Black Wind

by F. Paul Wilson

  "That's a lie!"

  I didn't want to believe it. It couldn't be true. It was just rumor. But it jibed so perfectly with what Sam had said.

  "No." His voice was low and sad now. "It's true."

  I had known Matsuo long enough to know he was telling the truth. My stomach turned.

  He said, "Why weren't you warned?"

  That was the question I wanted answered. That and so many others. The questions showered down around me like hail, threatening to drive me to my knees. Pearl was in the area threatened by Japan—why hadn't we been given Purple magic? Why hadn't we been given any way to mount an effective aerial reconnaissance? Why had all those ships—ninety-six of them—been in Pearl at once? It was like waving a red flag at the Japanese. And how come the two truly indispensable ships in the fleet, the big carriers Lexington and Enterprise, were conveniently ordered out just days before the attack?

  "I think your government is just as responsible as mine for the lives lost at Pearl Harbor."

  "That's insane!"

  "I don't think so. I've given this much thought in the past few weeks. Your confirmation that our diplomatic code was broken over a year before the attack has brought everything into focus."

  "You don't get off the hook so easily, Matsuo."

  "I have no hope of that. You see, I helped plan the attack. But I didn't know that I was playing directly into the hand of your President Roosevelt."

  "You expect me to believe that my own President planned the deaths of three thousand sailors in his own Navy? You're out of your mind."

  "I doubt President Roosevelt and his circle ever dreamed so many Americans would die. With their usual American smugness, they underestimated our leaders, men like Admiral Yamamoto, and our weaponry, like the Zero. They probably expected better resistance from the Army fighter squadrons on Oahu—squadrons we destroyed on the ground. But it doesn't matter what they expected. The fact remains that they made Pearl Harbor an irresistible target. Would American isolationists have cared if we attacked the Philippines or Borneo or Korea or Australia? Would that have rallied them to war? Of course not. FDR needed an attack on Americans. And to that end he purposely left your Pacific Fleet exposed and unwarned. His reasoning was simple: If properly alerted, the fleet would have put to sea and dispersed. If we had come upon an empty harbor we would have turned back. Result: no attack. And no attack meant no way to go to war."

  "No! You don't believe that any more than I do."

  "Unfortunately, I do believe it." Suddenly he sounded extremely weary. "We have men like that in my own government."

  Christ, it couldn't be true. Yet everything Matsuo was saying fitted so perfectly with all the doubts that had plagued me before and since the Pearl attack. I couldn't fight it anymore.

  We were set up.

  And I had to wonder—had I personally been set up? I thought about the Harbor diagram locked out of its safe so conveniently on Saturday and given over to the ONI man with the Japanese wife—me. Had someone known that Matsuo and Meiko had been meeting? Had the plans been just one more nudge toward attack, a final cherry on top to make Pearl Harbor an irresistible target?

  I wanted to lie down. I wanted a drink—lots of drinks. I wanted to weep.

  "But that is all in the past," Matsuo said. "What you should know right now is that I have stolen your country's atomic bomb."

  It took a moment for my brain to switch to the present.

  "Atomic bomb? I've heard rumors, but—"

  "It's one of the world's best-kept secrets, but the bomb is real, it exists." His voice sounded mechanical. "It's slated to be dropped on Kyoto. I stole the uranium projectile. There is no bomb without it."

  So that was what all the excitement was about. An atomic bomb. I'd just read about one in a science fiction magazine called Astounding Stories. It was supposed to be the ultimate weapon. Now I understood what General Groves had said about saving countless thousands of American lives. The Allied invasion of the Japanese mainland was still in the planning stages and probably wouldn't start till November, but I'd seen casualty estimates of up to a million Americans. An atom bomb could change all that.

  "Where is it?" I said. An automatic question—I didn't expect an answer.

  "Hidden."

  I knew I was going to have to bring him in, or die trying. I couldn't let an atom bomb fall into Japanese hands. I edged my fingers toward my .45.

  "Who is the highest-ranking officer on the island?" he said. "The one in charge of bombing Japan?"

  My hand was resting on the pistol stock. All I had to do now was get it out of the holster. I kept my voice as calm as possible.

  "As of a few hours ago, General LeMay."

  "Would you take me to him?"

  I laughed with relief and Matsuo must have thought I was a little crazy.

  "Sure! Let's go!"

  This was a meeting I just had to see.

  * * *

  General Curtis LeMay stormed around his commandeered Quonset hut office. His elation at my capture of "Mariano Cruz" had quickly turned to raging frustration at Matsuo's flat refusal to give up the uranium projectile. The scientists had come in and got excited over all the noise Matsuo caused in their little clicking machines, which I learned were called Geiger-Muller counters. That appeared to be proof that Matsuo had been in contact with the cylinder.

  They were finally shooed out and now only five people remained in the room. Beside Abrams, General LeMay, and myself, there was Major General Groves, a pudgy, middle-aged man who I learned was in charge of the atom bomb project. He sat behind a desk looking tired and nervous, nibbling chocolates. Outside in the hall and all around the building, however, a ring of white-helmeted MPs stood guard.

  Matsuo sat impassively in the center of the room, secured to his chair by four pairs of handcuffs, one for each wrist and each ankle. I was taking no chances.

  "You think this is a game, mister?" LeMay shouted.

  He was on the husky side with a full face tending toward jowls; his dark hair was parted high and combed up boyishly in the front; not yet forty. He was already a two-star general, the youngest in the Army Air Force, the man who planned and executed the March 9 holocaust of Tokyo and was said to be a brilliant tactician. I got the distinct impression he might have been the one to say it most often. I never saw him without a cigar. Maybe he thought of it as a parallel to MacArthur's corncob pipe.

  Matsuo looked at LeMay impassively as the general continued to work up steam, hauling his bulky frame back and forth in front of Matsuo, his cigar puffing like a locomotive stack.

  "You've got no leverage here, mister," he said with a faint Midwest accent. "We're going to find that cylinder with or without your help, but it'll go easier on you if you tell us where you hid it. Otherwise, we'll comb this island inch by inch until we find it."

  "I did not say I hid it on the island," Matsuo said softly.

  Groves shot out of his chair. "You mean it's in the ocean?"

  "I only said it is hidden," Matsuo replied.

  "You know," LeMay said, "we Americans don't believe in torture like you Japs, but I'm going to find somebody around here to give you a dose of your own medicine!"

  "Excuse me, sir," I said, sensing that this could get out of hand. "But that won't work."

  "Yeah?" he said with naked belligerence. "How do you know?"

  "Look at him.”

  LeMay stared at Matsuo, perhaps truly doing so for the first time. He saw what I saw: implacable determination. Matsuo used the moment perfectly.

  "I will give you back the uranium projectile," he said.

  LeMay chomped on his cigar. "In return for what?"

  "For the end of the war." He waited a few beats in the dead silence of the room, then continued. "That is what you wish to use the atom bomb for, is it not? To end the war. You can still use it for that, but without exploding it."

  "Oh, really?" He glanced at Groves. "We're all ears, mister."

  "I will return to Japan a
nd convince the government and the military that they cannot withstand the weapon you have developed. I'll tell them what I saw at Alamogordo and—"

  Groves shot from his seat. "What do you know about Alamogordo?"

  "I was there."

  "Impossible!"

  Matsuo proceeded to tell the general what he had seen. It sounded like the most frightening science fiction I had ever heard, but as he spoke I watched the color drain from Groves' face and realized with horror that Matsuo wasn't exaggerating.

  "Your little scheme won't work, mister," LeMay said. "We have plenty of atom bombs."

  "You have one other." Matsuo’s face flashed with defiance. "It is called Fat Man, and it is still in the United States."

  "My God! My God!" Groves muttered, rubbing a trembling hand across his eyes. "He knows everything."

  "Well, we'll get Fat Man here and use that."

  Matsuo met LeMay's glare calmly. "After you explain how Little Boy was stolen from right under your nose, do you really think they'll want to trust the only other existing atom bomb to your security again?"

  That shut LeMay up. He looked like he was ready to have his own little atomic explosion inside his head, but he fumed in silence. I watched Matsuo. I had to admire him. Part of me still hated his guts, but another part responded to his courage, and to what he wanted to do. He said he wanted to end the war without using the atom bomb and I believed him. And he was one hell of an intelligence officer.

  "Sending you to Japan is out," LeMay said finally. "You'd never come back, then we'd have neither you nor the bomb. Forget it!"

  "You have my word," Matsuo said.

  "Your word isn't worth a nickel, pal."

  Not true. I knew Matsuo would die rather than break his word, but no way I'd ever convince LeMay of that. He'd want insurance. Then inspiration struck.

  "I know a way," I said.

  * * *

  "Meiko!"

  Matsuo tried to leap up when they brought her in, but the chair and the cuffs held him back. His Japanese composure slipped completely, but only for an instant, then it locked back into place again.

  She started toward him but the MPs held her back. "Oh, Matsuo! Have they hurt you?"

  The way they looked at each other, the need, the love, the undeniable bond between them, was like a knife in my gut.

  "Who is this?" LeMay said.

  "His wife," I told him.

  LeMay's face suddenly relaxed into a satisfied smile. "Well, well. Isn't this cozy." Then his smile vanished and he whirled on me. "How come you know so much about this guy?"

  "He used to be my best friend."

  After I said that, you could have heard a butterfly's wings flapping across the room. I had already put one foot in it. I decided to go for two.

  "And she used to be my wife."

  The cigar dropped out of LeMay's mouth and rolled on the floor. Abrams was staring at me as if I'd grown another head.

  I saw Matsuo's eyes leave Meiko for the first time since she had entered the room. He looked at me with a slightly cocked head, then briefly inclined his upper body an inch forward. The tiniest of bows, but an acknowledgment of the trouble I could be buying myself with those statements, and a vote of confidence and of gratitude. He had guessed what I was up to.

  It took a while to explain everything, but when I showed them my right arm—Meiko turned away at that point—and how I couldn't make a tight fist, I could see the doubt in their faces begin to fade.

  "The whole point of this story is that Meiko is our insurance policy. Matsuo will return for her. He went to Hawaii to bring her back to Japan; she was sailing to Tinian in a sampan to pick him up. They're devoted to each other." God, it hurt to say that. "One would never desert the other. He'll be back."

  "We've got to risk it," I heard Groves whisper to LeMay. "We've got to get that bomb back. I can't call Washington and tell them it's been stolen. Christ—"

  "Never!" LeMay said.

  Groves glanced at Meiko, Matsuo, and me, then pointed LeMay toward the office door.

  "Outside."

  It seemed to take them forever out there, but when the two generals returned, LeMay's face was dark with anger. He glowered at Groves and seemed to hate us all. He walked over to Matsuo.

  "Okay, mister. Listen up: There was a big conference in Potsdam yesterday. President Truman, Attlee, and Chiang Kai-shek signed a proclamation setting out surrender terms for you monkeys. I'll get you back to Tokyo. And I'll give you seventy-two hours to either get your government on the air to accept those terms or get yourself to a pickup point we settle on. If the time limit passes and we don't see or hear from you, I'll get Fat Man here and I'll personally see to it that your wife is tied to it when we drop it on your hometown."

  Matsuo returned his glare. "For the record, I grew up in San Francisco."

  HIROSHIMA

  Shimazu watched Hiroki as they sipped green tea. The brazier smoked between them, obscuring, then revealing his student's haggard, drawn face. These days, during the workweek, Hiroki functioned as a cheerleader of sorts, going from one cabinet office to another, bolstering the courage of the ministers, encouraging the Chiefs of Service to keep fighting, to keep resisting those who wanted the Empire to surrender. A harrowing task, Shimazu knew. One with ever-diminishing returns. At least he could find shelter here at times.

  Even as he watched, Hiroki's features were relaxing as he lost himself in thought while sipping tranquillity from the bitter liquid.

  "How are plans for the final defense going?"

  "Very well, sensei. As per our suggestion, General Anami has put the War Ministry to work distributing ten million bamboo spears to the people. Daily classes in their use have begun. When the Americans come ashore, not only will they have to contend with the Black Winds, but with a populace armed down to the last woman and child. We shall deal the Americans such a blow for setting foot upon our islands that the few who survive will scurry back to their side of the Pacific, never to darken our shores again."

  Shimazu could not resist smiling behind his mask. "I do not think a single American foot will ever get close enough to make those bamboo spears necessary."

  In response to Hiroki's puzzled expression, Shimazu reached behind him and brought forward a small carved teak box. He lifted the lid to reveal a vial of clear fluid resting on a bed of deep blue velvet within. Hiroki's eyes widened.

  "Is all that ekisu?"

  "Yes," Shimazu said. "Four ounces of it."

  Hiroki was on his feet. "Four ounces? We've only been able to distill a few drops at a time until now."

  "The process has been perfected while you were in Tokyo. More is being distilled at this very moment."

  "Then we've done it. We can now begin a true offensive with the Black Winds."

  Shimazu nodded. They knew the ekisu worked. They recently had tested their few meager drops on Okinawa. On each occasion, a child, one of the surgical failures, had been sedated, submarined to the island, given a few drops of the fluid, then left onshore. Each had succeeded in becoming a Black Wind shoten.

  "We'll need more children," Hiroki said.

  "Perhaps not." Shimazu closed the cover over the vial of ekisu and put the box aside. It was too precious to risk spilling. "I think we can use the little mongrels we keep upstairs most effectively against the US fleets at anchor in the harbors they've taken from us. Consider: A woman rows a boat near a nest of American warships in, say, Manila Bay. Just a mother and her child in a tiny open boat. Certainly nothing for a mighty cruiser or aircraft carrier to fear. She stops rowing and gives a dram of clear fluid to the child. Moments later, a Kuroikaze strikes with full force. And when it has finally passed, Manila Bay is still full of perfectly undamaged craft, just as before the storm. However, they now are death ships, manned by corpses."

  Hiroki's eyes glowed. "Yes! Think of the terror. They will be afraid to board their own ships."

  "But that is only the beginning," Shimazu said, exhilaration rising in
him like a tide. "We will take this war to their own soil. All we need is one dedicated man to go to America with a supply of the ekisu."

  "Their cities will suffer like ours. What a perfect use for the Kuroikaze! All their factories, all their planes, all their ships and bombs and cannon will be useless against Black Winds within their own borders."

  Shimazu said, "And the message will be clear: Leave Asia. Leave the Pacific. Return to your families now or you won't have any."

  "Then the Seers were right. We can win this war. We will win it."

  "You doubted?" Shimazu said.

  Hiroki lowered his eyes. "With all the difficulties we've had, sensei, how could I not?"

  Shimazu privately admitted that he, too, had had his moments of doubt.

  "But now you see how it all follows the vision: we have suffered through our darkest moments, and now we have the means of final victory in our hands."

  Hiroki sighed. "As long as the defeatists in the government do not surrender first."

  Shimazu smiled. "Have no fear of that. I have seen a copy of the enemy's terms."

  He had been terribly concerned on his first reading of the Potsdam Proclamation because it called for the "unconditional surrender of the Japanese armed forces" without mentioning the civilian government. The implied dichotomy was a very obvious inducement to the Diet to cave in. However, upon rereading, he noted to his great relief that the proclamation made no provision for the preservation of the Imperial Line. Without such a guarantee, not even the most craven of the defeatists would consider placing his name upon such a blasphemy.

  "It is unacceptable to anyone Japanese," he told Hiroki.

  "What of this atomic bomb the Americans are supposed to be developing?"

  "A myth," Shimazu said. "A rumor they themselves have planted in a desperate attempt to save themselves from the task of storming our shores."

  "I have learned through our contact in Naval Intelligence that my brother is expected back from America soon," Hiroki said. "I wonder if he has learned anything about this bomb."