Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [184]
Clang, clang! The gig slowed, and Meatball shouted, “Coming alongside New Jersey gangway, Mr. Maryk!”
The two officers scrambled out on the gunwale. The vast flat steel wall of the battleship’s side confronted them. It towered like a skyscraper and stretched away, seemingly for blocks, on either side, hiding the atoll. Maryk leaped to the landing platform, a small square wooden grille bleached by salt water at the bottom of the steep gangway ladder. Keefer followed. “Lie off and wait for us,” the exec shouted to Meatball. They mounted the ladder, jingling the guys chains. The OOD was a short, round-faced lieutenant commander, gray at the temples, wearing a very clean, very starched khakis. Maryk asked for the location of the flag office. The OOD briskly gave him directions. The Caine officers left the quarterdeck and walked slowly aft, looking around at the majestic main deck of the New Jersey.
It was another world; and yet, somehow, the same world as the Caine, transfigured. They were on a forecastle, with anchor chains, wildcat, pelican hooks, and bitts, with ventilators and life lines. But the New Jersey’s pelican hook was as big as the Caine’s main guns; one link of the battleship’s anchor chain would have stretched across the minesweeper’s entire bow; and the main battery, the long, long cannons with their turrets, seemed bigger than the whole Caine. There were sailors and officers everywhere, the same crowd of blue and sprinkling of khaki, but the sailors were clean as Sunday-school boys, and the officers looked like their teachers, grown up and fussily neat. The great central citadel of bridge and stacks jutted out of the deck skyward, a pyramid of metal, nervous with anti-aircraft batteries and radars; the deck dwindled aft beyond it for hundreds of feet. The New Jersey was awesome. “I guess we go in here,” said Maryk. “Third door, starboard side, under the twin five-inch-”
“Okay,” said Keefer, with a glance upward at the towering bridge in the brilliant sunlight.
They threaded through cool dim immaculate passageways. “Here we are,” said Maryk. The black plastic plate on the green door read Flag Lieutenant. He put his hand on the knob.
Keefer said, “Steve, maybe this isn’t the right place to start-”
“Well, they’ll give us a steer, here, anyhow.” He opened the door. There was nobody in the long, narrow, desk-filled room but a lone sailor in whites, reading a rainbow-colored comic magazine under the fluorescent lamp of a desk at the far end. “Where’s the flag lieutenant, sailor?” Maryk called.
“Chow,” said the sailor, not looking up.
“When will he be back?”
“Dunno.”
“What’s his room number?”
The yeoman glanced up with languid curiosity. He was white-faced, like most yeomen, and he could yawn as widely as a tiger, like most yeomen. He demonstrated this accomplishment for the benefit of the Caine officers, and then said grumpily, “What’s it about?”
“Official business.”
“Well, whatever it is, you can leave it with me. I’ll take care of it.”
“No, thanks. What’s his room number?”
“Three eighty-four,” said the yeoman, with another huge red yawn, and turned back to the comic magazine, adding, “But he don’t like nobody bothering him in his room. You won’t get no favors that way.”
“Thanks for the tip,” said Maryk, closing the door. He looked up and down the passageway and began to walk aft. “Which way do you suppose is 384?”
“Steve.”
“Yes?”
“I think we ought to talk a little bit.”
Maryk stopped, and looked back at Keefer. The novelist was not following him. He was leaning with his back against the flag lieutenant’s door.
“What about?”
“Let’s go out on deck.”