He handed it to me, and I took it gingerly, trying not to touch the bloodstains. The pages were beautiful-it wasn't a book, really, as much as it was some man's private journal. The Japanese calligraphy was done in a tight, neat hand in the corners or margins of each page; in the center was usually a map or illustration, done with black ink and colored with watercolor paints or a light gray wash. The fire balloons appeared on a number of pages; sometimes in flight, sometimes lying in a wreck on the ground. The pages themselves were unusual; the paper felt brittle and had a slight sheen.

Gurley thought the book's final pages were its most curious. First, several seemed to be missing, which he found troubling. And the pages that remained-well, they looked blank. But when you looked closer you could see evidence of some color-a faint gray wash, nothing more. After a minute or two, I decided that summed up the book: pretty, but useless. I made the mistake of saying so.

“On the contrary, Belk,” Gurley said. “It is extremely useful, in fact, albeit to a small number of people.” He counted them off with his hand, starting with his thumb. “First it is useful to the spy, or spies, who created it. Should we find them and-secure-their assistance, then the book becomes useful indeed. Second, it is, and has been, useful to me. I was able to convince my former colleagues that the book, and by extension, the balloon campaign, was worthy of my personal and total focus. I admit the colonel was uncertain, initially, but I explained that I would be happy to brief his wife on all that I had discovered about the Blue Fox. He turned a shade of red that was indeed close to blue.” Gurley smiled. “He was only too happy to send me back to Alaska.”

Gurley looked at his row of clocks and stood. “It's time to go.” I started to stand as well, and Gurley pointed me back down. “This book, lastly, will prove useful, I hope, to you. I have read it, studied it, translated it, but have yet to find a balloon with it, or predict, precisely, where one will land.” I looked up. “Yes, we're quite good at finding them after they've landed. But by then it's too late: a fire has started, or worse, rumors have started among the local populace.” Gurley paused until I looked at him. “So please, Sergeant, find us our next balloon, before some lumberjack does. Find me my spy. Find the next bomb in that book, on paper, before I find it in the field, with my one remaining foot.”

He limped quite slowly around the desk to the door. I twisted around to see him go. “I'll not be back today, Sergeant. Business in town.” He smiled, broadly. “But I look forward to hearing the fruits of your labors. Tomorrow, 0700, at the airfield. Do not be late. Nor empty-handed.”

“I don't know what I can do by then, sir. That's not nearly enough time to-”

Gurley cut me off. “Sergeant,” he said, teeth bared in his favorite apparent smile. “You've seen this weapon in flight. You've seen it land. You've seen what happens when you don't move fast enough.” He spun and kicked the door with a violence that no other man who wanted to spare his foot injury could have matched. Which, when I saw his face, I realized was precisely his point.

“Boom,” he said, just the one word, quiet and slow, and then he left.

CHAPTER 8

I HAD NO IDEA WHERE GURLEY AND I WERE FLYING, SO I packed everything I could think of into a large duffel and hauled it down to the airfield the next morning. I got there an hour early, just to be safe. After a flight left for Juneau and points south at 0630, I had the terminal to myself, with the exception of a surly master sergeant who appeared to be in charge of everyone's comings and goings. I went outside to wait.

At 7:10, the sergeant poked his head outside the door and asked if I'd seen a Captain Gurley I said no, and he ducked back inside before I could say anything more.

At 7:30, the sergeant poked his head outside again, saw me, frowned, and then disappeared once more.

At 7:55, Gurley bounced up in the back of a jeep driven by two sailors. None of the three looked like they had bathed, changed, or slept since the day before. Gurley climbed out of the back carefully, but quickly, exchanged a laugh with the driver, and then turned to face me. The jeep lurched away.

“Who's late, Belk? You or me?” He looked at his watch, and then caught sight of my bag. “What's this?” he asked, kicking it. “You packed me a lunch?”

“No, sir,” I said. “I-well, I wasn't sure where we were going, so I packed everything I-” Gurley looked completely confused, so I tried something shorter: “That's my gear, sir.”

“Lovely, Belk, but why-oh dear,” he said. “You assumed-but of course you did, what with your feeble brain and eager youth. You thought you were going with me. That's charming.”

Gurley walked us away from the building-he was concerned about eavesdropping; I was concerned about a fight-and then turned me around, put his hands on my shoulders, and said, “Before we begin, Sergeant, let us be absolutely clear on one point. What you learned yesterday is extremely secret. You are to tell no one. If you do-” Now, it would have been clear enough for Gurley to draw a finger across his own throat. But, as always, he'd devised better. Whether it was improvised or practiced, I can't say, but this is what he did: he put a thumb to my neck, just to the left of my carotid artery. And then he slowly drew his thumbnail across-carotid, esophagus, jugular- before lifting it, before I quite knew how to react, before I'd started breathing once more. He smiled. “There, now,” he said. “It might just be better to pretend-and this may not be too difficult to do-that you learned nothing, not a single thing.”

He was right. That would not be difficult at all, because this was Alaska.

During the war, the entirety of Alaska was declared of strategic importance. Press censorship was so tight, soldiers returning Outside sometimes weakly joked that their whole horrific Alaskan experience may have taken place in their imaginations. They'd been to this strange and wild place, after all; many of them never saw the enemy (nor the sun). Once they were home, they discovered that no one had heard or read a single word about what they'd done. Daily dispatches from the South Pacific appeared in the press, but the Alaska news blackout was almost total. Maybe nothing had happened there at all.

And if Americans thought that, if the enemy thought that, it was fine with Gurley. He fought his war on two fronts, as he now explained. On one side were the Japanese, their balloons, and the prevailing winds. On the other side, the American press and public, whom he feared and loathed even more. The greatest danger these balloons posed, Gurley insisted repeatedly, was not that they would kill a few civilians or set ablaze a few acres, but rather that they would be discovered by the wrong sort of people-in particular, members of the press, who would inevitably sensationalize the issue. And why not? Japanese bombs were raining down on North America almost daily now, and not many Americans-though surely more than Gurley's supposed fifty-knew what was happening.

Although there had been a few brief mentions of the balloons in the New York Times and elsewhere early on in the campaign, very little was known about the balloons at the time, and officials had quickly moved to smother any further coverage. Gurley told me his superiors had initially proposed sending out a general bulletin to editors nationwide, alerting them to the story, and then demanding that they not cover the story. Report any information they uncovered to the Army, but publish nothing.

As it happens, just such a blanket agreement was later struck. But when I told Gurley that this sounded like a sensible plan, his reply was quick.