Ghostboat (46 page)

December 24, 1974

The day before Christmas, Ed Frank was flown back to Washington and driven to the Pentagon. He walked the halls to his office. Everything was just as he had left it—the photograph of Joanne in its sparkling silver frame still centered on his blotter. Cook’s name was already gone from the other door; his cubicle was vacant.

Frank made several attempts to get through to Smitty. He was told that the Director of the NIS was away for the holidays.

Admiral Diminsky was in a doorway, chatting with an Air Force general.
 

Frank didn’t stop to say hello; he went straight home.

He unlocked the door to his apartment, hoping to find a Christmas tree and other evidence of Joanne’s holiday spirit.

He found only a note. Dated November 15th.

He spent Christmas Eve alone, nursing a bottle of Scotch, recalling that he hadn’t written since he left for Pearl.

Maybe this was the way he had always wanted it.

January 15, 1975

Frank was advised in a curt note from Diminsky that the findings of the Board of Inquiry were not in his favor, that the NIS in particular was reprimanded for allowing a desk man to assume command of a Navy vessel, that in the future such matters would not come under the jurisdiction of that office.

The results of the Board of Inquiry were not surprising. But he finally understood why they had so easily accepted the stories: The case was too complex for them. They intended to hush it up and file it away. He knew it for sure when he was visited by the CIA and told point-blank that to speak of the
Candlefish
in public would be regarded as a treasonous act.
 

He received a letter from Jack Hardy’s son in Seattle. It was a severe accusation, but he managed to deal with it.

February 20, 1975

But within two months he was having regular nightmares about the
Candlefish
and her crew, about what he had done, the parts he had played... and Jack Hardy.

For reasons he was never able to explain, he lost his ability to make firm, snap decisions. He became hesitant, cautious, worrisome.

He had inherited Jack Hardy’s albatross.

On February 20th Diminsky sent him on an extended vacation.

On March 14th Ed Frank resigned from the Navy.
 

July 4, 1975

On Independence Day, one year before the two hundredth birthday of the United States, Scripps Director Dr. Edward Felanco set out from SUBDEVGRU ONE at San Diego in the AGSS-555
Dolphin
with a team of oceanographic researchers. They were bound for the area off the south coast of Japan known as the Ramapo Depth on a classified project.

In thirty-one days of deep-sea exploration, they found not a single trace of the phenomenon known as Devil’s Triangle. Nor did they find any trace of the USS
Candlefish.

But if they had been able to reach the sea bottom at Latitude 30, their cameras and lights might have picked out a shape mired in the deep silt of the Pacific floor. An old, rotting, coral-encrusted hulk, the raised bolts on her conning tower outlining a vaguely discernible group of digits:

284.