“The Cascadian rebels aren’t organized enough to make a commitment to the Japanese,” Bill said. “But I’m prepared to make it on their behalf. It’s a natural relationship, since Cascadia has looked toward the Pacific since well back in the 20th century, and Japan is the dominant maritime power in the Pacific.
“If the Cascadians won’t honor the commitment, well, we’ll just have to rent another fleet and make them see reason.”
“Meanwhile, are you still packed and ready to travel east, this time?” Bill asked me.
“Aye, aye, sir,” I replied.
“The Imperial Russian Air Force aircraft that keeps me supplied is due here the day after tomorrow,” Father Dimitri said to me. “I have taken the liberty of reserving you a seat on it–Admiral Rumford.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Russian punctuality had long been a proverb, in the same vein as Italian efficiency. It was a testimonial to the new Russia that Father Dimitri’s resupply flight landed right on schedule at Portland airport, at 5 PM on July 12, 2035. The big white Ilyushin 76 carried the pre-1917 white-blue-red roundels on its wings and fuselage and an immense, black Orthodox cross on its tail. The latter was by the Tsar’s ukase. If the Muslims wanted a religious war, they could have one. It was good to see Christianity once again willing to fight.
Father Dimitri met me at the airport with my Russian and Japanese visas and quarantine waivers. Without the waivers I would have faced a three-month quarantine to enter Russia and another six months to get into Japan. As usual, when governments wanted something for themselves, the rules proved easy to bend.
The Russian aircraft took off at 7 PM, just as the flight plan indicated. They had a bunk ready for me, which I appreciated. From Maine to Tokyo was a fair ways. I would change planes in St. Petersburg, at a restricted military airfield. The Russians didn’t want my fingerprints on them when the Chinks started to howl. Lenin on the sealed train again, I thought.
The flight was uneventful, as every air passenger always hopes it will be. I remembered a party years ago where some silly woman asked an airline pilot if his job was exciting. “Not if I do it right,” was his reply. I slept most of the way, thanks to the vodka that was part of Russian military rations plus a Marine’s ability to sleep anywhere. At St. Petersburg, I was only on the ground long enough to shit, shower, and shave.
On the St. Petersburg-Tokyo leg, my body clock said day, so I went up to the cockpit. The co-pilot spoke some English and told me a bit about the country we were flying over. As we came across the Urals, two SU-41 fighters appeared alongside as escorts.
“An honor guard?” I asked the co-pilot.
“Nyet,” he replied. “All Russian aircraft flying through this region receive fighter escorts. Sometimes the Islamics send a single fighter of their own north, flying low to avoid our radar, to shoot down our airliners. After we lost four, and almost a thousand civilian air passengers, we realized we had to provide escort. Once we reach the Russo-Chinese border we will be out of their range.”
“Airborne pirates,” I said.
“Assassins,” the co-pilot responded. “Remember, assassin is an Arabic word. It is the way the Islamics have always fought. Now they do it with airplanes, bombs, rockets, and bioweapons instead of daggers. Nothing really changes with them.”
As we began our long descent toward Japan, I went aft to change into my admiral’s uniform. We didn’t actually have any admirals in the Northern Confederation Navy, but Orientals were big on rank and my time in the Confederacy had taught me to play along. For a uniform, I took our plain Navy blues and threw on handfuls of gold braid, fruit salad, and gee-gaws. My adjutant took one look at it and said, “Boy, get me a cab,” so I figured it was about right for the Japs.
We landed on a Saturday afternoon at a military airfield on Hokkaido. I was met with full honors, but the remoteness of the location told me the Nips also wanted to keep things quiet. After greeting a variety of big-wigs, I was introduced to the officer who would be my escort, aide, and keeper, Captain Yakahashi Tomo IJN. He explained that the fleet—soon, the Northern Confederation fleet—would be ready to weigh anchor in about ten days. Until then, he and I would keep a low profile. Was I agreeable to spending the time at a ryokan up in the mountains, which we would have to ourselves? I was, so the two of us jumped into a new Mitsubishi Zero sports car and set off on back roads.
I had always appreciated the Japanese sense of beauty. Its spare harmony reflected its origin among a poor people. Perhaps I liked it because Maine too was poor. But it was also a masculine aesthetic: simple materials, subtle colors, precise ordering that took long thought and care not to look ordered. As Oscar Wilde said, the problem with being natural is that it is such a difficult pose to maintain.
Our ryokan fulfilled my long ambition to immerse myself in traditional Japan. It grew out of a rocky cleft in the mountains like the pine trees that almost hid it. It was very small, just three guest rooms. Inside, it had the minute perfection of a fine watch. The woodwork was all straight-grained, no knots or blemishes. The paper screens that made the walls glowed like unimaginably thin sheets of ivory. The tiny courtyard garden was grey sand and grey rocks, with a single mountain laurel. I knew the laurel’s twisted trunk was no accident. It had been shaped carefully as it grew, like a bonsai. The garden was stark, and peaceful.
My mind and body were in a variety of time zones by this point, and Captain Yakahashi kindly suggested we postpone any business. Instead, we soaked in the ofuro, the steaming hot Japanese bath, then enjoyed a long, slow, dinner of many tiny courses, served with absolute grace by three geisha. I recognized the food as kaiseki, the court cuisine of Imperial Kyoto. The important thing was not the taste but the beauty of the presentation. To a degree unapproached and incomprehensible elsewhere, the culture of Japan was dominated by a visual aesthetic. I drank it in like cool mountain water, and that night I slept as if in hibernation.
Japanese summers are hot, but up in the mountains, I awakened Sunday morning to a cool crispness that reminded me of home. The only sounds were the wind in the pines and the calling of birds. Captain Yakahashi and a Japanese breakfast of rice, vegetables, and green tea were waiting on a small porch overlooking the garden.
“Bit of a nip in the air this morning,” I said to the captain.
“Just like one Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor,” he replied, and he laughed. I hadn’t expected an irreverent sense of humor in a Jap, and I was happy to find one.
After breakfast, still sitting on the porch, I read the Morning Prayer service in the old 1928 Book of Common Prayer. I always did that when I couldn’t get to church.
Then the glories of the morning and the mountains beckoned. Could we go for a walk? The captain said we could. I was a guest, not a prisoner. That day began an idyllic week of walking, talking, and soaking in rural Japan.
To my relief, the Japanese military had not caught the old American “briefing disease.” They didn’t think it necessary to tell me what we were going to do in some damned slide show led by a talking dog major or commander reading from a script. Tomo—we were quickly on a first name basis—knew his stuff and we just talked.
The fleet would be a powerful one. I would have two aircraft carriers, the Zuikaku and Shokaku, one with fighters and ASW aircraft and the other carrying ground support planes and transports. We’d have ASW destroyers as escorts, since if the Chinese responded it would probably be with submarines, plus two amphibious transports without troops. Six Japanese subs would also operate in support.
“Why the amphibs without troops?” I asked Tomo.
The troops would be provided by the Cascadian Resistance, he replied. The op plan was that the fleet would arrive, blockade the Cascadian coast and fly the transport aircraft across Cascadia to Idaho. There, they would pick up the troops and bring them back to one of the carriers, whence they could be ferried to the transports. No Japanese would go ashore. Beyond the blockade, the Cascadians would liberate themselves.
It was a good plan, and I said I'd go with it. I didn’t really have much choice. Tomo made it clear that my role was as a fig leaf only and I would have no real command over the fleet. I told him I would go ashore with the Cascadian troops where I would be more in my element. He said that would be agreeable to Tokyo.
The big question was the Chinese reaction. Japanese naval intelligence didn’t think there would be one. While the Chinese had a big navy on paper, it seldom went to sea, and when it did it was always something of a Chinese fire drill. Tomo hadn't heard that expression before and howled with laughter when I used it. For more than a century the Japanese Navy had been a real navy, and if the Chinese took them on it would be the Battle of the Yalu all over again. Both sides knew it, too, so Tokyo expected Beijing to keep quiet.
Of course, China’s interests would have to be accommodated. A revenge-minded China would not be good for Japan. The Japanese plan was to let China bid for Cascadian resources along with everybody else. She’d still get her share, she just wouldn’t get everything. And she’d have to pay market price. The Japanese Foreign Service thought China realized her current game was too good to go on forever and would be willing to recognize reality. Besides, at the rate the Deep Green government was stripping the place, there soon wouldn’t be any Cascadian resources for anyone.
That all made sense from the Japanese perspective. Unfortunately, China had another option. The fleet that would cut her off from the Cascadian honeypot would legally be a Northern Confederation fleet, not a Japanese fleet. How might China strike back at us? She could cut off trade, but the raw materials that made up most of the N.C.'s exports were in hot demand in a resource and food-short world. What we didn’t sell to China we could sell as easily to someone else. Geography protected us from the Chinese Navy. But a Chinese ICBM could reach N.C. territory. What would our response be if the Chinese gave us an ultimatum to raise the Cascadian blockade or get a Chinese nuke on, say, Buffalo? We had nukes of our own, taken with the old U.S. Navy sub base at New London, Connecticut, but the Chinese might calculate that we could not deliver one on China. How could we demonstrate we could?
I spent most of a week thinking about this one. I didn’t say anything to Tomo because I didn’t want to screw up the Japanese plans. But unless I had an answer, my responsibility to my own government meant I would have to call the whole operation off. We’d look like fools who’d gotten in over our heads, then lost our nerve.
Maybe it was the serenity of the ryokan that let my Marine brain work better than usual. Thursday evening, sitting on a rock that looked down at the inn from higher up on the mountain, an idea came with my third cigar. I walked down the mountain and found Tomo in the inn’s ofuro. “Captain Yakahashi, I have a formal request to make on the part of the Northern Confederation government,” I said as he soaked in the deep tub.
Thinking I was playing a joke, Tomo bowed deeply into the bathwater and replied, smiling, “I have been instructed to meet every request of the Northern Confederation or die in the attempt.”
“Good,” I said. “I want you to set me up a meeting with a yakuza leader.”
“This is an example of New England humor, I trust,” Tomo replied, his eyes telling me he wasn’t sure.
“Nope. It’s just what I said it was, an official request,” I said. “If you want, I’ll put it in writing.”
“Why do you want to meet with a gangster?” Tomo asked, now worried that he faced an Oriental’s deepest dread, embarrassment.
“Remember, Tomo, the line between war and crime is thin. In our time, it is growing ever thinner. We’re about to walk into a war, and I think a gangster might make a useful ally. More than that will have to remain a Northern Confederation military secret.”
Tomo hissed. I recognized the involuntary gesture as something Japanese did when presented with an unexpected and unpleasant situation. But Japanese also did their duty, unpleasant or not. “Will tomorrow afternoon be soon enough? It will take a little time to make the necessary connections.”
“Tomorrow afternoon will be fine,” I answered.
“May I make a personal request?” Tomo asked.
“Of course.”
“Would you be willing to consider meeting the yakuza somewhere on the mountain rather than here in the ryokan?”
I knew Tomo would embarrass the ryokan if he arranged for a yakuza to come here, and embarrassing them would embarrass him worse. I had no desire to do either. “On the mountain is fine with me.”
Tomo did another bow into his bathwater, this time a deep one that said “Thank you very much.” I couldn’t keep my mind from seeing an officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy bobbing for apples.
The next day, on a fine, clear afternoon, I went hiking. Tomo had told me to take the Willow Trail, which followed a small stream. At a miniscule pavilion, so artfully constructed that it almost vanished into the ferns and trees around it, the gangster was waiting. He wore the trademark zoot suit and sported heavy gold rings on all nine fingers, the missing tenth serving as his formal ID. Being a Japanese gangster, he proved exceedingly polite. My request was a reasonably simple one, and the yakuza’s price was not excessive. We sealed our deal with an exchange of business cards, meishi. In Japan, there was still honor among thieves. I was as certain he’d come through as that a new Toyota would start.
That evening, Tomo had ordered us a special dinner. The kaiseki was beautiful, but truth be told, my weight was dropping. After a day of mountain hiking, coming in and sitting down to a meal of Fabergé eggs had its drawbacks. So that night, the ryokan swallowed its pride and fed us meat: big donkatsu, Korean bulkogi, and Peking duck. At the end the three geisha, giggling madly, processed in with an enormous Malakofftorte. I have no idea where they found one on Hokkaido. I stuffed myself to just short of the terminal bloat point, then said what the hell, had more cake and went over the edge. I knew I’d have nightmares but the Malakofftorte was worth it.
I suspect the dinner was Tomo’s way of thanking me for not embarrassing him or the inn. I understood the oriental desire to save face, and he in turn knew that gaijin like to stuff themselves on gross fatty food. I didn’t mind a bit of multiculturalism with Asians, because their culture, like Western culture, had earned respect. It wasn’t as if they were just down out of the trees.
Besides the courtyard garden, the inn had a back yard, less formal and therefore the product of even more painstaking conception and care. Tomo and I waddled out there after dinner to sit on a rustic bench by the tiny stream whose gurgles might mask our guts’ groaning. I offered Tomo an Upmann, which to my surprise he took.
“Have you heard yet when we sail?” I asked, not in any hurry to leave a place whose beauty I would always remember, yet anxious to get my business done.
“The fleet is already at sea,” Tomo replied. “The day after tomorrow, we will leave here, pick up a flying boat at a small fishing village on the coast and fly out to the Zuikaku. That is the point when the charter will begin and you will take command. I hope you remembered to bring some Northern Confederation flags.”
“I did.” I’d brought a couple dozen naval ensigns, our Pine Tree flag with a blue anchor in the upper left quadrant.
“You also need to re-name the ships,” Tomo added.
“I don’t like giving weapons names,” I answered. “Once you name a weapon—and that’s all a warship is, another weapon—its loss becomes a big deal, so you become afraid to take risks. I’d rather just give the ships numbers.”
Tomo hissed again. “Perhaps you could do that with the escort ships and the amphibious transports, but please, not the carriers! It would be a terrible humiliation to their men.”
“OK, then, let me think.” This was another point where compromise was in order. “How about Nature’s Revenge for one of them? That would send the Deep Greeners a message.”
Tomo coughed. “Most regrettably, that is the name of the best-selling Japanese laxative.”
“Then I guess th
e crew wouldn’t care much for that, either. I sure don’t want them to run.”
“Why don't you name one of the carriers for your Governor Kraft? I am certain he would be pleased,” Tomo suggested.
“We don’t believe in naming anything for people who are still alive,” I answered. “That’s flattery.” Toward the end, the U.S. Navy started doing that with its aircraft carriers, naming them for politicians who’d given them pots of money. It turned my stomach.
Then the light bulb went on. “We do have some dead men who have earned the honor. The carriers will be the John C. Adams and the John Kelly. ” I knew John Kelly would have preferred an amphib, but I’d make sure his name went on the carrier that flew the ground support aircraft. There was enough Marine Corps in that.
“Excellent choices,” Tomo replied. “Real American heroes.”
Now it was my turn to ask a question. “How does it feel to be sending a fleet east again, to attack part of the old United States?”
“Please do not take offense if I give you an honest answer,” Tomo said. “It feels very good. Even though this fleet is under a flag that is not the Rising Sun, that is merely a stratagem. For every officer in the Imperial Japanese Navy, this action wipes out a long-standing shame.”
“Shame for the attack on Pearl Harbor?”
“No, shame that we lost the war.”
“Whose fault was that?”
“It was our own fault. Japan was impatient. We had already conquered most of China. All we had to do was hold on to that and wait for you to collapse from your own internal contradictions, as eventually you did. Now, America is gone, but we face a powerful China, which is a greater danger to us than you could ever have been. You were an ocean away, and China is on our doorstep.”