If not as good as French cooking, French medicine is yet excellent. But the combination of limited shipboard equipment, young and relatively inexperienced military physicians, and the press of civilian patients from l’Étoile made Rensselaer’s initial diagnosis imprecise. In the C-17 on its way to Germany and the giant U.S. military hospital at Landstuhl, the medical team noticed his decline, and upon landing he was rushed into an operating room on account of a hematoma at the back of his skull near the brain stem, and persistent bleeding in his chest cavity from shattered ribs cutting into the surrounding tissue on his right side.
“What now?” he asked the surgeons just before he was put under.
To shift the ground, they answered with a question. “How do you feel?”
“Pretty good,” he said, weakly, wanly, “actually, well, maybe.”
“We have a little more work to do.”
When he awoke he didn’t know where he was or what had happened, and he hadn’t the slightest idea of time. An attractive nurse—somehow, all nurses are pretty—told him who he was, where he was, the date, and where he had been.
He nodded. “I’m not quite there yet, but I remember. How long?”
“Since when?”
“Since I’ve been out.”
“Overnight. You came out of anaesthesia fairly quickly, but then fell asleep. You slept through two trips to imaging.”
“What’d they do?”
“They rearranged your ribs and put a plate in the back of your head.”
“A plate?”
“A tiny one.”
“So . . . a saucer?”
“More like a half-dollar. Why would you have been doing that kind of stuff at your age anyway, and with your rank?” she scolded. “Let me see your arm so I can check the IV.”
“Necessity.”
“If you say so. Now you can rest. Everything’s okay. Just sleep.”
He did. Days passed mainly in sleep. And when he had gotten his strength back enough to stay awake, his ribs killed him. He asked one of the doctors how long it would last. It would last a long time, the doctor said, but now that his neurological condition had reverted to normal it was safe for a narcotic. “Four days,” the doctor said. “And that’s it. We don’t want to get you hooked.”
They did, in fact, hook him up to a drip, and his pain vanished. After two days, a different nurse took over the morning shift and he thought that she had increased the concentration of whatever it was that now separated him from himself as if he were a disembodied spirit. He could still speak, so when she came to check on him he asked if she had upped the dose.
“No,” she said. “No change. Just what’s on order. What’s your name?” He told her.
“What day is it?” He told her.
“What’s eight times eight divided by two?”
“Thirty-two,” he replied instantly, certainly, and proudly. He felt as if he had just trisected an angle or proved Fermat’s Theorem, although he wasn’t quite sure what that was.
“You’re right, and you’re more sober than half the people in the officers’ club.”
He spent the next hour floating in air, eyes wide, and with hardly a reaction when an unknown captain walked into his room. This was not unusual. The hospital was full of captains—doctors of great learning and skill who were respected but never fully accepted as real Navy. This officer, however, was not a doctor.
“How are you?” he asked.
“I’m kind of like an airship.”
“I see.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you okay to answer a few questions?”
Thinking that he was again going to be queried as to sums, Rensselaer said, “Sure.” Then, remembering that the officer wasn’t a physician, he asked, “What kind of questions?”
“I’m Dick Osborne.”
“You’re Dick Osborne.”
“I am. I just have a few questions about what happened on station.”
“You think?”
“It won’t take long. A debriefing. I’ll record it.”
“I had no pens or paper. My head was smashed against a rock. I had no . . . I have to write it up.”
“But you can’t, and it’s important that we have the information.”
Truly at ease, floating in the clouds just below or perhaps above the ceiling, Rensselaer’s reply was “Information.”
Dick Osborne thought he had him. “What did happen?”
“Oh,” Rensselaer said, longingly, “if I had time enough to tell.” He seemed both amused and longing.
“You do. You have as much time as you want.” The tap of a finger signaled the start of recording. “So if you would start from the beginning.”
“The beginning. The beginning? Nooooo, not for a naval investigator who hasn’t read me my Article Thirty-Ones, Dick Osborne.”
Osborne said something under his breath, and then, “Would you like me to?”
“No.”
“I can help you, really.”
“Oh of course you can. Like a boa constrictor. What? You think I’m a lollipop? Morphine or whatever it is makes you high, it doesn’t make you stupid, Dick Osborne. Can you stop at the nurses’ station and tell them that I want to come back to earth, Dick. Okay?”
As Rensselaer watched Captain Osborne moving down the corridor toward the nurses’ station, he laughed like a crazy person. Drugs.
*
By the beginning of October, though he had largely recovered, he was weak. He would take slow walks in the strangely deserted garden, and then return to his private room. Almost no one spoke to him, and he spoke to almost no one other than Katy. Every day. Hearing her voice on the phone was like falling in love all over again.
Most of the crew, he was told, had been dispersed. Athena was under repair at Hampton Roads. And he was not supposed to speak with anyone while his case was reviewed. He had read in the papers that DOD refused to comment on what the press called “the Athena Affair” until all the facts had been ascertained. Although this had no effect upon the gifts of flowers, cakes, and awards that arrived almost daily from many points in Europe, these in turn had no effect upon his situation other than to puzzle him.
He was able to sleep in a medivac C-17 as it crossed the Atlantic, in a far more comfortable bunk than on the best commercial flights. He was fresh, shaved, and alert when at 1530 he landed at Dover. As soon he left the C-17 he was escorted to a naval Gulfstream that shot off immediately, headed south, rose to altitude, leveled briefly, and began its descent to Naval Station Norfolk. The terrain was familiar and beautiful. The wild beaches and barrier islands, broad bays, reed-carpeted wetlands, and the patchwork of newly harvested fields made him feel safe at home, as if the plane were floating on waves of benevolence rising from a benevolent land, which he was sure it was—especially as the declining sun lit the breakers’ white foam with a sheen of light gold.
As the plane decelerated on the runway, Rensselaer asked the rating who was his escort, “Am I going to Athena?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
A little plane when taxiing can turn surprisingly sharply and stop surprisingly short. This the Gulfstream did in front of the terminal. Its door opened, and Rensselaer walked carefully down the stairs, setting foot in America for the first time in months. Unlike any ground he had been on since, this ground felt solid and real.
It appeared that no one had come to meet him, something that for the Navy would be par for the course. Only one man was in the terminal, standing as if to greet him, but as he had a garment bag, Rensselaer concluded that he was waiting to catch a flight.
He was a commander, taller than Rensselaer, probably fifty pounds heavier, and ten years younger. He had big hands and thick fingers. He was tanned and his close-cropped, golden hair lay across his head, neat and flat. Square-faced and blue-eyed, he was the archetype of a British yeoman. He didn’t take his eyes off Rensselaer, who walked past him and toward the exit.
“Where’re you going, sir?”
“Actually, I don’t know.”
“Captain Rensselaer?”
“Right.”
“I’m Frearson, your attorney.”
“My attorney?”
“Yes, sir.”
Rensselaer looked at the garment bag. “I must be in a hell of a lot of trouble if your briefcase is that big.”
“It’s yours. From Athena. Your dress blues. They were packed away below. The whites didn’t make it.”
“I know.”
“You can put these on in the bathroom.”
“Why?”
Frearson checked his watch. “In twenty minutes, the charges will be proferred.”
*
On the ride over, Frearson said, “Look, I was appointed, but you can choose or add someone else, including a civilian attorney or another JAG. This is an important case. You might consider bringing in Gene Fidell, the dean of military law, and no relation to Fidel Castro, I think.”
Rensselaer sized up Frearson. “Are you as solid as you look?”
Taken aback, Frearson answered, “I am.”
“You know those things in railway stations, at the end of the track, that are engineered to stop a train that doesn’t slow down enough? You remind me of one of those.”
“Thank you. Can’t wait to tell my wife.”
“No doubt she already knows. Where’d you go to school?”
“Harvard College, and Harvard Law School. I know you were Harvard GSAS.”
“So why the Navy? Didn’t you pass the bar?”
“First shot.”
“Then why not a firm? How did you rank?”
“I did okay. I was on Law Review, if you must know. Frankly, they were a bunch of pompous assholes. I clerked for a year and then enlisted.”
“Something’s not right here. Harvard Law Review, appeals clerk?”
“Yes.”
“Then Navy JAG?”
“When I was in high school,” Frearson told him, “I had my congress-man’s nomination to the Naval Academy. I chose Harvard instead. You yourself chose Harvard over NPGS.”
“I did. Reputation, the first refuge of a scoundrel.”
“I fell for that, too, but in the first week I saw a kid named Jim Scalzo coming down the stairs of Pennypacker. . . .”
“What’s Pennypacker?”
“A freshman dorm outside the Yard, unknown to graduate students like you. He was in his NROTC uniform. He had his military classes at MIT. I knew I’d made the wrong choice. It was a dull pain, inside, almost like grief, and it took nine years to correct. What it comes down to is, whatever its faults, I love the Navy. I may be insane, but I really do.”
“Do you win your cases?”
“Most of ’em.”
“You cop a lot of pleas?”
“No, that’s not winning.”
They left the gray sedan, which then pulled away as they went into the HQ. As he climbed the stairs, Rensselaer was apprehensive for the first time. The officer who proferred the charges was a vice admiral, three ranks above him, which seemed unnecessary. The admiral was in someone else’s office, and he sat rather stiffly in a starched white uniform with fewer ribbons than Rensselaer’s, no combat designations, certainly not Special Warfare. Rensselaer had that above his ribbons, and the command-at-sea below them. The admiral had surface supply corps below, and command-ashore project manager above.
Rensselaer stood at attention. Frearson, also at attention, was several paces back and to the right. Other officers—none of whom, like the admiral, introduced himself and one of whom, presumably, was the prosecutor—flanked the admiral and stood in front of a bunch of flags. Rensselaer’s impression was that he was facing something that looked a bit like a salad.
“Captain Rensselaer,” the admiral said, his tone simultaneously questioning and disdainful, “were you not informed that in Virginia the switchover to winter uniform is on fifteen October?”
“No, sir, but I pretty much knew it.”
“So why are you in winter uniform?”
“I don’t have a summer choker, sir.”
“You don’t?”
“No, sir.”
“And why is that?”
“It was in a stowage space next to COMMS, which took a hit and burst into flame. One of my crew died there. I wasn’t thinking of my wardrobe at the time. Anyway, it was destroyed, sir.”
“I see. I’m sorry about that.”
“Sir.”
“Mr. Frearson, have you been given a copy of the charge sheet?”
“No, sir, I have not.”
“You should have been. Are you and your client prepared to hear the charges without notice, or would you like an adjournment?”
Frearson glanced at Rensselaer, who, without a sound, said it was okay. “We don’t need an adjournment, sir.”
“Very well. I’ll read the charges. I don’t know why I was picked: I’m trying to build a goddamned aircraft carrier.” He put on a pair of half-round reading glasses, stiffened even more, and began.
“Captain Stephen Rensselaer, United States Navy: according to the charge sheet, form four fifty-eight, you are charged with the following violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice:
“‘Article Ninety-Four, Section one, b. two: mutiny by refusing to obey orders or perform duty, usurping or overriding lawful military authority.
“‘Article Ten, improper hazarding of a vessel.
“‘Article Eighty-Seven, missing movement.
“‘Article Ninety-Two, failure to obey order or regulation.
“‘Article Eight-One, conspiracy.
“‘Article Eighty-Five, desertion.’”
“Desertion?” Rensselaer asked, amazed.
The admiral cleared his throat, simultaneously to confirm and to reprimand.
Again, but this time with a tone that indicated contempt for the accusation, Rensselaer said, “Desertion.”
The admiral ignored this, and forged ahead. “‘Article One Hundred and Thirty-Four, the General Article. In this case, diverting a component of the Armed Forces of the United States, in time of war, to invade a territory with which the United States is not at war, thus subtracting from the capacity of the United States to wage war, and risking creation of another front.’
“I myself have in proferring these charges noted on the charge sheet that they include one or more capital offenses. Due to the nature of the charges, and by order of the commander in chief, you will, despite your rank and long service, be ineligible for the customary confinement to quarters or base, and will forthwith be placed under arrest and transported to Naval Consolidated Brig, Chesapeake, where you will be kept in isolation from other prisoners.
“Due to the scope of the charges, the fact that the alleged violations took place overseas, and the ongoing conflict in the area, a trial date has not been set, and will be determined only when the investigation of the charges has been completed.
“Counselor, do you or your client have anything you would like to say?”
“Yes, sir,” Frearson responded. “In light of the—in the view of the Defense—unprecedented confinement order for the accused, a captain with a distinguished record and career, and in regard to the publicity and potential political nature of this case, can you confirm that the order comes from the commander in chief? That is, the president?”
“I can. It’s in writing, appended to the charge sheet. You’ll receive it with your copy.”
“Does it detail the conditions of confinement other than to specify isolation, sir?”
The admiral shook his head. “No. Speak to the CO of the brig. They may have instructions. They may work according to their own protocol. Anything else?”
“I want to note again before my formal protest,” Frearson said, “that given my client’s record of service the conditions of his confinement are both highly unusual and totally unnecessary.”
“Noted. Anything else?”
Frearson glanced at Rensselaer, who indicated no. “No, sir, nothing else.”