had intended to be here this morning to persuade Commander Swanson here to take you aboard. But I was delayed.’
‘Persuade, sir?’
‘Persuade.’ He sighed. ‘Our nuclear submarine captains, Dr Carpenter, are a touchy and difficult bunch. From the proprietary attitude they adopt towards their submarines you’d think that each one of them was a majority shareholder in the Electric Boat Company of Groton, where most of those boats are built.’ He raised his glass. ‘Success to the commander and yourself. I hope you manage to find those poor devils. But I don’t give you one chance in a thousand.’
‘I think we’ll find them, sir. Or Commander Swanson will.’
‘What makes you so sure?’ He added slowly, ‘Hunch?’
‘You could call it that.’
He laid down his glass and his eyes were no longer twinkling. ‘Admiral Hewson was most evasive about you, I must say. Who are you, Carpenter? What are you?’
‘Surely he told you, Admiral? Just a doctor attached to the navy to carry out –’
‘A naval doctor?’
‘Well, not exactly. I –’
‘A civilian, is it?’
I nodded, and the admiral and Swanson exchanged looks which they were at no pains at all to conceal from me. If they were happy at the prospect of having aboard America’s latest and most secret submarine a man who was not only a foreigner but a civilian to boot, they were hiding it well. Admiral Garvie said: ‘Well, go on.’
‘That’s all. I carry out environmental health studies for the services. How men react to extremes of environmental conditions, such as in the Arctic or the tropics, how they react to conditions of weightlessness in simulated space flights or to extremes of pressure when having to escape from submarines. Mainly –’
‘Submarines.’ Admiral Garvie pounced on the word. ‘You have been to sea in submarines, Dr Carpenter. Really sailed in them, I mean?’
‘I had to. We found that simulated tank escapes were no substitute for the real thing.’
The admiral and Swanson looked unhappier than ever. A foreigner – bad. A foreign civilian – worse. But a foreign civilian with at least a working knowledge of submarines – terrible. I didn’t have to be beaten over the head to see their point of view. I would have felt just as unhappy in their shoes.
‘What’s your interest in Drift Ice Station Zebra, Dr Carpenter?’ Admiral Garvie asked bluntly.
‘The Admiralty asked me to go there, sir.’
‘So I gather, so I gather,’ Garvie said wearily. ‘Admiral Hewson made that quite plain to me already. Why you, Carpenter?’
‘I have some knowledge of the Arctic, sir. I’m supposed to be an expert on the medical treatment of men subjected to prolonged exposure, frostbite and gangrene. I might be able to save lives or limbs that your own doctor aboard might not.’
‘I could have half a dozen such experts here in a few hours,’ Garvie said evenly. ‘Regular serving officers of the United States Navy, at that. That’s not enough, Carpenter.’
This was becoming difficult. I tried again. I said: ‘I know Drift Station Zebra. I helped select the site. I helped establish the camp. The commandant, a Major Halliwell, has been my closest friend for many years.’ The last was only half the truth but I felt that this was neither the time nor the place for over-elaboration.
‘Well, well,’ Garvie said thoughtfully. ‘And you still claim you’re just an ordinary doctor?’
‘My duties are flexible, sir.’
‘I’ll say they are. Well, then, Carpenter, if you’re just a common-or-garden sawbones, how do you explain this?’ He picked a signal form from the table and handed it to me. ‘This has just arrived in reply to Commander Swanson’s radioed query to Washington about you.’
I looked at the signal. It read: ‘Dr Neil Carpenter’s bonafides beyond question. He may be taken into your fullest, repeat fullest confidence. He is to be extended every facility and all aid short of actually endangering the safety of your submarine and the lives of your crew.’ It was signed by the Director of Naval Operations.
‘Very civil of the Director of Naval Operations, I must say.’ I handed back the signal. ‘With a character reference like this, what are you worrying about? That ought to satisfy anyone.’
‘It doesn’t satisfy me,’ Garvie said heavily. ‘The ultimate responsibility for the safety of the Dolphin is mine. This signal more or less gives you carte blanche to behave as you like, to ask Commander Swanson to act in ways that might be contrary to his better judgment. I can’t have that.’
‘Does it matter what you can or can’t have? You have your orders. Why don’t you obey them?’
He didn’t hit me. He didn’t even bat an eyelid. He wasn’t activated by pique about the fact that he wasn’t privy to the reason for the seeming mystery of my presence there, he was genuinely concerned about the safety of the submarine. He said: ‘If I think it more important that the Dolphin should remain on an active war footing rather than to go haring off on a wild-goose chase to the Arctic, or if I think you constitute a danger to the submarine, I can countermand the D.N.O.’s orders. I’m the C.-in-C. on the spot. And I’m not satisfied.’
This was damnably awkward. He meant every word he said and he didn’t look the type who would give a hoot for the consequences if he believed himself to be in the right. I looked at both men, looked at them slowly and speculatively, the unmistakable gaze, I hoped, of a man who was weighing others in the balance: what I was really doing was thinking up a suitable story that would satisfy both. After I had given enough time to my weighing-up – and my thinking – I dropped my voice a few decibels and said: ‘Is that door soundproof?’
‘More or less,’ Swanson said. He’d lowered his own voice to match mine.
‘I won’t insult either of you by swearing you to secrecy or any such rubbish,’ I said quietly. ‘I want to put on record the fact that what I am about to tell you I am telling you under duress, under Admiral Garvie’s threat to refuse me transport if I don’t comply with his wishes.’
‘There will be no repercussions,’ Garvie said.
‘How do you know? Not that it matters now. Well, gentlemen, the facts are these. Drift Ice Station Zebra is officially classed as an Air Ministry meteorological station. Well, it belongs to the Air Ministry all right, but there’s not more than a couple of qualified meteorologists among its entire personnel.’
Admiral Garvie refilled the tooth-glass and passed it to me without a word, without a flicker of change in his expression. The old boy certainly knew how to play it cool.
‘What you will find there,’ I went on, ‘are some of the most highly skilled men in the world in the fields of radar, radio, infra-red and electronic computers, operating the most advanced instruments ever used in those fields. We know now, never mind how, the count-down succession of signals the Russians use in the last minute before launching a missile. There’s a huge dish aerial in Zebra that can pick up and amplify any such
