“How very interesting. Your father is not in the newspaper photo.”
“They’re all up to something. They don’t care about the war.”
“Read the newspaper,” Mr. Yoshioka said. “I think you will see what they might have been up to at City College. But first I must tell you that both Mr. Tamazaki and Mr. Otani have at last been in touch with me. There have been developments, and I will learn more tomorrow. I wish to come see you about all of this on Friday. What time would be most convenient?”
Considering that we would be talking about things of which my mother and grandfather were unaware, I said that he should come any time between eleven o’clock and four, when we could be sure that no one would know of his visit and question the reason for it.
“I will be there at two o’clock. And now I must tell you that two weeks ago, your father and Miss Delvane moved out of the place where they were living and have become impossible to trace. It is Mr. Otani’s considered opinion that they have gone underground.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that they are covering their trail because they expect eventually to be sought by authorities. They may already have changed their identities. If they are, as you say, up to something, something more than what they’ve already done, then the something to which they are up is likely to occur this summer, perhaps sooner than later.”
Miss Pearl, my apparently supernatural mentor, had visited me with her advice and warnings because the pivotal moment of my life lay in the immediate future, perhaps not mere days away but not years in the future, either. This summer, Mr. Yoshioka had said; and that felt about right.
“I will have more to tell you on Friday, Jonah. I have not meant to alarm you. I hope I have not.”
“You haven’t, sir. No matter what happens, everything will be all right in the long run.”
“That is a very Zen recognition.”
“A what?”
Rather than explain, he said, “Very wise. That is most wise. I will see you at two o’clock, the day after tomorrow. Be well, Jonah.”
“I hope so. I mean, I will. I’ll be well. You, too.”
57
On the front page of the Daily News, above the fold, Miss Delvane and Mr. Smaller looked as though they had come from different worlds, heck, from different solar systems. She might have been born on the Planet of Superhot Women, while he traveled to Earth from the Planet of Unfortunate Men.
Reading, I quickly discovered what Mr. Yoshioka meant when he said the newspaper might show me what their weird little gang had been up to at City College.
Late in the demonstration, seven bombs had gone off, one after the other, at locations all across the campus. Nobody had been killed or critically injured, though six sustained minor wounds. Authorities believed that the explosives had been placed specifically to avoid killing anyone, that the purpose had been to create total chaos and distract the police and particularly the campus security forces.
Evidently, there had been plenty of chaos. As the explosions occurred at buildings to all sides of the crowd, the thousands of demonstrators hadn’t known which way to run and had run every which way, crashing into one another. The bombs had been packaged with what the newspaper called “smoke accelerants,” which seemed to mean that in a very short time, churning clouds of smoke spread across campus, greatly reducing visibility and causing everyone’s eyes to water, their vision to blur.
Campus security men, who were not armed, left their posts and patrol routes, rushing into the melee under the impression that many seriously wounded awaited their help. The guard assigned to the Albert and Patricia Barton Gallery, adjacent to the College of Arts, locked the main entrance behind him, but the two men who looted the current exhibition blew open the door with the seventh bomb.
The security cameras caught two individuals—most likely men—dressed in black, wearing masks and gloves. They came in through the blown door and swirling masses of smoke, each carrying a cloth sack. The current show in the gallery featured seventeenth-through early nineteenth-century Chinese jade: vases, incense burners, screens, bowls, human and animal figures, scepters, snuff bottles, jewelry.… They moved through the big room as though they knew the location of everything they wanted, ignoring the heavier items, snatching up the jewelry—necklaces, bangles, pendants, earrings—and the oldest and most exquisitely carved little snuff bottles. They were gone in five minutes.