Twilight of Gutenberg

by Hitoshi Goto

  Yokoi clearly had no idea what it felt like to have your country occupied by the enemy. When I didn’t respond, he continued, “It’s an unusual way of thinking, shall we say. You would make a good detective novel writer.”

  “I’m not a soldier, nor a writer. I’m a painter,” I said huffily, thinking he was making fun of me.

  “But more importantly you have a duty as a subject of His Majesty the Emperor,” he retorted sharply. This was why I would probably never really get on with military types.

  He glanced at Kenichi, then returned his gaze to me.

  “So, how about it? Will you cooperate with us?” he asked a little more gently.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Did something happen in Guernsey? Was that really Yagyu? And if it was, what was he doing there? I want you to go there and find out what you can.”

  “But he isn’t there any longer, surely.”

  “Nobody knows where he is. Look, here is a summary of everything Amemiya did after going to Guernsey,” Yokoi said, handing me a piece of paper.

  July 1943

  15

  15:00

  Officer A arrives on Guernsey aboard the Saint-Malo

  20:00

  A reception is held by the commanding officer to welcome him.

  16

  10:00

  Officer A is shown around the island by a local intelligence officer.

  18:00

  Returns to hotel. 30 minutes later he goes out again.

  After this, Officer A’s trail goes cold. There are no witnesses.

  17

  06:00

  A local finds Officer A’s body on the shore near Petit Bôt, along with that of a blonde woman

  09:00

  Crime scene searched, and photographs taken. Former Commander Yagyu photographed.

  “The estimated time of death is sometime between 22:00 and 02:00 hours on the night of the sixteenth.”

  “Nothing definite from the contents of the stomach?” I asked, and immediately regretted it. That was tantamount to accepting the mission.

  “Said like a pro! We don’t have that information, but I’m sure you’ll be able to ask that when you get there,” Kenichi said with a straight face, egging me on.

  “By the way, Commander Yagyu retired from the navy abruptly after the defeat at Midway.”

  “Defeat?”

  Yokoi looked taken aback for a moment, then shook his head said, “The reports were all lies, you know. All the newspapers said was that an American aircraft carrier was destroyed, and didn’t mention that actually we were the ones who were routed. We lost four carriers all at once.”

  I was speechless. “How can they not report something so important to the nation…?”

  “Tell me about it. But all countries do the same to some extent. Commander Yagyu was the one behind that grand plan, as well as the attack on Pearl Harbour, and was greatly valued by Commander-in-Chief Yamamato. However, he left the navy in July last year citing personal reasons. Yamamoto apparently tried to talk him out of it but to no avail. There were various rumours going around, such as he had a nervous breakdown after the Midway defeat, or his tuberculosis became acute. Whatever the reason, he retired to the mountains in Fukui.”

  “He last appeared in public this year on 5 June. Do you recall what day that was?”

  “Commander-in-Chief Yamamoto’s…”

  “Yes. It was the state funeral held for Yamamoto, who died in battle in April at Bougainville. His coffin was mounted on a gun carriage to be taken to the state funeral hall in Hibiya Park. Yagyu was there in the crowds near Hibiya Park watching the procession. He was spotted by a number of colleagues from his navy days. That was also the last time he was seen in Japan.”

  “And then forty-two days later he turns up in Guernsey.”

  “Hoshino-kun. I am authorising your access to the military’s record of passage between Japan and Europe. This is confidential information. Once you see it you’ll understand why…” Yokoi leaned forward. “In peacetime he would have had no problem travelling to Guernsey via the Trans-Siberian Railway. But we are in a state of emergency, and on top of that Germany and the Soviet Union are at war, so that route is out of the question.”

  “What about by ship? Or submarine, or whatever?”

  “The Indian independence movement freedom fighter Chandra Bose was transported from Germany to Japan this spring. A German U-Boat took him as far as the coast of Africa, after which he was taken to Malaya in a Japanese submarine, but even just that took 63 days. Also, it was only possible because of the collaboration between the Japanese and German navies. This time Yagyu must have come without that kind of support.”

  “By air?”

  Yokoi just shrugged. “Which route? He might have got as far as Shonan or Burma, but after that?”

  “Shonan?”

  “Singapore—the name changed after we occupied it,” Kenichi said. “An Italian plane did manage to fly from Turkey to Inner Mongolia. Japan also attempted to fly an army plane from Rangoon to Turkey via India, in June, but it disappeared midflight.”

  “So you see, first we have to determine whether it was possible for Yagyu to travel to Guernsey in forty-two days,” said Yokoi.

  “Commander Yagyu’s current whereabouts—”

  “Remain unknown. His home in Japan has been under surveillance, but nobody has been seen there.”

  “Doesn’t he have any family?”

  “He’s divorced. His ex-wife lives in Tokyo, but here is no sign of him having been there, either.”

  “May I ask a question?” I shifted in my seat so that I was directly facing Yokoi.

  For a brief moment he looked ruffled, but contained himself and said evenly, “Go ahead.”

  I got straight to the point. “Where did you get the information about this photo and the investigation?”

  “The Abwehr. The head of the counter-espionage bureau is Admiral Canaris, who feels a sense of kinship with us as a navy man. He was the one who gave me this photo, and is sure to facilitate our investigation.”

  “And what about the Japanese army?”

  “We have not said anything about it to them. If you go to Guernsey, Major Amemiya is bound to come up in conversation. However, his body has already been cremated and his bones properly returned to Japan. All of his belongings, too, have been returned. As far as the army is concerned, the case has been settled as an accidental death. I do not wish to cause any unnecessary friction, which is why I want you to go there in a private capacity on a sketching trip, nothing to do with the Imperial Navy.”

  Here he was virtually issuing me with orders, yet ending up by telling me I was on my own!

  “Think of it like a detective novel.” Kenichi said, noticing my dissatisfaction. “It’s always a private detective who solves a difficult case, not the police.” It was very unlike him to come up with such an analogy, but I suppose he was trying to encourage me.

  Yokoi cleared his throat and turned to me again. “This is why the navy cannot act publicly. There is just one more thing I have to tell you.”

  “There’s more?”

  “According to Canaris’s information, there was yet another body. It was found not far from Major Amemiya’s.”

  “Another body? Any relation to Major Amemiya?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s apparently an officer from the Gestapo.”

  “Gestapo?”

  “We might be allies, but names don’t immediately mean an
ything to us foreigners. The Gestapo is Germany’s secret police, and is part of the SS. The SS includes organisations such as the Waffen-SS which sends soldiers to fight on the front line, as well as the Reich Main Security Office, which is said to be strongly connected to maintaining public order, political repression, and persecuting Jews at home and abroad.”

  “In other words…”

  Reading my expression, Yokoi went on, “You’re quick on the uptake, aren’t you? Consequently it doesn’t get along at all well with the Abwehr’s counter-espionage bureau. I guess you know what this means. I have heard that only the Abwehr is on Guernsey, but if you do happen to come across the Gestapo you must not get involved in the rivalry between the Gestapo and Abwehr. You mustn’t have anything to do with that murdered Gestapo—your mission is solely to investigate whether that man in the photo was Yagyu, and if so what he was doing there. You are our only hope. I’m counting on you!” he said, clapping his hand heartily on my shoulder.

  †

  So this was the unsettling mission that Yokoi had foisted onto me in Berlin.

  I had always lived as I pleased. I had chosen my own path in life. I couldn’t bear being ordered around, even if it was by a military officer and diplomat. Of course there was Kenichi, but it wasn’t as if I’d accepted the mission as my duty as a subject of his Imperial Majesty.

  Later I’d gone through all the records of travel between Japan and Europe before and during the war and, as a result, I’d realised something astonishing.

  Someone who had been in Tokyo on the 5 June 1943 had taken just over forty days to reach Europe—the island of Guernsey off the coast of France—by 17 July.

  What routes existed between Japan and Europe? I made a note of the possibilities. In terms of time, the most likely was by air, followed by train, car, and ship—or a combination of these. This would be easy in peacetime. Sparing no expense, the quickest way would be via a succession of aeroplanes, while train would be the most comfortable.

  According to the record, Ambassador Oshima had taken the Trans-Siberian Railway when he took up his post in Germany in 1941. His party was seen off from Tokyo Station by Foreign Minister Matsuoka on 19 January, and took the Kamome Limited Express, crossed from Shimonoseki to the Korean Peninsula, and then travelled by the Nozomi Limited Express to Hsinking, capital of Manchukuo. On the 6 February they boarded the Trans-Siberian Railway headed for Moscow at Manzhouli on the border between Manchukuo and the Soviet Union. They then stopped for two nights in Moscow before departing westwards on 15 February. Poland was already partitioned and occupied by Germany and the Soviet Union, so at the border they changed onto a German train, arriving in Berlin’s Anhalter Bahnhof on 17 February. The fastest you could do the journey during peacetime, without stopping along the way, would be about two weeks.

  Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka used this route when he visited Europe, as did General Yamashita when he travelled back to Japan just before the outbreak of war between Germany and the Soviet Union. If you then went by train from Berlin to Paris, and from Paris to either Saint-Malo or Cherbourg, and the final crossing by boat, you would need at least twenty days to do the full journey from Tokyo to Guernsey.

  By sea, the journey during peacetime would take around forty days to Italy, France or Portugal, which made it out of the question.

  The problem was that Yagyu had made the journey during wartime. Furthermore, the Soviet Union and Germany were fighting each other. Even Chandler Bose, who was transported from Germany to Japan as a distinguished guest, had to go by submarine. Was it even possible to come to Europe overland?

  I considered this question with the aid of a world map and timetables. The frontline currently was around the Dnieper River in the Ukraine, which effectively meant that a major barrier stretched from Finland to Sevastopol. It was best to assume that it was impossible to travel westwards from Moscow.

  As far as I could see from the map, it was possible to travel from Manchukuo to Moscow via the Trans-Siberian Railway. From there if you went southwards via the Caucasus region, which the German army had just retreated from, you could reach Turkey, which was neutral. Another possibility was probably to go to Iran or Afghanistan and travel to Turkey that way.

  Once reaching Turkey, you could probably travel overland through German territory all the way from Bulgaria, possibly combining it with air travel. Being neutral, Turkey could be a buffer zone. Were there any other similarly neutral countries?

  Portugal… but it would be difficult to get there. Spain… same as Portugal. They had territories in Central and South America, the other side of the world—but that didn’t help. So had he gone via Turkey after all?

  Another problem was the fact that Yagyu hadn’t been issued a visa. Would it really be possible to cross the borders between Manchukuo and the Soviet Union, and Germany?

  So how had he done it? Surely there must be some loophole I hadn’t considered. Maybe he’d taken some route that hadn’t even occurred to me. But what on earth was it? In the end I was determined to solve this puzzle, and for that reason I decided to accept the mission. Whether or not it was an order had nothing to do with it.

  †

  Two days later, I was standing in Saint-Malo Station with a small travel bag, a set of paints and some other art materials. The train I had arrived on was still at the platform. Casting a last glance at it, I took my notebook out of the inside pocket of my suit jacket, and checked the details of my hotel in Saint-Malo and my German contact. I’d already done this any number of times since leaving Paris. The street map of the town was already engraved in my mind so I knew exactly where to go and how to get there.

  I suddenly noticed my palms were sweaty. I was feeling a strange kind of excitement different from other trips I’d made up to now. I took a deep breath.

  As my lungs filled with the smell of the sea, I began to feel calmer. I looked up at the sky. Not a cloud in sight. A flock of birds, possibly seagulls, flew overhead in an arc.

  It was my first time in Saint-Malo, located midway between the Brittany and Normandy peninsulas. Four hundred years earlier, Jacques Cartier had set sail for the New World from here. The place he landed in was declared the territory of Francis I of France, and is now known as Quebec.

  The castle walls around the old town made it feel like being in a timeslip back to the Middle Ages. This was where my hotel was. There was hardly anyone in the station or on the streets, yet the few locals I did pass shot me curious looks that I couldn’t imagine Parisians ever doing.

  As I set out on foot to my hotel, I decided to take some advice that Kenichi had given me before I left Berlin and, for the first time in my life, try something rather adventurous.

  When I reached a narrow but straight street leading to the old town, I quickened my pace. And at the next corner turn left… then run!

  I ran for about twenty metres, then as I turned right I turned to look behind me.

  Nobody there.

  It appeared I didn’t have a tail on me. The word “tail” immediately made me feel that what I was doing was extremely dangerous.

  Hôtel Tante Louise was not far from the German navy’s office. After checking in, I walked across the lobby looking nonchalantly from side to side. There was only a middle-aged woman wearing a headscarf sitting on the sofa absorbed in her knitting.

  There was some time before I was due to present myself, so I left my luggage in my room and went to the café across the road from the hotel.

  There were no other customers in the café. The owner seemed mightily surprised to see an oriental walk in, and even more so when I spoke to him in French.

  I ordered an espresso and was gratified to find it was made from real, not substitute, coffee beans. As I took a seat alone at the big round table in the middle of the café and sipped my coffee, the owner nervously came up to me. He had chestnut brown hair and wasn’t very tall, a kindly ol
d man with gold-rimmed glasses perched on his red nose. He was carrying a plate of sweets.

  He peppered me with questions like, was I Japanese, how was it that a Japanese could speak such fluent French, what work did I do, and so forth, and before I knew it he was sitting down at the table with me. He appeared to be extremely interested in me, but without any of the racial prejudice I had sometimes felt since moving to Paris.

  As our conversation progressed, he told me his daughter had been conscripted into working in the Channel Islands, and took a sepia photograph out of his breast pocket to show me. He clearly took it out to look at often, for it was all dog-eared and crumpled. It appeared to have been taken on a picnic one fine day. The woman was dressed in a cardigan and skirt and sat shyly on the grass. In her left hand was a basket, and she was waving at the camera with her right hand.

  “Catherine is only twenty-two. She has her mother’s blonde hair,” he told me, and went on to say that her birthday was 17 March, and that her mother had died young and he had raised her alone, but now the Germans had forced her to go and work for them.

  As he carried on talking endlessly about his only daughter, I gazed at the photograph. For some reason I was strongly drawn to the woman’s right hand. It reminded me of the elegant hand movements Marie Dubas made when she sang at the Bobino Music Hall in Paris. This woman was blonde and looked quite different from Dubas, but the image of her hand was superimposed on the other.

  “But even though Catherine has gone, the rats don’t come out, so there’s no need to worry,” the owner said inexplicably.