THE CALL
Everyone had been keeping an eye on the black secure telephone, the one to Lawton’s office. So, when Hudson hung up, all he had to do was nod.
“It’s on.”
The whole room was watching. Excitement rippled out into the room, so thick it coated everything in the entire Dungeon. But there was a somber feel, too. Ziegler was still shaking his head about the codes, while Huckleberry high-fived Hudson and Denny and even Isabel. They all knew that this had the potential to be a decisive moment in the war with Japan.
The beginning of the end.
Once home, she collapsed into a dream-swamped sleep. In one, Isabel was flying a plane with no top on it. Wind blasted her face. Bullets whizzed past. She flew through columns of smoke so thick she tasted ash on her tongue. When she turned to check her tail, the sky was gray with enemy fighters. She was their target, and there was no escape. Nothing but water below. She woke in a sweat, drank a glass of water and fell back into a fitful sleep.
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.