Flying Blind

little bit of time.”

“To do what? Who the hell are you?”

“It’s not important…. Nate Heller.”

His eyes narrowed even tighter, and glittered. “I know that name….”

“Old friend of Amelia’s.”

He began to nod, smile. “More than a friend….”

Apparently, on their long flight, he and Amy had shared a few secrets.

“Listen,” I said, “the Yellow Peril out there thinks I’m an I.R.A. priest….”

Noonan, an Irishman himself, chuckled. “Not a bad way to get onto this hellhole island. But why would you want to?”

“Our loving uncle sent me to see if you and Amelia were guests of Hirohito.”

“The answer is yes…. I hope you didn’t come alone.”

“Afraid I did—I got a way out of here tonight, though.” I glanced around the concrete bunker. “Is there any way I can bust you out of this hatbox?”

He laughed the most humorless of laughs from deep in his sunken chest. “A small army couldn’t…” Then, with sudden urgency, he said, “But you can take Amelia! They got her in this hotel over—”

“I know. I spent the afternoon with her.” I slipped a hand through the bars and onto his shoulder; and squeezed. “But she won’t go without you.”

He backed away from my touch, eyes so wide they filled the sockets. “That’s crazy! She has to….”

“When do they let you into the exercise yard?”

“Not more’n once a week, and I was just out there yesterday. No set schedule.”

“Damn.” I checked the window again; Mutt-san and Jeff-san were still smoking. “Fred. If you’ll forgive the familiarity…”

“I’ll let it slide this once.”

My hands gripped the bars as if I were the prisoner. “Chief Suzuki sent me in here to see if you’d spill your guts to a priest…a last-ditch effort to get something out of a very stubborn prisoner.”

He was studying me like he must have studied his charts. “You sayin’ what I think you’re sayin’?”

“You’re under a sentence of death. Today, tomorrow, a week, maybe two. But probably no more. I’m sorry.”

Another hollow laugh. “You’re sorry…”

“Amelia’s under the same death sentence. She thinks she can manipulate these clowns, but we know better, don’t we? She’s already spilled a lot, Fred, about the souped-up aspects of the Electra….”

The yellow teeth clenched in the nest of beard, and he spat, “Damn it, anyway. That’s a pacifist for you. Damn it…. Listen, Nate, you gotta get her offa this island. She doesn’t deserve this fate.” He shook his head. “Me, I knew what I was getting into. I’m military; she’s civilian. It was wrong how they used her…hell. How we used her. She didn’t even know we were flyin’ over the Mandates, till—”

“I can get her out tonight, Fred.”

“Then do it!”

“You have to do it. You have to help me convince Amelia to leave you behind. Can you think of some way to do that?”

He lowered his head; he laughed but no sound came out. Then he said, “Yeah.”

“I mean, some message….”

“I know what you mean.”

“…I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry.”

I was. It was a hell of a thing I was asking.

“I better go,” I said.

I offered him my hand, and, twisted arm or not, he shook it, with a firm grip worthy of the adventurer who had helped chart the Pacific for Pan Am, not to mention his country.

I turned away.

“Heller! Nate….”

“Yeah…?”

“I got a wife.” He swallowed and his eyes were brimming with tears. “Didn’t have her very long, but she was a honey. Mary Beatrice. Some people call her Bea, but I like Mary. That’s what I call Amelia, too…. Smartest thing I ever did, marrying that girl, followed by the dumbest. Would you tell her something for me?”

“Sure.”

“…Make it something nice.”