“I appreciate the fact that you’ve come to see me.”
Red looked up, startled. He’d agreed to the arrangement so that the lieutenant commander wouldn’t send a patrol boat to Wreck Bay but wished fervently that he hadn’t.
“Should I offer condolences?”
“A cup of tea, please, sir. Some water for Archie.”
“No problem. Here, let me take your coat.”
If the man had released Red from stocks he could hardly have been more grateful. Lieutenant Commander Michael Finn smiled. It wasn’t every day people dropped in to his office dressed like pimps with a dog and a fresh urn of ashes. He hung Red’s coat on the back of his door and stuck his head into the corridor. “Gloria! Could you do me a tea, a coffee and a bowl of water please? Yeah. Bowl of water. Ta.” He turned and crouched down to let Archie sniff his hand. He ran his hand sharply up and down the dog’s spine. “Like that, do you?” Archie shuffled and made it plain that he did. The lieutenant commander concentrated on the dog and deliberately ignored his owner. Red was on the verge of hyperventilating, and the officer wanted to give him time to settle and relax. He found the spot above Archie’s tail that all dogs like having rubbed and stole a quick look at Red. The man looked like he was going to bolt out through the door at any moment. “Do you think we should have a beer for your mate later?”
“Sherry.”
“What?”
“He drank sherry.”
“Then we’ll have a sherry for him.” Mickey grimaced. “No. Perhaps not. Beer or nothing.”
Red forced a smile. He looked around the little office. It wasn’t as bad as he’d thought it would be. At least it had a window so he could look outside if the walls started closing in. The lieutenant commander wasn’t as formidable as he’d feared, either, and showed no sign of shouting at him. He was a big bear of a man and seemingly ill at ease with his size. His limbs flopped haphazardly as if their owner only exercised occasional control. But their looseness also suggested that at one time the lieutenant commander might have been an athlete. They were near the same age, but while Red didn’t have an ounce of fat on him, the lieutenant commander had a few pounds too many and had the least military bearing of any officer Red had ever met. He hadn’t expected a lieutenant commander who got down on his hands and knees and patted dogs, and he found that reassuring.
“Red—you don’t mind me calling you Red?—would you please call me Mickey.” He gave Archie one last pat and stood. His uniform had crumpled into familiar folds. The crease in his trousers zigzagged as if unsure of the way to his shoes. “I’ve been called Mickey ever since I started school. My parents hated it, and I hate it. But when they named me Michael Finn, what the hell did they expect?”
Red snorted, an attempt to laugh by a man who had forgotten how. Mickey’s charm was beginning to bite and had a pleasantly familiar ring, like the laconic good humor of the Aussies. A young woman in naval uniform interrupted them with the tea, coffee and Archie’s bowl of water. She appeared very young to Red, almost too young to be in uniform. But then, they’d all been young once.
“Third Officer Gloria Wainscott, my ever-so-efficient assistant. Red O’Hara.”
Red rose awkwardly to his feet and held out his hand uncertainly. He wasn’t sure that shaking hands with women was the right protocol. Women made him uncomfortable and brought back memories.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. O’Hara.” The young woman blushed, disconcerted. Red was staring at her. No, not at her. It was as if he was staring through her, past her to some distant spot only he could see. Gently but firmly she pulled her hand from his grip, and drew the only other free chair up toward the desk. The lieutenant commander gave her a quick glance and cut in.
“Red, is it okay if Gloria joins us? If you prefer …”
“No, it’s okay,” said Red, anxious to please and get the interview over. He ran a finger around the collar of his shirt, pulled at it until the top button gave.
“Right,” said Mickey. “Take your tie off before you choke. While we have our tea, just let me fill you in. Some of this you’ll know already but it won’t hurt to hear it again. Up until January this year our territorial waters extended only three miles from shore. That’s not a lot of water to protect unless you’ve only got four patrol boats to protect it, which is all we had. Despite the blurb our publicity department put out, we did a lousy job. So lousy that at the beginning of the year the government extended our territorial waters to twelve miles, on the theory that if we can’t catch poachers inside three miles, we can catch them inside twelve. When the navy pointed out that they’d actually increased the area of water we had to patrol by four hundred percent, they solved the problem by giving us two more patrol boats. Bit like sending school prefects out to control the mafia.”
“You’re still better off,” said Red quickly, unsure whether he was allowed to comment.
“True. Except that Japan refuses to recognize the twelve-mile zone and has appealed to the International Court of Justice. It’s just a delaying tactic, of course, because our people in Japan know that five prefectures there are about to follow our example and impose their own twelve-mile limits. In the meantime, the Japanese are grabbing all the fish they can and coming down heavy on our guys in trade negotiations. Japan is a major buyer of our wool, so their kanji kaisha—their champion negotiators—simply linked the needs of New Zealand sheep farmers with the needs of Japanese fishermen. The result? They run rings around our blokes, and our government agrees to license a limited number of longliners to fish as close as six miles from the coast. Give us twelve miles and our Sunderlands stand a chance. Give us six and the Japanese skippers laugh at us.”
“What do you want me to do?” asked Red.
“I’ll get to that. How’s the tea?”
“Fine.”
“What the government fails to appreciate is that we’re up against the most sophisticated and aggressive fishing fleets in the world. Everybody’s heard about the cod wars off Iceland, but believe me that’s just a sideshow. We’ve got the Japs, and they’ve got the best fish finders in the world, the best techniques, the biggest nets, the longest lines, the most dedicated crews, and they’ve got radar that can find us, often before we can find them. Their dories are faster than anything we’ve got except the Sunderlands, and the flying boats can only photograph poachers but can’t catch them.
“We’ve also got the Russians, who tend to fish out deeper but are not averse to a bit of poaching, either. Their mother ships are equipped with electronic surveillance gear so they can do a bit of intelligence gathering on the side, which, of course, also means they can keep better tabs on us than we can on them. Then there are the Taiwanese, the Chileans and even our friends the Americans. At any time there can be as many as twenty to thirty foreign boats harvesting the waters around New Zealand. Against this armada we have six Fairmiles. Six pathetic Fairmiles.” Mickey Finn stopped talking and took a long sip of coffee. Red shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“What about the Sunderlands?” Red asked.
“Ahhhh … our ace in the hole. A dozen Sunderlands patrolling night and day and a government with balls, and our problem would sail peacefully over the horizon. At least beyond the twelve-mile limit. But we never have more than one Sunderland up at a time and we’re lucky to get that. They’re not ours, they belong to the air force, Number Five Squadron, so we have to rely on interservice cooperation. They’re not bad, the blokes out at Hobsonville, and the aircrew are as committed to nailing the Japs as we are. But it makes things difficult. For example, I can convince my superiors that an intercept is in order, but they in turn have to convince their opposites in the air force. And those blokes have heavies breathing down the phone at them, as well. The Aiguilles operation was ours. We’d planned