by Ken Follett
Then he remembered that the aircraft carriers of the Japanese navy had gone into radio silence. The signal intelligence unit had assumed they were in home waters, but had never been able to confirm that.
He caught his father’s eye, and guessed he was remembering the same conversation.
Everything suddenly became clear, and incredulity turned to fear.
The lead plane flew low over the Nevada, the stern marker in Battleship Row. There was a burst of cannon fire. On deck, seamen scattered and the band left off in a ragged diminuendo of abandoned notes.
In the launch, Rosa screamed.
Eddie said: ‘Christ Jesus in heaven, it’s an attack.’
Chuck’s heart pounded. The Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor, and he was in a small boat in the middle of the lagoon. He looked at the scared faces of the others – both parents, his brother, and Eddie – and realized that all the people he loved were in the boat with him.
Long bullet-shaped torpedoes began to fall from the underbellies of the planes and splash into the tranquil waters of the lagoon.
Chuck yelled: ‘Turn back, Eddie!’ But Eddie was already doing it, swinging the launch around in a tight arc.
As it turned, Chuck saw, over Hickam air base, another flight of aircraft with the big red discs on their wings. These were dive bombers, and they were streaming down like birds of prey on the rows of American aircraft perfectly lined up on the runways.
How the hell many of the bastards were there? Half the Japanese air force seemed to be in the sky over Pearl.
Woody was still taking pictures.
Chuck heard a deep bang like an underground explosion, then another immediately after. He spun around. There was a flash of flame aboard the Arizona, and smoke began to rise from her.
The stern of the launch squatted farther into the water as Eddie opened the throttle. Chuck said unnecessarily: ‘Hurry, hurry!’
From one of the ships Chuck heard the insistent rhythmic hoot of a klaxon sounding General Quarters, calling the crew to battle stations, and he realized that this was a battle, and his family was in the middle of it. A moment later on Ford Island the air-raid siren began with a low moan and wailed higher in pitch until it struck its frantic top note.
There was a long series of explosions from Battleship Row as torpedoes found their targets. Eddie yelled: ‘Look at the Wee Vee!’ It was what they called the West Virginia. ‘She’s listing to port!’
He was right, Chuck saw. The ship had been holed on the side nearest the attacking planes. Millions of tons of water must have poured into her in a few seconds to make such a huge vessel tilt sideways.
Next to her, the same fate was overtaking the Oklahoma, and to his horror Chuck could see sailors slipping helplessly, sliding across the tilted deck and falling over the side into the water.
Waves from the explosions rocked the launch. Everyone clung to the sides.
Chuck saw bombs rain down on the seaplane base at the near end of Ford Island. The planes were moored close together, and the fragile aircraft were blown to pieces, fragments of wings and fuselages flying into the air like leaves in a hurricane.
Chuck’s intelligence-trained mind was trying to identify aircraft types, and now he spotted a third model among the Japanese attackers, the deadly Mitsubishi ‘Zero’, the best carrier-based fighter in the world. It had only two small bombs, but was armed with twin machine guns and a pair of 20mm cannon. Its role in this attack must be to escort the bombers, defending them from American fighters – but all the American fighters were still on the ground, where many of them had already been destroyed. That left the Zeroes free to strafe buildings, equipment and troops.
Or, Chuck thought fearfully, to strafe a family crossing the lagoon, desperately trying to get to shore.
At last the United States began to shoot back. On Ford Island, and on the decks of the ships that had not yet been hit, anti-aircraft guns and regular machine guns came to life, adding their rattle to the cacophony of lethal noise. Anti-aircraft shells burst in the sky like black flowers blossoming. Almost immediately, a machine-gunner on the island scored a direct hit on a dive-bomber. The cockpit burst into flames and the plane hit the water with a mighty splash. Chuck found himself cheering savagely, shaking his fists in the air.
The listing West Virginia began to return to the vertical, but continued to sink, and Chuck realized that the commander must have opened the starboard seacocks, to ensure that she remained upright while she went down, giving the crew a better chance of survival. But the Oklahoma was not so fortunate, and they all watched in terrified awe as the great ship began to turn over. Joanne said: ‘Oh, God, look at the crew.’ The sailors were frantically scrambling up the steeply banked deck and over the starboard rail in a desperate attempt to save themselves. But they were the lucky ones, Chuck realized, as at last the mighty vessel turned turtle with a terrible crash and began to sink, for how many hundreds of men were trapped below decks?
‘Hold on, everyone!’ Chuck yelled. A huge wave created by the capsize of the Oklahoma was approaching. Papa grabbed Mama and Woody held on to Joanne. The wave reached them and lifted the launch impossibly high. Chuck staggered but kept hold of the rail. The launch stayed afloat. Smaller waves followed, rocking them, but everyone was safe.
They were still a long quarter of a mile offshore, Chuck saw with consternation.
Astonishingly the Nevada, which had been strafed at the start, began to move off. Someone must have had the presence of mind to signal all ships to sail. If they could get out of the harbour they could scatter and present less easy targets.
Then from Battleship Row came a bang ten times bigger than anything that had gone before. The explosion was so violent that Chuck felt the blast like a blow to his chest, though he was now almost half a mile away. A spurt of flame spewed out of the No. 2 gun turret of the Arizona. A split-second later the forward half of the ship seemed to burst. Debris flew into the air, twisted steel girders and warped plates drifting up through the smoke with a nightmare slowness, like scraps of charred paper from a bonfire. Flames and smoke enveloped the front of the ship. The lofty mast tipped forward drunkenly.
Woody said: ‘What was that?’
‘The ship’s ammunition store must have gone up,’ Chuck said, and he realized with heartfelt grief that hundreds of his fellow seamen must have been killed in that mammoth detonation.
A column of dark-red smoke rose into the air as from a funeral pyre.
There was a crash and the boat lurched as something hit it. Everyone ducked. Falling to his knees, Chuck thought it must be a bomb, then realized it could not be, for he was still alive. When he recovered, he saw that a heavy scrap of metal debris a yard long had pierced the deck over the engine. It was a miracle it had not hit anyone.
However, the engine died.
The boat slowed and was becalmed. It wallowed in the choppy waves while Japanese planes rained hell fire on the lagoon.
Gus said tightly: ‘Chuck, we have to get out of here right now.’
‘I know.’ Chuck and Eddie examined the damage. They grabbed the metal scrap and tried to wrestle it out of the teak deck, but it was firmly stuck.
‘We don’t have time for this!’ Gus said.
Woody said: ‘The engine is blitzed anyway, Chuck.’
They were still a quarter of a mile from shore. However, the launch was equipped for an emergency such as this. Chuck unshipped a pair of oars. He took one and Eddie took the other. The boat was large, for rowing, and their progress was slow.
Luckily for them there was a lull in the attack. The sky was no longer swarming with planes. Vast billows of smoke rose from the damaged ships, including a column a thousand feet high from the fatally wounded Arizona, but there were no new explosions. The amazingly plucky Nevada was now heading for the mouth of the harbour.
The water around the ships was crowded with life rafts, motor launches, and seamen swimming or clinging to floating wreckage. Drowning was not their only
fear: oil from the holed ships had spread across the surface and caught fire. The cries for help of those who could not swim mingled horrifyingly with the screams of the burned.
Chuck stole a glance at his watch. He thought the attack had been going on for hours but, amazingly, it was only thirty minutes.
Just as he was thinking that, the second wave began.
This time the planes came from the east. Some of them chased the escaping Nevada; others targeted the Navy Yard where the Dewars had boarded the launch. Almost immediately the destroyer Shaw in a floating dock exploded with great gouts of flame and billows of smoke. Oil spread across the water and caught fire. Then in the largest dry dock the battleship Pennsylvania was hit. Two destroyers in the same dry dock blew up as their ammunition stores were ignited.
Chuck and Eddie strained at the oars, sweating like racehorses.
At the Navy Yard, Marines appeared – presumably from the nearby barracks – and broke out firefighting gear.
At last the launch reached the Officers’ Landing. Chuck leaped out and swiftly tied up while Eddie helped the passengers out. They all ran to the car.
Chuck jumped into the driving seat and started the engine. The car radio came on automatically, and he heard the KGMB announcer say: ‘All Army, Navy and Marine personnel report for duty immediately.’ Chuck had not had a chance to report to anyone, but he felt sure that his orders would be first to ensure the safety of the four civilians in his care, especially as two were women and one was a senator.
As soon as everyone was in the car he pulled away.
The second wave of the attack seemed to be ending. Most of the Japanese planes were heading away from the harbour. All the same, Chuck drove fast: there might be a third wave.
The main gate was open. If it had been shut he would have been tempted to crash it.
There was no other traffic.
He raced away from the harbour along Kamehameha Highway. The farther he got from Pearl Harbor, the safer his family would be, he figured.
Then he saw a lone Zero coming towards him.
It was flying low and following the highway, and after a moment he realized it was targeting the car.
The cannon were in the wings, and there was a good chance they would miss the narrow target of the car; but the machine guns were set close together, either side of the engine cowling. That was what the pilot would use if he was smart.
Chuck looked frantically at both sides of the road. There was no hiding place, nothing but cane fields.
He began to zigzag. The approaching pilot sensibly did not attempt to track him. The road was not wide, and if Chuck drove into the cane field the car would be slowed to a walking pace. He stepped on the gas, realizing that the faster he was going the better his chances of not being hit.
Then it was too late for forethought. The plane was so close Chuck could see the round black holes in the wings through which the cannon fired. But, as he had guessed, the pilot opened up with machine guns, and bullets spat dust from the road ahead.
Chuck moved left, to the crown of the road, then instead of continuing left he swerved right. The pilot corrected. Bullets hit the hood. The windscreen smashed. Eddie roared with pain, and in the back one of the women screamed.
Then the Zero was gone.
The car began to zigzag of its own accord. A forward wheel must have been damaged. Chuck fought with the steering wheel, trying to stay on the road. The car slewed sideways, skidded across the tarmac, crashed into the field at the side of the road, and bumped to a stop.
Flames rose from the engine, and Chuck smelled gasoline.
‘Everybody out!’ Chuck yelled. ‘Before the fuel tank blows!’ He opened his door and leaped out. He yanked open the rear door and his father jumped out, pulling his mother along. Chuck could see the others getting out on the far side. ‘Run!’ he shouted, but it was superfluous. Eddie was already heading into the cane field, limping as though wounded. Woody was half pulling, half carrying Joanne, who also seemed to have been hit. His parents charged into the field, apparently unhurt. He joined them. They all ran a hundred yards then threw themselves flat.
There was a moment of stillness. The sounds of planes had become a distant buzz. Glancing up, Chuck saw oily smoke from the harbour rising thousands of feet into the air. Above that, the last few high-level bombers were heading away to the north.
Then there was a bang that stunned his eardrums. Even with closed eyes he saw the bright flash of exploding gasoline. A wave of heat passed over him.
He lifted his head and looked back. The car was ablaze.
He jumped to his feet. ‘Mama! Are you okay?’
‘Miraculously unhurt,’ she said coolly as his father helped her up.
He scanned the field and spotted the others. He ran to Eddie, who was sitting upright, clutching his thigh. ‘Are you hit?’
‘Hurts like fuck,’ Eddie said. ‘But there’s not much blood.’ He managed a grin. ‘Top of my thigh, I think, but no vital organs damaged.’
‘We’ll get you to hospital.’
At that moment Chuck heard a terrible noise.
His brother was crying.
Woody was weeping not like a baby but like a lost child: a loud, sobbing noise of utter wretchedness.
Chuck knew immediately that it was the sound of a broken heart.
He ran to his brother. Woody was on his knees, his chest shaking, his mouth open, his eyes running with tears. There was blood all over his white linen suit, but he was not wounded. Between sobs he moaned: ‘No, no.’
Joanne lay on the ground in front of him, face up.
Chuck could see right away that she was dead. Her body was still and her eyes were open, staring at nothing. The front of her gaily striped cotton dress was soaked with bright red arterial blood, already darkening in patches. Chuck could not see the wound but he guessed she had taken a bullet to the shoulder that had opened her axillary artery. She would have bled to death in minutes.
He did not know what to say.
The others came and stood by him: Mama, Papa, and Eddie. Mama knelt on the ground beside Woody and put her arms around him. ‘My poor boy,’ she said, as if he was a child.
Eddie put his arm around Chuck’s shoulders and gave him a discreet hug.
Papa knelt by the body. He reached out and took Woody’s hand.
Woody’s sobs quieted a little.
Papa said: ‘Close her eyes, Woody.’
Woody’s hand was shaking. With an effort, he steadied it.
He stretched out his fingertips to her eyelids.
Then, with infinite gentleness, he closed her eyes.
12
1942 (I)
On the first day of 1942 Daisy got a letter from her former fiancé, Charlie Farquharson.
When she opened it she was at the breakfast table in the Mayfair house, alone except for the aged butler who poured her coffee and the fifteen-year-old maid who brought her hot toast from the kitchen.
Charlie wrote not from Buffalo but from RAF Duxford, an air base in the east of England. Daisy had heard of the place: it was near Cambridge, where she had met both her husband, Boy Fitzherbert, and the man she loved, Lloyd Williams.
She was pleased to hear from Charlie. He had jilted her, of course, and she had hated him then; but it was a long time ago. She felt like a different person now. In 1935 she had been an American heiress called Miss Peshkov; today she was Viscountess Aberowen, an English aristocrat. All the same, she was pleased she was still in Charlie’s mind. A woman would always prefer to be remembered than forgotten.
Charlie wrote with a heavy black pen. His handwriting was untidy, the letters large and jagged. Daisy read:
Before anything else, I need, of course, to apologize for the way I treated you back in Buffalo. I shudder with mortification every time I think of it.
Good Lord, thought Daisy, he seems to have grown up.
What snobs we all were, and how weak I was to allow my late mother to bully me into beha
ving shabbily.
Ah, she thought, his late mother. So the old bitch is dead. That might explain the change.
I have joined No. 133 Eagle Squadron. We fly Hurricanes, but we’re getting Spitfires any day now.
There were three Eagle squadrons, Royal Air Force units manned by American volunteers. Daisy was surprised: she would not have expected Charlie to go to war voluntarily. When she knew him he had been interested in nothing but dogs and horses. He really had grown up.
If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, or at least to put the past behind you, I would love to see you and meet your husband.
The mention of a husband was a tactful way of saying he had no romantic intentions, Daisy guessed.
I will be in London on leave next weekend. May I take the two of you to dinner? Do say yes.
With affectionate good wishes,
Charles H.B. Farquharson
Boy was not at home that weekend, but Daisy accepted for herself. She was starved of male companionship, like many women in wartime London. Lloyd had gone to Spain and disappeared. He said he was going to be a military attaché at the British embassy in Madrid. Daisy wished it might be true that he had such a safe job, but she did not believe it. When she asked why the government would send an able-bodied young officer to do a desk job in a neutral country, he had explained how important it was to discourage Spain from joining in the war on the Fascist side. But he said it with a rueful smile that told her plainly she was not to be fooled. She feared that in reality he was slipping across the border to work with the French Resistance, and she had nightmares about him being captured and tortured.
She had not seen him for more than a year. His absence was like an amputation: she felt it every hour of the day. But she was glad of the chance to spend an evening out with a man, even if it was the awkward, unglamorous, overweight Charlie Farquharson.
Charlie booked a table in the Grill Room of the Savoy Hotel.
In the lobby of the hotel, as a waiter was helping her take off her mink coat, she was approached by a tall man in a well-cut dinner jacket who looked vaguely familiar. He stuck out his hand and said shyly: ‘Hello, Daisy. What a pleasure to see you after all these years.’
