Cold is the Sea Read Online Free PDF Page A

at a critical time. Laura must know, or have shrewdly guessed, already. But, womanlike, she must have it from him. He had already denied Joan once, would not a second time. He could not, however, tell what he knew, or surmised, about her and Jim. That was not his secret. Nor need he distress Laura with any details of his own relationship (that word, again!) with Joan. Yet he would have to tell her something. That was clear.
    â€œI do know someone over there, though there’s nothing she could do. I ran into her by accident when I was over there. It’s a WAVE lieutenant, Joan Lastrada. I knew her when she was in the intelligence business in Pearl Harbor, during the war.”
    Again that unfathomable ghost of a smile. “Good. Now maybe we’re getting somewhere.” (Could that simple statement have had a double meaning?) “How can we get Joan to tell Brighting you had no part in Scott’s scheme?”
    â€œWe can’t, Laura. Nobody has any influence over Admiral Brighting. She’s only a lieutenant in his shop. I’m not about to go to her with any such idea!”
    â€œI know you far better than you think, husband mine, and Iwouldn’t love you as much if I thought you would. But she might anyway, if she finds out what’s been going on. . . .”
    Something was going on in Laura’s mind, all right. “We’re not going to get Joan or anybody else mixed up in this,” he said again, a little too loudly. As he pronounced the authoritative-sounding words, however, he sensed an unusual undercurrent. It was almost something one could touch. There was a fleeting, cryptic look in Laura’s eyes, a general abstractedness, an attitude of listening to another tune entirely. For the moment, he had lost her.
    The conversation, and the unusual note on which it ended, a note he could never before remember emanating from his wife, remained uppermost in Richardson’s mind for days. There were the final details of turning over his office to his relief, the modest good-bye luncheon given by his office mates, finally the Friday morning arrival of a moving van at his house. Even the hectic activity of tearing up the home of three years and seeing it packed into the van, a routine gone through so very many times and yet always traumatic, seemed overshadowed by a quietness of waiting. Something was going on somewhere, out of sight and out of hearing. His sixth sense, whatever that might be, was whirling madly. Laura was no help, nor had she been, although on this moving day, when he asked her point-blank, she admitted to the same intuition. Even Jobie felt it. “It doesn’t feel like we’re moving to where we’re supposed to be moving to,” he announced with thirteen-year-old directness.
    Late in the afternoon, the moving van was about to pull away from the empty house when the telephone, now on the floor in an empty hall, sounded its insistent tocsin. “Just a moment for Admiral Brighting,” said a female voice.
    There were no communication-establishing formalities. Brighting spoke on the telephone with the same expressionless monotone Richardson had heard in his office. “Richardson, there’s a vacancy in the next class at Arco. It starts tomorrow. Do you want it?”
    â€œYes, sir!” Richardson could say nothing more. The unexpected words rang through his brain. Whatever it was that had changed Brighting’s mind, it had indubitably happened. He had won! Euphoria flooded his body.
    â€œYou will bring no uniforms with you, and no rank insignia.You’re to wear civilian clothes the entire time you’re on the site. There are officers and enlisted men there whom I have put into positions of responsibility, and you’re to accept orders from them as though they were from me. At no time are you to use your rank for any purpose whatsoever. I will not have my program and organization disrupted by the requirement of toadying to