David Golemon - Event

She produced a card that she wore around her neck on a chain and tucked into her coverall, then stepped to the nearest vault. She took the small card-key and swiped it down a reader, which ordered the lock to disengage. There was an audible click and the door slid silently inside the wall. An overhead light came on automatically and the computer said, "The vault requirements for file number 11732: all personnel are prohibited from making contact with the sealed enclosure."

"We lost two people on this particular mission, a doctor from the University of Chicago and a student from LSU. They thought it was worth dying to bring it out."

Collins stepped past McIntire and into the small theater-style room. Four spotlights shone down on a four-foot-wide-by-eight-foot-long glass box, with latex hoses running into its sides from the aluminum panel embedded in the wall. The room was cool and smelled of wet stone. Inside the glass box was a decomposed body lying on a slab of gray granite. The tattered remains of khaki-style clothing hung off the exposed bones, and the remains of short-topped boots were visible through the glass. The blondish red hair was short and still held a part just left of center of the head. There was a nice clean bullet hole in the side of the skull.

Sarah stood motionless for a long time until finally placing her small hand over the glass as near as she could get without contacting it and seemed to gaze forever at the figure inside.

"The Yakuza killed our people over her," she said in reverence, seeming to show deference to the dead.

"Come again?" Collins asked.

"Japanese organized crime."

"I know the Yakuza. Why did they kill a student and a doctor?"

"They thought it was important enough to kill for." She turned to face Collins. "The head of the Yakuza today is named Menoka Ozawa. He had a grandfather of not very high standing in the Japanese army in 1938." Sarah looked at the body through the glass again as she felt a kinship with it every time she was near it. "It was that man that was responsible for the bullet hole you see." She once again watched Collins for a reaction, and when none came, she continued, "This woman was executed on a small island in the Pacific for being an alleged spy, her and a man named Fred Noonan."

Jack looked closer at the skeletal remains. He smiled. It was the small gap in the cadaver's front teeth that clinched it for him.

"Amelia Earhart," Jack said, looking from the coffin to Sarah.

"How did you guess?"

"Believe it or not, I saw it on Unsolved Mysteries." He smiled. "So why not tell the public?"

"I can only assume, since the senator and director don't take me into their confidence."

"Assume away then," he said, sweeping his arm in a mock bow.

"She was on a stunt, that's all. That is until President Roosevelt and Naval Intelligence asked her to gather some information on Japanese movements and bases in the central Pacific, which she did. That was one of the unflattering things about Roosevelt." Once again Sarah looked at the major. "He played on her womanhood at being needed and accepted for his own ends. She had mechanical problems and her Electra aircraft went down. They found her and executed her without really knowing or caring who she was. A typical military response, if I may add. Anyway, this Yakuza fellow didn't want any bad taint to fall on his grandfather, who had left a detailed accounting of the incident in his personal journal. Thus he was willing to kill to keep the body right where it was found."

Sarah started for the door, pausing to look at the major as he was still taking in Earhart's body. He stood motionless for a moment, a sad look crossing his features.

"She was something, though, wasn't she?" he asked, still looking.

"In my opinion, one of the bravest women in history." Sarah thought a moment, then added, "Major, did you meet the old gunnery sergeant at Gate Two?"

"Campos, if I remember right."

"One of our people went on vacation ten or so years back and adjusted the thinking of this Yakuza person. They found him hanging in his rather expensive apartment one day. The person who vacationed in Japan that year was Gunny Campos."

Collins turned and looked at Sarah, wondering if viewing this particular vault had been a deliberate way of showing the worth of women, such as Earhart, or old people, such as the gunnery sergeant, or if it was just a fluke. He suspected Sarah was a person to watch.

"Well, anyway, her body is being flown back to Hawaii next month. We have arranged for Ms. Earhart to be found by a professor from Colorado State University and a University of Tokyo faculty member, both of whom had brilliantly proven this theory linking the Japanese and Earhart. So they deserve to find the body after we place it back." Sarah looked once more at the body. "Amelia deserves far better than this," she said as she gestured to the glass enclosure.

After Jack quietly left the vault, Sarah closed the door and it locked automatically. Then she turned and walked down a hundred feet before stopping at a larger, more heavily built door. She let Collins catch up before she turned and slid her access card into the slot. Instead of sliding up or into a wall, this one just clicked, and there was a gasp of air as it only opened an inch.

Sarah swung the large vault door open and stepped inside and the lights came on automatically.

Jack was amazed to see the metal ribs of a boat. It was long, about three hundred feet in length, he quickly deduced. The stern disappeared into the vastness of the vault. He made out hull plating that covered about a third of the vessel and the huge metal rivets that held them in place.

Sarah asked him to follow her up a large metal staircase that was permanently attached to the floor, allowing people to reach the top deck and travel the length of the find. As they reached the top, Collins saw what looked like more metal covering of what was once indeed a deck, which led to a tall structure that resembled a rusting conning tower of a submarine. Only this tower was rounded at the top with long diving planes attached to its sides. He could see large rusted-through holes that afforded a view of the interior, which was lit up by lighting that had been placed inside. He made out rust-encrusted gauges and levers.

"Resembles a submarine," he said.

Sarah didn't respond; she nodded her head and made her way along the catwalk. She stopped toward the stern and pointed down into a compartment that had been cut away.

"See those boxy-looking things lining the floor?"

Jack followed her finger and saw several hundred large, rusty boxlike rectangles. "Yes, what are they?"

"Batteries. This is an electrically powered submarine, Major."

"World War Two? But I've never seen a class of boats that had as strange a bow as this one. I don't think they had a spherical bow in the forties."

Sarah smiled. "No, they didn't. Our most advanced classes of submarines for most of World War Two were the Gato and Balao classes; they fought mostly in the Pacific campaign against the Japanese."

"So what are the dates on this craft?"

"Well, she was a little ahead of her time. Would you believe 1871?"

Jack looked at Sarah as if she had fallen off the deep end.

"This is what we know for sure. The boat was discovered off the coast of Newfoundland in 1967. She was totally buried in mud and she came up basically as you see her today. We have confirmed that she was electrically driven and, according to our engineers, had a top speed of twenty-six knots submerged, far faster than our boats in the war, and very comparable to our attack subs today. She had a crew complement of close to a hundred men and carried rudimentary torpedoes that ran on compressed air. For obvious reasons they are stored in a different vault. She had a ramming spike on her bow that has yet to be recovered, but we know it was there because the mounting for it is still bolted to the window frame. She had a glass nose made of quartz crystal for underwater viewing. She's just like the vessel described by Jules Verne in his novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea."