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Page 87.

Chapter 19. Duty, Skirts, City of Love

It was good to be out in the fresh air of San Francisco, wearing a slightly rumpled but clean uniform that his sister Catherine had ironed for him and carefully folded up in the sea bag.

Tim was young, and jaunty, with a nice collection of ribbons, and he attracted his share of attention from passing women. A lot of those were in uniform themselves, particularly the nurses from Letterman Army Hospital and other duty stations overflowing with distaff military. San Francisco had a reputation as the Paris of the West, a City of Love. He felt more comfortable in his own country with its more generous living space, soap, baths, all the little extras of life that had been missing in Europe and nonexistent in Africa. Whistling, he carried his personnel folder and medical records around to various sun drenched, whitewashed offices set on well-sprinkled green lawns. He sent a telegram home to New Haven, announcing that he’d arrived in good shape.

His duty station was at the Presidio in a two-story stucco building that itself was an annex to the rambling Navy Quartermaster Corps facilities all around the Bay area. He had a small office overlooking a sunless courtyard. One of the many cute young enlisted women who did administrative tasks like typing and filing told him, while chewing gum and patting her brown hair, that the sun did penetrate down to the second floor during the mornings on clear days, but generally she was always happy to get out. He thanked her, getting his own coffee rather than asking her to do, it, and began the process of settling in.

He met his immediate supervisor, Captain Martin Teague, in a large office with a round conference table overlooking a sunny, breezy intersection below. Teague was a tall, white-mustached man with a dignified mien and a somewhat sardonic, dry sense of humor. Sitting in was Lt. Cdr. Stan Kehoe, Tim’s friend—a freckled, sandy-haired young man, athletic and brash.

“I hear you went for a swim in the North Atlantic,” Martin Teague said without making light of the tragedy. He had been fed a half-true story. Nobody would know the truth about H.M.S. Sturmer for years, to prevent the Nazis from knowing how superior their submarine technology had been at that moment, in that place. Stan Kehoe as usual was forward. He’d say just one thing too many, or say not quite the right thing considering the company, but he was so good-natured that most people overlooked his eager quality. He usually had his tie slightly loose, as if he needed air while he bounced about in his seat and gesticulated as he spoke. “Yeah, Tim and I hit all the hot spots around London. I’ll vouch for him.”

“Glad to hear it,” Teague said quietly, raising both hands over Tim’s personnel field file as if in blessing. “Everything in here looks first rate. I feel very lucky that we have a good solid staff officer on board, and I’m sure Admiral Lemney will feel the same way as he gets to know of you from our weekly briefings.”

Hiram L. Lemney was the two star flag officer in charge of Procurement 5549, which specialized in turning specific small captured exotic enemy weapons over to the maw of the vast U.S. industrial machine, and receiving back production versions that could be shot back at the enemy.

Later that evening, sitting over a red checkered tablecloth in a smoky bar in the commercial district of Union Square, Tim and Stan reviewed the day’s meeting. “Teague likes you. I can tell.”

“Glad to hear it.” Tim had begun thinking about home.

“You’ll do just fine. Say, I thought you were going to be the life of the party. You look a little under the weather.”

“Still a little bushed from the long trip.” Tim sat back in the corner and propped one leg up on the dark red plastic bench. “That meeting today got me thinking about clocks.”

Stan laughed, sucking ice from his empty glass and letting the cubes tinkle back in while his gaze roved after young women in military hats parading by outside on the neon-lit avenue. “Clocks? You feeling okay?”

Tim shrugged, pushing an ice cube around so it left soggy little trails in the table cloth amid the bread crumbs from the Italian sandwiches they had just eaten. “I begin to wonder, you know. Do I really want to go back to Connecticut and design escapements in a little town. You know, marry the girl next door, have children, live out the whole conventional life style.”

“Hmmm. Do you miss London?”

“A bit. Not the plumbing.”

Stan laughed. “I know what you mean. And not the buzz bombs.”

“I’m sure they won’t have those after the war.”

“And the V-2s.”

“Not since the Germans surrendered.”