Black Bear Blues

by Stephen Wishnevsky

  The railroad to Omsk was not quite finished yet, neither was the line to Novonikolayevsk. Most of the thrust was on the Silk Road Line to Persia. It had a name now, if little else. We got a release from our old buddy Ken Inahara, still in Dalny, that all the railroads east of Yekaterinburg were now part of the Pan-Asian Railroad Corporation, and would be run from a new headquarters in Harbin. How lovely for somebody. A stroke of the pen, and the largest corporation on earth was open for business. Money business, if I knew shit from Shinola. The Chinese could have their country as long as the Japanese had the railroads. Just like Jay Gould and Vanderbilt could have cared less who was President, as long as the trains ran on time. Talk about your well-greased rails.

  That line of thought led to another. The trappers and the settlers and the cowboys fought back and forth with the Indians for centuries, the Indians lost and lost and lost, but were never defeated until the railroads started cutting the West into bite-sized bits. They couldn’t fight that. The railroads let people like Buffalo Bill Cody make money exterminating the buffalo, and the Indians had no way of fighting that either. Want to bet that the Japanese General Staff knew that history too?

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  No sooner had that sunk in, than Ivan Hodak declared the Republic of Baikal, which ran right down the Trans-Siberian Railroad from Omsk to Vladivostok, with its capital at Irkutsk, which just happened to be his old home town. They didn’t mention it, but the safe bet was that Aneko was right at his at his shoulder, if she wasn’t actually holding the pen. The fix was in. And even if it wasn’t, he had a few tens of thousands of essence of evil type Mongol motorcycle warriors to back him up. One could get a chill just thinking about that. For sure, he had one of the largest organized forces in that whole territory. They had been our 37th Mechanized Division, loosely speaking, what they actually were was a private army that had worked for us as long as it had been convenient, and we kept the ammo and the gold coming. And now it wasn’t. Been fun, see ya, bye.

  This Aneko was one of those proverbial mysteries wrapped in enigmas tied with a bow of misdirection. We had met her a year ago, in the company of Hodak, just as the Battle of Irkutsk had been joined. She provided us, me and my late wife Maeve with a fast ride back to Dalny, claimed to be of the Karayuki-san, heritage. She said that they were Japanese prostitutes and merchants, who made up the majority of the Japanese community in this region for seventy years and more. She said she was merely a Siberian patriot. “My people gained our strength from the Japanese nationalist groups like the Black Ocean Society, Genyōsha, and the Amur River Society, what they called Kokuryūkai. They glorified and applauded us as some Amazon army of Japanese prostitutes in the Russian Far East and Manchuria, enrolled us as members. We had connections from Vladivostok to Irkutsk by what they thought were Japanese prostitutes. Men think with their penises. But not Hodak. He is a wise man, a true warrior. We follow him because we recognize his virtue.”

  That un-simple explanation became less and less likely as time rolled on. She had been an Intelligence officer and translator with Yelena, Nadia Yelena Akhtiorskaya, who was also known simply as Isis. They had both been working, it says here, for Stilwell in Jiu-quan. Isis had been at the Urum-chi conference, she was a dark-skinned woman of great beauty, supposedly half Malay prince and half Russian noblewomen. Who the fuck either of them was, was a deeper mystery than I cared to delve into. It was obvious that they both worked at least part of the time for Japanese Intelligence, the Kempeitai. Maybe. The Kempeitai was Army intelligence, more of a secret police, and the only thing I knew about them was from dime novels. I used to write them too, or tried to. I read more than I wrote, that’s a fact.

  If there was a civilian, a Foreign Service, a Navy, or a fucking Imperial Secret Service, nobody knew but the Emperor, and he wasn’t talking. Wheels within wheels was hopscotch compared to this level of secrecy. You might think you were paranoid, but you could never know if you were paranoid enough. The only thing to do was to paste a stupid grin on your stupid white face, and carry on, as best you could. And never forget the Kipling poem about the guy who tried to hustle the East.

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  We got the word from on high. The Omsk Conference was in a week, and we were supposed to be there. The rails were not laid yet, so we had to back track all the way to Ulan Bator in Mongolia, and then a few thousand miles back to Omsk. On or before, such and such a day, you will be at… So, fold down the tower, fill up the coal and water, and tell the engineer to start chugging.

  So, we rolled, and we tried to think, hashing out endless maybes around the dining car tables. Me and Peaches, Frankie, Conductor Earl, Bob Weeks, Maggie White, Stan, who had a good head on his shoulders when sober, William Doyle, our pet historian, Alde and Woody, Henry Mencken, and Grace Burns, a constant, well-lubricated bull-session. Lupo sat in, did not speak much, didn’t drink at all, heard every word, and filed it all away for future reference.

  One thing was painfully obvious. We were not going anywhere, especially not back to the States, without the Japanese taking us there. The US Navy was still strong in the Pacific, had not been bloodied, and was still taking orders from Patton. They had never seen the horrors we had, they might have gotten word from their parents, but the Navy is a separate place, almost a separate nation. Pure white, awfully damn Anglo, and as American as it gets. They might have Filipino and Negro servants, but they sure were not in any position of power.

  Were the Japanese willing to fight the US Navy to get us back home? Did they need our Navy to fight the Reich? Probably not, and sure as fuck. So, what was the deal? That was as far as our bullshit could take us. Money talks, bullshit walks. But it was silent Lupo who had the idea. “If we no can fight our way through, we have to… you say, sneak?”

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  We had a small antenna up, for sure there were damn few bridges we had to go under out here, and we got telegrams at every water stop. And we were still monitoring world-wide broadcasts, as a matter of course. We got word, jest before we got to the capital of Mongolia, Ulan Bator, that the Polar Bears had declared the Free State of Dalny, Jimmy Bolton, the ex-used car salesman turned motor magnate at the DAT Lila warehouse. The proof that this was all a set-up deal was that our old buddy Ken Inahara was to be the Vice President. All in a spirit of Pan-Asian unity, of course.

  That made it all pretty damn obvious. The Japanese would control all the railroads, would have garrisons at Urum-chi, Omsk, Harbin, Shanghai and Vladivostok. The big naval base would be at Vlad, and another at what had been Hong Kong. As easy as the decent to Hell in a Baptist sermon. Just smile and bend over. It was time to face facts. There were two empires on earth, one was white and one was yellow. Eventually, Goering would conquer the USA, or force Patton to join the Reich. Which would be death or worse for all the mixed breeds, outlaws, and mongrels like me. I was white, but not white enough. Our only choices were to stay here, and melt down into the Chinese or Pan Asian stew, or go home and try and forge some fucked-up kind of mongrel empire of our own, join up with all the tan-colored mutts of the world, and do whatever it took to survive. Or die trying. The Empire of the Outcasts. Sounded like fun, actually. Hybrid vigor anyone? Mutts uber alles? Paint that on your fucking flag, baby, and nail it to the masthead. Never give up the mongrel ship.

  I told that to Woody, he laughed so hard I thought he might bust a gut, said, “I thought I was the songwriter here, Miles. You have enough good lines in that rant for a dozen songs. I might just have to steal your ideas. I know they won’t give me any rest now that they are in my brain. I can feel it itching already. Words ready to just bust out of me.”

  “You go for it, Woody. I’m just a penny a word man, I can’t rhyme June and spoon. Have fun.” He didn’t answer in words, just grabbed a pencil and started scribbling on this wad of paper he always had stuck in his hip pocket. What hath I wrought?

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  We got to Omsk on time, were greeted by lines and walls of dead serious sentries and guards, the Japs
and Krauts trying to outshine each other in martial glory, the few Americans looked scruffy in comparison. But Hodak’s mechanized Mongol motherfuckers reveled in grease, dirt, hair, and weapons. The weapons gleamed, the rest of them frankly stank. As if they could give a shit. This was going to be their city once the spit and polish boys left, and they made sure we knew it. This was going to be a hell of a country with these monsters running it, was all I could say.

  There were so determinedly scruffy that it was hard to remember that their great-great-great-grandfathers had conquered the previous Largest Empire on Earth, and held it for hundreds of years. My mother used to hush me when I was a baby by telling me the Mongols could hear me. A lot of Russians have slanted blue eyes, just for a reminder. Not that Russians need reminders of their history. Cut them, they bleed history.

  There were a few Chinese officials there, in a non-official capacity, sporting new uniforms of the Communist drab blue color and a toned-down version of the Nationalist tailoring. Snappy they were not, but they looked trim, efficient, and very, very observant.

  Hodges and Bradley were already there, and being treated like royalty by the officials. They all knew who had done the real fighting, and who were the honorable opponents. One good thing about the krautheads, they do know how to show respect to people who have earned it, and we had.

  I laid low, I still didn’t have a decent uniform, Bill Doyle did most of the representing that we required, and Barbara was back on historian duty. I listened to the radio, a rough job, but somebody has to do it. And for once, we were the big story.

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  Lines were drawn on maps, papers were signed, seals affixed, cheeks kissed, bows made. Salutes were fired. Hodges insisted on a public memorial service for all the war dead, with the correct bugle calls, Taps and the other three, whatever they are named. I found myself tearing up. He had a few words, not many, short and to the point, not the Gettysburg Address, but in that neighborhood.

  There was a banquet, I avoided it, and it was over. The war was over. The flag of the Republic of Baikal was raised, red, white, and green tricolor, more toasts, more salutes, and off we went.

  The Japanese and Germans had each come in fleets of zeppelins, that was a sight to see, dozens of them lifting off. They are such lovely things when they are not dropping bombs on you, and off we went, three long trains, back to Dalny. The Endless War was over, and our war was just beginning. The war is dead, long live the war.