by John Wilson
We piled back into Felip’s car and merged back onto the highway. I looked back at the parking lot and spotted three black SUVs. I was becoming paranoid.
EIGHT
As we wound past the Sierra Nevada mountains, Laia and I worked on the notebook pages. It was slow going, decoding the message one letter at a time, and it took us a while to recognize that Grandfather had reverted to English, but we eventually ended up with a collection of seemingly unrelated phrases.
moron saboteur
could not stop
the fifth unknown
hid so gorky would not find
must stay hidden
too dangerous
finding would be a larger betrayal
rock fall fourteen
“Does any of this mean anything to you?” Laia asked after we had stared at the phrases for a few kilometers.
“No,” I replied. “It almost seems as if Grandfather is speaking in riddles. What makes the saboteur a moron? Are they stupid because they didn’t do something Grandfather wanted?”
Laia shrugged. “Okay. Let’s write down the question—”
“Or questions,” I interjected.
“—or questions that we have for each phrase.” She turned over the printout and wrote, moron saboteur. Beside it she wrote, Who is the moron saboteur? Why a moron?
“And what did he or she sabotage?” I added.
We went down the list and ended up with:
• moron saboteur—Who is the moron saboteur? Why a moron? What sabotaged?
• could not stop—Stop what? Himself?
• the fifth unknown—Fifth what? What are the four knowns? Or four unknowns?
• hid so gorky wouldn’t find—Hide what? Who or what is gorky?
• must stay hidden—What must stay hidden? Why? From gorky?
• too dangerous—What is too dangerous? The thing that must stay hidden? Gorky?
• finding would be a larger betrayal—A larger betrayal than what? Betrayal of who or what?
• rock fall fourteen—A fall of fourteen rocks? Are there thirteen other rockfalls?
“That’s a lot of questions,” Laia commented when we had finished.
“At least we have a focus now,” I said, trying to sound positive although I thought it was a depressingly long list.
“Several focuses,” Laia said, “and we still don’t know what the ten lines of numbers mean.”
“Let’s look at them again,” I said.
372490
17798
372437
18120
372478
17911
371893
17021
373559
18601
“There does seem to be a pattern in the length of the numbers,” Laia mused. “It’s like one of those puzzles where you have to find the next number in a sequence. I can never do them.”
I had an idea. “Maybe we shouldn’t think of them as ten sequences of numbers. Maybe they’re pairs: 372490/17798, 372437/18120 and so on. That would make five pairs and that might relate to the fifth unknown.”
“Interesting,” Laia said, “but we still don’t know what they mean. 372490 and 17798—are they weights or numbers of…something?”
“Are those the numbers on the pages you showed me in the café?” Felip asked over his shoulder.
“Yes,” Laia and I said at the same time.
“Read them out to me, slowly,” Felip asked.
We had only managed the first four when Felip interrupted. “I know what those are.”
“What?” we shouted from the backseat.
Felip picked his handheld GPS off the dash and tossed it back to us. “Plug them into this,” he said. “Your numbers are locations—latitude and longitude—37 degrees 24 minutes 90 seconds north and 1 degree 77 minutes 98 seconds west.”
“Five locations,” Laia shouted triumphantly. She hunched over the GPS and punched numbers in while I peered at the screen, holding my breath. The machine sat for what seemed an age and then a map appeared with a tiny red cross on it—right beside the village of Palomares.
“It’s in Palomares,” Laia said breathlessly.
The next two locations formed a line right through Palomares. “There must be a mistake,” Laia said when the fourth location showed nothing but a red cross on a blue background. “There’s nothing here.”
“Can you change the scale on this?” I asked. Laia pressed some buttons and a coastline appeared. The red cross was about eight kilometers offshore. “Those must be the locations of the four bombs from the B-52. Three landed around Palomares and the fourth fell in the sea and took months to find. Where’s the last location?”
Once more Laia’s fingers worked. The final red cross was in the hills, a few kilometers inland from Palomares. “The four known and the fifth unknown?” I speculated.
“I’m sure it’s the four known bombs,” Laia said, “but there wasn’t a fifth one. Felip, could there have been a fifth bomb on board the B-52?”
He shook his head. “No. Throughout Chrome Dome, every B-52 carried four bombs, each of which had a specified target inside the Soviet Union if they were ordered to fly in.”
“What if it’s not a complete bomb but the plutonium core from one of the four that broke apart?” I asked.
“It’s possible,” Felip said, but he sounded far from convinced. “The Americans found three bombs in the first twenty-four hours. It would have been obvious if something as large as the plutonium core was missing, and they would have found it. It was the size of a soccer ball, and they searched everywhere—photographs from the time show lines of men in masks, shoulder to shoulder, walking over the landscape. They would have found it.”
“Unless it was hidden,” Laia said. “Hidden so that ‘gorky’ couldn’t find it.”
“Now you’ve been reading too many mystery stories,” Felip said with a laugh. “There weren’t spies running all over the hills like in one of your James Bond movies.”
“You said there was a Soviet spy ship and probably spies on land,” I pointed out. Felip nodded slowly. “And why did the Americans spend such a long time searching around Palomares if they found the first three bombs on the first day and the fourth was underwater?” I asked.
“They wanted to clean up everything,” Felip said, but he didn’t sound quite so certain. “There were many pieces of the two planes that had to be cleaned up as well.”
“But they could have been looking for a fifth bomb,” I said.
“It’s possible, I suppose. But why then did they leave without it?”
“Maybe they took it with them and didn’t tell anyone,” I said. “Maybe they thought someone else had found it, or maybe they just didn’t want more of a fuss. They didn’t want to look even more stupid after it took them so long to find and bring up the fourth bomb. Perhaps they thought if they couldn’t find it, no one could.”
“It’s all a bit of a stretch,” Felip said.
“Okay,” Laia joined in, “but can we go and look while we’re in Palomares? It won’t take long with the GPS.”
Felip sighed. I suspected this wasn’t the first time Laia had talked him into doing something unplanned. “If there’s time,” he said.
Laia turned to look at me, smiled and winked broadly.
“I saw that,” Felip said. I glanced at the rearview mirror. I could tell from Felip’s eyes that he was smiling too.
“So,” Laia said, “the fifth unknown is part of a bomb…”
“Possibly,” Felip said from the front.
Laia grimaced, but she continued, “Possibly, the fifth unknown is part of a bomb. The four knowns are the four known bombs at Palomares.” She waited and looked pointedly at the back of Felip’s head. He said nothing, fixing his eyes on the road ahead.
“The fifth bomb landed in the hills and was hidden from gorky because it was too dangerous.”
“And the bomb was hidden behind the fourteenth rockfall,” I said, worried t
hat we were building too much of our story on speculation. “We’re guessing at an awful lot. And how does the stupid saboteur fit into this?”
Felip laughed. “You think the saboteur was stupid?”
“Yes,” I said indignantly. “That’s what moron means.”
“I know,” Felip agreed, laughter still in his voice, “but Base Aérea de Morón is an American Air Force base outside Seville.” Laia and I stared at her father. “What is more,” Felip went on, “Morón is where the refueling planes left from to meet up with the returning B-52s in 1966.”
“So there was a saboteur—who’s not stupid—at Morón Air Base, planning to bring down a B-52 over Spain in 1966.” Laia was speaking quickly as she continued to build our theory. “He or she succeeds, and four or five bombs fall over Palomares.”
Laia looked at me with a triumphant smile on her face. I couldn’t share her excitement. What if Grandfather was the saboteur? What if he really was a traitor?
NINE
“Palomares has changed a lot since 1966,” Felip explained as we stood beside a high wire fence with several Beware Radiation signs on it. “Back then it was a dusty village of a few hundred people who made a living growing tomatoes. Now…” Felip’s voice trailed off, but it was obvious what he meant as he waved his hand toward the glistening Mediterranean. The blue water two kilometers away was just visible between white-painted villas and resort hotels lining the beach.
“It’s the Spanish miracle,” Felip continued, his voice heavy with irony. “In forty years, we have created one of the largest cities in Europe—in a long, thin strip from Gibraltar to France—and most of the residents are not Spanish. Tens of thousands of aged northern Europeans who want to retire in the sun live here year-round, and millions who want to escape for a couple of weeks in the summer visit. It’s probably easier to get fish and chips and English beer here than in Canada.”
“And Chad Everet wants to build a new resort here?” I pointed through the fence at the unpromising-looking scrub.
“He is a man of vision,” Felip said, “and he’s punctual.” I looked to where he was pointing and saw a cloud of dust rising from the dirt track we had followed from the main road.
“This isn’t one of the locations,” Laia said. She had been busy with Felip’s GPS ever since we’d arrived. Her brow was furrowed in concentration. “Are we wrong about the numbers being the bomb locations?”
“No,” Felip said. “None of the bombs fell here. The wind blew some plutonium contamination here from the explosion of number two. Look, I’m going to be tied up with this guy for a couple of hours. If you walk back into town, you pass the places where bombs number one and three fell. The GPS will tell you where. You can’t miss it: the road is Calle las Bombardas—the street of the bombers. There’s a café on the edge of town called Pedro’s. I’ll meet you there in about two hours.”
“Sounds good,” Laia said.
A sleek silver BMW Z4 pulled up beside Felip’s vehicle. The door opened and Chad stepped out and stretched. “Buenas tardes, señor Aguilar. ¿Cómo estás?” he said in a polished Spanish accent as he held out his hand.
Felip shook Chad’s hand and replied in equally flawless English. “I’m well, thank you. I trust you had no trouble finding us.”
“None at all. Always rely on the good old GPS.” Chad’s gaze flicked over Laia and rested on me. “And I believe I know you,” he said.
“We met on the plane,” I said as we shook hands. His hand was smooth and dry, even in the afternoon heat. It made my hand feel grubby and clammy.
“I remember. Good to meet you again, Steve. And this must be your friend from Barcelona.” He shook hands with Laia.
“My daughter, Laia,” Felip said. “They’re just heading into town to do some looking around while we get on with business.”
“Perfect,” Chad said, flashing his expensive teeth. “You kids have fun.”
“Thanks,” I said as Laia and I turned and headed toward the road.
“What a smooth operator,” Laia said as soon as we were out of earshot.
“He’s the most boring person I’ve ever met,” I said. “And there’s something about him I don’t trust.”
“Yeah, he’s too smooth,” Laia agreed. “Still, if he helps the people of Palomares get all the radioactivity cleaned up, that’s good.”
I nodded. “The area looks pretty depressed.” The low, dry hills around us were crisscrossed by truck and ATV trails. Strange pieces of rusted machinery dotted the landscape, and farther off I could see broken-down walls and chimneys from what I assumed were abandoned factories. It looked like a film set from an end-of-the-world movie.
“More than two thousand years ago, this was one of the richest places in the world. There are hundreds of old mines in the hills around here, and the silver from them made Carthage the most powerful nation in the Mediterranean—until the Romans defeated them and took over the mines, and then they became the most powerful nation.”
“Has there been mining more recently?” I asked, looking at the ruins in the distance.
“Some,” Laia said, “but nothing like in ancient times.”
We walked along the dirt road in silence for a while, just happy to be together. Then something that had been nagging at the back of my mind crystallized. I stopped. “Chad knew my name.”
“You met him before,” Laia pointed out. “You must have told him on the plane.”
“I didn’t,” I said. “I barely said anything to him on the plane. He did all the talking. Even then, I didn’t trust him.”
“Maybe Felip told him,” Laia said as we began walking again. “He must have said we’d be here with him for the meeting.”
“I guess,” I said, “although I can’t see why Felip would mention my name. And anyway, don’t you think it’s quite the coincidence that the person who sat beside me on the plane should turn up here for a business meeting with Felip?”
“Coincidences happen. What are you suggesting—that there’s a huge conspiracy around your visit here? That’s even wilder than our interpretation of your grandfather’s code. There’s no conspiracy, and whatever happened all those years ago is forgotten. It’s interesting to try and work it all out, but that’s all.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I said. What Laia said made sense, but there had to be something else going on. The coincidences were piling up, and the only common link I could see was Grandfather’s coded message.
“This is where the first bomb fell.” We had reached a narrow paved road, and Laia was standing looking at a shallow streambed. “It’s the one that landed intact because its parachute opened in time to slow its fall. So if bomb number five is the plutonium core from one of the four known bombs, then it’s not from this one. The tail section of the B-52 landed up there.” Laia pointed up the small valley. There was nothing to show that anything unusual—especially one of the most serious nuclear accidents ever—had disturbed this unremarkable spot. Only the flickering numbers on the GPS and what we had learned from Felip and a couple of quick Internet searches told us where we were and what had happened here.
“What must it have been like that day?” I wondered out loud as we walked on. “An explosion in the sky, then flaming wreckage, bodies and four nuclear bombs raining from the heavens on this sleepy village. I read on one of the websites that one of the first Americans to arrive found the villagers picking up pieces of the dead crew members and trying to work out which part went with which body.”
We walked in silence, imagining the horror of that January morning. The focus of what we’d read had always been on the four nuclear bombs and the search for them. The human element had often been missed. Seven men—the entire four-man crew of the refueling plane from Morón Air Base and three of the B-52 crew—had died, their bodies horribly mutilated, either in the fiery explosion or the fall from 30,000 feet. Large pieces of flaming wreckage had landed all around the village—miraculously, missing the local school and any houses.
In seconds, the lives of everyone in an entire community had changed forever.
It was a horrifying tragedy, but I couldn’t get my personal worries out of my mind. DJ and the others had certainly discovered something about Grandfather that he had managed to keep secret from his close family. Had it been something sinister? I wondered what the cousins were doing and what they had discovered. I made a mental note to text DJ that evening to let him know what we had found out so far. I wished I could talk to him. He was always so rational and sure. Even when he was wrong, he sounded right, and that was comforting. But he wasn’t here. He was chasing his own mysteries in England.
“Do you think Grandfather might have been the saboteur at Morón?” I blurted out.
Laia stopped and stared at me. “You don’t honestly believe that could be possible, do you?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I’m really confused. Grandfather certainly had a whole secret life, and someone thought he was a traitor.”
“Steve, sometimes you think too much,” Laia said. “Can you see the young man who fought against the Fascists being a traitor?” I shook my head. “Or the old man who put so much thought into giving each of his grandsons the perfect task?” Again I shook my head. “Then those are the things you have to hold in your mind. The grandfather you knew couldn’t be a traitor, so whoever wrote that must be wrong.”
“I guess so,” I said. I loved Laia for being so certain, but it wasn’t that simple. “What do we really know about what the world was like back in 1966? People thought the world was on the brink of destruction and that all they had to look forward to, if they were lucky, was surviving in a nuclear wasteland. Revolution was in the air. What if Grandfather tried to sabotage something at the air base to bring attention to the dangers of the Chrome Dome project and it went horribly wrong?”
“I can’t believe that,” Laia said, her eyes boring into me until I felt distinctly uncomfortable. “Your grandfather would never have done anything that put people’s lives in danger, even for what he thought was a good cause.”