The Cloud Atlas

“That,” the captain said, “is confidential.” That clearly wasn't good enough for the colonel, but before the colonel could blurt out another question, the captain looked at me and asked, “Who's this?”

The colonel drew himself up. “This asshole, supposedly a bomb man, was the first to figure out that the balloon was booby-trapped.”

“Bomb disposal?” the captain said, peering through the dark. “What's your name?”

“He was a little damn slow,” the colonel said. “A few minutes earlier, he could have saved some lives.”

I looked at the captain: “Belk, sir.”

The captain barked a little laugh. “You don't say? Sergeant Louis A. Belk?” I nodded. “How do you like that? You're mine, too. Wait for me in the jeep.”

I was glad to leave the colonel to him, and watched from a distance as the two officers argued. Finally, the colonel offered up a bit of a smile, and the two of them walked over.

The colonel regarded me, savored, and smirked. “You poor sap,” he said. “Whose ass did you forget to kiss?”

I looked to the captain. He looked at the colonel and then at me. “I am carrying orders to remove you from Camp Sunshine here, immediately, and deliver you to Elmendorf Field, Fort Richardson, Alaska,” he said, and then hiked up the hill toward his men.

“ Alaska,” the colonel repeated, very pleased.

I watched the captain exchange words with his men, who now had their masks off. Then he walked back toward us and climbed into the jeep.

“Bon voyage,” the colonel said to me.

“I'd keep clear of the area,” the captain said. “Just in case.” We all looked back up the hill, where the men now had their masks back on. The jeep sputtered to life and the captain steered us down the track he'd come up.

Hands on hips, feet apart, the colonel watched us drive away. I stared back at him for as long as I could, until I couldn't be sure if I was seeing or imagining him.

WHAT NEITHER THE colonel nor I knew at the time was that one of the most closely guarded secrets of World War II had exploded right in front of us.

The Japanese were bombing mainland North America. And the attack was far more widespread, and had gone on much longer, than the infamous raid on Pearl Harbor. In many ways, it was much more audacious. Certainly the censorship campaign that surrounded the bombing campaign was audacious: American authorities ordered nothing be reported. In the months to come, I would learn a little more, but only a little. The complete history-such as it is-I have come to learn only over the course of many years.

In mid-1944-not long after I enlisted, as it happens-a Navy ship made a curious discovery just off the coast of Southern California. The lookout first reported a downed pilot; what he could see through his binoculars had all the looks of a parachute. But there had been no word of any sorties being flown in their sector that day, and certainly no word of any mishaps. Upon drawing closer, the ship found no evidence of a pilot or plane, and when the material was hauled on board, it appeared to be a large hot-air balloon of rubberized silk. Instead of a basket, it contained a peculiar sort of crate, to which were affixed various instruments. One of the communications officers said it looked like a weather balloon. Thus mollified, the ship's captain brought the balloon and its crate home, where it was packed off to a warehouse in Long Beach. Word was sent to the weather bureau to come collect their fallen star.

The bureau had yet to reply when the authorities learned of an explosion outside Thermopolis, Wyoming (I'm fuzzy on some details, but not that one; my Alaskan missionary mind refuses to forget such a warm-sounding place). Residents had seen what appeared to be a parachute, rocketing toward earth with fatal speed. Shortly after came a tremendous explosion, and bright flames of a bizarre red hue leapt in answer to the sound. The next morning, locals set out to discover what had happened, and there, fifteen miles northwest of town, they came upon a great crater littered with shrapnel. There was talk of comets and flying saucers. The police notified the military.

Not long after, the Fourth Air Force, responsible for the air defense of the western United States, learned of a gigantic paper balloon that had crashed outside Kalispell, Montana. Its construction, though elaborately conceived, was somewhat makeshift, and authorities initially believed it had been assembled and launched from a nearby German prisoner-of-war camp or one of the Japanese internment camps.

But within the next few weeks, dozens more balloons were sighted. Some as far north as Saskatchewan and others just south of Santa Barbara. And while evidence of some of the early landings had disappeared in explosions, more balloons began to be recovered intact. (One western sheriff bravely, or comically, leapt after a balloon's trailing line as it near ed the ground; it bounced and dragged him across the desert for several miles before he finally managed to stop and anchor it.)