if this business of the exploders had gone to a court-martial. Then it would have been out in the open and I, for one, wouldn’t be messed up in politics and newspaper reporters and things like that.”
“You’re nuts!” Rudd said, leaning over the table top. “You go in front of a court-martial and who are you talking to? To a bunch of old fogies who think the same as Severn does! The Navy is never wrong, you know that! This is the best way. We save your ass and I think we should because in my mind you did the right thing and we get the word to old FDR that the war is being fucked up!”
“All right,” Hinman said, his mouth setting in a thin line. “Now indulge me a little more. Mr. Butler, how in the hell is it that you have so much influence? Setting things up so that I meet with the President of the United States! Presidents talk to Admirals, not two and a half stripers!
“How can you, sitting here in Pearl, arrange things so that you get a WAVE officer or whatever you call her assigned to go with me on this tour? The last time I tried to get a man I wanted for my own crew it took months of work! Yet you do this in a week or so!”
“Captain,” Butler said slowly, “never forget one thing. All politicians are the same. That is, their first worry is to get re-elected. After they have done that then they think, sometimes they think, about doing what they promised the voters they’d do.
“The President is a politician, one of the best. To get re-elected or even to get his programs through the Congress he has to have the support of the people. The easiest way to get that support is to first get the approval and support of the major newspapers, the support of their editors and editorial writers. That’s basic.
“I’m the editor of a major newspaper, one of the largest in the country. Before I got that job I was the head of my newspaper’s Washington bureau. I met FDR then and I liked him. He’s a hellraiser. So am I. He liked me.”
“Why?” Hinman asked.
“I used to ask myself that same question,” Butler said. “And I came to the conclusion that he liked me because I used to attack him every once in a while. I wrote a column in those days that was widely syndicated. If I thought FDR was wrong I’d say so. I’d tear his ass off every once in a while and he loved it. He’s a cynic, you know, about politics. He knew I was a cynic and he sort of liked it because I didn’t kiss his ass.
“You work in Washington long enough for a big enough paper, you write a column that pokes a finger in people’s eyes and you get well-known. Senators and Representatives come around and talk to you. The bureaucrats — and they’re the people who really run this country if you don’t know that — the bureaucrats feed you little bits of information. What happens is that in time you find yourself holding a lot of IOUs from a lot of people. All I did in this case was to call in two or three small IOUs, Captain. No big deal.”
He paused and tapped the tablecloth gently with his finger.
“What it boils down to, Captain, is that when I called in a couple of little IOUs I did it as Ben Butler, who is going to be the editor of that newspaper when this war is over.” He leaned back in his chair. “I did it without ever meeting you because Bob, here, said you were worth any effort I could make. Now that I’ve met you I’m glad I did it.”
“You’re putting me in a tough spot,” Hinman said. “I want you to know I appreciate what you’ve done.”
“You can show it by listening to Joan Richards,” Butler said. He smiled. “She sure as hell doesn’t look like a man but she thinks like one.”
Hinman stood up. “I’ll be at your office tomorrow for the flight to the mainland.” He turned to Commander Rudd. “Bob, my deepest appreciation for all you’ve done for me. If it’s all right with you I’d like to borrow your car and driver now. Mike, can I drop you off at home on my way?”
“If you don’t Gloria will beat on you,” Brannon said. “A pleasure meeting you, Mr. Butler. If you get back here before I leave here I want you to come out to the house for dinner, meet my wife and daughter.”
Butler watched the two men walk out of the O-Club. He turned to Rudd.
“Those are two very nice gents,” he said.
“Hinman is tough,” Rudd said. “You can see that. But don’t be fooled by Mike Brannon. That Irishman may look easy and soft but he’s a fighter. When he takes over the Eelfish he’s going to be another Art Hinman and in this war that ain’t bad.”
Chapter 9
The two women waiting at the end of the pier for Dusty Rhodes and John Barber were a study in contrasts. June Rhodes was tiny, barely five feet tall with a slim, girlish figure. She was one of the Island people of mixed racial strains that so often produced women of exquisite beauty. In her veins ran the blood of the old Polynesians, of Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiians and white missionaries. The slight slant of her large, dark eyes gave a piquancy to the pale copper tones of her skin. Her hair was jet black, thick and luxuriant and hung to her waist, caught at the back of her neck in a simple clasp.
June Kanakaia met Dusty Rhodes when he was a young sailor and she was seventeen. She had accepted his grave courtship with a naive trust that had awed him and which he had never violated. Gordon, Jr., was born a year after their marriage. Alan two years later. In Dusty Rhodes’ view June was the ideal Navy wife. She kept a spotless house, never complained of not having enough money and helped her husband study for his promotional examinations. She reared their children with a firm discipline that brooked no disobedience but was tempered by the love that flowed from her as naturally as the rising of the sun each day. She accepted the long separations from her husband when she had to be both mother and father with a stoic resignation, living for the day when Rhodes would have put in his twenty years of service and could take a job in the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard and be home every night.
Dottie Barber was tall, blonde, buxom and as outgoing as June Rhodes was reserved. A Los Angeles secretary, she had saved her money until she could afford a third-class ticket on one of the Lurline cruise ships that traveled between the West Coast and Hawaii. She met John Barber in a department store in Hawaii. He was buying a spool of white cotton thread and she had giggled uncontrollably when the sales girl sold Barber a darning egg and tried to explain its use.
Barber had tipped his white hat back on his head, eyed her and said that if she knew so much about how to darn socks maybe she could tell him about it over a cup of coffee. She admitted to being an expert, that she had darned her father’s socks for years. The cup of coffee had extended into a quiet dinner and ten days later she wrote home for her clothes and personal possessions, cashed in her return ticket and used the money to finance a week — long honeymoon.