Chapter 36
WHEN PAUL ARRIVED back at the hotel, at a quarter after six, he changed out of his uniform and into civilian clothes and we walked to a little restaurant near the church called Osteria da Liò.
It was a warm night, so we sat outdoors, and while we waited for someone on the staff to notice us, I told him about the luncheon.
“The place was insane,” I said after I’d described the Greers’ house in some detail. “Like, you think you’re showing up at this modest house on the water, and then you realize, no, it’s a full-on villa.”
“Sounds incredible,” said Paul.
“I met this girl, Laura. She thinks you probably know her husband.”
“What’s her last name?”
“I can’t remember, but I think his first name’s Bobby. He does something with nuclear maintenance?”
“Bobby Carpenter?”
“That’s it,” I said. “Carpenter. They just moved here from New London.”
“Yeah, he was telling me he just finished a tour on the U.S.S. Nautilus, which is cool.”
“Why?”
“It was the first nuclear-powered submarine in the fleet. In the world, actually. So serving as engineer, it’s a real feather in your cap.”
“Do you like him?”
“Bobby? He’s a good guy. Smart. Really funny. What’s she like?”
Laura wasn’t quite so easy to describe. “She’s really pretty. Like she’s from somewhere else.” I’d learn later that Laura’s parents were Greek.
I went on. “She’s a bit of a brown-noser. But she’s got good intel. Knows a lot more than I do about what it is we’re meant to be doing here.”
“What, like about the tender?”
“No, I guess I mean about paperwork and processes and stuff like that. But yeah, also about the tender.”
A waiter came to take our drink orders—red wine for me and an Ichnusa for Paul.
“Meeting her made me wonder if I should be asking you more questions,” I said. “I don’t want to come off like a dunce.”
“What do you want to know?”
I thought for a minute. “Well, for starters, what is it you do out there?” I waved in the general direction of Santo Stefano.
“I told you. I head up Radiological Controls.”
“Yes, I know that. But what does that mean?”
“I manage and try my best to minimize radiation exposure when we’re maintaining the subs.”
“Okay,” I said encouragingly. “How many guys are in the division?”
Paul closed his eyes as if counting in his head.
“Seventeen, maybe eighteen.” There was one other commissioned officer—a junior officer named Teddy Wozniak, who was straight off his first sea tour and who Paul had already decided was a dolt.
Then there was Paul’s master chief, a guy named Brick Cash.
As a noncommissioned officer who had been promoted up through the enlisted ranks, Brick knew a hell of a lot more about managing and minimizing radiation exposure than whatever the navy had managed to cram into Paul’s head during RADCON school.
The rest of the guys in the division were electrician’s mates, machinist’s mates, and electronics technicians.
One yeoman, whom Paul referred to only as Jet, acted as the division secretary.
“That’s a lot of people,” I said. “And they all report to you?”
Paul laughed.
“What?”
“It’s just funny how little you know about the navy,” he said.
The waiter delivered our drinks, along with a small bowl of olives. A week ago, I’d have said I didn’t like olives, but they kept showing up gratis every time we ordered anything, and I had a hard time turning down free food.
“All the enlisted guys report to Brick,” said Paul, popping an olive into his mouth. “And he reports to me.”
“Okay,” I said. “So it’s just Brick and Wozniak who report to you?”
“Right.”
“But what do you actually do?”
“Me personally or the whole division?”
“Both?”
“A lot of things, but the biggie is that we supervise nuclear maintenance.”
“Supervise? Meaning you don’t do the maintenance?”
“Right,” he said. “That falls to Bobby’s team.”
“Why do they need supervision?”
Paul pulled a perfectly clean olive pit from his mouth and placed it on a paper napkin.
“Let’s say a sub comes in, and the reactor’s cooling system needed to be flushed.
The guys on the sub can shut the reactor down, and the guys in nuclear maintenance know what they need to do.
But there are lots of protocols everyone has to follow to make sure no one’s exposed to too much radiation. ”
“And that’s where you come in?”
He nodded.
“So your whole job is to make it safe for Bobby’s team to work?”
“Well, it’s not my whole job, but yeah, it’s a big part of it.”