by Greg Dinallo
“And there’s never been a case where a POW died in captivity and his body was repatriated?”
“I’ve never seen one—despite the reports of live sightings. The Southeast Asian governments insist there are no longer any prisoners of war . . .” He pauses and raises a skeptical brow before adding, “. . . under their control. You can draw your own conclusions.”
I’m exhausted.
We sit in silence for a moment.
He methodically taps the ash from his cigarette. “Anything else?”
“No, Mr. Ingersoll. I think that does it. Thanks.”
He nods amiably, then crosses to the window and opens the blinds. Bands of sunlight and shadow slash across his torso. After a moment he glances in my direction and waves me over.
“See that beige wagon there?” he prompts, pointing out a dilapidated station wagon in the parking lot. The paint is dull and worn. One of the hubcaps is missing. The antenna has been bent by the wind.
“Yours?”
“Uh-huh. Seventy-eight Chevy. Needs a brake job, tires, and a major tune-up.”
“I understand.”
“I thought you might. In case you’re wondering, I rent a small cottage in Kaimuki—no view—far from the beach.”
I nod, chastised, and shake his hand. “Thanks again. I’m sorry to put you through all this.”
His eyes soften and he smiles, absolving me of blame, then he lights another cigarette and turns away.
I sense he wants a few moments to himself while the memories recede. I’m heading for the door when he calls out, “Ac—I think it was Ac-something.”
“Pardon me?”
“The name of that out-processing noncom who was fragged.” He scratches his forehead in frustration. “I vaguely recall his family being in the mortuary business. I could be wrong. Many GR people have that background. Damn.”
“Don’t worry. It’s not that important.”
“For some reason San Francisco sticks in my mind. But I’m not sure.”
San Francisco? It is important.
“Was it Acacia?” he wonders. “No that’s a tree, isn’t it? Well it was something like that. So aggravating. It’s on the tip of my
tongue.”
On mine too. “Was it Ajacier?”
His eyes brighten in recognition. “Why, yes. Yes, it was. How’d you know?”
“Just happened to come across it.”
20
Ajacier?” Webster repeats in an icy whisper. He instantly made the connection between the out-processing noncom who was fragged and the owner of the condo where the Surigaos were living. His eyes burn more in frustration than anger as he stares across the desk at me. “You stirred all this up, Mr. Morgan. Now, I’m going to ask you again, and this time I expect an answer. What do you think’s going on here?”
“I think that’s a two-part question, Colonel. What was going on then? What’s going on now? As far as the past’s concerned, Mr. Ingersoll opened the door wide, then slammed it shut pretty hard. I imagine he was well coached by his attorneys at the time he was investigated. So he’s either lying or—”
“I don’t believe that for a minute.”
“I was about to say, gut instinct tells me he’s a decent guy who got screwed. He had no idea what Ajacier—the noncom, that is—was up to.”
“Which was what? Some kind of drug smuggling operation, involving the shipment of GI remains?”
“Yes, but the investigation clearly established it wasn’t being done out of the mortuary. So how the hell did they pull it off?”
“Damned good question.” Webster kicks back in his chair, torturing a paper clip. “Well, regardless, it still follows that if Ajacier ran the in-country end, the family mortuary business was the stateside connection.”
“They were civilians. Not easy to manipulate a military operation from the outside.”
“Didn’t have to. During the war, the remains of a lot of GIs ended up in a few Bay Area mortuaries for forwarding throughout the western states. There’s always that transition from military to civilian custody. We’re still dealing with it.”
“For example?”
“After the CIL makes an identification, the remains are shipped to the port mortuary at Travis. We have a contract with a local mortuary to run that facility.”
“They provide the personnel.”
He nods. “Not unusual. Hickam Field, the local Air Force base, is eighty percent civilian. Anyway, the morticians at Travis are responsible for transferring remains from T-cases to standard coffins and working with members of the service branches to make sure decorations and awards are properly arranged on the uniforms before they’re released to the family or its representative.”
“Who’s the contractor?”
“Golden Gate Mortuary Services. We’ve been dealing with them for as long as I can remember.” He pauses and smiles at what he’s about to say. “The owner’s name isn’t Ajacier.”
“Okay. We’ve just fast forwarded from past to present. Let’s stay here: We have this other Ajacier, also from San Francisco, who we assume is related—brother, father, cousin, whatever. He and the Surigaos are in cahoots on something. We’re not sure what.”
“We’re not even sure if it’s connected to the past other than in name.”
“I disagree. We know it’s connected, because my inquiry threatened it.”
“That’s right. But we don’t know why. Matter of fact we don’t even have a clue.”
“Well, if they were in the mortuary business in San Francisco twenty years ago, maybe they still are?”
“Good a place as any to start.” The colonel lifts the phone, calls San Francisco information, and is told there aren’t any business or residential listings under the name Ajacier.
Something dawns on me. “That’s probably the only thing ‘Captain Sullivan’ told me that wasn’t a lie.”
“What?”
“That he was in San Francisco.” I go on to explain about the detectives who are investigating Nancy’s accident, and their discovery that a driver’s license with the name Thomas Sullivan and a San Francisco address was used to rent the car that killed her. When finished, I slip Sergeant Daniels’ card from my wallet and reach for the phone.
The colonel puts his hand over it to stop me. “What’re you doing?”
“I want to see what they found out.”
“Let’s talk about what I want, first.”
“Shoot.”
“I want to keep my own house in order if I can. The POW/MIA issue’s been a political tightrope for years, and the CIL’s taken its share of falls. We’ve been accused of everything from slipshod scientific practices to outright deception.”
“Regarding identifications?”
Webster winces at the memory and nods. “Do you know there are over seventy-five thousand MIAs from World War Two?”
“Seventy-five thousand?” I echo, astounded.
He nods solemnly. “No one ever makes any noise about them.”
“Times have changed.”
“Sure as hell have. Anyway, the point is, we’re just spinning our wheels here if we don’t have the trust of the families. I’ve worked my butt off to prove worthy of it. The media gets hold of this, well, I’ve learned the hard way that the tar goes on a lot faster than it comes off.”
“I understand. For what it’s worth, the police have probably checked out the address. I think it might be to your advantage to know what they’ve turned up, if anything.”
He steeples his fingers thoughtfully. “Under one condition. We play our cards close to our chest.”
“Fair enough.” I dial the number and get a desk sergeant. Neither Daniels nor Molina are there. I leave the number of the Hale-kulani, the hotel in Waikiki where I’ll be staying this evening.
“You’re right,” Webster says as I hang up. “It’s a two-part question and it’s part two that’s really bugging me. I mean, the thought of using the CIL to smuggle drugs . . .”he lets it trai
l off, visibly shaken by the specter of scandal.
“Well, Mr. Ingersoll made it pretty clear it couldn’t be via remains, or the wooden boxes. What’s left—transfer cases?”
The colonel shakes his head. “I don’t see how. There’s no place to hide anything.”
“Humor me. Who’s in charge of them?”
“Depends on where they are in the process: Andersen Air Force Base on Guam, here, or Travis. We’re working with a number of governments in Southeast Asia, but most repatriations start with the VNOSMP, that’s the Vietnamese Office for Seeking Missing Personnel. They turn over the wooden boxes containing the remains to us right on the tarmac at Noi Bai Airport in Hanoi. From there, the boxes are flown to Andersen, where they’re put in transfer cases.”
“One box in each case?”
“One in each case. And once assigned, a given case stays with that individual’s remains. We use an alphanumeric numbering system. CIL-dash-one through however many we have on the books. I think we’re somewhere in the low hundreds now.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“They’re flown to Hickam Field. Immediately after the arrival ceremony, they’re loaded on a medevac bus and driven here.”
“You accompany them?”
“Every step of the way, starting in Hanoi.”
“And after the remains are removed?”
“The wooden boxes are destroyed and the transfer cases are kept here until identifications are made, then used to ship the remains to the port mortuary.”
“Where they’re put in standard coffins and turned over to the family.”
“As I said.”
“And the T-cases?”
“They’re stockpiled at the port mortuary—”
“Under civilian control.”
“Correct—until they have enough for a pallet, say a dozen, then they’re shipped back to Clark.”
“Clark?”
“I meant Andersen. Force of habit. We got blown out of the Philippines by that volcano.
“That contractor in San Francisco may have the wrong name but he’s sure as hell in the right place.”
Webster nods thoughtfully.
The assembled pieces quickly lead to an undeniable and intri- guing conclusion. “If I’m right, I mean, if they are somehow using the T-cases to smuggle drugs, and the stuff is being removed at the port mortuary, then it follows that it’d still be in the transfer cases that are here now, wouldn’t it?” I want his opinion, but I’m even more interested in his reaction. Will he be threatened? Resist? Dismiss it out of hand?
His eyes flare, not with indignation but angry agreement. “Damn. Sure would.”
“But I thought you said there’s no place to hide anything?”
“There really isn’t—other than the doc-tube.”
“The what?”
“Document tube. It’s a cylinder that’s built into the case. Paperwork pertaining to the remains can be rolled up and slid inside. The cap’s secured with one of those wire and lead customs seals.”
“Wouldn’t you or one of your people have found the stuff if it was in there?”
“We don’t use the doc-tubes. Never have. I can’t even remember the last time I opened one.”
Webster is out of his chair in an eye blink. I’m right behind him as he charges down the corridor, out the door, and across the grounds to a second chain link fence that separates the two buildings. He unlocks the gate, explaining that this is the actual laboratory where remains are stored and analyzed, where the original records of those who are unaccounted for are kept, where circle searches are plotted. We hurry past the entrance, where a sign on the door proclaims:
IN RESPECT FOR THE DECEASED PLEASE REMOVE HEADGEAR
I follow Webster to the rear of the laboratory, where we’re confronted by a wall of aluminum transfer cases stacked three and four high. There must be twenty or thirty of them.
Unlike a traditional coffin, the halves of a T-case are separate and unhinged: the bottom a very shallow tray; the upper, deeply drawn and reinforced by V-shaped ribs that are spot-welded lengthwise along the top, sides, and ends. The two parts form an airtight seal when joined and latched. Located at one end of the top half, where the word HEAD is stenciled, is a pressure release valve and next to it, in the upper right-hand corner, a metal disc approximately two inches in diameter that resembles a small gas filler cap.
“That’s what I was talking about,” the Colonel drawls as he unscrews one of the caps, letting it dangle from a length of braided wire that prevents it from being separated from the case. He peers into the 1½ inch diameter metal tube that extends into the interior of the case, then stabs a finger inside.
“Empty.”
“How far in that go?”
“About a foot, maybe less. Give me a hand here.”
We grasp the hefty U-shaped handles, lift the T-case off the stack, and set it on a tubular stand. It takes a few moments to undo all ten latches. When finished, we remove the top and set it upside down next to the bottom.
The interior is unadorned, unlined, just bare aluminum with rounded corners to facilitate cleaning. There’s quite obviously no place to conceal anything. In one corner, a metal cylinder extends about nine or ten inches into the case. This end of the document tube is permanently sealed.
As we go about removing the caps from the rubes on the other transfer cases, I calculate the volume of the cylinder—pi/r2/h—3.14 × .75 × .75 × 10. “For what it’s worth, Colonel, we’re talking seventeen point six six two five cubic inches. That’s roughly a third the volume of a quart of milk.”
“A kilo’s what, just a little over two pounds?”
“Two point two zero four six. Just one would fill about a half dozen of those tubes.”
“Not very efficient, and obvious as hell.” He unscrews the last cap and shakes his head no.
All the document tubes are empty.
I return to the open case. The edges that mate to form the seal are about an inch wide. I grasp the top section—thumb on the outside, forefinger on the inside—and gauge the thickness of the aluminum wall below. It can’t be more than an eighth of an inch.
We reassemble the halves and screw down the latches. “These are a lot heavier than I thought,” I say, as we prepare to lift the transfer case back onto the stack.
“Hundred and twenty-one pounds empty.”
I’m struck by an idea. “Exactly?”
“Exactly.”
“You have a scale here?”
“Sure. We do a lot of shipping. You want to weigh one of these?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Why?”
I tap one of the reinforcing ribs on the exterior of the transfer case. “How do we know it’s not in there? Must be a total of thirty linear feet of that on a case. Way more than ten times the volume of one of those tubes. Enough for a couple of kilos. Easy.”
“But those are welded on.”
“You see The French Connection?"
Webster nods and quickly rounds up a couple of enlisted men, who carry one of the transfer cases around to a small shipping dock on the other side of the building. They muscle it into an upright position and lift it onto the scale.
The colonel adjusts the sliding weights, setting the large one at 100, then ticks the smaller along the beam with a fingertip. It balances at precisely 121 pounds. A half hour later, jackets off, sleeves rolled up, sweat rolling down our faces, we’ve weighed every T-case on the premises, twenty-six in all.
Every last one tipped the scales at 121 pounds.
“Now what?” the colonel wonders, baffled but somewhat relieved.
“Beats the hell out of me, sir.”
We return to the main building and are heading down the corridor to his office when the First Sergeant intercepts us. He’s carrying a file folder.
“Pettibone, Richard M.,” he announces smartly with a satisfied smile.
“The guy who took my ID?”
“Found him in the AWOL fi
le. Loss scenario’s a perfect match.”
“Was he a chopper pilot?”
“Affirmative.”
“Dustoffs?”
The sergeant nods.
“How’d this clown die?” the colonel asks, leading the way into his office.
“According to his file, last seen boarding a flight at Ton Son Nhut for Vientiane, Laos. The plane was forced to make an emergency landing in enemy territory due to mechanical problems. They radioed their position. By the time a Jolly Green got in there the gooks had already shot everyone aboard.”
“But Pettibone’s name wasn’t on the manifest,” I say, jumping on it. “Mine was.”
“Right.”
That confirms Pettibone stole my ID. The recovery team found it on his body and the casualty report ended up in my file. Pulling his corpse from the morgue kept it from going any further. “But if Pettibone was using my ID, how’d that information get in his file?”
“His commanding officer included it when he reported him missing,” the sergeant explains. “Whoever saw him board that flight must’ve come forward when they heard it went down.”
“Another thing I can’t figure is, why a guy who’s AWOL would go to Vientiane. Why not Bangkok or Hong Kong?”
“Beats me,” the colonel sighs. “You’re sure you’ve eliminated all other scenarios, Top?”
“Positive. When you get right down to it, sir, it’s all just a formality anyway.” The sergeant lays the file on the colonel’s desk and opens it, revealing a photograph of Pettibone.
The colonel’s jaw drops.
So does mine.
The resemblance is striking. Bartlett was right. This guy was damn near my double. As I stare transfixed at the photograph, it dawns on me that I finally have a name. It’s totally meaningless now.
“Good going, Top,” Webster enthuses. “Next, find out if Sean Surigao was ever in the military.”
The sparkle in the sergeant’s eyes intensifies. “Did his tour in ’68. Crewed a dustoff chopper. Guess who he flew with?”
“Pettibone,” the colonel and I say in unison.
“Pettibone,” the sergeant confirms smartly.
The big pieces to the puzzle just locked into place. We have the connection to the past: Pettibone and Surigao were ferrying drugs, heroin undoubtedly, in their chopper from an unknown supplier to Ajacier at the Ton Son Nhut mortuary. He shipped it to the family funeral home in San Francisco where distribution was handled. And we have the connection to the present: Surigao, the only one who made it back, subsequently went into business with Ajacier’s family.