And as inevitable as the rise of the sun.
Hiroki spoke in a soft voice, as if half in a dream. "If not for that day, we would have walked the same road here in Japan. You would not have had to banish yourself to Hawaii for all those years."
In her mind, Meiko suddenly saw Frank's face and felt a rush of warmth. But the thought of Frank brought another name boiling to the surface. Naka.
"Where is my son?" she said, struggling to her feet. How could she have forgotten even for a moment that he was missing? She stood over the startled Hiroki. "I demand that you return him to me."
"No one demands here."
That voice! The words were spoken barely above a whisper yet Meiko froze at the sound. Someone had entered the cubicle. A tall, thin, high-shouldered figure stood in the doorway. Pale green eyes with tiny pupils peered at her through the holes in his silk mask.
Hiroki shot to his feet and bowed. "Sensei, this is—"
"I am perfectly aware of who this is," said the soft voice. "What I wish to know is why she is in a place where women are forbidden?"
"She followed the last truck from Tokyo, sensei."
The eyes turned from Hiroki and Meiko felt their full impact as they assessed her up and down. They battered her, bored through her, stripped her of any pretense of bravery, and laid bare her fears. She was naked before this monk.
Finally the eyes released her, yet she remained dumbstruck.
"And why would she do such a thing, Okumo-san?"
He wouldn't speak to her. It was as if she were some sort of animal, or an item of clothing or furniture.
"She is searching for her child. She seems to think he is here."
"Really?" The eyes turned back to her and Meiko saw amused puzzlement in them. "Why would anyone go to all that trouble for some wretched little zasshu?"
The dripping contempt in the monk's voice broke the thrall that had held her mute. All caution, all humility and reverence, burned away in a blast of rage.
"How dare you speak of my son that way. I want him back now. Show me to him at once or I will go to the police and—"
"Do not waste your time," the monk said without raising his voice the slightest. "The police have been instructed to keep clear of this building at all costs. They will obey those instructions."
"Then I'll go to—"
"The Army and Navy already know better than to get involved, and your husband is in America."
He seemed to be reading her mind, answering her questions before she asked them. A sense of helplessness all but overwhelmed her. She turned to Hiroki.
"Is this the great Shimazu-san you told me about all those years? This is the man you admire so?"
She saw Hiroki's body stiffen, saw his face go slack at her boldness. She didn't care. Perhaps it was her fatigue, or the years of living with Frank, an American, and then with Matsuo, who had never learned to act like a meek, perfectly compliant Japan man, that freed her tongue now. Whatever the reason, she hoped it would bring some sort of response from Hiroki, something to confirm Naka's presence here.
"Do you admire someone who waits until a woman's husband is gone and then steals her child? I am ashamed of you, Hiroki Okumo. Perhaps that day in August was the best thing that ever happened to me."
"That will be quite enough," said the monk in his soft tone. His eyes were as cold and hard as emeralds. "I cannot show you your son, but we do have children staying with us. I can let you see them if you wish."
"I wish," Meiko said, wondering what the monk hoped to gain from his offer.
Hiroki said, "Sensei, I don't think—"
"She seeks a child. I will show her many." He turned and walked through the doorway. "Come."
Meiko followed him into a hallway lined with rooms and offices, then down a stairwell. To her shock, she realized she was on the second floor. On the ground level were a few small subdivisions and a wide expanse of dusty, dirty floor where drilling and cutting machines stood still and silent on every side.
"We are turning certain children into weapons," the monk said as he led her to the largest. He stopped at the door, took a lighted candle from its sconce, and handed it to her. "We have no electricity in this area as yet. You will need this. Those within do not."
He held the door open and Meiko stepped through.
First, the odor—urine and feces. The air was thick with it. Next, the sound. If the human voice could rasp and rustle like a fall wind through dry leaves and yet still convey the miseries of the damned, that would be what Meiko heard. She hesitated, fighting an instinctive revulsion, then stepped inside. Her bandaged foot struck something and she held the candle low to reveal a wooden boardwalk, almost like a trellis. She stepped up on it and raised her candle to find the source of the odor, and the sound.
Bodies lay on the trellis. Small, wasted, naked bodies lay motionless with flaccid limbs and slack faces. Only their chest walls moved with their respirations, otherwise they might have been pieces of sculpture.
"These are our failures," said that sinuous, so-calm voice from the doorway behind her. "We feed them as best we can, keep them as clean as we can. But they are the last failures. We will soon have a new method—a few sips of an ancient ekisu will allow them to become what we intended them to be."
With her heart pounding, Meiko held the candle closer. They had no eyes, none of them, just empty sockets. Their nostrils had been sealed, and in the open mouth of the one nearest her she could see no tongue. And from that open mouth came the hoarse rush of air that would have been a wail of fear or grief or terror or all three if the child had had a voice. That mad, voiceless cry was repeated all across the room.
Feeling as if her blood were congealing, Meiko began backing away. She saw the candle fall from her nerveless fingers, but it was like watching someone else's hand. She nearly tripped coming off the boardwalk and her head fell back and slammed against the wall. She slid sideways she found the door, and then reeled into the light.
She dropped to her knees and retched.
"Beast!"
"They will win the war for the Emperor," said that voice. And for the first time she sensed emotion in it. "No sacrifice is too great to that end. The finest young men in Japan are clamoring, vying for the chance to give their lives for the Emperor. How dare you moan for your puny misbegotten child." He turned. "Okumo-san, show her to the street. The presence of one with so little regard for chu desecrates this place."
She barely saw Hiroki's tortured face as he led her to the door.
"That won't happen to your son," he whispered. "He'll just have to drink something." His last words to her as she stood out on the street were, "Be strong. It is chu."
Chu! Always chu!
That would not work anymore. These monsters had to be stopped. But how? She believed what they had said about the police and the military being no help. Hiroki had often boasted about the Order's far-reaching power and influence. Even the newspapers would be useless—the Ministry of Information controlled everything that was printed. Certainly they would not allow this sort of story to see the light of day.
Only one man in all the world could help her get Naka back—and he was in America.
Meiko began walking. She had to find Shigeo. He would know when Matsuo was returning. She had to get word to him.
JULY
SAN FRANCISCO
Matsuo sat on a bench by the wharf, reading the Sunday Chronicle. The sun was barely up and he had the view of the bay all to himself. He lit a Lucky Strike—he could not get used to Luckies in a white pack—and rifled through the pages, hunting for something of interest.
He was tired of waiting. So much time wasted doing nothing—it was driving him mad. And all the news from the Pacific—good for the Americans, bad for Japan. He couldn't bear to read it anymore. He turned to the funny pages. He read The Captain and the Kids and Joe Palooka first. They were pretty much as he remembered them from his college days here. Gasoline Alley had the same look, too, except that Wal
t was older and fatter. But The Gumps were unrecognizable. He liked a few of the new ones, especially Dick Tracy with characters like Breathless Mahoney and B.O. Plenty.
He folded the paper and sneaked a finger under the false beard. His real beard was filling in but was maddeningly itchy at times. He scratched for a few seconds, then snatched his finger away from his face.
Someone was watching.
A seedy-looking man leaned on the back of the bench, staring at him. He stood with his hands in the pockets of an old tweed jacket that looked as if it had been used to clean a dock; he wore equally filthy overalls and an undershirt which might have been white once. He sat down, close on Matsuo's right, and kept staring at him.
"That's a fake beard, ain't it?" he said in a low voice, full of wonder.
Without a word, Matsuo stood up and hurried away.
"Hey! I'm talkin' to ya! Whatcha hidin'?"
Matsuo ducked into an alley and sprinted for Sachi's quarters.
"Present for you," Sachi said as Matsuo entered. He indicated a flat package wrapped in brown paper. "Word came right after you left that it was ready. I picked it up while you were gone."
His false papers, no doubt, and maybe some information on Los Alamos. A note inside said the Navy would be unable to send a sub back for him. The enclosed was the best Panama could do to get him back to Japan.
Damn!
He looked and found the identification papers and orders for one Mariano Cruz, a thirty-four-year-old Filipino galley helper from Baguio, on Luzon. The identification card showed a grainy black-and-white photo of Cruz. He had a vaguely Oriental cast to his features and was bearded like Matsuo, but there the resemblance stopped. Cruz's face was darker and broader, and his nose flatter. He seemed to have rougher skin, too, although that might have been an effect of the photo.
Sachi examined the contents of the package with him.
"Panama's pretty much on the ball, wouldn't you say?"
"They should be," Matsuo said with no little pride. "I set up that office. We used Panamanian agents throughout the Southwest here where Spanish is almost a second language." He looked at the photo again. "But I'll never pass for him."
Sachi said, "Don't be surprised. You give that beard a few more weeks, get out in the sun to darken your skin some, and you'll pass. Don't forget, we ‘all look alike' to most whites."
Matsuo looked at Sachi to see if he was joking but he seemed serious. He put the photo down and picked up Cruz's orders. They instructed him to report to the galley of the heavy cruiser Indianapolis at Hunter's Point Navy Yard on or before 6:00 A.M. on July 16.
"The Indianapolis?" Matsuo swallowed hard. "I've got to return to the Pacific on a US Navy ship?"
How was he going to get away with that? And so soon! The sixteenth was less than two weeks away.
According to the letter with the order, Cruz had been on the payroll via the Panama office for three years.
"Looks like his orders came through in a rush," Sachi said, reading over his shoulder. "Something's up. Maybe there's some sort of emergency out in the Pacific that we don't know about."
Matsuo thought of the Kuroikaze and wondered if the Kakureta Kao had finally managed to turn it into an effective weapon.
"But I don't know any more now than I did when I arrived. This is insane. I can't go back with nothing."
He spotted another envelope in the package. Inside was a short note: the Panama intelligence net had learned from a German contact in Los Alamos that the Americans were planning to test a nuclear weapon at a desert site in New Mexico called Alamogordo. The time of the test was 2:00 A.M. on July 16. The same day the Indianapolis was leaving.
He shoved the papers at Sachi. "Four hours! How can I get from New Mexico to San Francisco in four hours?"
"You don't have to. Maybe somebody else can be found to witness the test and let me know if it is a success. You can't miss that ship. You might not be able to get papers as good as these again. If you don't board the Indianapolis you might have to ride out the rest of the war here with me. Someone else can monitor the test."
"Who?"
Sachi shrugged. "How about me? I can come back here afterward and radio out the information."
"No good," Matsuo said. "How would we know it was really you on this end? And convincing the Supreme Command that the Americans have a working atomic bomb will be difficult enough in person. Trying to do so on the basis of a radio transmission will be impossible. I was sent here to find out if the Americans really have an atomic bomb and what it can do. If I don't return with firsthand information, this whole trip will be a waste. I've got to see that test."
"You can't. There's no time. There's no way."
"I'll find one. You just get the word back home that I'll be returning on the Indianapolis. Tell them to make arrangements to pick me up off …" He consulted the letter from Panama for the ship's itinerary. It was stopping at Hawaii, then moving on to Tinian in the Marianas. "Tinian. I'll jump ship on Tinian."
"All right," Sachi said reluctantly. "I just hope this code is secure."
"Don't worry. It's secure."
"That's what they said before Midway."
"Overconfidence," Matsuo said, remembering his warnings to Admiral Yamamoto. "There's no evidence that they've broken this code."
"But you don't know. The Americans broke our top diplomatic code in nineteen forty and we didn't have the slightest inkling for years."
Matsuo laughed. "Nineteen forty? That's impossible."
Sachi shook his head. "Not impossible—true. I sit here lots of nights with nothing to do, so I listen to the shortwave. I heard a couple of intelligence officers talking about ‘Purple magic.' It took me a while, but I finally gathered that ‘Purple' was their code name for our top diplomatic code, and ‘magic' was a machine that deciphered it. The Americans had been privy to our top-level messages since the fall of ‘forty."
"But that can't be," Matsuo said. "We sent the final section of the declaration of war to our Washington Embassy a good eight hours or more before we attacked Pearl Harbor. If the Americans had been able to decipher the message, the US Pacific Fleet would have been warned and waiting for us. The very fact that we caught the fleet sleeping is proof positive they hadn't broken the code."
Sachi's expression was troubled. "You've got a point there, but I don't know…" He rubbed his eyes. "Logic is on your side, but the men I heard seemed to take it for granted that the diplomatic code was broken. It was old news for them. They were more concerned with breaking other codes."
Matsuo said nothing. He had to respect Sachi's expertise at espionage. His continued success as an operative in the heart of San Francisco was testament to that. But he could not accept that the diplomatic code had been broken more than a year before the beginning of the war. That would mean the American government had known the content of the entire Fourteen Part Message eight hours before the attack on Pearl and had not warned the fleet. Their silence would indicate that the American President and his cabinet had purposely placed the fleet in jeopardy…
Matsuo remembered his feelings that violent Sunday morning as his Zero swooped over the hills of Oahu, the uneasy feeling that everything was too perfect, that they were flying into a trap. He remembered his relief when he found all the American planes neatly lined up on their runways, waiting to be riddled by his cannon.
Now he wondered if it might not have been a trap after all, a trap of another kind, drawing Japan into war in a manner that would so inflame the American people that they would hurl themselves headlong into the conflict they had steadfastly avoided for years despite a President urging them to take arms.
No, Matsuo thought. He could not imagine an American President so cold-bloodedly sacrificing three thousand sailors, no matter how badly he wanted to fight Germany.
He pushed the nagging questions from his mind. He had more important problems to consider: like how to get from Alamogordo to San Francisco in three hours.
ALBUQUER
QUE
"You want three pairs?" the lady at the counter said.
"Yes, please," Matsuo said hoarsely in his best old-man voice. "My eyes are very sensitive to light and I don't like to be without extra pairs."
"Okay. That'll be $2.97."
Matsuo passed her three singles and she handed him a brown paper bag containing three pairs of sunglasses. After taking his change, he dropped the glasses into the large shopping bag he carried, then made the long walk down to the sandy field surrounding the municipal airport outside of town. He stretched his legs out on the ground and leaned back against a rock. To passersby he would look like an old codger basking in the sun and watching the little planes take off and land. And in a sense, they would be right: That was exactly what he was doing.
Since arriving by train last week, he had lain here and let the sun darken his skin to bring it closer to Filipino coloring while he studied the activity in and around the airport. Now it was late Monday afternoon and things were quiet. He had studied all the planes, looking for the one he wanted. By yesterday he had made his decision: a Seversky S2—a sleek little speed plane whose owner flew it like a race car, tearing up the sky with flagrant disregard for wartime restrictions on the fuel he burned. He either had close connections with the local rationing board or had managed to document some sort of war-related use for the craft.
Matsuo had called the Seversky Company this morning and learned some details as to speed and range. It fit his needs perfectly, especially the optional electric ignition, which he knew had been installed in this particular plane—he had seen the owner start it up yesterday without a mechanic to give the prop an initial turn. And best of all, the owner took it up on Saturday and Sunday only. He never showed his face all week.
At five o'clock he watched the mechanics and attendants leave. He checked the pockets of his coat. The tool kit and wire cutters were there. He had the extra sunglasses, a change of clothes, his Filipino identity papers, and a sandwich all in the big bag. He had an American .45 automatic tight in his belt.