“Ay, sir.”
As the sun reached its zenith Dolly was busy fishing, heading as she did so in a southwesterly direction. In another three days she would be in safer waters where she could more easily play her new role of a Japanese fishing ship headed back to her home islands. Lieutenant Hanson, the Japanese language officer, moved his bunk into the radio shack where he would be on hand to handle any unexpected message traffic. All that the Dolly and her crew asked for then was the mercy of God and, if possible, another day and a half free of observation.
To Erskine Wattles the injustices which had been heaped upon him and his people were compounded by his own long detention after the nation’s new masters had taken over. Every inmate of Leavenworth knew that there was a new warden from overseas and that she was a woman, but the routine of the prison continued almost unchanged. As the days made their dreary pilgrimage, one after the other, he waited — with fuming impatience and, at last, with a burning sense that something had gone radically wrong. He was a dynamic leader of the new movement; the movement had triumphed but his reward, the fame and the power that were now rightfully his, had been much too long in coming.
Then, at long last, two men arrived at his cell with the information that the warden wanted to see him. He stepped forward eagerly, his head suddenly high; he discarded the prison shuffle and tried to begin to walk with the swagger he had cultivated long before.
When he reached the warden’s office he was put into a chair well back from the woman who studied him from behind her desk. As she did so he judged her, deciding in his mind what disposition he would make of her once he was outside.
She spoke to him, in English. “You are loudly asking to see me. What is it that you want?”
Wattles had little time to waste on her. “I want to get out of this Goddamned stinkin’ hole,” he almost shouted. “Do you know who I am?”
“I know very well who you are.” She surveyed him dispassionately, as though he were a laboratory animal she was observing. “You are a murderer, a rapist, an arsonist, and you have made mayhem upon a federal judge in his court.”
“Goddamned right I did!”
“Your sentence is not up. When it is, I will decide whether to let you go or not.”
He started to rise out of his chair, but he was thrust back down again by one of the two guards who stood watch over him. He looked again at the woman behind the desk; she was not too old and she was good looking. Instantly his mind froze on his plan of vengeance: she would pay with her body. He would have her held down by the same two apes who were beside him now, then he would climb on her and stick it in so far and so hard she would feel it in the back of her throat.
His common sense told him that he would get nowhere abusing her now — he would have to play it cool. “You know why you’re here?” he asked. “Me, that’s why. You ask the bosses where you come from.”
In answer the woman picked up a folder from her desk, opened it, and studied the contents once more. It was for his benefit; she knew what it contained in fullest detail. “I am aware,” she said when she had finished, “you are criminal — nothing more. Your politics, it makes no difference. You are a bad, dangerous man.”
She was going to say more, but he would not let her. Raising both fists, he slammed them onto the arms of the chair. “Your boss will kill you,” he yelled.
Calmly she shook her head. “To me this prison was given to run,” she said. “It is to me to decide what to do. I tell you now that I alone am in charge; it is how we do things. You have made much trouble screaming in the night that you must be let out quickly. I send for you to tell you that it will not happen. You do not love us, you do not love me. You love only yourself.”
Wattles turned livid despite his dark skin.
“You have yet eight years to serve. You have this time to learn that you are nothing, that we do not desire you. If you do not learn, we will keep you longer. As long as we wish. If you more trouble make, I will put you in solitary. That is all.”
Back in his cell Erskine Wattles sat on the edge of his hard bunk and cursed the name of the God who had betrayed him.
On Unimak Island in the Aleutians the operator of a secret electronics communications facility listened carefully to WWV and once again checked the accuracy of his chronometer against the time tick broadcast. It was precisely on. That verified, he turned his attention to a specialized receiver that was crystal-controlled and to the backup unit which was its exact duplicate and which operated from an entirely separate power circuit. Both pieces of equipment had built-in checkout circuits which continuously monitored their performance; both read out that their parent circuitry was working perfectly.
At minus ten minutes the operator started the tape recorders, sensitive instruments that could detect and preserve the faintest sounds captured by the receivers. The highly directional antennae were properly positioned and tuned; everything was in readiness. Then, carefully and methodically, the operator checked everything once more. He knew the importance of what he was doing and he was taking no chances. Even he did not know that at another site, of which he was not aware, similar precautions were being taken for the same purpose; Colonel Prichard was not a man to leave anything to chance.
Precisely on the second that it was expected a very short, unreadable three-second transmission was received. It came and went so quickly it was almost like the winking of a flashbulb without the brilliance to announce its presence. To hear it, anyone for whom it was not intended would have had to have had the necessary underwater antennae properly tuned and precisely aimed; the chances of that happening by accident were mathematically almost invisible.
As soon as the message had been recorded the operator on Unimak relayed it on by secret circuit; it was received and transcribed in the underground headquarters of Thomas Jefferson very shortly thereafter. The news that it conveyed gave Admiral Barney Haymarket the greatest emotional lift he had known since the first indefinite messages had been received from San Francisco which indicated that the Magsaysay had probably made good her initial escape. All that he had had to go on at that point had been the likelihood that he had a ship at sea, but within vulnerable range of the enemy, unprovisioned, and with a highly hazardous at-sea supply operation setup which would depend to a large degree on luck — sea conditions and the lack of enemy interference. He had gambled with those odds because it was the best that he had been able to do, but he had not liked it and it had worried him out of two consecutive nights’ sleep.
The message he had in hand now was enough to make him call together all of his immediate associates who were available. Major Pappas had been asleep; the distinctions between night and day in the underground facility had been erased and the clock had become the sole arbiter of time. It had taken the major almost four minutes to rouse himself, get out of bed, dress, and report to the coffee bar where the admiral and the rest of the members of the First Team, with the exception of Walter Wagner, awaited him. He apologized for his late appearance.
“As far as I am aware, Ted,” the admiral said, “that’s the first time that you’ve been in the sack for the past three days. Now here’s the word.” He looked around at the small group on which he relied so much. “We have a report from Magsaysay.”
He stopped long enough to let his team understand the full meaning of his words. “She rendezvoused with the Dolly and resupplied successfully. There was no interference, and she reports no ill effects; all hands are well.”