The Eldridge Roster Read online

  “Oh. Jim. Before I forget—if you see Schmidla, remember that he was born in 1891 and that in 1938, according to his SS medical record, he stood the equivalent of six feet, three inches tall.” Setting his brandy down, George uncrossed his legs, leaning intently forward. “Schmidla and his niece Maria live in an old Yankee farmhouse on the island. Officially it’s a small private psychiatric hospital. There’s a file on this disc labeled Small’s Island—it’s all the information we have on the place—woefully incomplete, sorry to say.”

  “Who the hell is ‘we?’” said Jim.

  “All I can tell you about us, Jim,” said George, “is that mostly we observe. There’s just a few of us and most of us have no teeth. But you have teeth, Jimbo, or can get them, especially if Angie helps. And it’s time—long past time—to close Schmidla and Whitsun down forever. Our government’s playing Good German—it doesn’t want to know how the results are obtained, but it greatly desires them. Schmidla’s apparently shown them some very heady stuff and Whitsun knows how to pander to the egos of the powerful.

  “Three things, Jimbo,” said George, leaning forward intently.

  “One. Keep the Eldridge roster from Whitsun. Schmidla needs more Potentials, children of those poor damned sailors like Angie. The unknown children of the Eldridge and their offspring are his only hope. Without Angie or others like her, whatever they’re trying to spawn won’t be born.

  “Two. Ensure that the 1943 personnel records were destroyed. All of them. I’ll order them burned tomorrow, after I extract the roster. Not that the Navy ever screws up, but make sure it happens—go down to New Orleans and view the ashes, please. I mean that. Whitsun and Schmidla must not have a single name from that crew!” He sighed. “It may be a mistake to not destroy the roster, but maybe when this is over, amends should be made to those families and, perhaps, their abilities utilized. But only you can judge the cost of keeping that list.

  “Three.” George rose and left. They heard a drawer slide open, then he was back in his chair, holding a photo of a stunningly attractive girl in her mid-twenties: jet black hair, elegant fine-boned features with a slight Asian cast to her eyes—blue-green eyes that sparkled with humor and intelligence. “This is Schmidla’s niece, Maria. She grew up on the island, attended an excellent local private day school and was admitted to Harvard at the age of sixteen, graduating summa cum laude. She later earned a PhD, also from Harvard, and teaches history there. Brilliant girl. She believes her name is Maria Theresa Nelson. Her birth name was Kaeko Gabriella Beauchamp. Whitsun and Schmidla murdered your wife and stole your child, Jim.

  “Kaeko is the most powerful Potential Telemachus has ever had and the key to all their plans.”

  Chapter 11

  “Both the men I sent to do that job for you are missing,” said Philip over the phone.

  “Any idea what happened?” asked Whitsun.

  “No. We’ve searched the area they were in, checked with the police and hospitals. Nothing.”

  “Vanished,” said Whitsun, nodding to his housekeeper as she left him his lunch. “Just like DE173.”

  “Sir?”

  “Nothing, Philip.” Ensuring that the woman had left the dining room, he continued. “We’ve no choice at this point. Get me that roster any way you can. Now!”

  At 2:07 p.m. the next day, a Verizon truck pulled up outside Jim’s house. The driver got out, climbed the pole and carefully disconnected Jim’s phone line. Getting back into the truck, he drove off.

  At 2:10, an SUV parked in Jim’s driveway. Philip and three other men got out. Sending two of them to the back of the house, Philip stepped onto the porch and rang the doorbell, a silenced pistol in his hand. The street was empty, everyone at work. He rang again, then after a moment nodded to his companion, stepping aside to let him work on the locks. In less than thirty seconds they were inside, ignoring the alarm’s frantic beeping. Joined by the others who’d broken in through the kitchen, they searched the house.

  “Not here. Lots of clothes missing,” said Iceman, his number two, coming downstairs.

  “The birds have flown,” said Philip, unscrewing his silencer and slipping the pistol into his shoulder holster. “Get his computer and we’ll go.”

  Bill Enders was rereading the play set’s directions, translated into colorful and tantalizingly near-comprehensible English by its Chinese manufacturer. It was one of those days when he wished they’d stayed in Arizona. Things were cheaper there, his GS-13 pay had gone further—in Flagstaff, he’d have paid to have this miserable thing assembled. Still, he thought, positioning the new strut, Washington was a better place for the three of them: Patti had a decent job, Joanne went to parochial school, Baby Billy was in a great daycare center. Plus it was a cosmopolitan area, which was nice. No one here had yet stopped Patti—fair-skinned, Irish Patti—when she was with Baby Billy to compliment her on her courage for adopting a black child. We’re doing fine, he thought, screwing in a bolt.

  Bill looked up at the sudden sound of breaking glass. Uphill, thirty yards away, two guys were breaking into Jim’s kitchen, one of them already reaching through the broken pane, opening the door.

  “Ah, come on—not again,” he muttered. As they entered the house, Bill slipped off the play set and went into his kitchen. Dialing 911, he reported the break-in in the succinct, professional words of a long-time cop. Hanging up, he debated with himself for a few seconds: he should let the cops handle it, but really, enough.

  “Freeze!” ordered a voice.

  Philip and Mike froze.

  “On the floor, now! Spread ‘em!”

  Dropping to the floor, Philip risked a look. A large black man in an FBI Academy sweatshirt and blue jeans stood in the dining room entrance, pointing a nine-millimeter Glock at them.

  “Spread your arms and legs!” Bill ordered, moving in closer, circling cautiously.

  Philip and Mike complied.

  “Just lie real still. Police are on their way,” said Bill. He was uneasy—these two looked far too bright and well-groomed for typical burglars. He was wondering what sort of shit Jimbo had gotten himself into when a .357 magnum round tore off the back of his skull, killing him instantly. He never heard the faint pop! of the silenced pistol fired from the stairs behind him.

  Rising, Philip looked at Ender’s body, then at his two men coming down the stairs. One held Jim’s hard drive, the other, Iceman, a short-barreled Smith & Wesson .357 Combat Magnum. “Thank you, Ice,” he said. “Let’s get out of here. You heard the man—the police are on their way.”

  Yokohama

  April 1941

  Chapter 12

  The dinner party was over, the staff cars bearing the last of the Imperial Navy’s senior officers and their entourage setting off into the warm spring night. It might have been called an intimate gathering, their host thought, had the security personnel not outnumbered the guests. His appraisal of the damage done to his garden by thoughtless feet would have to wait until morning.

  General Oshida turned to his nephew as the tail lights of Admiral Yamamoto’s car disappeared down the long, shrub-lined driveway. “Let’s go sit in the courtyard garden, Tennu,” he said, leading the way back through the house. A magnificent work of art, the Oshida home was a cluster of gracefully flowing shoin-zukuri buildings, evocative of the Zen Buddhist monasteries that had inspired it. Interspaced with gardens and accented by the clever use of shoji screens, Oshida Manor was wrought of rough, untrimmed teak beams, built with timber-and-peg construction and often compared to Katsura Palace in Kyoto, architectural beau ideal of the 17th century Edo Period. Sitting atop a hill high above Yokohama, the house had been built during the Tokugawa Shogunate for the legendary samurai, Baron Shuniji Oshida and held by his descendants ever since.

  Tennu and his uncle sat unspeaking, listening to the crickets as the tea was served by the general’s houseboy, who left as noiselessly as he’d arrived. “So,” said the general, lifting his cup, “when are you and Masumi to be married?”


  “In August, Uncle,” said Tennu. “It’s all been arranged.” He ran a finger between his chaffed neck and the stiff collar of his dress uniform. An Army lieutenant, he’d been the junior-most officer at dinner and the only one other than his uncle not of the Navy. He’d sat wedged between an icicle of a senior captain who, unaware that he was Oshida’s nephew, hadn’t once spoken to him, and an obnoxious Admiral who kept urging more sake on him while telling all around him how pathetic the American military was.

  “The Asatos are a fine old family, Tennu,” said the general. “They’ve been industrialists, soldiers, diplomats. I’ve met Masumi—she seems a very accomplished and cultured girl. Nice, too.”

  Squat, homely, humorless, unimaginative and seemingly without a spark of sexuality, thought Tennu. But certainly a nice girl. In his late twenties, Tennu was very much the opposite of Masumi Asato—tall and good-looking, with a quick smile and an easy graceful way to him.

  “Yes, she’s a very nice girl, Uncle. Her family has been very kind to me. So, Uncle,” he asked, changing from one dejecting topic to another, “all this talk of going to war with America. Do you think anything will come of it?”

  General Oshida sighed. “Yes. And soon. Most of our leaders believe the Americans will be too busy with Europe to notice our absorbing, say, the Philippines or Hawaii. Or perhaps, on a busy day, California. Or noticing, do anything about it.” He laughed humorlessly. “And of course, everyone knows that racially the Americans are a mongrelized people, intellectually and spiritually inferior to us—imperfections sadly afflicting everyone on the planet who isn’t Japanese.” He shook his head. “Indulging our stereotypes is going to be very expensive.”

  “You don’t believe we can win?”

  “Win, Tennu?” He snorted. “I don’t know if we can survive. Neither does my good friend Admiral Yamamoto. Whenever we talk privately we depress each other. If our collective hubris continues,” his hand swept toward the twinkling lights of Yokohama and the harbor, “all this may pass away in blood and flame. But perhaps you think I’m being an alarmist, Tennu?” he asked, finishing his tea. Somewhere nearby a nightingale sang, sweet and high.

  Listening to his uncle a cold fear had stolen over Tennu. He’d never heard him so forthright or so pessimistic. The general was as skilled at extracting others’ thoughts as he was keeping his own guarded. He was a much-respected senior official with an extensive career in both intelligence and diplomacy. And he was the rock of his family, supportive of his sister—Tennu’s mother—ensuring that Tennu’s father, despite his gambling and love of absinthe, always had a position at some government ministry or other, a position appropriate to his station.

  The young officer thought back to his years in the States, his college friends, a girl he’d cared about, other Americans he’d known. “Americans are determined and resourceful, Uncle,” he said carefully. “Some people mistake their enthusiasm and naiveté for stupidity and lack of character. It would be very foolish—deadly, even—to think we could just march over them.”

  The General set his cup down. “I’m glad we’re of one mind on this, Tennu. Of course we have our duty to Japan. But we can best serve her with our eyes open. I’ve a task for you for next week,” he said, turning to a new topic.

  An architect nominally assigned to a construction battalion in Saitama-ken, outside of Tokyo, Tennu had spent the last three months on detached duty to General Oshida’s inter-service intelligence group, based in Yokohama, most of his duties focusing on signal intelligence and cryptography. Much of the work was boring, but none of it as stultifying as training levies of young recruits in the building of bridges and roads, only to see them shipped off to war and replaced by yet another batch of fresh-faced conscripts, fodder for the guns.

  The only disadvantage of his work was physical inactivity. Tennu compensated for it in the evening by honing his karate skills at the local dojo and other skills with women of convenience.

  “A different sort of task, I hope?” asked Tennu, brightening.

  “Different but not exciting,” said his uncle, laughing as Tennu’s face fell. “You won’t be parachuting onto Oahu. I need you on a ship in Yokohama harbor. Don’t worry, it’s not going anywhere—at least not far. Just steaming out into the harbor. Our good friends in the Navy are trying out a ‘secret device.’” He pulled a face. “The only way we’ll ever learn anything from those clannish Navy people is to be there during this experiment, then question them based on our own observations—your observations. They fought me long and hard on this, but I won—I may send one person. One junior level observer. Just keep your eyes open, take careful notes and let me know what happens. I will be very interested in your impressions, Tennu.”

  Tennu nodded. “Yes sir. What sort of secret device, Uncle?”

  “They won’t tell me,” he said, spreading his hands. “Not so much as a hint. So go find out for me, would you, Tennu?”

  “Don’t I know you, Lieutenant Musashi?” asked the Naval captain as Tennu bowed, introducing himself.

  “Yes, sir,” said Tennu. “We met last week at General Oshida’s home.” Captain Watanabe had been the austere, silent officer next to him at dinner. Watanabe was lean and fit, with gray-flecked hair and a face lined from years at sea. He gave the younger officer an appraising glance. “How long have you been on General Oshida’s staff?”

  “Six months, sir.”

  They stood on the bridge of the Kikuzuki, a Mutsuki-class destroyer. Though built less than a decade ago, her high superstructure and raised forecastle gave her the look of a vintage vessel when compared to her sleek neighbors, the big new Tachibana-class destroyers fresh from the Maizuru Dockyard.

  Below them along the crowded deck civilians and sailors were busy making the final preparations for the experiment. This seemed to Musashi’s untutored eye to be mostly a matter of the civilians huddling together in small groups, speaking briefly with occasional reference to the clipboard each carried, then nodding curtly and moving on to form part of a new group wherein the ritual was repeated.

  A separate activity, conducted by sailors and a few civilians, was centered on two large electric generators—or so they appeared to Tennu—occupying most of the stern. Thick cables stretched out from them, snaking along the edge of Kikuzuki’s deck. The cables were joined to the ship’s gray steel every three meters by short, equally thick cables that ran down from the main wiring and were clamped to the protruding lip of metal that rimmed her deck.

  Tennu had sat in the back during the briefing, held an hour earlier in a heavily guarded conference room of the Naval base, his the only Army uniform there. This had brought him many a quizzical stare, though no one had said anything.

  An Admiral and a civilian scientist—the latter introduced as the “eminent physicist, Dr. Kimura, of Tokyo University”—each spoke. The Admiral, Vice Admiral Wada, briefly welcomed everyone, reminding them that this was a top secret project and that anyone revealing information about it would be summarily hung. (Judging from the Admiral’s tone and dark scowl, Wada would like to hang them all now, just for knowing about the project.)

  Kimura, a round, bald little man wearing very thick glasses and a rumpled brown suit, spoke in a low monotone. At first, Tennu, leaning forward intently, wasn’t sure that he was hearing correctly, but then seeing the looks of disbelief around him, knew that he was. They were here today, said Kimura, to witness the first attempt at ship invisibility. Eight years of research by he and his colleagues, both Japanese and European, had resulted in a prototype device which would, it was believed, render Kikuzuki invisible to both human and electronic detection. The power output required was substantial, the machinery delicate and the result unknown. “One of three things will happen today,” said Kimura, his voice rising into a normal conversational tone. “Nothing, success or catastrophe. Whatever happens, we will have learned a great deal. We’ve had some success using objects smaller than a ship, though only for very short periods of time.
This is our first attempt at concealing such a large object. I would urge those of you who don’t want to be at risk to watch from the pier. The Kikuzuki will steam out a safe distance and engage the field generators. If all goes well, an oscillating electromagnetic field will surround the ship and she will disappear. I’m sorry,” he said as hands shot up, “the Imperial Navy has asked that I not answer questions.” With a stiff bow, he resumed his seat.

  “I congratulate you on having the balls to join us for today’s little cruise, Lieutenant,” said Captain Watanabe, looking beyond Tennu to the gaggle of civilians and senior officers standing on the pier near Kikuzuki’s gangway.

  “I was sent to observe, sir,” said Tennu. “Observing is best done closely and at first hand.”

  “Indeed. We’ll be getting underway in a few minutes. The part of the ship just forward of the bridge will probably be the best place from which to observe. Good luck to you.”

  “Good luck to us all, sir,” said Tennu, exchanging salutes with Musashi. Stepping inside the ship’s pilothouse, the captain began issuing orders into a pair of speaking tubes.

  As the Kikuzuki slipped from her berth, Tennu found himself a place on the main deck, just below the bridge and watched as Yokohama slipped past. He was soon joined by two civilians of about his own age, emerging from below deck: a young Caucasian woman and an aristocratic-looking Japanese man. Both wore sweaters and leather coats against the chill early morning wind. The woman introduced herself in passable Japanese as Leni Horreth, a physicist from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Her companion was Dr. Shunichi Kowamoto, a physicist on the staff of the Imperial Navy. As the destroyer moved out into the harbor, Kowamoto excused himself and ducked back below deck. “Do you speak English, Doctor Horreth?” asked Tennu in that language as the destroyer picked up speed, plowing through the whitecaps, her deck plates vibrating.