“Sure, a promise, sir,” young Randall replied instantly. “But...but, gosh, sir! I mean, isn’t there something you could tell me? And...and isn’t there something I could do to help? I mean...you say you’re all balled up. Maybe...”
Red could think of none of the right words, and tried to express his meaning in an appealing gesture. Colonel Stacey smiled, and started to put a fatherly hand on Red’s arm when Major Nichols spoke up.
“Maybe he’s got something there, Colonel,” he said. “It’s a cinch our hands are tied, and...well, maybe a civilian cloud jumper cruising around in the air wouldn’t be given a second glance. There might be a chance, Colonel, you know.”
The senior officer scowled and stared down at the ground.
“Yes, a chance,” he grunted. “A darn slim one, but...but, no go, Jim. After all, he’s just a kid.”
That last remark was the spark that touched off the fire-cracker factory in Red Randall’s head.
“I’m no kid, sir! I know my way around! I’m eighteen!”
Chapter Four – Secret Orders
COLONEL STACEY FOR the first time broke into a laugh.
“Hold up, son!” he said and lifted his hands in a gesture of protest. “I meant no offense, Red. Really I didn’t.”
“Then why not let me help, sir, if I can?” Red instantly crowded him with words. “Please, Colonel!”
“But, Red, this is military business,” the Colonel said gently. “We can’t go around having civilians doing jobs for us. You don’t understand, Red. It’s...”
Trembling with excitement, Red broke in, “Maybe I am a civilian, sir, but I’m entering West Point next fall, I hope. And...my Dad’s not a civilian. Listen, Colonel! Is it going to hurt anything if I can help? What is it, anyway? What do you want me to do? Please! I’m really not as young as I look. I’ve been on my own pretty much. And I’m not afraid, either, if that’s what you’re thinking about!”
The Colonel said nothing, but the way he looked at Red made him feel good all over. A wonderful warm glow that started at his toes traveled all the way up his body to the top of his head. He had no idea of the job the Colonel had in mind, but that did not matter. He didn’t care. He simply knew that danger, great danger was hovering close. And if he could be of even a tiny bit of help, then nothing else in all the world mattered. He was the son of a soldier, wasn’t he? Well, that made him different from a lot of young men his age.
Those and countless other thoughts passed through his mind while he waited for the Colonel to speak. But the senior officer did not reply. He turned and addressed his words to Major Nichols.
“Of course I’m out of my head completely,” he said. “And Jack Randall probably will shoot me for it. But, you’re right, there is a slim chance, and time’s too short to pass up anything. And thunderation, there’s no danger attached to it. He’d be flying around there, anyway. What do you think, Jim? I want your honest opinion.”
“I say yes,” Major Nichols replied without hesitation. “There’s no time to be fussy about things now. And I think Colonel Randall will understand when you explain. He feels just as we do about things, you know. By all means, I say yes.”
Colonel Stacey scowled at nothing in particular for one last brief moment, then nodded.
“Very well, then,” he said. And turning to young Randall, “Let’s go back to the car where we’ll be more comfortable. Then I’ll tell you something you can do that may help us a lot.”
Red could only nod. He was too choked up with excitement to speak. He led the way back to the Ford and the jeep, and for comfort’s sake the three of them climbed into the Ford after Major Nichols had tooled the jeep off the road so that there would be passageway for any other cars that might come along.
“First, I’ll have to give you a little bit of the general picture, Red,” Colonel Stacey finally said after a few moments of silence. “I can’t give you all of the picture, because we don’t know it. We know only parts of it, and are filling in the rest with guesses. First off, as you’ve probably guessed, Major Nichols and I are with Air Corps Intelligence, attached to General Staff here on Oahu. Our job has been to keep on our toes, guard against possible sabotage, and to keep an eye out for any signs of trouble that could have an effect on this area. Sometimes we work alone, and sometimes with the Army, Navy, F.B.I., and even the Island Police. But so much for what we’re supposed to do.”
Colonel Stacey paused for a moment. He started to fish for a cigarette in his tunic pocket, but changed his mind and let his hand drop back into his lap.
“But to get down to things definite,” he continued presently, “about six weeks ago a man came to my office and asked to see me. He told the corporal in charge that his name was Joe Haleohano and that he knew me. The name did not register with me for a couple of seconds, and then suddenly I remembered a Joe Haleohano I’d raced against in swimming meets out here in the Islands back in the twenties. We became pretty close friends, and for a year we were on tour together in Australia and New Zealand. Eventually, though, I went back into the service, and our letters to each other became fewer and fewer and finally stopped altogether.
“Anyway, I remembered Joe Haleohano, and had him brought into the office at once. He was changed, much changed. He looked like an old man, though we were both about the same age. I could see that he had suffered a lot, and I could also tell that he had something very important on his mind. We greeted each other warmly, and talked a bit about the old days. Then he gradually got around to the real reason for coming to see me.”
The Colonel paused again, and Red, glancing at him out the corner of his eye, saw his lips stiffen and come together to form a thin, grim line, “Joe had suffered plenty!” the senior officer repeated. “At the hands of the Japs, too. He had gone to Japan to teach swimming and give exhibitions. Things went fine until suddenly it dawned on him that he was being used by the Jap Military. No, he couldn’t put his finger on any one thing. He...well, he just had the feeling. And then one day he received a letter from a friend here on Oahu. It bawled him out for snubbing him the last time they met, which the friend said had been two weeks before the date of his writing. Well, it so happened that Joe had not been out of Japan for the last six months.”
“Then it must have been someone who looked like this Joe Haleohano!” Red Randall exclaimed as the Colonel ceased talking.
“Correct,” the Colonel said with a nod. “And Joe wouldn’t have thought much about it, if in the next mail he hadn’t received a note from a Honolulu photographer demanding immediate payment of a hundred dollar bill for camera supplies and film developing, and so forth. Well, Joe hadn’t spent a dime at that particular photographer’s in all his life, and he thought the man was crazy. Then that same day something else happened. Japanese police arrested him on a trumped-up charge and took him to the police station. There it was found that a mistake had been made. There was much apology and he was escorted back home in style. And when he arrived home it was to find that his rooms had been searched and the photographer’s letter stolen.”
“Why?” Red prompted when the Colonel paused for breath again.
“We’ll probably never know,” the other replied with a shrug. “Maybe that was a letter the Japs had not opened before Joe got it. That’s a favorite trick of theirs, you know, opening other people’s mail. Or maybe they had opened it, saw that their man had fumbled the ball, and decided it was time to act.”
“Their man had fumbled the ball?” Red echoed. “I don’t get that, sir. You mean the Japs had one of their men posing as Joe Haleohano here in the Islands?”
“I mean just that, and nice figuring, Red,” the Colonel nodded and smiled at him. “They had a Joe Haleohano of their own. An expert swimmer, and everything else that the real Joe was. And all the time Joe was in Japan, this bogus Joe was here in the Islands getting a library of information and photographs for the Jap Military. Why, Joe told me they even showed him a picture of himself on the beach at Waikiki the ve
ry day the Honolulu photographer was found with a knife in his back. Joe could hardly tell it wasn’t himself.”
“And the fake Joe had murdered the photographer, of course?” Red put in the question.
“He, or one of his rat pals,” the Colonel replied grimly. “The big idea was this: the Japs had been using a fake Joe to take the real Joe’s place in the Islands, but it seems they also needed the services of the real Joe. So they fixed things up very nicely to make him toe the mark. The Honolulu Police don’t know to this day who murdered the photographer almost a year ago. But the Japs can prove that Joe did it, you see? They have threatening letters written by the photographer. They have the letter from Joe’s friend bawling him out. They have pictures of Joe in Honolulu at that time. And they can swear that he was not in Japan.
“In short, they had Joe tied hand and foot. No jury in the world would believe his story in the face of what the Japs could let come to the prosecutor’s ears, and the damning evidence they could bring to his desk. Maybe Joe could have fought it through and cleared everything up. But he was in Japan. And to clinch it all, the Japs brought Jo’s wife and mother to Japan. Joe doesn’t know how they worked that, but they did. They even let him see them, but not get near enough to speak. And so they had Joe cold. He couldn’t take a step in any direction without the world tumbling down around his ears. They had the poor devil hog-tied and hung higher than a kite. He had to do what the Japs demanded of him, or he’d be in trouble up to his neck. And Lord knows what would happen to his wife and mother who were virtual prisoners of the Japs.”
“Gosh, I can hardly believe it!” Red muttered in an awed voice. “If it had been me, I’d have gone straight to the American Ambassador, or...or somebody, at least.”
“You don’t know the Japs,” Colonel Stacey said quietly. “You would never have reached where you were going, that’s certain. In Japan you play the Japanese way, Randall, or you don’t play at all. You just disappear and the Jap authorities are ‘So sorry, please,’ but they don’t know a thing. Maybe honorable one jumped down a volcano, and so forth. And that’s the end of it, so far as you’re concerned. No, the Japs had Joe Haleohano right where they wanted him, and he knew it. They didn’t pull any punches. The cold-blooded rats came right out with the whole picture and showed him how he was definitely behind the eight ball.”
“But how did they want to use him, when they had a perfect double for him right here in the Islands?” Red asked. Then with a jerk of his head, he added, “Oh, I get it! Maybe Joe’s double died, or something, and they decided to make the real Haleohano do espionage work for them, too?”
“No, not exactly,” Colonel Stacey replied with a frown. “Maybe the double did die, but Joe didn’t know it when he came to see me at my Hickam Field office. According to Joe what they wanted him to do was something that their double couldn’t possibly do—or, at least, there was too much danger to make it worth taking the chance. In short, Joe was to take a supposedly dear friend of his into the homes of his relatives who live all over this Island, and get them to accept his friend just as they accepted Joe himself. This supposed friend was none other than Kato Harada, the most cunning, ruthless, and dangerous rat in Hirohito’s nest! But, at the time, Joe didn’t know this Kato Harada or anything about him.”
“And I know even less,” Red spoke up. “Except a little what he looks like, and the bit you’ve told me. What about him?”
“I could talk all day and not complete the dossier on one Kato Harada,” Colonel Stacey replied, impulsively bunching both fists. “Briefly, he makes Himmler of the German Gestapo seem like a Sunday school teacher by comparison. Seventy-five per cent of all that’s happened in China can be placed right at Harada’s door. He’s the type who would slay his own mother just for the diabolical thrill of it. He... Good heavens, Randall! If that was Harada you saw—and it must have been—why he didn’t kill you, too, is the miracle of your entire life, past, present, and future!”
Red licked his lips and swallowed hard at the reminder of what might have been.
“Maybe he was in too much of a hurry,” he said in a weak voice.
“He must have been, and you can certainly thank God for that fact,” Colonel Stacey said with a vigorous nod. “Anyway, Harada is about the lowest, most deadly thing on the face of the earth. But he is twice as cunning, and twice as clever, too. He’s pulled off more daring espionage stunts than there are waves in the Pacific. I don’t think there’s an intelligence service in the world—including the Nazis—who wouldn’t sigh with relief to see Harada drop dead and stay dead for all time to come. He knows more ins and outs, more loopholes and tricks to leave a fellow holding the bag than...than…well, take just my word for it that he is the most dangerous animal or reptile alive today.”
“And he’s the guy Joe was to take into the homes of his relatives?” Red Randall echoed. “Why?”
Colonel Stacey grunted and put out both hands, palms facing upward, and shrugged.
“And that’s the sixty-four dollar question that we can’t answer,” he said. “Joe didn’t know. That is one of the reasons he took his life in his hands and came to see me when he learned that I was on duty here Oahu. But I’m a little ahead of my story. The Japs put the relative visiting proposition up to Joe, and the only thing he could do was to accept. After all, he was only to represent this Harada...who, by the way, was not introduced to Joe by that name...to his relatives as a very dear friend. As you probably know, Hawaiians are a hospitable people. If a Hawaiian takes you for a friend that goes for his family, and his cousins, and his uncles and his aunts. You’re aces all around.”
“Yes, I know that, sir,” Red replied. “I’ve often heard Dad say the same thing. But Joe must have suspected that something funny was up.”
“Certainly, he did!” the Colonel replied sharply. “Anybody who has spent any length of time in Japan knows that the whole cursed country is getting set for the day when they’ll sail into the United States. We know it right here in Hawaii. And they know it in Washington, too... I hope! But what could Joe do but accept? They had his wife and mother as hostages. Perhaps even more important than that to Joe, by falling in with the proposition, he might be able to get some information about the Japs’ plans in the Pacific when war came. Which it is bound to, and soon, I’m afraid. Anyway, he agreed to the idea. He was introduced to Harada, who was going by the name Kamoto, and the pair of them came to Oahu by Jap submarine.”
“What?” Red Randall gasped and sat up straight. “Came here by Jap submarine? But…”
“Hold your horses, son, and let me finish,” the Colonel cut him off. “Not right into Pearl Harbor, naturally. The submarine came in close to shore under the cover of darkness, and Haleohano and Harada swam the rest of the way. They came ashore up at Kahuku Point. And right then and there Joe got a break. Harada stumbled over something on the beach in the dark and sprained his ankle. Joe had to carry him to a cousin’s house about two miles away. There they made the Jap rat comfortable and bound up his ankle.”
“Too bad they didn’t cut his throat while they had the chance!” Major Nichols grunted as the other paused.
“Yes, it would have helped, the way things turned out for Joe,” Colonel Stacey murmured, and stared through the car’s windshield. “Anyhow, it did give Joe a chance to get away from Harada. He told me that the Jap wouldn’t let him out of his sight for the first couple of days. Joe’s wife and mother were back in Japan, but apparently Harada wasn’t taking any chances. On the third day, though, Joe got away by telling Harada that he had to help his cousins in the nearby pineapple fields, as they were shorthanded. Harada didn’t like it, but Joe insisted that he had to help. So Harada let him go with the gentle reminder that Joe’s wife and mother were in Japan. As soon as he could, Joe lighted out for Honolulu and Army Headquarters. It was there he learned that I was over at Hickam and came over to see me.”
Colonel Stacey stopped talking, bunched his fists again, and pressed them hard aga
inst each other.
“And that was when I made the biggest mistake of the many I’ve made in my forty-six years!” he said bitterly.
Chapter Five – One in a Million
RED RANDALL WAITED as long as he could for the Colonel to continue, but when the senior officer remained silent, he asked the obvious question.
“What do you mean, you made a mistake, sir?”
The Colonel shook himself out of his spell of bitter reverie and grunted.
“The mistake of not going to Joe’s cousin’s house right then and there and nailing Kato Harada,” he said. “Also the mistake of letting poor Joe sell me a bill of goods. And, too…maybe the mistake of wondering just a little about Joe. After all, I hadn’t seen him for years. And the story he told me did sound just a little screwy.”
“You mean, how the Japs had framed him, and were holding his wife and mother prisoners?” Red prompted.
“No, I believed that,” the Colonel replied with a shake of his head. “That stunt wasn’t copyrighted by the Nazis. No, the screwy part was when he told me that the Japs are going to make a sneak air, land, and sea attack on Pearl Harbor. And…”
“Pearl Harbor?” Red gasped and sat up straight. “When?”
Colonel Stacey shrugged.
“I don’t know, and neither did Joe,” he replied. “Joe swore that he saw charts and attack plans in the submarine commander’s quarters while coming from Japan. I pressed him hard for details, but he couldn’t give me any that were of real help. But he swore that he saw charts of Pearl Harbor with footnotes on everything we’ve got there. He said there were also notes on the courses that two-man Jap submarines would take to approach Oahu, and even get into Pearl Harbor. Of course Joe could read, write, and speak Japanese like a native. And he said that several times Harada and the sub’s officers toasted the capture of the Hawaiians with their native drink, sake.
Red Randall at Pearl Harbor Page 3
