Clouds Over Mountains

He waits, keeps his mouth shut, watches and wonders.

Seven days a week this complex teems with tourists. Hundreds might stand in long lines to view the documentary or board the boats, to browse the gift shop or snap photographs. Tonight they’re gone, but not the beehive of activity: the complex is overrun by countless police and military, firemen and paramedics, wave after wave of authority. Yellow caution tape cordons off entire buildings. Radios blare inaudible monotones while red, amber and blue flashing lights reflect off cement walls.

Officials arrive in all manner of dress. Some are casual, others in suits, many in uniform. Most are poker-faced and look straight ahead. A few seem irreverent and may not understand — they parade by, laughing and joking. Singles or pairs, sometimes in larger groups, each comes through the courtyard, past the dark corridor where he’s sitting, down steps to the grassy waterfront promenade. There they point through heavy fog across the bay, huddle, gesture, talk into cell phones, eventually leave.

All night long, this is what the chief petty officer sees and hears. He waits alone, isolated to the side, cold and hungry, chain-smoking Marlboros, and battling conflicting emotions. Fatigue and boredom. Unwelcome attention. The horror of what he saw. He knows what he saw, but he’s unable to calculate the geometry, the logic, the meaning of it, the how and why.

Meanwhile, he thinks. Who are these people? How much should I say? What really happened? Who was he? Of all places, why there? What type of questions will they ask?

Now, finally, they come get him for the interview.

He’s ushered inside a drab conference room that’s overheated and reeks of stale air. A lone armchair has been placed at the far side of a laminated rectangular table.

Five men and one woman greet him — the men are stern and sober, but she’s blonde and beautiful. They’re across from him, four civilians and two officers in U.S. Navy winter blues. Some sit, others stand. At the head of the table, a second woman fiddles with a black box atop a silver tripod. The stenographer, she’s plain looking compared to the blonde, and less official than the others, but he acknowledges her smile with a wink.

There are no handshakes, no small talk. After introductions, he remembers none of their names, only their organizations. Taking his seat, the atmosphere strikes him as court-like, as if Perry Mason is about to begin some crucial cross-examination. Questions, he soon learns, are asked almost free-for-all, thrown from every direction, considering each angle. The process, he’d later tell friends, was like watching quarrelsome carpenters build a house. Framing first, foundation next, then the roof.

The beautiful blonde is an FBI agent — there are at least three of them — and she takes charge. But nobody seems clearly in charge; he’s been in the Navy long enough to recognize a turf battle. The FBI agents pursue one line of questioning; the two uniforms — Naval Investigative Service — take a different tack. They frequently interrupt one another. One man in the back corner is neither FBI nor Navy; he wears a jacket and tie, seems preppy and effeminate, watches everything, misses nothing.

The woman agent hands the chief a bottle of water, explains the process, and encourages him to relax. Her deep Southern accent and tranquility are reassuring. After providing his name, rank, and unit for the record, he sips from the water bottle.

“Yes, ma’am, our shift had just ended,” he begins, scratching stubble on his sharp jaw line with three middle fingers.