Passage

She let him ramble on, satisfied that he wasn’t one of Mr. Mandrake’s spies. It was clear the real reason he’d volunteered was to have somebody new to tell his war stories to. And if Mr. Mandrake tries to pump him, it’ll serve him right, she thought, smiling to herself. He’ll get the whole history of the war in the Pacific. And if Amelia didn’t get here soon, she would, too. She glanced at the clock. It was nearly two. Where was she?

Joanna’s pager beeped. “Excuse me,” Joanna said and made a point of pulling it out of her pocket and looking at it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve got a call I’ve got to take.”

“Sure, Doc,” he said, looking disappointed. “Those are great little gizmos. Wish we’d had ’em back in WWII. It sure woulda helped the time we—”

“We’ll call you as soon as we’ve finished setting up the schedule,” Joanna said, escorting him firmly across the lab to the door with him still talking. She opened the door. “We should know in a day or two.”

“Anytime’s fine. I got all the time in the world,” he said, and Joanna felt suddenly remorseful.

“Ed,” she said, “you never finished telling me about the dive-bomber, the one who said he’d hit the flight deck if he had to lay the bomb on there himself. What happened to him?”

“You mean Jo-Jo?” he asked. “Well, I’ll tell ya. He said he’d sink that carrier if it was the last thing he ever did, and he did it, too. It was a sight to see, him coming in straight at the Shokaku, his tail on fire, Zeroes all around him. But he did just what he said he was gonna do, laid that bomb right on her flight deck, even though he couldn’ta been more than two hundred feet above that deck when he dropped it, and then, wham! his bomber crashed into the ocean.”

“Oh — ” Joanna said.

“But he did it, even if he was already dead when that bomb went off. He still did it.”

7

“On board the Pacific from Liverpool to N.Y. — Confusion on board — Icebergs around us on every side. I know I cannot escape. I write the cause of our loss that friends may not live in suspense. The finder will please get it published. Wm. Graham.”

—Message found in a bottle, 1856

It took another twenty minutes and two more stories about the Yorktown to get rid of Mr. Wojakowski. “My gosh,” Joanna said, leaning against the door she had finally managed to shut behind him, “he’s harder to get away from than Maisie.”

“Do you think he’s one of Mandrake’s?” Richard asked.

“No, if he were a True Believer, we’d have heard all about it. He’ll actually make a very good subject if I can just keep him away from the topic of the USS Yorktown. He’s got an eye and an ear for detail, and he talks.”

Richard grinned. “You can say that again. Are you sure that’s an advantage?”

“Yes. There’s nothing worse than a subject who answers in monosyllables, or just sits there. I’ll take talkative any day.”

“Then I can schedule him?”

“Yes, but I’d do it right before another subject’s session. Otherwise, we’ll never get him turned off.” She went over to the desk and put down Mr. Wojakowski’s file. “I kept hoping Amelia Tanaka would come in and provide a good cutoff point. She was supposed to be here by now. Is she usually late?”

“Always,” Richard said, “but she usually calls.”

“Oh, maybe she did,” Joanna said, pulling her pager out. “I gave her my pager number.” She hastily called the switchboard and asked for her messages.

“Amelia Tanaka said she’d be late, she’ll be there by two,” the switchboard operator said. “And Nurse Howard wants you to call her.” That was Vielle, and she must not be calling about an NDE. When it was someone who’d coded, she simply left a message for Joanna to come to the ER.

She’s found out what Greg Menotti meant by “fifty-eight,” Joanna thought. She glanced at the clock. It was one-forty. “I’m running down to the ER,” she told Richard, hanging up the phone. “Amelia will be here at two. I’ll be back before then.”

“What is it?” he asked. “An NDE?”

“No,” she said, “I just have to find out something from Vielle.” What fifty-eight means.

And it’s probably nothing, she told herself, hurrying down the steps to fifth. Vielle will probably tell me Greg Menotti was trying to say something perfectly ordinary, like, “Try Stephanie’s office. The address is 1658 Grant.” Or, “I can’t be having a heart attack. I did fifty-eight laps at my health club this morning.”

But he wasn’t, she thought, crossing the walkway to the main building and the elevator. He wasn’t talking about laps or phone numbers. He was talking about something else. He was trying to tell us something important.