“You go first,” he said. “How the hell did you find out about me, after all these years?”
Michael laughed. “What, you haven’t been watching the news last year? In case you didn’t get the memo, the goddamn Evil Empire has collapsed. The Communist Party’s practically outlawed, peace is breaking out, and the Soviet Union is no more.”
“So?”
“So when you got a country that’s collapsing, the army’s being called out to harvest potatoes and their navy is sinking dockside, then everything’s for sale. Everything! So we’ve had guys going over to Moscow and other places, passing out the Benjamins, getting files and dossiers. You wouldn’t believe the old secrets that are being given up. We had special squads lined up to get answers to old puzzles... I put in for the JFK squad but I was assigned to naval matters. And we found your dossier... or parts of it. Got your real name, your job at the shipyard, and your assignment for the Thresher.”
Gus sighed. “I never got contacted after she sank. I thought I was in the clear. Thought they had forgotten me.”
Michael said, “Then you don’t know how they operated. The KGB had a seal they’d put on some of their more sensitive documents. Dolzhny khranit’sya vechno. Know what that means? It means ‘to be kept forever.’ That’s how their minds worked. They thought they’d be victorious against us evil capitalists, so nothing would ever be burned or shredded. Their proud files would be kept forever.”
Gus looked out at the channel, and Michael said, “But something was missing in your dossier, Gus. It’s why you did it. Was it money? Were you that hard-pressed for money back in the 1960s? Was it gambling? Medical bills for a family member? Did the KGB promise you a ton of cash?”
“No, nothing like that. It wasn’t for the money. Didn’t get paid a dime.”
“So why did you do it, Gus? Why did you betray your country? Sabotage a nuclear-powered submarine, the first in its class, a sabotage that would sink it and kill everyone on board?”
The old man sighed. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
“Try me. C’mon, let me in on it.”
“Why?” he shot back. “To make it look good on your arrest report?”
Michael laughed. “Who said anything about arresting you?”
Gus turned, shocked. “Then why the hell are you here? What’s going on?”
“Didn’t you hear what I said earlier? We’re getting old questions answered, puzzles figured out. I didn’t say anything about arrests, now, did I?”
The old man slowly turned his head back. Michael said, “Look, the JFK squad. They’re compartmentalized, so I don’t know what they’re learning. But suppose they did find something out. Like somebody in the KGB ordered the hit on JFK. Or if Oswald really was sent over as a patsy to cover up for whoever really did it. What, you think the president will hold a news conference and say nearly thirty years of official history and explanations were wrong? And by the way, let’s start a new Cold War to get revenge for what the Reds did back in ’63?”
There was a siren sounding out by the shipyard, which eventually drifted silent. “Same thing with you, Gus. We just want to know how it happened, why it happened, and fill in those gaps in the secret histories. And once those gaps are filled, I’ll leave you here and I promise, you’ll never be disturbed, ever again.”
Gus seemed to ponder that for a few moments, and, his voice quiet, he said, “My dad.”
“What about him?”
“It was his fault.”
Michael was so glad he hadn’t rushed things, because this was certainly a new bit of information. Gus sighed. “My dad. A gentle guy. Never once hit me. Was a deacon at our local Congregational church. Didn’t really belong in the military at all. But they were calling everybody up back then, teenagers, fathers, guys with glasses or some medical conditions. A cousin of his, he said to my dad, Curt, ‘Curt, join the navy. You’ll sleep at night in a bunk, you won’t be in a muddy trench, you’ll have food three times a day, no cold rations, and no marching.’ So he joined the navy.”
Gus rotated his cane twice. “Since he was so smart and quiet, he was assigned to some military evaluation team. He and a bunch of others were sent to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to check on what the places were like after the atomic bombs had been dropped a month earlier. It was horrifying, he told me later, all these blasted buildings, the trees burnt stumps, and wounded and burnt people still stumbling around.”
“That’s war,” Mike said.
Gus shook his head. “No, Dad thought differently. It may have ended the war, but it also opened the door to something much more terrifying, something that could go beyond destroying cities to destroying whole peoples, whole countries, even the damn planet itself. He said every day and night there just sickened him. He said going across the Pacific, not once did he get seasick, but he was nauseous and threw up a lot when he was in Japan.”
“That’s why he didn’t want you to join the military, do anything that had to do with defense.”
“You got it. He only talked about it as he got older, and then, in 1962, he got lung cancer. Pretty funny, since he never smoked a cigarette or a cigar in his life. His doc told me privately that he probably kicked up a lot of radioactive dust when he was going through Nagasaki and Hiroshima, kept on breathing it in. By then I was married, to a nice girl called Sylvia, had two young boys, and I was working at the shipyard, making good money. My dad died that October. I was his only son, so I went through some of his things. That’s when I found the movies.”
“What kind of movies?”
“My dad, he told me that he and the others, they were forbidden to take photos at Hiroshima and Nagasaki unless it was part of their official work. But somehow Dad got a hold of an eight-millimeter movie camera, even used color film. I think he went out on his own and took these short little movies. No sound, of course, but you didn’t need sound to figure out what was going on.”
Michael let him sit quiet for a few moments, wind coming off the water flapping the loose ends of Gus’s white zippered jacket. “What were the movies like?”
A heavy, drawn-out sigh, like the man next to him had just finished climbing an impossibly high peak. “I still dream about them, even though it’s been thirty years. I found a projector and one night hung up a white bed sheet in the basement and played them. The city... you see those TV reports, about a tornado hitting some city out in the Midwest? Just piles of rubble and debris. That’s what it was like. Except the rubble had burned... there were places along the sides of bridges or cement walls where the flash from the bomb had burned in shadows... and the last bit of the third film, it was the people. Still walking around in shock at what had happened to them. One plane, one bomb... there were these two little boys... about the age of my own little fellas... looking at the camera, looking at my dad... they were barefoot... the clothes they was wearing was filthy... and each was holding a little ball of rice. And you could tell they was brothers, they looked the same... even were hurt the same...”
The old man’s voice dribbled off. Michael cleared his throat. “How were they injured?”
“The right side of their faces. Scabbed and crisscrossed with burns. Like they were walking down a street, going in the same direction, when the bomb hit and burned them. Oh, I know they were the Japs, the enemy, and lots said they deserved it for what they did at Pearl Harbor and Bataan. But when I saw it, in 1962, the war had been over a long time. All I saw was two kids, all I saw was my two boys, burned and barefoot in the wreckage of their city.”
Michael saw the emotion in the man’s face, the tears coming up in his eyes, and it came to him. “You said your father died in October 1962. That’s when the Cuban missile crisis was, when we almost got into World War III with the Russians. You put the two together, didn’t you?”