the truth about Susheela the Ninth. I could tell him she was the last of her kind among the Meq; I could tell him she had once known famous painters, princes, and queens; I could even tell him she possessed unique mental powers, but I could never tell him one thing — her true and actual age. He would never believe me. With the engines still running, Jack opened the door. The sound was deafening. He lowered the ladder, saluted the two pilots, and we stepped out of the plane and onto the ground. Jack waved us toward an empty hangar while the big transport turned around and taxied off to another runway. The last remnants of a storm were dissolving in the western sky and the sun was setting. Only a long, lone, horizontal sliver of bloodred light shone through the clouds. It looked like a scar between two worlds.
Jack had left his car parked inside the empty hangar. It was a 1939 Ford convertible, and the three of us piled into the backseat while Jack drove off the base. We put our heads down as he waved to the guards at the exit gates. One of them yelled, “Good to see you back, Jack!”
“Good to be back, boys,” he shouted, then turned north onto the highway. About twenty minutes later we pulled into his house, a small bungalow on the north side of Pearl City. The house was only a few hundred yards from the beach and shielded from view by an overgrown hedge on two sides. We spent three days in Hawaii, mainly at Jack’s place. During that time we talked often at the beach and learned about the obscure nature of his current “occupation” and some of what he had been doing during the war.
In 1940, well before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Jack was approached and asked to join a government covert intelligence unit, which later became known as the O.S.S. After agreeing to serve, he trained in Washington and later in England under British command. In July of 1942, he was ordered to set up his own network of agents in Lisbon, Madrid, and Marseille, along with direct connections to the French underground. His mission was simple and direct: by any means necessary he was to help certain people, primarily downed British and American pilots, escape through France and into Spain via the Pyrenees.
Absolute trust is absolutely necessary for any clandestine operation to work, particularly during wartime. I learned that fact from Captain Woodget and I have always found it to be true. Jack chose the first members of his organization from those he knew well — those few people who also happened to know of the Meq. He traveled to Caitlin’s Ruby and enlisted the aid of Willie Croft and Koldo Txopitea. They both agreed on the spot to do whatever they could to help. The memories of Guernica and the German bombs killing most of his tribe, including his father, were still fresh in Koldo’s mind. Arrosa even volunteered, but Jack told her to stay at Caitlin’s Ruby, along with Star and Caine. He said he would need a place to plan operations when he was in England and the Ruby was perfect because it was remote and unattached to the British and the Americans. A year later, and against the protests of Star, Caine dropped out of college to join Jack in the field. Mitch Coates and Antoine Boutrain were also brought into the group. Jack found them in Marseille, along with Mercy, Emme, and Antoinette. They were all living together in one of Antoine’s homes. Mitch and Antoine became essential to Jack because almost everyone they knew was in the French resistance to some degree. Koldo recruited several of his Basque friends and relatives, and the whole operation was a success for the next two years.
Shortly after D-day in 1944, Jack was ordered to disband his group and transfer to Hawaii. Three months later he was assigned the task of training new recruits for covert intelligence missions in northern China and parts of Korea. Captain Blaine Harrington, then a first lieutenant just out of Princeton, was one of Jack’s first trainees. After only one mission, Jack had to recommend that the young lieutenant be removed from the field and transferred to another position. Blaine Harrington’s amazing facility with languages was a valuable asset, but his inability or unwillingness to improvise and act “outside the book” was a serious liability. Improvisation is a skill as necessary in the field as absolute trust. Blaine Harrington was soon promoted to captain and transferred to General MacArthur’s staff. For the rest of the war, he held Jack responsible for steering his career into a long series of insignificant and boring assignments.
As soon as Japan surrendered, Jack was sent to Mukden, Manchuria, along with three other O.S.S. agents. They were there to take notes and snap pictures as evidence of Chinese peasants looting factories and Russian trains loading heavy equipment and machine tools to be shipped back to Russia. Ten days later the Russians ordered the O.S.S. agents out of the country without delay. Jack was then ordered to Japan to gather eyewitness observations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A few days after that we entered the American Embassy and I told my story to Blaine Harrington.
Jack looked at me. The four of us were sitting above the beach on a small outcropping of rock, facing Pearl Harbor to the south. The sun was still high in the sky. “I saw something else when I was in Manchuria, Z.”
“What was it?”
“A photograph — an
“Of what?”
“Not what — who!” Jack glanced at Sailor and Sheela, then turned back to me. “A Russian agent I only know as ‘Valery’ showed me a picture he had taken in China because he said the subjects were ‘unusual.’ They were standing in a crowd — there were three of them.”
“Three of who?”
“Three of
Sailor was looking at Jack without expression. “Tell me, Jack, for whom, exactly, do you work? Are you a spy, then?”
Jack laughed. “It’s not that glamorous or romantic, Sailor. Right now I’m sort of a fact finder. The O.S.S. is dissolving and something else is evolving. The man I work for is in the middle of it.”
“Who is he?” I asked.
Jack smiled. “Do you remember the man Owen Bramley told me about, the man who first helped us in Cuba, the one he called ‘Cardinal’?”
“Of course. He helped us with the names on the ‘List.’ ”
“Yes, well, we’ll get to that, but he’s the same man who recruited me. I work for Cardinal.”
“What is this man’s real name, Jack?” Sailor asked. “Who is he?”
Jack turned his head and gazed west, toward Japan. “Z, did you and Sailor ever find the family of Sangea Hiramura?”
I glanced at Sailor, remembering the faces of Sak and Shutratek. “Yes, we found them … two of them. They are gone now. They were good people.”
Jack seemed genuinely saddened by the news. “If you recall, there was one son who came to the World’s Fair in 1904 with Sangea, but never returned to Japan.”
“I remember,” I said. “His name was Bikki.”
“That’s right. And sometime before the Fair began, Solomon had made a deal with Sangea to set aside a trust fund for educating Bikki in the United States. Bikki later changed his last name to Birnbaum and was sent to the very best schools, eventually becoming an ophthalmologist and surgeon among other things. He set up his practice in Washington, D.C., which was the perfect cover for his other job, the one he still practices.” Jack paused a moment. “Dr. Bikki Birnbaum is Cardinal.”
I shook my head and smiled. It had been over forty years since his death and my old friend Solomon was still surprising me.
“Is Dr. Birnbaum aware of the Meq?” Sailor asked.
Jack glanced once at all three of us. “Yes, he is. Solomon told Owen Bramley that Sangea Hiramura’s entire family knew of the Meq long before they came to St. Louis.”
“This is true,” I said, remembering what we’d learned from Sak.
“True indeed,” Sailor added.
Suddenly I recalled the brief incident on the way to Blaine Harrington’s office. The lieutenant had confiscated the film containing the snapshot of Sailor, then handed it over to the captain. I told Jack about it.
“Damn! I wanted Blaine to forget you three as soon as possible.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked. “Do you think he is a threat?”
“Possibly.”
“How could he be a threat to us, Jack?” Sailor asked.
“Because he’s like a ferret smelling a rat. He will gnaw and gnaw through anything until he finds that rat.
