only parts of Pearl Harbor are a ten—the Arizona, the West Virginia, Wheeler Field, and the Oklahoma. I’m going to be on the New Orleans.”
“But do you actually have to be on the boat with Lord Nelson or whoever it is? Couldn’t you observe him from a safe distance?”
“No,” Michael said. “One, the New Orleans is a ship, not a boat. Boats are what rescued the soldiers from Dunkirk. Two, observing from a safe distance is what historians were stuck doing before Ira Feldman invented time travel. Three, Lord Nelson was at Trafalgar, not Pearl Harbor, and four, I’m not studying the heroes who lead navies—and armies—and win wars. I’m studying ordinary people who you wouldn’t expect to be heroic, but who, when there’s a crisis, show extraordinary bravery and self-sacrifice. Like Jenna Geidel, who gave her life vaccinating people during the Pandemic. And the fishermen and retired boat owners and weekend sailors who rescued the British Army from Dunkirk. And Wells Crowther, the twenty-four-year-old equities trader who worked in the World Trade Center. When it was hit by terrorists, he could have gotten out, but instead he went back and saved ten people, and died. I’m going to observe six different sets of heroes in six different situations to try to determine what qualities they have in common.”
“Like an aptitude for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or owning a boat?”
“Circumstance is one factor,” Michael said, refusing to be baited.
“Also a sense of duty or responsibility, physical disregard for personal safety, adaptability—”
“Adaptability?”
“Yeah. One minute you’re giving a Sunday morning sermon and the next you’re helping pass five-inch shells up to the guns to shoot at Japanese Zeroes.”
“Who did that?”
“The Reverend Howell Forgy. He was getting ready to do Sunday morning services on board the New Orleans when the Japanese attacked. They fired back, but the electricity to the ammunition hoists had been knocked out, and he’s the one who organized the gun crews—in the dark—into a human chain to pass the shells up to the deck. And he’s the one who, when one of the sailors said, ‘You didn’t get to finish your sermon, Reverend. Why don’t you finish it now?’ answered, ‘Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.’”
“And you’re certain being fired at by Japanese Zeroes isn’t a ten? I still can’t see how you persuaded Dunworthy to approve a project like that.”
“You’re going to Singapore.”
“Yes, but I’m coming back before the Japanese arrive. Oh, that reminds me, someone phoned for you earlier.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know. Shakira took the message. She was here teaching me to foxtrot.”
“Foxtrot?” Michael said. “I thought you had to learn about foxhunting.”
“I need to learn both. So I can go to the club dances. The British community in Singapore held weekly dances.” He put his arms in the self-defense positions he’d had them in when Michael came in and began stepping stiffly around the room, counting, “Left and-two and-three and-four and—”
“The British community in Singapore should have spent more time paying attention to what the Japanese were up to,” Michael said. “Then they might not have been caught so completely flat-footed.”
“Like you Americans at Pearl Harbor, Lieutenant Davis?” Charles said, grinning.
“You said Shakira took the message. Did she write it down?”
“Yes. It’s there by the phone.”
Michael picked up the slip of paper and tried to read it, but the only words he could make out were “Michael” and, farther down, “to.” The rest of it was anybody’s guess. There was something that might be “dob” or “late” or “hots,” and on the next line a “501” or “scl.” “I can’t decipher this,” he said, handing it to Charles. “Did she say anything about what it was about?”
“I wasn’t here. I had to run to Wardrobe to be measured for my dinner jacket, and when I got back she told me there’d been a call for you and she’d written it down.”
“Where is she now? Did she go back to her rooms?”
“No, she went over to Props to see if they had a recording of ‘Moonlight Serenade’ for us to practice to.” He took the slip of paper from Michael. “Here, let me try. Good Lord, she truly does have wretched handwriting. I think that’s ‘sch.’” He pointed at the “sol.” “And the next word might be ‘change.’ Schedule change?”
Schedule change. In which case the “dob” might be “lab.” “They’d better not have postponed it again,” Michael said, calling the lab. “Hi, Linna. Let me talk to Badri.”