Flying Blind

by Max Allan Collins

  She rolled her eyes, nodded vigorously. “Oh my goodness, yes…the ‘calaboose,’ they call it. Same cellblock as Fred—that dirty little building with the four nasty cells. But I only lasted three days. I passed out and woke up, I don’t know…six months later.”

  I frowned. “Then you really did almost die. What, were you in a coma?”

  She shrugged. “Or they kept me doped up. I don’t really know….” She studied me through narrowed eyes, as if only now she had convinced herself I wasn’t an apparition. “What are you doing here, Nathan? Who sent you on this harebrained expedition? G. P.?”

  My laugh was harsher than I intended. “Not hardly. He had you declared dead, I don’t know, two years ago; he’s already remarried.”

  The blood drained out of her face; so did the emotion.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m sorry…. I don’t mean to be so cold about it….”

  “It’s all right. It’s just…I knew he didn’t love me, anymore. And I never loved him, not really. But we were…a kind of team, you know? A partnership. I think I…deserved a little better from him, is all.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir on that one.”

  She flashed me the gap-toothed grin and slipped a finger in my collar and tugged. “Preaching to the preacher, you mean. What’s this about? Who did send you, you wonderful lunatic?”

  “The same star-spangled bunch who sold you out,” I said. “Uncle Sam and assorted nephews.”

  And I filled her in, giving her a brief but fairly complete rundown, from my unofficial investigation in July of ’37 (she was fascinated and astounded to learn that I’d heard her capture on the Myers family Philco) to my current mission, right up to my role as I.R.A. emissary Father O’Leary—leaving out what Chief Suzuki had asked of me.

  Then it was her turn, and she told how she and Noonan had been picked up by a launch from a battleship, and were held in a place called Jaluit where a doctor tended to injuries Noonan had received ditching in the water; they were bounced from one Japanese Naval station to another, islands with names like Kwajalein, Roi, Namor, and finally to Saipan, where they were interrogated by Suzuki and others—they denied being spies, having dropped their photographic equipment into the ocean—and were jailed.

  “After my collapse in my cell, and that long stay in the hospital,” she said, “I was brought here to the Kobayashi Ryokan. And I’ve been treated more or less decently, ever since. I’m really under a kind of house arrest.”

  “You mean, you can come and go as you please?”

  She nodded, shrugged. “Within boundaries. There are always at least two of those native police lackeys watching me, here at the hotel—day and night; if I leave, they’re my shadows…even when it’s just a trip out to the privy.”

  “How short a leash are you on?”

  “I can venture out into the Garapan business district. Like a child, I have an allowance. I can get my hair done. Go to the movies. Stop at a teahouse—they don’t make cocoa here, unfortunately, so I’ve finally learned to drink tea and coffee, at this late date. But always my Chamorro chaperons are nearby.”

  “You mean, if we wanted to leave right now,” I said, “we could go for a walk—we’d just have a couple of fat ugly tails on our behinds?”

  “Yes.” She gripped my hand, tight. “But Nathan…don’t underestimate them—particularly the one named Jesus.” Her eyes took on a momentary glaze. “Lord Jesus, the islanders call him. His own people are frightened to death of him, even the ones he works with. He’s terribly cruel.”

  I looked at her carefully. “You sound like you speak from experience….”

  “I know he’s tortured Fred, many times.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  She nodded in admission, and shared the unpleasant memory: “Shortly after I got out of the hospital, Lord Jesus came to my room, this room, and tried to make me admit I was a spy….” She tilted her head to one side and pointed to her neck, where there were several nasty burn scars.

  “Cigarettes?” I asked. A cold rage was rising in me.

  She nodded. “But Chief Suzuki came in and saw what Jesus was doing, and put a stop to it.”

  I didn’t bother to tell her that she’d just described an interrogation technique that dated back to the time of the original Jesus. Except for the cigarettes.

  “This room has become a kind of…sanctuary for me,” she said. Then her tone turned bitter. “But I always remember that, whenever they want, any of them can come right through that door…torture me, rape me, whatever they please…. It’s a pleasant enough prison, Nathan—but it’s a prison.”

  “Let’s go for that walk,” I suggested. “A priest and his parishioner.”

  She nodded, springing to her feet with girlish enthusiasm. “Just let me grab my sandals….”

  We went out through the lobby—a Chamorro clerk in a high-collared white shirt and bemused expression was at the check-in desk, now—and Jesus and Ramon were indeed still playing cards at their matchstick-, billy club-and machete-littered table. Under his misshapen straw fedora, the blunt-featured, knife-scarred, pockmarked puss of Lord Jesus frowned up at us in a startling mixture of indignation and contempt. How dare we interrupt his life?

  “Catching some air,” I explained. “In Six—remember?”

  He sneered at me, baring mahogany teeth and the space for one.

  And then we stepped out onto the wooden sidewalk where a cool yet muggy afternoon awaited under a steel-wool sky. We strolled by the general merchandise store with its shelves open onto the street, dolls and cloisonné vases, cakes and confectioneries, condiments and bean curd, its salesgirls in colorful kimonos. But the passers-by were less formal, men in shorts, women in Western-style dresses, not a parasol in sight; a few young men on bicycles. A pair of green-denim-uniformed officers on a motorcycle and sidecar rolled by, in the direction of Chico Naval Base. This time, I couldn’t catch anybody even stealing a glance—word about my presence, here, must have gotten around.

  “For such a striking couple,” I said, “we’re not attracting much attention.”

  Not counting Jesus and Ramon, of course, who were behind us about a half a block; they were so fat, only one could walk on the boardwalk—the other had to trod along kicking up dust in the hard-dirt street, making an obstacle for bikes. The billy clubs were stuck in their belts like pirate swords; Jesus had the sheathed machete stuck there, too—all he lacked was the parrot and eyepatch.

  “Oh, I’m old hat around here,” she said with a little smile. “They call me ‘Tokyo Rosa.’”

  “Why?”

  “Tokyo because I attract so much official attention. Rosa because it’s a female name in English they know from somewhere.”

  I gestured toward the little park where the sugar baron’s statue loomed and we headed over there.

  “It’s usually prettier here,” she said, as we sauntered along. We were close enough to the waterfront that we could see gray patches of ocean between trees and buildings. “Saipan sunsets are amazing, and the waters are so many different, clear shades of blue.”

  “It almost sounds like you like it here,” I said.

  A tiny grimace tightened her face. “I guess I deserve that. But I’m always aware of what Fred’s going through.”

  We could see the prison, on its little jungle side street, as we walked. The boardwalk had given over to a simple well-worn grassy path.

  “According to Chief Suzuki,” I said, “your navigator’s been pretty uncooperative, even belligerent.”

  “Fred’s never given them a shred of information, never admitted to anything…but he’s been through a living hell for it.”

  That made sense. Leaning on Noonan and taking it easy on Amy wasn’t chivalry on the part of the Japanese, rather their chauvinist supposition that the male team member would be the leader, and would hold the military secrets. To some degree, they may have been right—after all, Noonan had been working for the Navy, all along.

&nbs
p; I asked, “Do they let you see him?”

  “Once a week or so we talk, when he’s allowed out into the exercise yard.” She looked in that direction and I could see the area she meant, a grassless parcel beside the larger, boxcar-like cellblocks. “He’s very strong. Resolute. I admire him terribly….”

  She wiped tears from her eyes with her short sleeve and smiled bravely and I looped my arm through hers and walked her into the little park, where we settled onto a stone bench, alone in the shadow of the baron’s statue and sheltering palm trees.

  “I’m going to get you out of here tonight,” I said.

  Her eyes widened with hope and alarm. “You can do that?”

  Jesus and Ramon were watching from across the street, sitting on the stone steps out in front of the hospital, like a couple of gargoyles who’d fallen off the roof.

  “You need to understand something,” I said. “My mission to Saipan was defined by such patriots as William Miller and James Forrestal as ‘intelligence gathering.’ They didn’t send me in here to rescue you, just to find out whether you and Fred were here or not. Alive and well, or hung by your thumbs, it didn’t matter—are our missing people in Saipan or aren’t they? That was the extent of why I was sent.”

  She nodded. “I follow you.”

  “Trust me, you don’t. I was told, if you were here, not to ‘play hero,’ but to leave you behind, with the assurance that your pal FDR and naval and military intelligence would decide what to do about it…whether to negotiate the release of the American prisoners, or mount a full-scale rescue operation.”

  Wincing in thought, she said, “I guess that makes sense….”

  “No it doesn’t. I played along with them, so they’d send me in here, but baby, my sole point in taking this seagoing safari was to bring you home with me. You think I got a particle of confidence in the government’s ability to negotiate your release? How have they done so far?”

  She sighed a laugh. “Not wonderfully well…and I guess they did figure there was a pretty good chance I was on Saipan, in Japanese custody, or they wouldn’t have sent you in here, looking.”

  “Now you’re gettin’ your head out of the clouds.” I gently touched her arm. “Do you really think FDR would send some kind of full-scale military raiding team into Saipan, to save his wife’s canasta partner in what would clearly be an act of war?”

  Her eyes seemed suddenly empty. “…No.”

  “Yes—no. And I knew, coming into this masquerade party, that once Father Brian O’Leary had disappeared off their island, the Japs would figure out my real purpose. That I had come calling to ascertain the condition and whereabouts of Earhart and Noonan…in which case, what kind of future do you think would’ve been in store for you?”

  “Continued detention? Imprisonment…?”

  I let out a heavy sigh. “I’m going to say this, and you’re going to have to be strong. I don’t want our audience to detect any undue reaction.”

  Jesus and Ramon had brought their shopworn deck of cards with them; Ramon was dealing, on the hospital steps.

  “Say what you have to,” she said.

  “Faced with the knowledge that the United States military has confirmed your presence in their custody, your Japanese hosts would take steps to remove any and all signs that you’d ever been here.”

  She said nothing, her expression blank. I didn’t have to spell it out. She knew. She and Noonan would be executed. Buried anonymously on this island, or dumped as chum into the ocean to attract bonito.

  “You’d be part of an incident that never happened,” I said. “Which, at the end of the day, would suit both governments just fine.”

  Her eyes and nostrils flared. “Nathan, I can’t believe…”

  “That FDR would rather have you dead, than a Japanese propaganda tool? That he’d rather have you in an unmarked grave, than living evidence that the United States committed an act of espionage and war? Didn’t they tell you what you were getting into, baby? If you’re captured, you’re on your own. That’s the cardinal rule, the unwritten law of espionage: your government never fucking heard of you.”

  She looked as though I’d struck her a hard blow in the stomach; and hadn’t I?

  “Maybe,” I said, “if our ambassador told their ambassador that we knew for a certainty that Amelia and Fred were in Japanese hands, maybe the Japs would quietly return the two of you. Very damn doubtful, though. It makes more sense that you would simply disappear. That’s the Japanese face-saving way, in which case America saves face, too—the U.S.A. wouldn’t have to see Amelia Earhart’s mug turning up on Jap recruiting posters.”

  “Then…” she began, in halting horror. “Then…why did you come? If you knew—”

  “Amy, full-scale war is around the next corner. Your death sentence has been passed already; it just hasn’t been carried out yet. No, I knew going in that I had to bring you back with me, or leave you to die. You said it yourself: that hotel room may be pretty damn nice for a prison cell, but a prison cell is exactly what it is.”

  “Yes,” she admitted. “Yes it is.”

  “Now—are you ready for where this really turns nasty?”

  She laughed hollowly. “You’re kidding, right?”

  I nodded up toward the mustached statue of the sugar baron. “Don’t let ’em kid you, baby. Garapan isn’t a boom town ’cause of sugar; Saipan isn’t thriving ’cause of dried fish, or sheds full of copra. The chief product here is war…they haven’t harvested it yet, but they’re planting, and the yield is gonna be something fierce.”

  She thought that over, and swallowed, and said, “And how does that affect me?”

  “Understand, they’ve kept you here because Saipan’s been a suitably out-of-the-way pimple on Nowhere’s ass; not a bad place at all to keep a famous person like you under wraps. But with the fortification of this floating fly speck, and its advantageous position in the Pacific—perfectly located for either side, where long-range bombers are concerned—Saipan’s going to be a major target of the coming war. So, I gather from my new best friend Chief Suzuki, a decision has to be made about you and Fred Noonan.”

  “A decision.”

  “Yeah—about finding you a new home. One possibility is Tokyo. The imperial government, the chief tells me, is impressed by your propaganda value. They feel you might possibly be…turned. That you might come over to their side, and became a major embarrassment to your homeland.”

  “But I’ve only cooperated to keep Fred and me alive,” she said, half-enraged, half-defensive. “I mean, of course I felt betrayed and abandoned, by G. P. and Franklin…but that didn’t turn me into some kind of traitor!”

  It had to be asked: “How exactly have you cooperated?”

  She smiled nervously, shrugging. “Well, you know, they fished the Electra out of the waters…they put her in slings and hauled her up onto the deck of that battleship that picked us up, Fred and me. I don’t exactly know how they got the plane to Saipan…Fred said on a barge, though I heard later someone actually flew it here, and badly, crash-landing through some trees onto the beach near the harbor…. Anyway, Chief Suzuki, who’s been very nice to me, said that things would be better for me, and for Fred too, if I would answer a few simple questions about my ship.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes, out at Aslito field. Over a period of several months, I spoke with pilots and engineers, about the plane and its various capabilities. I mean, it wasn’t a fighter plane, what was the harm? These engineers were from a Tokyo firm called, uh…Mits-something.”

  “Mitsubishi?”

  “Maybe…. Anyway, they made all sorts of repairs, and we took the ship up a few times…that was the last time I was in a plane. Just a passenger, though. Far as I know, the Electra’s still sitting in a hangar out at Aslito airfield. It’s certainly not going anywhere without its engines.”

  I blinked. “Without…its engines?”

  “Yes, the last time I saw the ship, maybe six months ago, the engine
s’d been removed.”

  Shipped off to Tokyo for further study.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her flying laboratory had become the blueprint for the revamped Japanese fighter plane, the new and improved Zero. Her own disdain for war, and her love for flying, had created in her a deadly naïvete. On the other hand, it had helped keep her alive.

  “Is, uh, Fred aware of how you’ve cooperated?”

  The idea of that seemed almost to frighten her. “No! Oh my goodness, no—I’ve never admitted any of this to him. I know he wouldn’t approve, and it would just agitate him. He has it so terrible, as it is….”

  “I’m afraid, Amy, that Fred’s problems are going to be over very soon. That ‘nice’ Chief Suzuki informs me that the imperial government has approved Fred Noonan’s execution.”

  I’d hit her with so many blows, she was almost punchy; she could barely reply. “W-what?”

  “There’s no way to sugar-coat this. I heard it from Suzuki’s own lips. Fred Noonan is considered a dangerous prisoner, uncooperative, belligerent, but most important, he’s a spy, and as such will be executed…and Chief Suzuki feels that you, despite being a fine and beautiful human being, are also a spy, and should face the same fate.”

  “Why did he tell you this?”

  “Because he asked me…or rather, he asked Father O’Leary of the I.R.A.…to ascertain your true feelings about the Japanese.”

  She was shaking her head, as if she were reeling. “True feelings…?”

  “Are you sympathetic enough toward the Japanese, and bitter enough toward FDR and the United States, to come over to their side, as a valuable propaganda voice? To help them demonstrate that, as early as 1937, the United States committed an act of war upon imperial Japan?”

  She was holding her head in her hands as if trying to keep it from exploding. “How this nightmare could become a greater nightmare, I never imagined…but it has…it has….”

  “The chief also wanted me to ascertain whether or not your sympathies could be maintained even after the execution of your cohort. Of course, they may try telling you he died of dysentery or dengue fever—”