The Little Tokyo Informant

by Andrew Rosenheim

  Across the corridor a drunken sailor who’d gone AWOL stood staring through the bars at Nessheim; in the next cell another sailor sat crying on his bunk. When the guards came with dinner trays they must have said something about the new prisoner.

  ‘Nazi bastard,’ the AWOL sailor suddenly snarled. ‘Wait until we get you in the yard!’ an inmate down the corridor shouted. Even the crybaby sailor looked daggers at Nessheim. Soon all the inmates took up the cry of ‘Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!’ ringing out from the dozen cells.

  The stockade CO came down late the following morning. He was a very little man with square shoulders, in a crisp Navy uniform that looked as if it rarely went outdoors. Nessheim stayed seated on his bed in order to look shorter.

  ‘I’m Captain Maston,’ the Navy man announced.

  ‘And I’m Special Agent Nessheim of the FBI. I was sent to Molokai to meet with Japanese agents there—’

  Maston cut him short. ‘Save the horseshit, please. I don’t know exactly what you were doing on Molokai, but let’s not waste my time, okay Herr Rossbach?’

  ‘My name isn’t Rossbach.’

  ‘Why does your driver’s licence say it is?’

  ‘My real name is James Nessheim.’

  Maston looked amused. ‘I saw that movie.’

  Nessheim tried to control his rising impatience. ‘Please contact the local Special Agent in Charge – he’s named Shivers. He can confirm who I am. And while I wait for him, I need a medic.’ He pointed to his leg, which had started seeping blood again during the night.

  Maston looked around the cell. ‘The thing is, Rossbach or Nessheim or whatever your name is, I’ve already talked with Mr Shivers.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I phoned him last night. Shivers said there was an agent here last week, named Nessheim.’

  ‘Okay, then.’

  ‘Not so fast.’ Maston held up his hand. ‘Shivers told me that he personally saw this guy on to the Pan Am Clipper to San Francisco. He said there’s no way you can be the same guy unless you parachuted out and swam back.’

  Nessheim shook his head furiously. ‘He only saw me leave the terminal. I never boarded the plane.’

  Maston was unimpressed. ‘You can tell that to the Naval Intelligence folks on Monday.’

  Nessheim was now fully on edge. ‘Listen, please will you call Shivers again? Tell him I can prove I’m Nessheim – all he’s got to do is come have a look at me. Tell him I had dinner last Wednesday at his house. We had meatloaf with pineapple rings. Sue, the Japanese girl, made it. Just tell him that, okay?’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ said Maston and went out the door.

  * * *

  By the time night fell Shivers had not come to see him and Nessheim was beginning to despair.

  A medic did show up, a taciturn man who cleaned his wound in silence, then bandaged it. When Nessheim asked for something to dull the pain, the medic gave him two aspirin in a twist.

  ‘I need something stronger,’ Nessheim said.

  ‘You’re lucky to get that.’ The medic started to leave. ‘Heil Hitler to you, pal.’

  ‘Auf Weidersehen,’ snapped Nessheim.

  The calls of ‘Traitor! Traitor!’ continued sporadically throughout the evening, then at last the cells grew quiet. But sleep was an impossibility: Nessheim lay sweating in his boxer shorts, as his leg continued to throb. He went and stood on the chair, which oddly seemed to ease the pain. He looked over the east loch, towards Ford Island and the large battleship shapes he could just make out in the dark.

  What the hell had Guttman been thinking of? He had never understood the man. Guttman would cajole one day and mislead the next; alternately confide secret information, then refuse to say what time it was; dole out effusive praise, before proceeding to chew him out. It was bewildering, exasperating and sometimes pointless. But as infuriating as these vacillations were, Nessheim had always held a sustaining belief that Guttman knew what he was doing.

  Not this time. Nessheim looked down at his bandaged leg, totem of his abortive trip to Molokai.

  A light went on high in the bridge of one of the ships berthed across the loch at Ford Island. What were the names of the different kinds of battleships out there? Nessheim wondered idly. Cruiser, frigate, destroyer – what else? Aircraft carriers – newfangled and apparently crucial, because they carried planes. He wondered how the planes landed in the fog or when the cloud cover was really low. It must be a lot easier to do in clear skies.

  Clear skies – someone else had mentioned them recently. Who was it? He tried to remember, letting the inchoate jumble of recent memories float through his mind. Finally he heard the voice say – you can’t expect us to guarantee clear skies.

  It was Noritaka who had said these words. But why?

  Then it came to him, as if he’d crossed a finish line. Depths, tide differentials – these were the facts of a fleet at harbour, and the harbour must be here – why else meet in Hawaii?

  Oh, how could he have missed it? The Japanese were going to attack, and the Germans had wanted to know when. It was as clear as day to him now. But he realised that there was no way on earth he could prove it, for he had no evidence any of these Navy people would take seriously. Without Shivers there was absolutely nothing he could do.

  He went back to his bed, completely drained. Despite the pain in his leg, or because of it, he finally managed to fall into a deep sleep. As the sun came up, light the colour of plums streamed through his cell, but Nessheim was still only half-awake when he heard the sound of jangling keys. He sat up groggily as an orderly came in. Behind him stood another man, dressed in a green polo shirt and blue checked trousers. It was Shivers.

  ‘Am I glad to see you,’ said Nessheim.

  ‘I’m not going to say “likewise”.’ Shivers looked at his watch. ‘My Sunday four-ball tees off in twenty-five minutes.’

  ‘What time is it? My watch got soaked in Molokai.’

  ‘It’s just short of seven thirty,’ said Shivers. There was no warmth to his voice. He turned to the orderly. ‘You can leave us, sailor. And tell your CO that this man is who he says he is – Special Agent Nessheim.’

  Shivers sat down on the chair beneath the grilled window. ‘I am assuming you are Nessheim, since I can’t for the life of me see why, if you were actually a Nazi named Rossbach, you would have contacted me when you arrived.’

  ‘I’m Nessheim all right. Two years ago, I infiltrated the German-American Bund on Harry Guttman’s orders; my alias was Rossbach. Guttman resurrected that identity for me to meet with foreign agents in Molokai. At Kalaupapa.’

  ‘The leper colony? Jesus, what were you meeting there for?’

  ‘For the reason you just reacted like you did. Nobody goes there if they can help it.’

  ‘Who were you meeting with?’

  Two days before Nessheim wouldn’t have told him, but all that had changed. ‘I found Billy Osaka’s cousin, Akiro. He’s a Japanese agent.’

  He was disconcerted when Shivers didn’t say anything.

  ‘Look,’ Nessheim said, ‘call Harry Guttman – he’ll confirm all of this. I have been acting on his direct orders.’

  ‘Believe me, I’ve already tried. But Guttman’s out of commission again – he’s back in the hospital with pneumonia. Without him, there’s not much I can do. I can’t ask for you to be released, now can I? In fact, when I called D.C. HQ I ended up talking to Clyde Tolson himself. I have to say he’s not one of your natural defenders. Or Guttman’s for that matter. He said to throw the book at you and sort out the details later.’

  ‘Do whatever you want to me. But please listen first to what I have to say.’

  He explained as calmly as he could his sudden revelation in the early hours, and watched as Shivers’s face moved back and forth between amazement and disbelief.

  Nessheim ended, ‘Can’t you see? You have to tell them that the Japanese are coming. If I’m wrong, you can throw away the key, but if I’m right there’
s still time to defend the base.’

  Shivers stared at him for a long time. ‘All right. I will do that. I give you my word. But don’t be surprised if it doesn’t make a damned bit of difference. We get a rumour a day here. They may not come from an FBI agent, but then, they don’t usually come from a German spy, either.’ He shrugged and gave a little smile, then rose to his feet. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow with the ONI. But I’ll see the rear admiral first.’ He paused, then held out his hand. Nessheim shook it and the SAC left.

  Nessheim sat down again on his bed, suddenly exhausted. He trusted Shivers and that was what mattered. If Guttman didn’t make it, Nessheim was looking at a prison sentence, he figured, but right now he didn’t care.

  It was minutes later that he heard the first dull thud, like a shoe dropped in an upstairs bedroom. Down the hall someone was playing the radio loudly – Hawaii Calls with Webley Edwards on CBS – and at first Nessheim though the noise was part of the programme. Then there was a boom, and then a succession of them, each louder than the last.

  He grabbed the chair and stood on it by the window. In a cloudless sky the sun spread over Ford Island in a buttery sheen. More booms were coming from Hickam Field, to his left but out of sight, and then there was a cannonade of explosions. Over Ford Island he now saw half a dozen low-flying, unfamiliar planes. There were small red circles on their wings that stood out from the greenish-grey of their fuselages. A plane flew above them like a supervising bird, its entire tail painted red. The planes below were heading straight for the island’s airfield, and as they passed over, only a few hundred feet above the ground, they began dropping bombs in clusters. More planes followed them in, dropping their own explosives in the untouched spaces left between the lines of the previous explosions.

  He looked to his left and in the south he saw a succession of aircraft, grouped in threes, pass through the entrance to the harbour. From the bellies of the first trio sleek, tube-shaped objects fell like lozenges ejected from a Pez dispenser. Why were they unloading there in the middle of the loch, well short of any obvious target? Then he understood – these were torpedoes, despatched by the airborne equivalent of submarines.

  Seconds later one of the ships lying in Battleship Row was hit. A towering geyser of water soared into the air like a theatrical fountain. Another battleship was hit, and then another; the ship closest to him began to list.

  Sailors started to appear on the decks, running to man their guns. The hit ships were on fire, one so badly that flames spread along its starboard side like a lit trail of gunpowder. Panicked seamen began leaping into the harbour. Nessheim watched as a watery slick of gasoline caught fire on the harbour surface and engulfed half a dozen of them.

  There was a short pause, as the planes regrouped to attack again. Down the stockade corridor the radio was still playing when suddenly the programme was interrupted and the urgent voice of Webley Edwards was shouting, ‘Attention! This is no exercise! The Japanese are attacking Pearl Harbor! All Army, Navy and Marine personnel—!’ someone switched it off, just as a siren sounded in the distance, howling like a dog caught in a trap. Another siren followed, curiously unmodulated, its high-pitched shriek one long note.

  Nessheim could hear orders being shouted over PA systems on the ships in the harbour, and watched as a fighter plane tried to take off on the Ford Island runway. It suddenly shuddered to a halt, just short of an enormous crater that had been created in its runway path. In the corridor orderlies kept running past the cells, while the prisoners were shouting to be let out. Suddenly, just overhead, Nessheim saw a plane appear and as it headed towards Ford Island there was an enormous bang. The walls around him shook as if an earthquake had struck.

  Nessheim stood transfixed, finding it almost impossible to take it all in. He looked out again towards Ford Island. The torpedoes had done their job well: already two of the battleships were sinking and a third had lost most of its stern. Smoke swirled like burning tyres from the many small fires, and hundreds of men had jumped overboard.

  Then the attack recommenced. He could spy yet more planes circling far up in the sky, at least 10,000 feet up. Bombers. There was an explosion on the USS Arizona; he could hear it as if the bomb had gone off in the next cell. Fire broke out on the battleship’s deck and quickly spread below, glowing like an elongated hot coal. Suddenly the entire ship seemed to erupt, showering enormous pieces of metal into the air. The fire must have reached the munitions stores.

  Then the planes moved on, and within minutes more explosions could be heard from elsewhere on the island. The Japanese seemed to be attacking all the other airfields at once, and from the sound of it Fort DeRussy at Waikiki.

  In the stockade the prisoners were shouting, relaying what they’d seen and – in every word they spoke – their fear. From the harbour the noise now was less relentless: a small secondary explosion; a ship blasting its horn as it tried to escape through the small-necked harbour entrance; ambulance sirens; orders shouted from the shore or broadcast on the decks of the crippled ships hit by torpedoes. And a solitary, dreadful scream.

  An hour later the Japanese returned.

  Part Nine

  Los Angeles and San Francisco Late March 1942

  34

  THE LETTER ARRIVED on a Tuesday morning. It was marked Private in a female hand.

  P.O. Box 343

  Owens Valley Reception Center

  Manzanar, California

  Dear Jimmy,

  I never thought I’d end up here. Could you come visit me please? I have something to tell you, something I should have told you before. I promise it won’t be a waste of time.

  Yours faithfully,

  Hanako Yukuri

  Just what I need, Nessheim thought wearily, for he had his own plans now. He felt in his trouser pocket for the Rossbach driver’s licence, which was always with him. It was his ticket out of a life that hadn’t given him the answers. And now here was Hanako raising questions.

  His return to LA had been a close-run thing. After 7 December, prisoners were not a priority for the authorities at Pearl Harbor. Over 2,000 military personnel had been killed (Nessheim had seen half of them die when he witnessed the bombing of the USS Arizona) and the survivors’ sense of shock had turned to anger.

  There had been no sign of Shivers, and Nessheim was in no position to demand to see the SAC. On the 11th news ran through the stockade cells that Hitler had declared war on America, and an hour later he’d been suddenly yanked out of his cell by two military policemen, taken in an outboard-powered dinghy across the wreck-festooned loch to the back end of Ford Island and put on a requisitioned Pan Am Clipper, which had taken off five minutes later. Blackout blinds had been fitted over the porthole-shaped windows of the airplane; as the sun went down the attendants took them off and Nessheim saw that they were flying without lights. But no one told him where he was going and he was kept handcuffed throughout the long flight; when he needed the bathroom he was taken under guard, even though he could barely hobble there.

  It was only when he had seen the Golden Gate Bridge that he knew they’d returned to San Francisco. At Treasure Island he’d been escorted out first by a trio of MPs carrying carbines. He wondered how long he was going to remain a prisoner, and what he would be charged with. He was confident he could establish his true identity, less sure that he could prove he was on a legitimate mission on Kalaupapa. It was critical that Guttman survive his pneumonia, and he tried not think what would happen if the man didn’t; he knew traitors were usually shot.

  The terminal building was crowded with military personnel, looking dazed that their uniforms were suddenly for real. They stared as his escorts cleared a path for the wobbly Nessheim, then led him down a corridor of Pan Am offices. These rooms had also been requisitioned, and the MPs decided he was dangerous enough to warrant the General Manager’s suite. It had a stunning view of the Bay, but the contrast with his cell’s view of the watery graveyard in Hawaii was almost too much to bear. He looked awa
y, and it was then that one of the MPs slapped him.

  ‘What’s that for?’ he asked in surprise.

  ‘Pearl Harbor,’ the soldier said without batting an eye.

  Nessheim wanted to tell him that it was deserved, but for a different reason. Nessheim wasn’t a spy; he was a failure.

  He asked mildly, ‘So what happens next – you hit me again?’ And the soldier was clenching his fist when the door opened.

  ‘That’s enough,’ said a calm voice.

  The soldier said crossly, ‘Our orders were to bring the prisoner to an office, and then—’

  ‘Await further orders,’ the man said smoothly. ‘Your first one is to take those handcuffs off.’

  The soldier hesitated, then reluctantly unlocked the cuffs. At last Nessheim turned around.

  ‘Stephenson?’ The Canadian stood in front of him, dressed in a brown wool suit and grey fedora.

  ‘You two know each other?’ the soldier asked suspiciously. He looked at Stephenson. ‘I’d better see those orders.’

  ‘Be my guest.’ Stephenson handed over an envelope.

  As the soldier read the letter inside, his eyes widened. He looked at Stephenson and saluted smartly. ‘Sir!’

  ‘That’ll do,’ said Stephenson. ‘You can leave us now.’

  When the sailors had gone Nessheim let out a soft whistle. ‘I’m impressed. Who signed the letter – the Pope?’

  Stephenson gave a hint of a smile. ‘No. Just the President.’

  He had come back to LA with Stephenson on a Main train full of soldiers. They eyed the gimpy Nessheim admiringly, as if he must be one of the first casualties of the war. In a way he supposed he was.

  He and Stephenson had sat up in the smoker, though neither smoked, drinking rye and ginger while Nessheim related what had happened to him in Kalaupapa and then at Pearl Harbor.