The Remembering (10 page)

The captain didn’t respond immediately. He breathed in sharply and glared at Jack, then at each of us until he let his eyes rest on Katsuo. He raised his hand and pointed a finger at Katsuo’s face. “I do not believe one word this man has uttered.” The captain looked back at Jack.

Jack shrugged. “I’m sure it’s harmless,” he said. “The poor man is most likely only trying to find something in it for himself. I don’t blame him. Anyway, nothing to worry about and my man in Yokosuka will get to the bottom of it.”

The captain removed his wire-rimmed glasses and wiped the lenses clean. His eyes were still large, even without the glasses. “The coincidence of all this is much too disproportionate.” He carefully refitted his glasses over his nose and back into the grooves along his temples and around his ears. “How is this possible, Jack?”

Jack looked first at Sheela, then at Sailor and me. He laughed, shaking his head back and forth. “Luck,” he said. “Just pure dumb luck.” Jack leaned back in his chair. “What do you say? I’d really get a kick out of helping those kids again, Blaine.”

The captain gave Katsuo another piercing stare. “Well, all right, Jack, but—”

Jack interrupted. “Listen, Captain, if I leave right now, I might be able to make Yokosuka by nightfall.” Jack practically leaped out of his chair and opened the door to the hallway. “This way, everybody,” he said in English, motioning Katsuo and the three of us out the door. “Andele! Andele!” Once we were in the hallway, he turned back to the captain. “I’ve got Sergeant Roper waiting for me. I’ll send you a report from Yokosuka.”

In two minutes we were out of the embassy, down the steps, and being hustled into a jeep. A red-haired man sat in the driver’s seat. When he saw us, he said, “What the—”

“Never mind, Sergeant,” Jack said. “Just step on it.”

We took Katsuo back to the room where Ikuko was waiting for him. There was so much for which to thank him, but there was no time. Sailor said his farewells to Katsuo in Japanese, and Sheela bowed to him deeply three times. I said my good-bye and thanked him as best I could, then we were off on a hectic, rough ride to Yokosuka.

We arrived shortly after dark and made our way to the Japanese air base the U.S. Army now occupied. Jack told Sergeant Roper to drop us off at a small building squeezed between two enormous airplane hangars, saying he and the sergeant would be back soon. An hour later Jack, Sheela, Sailor, and I boarded a transport plane with no other passengers and little cargo. The plane took off, circled in a wide arc, and headed south. In less than ten minutes, I could no longer see Japan. Jack smiled and shouted over the noise of the engines, “Good to see you, Z.”

I yelled, “You, too, Jack. Where are we going?”

“Midway,” he shouted back. “Then we’ll change planes and go on to Hawaii.”

“You want to tell me what you were doing in Japan … and how you’re able to do what you’re doing? Are you in the Army?”

He laughed. “No, I’m not in the Army, Z. At least, not technically. I’ll tell you all about it when we land.” Jack dropped his smile and said, “It really was luck, Z … no doubt about it. I was supposed to go to Nagasaki the same day I heard from Blaine Harrington. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

“Why were you going to Nagasaki?”

“I was ordered to write a report about what I saw for a few people in Washington.”

“Don’t worry, Jack. I’ll tell you all about it. People everywhere should know what that bomb did.”

Jack shot me a look. “What? You saw it, Z?”

“Oh, yes, I saw it, all right. I saw the bomb drop and I saw Nagasaki … afterward … and it is in my mind forever.”

“Tell me later,” Jack shouted. “It’s too damn loud in here.”

I nodded my agreement and tried to get comfortable in the stiff makeshift seats. Jack tossed some blankets over to me. We were flying at several thousand feet and it was chilly inside the big plane. I turned to pass Sailor and Sheela a blanket and found them both asleep. She had her head on his shoulder and he was holding her hand. I put the blankets around them as gently as possible. For a moment they looked like two innocent children who had played all day and stayed up past their bedtime. I laughed to myself at the thought and closed my own eyes. I was on my way home. I couldn’t believe it, it seemed too good to be true, and even though Sailor’s “plan” had fallen through, he had been right about one thing—he said we would be on our way to Hawaii within a day, maybe two. And so we were, but not because of his or anybody’s “plan.” No, it was simpler than that. As Jack had said, it was nothing but pure dumb luck.

The event usually happens in an instant. The resulting injury is severe and traumatic. The healing is painful and slow. Time becomes the handmaiden, the nurse, and the clock that will gradually change, rearrange, and sometimes erase the event from memory. The mind plays tricks on itself, the body moves on, the soul calms and the spirit forgets, but the scar … the scar is permanent. The scar remembers
.

“P
ick it up, son. Pick up the baseball and give it to me,” the voice behind the mask said. The sun was shining. I stood on the pitcher’s mound and he was walking toward me. Who was he? Was he the umpire? I looked down and saw the baseball lying in the dirt. Instead of normal laces, the ball had been stitched together with jewels, and they reflected sunlight in every color and every direction. “Give it to me,” the voice repeated. I was confused. Why should I give the baseball to him? Why?

“Wake up, Z! We’re landing.”

I was jarred awake just as the airplane’s huge wheels hit the runway. I turned to Jack. “Where is this?”

“Hickam Field—but we won’t be here long. I want to get the three of you to my place before anybody asks any questions.” Jack looked over at Sailor and Sheela. He rubbed the stubble on his face and laughed once to himself. “You’ve got to tell me about her, Z. She’s amazing … I had no idea …”

Jack didn’t need to finish his sentence. I watched Sheela as we taxied to a full stop. I knew what he meant and he was right—she was amazing, and so was her story, but I knew I would only be able to tell Jack a portion of the truth about Susheela the Ninth. I could tell him she was the last of her kind among the Meq; I could tell him she had once known famous painters, princes, and queens; I could even tell him she possessed unique mental powers, but I could never tell him one thing—her true and actual age. He would never believe me. With the engines still running, Jack opened the door. The sound was deafening. He lowered the ladder, saluted the two pilots, and we stepped out of the plane and onto the ground. Jack waved us toward an empty hangar while the big transport turned around and taxied off to another runway. The last remnants of a storm were dissolving in the western sky and the sun was setting. Only a long, lone, horizontal sliver of bloodred light shone through the clouds. It looked like a scar between two worlds.

Jack had left his car parked inside the empty hangar. It was a 1939 Ford convertible, and the three of us piled into the backseat while Jack drove off the base. We put our heads down as he waved to the guards at the exit gates. One of them yelled, “Good to see you back, Jack!”

“Good to be back, boys,” he shouted, then turned north onto the highway. About twenty minutes later we pulled into his house, a small bungalow on the north side of Pearl City. The house was only a few hundred yards from the beach and shielded from view by an overgrown hedge on two sides. We spent three days in Hawaii, mainly at Jack’s place. During that time we talked often at the beach and learned about the obscure nature of his current “occupation” and some of what he had been doing during the war.

In 1940, well before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Jack was approached and asked to join a government covert intelligence unit, which later became known as the O.S.S. After agreeing to serve, he trained in Washington and later in England under British command. In July of 1942, he was ordered to set up his own network of agents in Lisbon, Madrid, and Marseille, along with direct connections to the French underground. His mission was simple and direct: by any means necessary he was to help certain people, primarily downed British and American pilots, escape through France and into Spain via the Pyrenees.

Absolute trust is absolutely necessary for any clandestine operation to work, particularly during wartime. I learned that fact from Captain Woodget and I have always found it to be true. Jack chose the first members of his organization from those he knew well—those few people who also happened to know of the Meq. He traveled to Caitlin’s Ruby and enlisted the aid of Willie Croft and Koldo Txopitea. They both agreed on the spot to do whatever they could to help. The memories of Guernica and the German bombs killing most of his tribe, including his father, were still fresh in Koldo’s mind. Arrosa even volunteered, but Jack told her to stay at Caitlin’s Ruby, along with Star and Caine. He said he would need a place to plan operations when he was in England and the Ruby was perfect because it was remote and unattached to the British and the Americans. A year later, and against the protests of Star, Caine dropped out of college to join Jack in the field. Mitch Coates and Antoine Boutrain were also brought into the group. Jack found them in Marseille, along with Mercy, Emme, and Antoinette. They were all living together in one of Antoine’s homes. Mitch and Antoine became essential to Jack because almost everyone they knew was in the French resistance to some degree. Koldo recruited several of his Basque friends and relatives, and the whole operation was a success for the next two years.

Shortly after D-day in 1944, Jack was ordered to disband his group and transfer to Hawaii. Three months later he was assigned the task of training new recruits for covert intelligence missions in northern China and parts of Korea. Captain Blaine Harrington, then a first lieutenant just out of Princeton, was one of Jack’s first trainees. After only one mission, Jack had to recommend that the young lieutenant be removed from the field and transferred to another position. Blaine Harrington’s amazing facility with languages was a valuable asset, but his inability or unwillingness to improvise and act “outside the book” was a serious liability. Improvisation is a skill as necessary in the field as absolute trust. Blaine Harrington was soon promoted to captain and transferred to General MacArthur’s staff. For the rest of the war, he held Jack responsible for steering his career into a long series of insignificant and boring assignments.

As soon as Japan surrendered, Jack was sent to Mukden, Manchuria, along with three other O.S.S. agents. They were there to take notes and snap pictures as evidence of Chinese peasants looting factories and Russian trains loading heavy equipment and machine tools to be shipped back to Russia. Ten days later the Russians ordered the O.S.S. agents out of the country without delay. Jack was then ordered to Japan to gather eyewitness observations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A few days after that we entered the American Embassy and I told my story to Blaine Harrington.

Jack looked at me. The four of us were sitting above the beach on a small outcropping of rock, facing Pearl Harbor to the south. The sun was still high in the sky. “I saw something else when I was in Manchuria, Z.”

“What was it?”

“A photograph—an
unexpected
photograph.”

“Of what?”

“Not what—who!” Jack glanced at Sailor and Sheela, then turned back to me. “A Russian agent I only know as ‘Valery’ showed me a picture he had taken in China because he said the subjects were ‘unusual.’ They were standing in a crowd—there were three of them.”

“Three of who?”

“Three of
you
—Nova, Ray, and Opari, I believe, though her face was turned away from the camera.”

“Ta ifi dite …”
Sheela whispered.

Sailor was looking at Jack without expression. “Tell me, Jack, for whom, exactly, do you work? Are you a spy, then?”

Jack laughed. “It’s not that glamorous or romantic, Sailor. Right now I’m sort of a fact finder. The O.S.S. is dissolving and something else is evolving. The man I work for is in the middle of it.”

“Who is he?” I asked.

Jack smiled. “Do you remember the man Owen Bramley told me about, the man who first helped us in Cuba, the one he called ‘Cardinal’?”

“Of course. He helped us with the names on the ‘List.’ ”

“Yes, well, we’ll get to that, but he’s the same man who recruited me. I work for Cardinal.”

“What is this man’s real name, Jack?” Sailor asked. “Who is he?”

Jack turned his head and gazed west, toward Japan. “Z, did you and Sailor ever find the family of Sangea Hiramura?”

I glanced at Sailor, remembering the faces of Sak and Shutratek. “Yes, we found them … two of them. They are gone now. They were good people.”

Jack seemed genuinely saddened by the news. “If you recall, there was one son who came to the World’s Fair in 1904 with Sangea, but never returned to Japan.”

“I remember,” I said. “His name was Bikki.”

“That’s right. And sometime before the Fair began, Solomon had made a deal with Sangea to set aside a trust fund for educating Bikki in the United States. Bikki later changed his last name to Birnbaum and was sent to the very best schools, eventually becoming an ophthalmologist and surgeon among other things. He set up his practice in Washington, D.C., which was the perfect cover for his other job, the one he still practices.” Jack paused a moment. “Dr. Bikki Birnbaum is Cardinal.”