There were only names, no areas of study listed, so Lake headed for the main office of the history department. Opening the door, he was greeted by a student behind the desk. “Can I help you?” “Do you have someone here who is working on material dealing with the Japanese Imperial Navy in World War II?”
The student frowned. “I really don’t know. Dr. Harmon might be able to help you. She’s the Twentieth-Century Pacific Areas Study specialist.”
“And where might I find Dr. Harmon?” Lake asked.
“Room one forty-two.”
“Thank you.” Lake exited the office and walked down the corridor. Room 142 came up on his right and he lightly rapped on the opaque glass that made up most of the top half of the door. There was no answer, so he tried the handle. It turned and he cautiously stepped in. He was in a small foyer, about six feet long. A door was to either side of him, one half-open, the other locked. He could hear someone talking to his right, behind the half-open door. Lake peered around the corner as he tapped on the doorframe.
Lake paused. A woman was seated behind a massive wood desk which was covered with mounds of paper. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties, with long thick black hair cascading over her shoulders and bright green eyes that fixed him in the doorway as she talked on the phone. Lake prided himself on telling a person’s ethnic background at a glance, but he wasn’t sure with Harmon. He thought she might have some Asian blood based on her facial features, but her skin was dark, as if she had Mediterranean ancestors in her past. Whatever the combination was, it was unique and intriguing. Beyond her looks, Lake picked up a definite sense of purpose and competence, which he found a little surprising. He was used to that feeling when around others in the covert community — men and women who had something extra, beyond the norm, knew they had it and didn’t have to tell anyone.
“I’ll get back to you,” she said, her voice low and firm. She put the phone down and stood. She was tall, perhaps two inches shorter than Lake, and slender. She wore a gray pants suit and no jewelry. “May I help you?”
“Are you Dr. Harmon?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Lake,” he said, extending his hand. She took it with a firm grip, then let go.
“Is that a first name or a last name?” she asked, sitting back down.
“It’s just a name,” Lake replied, a bit off-guard.
Harmon laughed, the sound coming from deep in her throat, and Lake slid a couple of inches off his emotional center of gravity. “What can I do for you, Mr. Lake?” She pointed at a chair facing the desk and Lake gratefully sank into the leather.
“I’m interested in information concerning the Imperial Japanese Navy during the last year of World War II.”
“For what reason?” Harmon asked, steepling her fingers.
“I’m writing a book,” Lake said, “about fleet operations that year.”
“For what purpose?” Harmon asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Why are you writing a book about the operations of the Japanese fleet in 1945?” Dr. Harmon amplified. “By that time in the war, most of the Japanese fleet had been destroyed. That which wasn’t destroyed was hiding in port, trying to avoid the onslaught of the American carrier forces.”
“To be more specific,” Lake said, “I’m interested in one ship in particular. The Yamamoto went down in April 1945.” Lake was using the information he had in the forefront of his brain from the side trip to the library. “It was the greatest battleship of the war, larger than either the Germans’ Graf Spcc or the Bismarck, yet little has ever been written about it.”
“Little has been written about the Yamamoto,” Harmon said, “because it didn’t do too much damage and its end was rather un glorious As you well know,” she added.
“Yes, but I’m still interested in the topic,” Lake said.
“Well, we do have quite a bit of material from the Imperial Naval archives,” Harmon said. “It was gathered by U.S. Naval intelligence at the end of the war and brought back to the Naval Air Station at Alameda. It sat there unopened for decades until I went over and started looking through it about eight years ago. I forwarded some of it to the National Archives. Some of it I brought here when they shut the air base down four years ago and were going to just destroy it. I took as much as I had room for.” She reached behind her and pulled a thick three-ring binder off a bookcase.
While she looked in it, Lake checked out the rest of the office. There were the usual diplomas on the wall behind her. He noted that several of the official papers were written in Japanese. There was a picture of Harmon standing alone with Mount Fuji in the hazy distance behind her. Another of a much younger Harmon with a man who appeared to be her own age at the time and an older woman taken in a park. The old woman was seated on a bench, Harmon and the other man behind her, a hand on each shoulder. The man was outfitted in a military dress uniform. A Marine. Lake noted that.
“I’m not sure if I have anything specifically related to the destruction of the Yamamoto,” she added as she flipped open the binder. “But on the other hand, I haven’t been able to go through one-tenth of what I recovered from Alameda This binder has the index for what I have gone through and filed.”
“Well,” Lake said, backtracking on his flimsy cover story, “the material I’m looking for doesn’t necessarily have to all deal with the Yamamoto. I’m also interested in any Japanese naval operations near what is now North Korea.”
Harmon paused in her reading. She closed the binder and rested her hands on top of it. “I don’t think you’re writing a book. I’ve written a couple of books myself and been published. One thing I know is that an author has to have a very clear idea of the theme of his work, especially when writing a historical work. I think you’re just fishing for some specific information which may or may not have anything to do with writing a book. If you would be more honest with me, perhaps I could help you better.”
If I was more honest, Lake thought, you might not help me at all. UCBerkeley was not exactly the place of choice for a government agent to go looking for information. However, he didn’t feel that he should so easily place Dr. Harmon into an antigovernment position. After all, there was the picture of her with the Marine.
“Where do you keep your material?” Lake asked.
Harmon looked at him, her eyes boring into his for several long seconds. “You haven’t answered my question. This university pays my salary to teach and do research. It does not pay me to answer questions for any person who happens to walk into my office. Do you have any identification that you can show me, Mr. “It’s-just-a-name’ Lake? What do you do for a living?”
Lake slumped in the leather seat, feeling the back of his head touch the headrest. He’d been doing undercover work for a long time now and he’d assumed many different personas. He didn’t have the time to be very creative here, nor was he back stopped by the Ranch on any cover he might come up with that would make Harmon cooperate. He looked once more at the picture over her shoulder where she was with the Marine and decided to gamble. An old hand at the Ranch, teaching him covert operations, had told him that when in doubt, the truth always worked the best. Especially if the truth couldn’t be verified by the person you told it to. Then all they had was a story.
Lake steepled his fingers. “Okay. Here’s the situation. I’m actually an agent working for the government under deep cover. Last week I stopped some terrorists trying to release a biological agent to infect the city of San Francisco. Last night I followed some foreign agents to this campus and they broke into this building. They left carrying a box with some materials in it. The man carrying the box was killed — not by me, but by someone associated with the Black Ocean Society from Japan, which you might have heard of — and he dropped the box. The other men, North Koreans, escaped with the box, but I was able to retrieve a few documents they left behind.” Lake reached under his sweater and pulled out a few pages which he handed across the desk to Dr. Harmon.