The Best American Mystery Stories 2015

Brendan DuBois Crush depth From Ice Cold

In the New Hampshire island community of New Castle, Michael Smith spent nearly a month conducting a surveillance op at an oceanfront park called the Great Island Common. It was small, with a tennis court, gazebo, and picnic tables and benches scattered on a scraggly green lawn. There was a stone jetty sticking out into the near channel, from which ships entered and left nearby Portsmouth Harbor to the Atlantic, and across the narrow channel was the state of Maine.

Near the stone jetty was a good downstream view of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, which had been building warships for the U.S. Navy since 1800.

It was now one year after the hammer-and-sickle flag had been lowered for the last time over the Kremlin, and sitting in a rented blue Toyota Camry, Michael thought it ironic that his work and the work of so many others was still going on, despite peace supposedly breaking out everywhere.

Cold war or hot war, there was always plenty of work to be done.

He stepped out of the Camry, started walking to the jetty. It was a warm day in late May. As with every previous Wednesday, his target was sitting on a park bench adjacent to the jetty, an old man with a metal cane balanced between his legs, looking down the channel, at the buildings, cranes, and docks of the shipyard.

Michael walked around the park bench, sat down, and gave a quick glance to the man about three feet away. He seemed to be in his late sixties, wearing a white cloth jacket, partially zippered up, a blue baseball cap with the U.S. Navy emblem in the center, dungarees, and black sneakers that had Velcro snaps. He looked over at Michael, then turned his gaze back to the shipyard. His nose was large with big pores, his face leathery and worn, white eyebrows about the size of butterfly wings.

“Nice day, huh?” Michael asked.

There was a pause, and the man said, “Yeah, it sure is.”

“But I bet fog can come up pretty quick, thicken everything up.”

“You know it.”

He sat still for a bit longer, not wanting to spook the man. All those months and weeks, poring over the dusty files, then making last-minute travel arrangements, and then ending up here. He had finally made it, and he didn’t want to screw it up.

“Think the shipyard will close now that the Cold War is over?”

A shrug. “Beats the hell out of me. But somethin’ that’s been there for nearly two hundred years, it’d be a shame if it did.”

“I agree,” Michael said, putting warmth into his voice. “I mean, there are good-paying jobs over there, with a lot of skilled guys and gals, am I right? Working with their hands, having special knowledge, knowing how to build subs.”

“Nobody over there builds subs,” the man declared.

“Excuse me? It’s a shipyard, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but all they do now is overhaul work or the occasional repair. Last time they built a sub over there was the USS Sand Lance. Launched in 1969.”

“What kind of submarine was that?”

“An attack sub. Sturgeon class. Used to hunt Russian missile subs.”

“Oh. I see.”

Michael kept quiet, folded his hands in his lap. Looked back at the older man, said, “Excuse me for asking this, I get the feeling you worked there. True?”

A long pause. The old man rubbed his hands along the top of the cane. “Yeah. I did. A pipefitter.”

Michael felt a small sense of triumph, tried to keep it out of his voice and expression. “You miss it much?”

“The people,” he said quickly. “You miss the guys you worked with. A real smart bunch of fellas, could pretty much figure out how to solve any kind of problem, no matter what it was, no matter if it was welding or electronics or anything else. Most of the times, we finished the boat under budget and on schedule. A great, great group of guys.”

“Sounds like it,” Michael said. “Makes it good to know that the place might still stay open.”

The old man kept quiet, and Michael stayed with him a few minutes longer, and said, “Lots of birds out there today.”

“Mostly seagulls,” the old man said. “More like rats with wings, not sure if they count as birds.”

Michael spoke softly. “Ever see a kingfisher?”

“No,” he said sharply. “Never have.”

He let it be, and after a couple of minutes got up and said, “So long,” and walked back to his rental car.

Good ops were like going fishing. Getting that initial nibble was always encouraging.

Exactly a week later, Michael came back to the Great Island Common and once again found the old man sitting at the same park bench, like he had never left. He sat down, and when the guy glanced over, he put his hand out and said, “Michael.”

The man took his hand. It was wrinkled and rough. “Gus.”

“Glad to meet you, Gus.”

They sat there for a while, and Gus said, “What brings you here?”

Michael sighed. “You know, Gus, sometimes I just need to sit outside and get some fresh air. I work in an office, and after a while, you realize, man, is this it? Is this your life? Moving papers from one pile to another. Going to lots of meetings. Moving some more papers around. Kissing the right ass. Go home, go to bed, get up and do it again. Blah.”

Gus stayed quiet, and Michael said, “I know this sounds crazy, but sometimes, you know, sometimes I envy guys like you. Worked with your hands. Building things. Fixing things. Could point to something at the end of the day. Could say, hey, that submarine that just got launched, I had a part of it.”

“Well... it wasn’t easy work.”

“Oh, man, yeah, I know that. I know it was hard, dirty, and maybe dangerous. But I’m sure you felt like you were helping out the country, you know? Helping defend it by making the navy strong. Me? End of the day, end of the month, what do I get? I moved some papers around and made some middle managers happy. So what?”

Gus cackled. “Yeah, managers. Always tend to get in the way, don’t they. Paperwork, procedures, forms, checklists. If it wasn’t for completed and filled-out forms, made you think whether they could breathe or not.”

“They sure do. Man, so how many submarines did you work on?

Gus shrugged. “Lose track. Eighteen, maybe nineteen.”

“So you were there when they went from diesel subs to nuclear?”

“That I was.”

“Bet security was really something, back then.”

Gus didn’t say anything, and Michael wondered if he had gone too far. He waited, wondering what to say next.

The old man finally said, “Yeah, it was something. Had to be. We were in the middle of the Cold War, weren’t we?”

Michael nodded. “People tend to forget that, don’t they?”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Neither do I.” Michael got up. “Tell me, you ever see a kingfisher fly by here?”

A firm shake of the head. “Nope, can’t say I ever have.”

The third time, the third Wednesday, it was overcast, with a steady breeze coming off the Atlantic, whitecaps making the channel choppy. But Gus was still sitting there, watching the gray buildings and cranes of the shipyard.

Michael sat down, having brought two cups of coffee with him. He passed one over to Gus, who took it and murmured, “Thanks, appreciate it.”

“Not a problem.”

A cargo ship was making its way slowly out of the harbor, being escorted by two tugboats. Michael watched it slide by and said, “Your dad work at the shipyard?”

“No, he was navy.”

“Oh. During World War II?”

“Kinda. He joined up just as it was wrapping up. Went to Japan as part of the occupation forces, right after the war ended.”

“I see.”

“Me, I got into the shipyard in the late 1940s, just as a kid.”

“Bet your dad was proud of you.”

“Yeah, you’d think,” he said, speaking slowly. “But my dad... something in the navy really changed him. Didn’t talk about his duty for a long, long while. But he hated the fact I had anything to do with the military.”

“Really? That sounds strange. I mean, you read all those books and see those television shows about ‘the Greatest Generation.’ It seems most guys were proud of their service. My grandfather, he fought the Nazis during the war. Said it was the best four years of his life. Nothing ever came close to giving him that close bond, of being part of something larger than him, fighting against fascism.”

Gus took a noisy slurp from his coffee. “Yeah, but the war was pretty much over when my dad joined up. No more fighting. Just occupation duty.”

“Something must have happened to him, back then.”

Michael sensed he had gone too far. It seemed Gus was staring at something very, very far away. His orders told him to do something, but he couldn’t do it. Not yet.

He didn’t know enough.

Finally Gus said, “This coffee is good. Thanks.”

Michael sat with him for a little while and then got up.

“Later, Gus.”

The old man didn’t say anything else.

In nearby Portsmouth, the Federal Building in the center of the city contained offices from the post office to the Armed Forces Recruiting Centers to the local office of the FBI. Michael parked nearby and walked for a bit, arriving at a room where he made a phone call to give an update.

His supervisor was brusque with him. “You should be wrapped up by now.”

“I’m close. I don’t want to spook him.”

“This whole thing can blow up in our faces unless it gets handled right. So handle it.”

“I will.”

“You better.”

And then his supervisor hung up.

The Wednesday next, Michael came to the park bench where Gus sat. In addition to bringing two coffees, he had brought a bag of doughnuts. Gus grunted when he saw the doughnuts. “My doc says I shouldn’t eat this stuff.”

“What do you say?”

“My doc should mind his own goddamn business.”

The doughnuts came from a local bakery — not a chain shop — and they were tasty and filling as both men ate. Michael took in the channel, the bridges, the brick buildings of Portsmouth, and the cranes and gray buildings of the shipyard.

“You said you worked on a lot of subs over the years,” Michael said. “Any one of them stand out in your mind?”

Gus took a good mouthful of coffee. “No, not really.”

“You sure? I think there’d be at least one that stuck out in your mind.”

“Nope.”

“Not even the USS Thresher? You sure?”

Gus paused, one hand holding the coffee cup, the other holding a half-eaten cruller. He coughed. “What do you know about the Thresher?”

“It was built over there, at the shipyard. Came back for some overhaul work in 1963. Went out one morning for a test dive off Cape Cod. Something went wrong. It sank, all hands lost. One hundred twenty-nine crew members and civilians. Hell of a thing.”

Gus lowered his shaking hands, let the coffee and the cruller fall to the ground. Michael said, “Went out on April 10, 1963. A Wednesday. Funny thing, huh? Every time I come by here and you’re sitting here, looking at the shipyard, it’s a Wednesday. What a coincidence, eh?”

“Sure,” Gus said. “A coincidence.”

“Never a Tuesday. Or Friday. Or Saturday. Only Wednesday. Why’s that?”

No answer.

Michael pressed on. “Tell me. You ever see an osprey out there?”

Gus turned to him, tears in his eyes. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

Michael took out a leather wallet with a badge and identification and held it up for Gus to look at. Gus looked at it, sighed, and sat back against the park bench. He seemed to age ten years from one heartbeat to another.

“How did you do it, Gus?” Michael asked. “How did you sink the Thresher?”

Michael waited, thinking he now knew this guy pretty well, and Gus didn’t disappoint. He didn’t argue, he didn’t deny, he didn’t try to get up and run away.

Gus just seemed to hold on to his cane tighter. “Wasn’t meant to sink the damn thing. That wasn’t the plan.”

“What was the plan, then?”

Gus said, “You told me the code words, in the right sequence. You should have figured it out, you and the rest of the FBI.”

Michael put his identification away. “You’d be surprised at what we don’t know.”

“You seem to know enough.”

“No, not really,” Michael said. “Biggest thing for me is, why didn’t you bail out once I said ‘kingfisher’ that first day?”

Gus turned to him. “What? Where would I go? Shuffle off to my assisted living facility? Empty out my savings account and take a Greyhound to Florida? I didn’t know who the hell you were... so I waited you out. Maybe you were a birdwatcher. Maybe not. I’m old enough now I don’t really give a shit.”

Michael knew his supervisor wanted him to wrap this up as quickly as possible, but he was patient. Maybe too patient, but he wanted to make sure he had this one settled before proceeding.

“So what can you tell me, Gus?” he said. “How did it start?”

“You go first,” he said. “How the hell did you find out about me, after all these years?”

Michael laughed. “What, you haven’t been watching the news last year? In case you didn’t get the memo, the goddamn Evil Empire has collapsed. The Communist Party’s practically outlawed, peace is breaking out, and the Soviet Union is no more.”

“So?”

“So when you got a country that’s collapsing, the army’s being called out to harvest potatoes and their navy is sinking dockside, then everything’s for sale. Everything! So we’ve had guys going over to Moscow and other places, passing out the Benjamins, getting files and dossiers. You wouldn’t believe the old secrets that are being given up. We had special squads lined up to get answers to old puzzles... I put in for the JFK squad but I was assigned to naval matters. And we found your dossier... or parts of it. Got your real name, your job at the shipyard, and your assignment for the Thresher.”

Gus sighed. “I never got contacted after she sank. I thought I was in the clear. Thought they had forgotten me.”

Michael said, “Then you don’t know how they operated. The KGB had a seal they’d put on some of their more sensitive documents. Dolzhny khranit’sya vechno. Know what that means? It means ‘to be kept forever.’ That’s how their minds worked. They thought they’d be victorious against us evil capitalists, so nothing would ever be burned or shredded. Their proud files would be kept forever.”

Gus looked out at the channel, and Michael said, “But something was missing in your dossier, Gus. It’s why you did it. Was it money? Were you that hard-pressed for money back in the 1960s? Was it gambling? Medical bills for a family member? Did the KGB promise you a ton of cash?”

“No, nothing like that. It wasn’t for the money. Didn’t get paid a dime.”

“So why did you do it, Gus? Why did you betray your country? Sabotage a nuclear-powered submarine, the first in its class, a sabotage that would sink it and kill everyone on board?”

The old man sighed. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me. C’mon, let me in on it.”

“Why?” he shot back. “To make it look good on your arrest report?”

Michael laughed. “Who said anything about arresting you?”

Gus turned, shocked. “Then why the hell are you here? What’s going on?”

“Didn’t you hear what I said earlier? We’re getting old questions answered, puzzles figured out. I didn’t say anything about arrests, now, did I?”

The old man slowly turned his head back. Michael said, “Look, the JFK squad. They’re compartmentalized, so I don’t know what they’re learning. But suppose they did find something out. Like somebody in the KGB ordered the hit on JFK. Or if Oswald really was sent over as a patsy to cover up for whoever really did it. What, you think the president will hold a news conference and say nearly thirty years of official history and explanations were wrong? And by the way, let’s start a new Cold War to get revenge for what the Reds did back in ’63?”

There was a siren sounding out by the shipyard, which eventually drifted silent. “Same thing with you, Gus. We just want to know how it happened, why it happened, and fill in those gaps in the secret histories. And once those gaps are filled, I’ll leave you here and I promise, you’ll never be disturbed, ever again.”

Gus seemed to ponder that for a few moments, and, his voice quiet, he said, “My dad.”

“What about him?”

“It was his fault.”

Michael was so glad he hadn’t rushed things, because this was certainly a new bit of information. Gus sighed. “My dad. A gentle guy. Never once hit me. Was a deacon at our local Congregational church. Didn’t really belong in the military at all. But they were calling everybody up back then, teenagers, fathers, guys with glasses or some medical conditions. A cousin of his, he said to my dad, Curt, ‘Curt, join the navy. You’ll sleep at night in a bunk, you won’t be in a muddy trench, you’ll have food three times a day, no cold rations, and no marching.’ So he joined the navy.”

Gus rotated his cane twice. “Since he was so smart and quiet, he was assigned to some military evaluation team. He and a bunch of others were sent to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to check on what the places were like after the atomic bombs had been dropped a month earlier. It was horrifying, he told me later, all these blasted buildings, the trees burnt stumps, and wounded and burnt people still stumbling around.”

“That’s war,” Mike said.

Gus shook his head. “No, Dad thought differently. It may have ended the war, but it also opened the door to something much more terrifying, something that could go beyond destroying cities to destroying whole peoples, whole countries, even the damn planet itself. He said every day and night there just sickened him. He said going across the Pacific, not once did he get seasick, but he was nauseous and threw up a lot when he was in Japan.”

“That’s why he didn’t want you to join the military, do anything that had to do with defense.”

“You got it. He only talked about it as he got older, and then, in 1962, he got lung cancer. Pretty funny, since he never smoked a cigarette or a cigar in his life. His doc told me privately that he probably kicked up a lot of radioactive dust when he was going through Nagasaki and Hiroshima, kept on breathing it in. By then I was married, to a nice girl called Sylvia, had two young boys, and I was working at the shipyard, making good money. My dad died that October. I was his only son, so I went through some of his things. That’s when I found the movies.”

“What kind of movies?”

“My dad, he told me that he and the others, they were forbidden to take photos at Hiroshima and Nagasaki unless it was part of their official work. But somehow Dad got a hold of an eight-millimeter movie camera, even used color film. I think he went out on his own and took these short little movies. No sound, of course, but you didn’t need sound to figure out what was going on.”

Michael let him sit quiet for a few moments, wind coming off the water flapping the loose ends of Gus’s white zippered jacket. “What were the movies like?”

A heavy, drawn-out sigh, like the man next to him had just finished climbing an impossibly high peak. “I still dream about them, even though it’s been thirty years. I found a projector and one night hung up a white bed sheet in the basement and played them. The city... you see those TV reports, about a tornado hitting some city out in the Midwest? Just piles of rubble and debris. That’s what it was like. Except the rubble had burned... there were places along the sides of bridges or cement walls where the flash from the bomb had burned in shadows... and the last bit of the third film, it was the people. Still walking around in shock at what had happened to them. One plane, one bomb... there were these two little boys... about the age of my own little fellas... looking at the camera, looking at my dad... they were barefoot... the clothes they was wearing was filthy... and each was holding a little ball of rice. And you could tell they was brothers, they looked the same... even were hurt the same...”

The old man’s voice dribbled off. Michael cleared his throat. “How were they injured?”

“The right side of their faces. Scabbed and crisscrossed with burns. Like they were walking down a street, going in the same direction, when the bomb hit and burned them. Oh, I know they were the Japs, the enemy, and lots said they deserved it for what they did at Pearl Harbor and Bataan. But when I saw it, in 1962, the war had been over a long time. All I saw was two kids, all I saw was my two boys, burned and barefoot in the wreckage of their city.”

Michael saw the emotion in the man’s face, the tears coming up in his eyes, and it came to him. “You said your father died in October 1962. That’s when the Cuban missile crisis was, when we almost got into World War III with the Russians. You put the two together, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Had Sylvia take the two boys up to a hunting camp of ours, over in Maine, with food and supplies. She said it wasn’t right to take ’em out of school, but I also said it wouldn’t be right to have ’em vaporized or burned in Portsmouth, because, by God, we were a goddamn target for the Russians. That and the SAC base over in Newington. And a couple of times I went out drinking in some of the bars in Portsmouth, and got drunk and pissed off, and said that damn fool Kennedy was going to kill us all, burn us and flatten our cities, because he got kicked in the nuts at the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba, and had to prove he was a real man to his bootlegger daddy.”

“Somebody heard you, then.”

Gus said, “Oh yeah. Somebody heard something, who passed it on to somebody else, and one day a guy came by and bought me some drinks. Said he was in the government, trying to work for peace, but he and the others were fighting against the hawks that were controlling JFK. He spun a good yarn, the bastard, and said if I was truly for peace, I could help things out. And I said, how? And he said, well, the Thresher’s being overhauled. If the overhaul took longer and longer, if problems cropped up, if things were delayed, that would help him and the others. Put things over budget. He and the others could help JFK rein in the Defense Department, help him work for peace with the Russians.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told ’im to go to hell... but he was sly, he was wicked sly. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. Showed me his ID, said he worked for the Department of Defense. Even took me to his office, just outside of the SAC base.”

“All faked, wasn’t it?”

“’Course it was,” Gus said. “But I was too young, too dumb. He kept on going back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He said, Look, back then, the Japs were our mortal enemies. Now we’re best buds. We’re buying their radios and soon we’ll be buying their televisions. That’s what happens in wartime. Your enemies become your friends. Look at Germany and us. So who can say what we and the Russians will be like ten or twenty years down the line? But the big difference was the bomb. The next war would be fought with the bomb, and this guy — Chandler was his supposed name — said, You know what Einstein said about World War IV?”

Michael said, “Beats the hell out of me.”

“Einstein said the fourth world war would be fought with sticks and stones. That’s what he said.” Another long sigh. “I watched those movies again, and I made up my mind. I told Chandler I’d help, but only to delay things. Not to hurt anybody. He gave me a tiny black box to smuggle in during my next work shift, which is what I did. A week later the Thresher went out on a shakedown cruise, never came back...”

Gus coughed. Tears were rolling down his cheeks. “What was worse... I mean, the whole thing was bad. All those poor sailors, all those poor families. But what made it worse was knowing there were seventeen civilians on board, guys from my own shipyard, guys from companies like Raytheon. You think, hey, the military, they sign up to put their lives on the line, that’s the risk. But these civilian techs... I’m sure they thought it was a thrill, to go along on this test dive, to make sure things worked... and then they sure didn’t. Can you imagine that, you’re a civilian, having a blast on this top-secret sub, thinking about bragging to your coworkers when you got back, figuring out what you could tell your wife and kids... and then alarms. Navy crewmen running around. Shouting. The sub tilting its nose up, sinking by the stern... knowing in your bones that the water wasn’t shallow enough to hit bottom... only knowing you were going to be dead within seconds...”

Michael said, “The naval inquiry said it appeared a pipe broke, releasing water that shorted out instrument panels, that led to the reactor shutdown... and they couldn’t keep her up, until she went to crush depth...”

Gus said, “Sure it said that. What else would they say? Sabotage, at one of the most secure shipyards in the country? I went to that office building where Chandler was supposedly hanging out. Empty. It was all a front. I thought about killing myself, about giving myself up... and I thought about Sylvia and the boys. And I tried to forget it... tried really hard.”

“But here you are, Gus. Every Wednesday.”

Gus leaned forward on his cane. “I lost Sylvia two years ago. Both boys are married, doing fine. One in Oregon, the other in California. I’m here by myself, and every Wednesday I come here. Pray for them. Pay tribute to them. And ask forgiveness.”

“For how much longer?”

Gus shrugged his shoulders. “Until the very end, I guess.”

“Does anybody else know about you and... what happened?”

“God, not at all.”

“Do you have any evidence from what happened back then?”

“Like what?” Gus shot back. “Pictures of me with that damn Russian? Written instructions on how to sabotage a submarine?”

Michael slowly nodded, and then Gus turned to him, eyes still watery, face flushed. “But what about me now, eh? You and the FBI, you know it all. What now?”

“What I promised,” Michael said, taking out a little notepad and a ballpoint pen, which he clicked open. “That you’ll never be bothered, ever again.”

And with one practiced motion, he took the pen and jabbed it into the base of Gus’s neck.

Gus looked stunned. He coughed, gurgled. A few words were whispered, the last one much quieter than the first.

Michael checked the old man’s neck for a pulse.

Nothing.

He put the pen and notebook away and walked back to his rental car.

Two days later, after his supervisor held a debriefing, his boss shook his head and said, “Misha, you need to know your history better.”

“How’s that?”

“Two things,” the stern man said. “First, you told the American that your grandfather had fought the Germans for four years. Maybe your grandfather did, but the first time Americans fought Germans was in North Africa in 1942. That would be three years, not four. And you said your grandfather was proud to fight fascism. That’s crap. Americans fought the Krauts, the Germans, the Nazis. They weren’t fighting fascism.”

He just shrugged. “Got the job done, though, didn’t I?”

“But you didn’t have to be sloppy. We can’t afford to be sloppy. The damn Americans are in a loving and forgiving mood. Ready to lend us billions so long as we play nice. If they find out some of our old secrets — like that damn attack submarine and how we sank it — they won’t be in a loving and forgiving mood. Got it?”

He sighed. “Heard you twice the first time.”

The supervisor walked past the office window, which offered a good view of the Kremlin’s buildings and where the white-blue-red flag of the new Russian Federation flew.

“Misha, you’re a romantic at heart. You probably write poetry in your spare time... but stay focused. Now. What did you leave out of your official report?”

“What makes you think I left anything out?”

“Previous experience from that Swedish schoolteacher who helped Olof Palme’s assassin escape.”

He crossed his legs, shook his head, still in disbelief. “The shipyard worker, he managed to say something as he was dying.”

“What did he say — ‘Go to hell, you bastard’?”

Another shake of the head. “No. He said thank you. That’s what he said. Thank you. Like he was thanking me for ending his life, ending the guilt. Can you believe that?”

His supervisor sat down heavily in his chair. “When it comes to Americans, I can believe almost anything. They spend fifty years threatening to burn us off the map, and now they offer us loan credits and McDonald’s. What can you say about a foe like that?”

“Makes you wonder who really won the Cold War.”

His supervisor, a sharp-eyed man named Vladimir, said, “Who says it’s over?”