by Bill Schutt
In New York, during World War II, the state-sponsored snatching of children from adoptive parents of German ancestry (the great calamity that turned R. J. MacCready increasingly toward solitude when we meet him at Waller Field) was a little-known but actual occurrence. In the family of one of the author’s friends, this happened to Emily H., an adoptive mother who was indeed called “Führer” during a decision that turned out to be anything but a fair hearing. Emily H. survived, as did the real Brigitte, though just barely. Emily’s husband, Will, an American World War I veteran doomed by mustard gas exposure, spent his last days barely able to speak, poking an index finger against a photograph of little Brigitte and begging to see her again.
The “Sparrow” seen perfecting a pan drum in Trinidad is based on “Mighty Sparrow,” an influential calypsonian (born Slinger Francisco, in 1935) who actually made his professional debut in the 1950s. In 1956, Sparrow won the first Calypso King competition with his song “Jean and Dinah.” The Allied base at Waller Field is described as it existed in 1944. World War II for the Trinidadians ushered in American soldiers, their dollars, and their refuse—most notably, fifty-five-gallon oil drums that offered local musicians a large surface area that could produce a far greater range of notes than the paint cans and biscuit tins they had been experimenting with since the 1930s. And while we’re on the topic of music, “Junk Ain’t Junk No More” was a real jingle—part of a series of public service announcements related to the use of junk and scrap metal for the war effort. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaD161ENV10.
The downgrading of the fictional Bob Thorne’s academic credentials, essentially for being Jewish, came at a time when such actions were common abroad and even in some institutions in the United States. The Manhattan Project was full of Jewish scientists whose degrees had to be reverified under the authority of what later became known as the Atomic Energy Commission. A major New York City university was among the American institutions that, near the start of World War II, downgraded the degrees of Jewish students and limited the numbers of Jewish students who could be admitted. One of those students, Isaac Asimov, would become a famed author. In the first volume of his autobiography, the 1938 graduate recorded that a year later the same metropolitan university announced officially that it would accept no more Jewish students from New York. While moving to Boston Medical School, Asimov discovered that he and other Jewish students had their credentials downgraded to second-class degrees. Asimov wrote: “The thought that even in graduation I was pettily discriminated against irritated me mightily” (Asimov, 1979), and he swore that the only thing the perpetrators would ever be remembered for was what he wrote about them in his autobiography. Additionally, the conversation related by Voorhees to Wolff, between Asimov and Harold Urey, also occurred. Whatever the source of Urey’s difficulties with Asimov, they stood apart from religious persecutions of World War II, for until his death in 1981, Urey respected people of all faiths. The problem appears to have been strictly a conflict of personalities, arising from Asimov (a teenage student at the time), who made some dangerously good guesses about what was evolving behind closed doors (with Urey) into the Manhattan Project—and who began publishing science fiction stories with such alarming titles as “Source of Power,” “Super-Neutron,” and “The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use.”
The reality behind the I-400 names: Nostromo was the title of a 1904 novel by Joseph Conrad as well as the name of the spacecraft in director Ridley Scott’s film Alien. The name of the second submarine goes back to the mythical daughter of Kronos and Rhea—and the mother (with Zeus) of Persephone. In his novel Dracula, Bram Stoker named his ill-fated ship (which ran aground and was found “mostly” abandoned) Demeter. The I-400 submarines themselves were in fact built, as described in this novel. They were undersea aircraft carriers, able to launch a trio of single-engine bombers stored in their enormous hangars.
The vampire catfish, or candiru, is real. Along the Amazon tributaries, the urethra-penetrating abilities of these tiny fish (actually a family of catfishes) is indeed more feared than piranha. In reality, although grisly stories abound, only one person has officially had his urethra invaded by a candiru—an attack that occurred while the man was wading in thigh-high water. While researching Dark Banquet, his book on the natural history of blood-feeding creatures, author Schutt asked Stephen Spotte, ichthyologist and the world’s foremost authority on the biology of candiru, what the odds of an attack would be if someone were to urinate in a candiru-infested stream. “About the same odds as being struck by lightning while being eaten by a great white shark,” Spotte assured Schutt.
The giant turtles inhabiting the swamp near the Mato Grosso Plateau are real, but extinct. Stupendemys geographicus lived in South America approximately three million years ago. Its shell was ten feet long, and the animal weighed between 2.0 and 2.5 tons. Although capable of severing limbs and snapping spines in two, it is quite unlikely that this species survived long enough to have encountered humans.
Whence came the Xavante: The lost cities of the upper Xingu region of Brazil’s state of Mato Grosso are real. Throughout the twentieth century, the remnants of causeways, canals, bridges, and stonework, through which MacCready trekked, existed only as vague and often fantastical descriptions, in local tales told by natives about ancient “ghost cities.” (During Schutt’s studies on the biology of vampire bats, he also worked in the Mato Grosso.) Although the plateau fortress and its draculae tomb remain stoneworks of fiction, the mythical lost cities, pursued by the ill-fated Percy Harrison Fawcett, are proving to be quite real. Until the twenty-first century, with its slash-and-burn farming, the search for dam sites and natural gas, and renewed exploration, most anthropologists and archaeologists believed that the Amazon Basin and indeed all of central Brazil (including the Rio Xingu region) had been pristine and sparsely populated up to and through the arrival of European colonists. Despite stories about lost cities, consensus thinking, by 2003, held that aside from nomadic tribespeople, the land was an archaeological black hole.
University of Florida anthropologist Michael Heckenberger was among the first explorers to take advantage of road building and strip-mine style farming practices to actually roam freely through, and to probe archaeologically, a world that had remained hidden from Percy Fawcett nearly a century earlier. Canals, farming settlements, building foundations, and terra-cotta cooking pots (unearthed from ancient settlements and studied for traces of their former organic contents) revealed that carefully rotated crops and great quantities of farm-raised fish supported towns approaching the population of modern-day Ithaca, New York (30,000 people). From everything we now know, the mythical Golden City of Eldorado might actually have existed.
Heckenberger spent more than two years living with the Kuikuro tribe and reported that the people are familiar with the earthworks and other peculiarities of the landscape. The upper Rio Xingu region, he reported, “[h]ad an economy that supported a large number of people in multiple large villages integrated across the region into a grid-like system. Their rotational [fishery]-agricultural and settlement cycle essentially transformed the entire natural landscape” (Heckenberger et al., 2003). The agricultural methods at the base of intervillage commerce were evidently more sophisticated than, and very unlike, modern slash-and-burn farming practices. The towns were arranged in a “galactic” pattern around a central hub. Nineteen such agricultural cities, in two large clusters, were connected by roads. “Virtually the entire area between major settlements was carefully engineered and managed,” Heckenberger wrote. His team found linear mounds or “curbs” positioned at the margins of major roads—“and circular plazas and bridges, artificial river obstructions and ponds, raised causeways, canals, and orchards.” The earliest construction phases began about A.D. 800, and the civilization lasted until A.D. 1600. A hundred years later, all of these structures had been swallowed by the forest, and the civilization lived on only in mythology. The upper Rio Xingu region of Mato Grosso and Hell’s Ga
te is so remote that Europeans did not reach the area until about 1750, more than two hundred years after the first colonists established a foothold in Brazil. The disappearance of the canal and bridge builders was likely the result of newly introduced diseases (including influenza) that moved along native trade routes ahead of the people from the east. Current estimates suggest that up to 90 percent of the population was felled by diseases to which the Europeans had long ago become virtually immune. Today’s Kuikuro, Xinguano, and Xavante tribes are descended from the disease-resistant survivors of the people who built the cities.
The jazz band’s visit to the Central Park Zoo (referred to in our story as the Central Park Menagerie) was a real event (as were the elephants), though the actual event took place in 1921. The poorly executed “experiment” (read, “publicity stunt”) scared some of the animals and enraged others. According to a reporter from the St. Petersburg Times, “Betsy and Jewel, the elephants, seemed to enjoy the music immensely, but Professor E. L. Davis of Columbia, pointed out that the pachyderms had probably followed a circus band. So there was a reason for their enjoyment that could be easily explained.” Modern zoo experts knew that, at only six acres, the zoo was too small to house large animals like elephants, rhinos, and lions, and so most of the larger animals were removed (although sea lions and bears remain). A major renovation in the 1980s transformed the Central Park Zoo into the beautiful, and essentially cageless, institution that exists today.
Finally, the discovery that elephants can communicate by producing low-frequency sounds is absolutely true . . . although it wasn’t determined until decades after Yanni’s fictional work with a baritone sax.
Acknowledgments
From Bill Schutt and J. R. Finch
The authors would like to thank Gillian MacKenzie for her hard work, great advice, and perseverance in getting our nightmares off the ground. Thanks also to Kirsten Wolff and Allison Devereux of the Gillian MacKenzie Agency.
We also thank Rebecca Lucash, Tom Pitoniak, and the entire production team at William Morrow.
Both of us are extremely grateful to Patricia J. Wynne for the amazing figures of Brazilian wildlife that grace our novel.
Special thanks also go out to James Cameron for his encouragement and kind words, and for The Years of Living Dangerously, his excellent documentary series about rainforests and other habitats threatened by human activity.
For their firsthand knowledge of the German WWII rocket programs, rocket-planes, and the world’s first true “space ship” (the Apollo lander), we thank Tom Kelly, George Skurla, and Al Munier (Northrop/Grumman), General Tom Stafford, Fred Haise, Jr., Alan B. Shepard, Jr., Harrison Schmitt, and Michael Collins.
Finally, we owe much to our talented editor, Lyssa Keusch at William Morrow, who had faith in us and contributed much to improving our tale. We knew that someone would fall in love with this story and we’re thrilled that it was you. See you in Tibet.
From Bill Schutt
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my friends and colleagues in the bat research community and at my favorite place in the world, the American Museum of Natural History. They include Ricky Adams, Wieslaw Bogdanowicz, Frank Bonaccorso, Mark Brigham, Patricia Brunauer (RIP), Deanna Byrnes, Catherine Doyle-Capitman, Betsy Dumont (who was there in Hell’s Gate with me), Neil Duncan, Nicole Edmison, the late Art Greenhall (whose hunch that Desmodus draculae might still be alive today served to fire his student’s imagination), “Uncle” Roy Horst, Tigga Kingston, Mary Knight, Karl Koopman (RIP), Tom Kunz, Gary Kwiecinski, Ross MacPhee, Eva Meade and Rob Mies (Organization for Bat Conservation), Shahroukh Mistry, Mike Novacek, Stuart Parsons, Scott Pedersen, Nancy Simmons (It’s good to know the Queen), Elizabeth Sweeny, Ian Tattersall, Merlin Tuttle, Rob Voss, and Eileen Westwig.
I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have had several incredible mentors in my educational and professional life. None was more important than John W. Hermanson (Cornell University, Field of Zoology), who took a chance in 1990 by taking me on as his first Ph.D. student. John not only taught me to think like a scientist but also the value of figuring things out for myself.
A very special thanks to my close friend and coconspirator, Leslie Nesbitt Sittlow.
My dear friends Darrin Lunde and Patricia J. Wynne were instrumental in helping us develop this project from a vague idea into a finished novel.
A special thank-you goes out to my teachers, readers, and supporters at the Southampton College Summer Writer’s Conference, especially Bob Reeves, Bharati Mukherjee, Clark Blaise, and Helen Simonson.
At Southampton College (RIP) and LIU Post, thanks and gratitude to Ted Brummel, Scott Carlin, Matt Draud, Gina Famulare, Paul Forestell, Art Goldberg, Katherine Hill-Miller, Jeff Kane, Howard Reisman, and Steve Tettlebach. Thanks also to my LIU graduate students (Maria Armour, Aja Marcato, and Megan Mladinich), who often found themselves along for this sometimes bumpy ride.
Thanks and love also go out to Bob Adamo—my late best friend and the inspiration for the character Bob Thorn. Rock on, Dimi!
To my cousin Richard, who wanted to die in my novel, and to LK and MV, who may not have, but did anyway.
Sincere thanks goes out to John E.A. Bertram, John Bodnar, Chris Chapin, Alice Cooper, John Glusman, Chris Grant, Kim Grant, John Halsey (Peconic Land Trust), Gary Johnson, Kathy Kennedy, Bob Lorzing, Suzanne Finnamore Luckenbach (who predicted it all), Deedra McClearn, Elaine Markson, Carrie McKenna, Farouk Muradali (my mentor in Trinidad), Ruth O’Leary, the Pedersen family and various offshoots, Gerard, Oda and Dominique Ramsawak (for their friendship and all things Trinidadian), Isabella Rossellini, Jerry Ruotolo (my great friend and favorite photographer), James “Camuto Jim” Ryan, Laura Schlecker, Richard Sinclair, Edwin J. Spicka (my mentor at the State University of New York at Geneseo), Katherine Turman (Nights with Alice Cooper), and Janny van Beem (the real inspiration for Yanni). Special thanks also go out to Mrs. Dorothy Wachter—for listening patiently, nearly forty years ago, when I told her I wanted to write a thriller. I think she would have loved the story that J. R. and I came up with.
Finally, my eternal thanks and love go out to my family for their patience, love, encouragement, and unwavering support, especially Janet Schutt, Billy Schutt, Chuck and Eileen Schutt, Bobby and Dee Schutt, my grandparents (Angelo and Millie DiDonato), all my Aunt Roses, and of course, my late parents, Bill and Marie Schutt.
Selected Bibliography
Altenbach, J. S. “Locomotor morphology of the vampire bat Desmodus rotundus.” American Society of Mammologists Special Publication 6 (1979): 1–137.
Asimov, Isaac. In Memory Yet Green. New York: Doubleday, 1979.
Brown, David E. Vampiro: The Vampire Bat in Fact and Fantasy. Silver City, NM: High-Lonesome Books, 1994.
Duffy, James P. Target America: Hitler’s Plan to Attack the United States. Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2012.
Emmons, Louise, and François Feer. Neotropical Rainforest Mammals: A Field Guide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Fleming, Peter. Brazilian Adventure. Evanston, IL: Northwestern/Marlboro Press, 1999.
Garlinski, Jozef. Hitler’s Last Weapons. New York: Times Books, 1978.
Georg, Friedrich. Hitler’s Miracle Weapons. Solihull, England: Helion, 2005.
Greenhall, Arthur M., and Uwe Schmidt, eds. Natural History of Vampire Bats. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1988.
Griehl, Manfred. Luftwaffe Over America. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2004.
Harris, Sheldon H. Factories of Death. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.
Heckenberger, M., et al. “Amazonia 1492: Pristine forest or cultural parkland.” Science, September 22, 2003.
Herwig, Dieter, and Heinz Rode. Luftwaffe Secret Projects: Strategic Bombers, 1935–1945. Leicester, England: Midland, 2000.
Hogg, Ian V. German Secret Weapons of the Second World War. New York: Fall River Press, 1999.
Hyland, Gary, and Anton Gill. Last Talons of the Eagle. London: Headline Books, 1998.
&n
bsp; Middlebrook, Martin. The Peenemünde Raid. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1982.
Morgan, G. S., O. J. Linares, and C. E. Ray. “New species of fossil vampire bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera: Desmodontidae) from Florida and Venezuela.” Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 101 (1988): 912–28.
Myhra, David. Sänger: Germany’s Orbital Rocket-Bomber in World War II. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Military History Books, 2002.
Nash, Douglas E. Hell’s Gate: The Battle of the Cherkassy Pocket. Southbury, CT: RZM Imports, 2001.
Neufield, Michael J. The Rocket and the Reich. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 1995.
Piszkiewicz, Dennis. From Nazi Test Pilot to Hitler’s Bunker: The Fantastic Flights of Hanna Reitsch. London: Praeger, 1997.
Rhodes, Anthony. Propaganda—The Art of Persuasion: World War II. New York: Chelsea House, 1993.
Schutt, Bill. Dark Banquet: Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood-Feeding Creatures. New York: Crown, 2008.
Schutt, W. A., Jr. “Chiropteran hindlimb morphology and the origin of blood-feeding in bats.” In T. H. Kunz and P. A. Racy, eds., Bat Biology and Conservation. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 1998.
. “Functional morphology of the common vampire bat, Desmodus rotundus,” Journal of Experimental Biology 200, no. 23 (1998): 3003–3012.
Smith, Anthony. Mato Grosso. New York: Dutton, 1971.
Wilkinson, G. “Reciprocal food sharing in vampire bats.” Nature 308 (1984): 181.
Ziemke, Earl F. The Soviet Juggernaut. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1980.
About the Authors