The Citadel

by Robert Doherty

  The body count was getting very high, Dyson thought. While the Organization was not averse to whatever cost was necessary to accomplish its goals, this was definitely beginning to look like a very major operation.

  "What did the convoy deliver?"

  "Among other things, four Mark-17 thermonuclear warheads. The largest yield bombs ever built by the United States."

  Dyson closed his eyes briefly. "Have the warheads ever been accounted for?"

  "No, sir. The most likely explanation is that they must still be there in the Citadel."

  "Anything more?"

  "Negative."

  "Thank you."

  Dyson turned the phone off, then picked up the tersely worded communiqué that had just been decrypted and then delivered to him. It was a directive from the High Counsel in Geneva, head of the North American Table, to present himself in person. And the subject of the meeting was to explain the Citadel and why Geneva had no records of such a place.

  Which meant he was going to have to explain the scanty yet startling records that the North American Table had of it.

  Philippines

  "He will die with twenty-four hours," the medic informed Fatima, pointing at the young Japanese man who had been Araki's target. "And he"-the medic indicated the old man in the bed next to him-"will live if we treat him. If not, he won't last forty-eight hours."

  Fatima turned to the Japanese woman who had saved her in the tunnel. Araki was tied to a chair facing the beds the two wounded men occupied. "And you," Fatima said to her, "will die immediately if you lie to me."

  Araki glared at her, face flushed in anger. A half-dozen Abu Sayif guerrillas were gathered round, weapons at the ready. Fatima walked up to Araki and drew a knife. She laid the cold flat edge of it against Araki's cheek.

  "Perfect skin," Fatima said. "It would be a shame to see it marred. You said you work for CPI-Central Political Intelligence. And you were following this man, Nishin." She removed the knife and pointed it at the young, wounded Japanese man. "Why?"

  "To find out who he works for," Araki answered.

  "He is Yakuza," Fatima said.

  "Check to see if he has Yakuza marking," Araki suggested.

  Fatima nodded, and two men ripped off Nishin's bloody shirt. His skin was unblemished. Fatima shrugged. "There are those among the Yakuza who are unmarked in order to be able to do covert missions."

  "He is not Yakuza," Araki said.

  "Telling me what he is not is not very useful," Fatima said. "Tell me what he is."

  "He is a member of an Organization the CPI has spent decades trying to infiltrate or at least find out what its real name is. The best we have come is to learn that it is referred to at times as the Far East Table. I told you this earlier."

  Fatima frowned. "You mean the group people call the Organization, with a capital letter?"

  Araki nodded.

  "We have heard of this Far East Table," Fatima said. "I recently killed one of their members, but she could tell me nothing. If this man, Nishin, is an agent, I am willing to bet he knows little and would say nothing."

  Araki shrugged. "It was the best lead we had. And we wanted to know why he came here to the Philippines and what his mission was."

  Fatima frowned as she tried to piece together this puzzle of bodies around her. She had been after Shibimi because the Yakuza had sent her that way. Araki had been after Nishin, and he had been after Shibimi. Fatima felt a sudden rush of pressure as she realized the information she had received had not come from nowhere and there was a very good chance someone knew she had this information.

  There was no time to fool around. She drew her pistol and walked over to Nishin. He was glaring up at her. She fired once, the round making a small black hole in the center of his forehead. She turned. Both Shibimi and Araki were staring at her wide-eyed.

  Araki was the first to speak. "What did you do that for? He was my-"

  "You will be very lucky to leave here alive," Fatima said. "He was a ronin, a soldier, who knew nothing other than he was here to kill this man." Fatima went over to Shibimi and placed the muzzle of her gun between his eyes. His face was impassive as he regarded her.

  "Where is his guard?" Fatima called out, and Shibimi's eyes flickered ever so slightly.

  Two of her men dragged up the wounded guard, his stomach heavily bandaged. They slammed him against the side of the building and he cried out in pain. Fatima jammed the muzzle of her gun right into his wound, and he screamed.

  "Who are you?" she asked, keeping one eye on the old man. He was much too concerned about the old man to be a simple bodyguard. "How are you related to Shibimi?"

  She jammed the gun once more, and he screamed, then she stepped back and waited. When he caught his breath, the man managed to speak. "I'm his grandson."

  Fatima spun back to Shibimi and walked up to him. "I will make you a deal. You tell me what you know of the submarine I-104 and I will have my people take your grandson into Manila and drop him at the hospital. You do not tell me, he dies."

  Shibimi closed his eyes for several moments, then opened them and nodded ever so slightly. Fatima gestured, and the two men holding the guard dragged the wounded man toward a waiting car.

  "I am upholding my end," Fatima said. "Talk."

  Shibimi watched his grandson tossed in the backseat of the car and as it drove away up the dirt trail. When it was out of sight he returned his eyes to Fatima. "There were three 400 series Sensuikan Toku-class submarines built near the end of the war: I-400, I-401, and I-402. They were the pride of the fleet. The largest submarines ever built up until the 1960s, when the first ballistic missile submarines were built. They were underwater aircraft carriers."

  "I've never heard of such a thing," Fatima said, noting that Araki had gotten over her shock about Nishin's death rather quickly and was listening intently.

  "I was assigned to the I-401," Shibimi said. "It was indeed huge. We were all stunned the first time we saw it. Over four hundred feet long and forty feet high. There were 144 men in the crew. It had a waterproof hangar built onto the deck in front of the conning tower. Inside were three bombers. Fully loaded with fuel, we had the potential to sail back and forth across the Pacific without refueling."

  "Where did you sail?" Fatima demanded.

  Shibimi closed his eyes and sighed. "The I-401 was built with a specific mission in mind. We were to sail to the Panama Canal and use our three planes to bomb it, shutting it to traffic. But the war ended before we could do that mission. We were at sea when the surrender was signed. We'd been at sea for two months. Doing trial runs. First heading toward the Panama Canal. Then sent north toward the American West Coast, where we were to rendezvous with a freighter and take on biological weapons to attack San Diego and Los Angeles."

  "Biological weapons developed by Unit 731," Fatima said.

  Shibimi looked startled, then nodded. "Yes. But that mission was canceled when we were within fifty miles of San Diego. No explanation was given. We were directed to rendezvous with a ship in the South Pacific, east of Australia. It was a long journey back across the ocean.

  "When we arrived at the location, we were shocked to see an American submarine tender. They were as shocked as we were, but they had the same orders. They refueled us. And we received new orders. To head here, to the Philippines."

  "Where you were met again by Americans," Fatima said.

  Shibimi nodded. "Yes. We surfaced at night, not far from here, off Corregidor. Then an American cargo ship came alongside. Our three airplanes were dumped overboard. In the hangar were placed numerous, unmarked crates."

  "Golden Lily," Fatima said. "Part of it."

  "Yes," Shibimi said. "Although neither I, nor any member of the crew, knew it then. We also took on a large amount of food store. And received sailing orders once more."

  "To go to Antarctica," Fatima said.

  "If you know all this, then why are you asking me?" Shibimi said.

  "I don't know everything," Fati
ma said. "Where in Antarctica?"

  "Due south. We sailed to the edge of the ice pack of the Ross Sea. Then we waited until it was summer and the pack had receded as far as it could. The captain was the only one who knew what we were doing. The rest of us just followed orders. We picked up random radio transmissions at times. We found out about the dropping of the atomic bombs. Details of the surrender."

  Shibimi's eyes grew distant. "That's when the suicides began. A man whose family had been in Nagasaki was first. Then others. In the first month while we sat off the coast, eight men killed themselves. They saw no hope, no reason to live. The captain would not explain what our mission was. Then something strange happened."

  Shibimi fell silent for a few moments, and Fatima gestured for one of her men to give him some water. His wound had stopped bleeding.

  "What happened?" Fatima finally asked.

  "Two more submarines arrived," Shibimi said.

  "American?" Fatima asked.

  "No, German," Shibimi said. "Because I was Kempetai, I talked to the member of one of the crews who was Gestapo. He told me an interesting story. He said the Germans called Antarctica Neuschwabenland and considered it part of the Third Reich. Or had. The Third Reich no longer existed by the time we met. He told me that before the war, the Germans had sent planes down to Antarctica and dropped pennons with Nazi flags over as much of the land as they could, a naïve way of trying to claim the land as theirs.

  "In 1943, Admiral Donitz, who commanded the German submarine forces, claimed that the Germans had created a fortress in Antarctica, a boast of a rather feeble attempt to establish a base there. But the agent told me this was not the first time his submarine, U-530, had been to Antarctica. In fact, it was its sixth trip. And every time they brought supplies and, like us, unmarked crates. This was their last trip along with their sister ship the U-977."

  "What happened then?" Fatima asked. She found it strange to be talking about such a cold and faraway land here in the middle of the sweltering Filipino jungle. And to have a man who was in the Japanese Kempetai talking about meeting a Gestapo agent off the shores of Antarctica.

  "A landing party was organized under the command of one of the German officers who had obviously been there before and was experienced in traversing the land. It consisted mostly of Germans, but a few members of our crew were part of it. They struck out over the ice cap covering the Ross Sea.

  "We waited. And finally we received a radio call from the party that they were in place. All three submarines submerged. One of the German ships was in the lead. You have to remember, we were sailing almost blind under the ice. We homed in on the sonar signal the land party was broadcasting.

  "When we arrived, we found that the land party had blasted holes through the ice so that each submarine was able to extend a snorkel and radio transmitter up to the surface. But that was it." Shibimi fell silent for a moment. "It made no sense to the rest of the crew. We couldn't surface. We couldn't bring the land party aboard. The captain didn't give the rest of the crew time to. He ordered almost everyone with the exception of myself and his executive officer into the rear crew compartment and the engine room. Then he had us seal the hatch from our side.

  "I think it was merciful what we did. We were cold anyway. Our country had been devastated in the war. Surrender was not an option. Most of us had nothing to go home to, and if we did, we would have been in disgrace. We pumped the air out of the rear compartments. It was over relatively quickly. Relative, when you hear the echoed screams of men dying and their banging on the hatches and pipes and hull. One hundred and twenty-nine men were killed."

  Fatima glanced over at Araki. She had gotten more than she had bargained for on this mission.

  Shibimi continued. "The captain then said we must commit hari-kari. He said it would be his place as captain to be last. However, those were not my orders. I had to act quickly. I drew my pistol and shot the executive officer and captain. I powered the ship down except for the radio, which I put on a certain frequency at low power to continuously transmit. Then I put on a dry suit and a rebreather. I went into the escape hatch in the conning tower. I sealed myself in then opened the outer hatch.

  "The water was cold even with the dry suit, on the verge of becoming ice. It was pitch-black under the ice. I made my way by feel to the snorkel and radio transmitter. I grabbed on and made my way up in the darkness, fearful that I would find them enclosed in ice when I reached the ice pack. But the hole that had been blasted had not completely iced in yet. I was able to wiggle into it, pulling my way up, still afraid that as I got closer to the surface it would be sealed in.

  "I barely made it. I did hit ice. I had a pick with me. In that tight space I chipped away, my air diminishing, and then I broke through. About six inches of ice had already formed, and I was able to crawl through, onto the surface. It was night. I saw a single lantern, like a beacon, in one of the tents the ground party had taken. I staggered over to it, the water on the outside of my dry suit freezing as I did so. I made it inside. A stove was still going, but they were all dead.

  "The Germans had drank poisoned wine. The Japanese had used the knives and guns to kill themselves. I stripped off my dry suit and scavenged for cold weather clothing. Then I slept among the dead for a long time. When I awoke, I gathered supplies.

  "Then I made my way back to the coast. A six-day journey for me on foot. When I got to the coast a trawler was waiting for me. The crew knew nothing of me or why they were picking me up. They brought me back to Japan, where I could report the mission accomplished."

  Shibimi stopped speaking.

  "Where were these submarines left?" Fatima asked.

  "After all these years," Shibimi said, "I still remember the coordinates." He spoke them, and Fatima copied them down.

  "What else have you done for the Far East Table?" Fatima asked.

  Shibimi gave a bitter laugh. "That was it. Why do you think I am here in the Philippines driving a stupid tugboat and peddling in arms? They tried to kill me, and I escaped. I came here and here I have been all my life. They wait for me." His voice had dropped. "The souls of those men, they wait for me."

  "Then join them," Fatima said as she fired her pistol.

  Then she turned to Araki. The Japanese woman stared back at her. "What are you going to do to me?"

  "Do you want to know the truth?" Fatima asked.

  Araki nodded.

  "Then you must come with me."

  "Where?"

  "To Antarctica, of course." Fatima turned to one of the Abu Sayif. "Dispose of the bodies," she ordered. "I want the freighter to be prepared. Take her to Manila and link her up with the crew. I will need everyone at the ship."

  Oahu

  "We're going to rack up quite a few frequent flier miles on this trip." Tai was looking at the flight itinerary Royce had just given them. "Depart Honolulu for New Zealand. Cross the international date line en route. Arrive Wellington, New Zealand, on Saturday evening at 2100 hours local."

  "The passports I've given you," Royce said, "are real and should raise no problems. From New Zealand you count on Logan to take you to Antarctica."

  "What about communications?" Tai asked.

  Royce slid a small case across the table. "Satellite radio. You might not get the best reception in Antarctica but you should be able to punch through a text message."

  "Gear?" Vaughn asked.

  "Will be waiting for you in New Zealand," Royce said.

  "Including weapons?" Vaughn pressed.

  "Including weapons," Royce reassured him.

  Vaughn stood and looked at Tai. "All right. Let's get cold."

  Manila

  Fatima checked the coordinates Shibimi had given her. Then she made her way to the front of the map store and paid the proprietor. She slid the map inside her jacket and opened the door with a feeling of excitement that she was on the trail of something that might unlock the secret of the Organization.

  She left the store and hopped on the m
otorcycle she had taken from the village. She roared through the streets to the rendezvous she had set up on her way in. She was headed to another ethnic-oriented part of Manila -not Japanese this time, but Korean. She raced through the narrow streets, avoiding cars, trucks, bikes, and pedestrians.

  She turned down an alley and came to a halt. She took her helmet off, left it on the seat and entered the back door of a small store. An old Korean man was seated on a stool just inside, a blanket over his lap. Fatima saw the large double-O shape of the end of a sawed-off shotgun trained on her.

  "I am unarmed," she said.

  "What do you want?" the man demanded. "Your call said you had important information."

  "I believe I know where some American nuclear weapons are stored," Fatima said.

  The old man snorted. "I can tell you where many American nuclear weapons are stored in South Korea and in Japan."

  "But these are not in South Korea or in Japan. Or in the United States or anyplace where there are currently America forces."

  The old man stared at her. "How can this be?"

  "The Americans built a secret military base right after World War II," Fatima said. "They went back there at least one time and put four nuclear weapons in it. And now it is abandoned, and I believe the weapons might still be there."

  "Impossible," the old man said. "Even the Americans are not that stupid. Where is this base?"

  " Antarctica."

  The old man blinked. "That is-" He fell silent as he thought about it. "Are you certain?"

  "I am certain there is an American base that was abandoned there," Fatima said. "I am not certain about the weapons, but it is likely they are still there. Even if they no longer work, they will still have their cores, which can be used. And even without that, the discovery of such a thing would be of great embarrassment to the Americans."

  " Antarctica is a large place," the old man said. "Where exactly is this place?"

  "I am heading down there to find out," Fatima said. "Would your superiors be interested in knowing the location?"

  The old man simply nodded.

  "Then I will contact you in the same manner over satellite when I know more," Fatima said, not wanting to give up any more information right now.