The Capsule Page 2

  There was another long pause. The only sound Sturm could distinguish over the recorder’s hum and squeak was someone breathing into the telephone. Then his own voice broke the silence.

  “What the hell? For Christ’s sake, Al, are you sure you have the right records? My mother told me he was listed as missing in action. She says she’s never heard from him since.”

  “Not according to this. These records show he was honorably discharged March 30, 1945.”

  “Does it say where?”

  “No, it doesn’t. Just says discharged honorably from special assignments on that date.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. Hang on a second.”

  Sturm could hear paper rustling over the phone line, then Thornton was back.

  “This says your father was enlisted in September of 1942 by request of U.S. Army Intelligence for Special Services duty for the good of the nation, quote, unquote.”

  “What kind of Special Services?”

  “You’ve got me. I’ve never seen anything so screwy as this, Travis.”

  He stopped the recorder and sat back. The beer had made him sleepy, but his mind was buzzing with what he had heard on the tape. All these years he had thought his father was dead, and now? Perhaps it was a mistake, but Al had seemed so certain. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, then punched the play button to continue the recording.

  “Is there anything else in those records that says what he did either during or after the war?”

  “Not a thing. But these orders refer to some DODSI file numbers. I think that’s the old Department of Defense Special Intelligence branch, or something like that.”

  “Can you get at those files, Al?”

  “I don’t know. I can try, I suppose. What’s this all about, anyway?”

  “Can’t tell you right now because I’m not sure myself. But how soon can you look up those other files?”

  “I can get at them first thing Monday morning and call you back.”

  “Okay, Al,” Sturm said. “I’ll explain it to you then.”

  Sturm reached out again, this time punching the fast forward button to advance the tape to his telephone conversation with his mother in Madison. After he had talked with Thornton he had thought for a long time about what he had learned, but he knew he could go no further until he contacted his mother. Maybe she was mistaken. Maybe she had lied on top of a lie. Maybe his father was not dead. Maybe his mother had known it all along and had not wanted him to see the man for some reason. He had recorded that conversation, like Thornton’s, so he would be absolutely certain there was no mistake.

  Sturm pushed the stop button and then the play button. His mother was talking.

  “… I’m sure it’s here somewhere. I don’t think I threw it out.”

  “Do you remember exactly what was written on that telegram, Mom?”

  “I don’t know exactly. It was from the War Department, or someplace like that. And it said your father was missing in action somewhere in Germany.”

  “Do you remember the date?”

  His mother’s voice was suddenly hushed. “Yes, I do. It was March 30, 1945.”

  And that made the mystery complete, Sturm thought as he punched the stop button. His mother had received a telegram stating his father was missing in action on the same day military records showed he was honorably discharged.

  He had listened to the tape recording of both calls at least a dozen times since Friday, and now, early Monday morning, he was no closer to a solution than when he had first learned of the contradiction. If Ellen were here, he mused as he got ready for bed, climbed in between the sheets, and set the alarm for eight o’clock, he could talk this out with her. She had been a good listener. When their two small children were in bed asleep, he and she would sometimes talk into the small hours of the morning about his latest detective stories. But things got tough, and their marriage had finally ended in a divorce nearly five years ago.

  As he fell asleep he thought about the past five years without her. He did not know for certain that he still loved Ellen, but if they had stuck it out until he got the job with the Journal, they might have made it …

  * * *

  The sun was just touching the tops of the trees with streaks of gold and red when Siegfried Adenauer, chief of the American Affairs Division of the Komitět Gosudarstvěbboi Bezopasnost’i, known to the Western world as the KGB, stepped out of the meeting hall and headed for his automobile. He was smiling. The meeting had gone better than he had thought it would, and within a few hours he would be in the United States.

  Adenauer’s driver jumped out of the car, touched his hand briefly to the brim of his cap, and held the rear door of the low-slung black military sedan open.

  “The airport,” Adenauer snapped.

  “Yes, Comrade,” the driver said.

  The car passed the gate leading out of the Institut für Wissenschaftlichen Förderungen with only a casual wave from the sentry on duty, and headed toward the highway which skirted Leipzig to the southwest. For two days Adenauer had been cooped up in the institute with its idiot director, Dr. Hans Müller, his even worse scientists, and the oppressive military men sent out from Moscow for the conference.

  Earlier this morning the men had watched the Apollo moon landing, and, directly afterward, had resumed their around-the-clock emergency session, accomplishing very little until just an hour ago.

  * * *

  “It should never have happened, Comrade,” Dr. Müller pleaded after the conference resumed. “The Americans were at least twenty years away from this.…”

  Adenauer smiled and waved him off. “As they were at White Sands and Alamogordo, Herr Doktor?” He said it softly. “Just as they should be years behind in electronic systems, in medical research, in.…”

  Dr. Müller protested, “They have the advantage.”

  “Yes, don’t they? Which is exactly why we are here, gentlemen,” Adenauer said. He looked around the conference table in the large room. Besides Dr. Müller there were three top scientists from the special scientific institute which had been built with Soviet money in the early 1950s, as well as two military advisers sent out from Moscow. What they were doing here was beyond Adenauer. He doubted they understood what was happening, what had just happened, and what would continue to happen if they did not move fast.

  Dr. Müller, a rotund, greasy little man, spoke up again in a pleading voice. “Was it not you who told us two months ago that our operatives were no closer than before? That they were nearing compromise?”

  “All true, Herr Doktor, in a manner of speaking,” Adenauer said with as much patience as he could muster. He looked at his watch. It was morning already, and he cursed the bumbling idiocy of these men. He glanced up at Müller again.

  “As I have explained more than once during these past hours, we expect penetration very soon, very soon, indeed. And when we do, we will be needing your cooperation. It would not do to bring the material to Moscow or to any of our other research institutes. This is the only safe place.”

  Dr. Müller was scowling and shaking his head, but Adenauer could see the man was both frightened and fascinated at the same time. He was frightened because when the Presidium asked, one normally responded positively. But he was also fascinated because the significance of using his institute in this matter could elevate him to become the most important scientist in the entire Eastern Bloc.

  “The next step for the Americans might prove fatal for us, as it nearly was in 1945,” Adenauer prompted.

  * * *

  They were passing the southerly highway which led into Leipzig itself now, and the car bearing Adenauer swept smoothly to the west, toward the military airport. He thought about the reaction his statement had produced on the others, and he smiled again.

  * * *

  All of the men in the room were clearly thinking back to July 16, 1945. Even then, their operatives were close to the American technical effort, and it came as no real surprise when the first atomic bomb was fired successfully at White Sands, New Mexico. Nor had it come as a surprise when the Japanese were defeated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But as hard as the Eastern Bloc scientists had worked, they were not able to crack the atomic secret without the help of a complex, but effective, espionage network. Soon the Eastern Bloc entered the atomic age, only to be left temporarily behind when the transistor was invented by Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley in 1947. Step by step, from miracle drugs to DNA and RNA research breakthroughs; from first-generation computers to subcompact machines that were designing new circuits for themselves faster than the human mind could comprehend; step by step, the Eastern Bloc scientists were being left behind. Then the Apollo moon shots capped the American efforts in the world’s eye, leaving the Eastern Bloc so far behind that they might never catch up. It was a puzzlement to these men at first, but a puzzlement that soon gave way to amazement, then envy, and, finally, greed which became the national goal.

  These men alone, besides fewer than three hundred in the United States, finally knew what was going on. And they were determined now, in the face of the latest American triumph, to either obtain the secret in toto or make sure it would be of no further use to anyone.

  Adenauer stood up and forced himself to smile at the assemblage. He hated his ill-disciplined military comrades for their weaknesses, and hated even worse the scientists who had been Nazis less than thirty years ago, but it could not be helped. He had to cooperate with them despite his long-standing hatreds. East Germany was needed as a clearinghouse for Western Operations in this matter, and that need made his hate almost unbearable at times.

  His parents had been among the first of the Jews to die at Nazi hands when the war was cruelly brought to the Russian
front. But even as a young man Adenauer was a realist, and he knew the death of his family meant release for him from the stigma of being a Jew in Russia. With his family gone, the town records destroyed, he took a new name and fought Germans, distinguishing himself to such an extent that he was given a battlefield commission after the first few engagements. No one knew where he had come from in the Russian military unit he had attached himself to, but it did not matter. Manpower was short, especially good men like Adenauer, and the Germans were close. Later, after the Germans were defeated, but before order was restored in Russia, he was able to implant his own version of his heritage in the city records at Minsk. The men he used for this task, all steadfastly loyal to him, nevertheless disappeared or died within a few weeks. And from that time on, he was a loyal party member. The un-Russian name he had taken because of his obvious accent served him well, so well, in fact, that he rose eventually to head the American Affairs Division of the KGB.

  “It is time now,” Adenauer said. “The area is pinpointed, and, as I have said, penetration is imminent. It is now up to you, Dr. Müller. Are we to use your distinguished institute, or not?”

  Müller was sweating, but after a long moment he nodded his head.

  “Good,” Adenauer said smiling, and he strode out of the room.

  * * *

  Travis Sturm woke at eight to the incessant buzzing of his clock radio over the sound of a news commentator. He reached up behind him to shut off the alarm, then stretched his nude body beneath the sheets as he caught the words:

  “… One small step for man, A giant leap for mankind.”

  Sturm lay back and shut his eyes again as the radio announcer continued.

  “Twenty minutes after Armstrong stepped down, Aldrin followed with the words, quote, Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, a magnificent desolation, unquote. Their spacecraft Eagle landed on the moon at three-eighteen P.M. Central Daylight Time, and both men were on the lunar surface six hours later. Describing his first steps on the moon, Armstrong said the surface is fine and powdered, like powdered charcoal. He said he could see his footsteps in the fine sandy particles. Meanwhile, the Soviet-launched Luna Fifteen unmanned space probe is reportedly skimming just forty miles off the surface of the moon. Scientists at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in England say they believe the Soviet probe may attempt to land sometime today. In other news…”

  Sturm pushed away the covers, slipped out of bed, and padded into the living room. The sun shone directly in the large front window, and Sturm could see a few fishermen out on the lake. It looked like a beautiful Monday. He yawned and went into the kitchen to make some coffee and toast. While the toast was in, he went back to his bedroom and slipped on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, then went to the front door to collect the newspapers. This morning the headlines blared: MOON WALK COMPLETED, accompanied by the photograph of Armstrong’s already famous first step.

  Sitting in the living room, drinking his coffee and eating his toast, he scanned through the newspapers, reading not only the moon-landing stories but also looking for local stories developing that he might be covering in depth. Then he caught himself and threw the papers down.

  “Screw it, Sturm,” he told himself. “You’re taking a two-week vacation, remember?”

  The events of Friday—along with the replaying of the tape recording all weekend, and his thoughts afterward began to enter his sleep-fuzzed brain, finally pushing him wide awake. There had to be some reasonable explanation for the apparent mixup in his father’s records. Someone had screwed up somewhere, and it was probably in the records section. If his father had made it through the war, he certainly would have returned home, or at least he would have contacted someone. But he had not. So that must mean he was dead.

  The next step, Sturm decided as he rinsed out his cup and cleaned the toast crumbs off the counter, would depend upon what Thornton was able to find this morning in the Department of Defense Special Intelligence files mentioned in his father’s records. Those files would in all probability clear up the mystery, but somehow he did not believe that this morning. Something—his old gut instinct, he called it, but something his wife Ellen had once remarked was a “pain in the ass”—said there was more to this than a single screwup someplace.

  The phone jangled, startling him out of his thoughts as he headed into the bathroom to shave. He glanced at the clock as he went back into the living room—it was nine-thirty—then answered, “Yes?”

  “Travis? This is Al.”

  “Good morning, Al. That was quick.”

  “Yeah, I was thrown out on my ear.”

  Sturm sat down, alarm bells jangling like the strident telephone along his nerves. “What happened?”

  “I went over to the Defense Department this morning and asked to see those files mentioned in your dad’s records. The young gal I talked to herded me into a small office to see some captain who told me it was impossible for me to look through their files.”

  “Why, for Christ’s sake?”

  “I never did find out for sure. But when I insisted and tried to pull a little rank, the captain called someone else; it was an outside call because he had to dial nine-oh for a line. Anyway, he asked for the colonel, whoever the hell that was, then told him I was there and wanted to look at the records. When he hung up he told me there was simply no way in which I could see those records. They were classified top secret, he said, and he suggested I drop the entire matter.”

  “And that was it?”

  “Yes. He just got up and showed me to the door as polite as everything, and the next thing I knew, I was outside, looking back the way I had come.”

  Sturm bit his lip, trying to concentrate. This was all wrong. That World War II military records on some foot soldier would be classified made no sense at all—unless his father had been something more than a foot soldier.

  “Travis, you still there?” It was Thornton again, and he sounded angry.

  “Yeah.”

  “Listen, what’s this all about? You said you’d tell me what’s going on this morning. I don’t like being shoved out of offices like that, without first knowing what the hell is going on.”

  Sturm took a deep breath, letting it out with a sigh. “Something screwy is happening, just like you said Friday. After you called and told me my father had been discharged in March of 1945, I called my mother in Madison. She told me she received a telegram on that same date from the War Department or someplace, notifying her that he was missing in action somewhere in Germany. Now you tell me you can’t get in to see his records.”

  “Maybe someone made a mistake and sent out the wrong telegram. Jesus Christ, Travis, that was at the end of the war, and no one really knew what the hell was happening. It could have been a mistake. I’m sure there were thousands of goof-ups like that.”

  “I thought so, at first,” Sturm said slowly. “But it’s been more than twenty-five years. You’d think the man would have contacted at least one person in his family in all that time if he was alive.”

  “Just how bad do you want to find him?” Thornton asked.

  Sturm stopped himself from snapping something about the man being his father, to ask himself that same question. Was it that he wanted to see his father’s records, or was it his reporter’s mind not liking unsolved mysteries? Maybe it was a little of both. “Badly,” he finally said.

  “I was hoping you’d say that. I was pissed off with that goddamned captain. I’ll take this to the senator and see what he says. Maybe he can pull a few strings.”

  After Sturm hung up, he sat thinking for a few minutes about his father, or at least his image of his father. If he really hadn’t been killed in the war, what had happened to him? Perhaps he had been discharged, then was killed on his way home. Sturm rejected that theory almost immediately. Had his father been killed, his relatives would have been notified. So he had to be alive. But why all the mystery surrounding the Department of Defense files mentioned in his father’s military records?

  Sturm got up and went into the bathroom to shower and shave. He was certain that a couple of days in Madison spent talking to his mother and his father’s relatives in light of this new development would produce the answers he needed. Although he had never met any of his father’s relatives, he knew that they lived in Madison. In all likelihood, his father had returned to Madison after the war, but had decided he did not want to fight for his only son. By that time Travis’s mother had married another man, and they seemingly were settled.