“You were an Earhart buff already, Buddy. You’d read the books.”
“Sure, casually. I knew the stories of her and Noonan windin’ up on Saipan, the theory that Amelia was on some sort of secret spy mission, and got shot down and captured. Never took it too seriously, though. ’Course I kinda liked the romance of it. Right out of the movies, you know?”
“And you were in the neighborhood, so you decided to see for yourself.”
“Yes, I did. Got an ashtray?”
“Use your saucer.”
He put his Lucky out, then sat forward, the coolness of his blue eyes at odds with an expression that had grown intense. “And I talked to all sorts of people…on Majuro, Mili, and Jaluit, three little atolls in the middle of the South Pacific.”
He told me of some of the islanders he’d spoken with.
Bilimon Amaron, a respected storeowner on Majuro, related that as a sixteen-year-old medic, at Jaluit, he was called to a military cargo ship, where he tended to two Americans, “one lady, one man.” The man had some minor injuries from a plane crash, and the woman was called, by the Japanese, “Amira.”
Oscar De Brum, a high-ranking Marshallese official, told of hearing from his father (in 1937, when De Brum was in the first grade) of the capture of a lady pilot who was being taken to the Japanese high command office in Jaluit.
John Heinie, a prominent Majuro attorney, recalled attending a Japanese school as a child in 1937 and witnessing, one morning, just before school, a ship towing a barge with a silver airplane on it, into the Jaluit harbor.
Lotan Jack, a Marshallese working in 1937 as a mess steward at the Japanese naval base on Jaluit, told of hearing officers discuss Amelia’s plane being shot down between Jaluit and Mili-atolls; that she’d been routed to Kwajalein and on to Saipan.
On Saipan, a respected local politician, Manuel Muna, told of talking to a Japanese pilot who claimed to have shot the Electra down, and also took Buddy for a tour of the ruins of Garapan Prison, where he said the American prisoners—Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan—had been held.
“We’ve made three trips to Saipan,” Buddy said, “with limited results. At first, the Saipanese, the Chamorros, seemed less willing to talk than the other islanders.”
“Why do you suppose that is?”
“Well, for one thing, they still fear reprisals from the Japanese.”
“Even now?”
“There’s still a strong Japanese presence on Saipan, Nate, strong economic ties. Then there’s a general distrust, no, more a…hell, a downright fear of Americans, ’cause up till recently the CIA had a secret training center on the island, behind a security fence, not unlike the kind of fences the Japanese put up, in the old days.”
“And the Saipan natives were afraid of the Japs, so now they’re afraid of us.”
“Right. Just another foreign military presence to be feared. And they got worries from within, too—a good number of Saipanese collaborated with the Japs, vicious goddamn thugs, carrying clubs, beating and torturing their own people. Many of those mean old bastards, who were on the Japs’ ‘local police force,’ are still alive, and might retaliate if old secrets were revealed….”
“You’d think after the war, these snakes would’ve been rounded up and shot.”
“That’s not the way of the Saipanese. Yet gradually we did get natives to talk to us. Dozens of them, with similar stories of the lady pilot held in the hotel, and the man who’d come with her, kept in the prison.”
“So why bring me into it?”
He tapped the pocket where the photocopy was folded up; it crinkled under his prod. “You were on Saipan, Nate, well before the war…probably in 1939 or maybe ’40. Weren’t you?”
“Do I look like a priest?”
“You sure don’t look like a Jew. Even if your name is Heller. That’s ’cause your mama was a good Catholic girl; that’s where you get your Irish good looks.”
“What would I have been doing on Saipan in 1930-whatever?”
That bathroom tile grin flashed again; dentures, all right—you didn’t smoke that many cigarettes and keep them white like that unless they reside in a glass overnight.
“Same thing I was doing there in 1967 and ’69,” he said. “Looking for Amelia.”
“She’s been dead a long time.”
“Probably. But where did she die? And when? And where’s the body?”
Out the glass doors of our patio, moonlight glimmered on the waterway; but even with the moonlight, the night seemed dark.
I said, “Buried somewhere on that island, I suppose.”
He pounded a fist on the table. “That’s why I’m going back. To find her grave. To prove she was there, and give her a proper burial, and her rightful place in history as the first courageous casualty of the Second World War.”
I looked at him like he was the one who’d been mustered out on a Section Eight. “Then go dig her up. You don’t need me for it.”
The blue eyes narrowed and bore in on me like benign laser beams. “I think you’d be useful company, Nate. Might be interesting, seeing if that mug of yours stirs any memories, loosens any tongues. You’ll see some familiar faces. Remember a badass named Jesus Sablan? He was the head of the Saipan police—worst of the collaborators.”
My stomach grew cold again; my eyes felt like stones.
When I didn’t say anything, Buddy said, “Funny, I thought maybe you might remember him. One of the stories about the Irish priest involves Sablan…. They say Sablan’s the one that killed Fred Noonan. Some of them say that, anyway. Quietly, they say it. Secretly. Praying it never gets back to Lord Jesus.”
“Still alive.” My voice sounded hushed, distant, like somebody else was saying it, somewhere else.
A sly smile formed; blue eyes twinkled. “Oh, you do remember Jesus Sablan, then?”
I gave him my own sly smile. “I never confirmed your theory, Buddy. Never said I’d been to Saipan before. This could all just be another horseshit Amelia Earhart yarn.”
“Could be.”
“Remember your research. Remember all those people who dismiss Nate Heller’s ramblings as bullshit self-aggrandizement.”
“Good point. Of course, another thing I read about you, they say you like money. You don’t turn down a good retainer.”
“I’m old and rich, Buddy. Anyway, rich enough. And old enough, to ignore you and any offer you might make me.”
“Ten grand, Nate. For ten days. Are you so well off ten grand don’t matter?”
Actually, I was.
But I said, “Okay, Buddy—I’ll take your money. Just don’t ask me to go on record about that priest business.”
“No problem.” He rose from the table. “We leave next week. I’ll mosey out so you can break it to your wife…no wives on this trip.”
“Good policy.”
“Please do thank her for the hospitality, and my regrets for messin’ up Valentine’s Day evenin’. Passport in order?”
I nodded. “I’ll phone my office in Chicago and get you a contract.”
“I’m disappointed,” he said as I walked him to the front door. “I figured you’d want cash.”
“That was a long time ago, that Nate Heller. I’m a different man, Buddy.”
And I was, or at least I thought I was, till I heard those names: Amelia Earhart, James Forrestal, Lord Jesus Sablan.
Buddy Busch was giving me an opportunity I’d never dreamed I’d get: before I really retired, I would return to a place I’d never expected to see again, to a job I’d left unfinished, a very long time ago.
And finish it.