The codebreakers secret, p.22
The Codebreaker's Secret, page 22
Matteo, where are you?
A letter had come two days ago, and she had already memorized his words. She went there now, in her mind.
Dear Izzy,
We’re on an island now, which is all I can really say. Me and the boys spend a lot of time training and tossing the football around, and I’m still managing a few games of chess. These past few days were pretty dull, but last night we had a plane come through shooting and tearing up the trees around us. It woke everybody up lightning fast. Scared the shit out of us, but no one was hit. These enemy pilots are something else. No damns given if they live or die. Which I suppose I understand, you know?
The heat here is almost unbearable. By 0800 you’re sweating your tail off and by 1000, well, you may as well call it a day. But I’m hanging in there. All that time out with Walt and with you, those are the memories that keep coming up in my head. Some days, they’re like moving pictures and I watch them again and again. Those were good times, some of the best of my life.
Can I tell you something? I know this sounds crazy, but I have this feeling that something huge is right around the corner. Like the calm before the storm. I want to be ready for anything, and I want you to know that you mean a lot to me, Isabel. A real lot. Take good care of yourself.
With love,
MR
Isabel walked into work on April 17 feeling proud but anxious. Hawai‘i was three hours ahead of the Solomons. Actually, it was twenty-one hours behind, but that only mattered to the clocks. Today was Yamamoto’s inspection day. The Dungeon was on red alert. So far, nothing had been picked up to indicate any changes in the scheduled plan.
The other morning, Hudson had gone as far as apologizing on the walk over to Lawton’s office. “I was wrong about you, Miss Cooper. Sometimes, us men, we get a little territorial about things. I’ll admit I had my doubts when you first came down the chute, but I’m going to personally call Admiral Sutton and thank him for sending you.”
Praise from Hudson felt good, but she wasn’t here for praise. She was here for retribution. And they were so close. In regards to the ambush, word had circulated that something was afoot, but Huckleberry and a few of the boys who knew the map and knew planes were saying that it would be damn near impossible to get anywhere near Yamamoto undetected. Most everyone in the room had congregated around Huckleberry’s giant map table, speculating.
“I don’t know of any navy aircraft that has that range. Guadalcanal, which would be the most likely launch point—the only launch point, really—is almost four hundred and fifty miles from Ballale,” Huckleberry said.
RXZ, they knew to be the airfield on Ballale Island. Yamamoto’s first stop.
“What about a carrier?” asked Denny.
“None in the area.”
One of the ex-pilots said, “Maybe not navy, but army. The P-38, if you added an extra tank, could do the job.”
“They’d have to fly far from any islands in order not to be detected. The Japanese have eyes on almost every single one of them,” said Huckleberry.
“Then they’ll have to fly wide.”
“I guess we’ll know soon enough,” Denny said.
Hudson rubbed his chin. “Sounds like a suicide mission to me. Godspeed to whoever is on this, they’re going to need it.”
A chill ran through Isabel. All she could think about were Matteo’s words: I have this feeling something huge is right around the corner. Matteo was army. And he would leap at the chance for something like this. If he was in the area, he was their man. No doubt about it.
By lunchtime, she had no fingernails left. Not that she had any to begin with, but still. The extra cups of coffee didn’t help, nor did Hudson’s pacing and Denny mumbling curse words left and right. Isabel went back to the diary of Sho. Strangely, something about him reminded her of Walt. Just a young man, in the spring of existence, missing home and pondering life’s deeper questions. Doing his best to be honorable. At the mercy of the moon and of men in high places. Lawton showed up at the door that afternoon, with a faint quiver of a smile. He marched straight to Hudson’s desk and handed him a paper. Isabel watched Hudson’s eyes grow wide as he read. He set it down gently, and turned to the room. “Fucking A. We got him!”
P-38s LED BY MAJOR J. WILLIAM MITCHELL USAAF VISITED KAHILI AREA. ABOUT 0930. 18 SHOT DOWN TWO BOMBERS ESCORTED BY 6 ZEROS FLYING CLOSE FORMATION. 1 OTHER BOMBER SHOT DOWN BELIEVED ON TEST FLIGHT. 3 ZEROS ADDED TO THE SCORE SUMS TOTAL 6. 1 P-38 FAILED RETURN. APRIL 18 SEEMS TO BE OUR DAY.
The whole room went crazy. Codebreakers were usually a quiet bunch, but not at that moment. At that moment, they were cheering and hooting and celebrating. The bottle of whiskey came out and toasts were made.
Victory!
God bless our boys!
Hallelujah!
Amid the party atmosphere, Lawton and Hudson stressed the utmost secrecy of this knowledge. Japan could never know. Isabel thought she would feel happier, but the weight of a man’s death, no matter how reviled, pressed down on her. Yamamoto might be dead. But so was an American pilot. A life for a life. Soon, two families on both sides of the globe would receive news that would break them.
Please don’t let it be me, again.
* * *
Because Isabel was not family and because there was no way to go around asking about a mission that no one even knew about, she could do nothing but wait to hear from Matteo.
It was bedtime. The moon was nearly full and crickets chirped outside her window, reminding her of home and a time before the world turned upside down. A banging on the door startled her out of her book, The Hobbit. She opened the door, and went to peek out, but before she could utter a word, Dickie stepped past her. She pressed back against the door, startled.
“Miss Cooper, we need to talk,” he said, clomping into the middle of the room and spinning around.
For a split second, she thought maybe the impossible had happened. “Have they found Gloria?”
“No, they haven’t,” he said, glaring at her. “But I heard it on good authority that you were at the police department spewing nonsense about me. Is that true?”
“I went there with information I thought might be valuable to the case.”
“The case? There is no case. Gloria drowned,” he said, spittle on the sides of his mouth.
Isabel stayed near the door. “My understanding is that there is a case. There’s always a case when someone dies under mysterious circumstance. Lopes asked me if there was any trouble between the two of you. And I told him what I knew.”
“And what exactly is that?”
If he wanted to play mean, she would not give him a thing.
“That is none of your business.”
“Don’t give me that crap. When you go around telling the police I’m a goddamn spy, that is my business,” he said, moving closer, then very slowly saying, “Tell me what Gloria said to you. I know she must have said something, or you wouldn’t have gone to Lopes.”
A twitch started up on one side of his mouth, like half of him was trying to smile. It gave her the willies. She wanted him out.
“Gloria happened upon a letter from your German friend, and she approached me about it. That’s all I told Lopes. I figured he ought to know.”
“So, you think I killed her, is that it?” he asked.
Isabel was trying to appear calm, but inside she was close to panic. While before, the thought that Dickie might do something violent had seemed too outlandish, now she wasn’t so sure. He was staring through her, as though looking at someone on the far end of the room.
“I never implied that whatsoever. I was merely providing the detective with what he asked for.”
For a moment, neither of them moved an inch. He was dog panting and perspiring and looking peaked. Isabel could not read his expression, but got the feeling that he was battling for control of his own emotions.
“Tell you what, Miss Izzy,” he said, drawing out the z’s. “That letter that Gloria thought she might have seen from Nancy was nothing more than conjecture. The FBI knows I used to work at Kuehns furniture store and I had no part in whatever he was doing on the side. Nor was it my fault that his nutty daughter took a liking to me and fancied us a couple. I never even gave her the time of day. But she was persistent.”
Isabel stumbled backward, but he slid toward her, coming within an inch or two. So close she could smell the garlic on his breath. And the fear. “So do yourself a favor and stay the fuck out of this. I know people, and I know what you do down there in the Dungeon, so if you want your job and you want to stay out of trouble, you’ll keep your trap shut.”
Isabel stood her ground, just barely, hiding her shaking hands behind her. “Please leave, this moment, before I scream so that every neighbor within a mile can hear me.”
His eyes were like wolf eyes. Wild, almost frantic. Without looking away, Dickie backed toward the door, and then slipped away into the moonlit night.
26
THE DISCOVERY
Hawai‘i Island, July 1965
Lu and Russi went toward Kawaihae. They took a golf cart to the far end of the course and set off on foot through the kiawe. It was almost lunchtime, and even with the sun blocked by clouds, heat shimmered off the lava. Not far away, jagged rocks crumbled into the sea. Small coves and inlets swirled with coral heads and crashing waves. When the water sucked out, you could see the red pencil urchins, bright like flowers. There wasn’t a hint of breeze. Thankfully, LSR had outfitted them with wide straw hats, canteens full of water and instructions to drink plenty or face sunstroke. Lu knew the drill.
“I don’t see Joni making it more than ten feet in this,” Russi said.
Before they’d left, Lu had kept expecting Joni to walk up with a towel in hand, flutter her eyelashes and say, “What’s all the fuss about?” But a bellman had gone door to door knocking, and the maids checked empty rooms. The hotel had been effectively combed.
Ten minutes in and they were drenched in sweat. Twenty minutes, Lu felt her mouth turning to cotton.
“Ouch! Dammit!” Russi yelled, hopping around on one foot and lifting his other to examine the bottom of his shoe. As expected, a kiawe branch was lodged in the sole. “I remember this stuff from Pearl days. My buddy nearly lost his foot to an infection he got while hiking out from his downed plane. The Japanese didn’t kill him, but a one-inch thorn almost did,” he said.
“Were you there during the attack?” she asked.
He didn’t answer immediately, pulling out the stick and whipping it away. “I was.”
“Were you up in the air?”
“Unfortunately, not.”
“I’d think it would be the other way around,” Lu said.
“Not when your friends are up there getting their tails shot up by the enemy. There’s no more helpless feeling in the world, I can promise you that.”
“I’m sorry, that must have been hard.”
“The worst. All of my flying in Hawai‘i was just training for the real thing. For me, that was at Guadalcanal and in the Solomons. And...well...” His voice trailed off.
Lu knew about the Solomons and Guadalcanal, everyone did. The numerous battles, countless dead. A few Pulitzer Prizes had come out of it, as well as the book and recent film, The Thin Red Line. “A lot of people talk about Midway as a defining moment in the war, but I’ve heard that Guadalcanal was just as important,” she said.
“It was the first time we were on the offensive, and boy, were we ever. You always hear about how tough the Japanese pilots were and how cunning. Course, they had their nutjobs, but that’s another story. Our guys had more heart and more balls by a long shot,” he said with conviction.
“I can’t believe you were actually there,” she said.
“You and me both, kid.”
She was hoping he’d say more, but he didn’t. He stood there, expectantly, waiting for her to keep walking. With the lava and ocean behind him, she realized it would make the perfect shot. Lu pulled up her camera and aimed it his way.
“Whoa,” he said, reaching out and pushing the lens away from his face.
She frowned. “What was that for?”
“I don’t do pictures.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I don’t have my picture taken.”
“You come with a lot of rules and requirements, you know that?” she said, not even bothering to ask why.
“Yeah, well, I have my reasons.”
“Sometimes it’s good to reexamine your reasons. You may just find that they’re outdated and no longer serve a purpose.”
He marched past her and said, “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Soon, they reached an area where they could barely make out a trail. Toward the ocean was a steep drop, so they veered inland slightly. The clearest way was through the kiawe. With the taller trees, the air cooled. There was a desolate, stark beauty to the place. Lu felt it, and she sensed that Russi did, too, because he stopped complaining. Ten minutes later, they reached a tiny salt-and-pepper sand beach, not more than thirty feet wide.
Lu rushed down to splash some water on her face, and run her wet hands along the back of her neck and her arms. Russi hung back.
“You want some?” she asked.
“What do you think?” he said, taking off his hat.
She cupped some in her hands and walked up to him. He closed his eyes and let her splash it on his face. The moment felt oddly intimate. They drank hot water out of their canteens and discussed the next route to take. One trail, which was just a series of smooth stones, went close to the water, the other inland.
“Should we split up?” she asked.
“Nah, I don’t want to have to come rescue you, too. Let’s go up through the trees and come back along the water,” he said.
So they did. Lu led, Russi followed.
She tried another approach to get him talking. “Did you meet any women while you were stationed in Hawai‘i?”
He groaned. “I should have taken the low road.”
“I’m just curious. There were so many wartime romances, it’s a natural question.”
“Sure, I met a lot of fine ladies.”
“Anyone special?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. She was my buddy’s sister and she was the smartest person I ever knew, and the most down-to-earth. A real stunner.” Russi went silent for a bit, and she only heard the crunch of his boots on the lava. “We had a good time,” he said quietly.
“What was her name?” Lu asked.
“Izzy.”
“What happened? Why aren’t you still with her?”
“Sorry, kid, you’ve passed your allotted questions for the day,” he said.
“Oh, please. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to get some of this off your chest. Think of it as practice for telling your story,” she said, half turning and giving him a pleading look.
“There you go again. You ever hear the word finesse? It works wonders when you’re trying to get information out of people. Right now, let’s concentrate on our mission out here.” He stopped and looked around. “Do you even know where you’re going?”
“I do.”
Five minutes later, they were ducking through kiawe, going in circles. Sweat dripped off the tip of her nose.
“If Joni came out here, this same thing could have happened to her,” she said, then called out into the thicket. “Joni! Hello?”
Russi’s T-shirt was dripping wet and clung to his arms and chest. For an old guy, he sure kept himself in shape. “If this is some cockamamie plan to get me in the water, you may just succeed,” he said, fanning himself with the bottom half of his shirt.
They were all turned around, and Lu was mad at herself for letting this happen. She listened for the sound of the ocean and would have headed toward it, but a wall of gnarled trees stood in their way. Instead, they climbed down a small crack in the lava and followed it a ways until it ended at a large opening. By the time they reached it, Lu was covered in old spiderwebs.
Russi stopped. “What do we have here?” he said.
Lu stepped into the mouth of the cave and felt a burst of cooler air. “Lava tube. They’re all over the place on this island. Some go on for miles.”
The tunnel was almost high enough to stand in, and thirty or so yards in, the top had collapsed, creating a natural skylight.
“Joni, you in there, girl?” Russi called, his voice swallowed by rock.
The possibility of Joni making it into this off-the-beaten-path lava tube were almost nil, but something drew Lu in, anyway. “You wait here, I just want to walk to the skylight and look around.”
“What’s the point? Let’s get out of this godforsaken forest before we cook.”
“I’ll be fast.”
The bottom of the lava tube was mostly smooth, but she had to watch the top, where chunks of lava and root clusters hung down. The faint scent of animal poop filled the tunnel. Mongoose, probably. But there was another, older smell, one of decay and darkness. Goose bumps formed on her arms. As Lu neared the pool of light, her foot kicked something hollow. Definitely not a rock. At first she thought it was a coconut, but when she looked down, she saw the white.
She jumped back. “Oh my God!”
“What is it?” Russi yelled.
“Bones.”
Her first thought was pig, but the skull, which was what she kicked, looked round. Lu had seen enough wild-boar skulls to know that they were angular and more jaw than anything. Her uncle was a big hunter and helped eradicate them from the farm now and then. She also knew that there were Hawaiian burial caves in the area, but those had been closed up with rock to preserve their contents. Crouching down, her eyes adjusted enough to see the form of a skeleton splayed out around her.
