Raging Sea, Searing Sky

by Christopher Nicole

  He went on to talk to the next couple, watched her leave the room a moment later. He talked for another minute, checked to make sure that both May and Hashimoto were fully occupied, then stepped outside into the gallery himself, and went towards the toilets. Brenda stood by the gallery window, looking out at the afternoon.

  ‘This is a bit public,’ he remarked, standing beside her. ‘Against all the rules. Nothing wrong, I hope.’

  ‘Everything. Lew...I only found out, last night, from Tadatune. Japan is building new battleships. Two of them were laid down over a year ago.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’ he said. ‘Great. But wouldn’t it have kept a couple of days?’

  ‘Lew,’ she said. ‘These are big ships.’

  ‘I guess they probably are. Forty thousand tons? Even the British are building forty thousand tonners.’

  ‘Lew,’ she said, ‘you don’t understand. The Japanese ships are to be sixty-two thousand tons standard. Deep loaded, they will displace seventy thousand tons. And they will carry eighteen-inch guns.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Pearl Harbour, 1941

  Lew felt as if he had been kicked in the stomach. Hashimoto had lied to him, after all. Then he realised that his friend had not, in fact, lied. Hash had pinned him down to a definite question, and then had answered it with absolute truthfulness. Of course Japan was not laying down a fifty thousand ton warship. And of course, in Japanese eyes, that would be an absurdity: such a ship would be no larger than the German vessels or the Iowas. But...seventy thousand tons! He found it difficult to imagine a ship that large. Twice the size of Vermont. Very nearly the size of Queen Mary or Queen Elizabeth, and they were floating cities.

  ‘Lew?’ Brenda asked.

  But that made Hashimoto very definitely his enemy. Because if Japan was building such a ship, or two, as Brenda had said, then she was bent on war. As Apwood had said in Washington, she would negotiate and parley until she was absolutely ready, and then she would begin the war without warning...with a ship which would probably be able to blow any three current US battleships out of the water — and would be in commission long before the Iowas.

  He looked down into Brenda’s face.

  ‘Is it that serious?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah. That serious. Brenda...I’m going to have to ask you to stick your neck out.’

  ‘It’s a long neck. Try me.’

  ‘I have to get hold of the plans for these ships. I have to know details of their armament and their armour. I mean, eighteen-inch guns...Jesus Christ! I also have to know their completion dates. Or the first one, anyway.’

  She nodded. ‘If you’ll give me some time.’

  ‘Of course. But...it is urgent.’

  ‘I know.’ She gave a little smile. ‘I’ll get to you as soon as I can.’

  He relayed the news the next day, but Washington was not impressed. ‘Come off it, Lewis,’ Admiral Slater wired back, also in code. ‘Seventy thousand tons? That’s impossible. Your girlfriend must be having the change of life and gone nuts.’

  When Lew retorted that he trusted Brenda’s judgement and information absolutely, Slater returned. ‘You let me see some detail of this dream ship, and I’ll believe you.’

  ‘It’s on its way,’ Lew promised.

  But it was, as usual, a long, slow business. He had to continue playing golf with Hashimoto, smiling and laughing, he had to go to parties at Hashimoto’s house — his friend had never married, but his sister and her daughter, now grown into a grave young woman who flushed every time she saw Lew as she remembered crawling over him in 1923, acted as his hostesses — and to entertain them in his, and he had to act the reassuring husband to May, rendered distraught by the shattering victories gained by Hitler’s panzers in France and even more so by the reposting of John Grimmett that summer, to England. She tried to persuade Joan to stay in Tokyo, but of course the girl accompanied her husband, straight into the blitz. Amazingly, it seemed, she survived, and so did England, but it was hard to see how the one little island, even supported by its empire, could ever turn the tables on a Germany which now ruled all Europe west of Russia.

  His heart went out to May. Over the past three years she had been the most perfect wife. As he had been the most imperfect husband, at least in his mind as he brooded on Brenda and her Japanese lover, and on the risks she was taking; he had not after all told her that Hashimoto was keeping an eye on her, had merely sent her back to work more dangerously than before. He could tell himself it was part of his job. And hers. But every day that passed and she did not come up with any detail on either the new Japanese ships or the plans for their use, he became more depressed. While Washington’s scepticism grew, and the State Department was confidently going ahead and gradually tightening the economic screws as the Japanese armies bit ever deeper into China. The Chinese were fighting with great determination, and the Japanese were responding in kind; some of the ties of the atrocities, both by aerial bombardment and by troops on the ground, were hair-raising, and again, difficult for American public opinion to accept. But they had to accept that the Japanese were not being in the least deterred by the threat of economic sanctions, or even of force, which began to crop up in one or two circles. Because they had confidence in their fleet. Lew had no doubt about that, and even less when he discovered that in both the Kure Shipyard, and the Mitsubishi Yard in Nagasaki down in the south, there were certainly ships being built in conditions of absolute secrecy — the hulls even had netting strung above them so they could not be observed from a plane. These had to be the big ones.

  He felt that he could put this to Hashimoto. As time had passed it was difficult to keep on convincing himself that this big, jolly man was indeed dedicated to the destruction of the United States, which by extension meant himself. Or that his family would support him if he did — they had almost adopted May and Lew as their own. Lew thought he would give a great deal to discover that Brenda, and himself, had been quite wrong.

  ‘So what have you got under wraps down in Nagasaki?’ he asked one afternoon in the fall of 1940, as they shared their after golf drink. ‘Something big, I imagine.’

  Hashimoto shrugged. ‘We are at last seeking to match other navies, perhaps.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ Lew said. ‘But with what?’

  ‘Now Lew, you know I cannot tell you that,’ Hashimoto protested. ‘Have I ever asked you for details about the Iowas?’

  ‘No,’ Lew agreed. ‘You haven’t had to, because they’re pretty public knowledge.’

  Hashimoto smiled. ‘Ah. But here in Japan we are better able to keep a secret, perhaps.’

  For the first time Lew felt an active antagonism for his old friend. Principally because Hashimoto was treating him with such contempt, playing the same old game with not the slightest worry, apparently, that Lew might ever see through it.

  ‘Now let us talk about Mrs Lloyd,’ Hashimoto went on, casually.

  Lew turned his head.

  ‘Are you still seeing a lot of her?’ Hashimoto asked.

  ‘I am quite sure you know I do see her, from time to time, even if it’s none of your business,’ Lew remarked.

  Hashimoto inclined his head. ‘Alas, as you say, Lew, it is my business. I would hope you would never consider using the lady, in any way.’

  ‘Just what do you mean by that?’

  ‘Hopefully, nothing. It is just that, in my unfortunate position, I have been trained to think like a policeman. To be suspicious even of my friends. And here we have a triangle: United States naval attaché — lovely American woman — senior Japanese naval clerk. I think you should know that my people feel this could be explosive. Forgive me for mentioning it.’

  A week later Brenda called. Lew had not actually seen much of her at all during the past few weeks, because her friend Tadatune had been becoming steadily more anxious to monopolise her company, and because she was now working on the single project which could not be interfered with in any way. ‘He’s beginning to talk
about marriage,’ she confessed, as they sipped sake in her small lounge.

  ‘You have got to be joking,’ Lew protested.

  ‘I don’t want to let him know that.’

  ‘I think it’s about time you gave him the brush off,’ Lew said. He had still not told her of Hashimoto’s suspicions, but instead a determination to get her out of Japan was hardening in his mind; he had already informed his superiors that she had outlived her usefulness. ‘He doesn’t seem to be coming up with anything.’

  ‘Oh, but he has,’ she said.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘That’s what I called about. I’ve managed to get those details you wanted.’

  Lew waited, heart pounding.

  ‘The ship in Kure was launched, in complete secrecy, back in August. She is to be called Yamato,’ Brenda told him. ‘She is eight hundred feet long, will displace sixty-two thousand tons standard, and seventy thousand fully laden. Her belt armour will be sixteen inches, and her deck armour nine.’

  ‘Holy Christ,’ Lew said. Deck armour on the North Carolina was five and a half inches.

  ‘She will cruise at twenty-seven knots,’ Brenda went on, ‘and she will have a main armament of nine eighteen-inch guns.’

  ‘God Almighty.’ He had almost been coming to share Washington’s opinion that the monster ships had been a figment of Tadatune’s, or Brenda’s imagination, or even if designed and laid down would be found too difficult to build. But if one of them was actually launched...that meant she would be completed in about a year. With that armour, and that hitting power, he realised, she would indeed be able to blow any three current American ships out of the water. While even the Iowas would be helpless against her.

  ‘The one in Nagasaki is to be called Mushashi, and there are two others planned, but I don’t think they have been laid down yet. They will all be sisters of Yamato. Mushashi is due to be launched in the near future.’

  Lew got up, paced the little bedroom. ‘By God, but you are a heroine, Brenda. Okay. You’ve done your bit. Now, kick this fellow Tadatune in the teeth, and get the hell out of Japan.’

  ‘I can get you more, Lew.’

  He frowned at her. ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it could be something. Tadatune has asked me to go down to Nagasaki with him, for a holiday, next month. November.’

  ‘And you want to go?’

  ‘Of course I don’t want to go, Lew, but he’s actually taking me to Nagasaki. God knows what might turn up, if I show enough loving interest. He believes I’m dead against the United States policy regarding Japan. I’ve told him so, often enough. Lew, I might even get to see Mushashi being launched.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Lew said. He hated the very idea...and the risk involved...but it would be criminal to pass up even the chance that she might learn something more. ‘And then, out. The very moment you come back to Tokyo you step on a ship for the States. You can carry your information with you. Let me know the dates and I’ll arrange the passage.’

  ‘If that’s an order, Captain McGann, I’ll obey it.’

  ‘It’s an order,’ Lew told her. November was only a couple of weeks away. So she’d be taking one last risk. Then she would be out of it. And out of Tadatune’s clutches, as well, he thought with some satisfaction.

  ‘But there’s another piece of information I have already,’ Brenda went on.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘The completion date for Yamato.’

  ‘When?’ He was curiously breathless.

  ‘December, 1941,’ she said.

  *

  He wired Washington. ‘Christ Almighty!’ Admiral Slater replied. ‘If this is true, Lewis, then we have a problem.’

  ‘What about the Iowas? If we can expedite their delivery, and make sure they always hunt in pairs...’

  ‘The first Iowa can’t be ready before 1942. Late ‘42. And you say the Nips could cut loose any time after Christmas 1941. Listen, Lew, you have got to get some idea of where they’re headed. Right?’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ Lew said. But that at least was out of Brenda’s terms of reference — an Admiralty clerk was hardly likely to have access to the navy’s war plans. And he had a year to play with. His first necessity was to get Brenda back to safety. As November approached, even after booking her passage — and there was an American ship leaving Yokohama on the very night she was due back from the south — he was more nervous than ever before in his life, for a multitude of reasons. Jealousy over her coming pre-marital get together with Tadatune, fear that Hashimoto was nearer to discovering the truth about her than he had supposed...for the first time that he could remember in his life, the complications with which he was surrounded, and which affected other people rather than himself, seemed to be having an effect on his health; he was aware of a general feeling of malaise, and seemed to suffer from indigestion more often than usual.

  As May could see. She was in a far happier frame of mind as Joan had written to say that John was being re-posted to the Far East. She couldn’t tell them more than that, but they gathered she was accompanying her husband. That was an enormous relief, as it removed her from the war zone, at least for the time being, and whether the Far East meant Sydney or Singapore or better yet, Hong Kong, it was still closer at hand, where even visits might be possible.

  In all the circumstances Lew decided to take May’s advice and have a holiday at the same time as Brenda; just to sit in the Embassy or at his desk while she was in Nagasaki would drive him mad. He and May went up into the Hakone mountains and put up at an hotel there. The weather was bleak and windy; it was too late for boating and too early for skiing, although there were already traces of snow on the lower slopes. But they wanted to do neither of those things. Instead they honeymooned, spent all day in their kimonos, and made love as they had done in the old days.

  ‘This is heavenly,’ May said, lying with her head on his shoulder. ‘But Lew, how much longer will we have in this posting?’

  ‘Slater said three years. That’s one more.’

  ‘And then what?’

  He kissed her nose. ‘I’ve been promised a battleship.’

  ‘Oh, Lew, have you? I’ll be so proud of you.’

  ‘Will you? What will you do?’

  ‘Go to live with Daddy.’

  ‘Will you do that, May?’

  ‘I want to,’ she told him. ‘He’s so lonely, up there in Long Island, now that Uncle Bill and Aunt Clara have died. Besides, I’ll be able to look at the sea, and think about you.’

  He looked down at her. ‘If you would do that...’

  ‘Would you love me, Lew?’

  ‘Don’t you think I do?’

  ‘I know you don’t. And I don’t blame you. Oh, you like making love to me. That’s great. But...won’t you ever be able to love me again, like you did when we were kids?’

  ‘I love you,’ he assured her, and held her close. But he knew she didn’t believe him.

  Yet he did love making love to her. As she was always hungry for his arms. They returned from Hakone on the morning of the day Brenda was due back, and, as Lew’s furlough was not up until the next day, made love again, at least partly because of his guilty conscience. They thrashed to and fro on the bed as they had in Lyme Regis, so many years before, with the abandon of those days too. Lew had just climaxed when he was seized with the most agonising pain in his stomach.

  He rolled off her, knees drawing up as if attached to steel springs, breath rushing from his lungs.

  ‘Lew?’ May rose on her elbow. ‘Lewis!’ Her voice rose. ‘Oh, my God, Lewis. What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He had never been ill in his life, however badly he had once been wounded.

  But May had once been a nurse. She pushed him on to his back, felt his stomach, the hardness, and ran to the telephone. ‘Dr Platt? May McGann. Can you come at once, please, and send an ambulance as well? Lewis has appendicitis. Acute appendicitis.’

  *

 
; Brenda Lloyd entered her apartment, sighed, and closed the door behind herself. It was a warm afternoon, and she was soaked in sweat. Partly that was alarm at what she had discovered, and excitement that it should all be just about over; in a few hours she would have left Japan forever. But she was also exhausted, emotionally and physically. She had never actually spent an entire fortnight making love before; her relations with Danny Walsh had been perfunctory from that first disastrous night, and with Lew had consisted of stolen moments, even during those unforgettable three days in Shanghai. Since those days, with their terrifying outcome, she had in fact rejected sex, at least mentally. When Lew had wanted it again, back in Annapolis, she had willingly accommodated him, because he was Lew, and because he was always so gentle and considerate. When she had been told, quite bluntly, by Admiral Slater that her assignment to Tokyo was because she spoke the language and that her job was to ‘get real friendly’, as the admiral put it, with someone in the Imperial Japanese Navy and, again to use the admiral’s explicit terminology ‘suck him dry’, she had been vaguely appalled.

  Then she had reflected that it went with the job, and that if she had actually liked doing it, she would be of less value to her own navy. Besides, since the deaths of both her parents she had been very lonely. To take her place in a society, and an alien society, although it was one she already admired for its gentility and good manners and perfection of form, but which would know nothing of her, was quite an attractive idea.

  She had been told to take her time, and she had done that, but by obtaining from her boss — who knew what she was although he did not know anything about the job itself and did not want to — invitations to every possible party in Tokyo and attending them unescorted, she had been clearly begging to be picked up, and had been, several times. Tadatune had been the seventh man to proposition her, and the second with navy connections. But the first with anything to offer. Thus they had settled in to an odd, intimate but at the same time an intensely friendly relationship. Tadatune was a typical Japanese man, in that he regarded women as placed on earth specially for his benefit. That she was not a typically Japanese woman, and thus not prepared to accept an inferior role in all things, had at once scandalised and fascinated him. But he was also inordinately proud of her, not only because she was a white woman, and an extraordinarily attractive white woman, but, in the strangest of fashions, because she was six years his elder. His entire family had been lost in the Tokyo earthquake of 1923, when he had been a teenager, and therefore he had never been able to fit into the close-knit family social life of his country, had always been an outsider — to have a beautiful white woman on his arm gave him the cachet he had always felt he lacked.