by John Lutz
“You interviewed him?”
“In a hospice in Arizona. He was ninety and riddled with cancer. He was dead by the time I found out he’d lied to me.”
“You mean, the operation was not a failure?”
Milton’s dark eyes burned into Laker’s. “My source for this part is still alive. So don’t even try to get the name out of me.”
“Okay.”
“On November 27, 1941, Jenkins sent a top-secret cable to his superior in Washington. According to Tillie’s report, Ryo’s blathering of the night before included the words “kido butai has sailed” and something she couldn’t understand about the Aleutians. Not much but it was enough. Kido butai means striking force. The Japanese attack fleet, which did in fact set sail from Hitokappu the previous day. The U.S. had an airbase in the Aleutian Islands. The Japanese were worried a patrol might spot the fleet. Jenkins said that meant the Japs were approaching Hawaii from the north. He urgently recommended air patrols of the northern approaches. If his recommendation had been acted on, the Japanese would have been sighted and Pearl would have been ready.”
“Have you seen Jenkins’s message?”
“No, and nobody ever will. Same with the response from Washington, which was stand down, nothing to worry about, negotiations with the Japs are going just fine.”
“Washington was complacent.”
“Laker, how dumb can you get? FDR himself had decided to let the attack happen, to bring America into World War II, something he’d been trying to accomplish for years.”
“This is old news, Milton. The ‘FDR knew’ rumors started before the war was even over. There have been—what?—ten official investigations.”
“They’ve investigated coded cable traffic, radio transmissions, stuff like that. Jenkins’s operation has never surfaced.”
“It would have. If you could prove what you say.”
Milton conceded with a shrug. “I’m not ready to publish yet. But I’ve found out what happened in the later lives of Ryo and Tillie, and it all fits.”
Laker leaned forward, turning his good ear. “What happened to Ryo?”
“On December 7, Ryo and the other Japanese diplomats were arrested and put in an internment camp. On April 5, 1942, he was returned to Japan. He went to work at the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo, where he was apparently doing something important and hush-hush. The records are incomplete, but apparently he’d resumed his rise in the diplomatic service. A year later, he suddenly disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“It wasn’t until years after the war that his family found out what happened to him. March 10, 1943, he was committed to Hoisin Prison near Tokyo. On January 4, 1944, he was executed there.”
“You think his superiors somehow found out about his affair with Tillie? How he’d almost given the game away?”
“Somehow? What kind of spook are you, Laker?”
“You mean Mannion and Jenkins sent word through a back channel.”
“Yeah, they burned him.”
“Why?”
“Why not eliminate a rising enemy foreign service officer? Especially if you can get the enemy to do it for you.”
“Mannion tell you that?”
“He didn’t have to. Then there’s what happened to Tillie.”
“She moved to Washington.”
“In the summer of ’42. As a reward for services rendered, Jenkins arranged an office job in the War Department. There she met an army lieutenant named Ephraim North. They got married in early ’44, and by the end of that year North was a major stationed at the Pentagon. By ’46, he was a lieutenant colonel attached to the White House. The Norths’ long career as a D.C. power couple had begun.”
“You’re saying they blackmailed FDR.”
Milton rolled his eyes. “Laker, don’t be crude. We’re talking about two of the most subtle political operators this town has ever seen. They dropped hints in the proper ears that a secret—even the biggest secret—was safe with them. And they were rewarded.”
Laker nodded. He could see a few soft spots in Milton’s version of events, but didn’t see any point in arguing with the reporter about them. He did have one more question, though.
“Do you think Tillie ever knew what happened to Ryo?”
Milton laughed harshly. “She’d forgotten all about him by then. She’d managed to make the marriage of the season, even though she was shopworn goods by the standards of the time. Now she was starting her climb to the top of Washington society. She never looked back at that sordid episode in Hawaii.”
15
Ava missed their rendezvous at the coffee shop. He called, but her cell phone was off and her in-box was full. He went home. An hour later, his intercom buzzed.
“Laker,” Ava’s voice said. “Let me in before somebody sees me.”
His building had no lobbies or corridors; the elevator—actually the freight elevator of the old pin factory—opened directly into his apartment. A minute later, the doors slid back to reveal Ava with a suitcase and duffel bag. She looked frazzled.
“God, what a day I’ve had. Pour me a big glass of that wood stripper of yours, would you?”
She staggered past him and flopped on the couch in the living area, leaving him to cope with the luggage. She was a North, after all. The suitcase was heavy. The duffel was light, but it clanked.
“What’s in here?” he asked.
“Pup tent. Fresh from the outdoor store in the mall.”
“You’re going to pitch a tent?”
She indicated the spaciousness of the loft with a sweep of her arm. “This place gives me agoraphobia. I can’t sleep out. And I’m certainly not going to share your teepee.” She raised her eyebrows at him. “I hope you haven’t been getting any ideas?”
“About you being my squaw? No.”
He put the luggage down and went to the safe he used as a liquor cabinet, where he poured two glasses of Speyside Cardhu. He handed one to Ava and sat down opposite her.
“Sorry I missed you at the coffee shop.” She kicked off her shoes, crossed her legs, and began to massage her left foot. “My feet are killing me. I was trying to hail a cab on N Street when Becky Johnson of CNN spotted me. She and her camera crew chased me as far as Constitution Avenue before they gave up.”
“I notice you’ve turned off your phone.”
“Had to. My section chief at NSA kept calling me about coming in to answer questions. It started with requests and escalated to demands. Then threats to pull my security clearance.”
“Has anybody mentioned the journal?”
“Still our little secret, as far as I know. It’s in the suitcase.”
“Good.”
“This town is having a panic attack, Laker. Everybody’s remembering something they once said to Tillie North and shouldn’t have. They can’t concentrate on their work. And these are the people who guide the destiny of the world, or think they do. We’re ants to them.”
“Sam Mason has our backs.”
“That’s not much comfort to me.”
“It would be if you knew Mason.”
She tossed off her scotch and held out the glass. He got up to refill it.
“Who did you go to see today? Thanks,” she said as he handed her the glass.
“Milton, at the Post.”
“Josh Milton. The original poison pen.” She took a long swallow of scotch.
“He had some information.” Laker sat down across from Ava. “You’re not going to like it.”
“I haven’t liked anything that’s happened to me in a while. Except you.”
She smiled at him over her glass. Laker forced himself to concentrate and told her the story. She listened gravely, and did not speak till he was finished.
“Okay. Milton is full of it. First, his only proof that Ephraim North blackmailed his way to the top is that he reached the top. Which he actually did by being brilliant, loyal, and hardworking. And having Tillie at his side.”
“Facto
rs a conspiracy-monger like Milton overlooks.”
“Second, I know that journal practically by heart. And there is nothing in there that even hints at a coming Pearl Harbor attack.”
“True. In fact the journal breaks off more than a month before December 7. Any thoughts on that?”
“They realized they were wasting their time. Ryo wasn’t going to say anything useful. I don’t have to tell you, Laker. Most intel ops fail.”
“But if the journal is just a by-product of a failed operation, why did your grandmother keep it? Why did she want you to have it?”
Ava leaned forward to put the glass on the table. Wearily rubbed her eyes. “I don’t want to know the answers to those questions, Laker. I’m afraid I’m going to find out something horrible about Tillie.”
Laker said nothing. After a minute, Ava lowered her hands. “Okay. Sorry. I know I have no choice. And I know what we’re going to do first thing tomorrow.”
“Which is?”
“We’re going to see the person Tillie trusted most in this world.”
16
Erlynne Bendix was napping when they arrived. The garden of the Dillsworth Long Term Care facility in Reston, Virginia, was a peaceful spot on a warm July morning. Marigolds, petunias, and tiger lilies were blooming in the greenery surrounding the small patio. Bumblebees and honeybees browsed among them.
Mrs. Bendix, as Ava called her, was an African American woman in her late eighties. Her forehead was deeply scored and her cheeks sagged, but her pure white hair was still dense. The eyes behind her bifocals were shut, the head bowed. She was breathing deeply but silently.
“She’ll be irritable if we wake her,” Ava whispered. “We’ll just have to wait.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t know how this will go. Some days she’s forgetful. Other days she pretends to be forgetful because she can’t be bothered with you.”
“You seem a little intimidated by her.”
“When I was a child, she ruled the Chevy Chase house with an iron hand. She’d come to work for my grandmother right after the war, as a teenager. She was her maid for almost fifty years. It was funny, Tillie knew hundreds of people. Brilliant, talented, powerful men and women. But in a way, Erlynne Bendix was her closest friend. Grandmother knew anything she told her would go no further.”
“Hard to find a friend like that in Washington.”
The old lady stirred. Raised her head. Blinked at Ava. “Miz Maureen?”
“I’m Ava, Mrs. Bendix. Maureen’s daughter.”
She thought it over. “That’s right. Maureen died ten years ago.” At Mrs. Bendix’s age, you were not squeamish talking about the dead. The head turned slowly, the aureole of white hair catching the light. The eyes behind the thick glasses came to bear on Laker. “I don’t remember you. You’re not Ava’s husband?”
“No.”
“No reason I should remember you, then.”
“None at all. My name is Thomas Laker, ma’am.”
She turned back to Ava. “Your grandmother’s dead, too. I saw it on the TV.”
“Yes, Mrs. Bendix. We’ve come to talk about my grandmother. We have questions about her early life, when she lived in Hawaii.”
“That was long before I came to work for Miz Tillie. I don’t know nothing about Hawaii.”
“Yes, but she may have spoken to you about it. She was working for officers at Pearl Harbor, Commander Mannion? Captain Jenkins?”
“Before my time,” Mrs. Bendix said stubbornly.
“They asked Tillie to do something for them,” Ava said. “For her country. It was important work and only she could do it.”
Mrs. Bendix was watching a bumblebee land on a petunia and crawl over its petals. Ava leaned closer and began to tell her about what Tillie had done for her country. She didn’t get far.
“Ava, who have you been listening to? Your grandmother would never have gotten mixed up in a thing like that.”
Laker said, “It was wartime, ma’am—”
“A lady is a lady, peace or war. I don’t want to hear no more about it.”
Ava sat back, lifted her purse onto her lap, and took out the journal. She held it out to Mrs. Bendix, who looked at it for a long moment but did not take it.
“She kept that with her all the time,” Mrs. Bendix said. “If you have it now, she must’ve wanted you to know everything.”
“Yes. It’s very, very important.”
Mrs. Bendix took an interest in the bees again. A full minute passed before she said, “I don’t like to talk about it. It was a terrible thing they made her do.”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Bendix. We know most of the story. Mannion and Jenkins. And Hirochi Ryo.”
The last name brought the old woman’s eyes back to Ava’s. “Hirochi Ryo,” she repeated. “Yes, that was his name. I’d forgotten. I’m not good with foreign names.”
Ava held the journal out to her again. “Did you ever look in this book?”
“Once, maybe. Didn’t mean nothing to me.”
“Did my grandmother ever tell you why she stopped writing in it?”
“Why she stopped?”
“We’re thinking it must’ve been because they realized Hirochi Ryo wasn’t going to reveal any secrets. Mannion and Jenkins, I mean. They told Tillie she didn’t have to do it anymore.”
Mrs. Bendix’s gaze drifted back to the bees again. The silence stretched on. Laker thought she was not going to answer. But then she said, “You don’t know what kind of men Mannion and Jenkins were. They spared Miz Tillie nothing.”
“She had to keep . . . meeting with Ryo? Reporting to them what he said? But why did she stop writing in the book?”
“Because she wasn’t going to betray the man she loved, Ava.”
Ava flinched. “What?”
“She’d go to Mannion and Jenkins, and they’d ask her what Ryo said, and she’d make up some nonsense. She was in love with that man, and she shared his bed until December 7, when they locked him up in an internment camp. Far as I know, she never saw him again. Years later, she found out he’d been sent back to Japan, and he died in the war. I was with her when she heard the news. By then she was a married lady with two children, but she was heartbroken. That’s when she told me about him. Now I’ve told you.”
The long gust of speech seemed to leave her exhausted. Her shoulders sagged, but she kept her head up, her fierce gaze fixed on Ava. “That’s all I know. Now let me rest.”
Ava rose unsteadily and murmured something, maybe thanks, maybe apology. She turned away.
Laker said, “Mrs. Bendix, we need to know why the book is so important. Did Mrs. North ever say why she kept it by her all these years?”
The old woman seemed to think this was a stupid question. She said, “Because it was all she had left of Hirochi Ryo.”
17
Back in the loft, Ava took the journal out of her purse, dropped it on the coffee table, and stood staring at it.
“Now we know. Tillie couldn’t betray her lover,” she said. “What we don’t know is, could she betray her country?”
“We haven’t found any evidence that she knew about December 7. Nor that Ryo himself knew about it. The Japanese navy had a spy in Honolulu tracking fleet movements. Even he didn’t know when the attack was coming.”
“Well, Laker, that’s what I would like to believe. That Mannion and Jenkins’s brilliant scheme produced no intelligence. Had no effect, apart from breaking a young girl’s heart.”
She dropped on the couch, hunched over with elbows on knees. “But where does that leave us? What’s in this book that Tillie had to die for it? And who was that guy who chased me through the forest in Hawaii?”
Laker had no answers to these questions, so it was just as well that the phone rang. It was the landline phone on his desk. The secure line. He walked quickly over and picked it up.
Sam Mason didn’t give him a chance to say hello. “You’ll remember, I told you you would get a call, and
you’d have to do as you were told for a change?”
“Yes.”
“This is that call. I need your report. I can’t cover for you any longer.”
“I’ll be there in half an hour.”
“Not here. The Mall, third bench down from the reflecting pool.”
Mason hung up.
“Your boss?” Ava asked.
Laker nodded. “Our time is running out.”
* * *
The high white dome of the Capitol building loomed over its reflection in the broad rectangular pool. As usual tired tourists were resting on the wall that surrounded the pool. Some looked as if they were contemplating a dive into the water. It was late morning and unbearably hot already.
Laker crossed the street to the wide lawn lined with trees that was the National Mall. Farther down toward the Washington Monument, he could see banners and crowds and hear amplified music. An event was going on. There was a festival or a demonstration or both on the Mall every day of the summer. But this end was fairly quiet, as the crowds of office workers from Capitol Hill hadn’t arrived yet to take their lunch breaks.
Mason had the third bench to himself. He’d put on a Washington Nationals cap to protect his bald head from the sun. It jarred with his dark blue business suit. Laker jogged over to him and arrived sweating.
“Why aren’t we meeting in your office?” he asked as he sat down.
“There are two guys from the Bureau permanently stationed in my waiting room, with orders to take you in for questioning.”
“I’m surprised you put up with that.” Mason had even more disdain for the FBI than for the CIA and the NSA.
“The guy who put them there has the power to cut our budget. To the bone.”
“Oh.”
“You’d be flattered if you knew the names of the people who’ve told me to turn you over to them or they’d have my head on a plate.”
“Have any of them mentioned a book? A journal?”
“No. Is that good?”
“It means we’re still a step ahead. The book is what this is all about.”