(Mac and the Lovely Bea at the Willow Bar. Photo Socotra.)

Well, some of you expressed concern about the lack of a story yesterday. Many more were relieved to not have to hit the “delete” button. But Mac was mildly concerned, and he said so as I slid onto a bar stool next to him, just down from where Old Jim and Ray the Jarhead were holding court.

Ray, you will be happy to know, is back from foot surgery, and was prepared to make up for lost time at the bar.

“It wasn’t a big deal,” he said. “Middle aged stuff- bone spurs and crap. What’s up with you?”

“A lot,” I said, as Old Jim took a healthy swig of Budweiser.

“I don’t really care,” said Ray with a his crooked smile.

“I know,” I said. “That is why I gave you the short version.”

Jake was midway down the bar collecting a bet from The Greek and Jeff, two Spooks I knew from the Task Force, and with whom I used to see on the weekly VTC with Kabul.  The Greek has been hunting Osama bin Laden for a long time, even before the attack on the Towers, and it was time to settle a bet made long ago. They appeared to be doing so in earnest.

I shook The Greek’s hand and asked what the bet had been. “Whether Osama would be killed in Afghanistan or not.”

“So you picked Afghanistan?” The Greek nodded.

“That was the smart money.”

Jake smiled. “I got the rest of the world,” and took a sip of his victory beer.

“But didn’t they drag his body back to Afghanistan for identification?”

“A triviality,” said Jake. “He sleeps with the fishes now.”

“You didn’t write this morning,” said Mac.

“Well,” I said defensively. “I did, but I didn’t publish. I was freaked out by the tornadoes in Massachusetts. The footage of the one you saw on the television that tried to suck the Connecticut River dry could have been shot from the house of our buddies Bonds-and-Donna. There were hysterical people from DC, Michigan, Chicago, Florida and Colorado trying to figure out what happened. I was right there two weeks ago.”

“Are they all right?”

“Yeah, Bonds checked in later in the morning. It was a relief. He wrote one of the funniest notes I have seen in a while about it, but the twister couldn’t have been more than a few hundred yards from his house. There is something going on this season.”

“Last one this violent was back in ’36, when I was just eighteen,” said Mac. “these things are cyclical, but there are a lot more people living in the path of the storms than there were then.”

I nodded and took a refreshing sip of wine. “Then, I was midway to crafting an account of what is going on in the Little Village By the Bay out of some phone conversations with my sister Annook, but in the end it wasn’t that interesting or funny and she does it better herself anyway. She is living the nightmare in person.”

“Well, I am sure she will get to telling the story,” said Mac, finishing his ginger ale. “I am parched from the heat wave, and it is my first time out since the season changed.” He looked up at Big Jim and asked for a Bloody Mary as he poured a rich pale tulip glass of Happy Hour White into my glass.

“A Bloody Mary?” I asked in surprise. “Did you fall off the wagon?”

“No,” said Mac quickly. “Sorry, a Virgin Mary. Still have to watch the medication. It is just good to be out again.”

Tracy O’Grady, Executive Chef and co-owner (with Kate Jansen, the best goddamn pastry maker in town) came down the bar to press the flesh with the regulars. Deborah was bustling around, doing her best den-mother thing with the rest of the staff, and the lovely Elizibeth-with-and-S was hustling to serve the throng out on the patio, basking in the brilliant lowering sun or huddling in the artificial shade of the orange Willow umbrellas.

She was focused, but I wanted to ensure that she knew that Mac was at the bar, since he is a babe magnet. She stopped long enough for me to get a picture as she delivered an astonishing new appetizer Tracy brought back from the restaurant convention in Chicago:

(Elisabeth-with-an-S presents. Photo Socotra.)

“It is sherry and tomato steamed mussels with speck ham, sweet garlic, fennel with ravioli and Basil,” she said. “It is not bad.”

Mac smiled. “I think I will go with the fish and chips from the Neighborhood Bar Menu,” he said. “I don’t want to eat at the Madison tonight. Been there too much lately.”

“There is nothing more amazing in presentation,” I said, reaching for a napkin and taking out a pen. “Now, where were we? We were going to finish the Pueblo damage assessment.”

Mac nodded. “took about three months. We assembled everything we thought they might have had on-board and reviewed it for what was disclosed about our collection priorities. The idiots in Yokosuka had ensured that everything we were interested in was in the inventory, in detail. All of it was compromised.”

“Was there any suspicion that the Russians put the North Koreans up to attack in order to get the KW-7 coding machines?”

“Oh, my no. It wasn’t until they caught that bastard john Walker that we knew that they had the keymat material. We had to assume that the crew did what they were supposed to and destroyed the enciphering machines and the keying material. We didn’t actually get to interview the crew until they were released the next year.”

I was scribbling frantically on the napkin in front of me.

“That was the Board of Inquiry they held out at the Amphib base in Coronado, right? My pal The Lawyer used to skate out of his JO job on the cruiser on the 32nd Street waterfront and attend the hearings.”

“Vice Admiral Harold Bowen was the President of the Board. He was Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence as a tin-can sailor. That was unusual. Dick Bates was his Special Security Officer, sent out there in case any codeword material came up in testimony.”

“Did they ask any of you to testify?” I asked.

(San Diego Union photo of VADM Bowen signing the report of the Pueblo Board of Inquiry. Photo San Diego Union from Official US Navy source.)

“No,” said Mac dryly. He fished in the pocket of his Aloha shirt for a ancient scrap of newspaper and pushed it across the bar. “This is the admiral signing out the Board’s report. He wanted Bucher court marshaled. SECNAV Chafee reviewed the recommendation and ruled that no one would be punished. He said that the Pueblo officers “have suffered enough” and that the inability to anticipate the attack reflected a general failure in the Navy command.”

“So everyone was responsible and no one was.”

“You got it,” he said with a thin smile. “Dick Bates never forgave the Pueblo’s skipper, Lloyd Bucher. He felt that he surrendered his ship without a fight. He could have been as big a hero as Lawrence, but instead he gave up the ship.”

At that very moment, the lovely Bea arrived, just a few minutes ahead of Jon-with-no-H. I waved her over to meet the Admiral. “Bea, I would like you to meet the last of the Midway Code-breakers, Admiral Mac. He was part of the team that broke the codes to enable the great victory at Midway in 1942. The anniversary is coming up on June fourth.”

Bea turned on that dazzling smile. “I had an Uncle who was there. He landed in Normandy.”

Mac just smiled. Like I say, he is a babe magnet.

(Mac with fish and chips. Photo Socotra.)

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com