“Do you mind if I smoke?” Lake asked as she came back in with a pot full of water.
“Only if I can join you,” she said. She took the offered cigarette. “This building is tobacco-free, as all the buildings on campus are; but no ever really comes in here, so I think we can get away with one or two.” Her eyes’ narrowed “Your hands are shaking.”
That surprised Lake. He looked down. His hands were shaking.
“What happened?” she asked.
With the hiss Of the water shifting through the coffeepot in the background, Lake began the story of the previous evening. He kept out many of the details, but quickly gave her a sketch of events from taking off in the helicopter to being rescued by Araki/the discovery of the messages to 1-24, and being brought to shore.
When he was done, Harmon was shaking her head. “I don’t know whether to believe you or think that’s the most outrageous story I’ve ever heard.”
“I don’t have any proof—” Lake began, but he paused as she raised a hand.
“I believe you,” Harmon said.
“What?” “I said I believe you. I believed you yesterday and I believe you today.”
“Why?” Lake asked.
Harmon smiled. “Let’s say it’s my own woman’s intuition.”
“I don’t think that’s enough to—”
“Would you stop?” she said. “You just can’t keep questioning everything and everyone.”
Lake blinked as she took both his hands in hers. They felt wonderfully warm. Her eyes locked into his. “You’re alone, aren’t you? All alone?”
Lake was so taken aback that he answered honestly. “Yes.”
“Well, right now you’re not,” she said. Then he saw her own shoulders twitch and she withdrew her hands and the warmth was gone. “I’m a historian after all,” she added. “I know that very strange things go on all the time — the old truth-is-stranger-than-fiction line. I’m just glad you made it out alive.”
To that Lake had no reply. He was just looking down at his hands, remembering the feeling of hers.
“Let me see the messages,” Harmon said, breaking the silence. Lake handed her the file and flipped it open to the first one. He then pointed out the second and third ones to 1-24.
“They must have been in dire straits to use the words “Genzai Bakudan’ openly in the second message,” Harmon noted. “That was a mistake.”
“Any idea what Cyclone or Forest are the code words for?” Lake asked.
“Not off the top of my head,” Harmon replied. “The U.S. Navy in World War II broke the Japanese encryption code early on. But code words for specific locations such as these are different.
“In late May 1942, U.S. Navy analysts were intercepting and decrypting quite a bit of traffic that indicated that the Japanese were preparing a major operation. They could decrypt everything, including the code word of the intended target: XXXX. The problem was, like us, they didn’t know where XXXX was. They suspected it might be Midway Island, but the Japanese plan was so complex with so many different feints and maneuvers, it was hard to tell.
“So the code breakers devised a simple plan. They had the American forces on Midway send a radio message in the clear that they knew the Japanese would intercept. The message seemed quite innocent, simply stating that the water desalinator on Midway had broken and certain repair parts were needed.
“A couple of days later, they intercepted a Japanese message to the fleet at sea. When it was decoded, it said that XXXX’s water desalinator had broken. Thus the U.S. Navy knew that the main Japanese thrust was aimed at Midway.” “Pretty ingenious,” Lake said. “The only problem is that we’re fifty years too late to be sending any messages using these code words.” He looked at the map of the Pacific on the wall behind her desk. “Do you have any idea what would be a priority target for a Japanese atomic bomb that late in the war?”
“For an atomic weapon delivered by submarine?” Harmon mused out loud. “My first guess would be the Allied fleet. By the time of those messages Okinawa had been taken and the home islands were under constant air attack. The Japanese were waiting for the final amphibious assault. Their number one threat was the Allied invasion fleet.”
“And where was that in August 1945?” Lake asked.
Harmon stood and stabbed her finger at the map. “Here. The Ulithi anchorage.”
Lake had expected an answer such as Pearl Harbor or Manila. “I’ve never heard of Ulithi.”
“Most people haven’t,” Harmon said. “It’s in the Caroline Islands, centrally located between the two thrusts the U.S. was making toward Japan; from the sea, island hopping, and MacArthur’s through the Philippines.
“Actually there’s not much land at Ulithi, which is why I think it would be a perfect target for a submarine-launched atomic attack. Ulithi is basically a series of atolls surrounding a deep-water anchorage. The Navy desperately needed such an anchorage in this part of the Pacific from which to stage their forces. They learned a bitter lesson in December 1944 when a typhoon hit Task Force 38, sinking three destroyers and damaging numerous other ships. That’s the typhoon that the Caine Mutiny was based upon. I’d say there’s a possibility that the Cyclone code name might reflect the fact that IF 38 sheltered at Ulithi right after the typhoon.”
Lake frowned. “I don’t think it would be that easy. Code names are usually decided upon by some staff wienie sitting behind a desk and aren’t supposed to have any relationship to whatever it is they are the code name for. Usually there’s just a list of words and the staff officer is just supposed to use the next one on the list.”
“Sounds like you know something about this,” Harmon probed.
“So what was at Ulithi in August 1945?” Lake asked, ignoring her comment.
“In August 1945 most of the invasion fleet was gathered there in the anchorage preparing and refitting for the assault on Japan. Several carrier task forces were conducting operations against the mainland, but the troop transports, supply ships, and quite a number of combatant ships would have been there. Destroying the ships at Ulithi and making the anchorage unusable due to radioactivity would have severely set back the American invasion timetable for probably a year. Since the invasion was planned for ‘46, that means it would have to be put off to ‘47.
“It’s hard to say whether the American public would have stood for two more years of war,” Harmon added. “There was a great outcry over troops being shipped from Europe to the Pacific theater. If the Japanese could have destroyed the fleet at Ulithi, they might have been able to sue for peace.”
Lake looked at the map. It made tactical sense. The Ulithi anchorage wasn’t that far from the Sea of Japan. “How would they do it, though?” Lake wondered. “Would they sneak in at night and try to off load the bomb?”
Harmon shook her head. “I think that whoever armed the bomb would still be with it when it was supposed to go off. I think they would put it on a midget sub that they would launch to conduct a kamikaze attack.”
“So we’re back to the original question,” Lake said. “Where’s the bomb now?”
“We have to find out what happened to 1-24,” Harmon said. “And there’s something else.”
“What’s that?”
“I said that I think Ulithi atoll would be the primary target for the Japanese bomb if they wanted to stop the Allied fleet. But the second message diverts the 1-24 from the primary target to the secondary one, Forest.” She was looking at the map. “So where’s Forest?”
“That’s your province,” Lake said. “Let’s see if we can’t track down the fate of 1-24 and then maybe we can get a liae on Cyclone and Forest.”
“To the basement,” Harmon said. * “To the basement,” Lake echoed.