Commander Cantrell in the West Indies(17)

“Uh, Mr. Chehab, her name is actually Anne Cathrine.”

“Trust me son, she is a young Ann Margret. But more curvaceous.”

“Now George,” warned Vince Marcantonio, “let’s not get too blatant in our admiration of the young lady.”

Chehab smiled and shrugged. “Okay, but damn, I confess to disappointment that she didn’t come down with you, Commander: severe, genuine, personal disappointment. She’s as charming as she is beautiful, and we’d have liked to show her more of Grantville last year.”

Eddie nodded. “Yes, sir. A return visit tops our list of things to do. When time permits.”

And the room became quiet again, the jocularity chased out by the shadow of things to come. Serious things. Time to get back to and conclude the matters at hand, Piazza admitted. “Well, Commander, we are very glad to have seen you and presented you with your long overdue medal—and gift. I take it you will be returning to your duties immediately?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not even time to sneak a quick visit to Copenhagen?”

Eddie shook his head. “No, sir. Much as I’d like to. What with being a new husband and all.”

“Amen to that,” breathed Warner Barnes sympathetically, who knew because Piazza had briefed them months ago, that Anne Cathrine was “inexplicably” not with her husband in Luebeck. Of course, there was a simple, if unpleasant explanation for her absence: she had been purposely kept away from Luebeck at the behest of a group of Swedish officers. Anne Cathrine, they correctly asserted, was inquisitive, clever, enthusiastic, and probably could have deduced military secrets from fragments of conversations overheard in Eddie’s quarters. Of course, the great majority of the command staff also held that she’d have been even more likely to die rather than give up those secrets. But there had been concerns among some ultranationalist Swedes that a new bride—and a Danish one, at that—should not be in close proximity to secret projects and documents. Nonsense of course, and driven by their distrust of Copenhagen’s loyalty to Stockholm in the forcibly reforged union     of Kalmar. But those officers wielded enough political power that some concessions had to be made, and this one was consented to because it imposed politically-inconsequential costs upon only two persons: a love-lorn and sex-starved new husband named Eddie Cantrell and his pining bride.

“That’s hard, lonely duty you’ve pulled up north, Commander,” nodded Piazza.

Eddie either misunderstood or was trying to change the topic. “Well, I do like learning how to sail and command a ship, but much of the Baltic is iced over and all of it is cold and stormy as hell in February and March. Every time a training tour is up, I’m grateful to be back in HQ for another few weeks. Suddenly, sorting through an endless stack of papers doesn’t seem so bad, when you’re doing it in a nice, warm office.”

“Well, I’m sure a lot more papers have accumulated in your absence. You certainly have done quite a job of depositing a hefty new pile here with us.” Piazza gestured to the leather folios on the table.

Eddie glanced at the “folders” and nodded, taking the president’s hand. “It’s been a pleasure to see you again, sir.”

“And you, Commander. Safe travels. And I almost forgot to ask: how are construction schedules holding up in the shipyards?”

“They’re passable, Mr. President,” an answer which Eddie punctuated by one moment of extended eye contact, a moment that was, again, probably lost on everyone except Nasi. Sagging a little, Eddie leaned on the table for support. “But everything will come together eventually.” And with that, his finger grazed across the exposed corner of the bottom-most folio.

Which was all code for: construction is on schedule and the new technologies have reached production phase, details of which are in this folder I just touched. And the delivery of that message, and the coded details scattered as harmless phrases throughout the papers in that folio, were the only reasons that the young commander had actually been sent down to Grantville.

The new prosthetic had been a great cover-story—flawless, actually—but the coded reports on Simpson’s classified projects, and his actual completion and readiness dates, could not be entrusted to airwaves or routine couriers. Even secure couriers were problematic because there was always the chance that their role was already known and that they would be waylaid at a most inopportune moment.

No, the best means of sending secret data—for which the codes were the second, not the first line of defense—was to send them in plain sight, so to speak. And that meant using a routine contact, such as Admiral Simpson’s staff expert on technology initiatives and fellow up-timer, to convey a single secure communiqué as part of a perfectly plausible trip that had been planned upon months ahead of time. And it meant that there were only three people who had known the identity of the courier in advance: Simpson, Piazza, and the courier himself—Eddie Cantrell.