NCIS Los Angeles

by Jerome Preisler

  “And by that logic, it followed that Rusty Corners shouldn’t be an exception.”

  “Right,” Alders said. “But with all due respect to the admiral—do you know how many U-boats we captured during World War Two?”

  “Wild guess,” Sam said, “I’d say maybe a dozen.”

  “Seven,” Alders said. “Four of the subs were escorted into Hueneme.” He paused. “One of those—U-437—was the only Type IXD2 boat ever brought to our homeland.”

  “There something special about it?” Sam asked.

  Alders nodded.

  “We’d probably need three hours just so I could scratch the surface,” he said. “And I promised to take my kids to the movies tonight.”

  Callen turned to him. “Mr. Alders—”

  “Warren, please.”

  “Warren… how about you give us the for-dummies edition? That’s pretty much my speed anyway.”

  Alders looked at him a moment, then gave a small smile.

  “Okay, let’s see,” he said, massaging the back of his neck. “U-437 is inherently unique because she was a longrunner. Designed to stay at sea for months without having to refuel. Only thirty German IXD2 boats were commissioned as combat vessels, and in the last years of the war a handful were converted into long-range transports. With their torpedo tubes removed for extra cargo space, they could carry over two hundred tons of freight.”

  “What sorta freight?” Sam asked. “And where were they taking it?”

  “The Far East,” Alders said. “Japan, and Japanese naval bases in Malaysia.” He looked at Sam. “Tokyo desperately needed certain materials for its war machine. Mercury, rubber, other resources. It also wanted secret German aircraft and rocket technology.”

  “So what did the Nazis stand to gain by sharing it?”

  “A fortune in yen, gold, and jewels,” Alders said. “But finances weren’t at the heart of Hitler’s plan. He was hoping a strengthened Japan could distract America from the European campaign. In his mind, if our forces in the Pacific took a major beating, we’d have to redeploy manpower there to offset our losses.”

  “And leave poor, helpless Berlin alone,” Sam said.

  “Something like that.” Alders inhaled, gathering his thoughts. “Anyway, it’s late May, ’forty-five. U-437 is en route to Japan with a full hold of goods, when a couple of our destroyers, the USS Linette and USS Phillips, pick her up in the Malacca Strait. There’s no fight—Germany surrendered earlier in the month, and the grand admiral has ordered all U-boats at sea to surface and capitulate to Allied vessels.” He paused again. “Right before they bring her into Hueneme, every American sailor on the destroyers is required to sign an oath of secrecy about the submarine’s capture. Violating it could result in court martial and even a death sentence.”

  “Was that SOP?” Sam asked.

  Alders wobbled his hand in an equivocal gesture.

  “It was done earlier in the war when other subs were captured, because U.S. intelligence didn’t want the enemy to know we had their Enigma code machines,” he said. “But in every other instance the sailors were released from their oaths after Germany’s surrender.”

  “And the war was already over when U-437 was netted.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So, what were we still trying to protect?” Callen asked.

  The curator’s expression underwent a marked change. He stood pensively a few seconds, then gave the agents a long, confidential look.

  “I think it depends on your definition of ‘we,’” he said at last.

  “You have something to tell us?” Callen asked.

  Alders was still looking straight at them.

  “Better,” he said. “I have something to show you.”

  * * *

  The museum’s collection room was hidden away behind a large exhibit hall, where restored tractors, bulldozers, trucks, and jeeps from the Naval Construction Battalion’s past were displayed alongside modern armored construction and ordnance-clearing vehicles.

  After guiding Sam and Callen through the hall to a locked steel door, Alders swiped his ID card through a reader, then tapped his security code into its keypad and led them inside.

  Calling the space a room was something of a misnomer. It was actually a series of branching, climate-controlled corridors, illuminated by cool LED ceiling panels, and walled by tall, upright shelves with alphanumerically labeled cabinets.

  “We have over five thousand artifacts back here,” Alders said. He gestured toward a shelf of black storage boxes. “Everything from the documents in those boxes to what you’ll see around the corner.”

  The agents followed him into another corridor lined with shelves and cabinets. Ahead of them was a mannequin in antiquated deepwater diving gear, with a huge copper-and-brass helmet, brass corselet, twill suit, and weighted shoes.

  Sam noticed something besides painted blue eyes staring out of the helmet, stepped up to the round front port, and saw a rubber fish jammed inside, the diver’s nose in its open mouth.

  He looked around at Alders.

  “This how curators entertain themselves?” he asked.

  “Some of them,” Alders said, turning a bend. “Come on, my office is in here.”

  Again it was really just an extension of the corridor. One side was occupied by a large worktable with several flexible LED magnifier lamps clamped to its edges, drawers underneath its heavy oak surface, and some straightbacked chairs around it. The other wall was lined by more storage units. There was clutter everywhere.

  Alders went over to a wall safe just beyond the table.

  “This was installed by Vance Coriell, the curator who preceded me,” he said, reaching for the combination dial. “He started here in the early nineteen-sixties, held his position till he was over seventy years old.”

  The agents waited as he turned the dial, then took hold of the handle and opened the door.

  “When I first started cataloguing for Vance, I would often come back here to ask him a question, and find him examining some item or other with his magnifying glass,” he said, pointing his chin at the worktable. “Everything looked the same as it does now, except he used standard incandescents rather than LEDs.” He reached into the safe and produced a white cardboard box shaped something like a hardcover book. “If it was late in the day, and he was finished with the museum’s official work, he’d be studying what’s in this box.”

  Alders carried it over to the table, shuffled some papers around to clear a space, and set down the box. Then he pulled two pairs of blue latex gloves from a dispenser, handed them to Sam and Callen.

  “Vance was curator while the Cold War was at its chilliest,” he said. “At that time, CRS-1’s buildings had been sitting untouched for over a decade, since the end of World War Two. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Navy ramped up the number of bases overseas, and Hueneme’s brass decided to put those buildings to use again.”

  “It wasn’t Elias Sutton, right?” Sam said. “By then, he’d already fought in Korea.”

  “And become a rear admiral at the Pentagon,” Alders said. “No, it wasn’t Sutton who reopened Rusty Corners. A panel of officers made the decision, and I strongly doubt he was even aware of it.” He turned on one of the flexible lamps, adjusting the neck so it shone over the box. “Vance knew there was a mother lode of artifacts in those buildings, and couldn’t wait to get hold of them for the museum. When they began emptying out all the old fixtures and equipment, he would go out there and oversee everything.” A pause. “Did Harrison take you over to the railroad tracks?”

  “Matter of fact, he did,” Sam said. “Told us it was out back by the ridges that they burned a lot of what was in the buildings.”

  Alders nodded.

  “That occurred years earlier—after Project Deep Dive shut down and the OSS moved out of Building Thirty-One,” he said. “Most of what was thrown into the burn barrels were sensitive paper documents.” He chuckled. “Vance was leery of that practice. Ca
lled it a memory hole.”

  “Orwell,” Sam said, nodding. “Nineteen Eighty-Four.”

  “Good old Vance,” Alders continued. “He insisted burning government records was better suited to the Ministry of Truth than the United States of America.” He took another pair of gloves from the dispenser and slipped them on. “So while the Seabees were moving stuff from the buildings onto pickup trucks, Vance decided to walk out to the slopes and poke around. Did it a few times, I think. He had a sixth sense for uncovering the past, and figured it was worth a shot.”

  Callen peered at the box Alders had taken from the wall safe.

  “Is that where he found whatever’s in there?”

  Alders nodded. He moved a chair out from under the table, shifting a heap of papers from it to the floor. Then he slid the chair toward the lamp, sat down, and lifted up the box.

  “Here we are, gentlemen,” he said, waving the agents over to him. “I think you should see this for yourselves.”

  As they approached the table, Alders opened the box with his gloved fingers, extracted a brown business-sized envelope, placed it on the tabletop, and then gingerly reached back in.

  The charred leather binder he slid out now was small—six inches by five inches or so—and appeared handstitched, its spine, corners, and edges singed and blackened by flames.

  “I told you Deep Dive’s classified papers went into burn barrels, but the men who cleared the building couldn’t fit everything into them,” he said. “This little item was apparently jammed between the interior trays of a trunk or footlocker they set on fire.”

  Sam stood looking over the curator’s right shoulder, saw a pair of ideographs etched into the middle of the cover:

  “Is that Japanese?” he asked.

  “Kyujitai,” Alders said. “Traditional characters that were mostly used until World War Two. After the Occupation, it became more common to see kanji, a simplified form of writing.”

  “And I’m guessing Vance hurried to get it translated.”

  Alders smiled. “I can only imagine his excitement,” he said. “What it says is journal. In the sense of a personal diary or notebook.”

  Callen leaned forward to inspect it. “Vance found this out by the ridge?”

  “In the footlocker,” Alders said. “For some reason it was just partially destroyed by the flames, and Vance assumed the Seabees hosed down and buried what remained of it. But when Tropical Storm Katherine hit in ’sixty-three heavy rains washed away the topsoil covering its metal hardware. He noticed a corner of it sticking out of the hillside, came back with a shovel, and dug it out.”

  The agents were quiet a moment. Then Sam nodded at the journal.

  “What’s inside?” he asked. “Anything legible?”

  “Not much.” Alders held the binder directly under the magnifier lens, opening it to show him its scorched, water-and-smoke-damaged flyleaf. “The ink on the pages smeared badly when they doused the trunk, and then the floodwaters compounded the damage.”

  Sam looked at the thick sheet of parchment paper through the lens.

  “Something’s written there,” he said. “More Japanese kyujitai?”

  Alders brought the light down nearer the page so they could look more closely at the smudged characters:

  “Vance explained it took him a while to decipher them,” he said. “He could’ve contacted Japanese-speaking colleagues for an assist, but he was always cagey about his discoveries. More than usual in this instance because it was something the OSS tried to wipe out of existence.” He paused. “As you can see, the last character’s especially faded… almost illegible.”

  “But he got it figured out,” Callen said, looking at him. “Or am I wrong?”

  Alders lifted the envelope off his worktable, pulled out a folded sheet of paper, and opened it at the crease, pressing it flat on the table.

  “I’m not sure how, or when, but he did it,” he said. “Here’s what he wrote.”

  Mori Haruo/Haruo Mori

  June 5 1898-Jan. 17 1944

  “Looks like a name,” Callen said. “And dates, obviously.”

  Alders was nodding his head.

  “The Japanese write their family names before their given names,” he said. “If you’re wondering about his transposition.”

  “Haruo Mori,” Sam said, reading aloud. “Should it ring a bell?”

  Alders looked at him. “It isn’t exactly famous,” he said. “But during the nineteen thirties and early forties he was one of Japan’s leading physicists. Worked with Yukawa to model atomic nuclei.”

  Callen tugged his ear. “Those dates,” he said. “Are they when Mori was born and died?”

  “You got the first right,” Alders said. “But the second is when he set sail aboard the U-437… the last captured Axis submarine to ever enter Hueneme… never to be seen or heard from again.”

  * * *

  The Pacific Ocean, shiny and blue, spread out beyond the palm-studded strip of beach to Callen’s left as he sped north on 101 toward Santa Barbara.

  Following a curve of the freeway now, he glanced out across the water as cloud shadows scuttled across its surface, teasing him with a false glimpse of the past. In his imagination, the warships Linette and Phillips briefly appeared offshore, their dark shapes sailing down the channel with a third between them.

  He turned his eyes back to the road, thinking about the captive U-437.

  “G, you have that look on your face,” Sam said from the passenger seat.

  “What look?”

  “The look that says we oughtta look into what we got from our look around the base,” Sam said. “Unless you’d rather we see which of us knows more words that start with double-o.”

  Callen frowned and shook his head. “We’re meeting Varno in a half hour,” he said. “We can probably look forward to him doing that.”

  “Agreed,” Sam said. “So we working our way forward in time or back?”

  “Your call,” Callen said. “I’m busy driving.”

  “For a change.” Sam thought a moment. “Okay, you ready?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Forward to back,” Sam said. “About a year ago, the Navy orders a study on whether Rusty Corners should be flattened like a tamale or preserved as a historic site.”

  “Rusty Corners and the area out by the railroad tracks.”

  “Right, the area where Curator Vance found the footlocker with Haruo Mori’s journal inside.” Sam patted the archival box on the seat next to him. “And where the CIA held a secret document cookout about fifty years ago.”

  Callen nodded.

  “If there’s any thought given to saving the compound,” he said, “Elias Sutton puts the kibosh on it.”

  “Insists it’s got no historical value.”

  “Which is kinda ludicrous.”

  “More than kinda, you ask me,” Sam said.

  “And speaking of the cookout,” Callen said, “that’s actually a cutesy way of referring to a thorough housecleaning of Building Thirty-One.”

  “By Tip Holloway.”

  “Who was with the CIA.”

  “An agency that grew out of the OSS.”

  “Which Holloway worked for while he and Sutton were stationed at Hueneme near the end of World War Two,” Callen said.

  Sam nodded. “I dig your segue,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Callen said. “Now I’m blushing.”

  Sam grinned. He’d kept his hand on the box Alders had entrusted to them.

  “It’s during this Cold War cookout that the footlocker is lugged over to the ridge and torched,” he said. “As top cat, Holloway either would have ordered or approved of that…”

  “Either way, he has to know…”

  “But he probably doesn’t know the Seabees who did the cleanup buried it afterward,” Sam said. “And that it’s still partly in one piece when they do.”

  Callen was momentarily quiet as the sun again fell behind the field of low, puffy stratus clouds rafting ov
er the water.

  “You know, Sam,” he said, “I don’t want to sound paranoid, but it just struck me that in the forty-eight hours since the Sutton killing, we’ve found out about three—no, four—possible attempts to conceal, suppress, cover up, or otherwise obfuscate information.”

  Sam nodded.

  “I’ve been thinking about it too,” he said, and began ticking them off on his fingers. “There’s Tip Holloway using his clout to get the police off his kidnapping investigation a couple months ago…”

  “And Elias Sutton advocating that the Navy knock down Building Thirty-One around the same time, which might or might not be coincidental…”

  “And Holloway ordering the destruction of sensitive Deep Dive records and other stuff from inside the building back in the sixties…”

  “Making it twice that he’s been involved in keeping things quiet,” Callen said.

  “Right,” Sam said. “Twice that we know.”

  “Or is it three times?” Callen said. “According to Alders, Mori’s journal is among the stuff that’s removed from the building at his command. This is sixteen years after it was secretly confiscated from U-437…”

  “Back when Holloway and Sutton were calling the shots together at Camp Hueneme.” Sam was still counting on his hand. “I’m at four definite or possible cover-up attempts so far.”

  Callen glanced over at him.

  “I think we can up it to five if we accept what Alders says about the sub’s irregular passengers,” he said. “We do take his word for it, right?”

  Sam nodded his head. “He’s a no bullshit boat guy,” he said. “We trust him.”

  “Then it’s definitely five attempts to hide info,” Callen said. “Because Alders has declassified British intercepts of radio cables between Tokyo and Berlin, naming Mori and three other Japanese scientists who were in Germany as advisors…”

  “This is late nineteen forty-four…”

  “Specifically, November ’forty-four,” Callen said.

  Sam nodded. “The cables involve Japan’s request to have the scientists return to their country aboard a German cargo submarine…”