THE DUNGEON
The next morning, after a dead sleep, Isabel woke to the faint smell of orange blossom. The temperature had dropped in the night, but it was still warm as an early Indiana summer. It took a second to register where she was. Tangled in a thin blanket on a rock-hard bed in Hawai‘i. The sound of car engines told her it was probably time to drag herself out of bed.
After showering, she applied her powder, mascara and red lipstick carefully, and then promptly wiped most it off with a tissue. She wanted to make a good first impression, but also wanted to be taken seriously. It was hard to know how to go about that when you had no idea what to expect. And the little she’d heard was not promising. Gloria was already in the kitchen with a box of shredded wheat and a bottle of milk on the counter. She was wearing a short-sleeved blueish gray dress and looking sharp.
“Good morning, sunshine! I’m just out the door. It takes twelve minutes at a good clip to get to the admin building and I pride myself on being punctual. Want to grab a banana and come along? I’ll drop you off at your door,” Gloria said.
A bunch of bananas hung in the corner from a hook in the ceiling and she plucked one. They were miniature versions of the bananas back home, which showed up in the store once a year and were gone in a day.
“Take two,” Gloria said.
Instead of snow on the ground outside, there were coral-colored flower petals, clipped green lawns and an abundance of birds. The trees wore all of their leaves—in mid-January! But despite the wonder of her new surroundings, Isabel felt a growing sense of dread as they approached the building. Her father had called it hysteria; the doctor had said she had a phobia. An irrational fear of something real or perceived. Whatever it was, Isabel hated the feeling. By the time they stood outside the door, her palms were drenched and her pulse raced along.
“You okay? You look a little peaked,” Gloria said.
“Fine. Just the first-day jitters. Nothing to worry about.”
Gloria squinted into the sun. “Anyhow, I’m on the second floor, Room 220 if you need me. Good luck.”
When Gloria disappeared around the corner, Isabel took a few moments to compose herself. Deep breaths helped, but barely. Now was not the time to have a nervous breakdown. The longer you stand here, the worse it’s going to be.
She pulled open the door and almost tripped over a couple of burn bags. Papers lay across the steps going down, down and farther down. She picked up one. It was a crypto worksheet. Lying in the open, for heaven’s sake. Heads would roll in Washington for something like this. Her nails dug into her palm as she descended. The air felt soupy, hard to take in. Six steps down, she stopped. This was not going to work. Nope, not at all. Isabel turned around and went back up. When she reached the top, she stopped and chided herself. How could she leave after making it all the way to this point? Walt deserved better.
On the next attempt, she made it more than halfway down the sixteen or so steps before an overwhelming suffocation nearly dropped her. Isabel held a hand to the wall and steadied herself. She was clammy and light-headed and a pathetic mess. One step at a time. She debated turning around at least eleven more times, but in the end, the pull of the Dungeon was stronger than her fear.
At the bottom, Isabel paused at a double-wide steel door. This one had no sign, either. With her heart thumping overtime, she pushed on through. A wall of smoke was the first thing to greet her and, beyond that, a murky passageway. It was all underground. How was she going to do this? She turned around, ready to scramble back up the steps, when a voice said. “Miss Cooper? That you?”
This was as wrong as a place could be.
“Yes, it’s me,” she squeaked.
Jones was by her side in an instant. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to the crew.”
She was shaking as she followed him into a slightly lighter room that extended in all directions—endlessly, it appeared. Men worked at desks around the room. The two closest to her hovered over a makeshift table on sawhorses and planks of wood. One was in an orange smoking jacket and bed slippers. Very un-navy. Neither even glanced up.
Jones walked her over. “Excuse me, Captain Hudson. I have your newest recruit, ready for service.”
Isabel was having a hard time catching her breath, which made her wonder how on earth she’d be able to concentrate in here. Between that and the gauzy layer of smoke. She could hear her mother’s voice: Be careful what you wish for.
Hudson straightened up and stood a good six inches over her. “So, you’re the girl that everyone at Main Navy is talking about.”
“Everyone, sir? I certainly hope not,” she said, meeting his gaze.
One side of his mouth lifted. “Everyone with clearance, I should say. Jones, I’m right in the middle of something important. Show her around and get her situated.”
Isabel knew of Hudson, had even run into him a few times in Washington. Rumors had swirled when he took over for the legendary Joe Rochefort, who had been transferred back to Washington. But in her mind Norm Denny was the real legend, and she was anxious to meet one of the country’s top cryptanalysts.
Jones led her around the massive room. It stretched about a hundred feet one way and fifty or so the other. Desks and file cabinets and mountains of paper were tucked here and there, giving the place a haphazard feel. Still, she had no doubt that what went on in this room could easily win or lose the war in the Pacific. That was made clear with Midway. Eavesdropping on the enemy saved lives. Won battles.
While shaking in her boots, she forced a smile as she met the next cluster of men, the linguists, who were responsible for translating the messages that she would be decoding. One of them had an ashtray with a pile of butts four inches thick. They all acknowledged her, but made no move to get up.
After the linguists, she met the combat intelligence guys and the traffic analysts—or TA guys—who figured out the extraneous parts of the messages. Things like where they originated and who was on the receiving end. Call signs, dates. One of the guys could have been her grandfather, the other looked sixteen, though everyone was a bit hazy. Jones also pointed out what he called the boiler room, where IBM machines lived. All Isabel could be sure of was that she would not remember a single name.
Jones brought her to a bank of desks near the boiler room door. “And here we are. The heart of the operation. Our crippies.”
Eight desks, six men.
“Where are the rest?”
There were hundreds back in Washington.
“This is it.”
A man looked up, then back down at the paper on his desk. He wore round glasses, a Charlie Chaplin mustache and had a handmade sign on his desk that read You Don’t Have to Be Crazy to Work Here, But It Helps. It could only be Norm Denny.
Suddenly, Hudson was there at her side. “Lieutenant Commander, greet your new cryptanalyst properly, would you?” he said.
Denny held up a hand, as though he couldn’t be interrupted. Isabel knew the feeling. When you were on to something, any distraction could derail the whole train of thought and leave you back at square one. But at the same time, she felt a stab of disappointment.
“No problem. I know how it is,” she said.
Being so far back in the room was causing a peculiar vibration under her skin, a gnawing in her stomach. She refrained from scratching by holding her hands behind her back. The only place she might possibly be okay was right next to the front door. God willing, her desk could be near Jones’s.
Hudson nodded at the empty desk. “Miss, here’s your station. Now break some codes,” he said in all seriousness, then turned to go. “Oh, wait, you speak any Japanese?”
“A little,” she answered. “Two weeks’ worth, to be exact.”
He laughed. “Almost fluent.”
“Almost.”
He walked off, leaving her standing between Jones and her new supervisor. Jones pulled out her chair and said, “Hudson has an odd sense of humor. Don’t fault him for it, though—the man is a genius. The men love him, and I suspect you will, too. In time.”
With that, he was gone. The cold from the floor crept up through her shoes and into her bones. The temperature was lower than inside Main Navy, if that was possible. Not wanting to bother Denny, she sat down at her desk and opened the top drawer. It was empty. So were the others. Fortunately, she had a pen, a pencil and an eraser in her purse. She set them on top of the desk and spent twenty minutes rearranging them. She was at a loss, and the feeling that the roof might collapse at any moment did not help matters. Maybe this whole gig was a huge mistake.
A hoarse voice startled her. “So, you were with Feinstein. I hear he’s in the nutter,” Denny said, sounding as though he’d swallowed an ashtray.
“He’s at Walter Reed, and improving steadily,” she said.
A week after the break in Magenta, Feinstein had been hospitalized for exhaustion. You could have seen it coming—the all-nighters, the frantic pace, the mounting pressure—but no one expected a full-blown nervous breakdown.
“Feinstein is why you’re here. I wanted him. He sent you,” he said.
“Feinstein didn’t get us into Magenta,” she said in all honesty.
I did.
Denny raised an eyebrow, nodded slightly. “How much you done on JN-25?”
“I spent three months on it when I first started,” she said.
“Sounds about the same as your Japanese, then.”
“Sir, Feinstein and Rawlings wouldn’t have sent me if they didn’t have faith. You won’t be disappointed, I promise,” she said.
“I already am.”
Ouch.
The next few days were not much better. Each morning, Isabel had to coax herself down the steps, through the steel door and to her desk. The sense of dread that pressed against her from the inside never left, and often all she could think about was getting up and out and into the light. Going to work had now become surviving work.
Hudson handed messages out on a whim, it seemed. Denny this one, Ziegler that and Lipp the other. None of them paid her much attention, though Ziegler at least smiled. Isabel got the scraps, but sometimes scraps turned out to be the most important ones, so it didn’t bother her. Plus, getting back into the complexities of JN-25 with its numbers instead of letters, and frequently changed additive books, was difficult enough.
On her fourth day, one of the linguists went up to Hudson and said something in Japanese. Without missing a beat, Hudson answered back effortlessly. Isabel was able to pick up a few words. Ship, transport, islands. It struck her then that Hudson—and maybe Denny—was probably the only one in the Dungeon who knew both cryptanalysis and Japanese. Everyone else was only playing with half a deck. If she could get at least a working knowledge, she’d have an edge. At night, she ramped up her studying, which left little time for anything else.
On her first day off, she slept the entire day away, waking now and then to bird chirps and airplane engines overhead. Gloria had invited her to play tennis with a few girls from upstairs, but Isabel politely declined. Her body felt as though it had been through the washing machine a few times over. Neck tense as a lead pipe, eyes bleary from all that smoke. The following day, Sunday, she’d reserved for finding Matteo Russi. She needed her wits about her.
Gloria, bless her heart, had rounded up a rattly gray Buick with a loud exhaust from the daughter of a car salesman in downtown Honolulu. They had it until 1600 sharp. As they tore down Russell Avenue at top speed, Isabel had the thought that maybe she ought to be driving.
“Linda is an absolute doll. All the girls are. You ought to come up for air sometime and join us for lunch. It would do you a world of good to get out of that torture chamber and mingle with the real world,” Gloria said as they passed through the main gates.
“I asked for it. I wanted to be stationed here.”
“Not down there you didn’t. I can ask around and see if they’ll move you upstairs.”
“No, thank you.”
“What harm would it do?”
“I enjoy what I’m doing.”
Gloria slapped her knee. “And I’m Bing Crosby. If you call that enjoying, I hope I never enjoy another thing in my life. You come home looking more haggard each night. No offense, but that’s how I see it.”
Isabel tried the half-truth tactic. “When I was little, Walt and I were stuck in the storm cellar after a twister wiped out half our town and killed our mother. It was dark and close, and I was terrified. Now, any time I’m underground it’s uncomfortable. But I need to move past it, so maybe this is my chance. A blessing in disguise.”
Uncomfortable was putting it mildly.
“Some blessing. And I’m sorry to hear about your momma. What an awful thing to bear. Sounds like you’ve had your share of tragedy for such a young thing. Let’s turn that around and find this fella. I bet he’ll do your heart some good.”
Isabel pulled out the envelope, which had his address written in neat block print, and set it on her lap.
“You sure you can get us onto base?”
“Have faith.”
This was her first foray out of Pearl Harbor, and she couldn’t wait to see more of the island. Even if Hickam was only a short drive away. They had to drive out of the naval base and onto the army base. She’d heard so much about Hickam Field and how the bombs fell, killing men and destroying planes and hangars and hearts. Through it all, some men had managed to get airborne and shoot down enemy planes. Same as Walt, though Walt had been at Wheeler.
It started raining. And the rain mixed with sun caused steam to rise from the asphalt, and a golden light surrounded them. Gloria, with her lead foot, seemed in a big hurry to get there. “So, what’s our guy’s name,” she asked.
“Matteo Russi,” Isabel said, admiring the glow.
Gloria shifted in her seat, but didn’t respond.
“You know him?”
“Nope.”
Isabel had the feeling she was withholding information, but let it go. The main gate at Hickam resembled a country club entrance, with white concrete portals and a cabana-like guard shack.
“What’s your business, ma’am?” a slim guard asked, bent over at the window. Both women were in uniform, with hats.
“We’re dropping off sensitive documents with the command center,” Gloria said with a wide smile, holding up her badge.
He studied them for a moment, then said, “You two know where you’re going?”
“Sure do, Private. Thank you.”
With that, they drove on through.
“See. Easy-peasy. You have to act like you own the place, and pretty soon, you do,” Gloria said.
The base was newer than Pearl, and the white paint stood out bright and shiny. Standing above everything was a sky-high water tower of Moorish design looking exceptionally out of place. As an officer, Russi was in the two-story BOQ rather than the hulking barracks building Gloria said was called the “Hickam Hotel.” And fortunately, he’d put his room number on the return address.
When Gloria turned off the car, Isabel paused. This was something she’d been wanting for so long, but now the reality of hearing about Walt bore down on her. Emotions were sure to be stirred and she was already feeling vulnerable.
Gloria rested a hand on her thigh. “Feeling nervous?”
“A little.”
“You know, you don’t have to ask anything you’re not ready to hear. And if it’s too much for you, we can always leave, come back later,” Gloria said.
Isabel knew Russi might not even be there. “You’re right, let’s go.”
Walking around the outside of the building, they turned a few heads before arriving at the correct door. Isabel lifted her arm to knock when the door swung open.
A man stumbled back in surprise. “Whoa,” he said, putting his hand over his heart. “You nearly scared the pancakes out of me.”
He was Isabel’s height, with hair the color of black molasses.
Isabel said, “Sorry. We’re trying to find Matteo Russi.”
His gaze shifted between the two women before focusing back on Isabel. For the briefest moment, he seemed ready to bolt. “Do I know you?”
“We haven’t met. I’m Isabel Cooper, Walter Cooper’s sister.”
It was a moment she would always remember, the way he stared through her as though picturing something tragic, and how his eyes reflected back love and pain and something undefinable.
“Isabel?” he said in almost a whisper. “He talked about you all the time.”
The words hit her hard. “He always mentioned you, too, in his letters. Russi this, Russi that.”
Russi looked over at Gloria and said, “I didn’t realize you and Walt had another sister.”
“We don’t... Gloria is my roommate.”
He whistled. “You sure had me fooled. And roommate? Does that mean you’re living here now?”
“I’ve just been transferred to Pearl and thought maybe if you had the time we could talk about Walt...and what happened.”
He swallowed hard. “Sorry, but I’m out the door for training,” he said, holding up a pair of sneakers. Beads of perspiration broke out above his upper lip in a neat line. “But if you’re free later today, I could come by and grab you. Take a drive or something?”
“That would be nice,” she said, relieved.
When he smiled, a dimple formed on one side of his mouth. He had a narrow gap between his front teeth that did nothing to detract from the obvious fact that that smile had opened a lot of doors for him.
“If you’re anything like Walt, you’re going to love it here. War and all,” he said.
“I’m not here to enjoy myself, Mr. Russi, so that’s really beside the point.”
He cocked his head. “I beg to differ. But then that’s usually the case, Miss Isabel Cooper.” He glanced down at her left hand. “Or have you become a Mrs.?”
“It’s Miss.”
“Catch you at 1630, then,” he said, then he turned and jogged off down the hall.
Whatever she had expected, this was not it.