One night, at about Week 9 of training, the ARPOC for O'Brien's company had gone bowling at the rec center on the base. Somehow, he'd managed to lose his bayonet. He'd accidentally left it behind after the game, and when he realized it was missing and returned to look for it, it was gone.
It seemed a minor enough crime… sheer clumsiness, and nothing more sinister. But so far as the Navy was concerned, a weapon had been lost, and weapons had to be accounted for.
The ARPOC — his name was Jack Hillel — had vanished. The other sailors who'd been with him that night, and O'Brien was one of them, had been taken one after another into the company commander's office in the barracks and grilled by a couple of gray-suited men from the FBI. The crime, as they called it, had been committed on a federal reservation, and, as such, was a federal crime.
Well, O'Brien had understood some of the concern, at least. Boot camp was a close association of over a hundred kids from every walk of life, including gangs and street kids from the inner cities. At that point in their naval careers, many of them didn't have much sense, and some were pretty wild, yet. And now, presumably, one of them had a knife, a potentially serious, even deadly situation.
The investigation had continued for a week. For that entire week, O'Brien and the others in his company had lived in dread of the consequences. It was possible that the entire company would suffer for Hillel's "crime," especially if the powers that were suspected that someone in the company had the bayonet and was hiding it.
In the end, nothing much happened. The word was that Hillel had been set back two weeks, transferred to another company. Nothing else was said about the bayonet… which was never seen again.
That interview with the FBI agents in the CO's office had been one of the worst moments in O'Brien's life up to that point.
The interview with the three men in the Pittsburgh's wardroom, though, was worse, much worse. And far more personal.
"You are Douglas Henry O'Brien," one of the men said, reading from a file full of loose sheets of paper.
"Yes, sir?"
"Aren't you sure?"
"Yes, sir. Who are you people?"
"Never mind that now." One of them pulled out a photograph and showed it to him. "You know this guy?"
It appeared to be a candid shot of a Navy commander and, yes, he did know the man. It was the friendly officer he'd sat next to on the plane flight from DC to San Francisco on Sunday. He thought the man had mentioned his name, but he couldn't remember.
"Yes, sir. He had the seat next to mine on my flight out here from the East Coast the other day."
"You know his name?" the man with the computer asked.
"Uh… I don't think so. I don't remember."
"You don't remember, huh?"
"Why did you take the seat next to him?" The first man demanded. "Sir? That was the seat they assigned me!"
"The airline?"
"Yes, sir!"
"He had seat 14F," the computer man said. "You had 14E. And you claim that was just a coincidence?"
"I didn't ask to sit next to him!" O'Brien was becoming angry, now. "There were other Navy people on that plane!"
"O'Brien, do you have any idea who that man is?"
"No, sir. Should I?"
"Are you stupid or what?"
"No, sir! Damn it, what's this all about? Are you people FBI?"
"No, Seaman O'Brien. What are your duties aboard this vessel?"
"Until you people called me down here, I was helping unload torpedoes."
"Don't get smart, kid. What department are you assigned to?"
"Uh… I think it's going to be the torpedo room. I'm supposed to start my quals there."
"Quals? What are those?"
"My qualifications. Look, this is my first assignment to sea duty. I have to work in all the different departments aboard until I can show proficiency in all of them."
One of the men was shuffling through something that looked like a copy of O'Brien's service record. "Haven't you completed Sub School?"
"Yes, sir, I have. Doesn't mean I'm a submariner yet, though. Hey, listen. What is all this, anyway?"
"We'll ask the questions, Seaman O'Brien."
O'Brien found himself remembering the questioning he'd gone through during boot camp. Later, he'd told a friend about it, Kathy Gilquist, a woman he'd once dated who was in college now and planning on going on to law school.
She'd told him that he should have demanded to have a lawyer present. "They were violating your civil rights, Doug. You have the right to have an attorney present whenever somebody like that questions you. And you have the right to know what the charges are against you. If they haven't charged you, they can't hold you. Simple as that."
As simple as that, huh? Well, Kathy wasn't here, facing these people and their barbed questions.
"Have you ever seen this man?" one of his questioners demanded, holding up another photograph. This one was a somewhat blurry black-and-white shot of a pleasant-looking man in a sports coat and sunglasses, walking down the sidewalk in front of a sporting goods store. The man was a stranger.
"No," O'Brien said. "Look, I want a lawyer present."
His interrogators looked startled. "We were assured that you would be willing to cooperate with this investigation," one said.
"Am I being charged with a crime?"
"Not… at this time," another said.
"What crime are you charging me with?"
"It won't help you to adopt these sea-lawyer tactics, Seaman O'Brien."
"Tactics, hell! I want to know why you're trying to railroad me, here! I have a right to have a lawyer present! I have a right to know what you think I've done!"
"As we told your commanding officer, Seaman O'Brien, we are investigating a case that may have serious implications for our nation's security."
"Are you accusing me of being a spy?"
"We aren't accusing you of anything, Seaman O'Brien. We merely want your cooperation."
"I'm not answering anything else!"
"Why are you afraid to answer our questions?"
"What are you hiding?"
"Nothing, damn it!" O'Brien was scared now, and sweating heavily, but he was also angry. He hadn't thought this sort of thing happened outside of places like the Soviet Union. "Look, I don't want to talk to you guys anymore! I'm outta here!"
Rising from his seat, he marched to the door.
"Seaman O'Brien, I don't think you fully understand your situation."
"You could find yourself transferred to some place considerably less pleasant than San Francisco. Adak, Alaska, for instance, doing the penguin census."
"There are no penguins in Adak. Penguins live in the southern hemisphere."
"Don't get smart with us, kid. Polar bears, then."
"Sit down!"
They questioned him for some minutes more, asking now about his shipmates aboard the Pittsburgh, if he'd seen anything suspicious, and the like. O'Brien folded his arms and stubbornly refused to speak. Anything he said might be the wrong thing, something to allow the three to twist his words.
At last they stopped and quickly consulted with one another. "I don't think he knows a thing," he heard one mutter to the others.
"… playing stupid… "
"… don't think he's playing."
"Seaman O'Brien," the man with the laptop said finally, "are you aware of the provisions of the Official Secrets
Act?"
"Huh? No… "
"You may in the near future find yourself deployed on a sensitive and highly secret mission aboard this vessel," another said.
"Failure to observe the letter of the law regarding the Secrets Act can result in a heavy fine and a long jail sentence."
"That is, assuming you survive."
"If we chose to take you for a helicopter trip out over the Pacific, for instance… "