Ian Slater - World in Flames

“Isotope stamping,” Brentwood cut in. “It’s called fingerprinting.” It was a long-standing pollution control device to track down whoever flushed oil from bilges in transit up and down the coast.

“Yeah, I reckon that’s what they do,” said Jones.

“What’s the ‘E’ stand for?”

Jones’s gaze followed Ray Brentwood’s finger pointing at the designation IX-44E in faded paint on the barge’s port side.

“Oh yeah. That’s ‘E’ for ‘experimental.’ “

“You mean the oceanographer’s stuff?”

“No, sir, I mean this is the first self-propelled sludge-removal barge in port. Used to just push ‘er around with a tug.”

“Jesus!” said Brentwood, and right then and there he decided he was going to resign from the navy. If they thought they could push him out quietly with this insult — the bastards were right.

What saved him, changed his mind, was Robert Mitchum, an actor his dad used to like, whom he’d seen in an old late show one night watching KVOS-TV out of Seattle. Mitchum was playing the part of a destroyer captain in World War II being hunted by a sub, and the destroyer had been hit. It wasn’t out for the count but was well on the way. “Old Bob,” as Ray’s dad used to call Mitchum, as if they were brothers, ordered everybody to abandon ship except essential crew. The officer of the deck had the job of making up the list of the nonessential personnel and had put down the garbage baler’s name — a low-IQ eccentric who was in charge of garbage disposal.

“Old Bob,” sleepy-eyed, had said no — the garbageman had to stay. Everybody disliked the man because he stank and had a weird passion for his job. But “Old Bob” told the OOD that the man’s dedication to “baling”—compacting garbage, making sure it sank out of sight instead of breaking up and acting as a trail for the marauding sub to spot and follow — could save the ship. Ray remembered that on this foul-smelling, misty wharf, and what his father had always told him — to swallow his pride and think of the navy, that it was bigger than any individual. Had to be.

Ray ordered the lackadaisical Jones to round up the vessel’s “full complement” by 1000 hours or he’d fine every man jack of them. They were going to scrub her down — stem to stern— and the engine room, crammed box that it was, was going to be so clean that any one of the ship’s company could eat their dinner off it. Was that understood?

“Yes, sir,” said Jones, saluting and wiping dirty hands on his dirty dungarees.

As Ray Brentwood watched him walk up the gangplank along the wharf, he felt the barge shift and strain against the hawsers. The tide was coming in. He saw a forlorn-looking sea gull perched atop the grease-stained derrick well forward of the wheelhouse, the latter looking like a box plonked on a slab of tired wood. “Well, bird,” Ray told the sea gull, “I don’t think Grace’ll win the war — running up and down the coast sucking up bunker C — but at least we can give the lady a little respect.”

In all the annals of war, never had a man so unwittingly belied the role of the vessel under his command — sludge-removal barge IX-44E — propelled.

The gull rose, squawking, depositing on Brentwood’s cap what the Grace’s captain took to be appropriate comment on his career prospects.

Beside the crackling warmth of the Oval Office fireplace, the president of the United States felt cold.

With the chiefs of staff, press aide Paul Trainor, and National Security Affairs adviser Harry Schuman sitting on the white leather lounge chairs behind him, he read the message that had been relayed directly to him by the U.S. trade legation in Taipei:

POISON GAS USED BY PRC FORCES AGAINST ROK POSITIONS NEAR MANPO ON YALU STOP POISONOUS GAS NOT YET KNOWN FOR CERTAIN BUT HAS BEEN CONFIRMED AS NERVE GAS TYPE SIMILAR OR IDENTICAL TO THAT USED IN NINETEEN EIGHTIES IRAQ/IRAN WAR STOP OBVIOUS DANGER IS THAT IF BEIJING HAS AUTHORIZED USE AGAINST NKA WE MUST ASSUME THEY AND/OR NKA GENERAL KIM WILL NOT HESITATE TO USE AGAINST US FORCES IN KOREA MESSAGE ENDS

Mayne stared into the fire as he finished reading the message and saw the red coals collapsing as he imagined ancient Pompeii must have disappeared in Vesuvius’s molten sea of lava. “Has Freeman been told?”

“Yes. Mr. President,” answered Army Chief of Staff General Grey.

“What’s he doing about it?” he asked General Grey.

“Only thing he can, sir,” replied the chief of the army. “Making sure each man has CBW clothing and masks.”

“How about Europe?”

“We’re doing the same thing there, sir. So are the Russians and Chinese if our intelligence reports are accurate.”

“Those dumb bastards!” said Mayne, his right hand massaging his forehead, the message from Taipei dangling from his left hand like a white flag.

“Mr. President,” said Air Force General Allet. “We can’t say for sure that Beijing ordered the use of the gas. It could have been a local decision by one of the commanders. Might have panicked when he saw ROK forces coming at him.”

“Good Christ!” said Mayne, turning away from the fireplace. “Well, let’s find out.”

“We can’t get through to Beijing on normal hookup, Mr. President,” General Grey informed him.

Mayne was incredulous. “Why, dammit?”

“Several microwave relay stations have been knocked out.”

The CNO — chief of naval operations — Admiral Horton, held that the question of who authorized the use of gas was more or less an academic one, “now that the ‘genie,’ “ as he put it, had been let out of the bottle. “No one’s going to care who started it, Mr. President. Point is, what’re we going to do about it now?”

“Warn them,” said Mayne. “Beijing and Moscow. That this is a no-win situation — for all of us.” Mayne caught the quick glance between Admiral Horton and Harry Schuman, his National Affairs adviser, who shifted his cane uncomfortably from left to right, a sign that his usual southern aplomb had been undone.

“Well?” demanded Mayne. “Isn’t it? A no-win situation?”

“Mr. President,” answered General Grey, moving forward uneasily in the plush lounge chair, “the army, marines — and the other two services all have supplies of Sarin and VX nerve gases, despite the agreement to reductions signed by Bush and Gorbachev. It was clearly understood by both sides it could never be a total ban, when at least fourteen other nations had similar chemical and biological weapons, including Libya, Iraq—”

“So? We get the message through to Beijing and Moscow— through Geneva if necessary — that we can play this game, too. God knows we don’t want to, but if any U.S. troops are attacked with gas, then we’ll retaliate in kind. We couldn’t pin this goddamned water poisoning that swept the country on them for lack of evidence, but this is clear-cut, gentlemen. And as Churchill told the Nazis: ‘We didn’t ask that the rules of the game be changed, but if they want to play rough, we can play rough, too!’ Agreed?” He waited impatiently for the consensus.

“Afraid not, Mr. President.” It was General Grey again who dared broach the harsher reality.

“What in hell do you mean. General?” asked Mayne, tapping his breast pocket, as if looking for his reading glasses, and asking his press aide to bring him a glass of water, a sign for Trainor to get the ABM — antiballistic missile — as he called the migrane medication, often having told Trainor in lighter moments that migrane is like an ICBM: if you didn’t start defensive measures quickly, you’ll lose.

General Grey was now sitting uncomfortably on the edge of the lounge seat, hands clasped but looking directly up at his commander in chief. This was no time, he decided, to play pussyfoot or to assign blame. It was the moment for an unsparing truth — not known by the American public at large and not even by many senior officers.