VIII
lONE]
"Rolling Waves" Waihihi Beach, Oahu, Territory of Hawaii
It was a forty-nive-minute drive from Pearl Harbor to the Dennison estate on the beach at Waikiki. The party was well under way by the time Lennox got there. The red-brick curved driveway before the long, low house was packed with cars, more than half of them military and naval staff cars. Lennox saw that many of the service cars had what looked like a second license plate covered with a canvas sleeve. He knew what they concealed: the starred plates identiiying the passengers as admirals and generals.
Lennox realized that not only was he going to be out of place in his tropical worsted uniform but outranked by a platoon of brass hats and their entourages.
This was no place for a simple submarine sailor to be.
And when they were inside, and a houseboy had led them to a two bartender bar set up by a large swimming pool, he saw two movie stars. Floating around in the pool with sort of inner tubes under their arms and drinks in their hands were Lana Turner and one of those too-handsome, too-perfect actors.
It took him a minute to place the guy as Greg Hammer.
How does a large, splendid physical specimen like that avoid his draft board?
He realized there must be two hundred people in the Dennison mansion. One in five was female. For woman-scarce Hawaii, that was an unusual percentage of females. Some of them were wives, but many were unattached.
Why am I surprised" Where did I expect the pretty girls to be, in downtown Honolulu trying to pick up sailors?
He saw COMSUBFORPAC, which wasn't surprising, and CINCPAC, which was. He wondered why the hell COMSUBFORPAC had wanted him at the party. Probably, he thought somewhat bitterly, to give the condemned man a last hearty meal.
COMSUBFORPAC saw him, nodded, and gave him a quick smile, but made it clear by quickly looking away that Lennox was not expected to pay his respects to him in person at that time.
And then the Admiral's aide disappeared, and Lennox was left alone. He finished his first drink, had the bartender make him another, and then wandered around until he came to the buffet.
What he would do, he decided, was eat. They weren't serving the steak he had been looking forward to, but it was beyond reasonable argument a hearty, luxurious meal. There were roast pigs, "steamboat" restaurant rounds of roast beef, fish, and chicken. He tried to remember where he had seen a more luxuriant display of food, but nothing came to him.
He carried his tray outside the building and sat on a low brick wall beyond which was the white sand beach and the ocean. The food turned out to taste as good as it appeared, and he ate everything he had heaped on his plate.
Lennox had just lit a cigar when the Admiral's aide came for him.
"I wondered what had happened to you," the aide said.
"I was about to come looking for you, Commander," Lennox said.
"I've got to think about getting back to Pearl."
"We'll get you back to the Drum," the aide said.
"But right now, will you come with me, please?"
"Where are we going?"
The aide did not reply. Lennox followed him around the pool, then through a long, high-ceilinged living room, and then down a corridor. The aide stopped before a door and knocked.
"Come!" a male voice said.
It was a den, a private office.
Inside were CINCPAC, COMSUBFORPAC, CINCPAC's aide, a very good-looking young woman, an Air Corps captain, and movie star Greg Hammer in the uniform of a first lieutenant of the Army's Signal Corps.
Lennox was a little embarrassed about what he had imagined when he saw Hammer floating around in the pool. He was clearly not a draft dodger. But not too embarrassed. He'd heard about Hollywood movie stars going into the services.
There was a Marine aviation squadron with Macdonald Carey and Tyrone Power in it, conveniently stationed in Diego, where they had rented a hotel so they wouldn't be forced to put up with the discomfits of a BOQ. dark Gable had been commissioned a lieutenant in the Air Corps. Ronald Reagan was making training films in Hollywood as a first lieutenant. It was therefore not surprising to find Greg Hammer in an officer's uniform.
"Miss Chenowith," CINCPAC said, "may I present Commander Len