“Yeah,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Had Sylvia take the two boys up to a hunting camp of ours, over in Maine, with food and supplies. She said it wasn’t right to take ’em out of school, but I also said it wouldn’t be right to have ’em vaporized or burned in Portsmouth, because, by God, we were a goddamn target for the Russians. That and the SAC base over in Newington. And a couple of times I went out drinking in some of the bars in Portsmouth, and got drunk and pissed off, and said that damn fool Kennedy was going to kill us all, burn us and flatten our cities, because he got kicked in the nuts at the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba, and had to prove he was a real man to his bootlegger daddy.”
“Somebody heard you, then.”
Gus said, “Oh yeah. Somebody heard something, who passed it on to somebody else, and one day a guy came by and bought me some drinks. Said he was in the government, trying to work for peace, but he and the others were fighting against the hawks that were controlling JFK. He spun a good yarn, the bastard, and said if I was truly for peace, I could help things out. And I said, how? And he said, well, the Thresher’s being overhauled. If the overhaul took longer and longer, if problems cropped up, if things were delayed, that would help him and the others. Put things over budget. He and the others could help JFK rein in the Defense Department, help him work for peace with the Russians.”
“And what did you say?”
“I told ’im to go to hell... but he was sly, he was wicked sly. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. Showed me his ID, said he worked for the Department of Defense. Even took me to his office, just outside of the SAC base.”
“All faked, wasn’t it?”
“’Course it was,” Gus said. “But I was too young, too dumb. He kept on going back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He said, Look, back then, the Japs were our mortal enemies. Now we’re best buds. We’re buying their radios and soon we’ll be buying their televisions. That’s what happens in wartime. Your enemies become your friends. Look at Germany and us. So who can say what we and the Russians will be like ten or twenty years down the line? But the big difference was the bomb. The next war would be fought with the bomb, and this guy — Chandler was his supposed name — said, You know what Einstein said about World War IV?”
Michael said, “Beats the hell out of me.”
“Einstein said the fourth world war would be fought with sticks and stones. That’s what he said.” Another long sigh. “I watched those movies again, and I made up my mind. I told Chandler I’d help, but only to delay things. Not to hurt anybody. He gave me a tiny black box to smuggle in during my next work shift, which is what I did. A week later the Thresher went out on a shakedown cruise, never came back...”
Gus coughed. Tears were rolling down his cheeks. “What was worse... I mean, the whole thing was bad. All those poor sailors, all those poor families. But what made it worse was knowing there were seventeen civilians on board, guys from my own shipyard, guys from companies like Raytheon. You think, hey, the military, they sign up to put their lives on the line, that’s the risk. But these civilian techs... I’m sure they thought it was a thrill, to go along on this test dive, to make sure things worked... and then they sure didn’t. Can you imagine that, you’re a civilian, having a blast on this top-secret sub, thinking about bragging to your coworkers when you got back, figuring out what you could tell your wife and kids... and then alarms. Navy crewmen running around. Shouting. The sub tilting its nose up, sinking by the stern... knowing in your bones that the water wasn’t shallow enough to hit bottom... only knowing you were going to be dead within seconds...”
Michael said, “The naval inquiry said it appeared a pipe broke, releasing water that shorted out instrument panels, that led to the reactor shutdown... and they couldn’t keep her up, until she went to crush depth...”
Gus said, “Sure it said that. What else would they say? Sabotage, at one of the most secure shipyards in the country? I went to that office building where Chandler was supposedly hanging out. Empty. It was all a front. I thought about killing myself, about giving myself up... and I thought about Sylvia and the boys. And I tried to forget it... tried really hard.”
“But here you are, Gus. Every Wednesday.”
Gus leaned forward on his cane. “I lost Sylvia two years ago. Both boys are married, doing fine. One in Oregon, the other in California. I’m here by myself, and every Wednesday I come here. Pray for them. Pay tribute to them. And ask forgiveness.”
“For how much longer?”
Gus shrugged his shoulders. “Until the very end, I guess.”
“Does anybody else know about you and... what happened?”
“God, not at all.”
“Do you have any evidence from what happened back then?”
“Like what?” Gus shot back. “Pictures of me with that damn Russian? Written instructions on how to sabotage a submarine?”
Michael slowly nodded, and then Gus turned to him, eyes still watery, face flushed. “But what about me now, eh? You and the FBI, you know it all. What now?”
“What I promised,” Michael said, taking out a little notepad and a ballpoint pen, which he clicked open. “That you’ll never be bothered, ever again.”
And with one practiced motion, he took the pen and jabbed it into the base of Gus’s neck.
Gus looked stunned. He coughed, gurgled. A few words were whispered, the last one much quieter than the first.
Michael checked the old man’s neck for a pulse.
Nothing.
He put the pen and notebook away and walked back to his rental car.
Two days later, after his supervisor held a debriefing, his boss shook his head and said, “Misha, you need to know your history better.”
“How’s that?”
“Two things,” the stern man said. “First, you told the American that your grandfather had fought the Germans for four years. Maybe your grandfather did, but the first time Americans fought Germans was in North Africa in 1942. That would be three years, not four. And you said your grandfather was proud to fight fascism. That’s crap. Americans fought the Krauts, the Germans, the Nazis. They weren’t fighting fascism.”
He just shrugged. “Got the job done, though, didn’t I?”
“But you didn’t have to be sloppy. We can’t afford to be sloppy. The damn Americans are in a loving and forgiving mood. Ready to lend us billions so long as we play nice. If they find out some of our old secrets — like that damn attack submarine and how we sank it — they won’t be in a loving and forgiving mood. Got it?”
He sighed. “Heard you twice the first time.”
The supervisor walked past the office window, which offered a good view of the Kremlin’s buildings and where the white-blue-red flag of the new Russian Federation flew.
“Misha, you’re a romantic at heart. You probably write poetry in your spare time... but stay focused. Now. What did you leave out of your official report?”
“What makes you think I left anything out?”
“Previous experience from that Swedish schoolteacher who helped Olof Palme’s assassin escape.”
He crossed his legs, shook his head, still in disbelief. “The shipyard worker, he managed to say something as he was dying.”
“What did he say — ‘Go to hell, you bastard’?”
Another shake of the head. “No. He said thank you. That’s what he said. Thank you. Like he was thanking me for ending his life, ending the guilt. Can you believe that?”
His supervisor sat down heavily in his chair. “When it comes to Americans, I can believe almost anything. They spend fifty years threatening to burn us off the map, and now they offer us loan credits and McDonald’s. What can you say about a foe like that?”