Night Moves (37 page)

The digital voice paused, which gave Diemer the opportunity to tell us, “Mid-July, Guam. The Americans—
you—
were assembling the bomb.”

There are many ways to say that word, but the atomic bomb has earned a unique inflection.

“It was delivered in pieces,” the Brazilian continued, “most of it by one ship. A heavy cruiser, not a battleship. She carried your entire supply of enriched uranium. Lieutenant, I have to ask: were you training to escort that ship?”

“Classified!” Sampedro hissed, his real voice less tolerant than the synthesizer. The man looked at Tomlinson, which seemed to relax him, then switched the subject to the storm that had caught the Avengers from the southeast and ended it all. The two planes had lost visual contact. Storm thermals made it impossible for Sampedro to maintain heading or altitude. He had climbed to eight thousand feet, as required by procedure, and attempted to alert Lauderdale and Key West—no response.

Despite the digitized monotone, what came next was chilling.

“Lightning bolt hit our wing. Saint Elmo’s fire in the cockpit—blue like Hell, a nightmare. Didn’t know if we were over Everglades or Gulf. Told Dakota, ‘I’m taking us down to check.’ Second later, my windshield is full of Coachie’s ship. Going too slow, that’s what I remember, why the fuck he goin’ so slow? White strobes blinding me . . . can still see tail fins coming at my head—those damn big numbers!”

Torpedo Bomber 113. The tail section we’d found buried in the earth like a hatchet, the wreckage we had used sponges to clean one slow layer after another, appeared to brighten on the computer screen and caused the old man to cover his eyes.

The planes had collided. Chaos followed . . .

Ten minutes wasn’t enough time to finish the story. The nurse knocked and entered, Sampedro’s bedtime meds in an IV bag. When he refused, Candice returned with the nurse to plead with her grandfather, the nurse telling us, “Mr. Sampedro needs his sleep! Days here move right along. We keep our guests busy!”

The aviator zapped the woman with a sour look that only Candice noticed, so she kissed her grandfather’s cheek, saying, “Don’t tire yourself, paw-paw.
For me?
” then left us alone.

In his own raspy voice, Sampedro waited until the nurse was gone to comment, “Bullshit, days don’t move when you’re dying. Only the nights. That’s when I’m alive . . . memories . . . she doesn’t understand.”

Then he returned to the keyboard, still unsure, seventy years later, what had happened after his Avenger had knocked the tail off his wingman’s plane.

Sampedro remembered a night spent alone, adrift in the Gulf of Mexico, his Mae West inflated. He remembered telling his rescuers he had seen a flare to the east—another survivor! The storm had certainly blown their ships northwest, so he shared the logical guess: the collision had occurred north of Marco Island.

For three days, planes and boats had searched, and Sampedro was still bitter—and suspicious—about why it had been called off so soon. Nothing close to the massive efforts he read about one year later when the Flight 19 Avengers vanished. “War was over by then,” he reasoned. “Life not as cheap—too late now to worry.”

Vargas Diemer, the historian, keyed in on the old man’s suspicions when he said, “The heavy cruiser that carried the bomb to Guam—the world’s total stock of enriched uranium in one container. You haven’t wondered about that, Lieutenant?”

“Yes . . . many times.” Sampedro spoke the words, his eyes moving to Tomlinson, who had reached for the note he had written.

“Night torpedo runs,” Diemer continued, “that had to strike you as odd. On barges—barges the size of a battleship, you said. Why train to bomb anything bigger than a sub? Unless your government was worried the Japanese might disable or capture the ship carrying the atomic bomb. That they might have to order specially trained pilots to bomb the—”

“No!” Sampedro said. Coughed the word, as he did earlier, angry, but then calmed himself to concede through the synthesizer, “Thought about that, sure. Still do. Order us to sink our own ship—but would never happen. Not us. Not me, Coachie, Dakota, and Harley. Jap subs got her anyway, but later. Still feel guilty maybe could have protected her, Japs would’a been so confused by our talk. Could’a sunk that fuckin’ sub! Instead thousand sailors dead on the . . .” The man’s finger hesitated—a naval aviator still mindful of his training—then wrote, “Still dream ’bout saving those men on the
Indianapolis
.”

Jesus Christ
—Dan and I both stunned by what we’d just heard, but not Vargas Diemer, the historian, who was now even more suspicious and started to ask another question, but I cut him off, saying, “Stow it!”

The
USS
Indianapolis . . .
my god, a war ship on a mission so secret that sailors who’d survived the sub attack had spent days adrift before radio silence was broken. Sharks had found them the first night among the blood and oil. By the fourth or fifth day, sharks were feeding in mass, killed six or seven hundred screaming men—I couldn’t remember the numbers—before the first rescue plane touched down.

Tomlinson stood, slipped the note into his pocket, and took charge of the laptop as he reseated himself at the old man’s shoulder, the old man weeping now. Gave the Brazilian a warning look,
Enough!
and put a hand on Sampedro’s shoulder. “Mr. Sampedro, you haven’t seen where we found the wreckage.” Waited several seconds, then said, “We were sent to tell you—help give you some peace about what happened, that’s what I think. Please . . . look at these photos.”

“Should have . . . died,” the man said, but Tomlinson wouldn’t let him push the computer away. Instead, one after another, he clicked through photos of the shell pyramid, pottery shards, ancient shell tools. “Look . . . what do you think this is?” until he had the aviator’s attention.

Then explained, “There is where we found the wreckage—where your three brothers died. A power spot.
Sacred
ground! Last night, going through your wife’s scrapbooks, it all came together in my head and I knew why the spot had called to us. Harley, Cochise, the others, they’re still
there
,
man.”

Coachie
had been the wingman’s nickname, not Cochise, but Sampedro, sitting upright while Tomlinson stuffed a pillow behind him, was suddenly interested. Looked at a few more shots, then asked, “Bones . . . they died . . . in an . . .
Indian
place?” His face, his tone, wanting to believe. There was a sadness in his manner, though, and I knew he was thinking about the flare he’d seen—seven decades spent wondering if one of his men had survived.

Tomlinson picked up on it, too, so closed the computer, sparing the man photos of a parachute harness and a tube of morphine, telling him, “From what we found, the crash happened so fast, none of them suffered. It was the right time for your brothers.”

“An Indian place,” Sampedro murmured, his mind drifting again.

“Not Pawnee or Dakota,” Tomlinson replied to Pawn Man, the aviator. “Ancient, though. See what I’m saying? You didn’t kill your friends. Angel—they were leading you home.”

As we exited the building, Tomlinson showed me his note, a two-word question:
Code Talkers?

32

FRIDAY NIGHT, AND MY DATE WITH HANNAH SEEMED
a long time coming. The fact that the retriever was gone, claimed by his owner, when I got home late Sunday had nothing to do with it. And it wasn’t just because I was nervous about a dinner date—although I was. So I buried myself in research and started a version of my hook placement study for weekend anglers. I worked out twice daily—running, swimming, wearing a forty-pound vest on the VersaClimber—and I also kept a very close watch on the news.

Sooner or later, someone would find the Stiletto ocean racer, one dead witch doctor aboard, and competent men with badged IDs would appear at Dinkin’s Bay, eager to ask questions. Sooner or later, Cressa Arturo would discover she had been robbed—same tight sphincter scenario.

The eventuality didn’t seem to bother Vargas Diemer. Probably because the man was too smart, too cool to behave as if he had something to hide. So his million-dollar yacht remained where it was, the jet-set assassin happy to entertain guests, including his beautiful victim, Cressa, the soon-to-be-unmarried mistress. I, too, was a regular visitor during that short span, Monday through Friday, but only when I was bored or restless—which was
constantly.

It was Wednesday evening, around sunset, sitting topside with Diemer, that I first learned that Dean Arturo had tried to escape from a state psych ward and then, inexplicably, had been released after his father posted bail. The Brazilian and I had been debating the true intent of the old aviator’s secret mission while also discussing the role of American Indians in World War II. Many tribes had sent volunteers as “Code Talkers” to befuddle the Japanese and Germans by communicating in their native tongues. Something I didn’t realize, though, was that
ninety percent
of Native American males had rushed to enlist after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Their astonishing loyalty to a government they had every reason to distrust had provided the nation with highly decorated heroes in every service branch—including the Marine Corps’ top fighter pilot ace, Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, a Sioux Indian.

It was an interesting irony that called for more research, and my respect for Angel Sampedro, and the airmen who had perished among ancestral bones, had grown exponentially. Same was true of the Brazilian, I think, who that Wednesday evening had turned the conversation to
why
those four men were being trained secretly for a night bombing mission off Guam.

Diemer pressed a three-pronged theory: 1. The U.S. government would have been derelict not to anticipate the
Indianapolis
being disabled. 2. Only bombers flown by American Code Talkers could have breached the ship’s security umbrella while also communicating freely among themselves. 3. The training mission’s secret couldn’t risk compromise by a prolonged search for three missing men.

Sinister government conspiracy theories are as commonplace as the simpletons who believe them, but this was the jet-set assassin talking so I had to at least listen patiently. Which is what I was doing when Diemer’s cell phone rang: Cressa Arturo calling, frightened once again because her crazy brother-in-law was on the loose.

“Why don’t you take her on a cruise?” I suggested when he’d hung up, then had to add, “Deano couldn’t get to her on your boat—and less chance of her looking inside her wall safe.
Whatever
it was you took.”

Diemer dodged the implicit question by asking, “Is he dangerous? I’ve never met the man.”

Later, I would regret my answer, but what I told the Brazilian seemed true at the time. “No, but in the way most snakes aren’t dangerous,” I said. “The guy will run unless you corner him.” I then repeated my suggestion that he take Cressa on a trip—Key West, although she’d probably enjoy Palm Beach more.

The man was already shaking his head. “Even on a vessel the size of
Seduci
, quarters are too close with a woman aboard. Not for more than a day or two. Better, I think, if I simply make nightly visits.”

“Just an idea,” I said. “A beautiful woman—very
neat
, too, so you have a lot in common—and she’s rich.”

“Tempting,” he said, “but unwise. Risk ugly scenes, emotional involvement? No . . . In certain
professions
”
—
the man attempted a kindred smile—“romantic relationships are wasted time. Never do they survive more than the first or second new assignment. They ask questions, they suspect infidelity. How does one answer? Impossible!”

That gave me the opening I’d been waiting for to ask about the gawky teenage blonde in the photo—Diemer was smart, he would know I had looked inside his tactical bag—but it would also open up the subject of a half million or more in euros, cash. And did I really want to know the truth in advance of being questioned by police?

No, I did not.

So, instead, I remained silent, which gave the Brazilian an opportunity to add to my restlessness when he said, “You think I’m selfish, don’t you?”

“Top-of-the-food-chain selfish,” I said.

“You’re right. Of course! I have to be—and so do you. But do me the kindness of looking at it from the woman’s perspective—Cressa, in this case. I fall in love with her, allow Cressa to fall in love with me, even though I know she will soon hate me—and for good reason. So I keep love in the bedroom, where it belongs. You see? It allows me to be selfish, but also extremely
unselfish
.”

The Brazilian, pleased with his rationalization, sniffed, placed his wineglass on the table, vanished for less than a minute, then handed me a sealed envelope as he walked me to the door.

“It has been . . . pleasant working with you, Dr. Ford. I was afraid you would ask all the obvious questions. Instead, you lived up to your reputation.”

“At the risk of being obvious,” I replied, “what’s this?” meaning the envelope, midsized manila, but it had some bulk to it.

“Professionals get paid. Isn’t that what the word means?”

When I got back to the lab, I opened the envelope. Twenty thousand in euros—almost five percent of a half mil. Not bad. Generous, actually, by European standards.

I gave some thought to calling the man and thanking him. Plus, I’d forgotten to request updates on Dean Arturo.

I did neither: an oversight a thinking professional wouldn’t make.

—

T
WICE
THAT
NIGHT,
I called Hannah. In total, talked for nearly an hour—an outrageous amount of time for someone like me. Pleasant, we laughed a lot, yet I still couldn’t sleep. Days may not move quickly for a dying man, but the night moves slowly, too, for a man who lives alone and who is starting to ask himself,
Is it time?