James Maxted 03 The Ends of the Earth

by Robert Goddard

  ‘What about us?’ asked Sam.

  ‘You and Miss Hollander, Twentyman-san, will also be deported … if you come to the attention of the authorities. You were never charged, however, so you cannot be arrested.’

  ‘And me?’ put in Max.

  ‘Officially, no one knows you are in Japan, Maxted-san. But you should all leave as soon as possible. That is my advice. Lemmer is defeated. Count Tomura is damaged. Trying to do more …’ Fujisaki looked intently at Max. ‘It is … jisatsu.’

  ‘Suicide,’ murmured Malory.

  ‘He’s referring to my pledge to kill Tomura,’ said Max. ‘I haven’t yet told my friends here why he deserves to die, Commissioner.’

  ‘Perhaps you should. Unless …’

  ‘I take your advice and persuade them to take it too?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Malory frowned at Max. ‘What’s this about a pledge to kill Tomura?’

  ‘Matilda Farngold was my mother,’ Max stated simply.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She and my father had an affair. After I was born, Tomura sent me to him as a sort of … contemptuous gift. My mother – my legal mother, that is – agreed to raise me as her son. And Matilda …’ Max rubbed his forehead. ‘It was said she’d died in childbirth. But my father – and Matilda’s brother, Jack Farngold – believed she’d been murdered. Noburo was the son of one of Tomura’s mistresses, acknowledged by him in my place.’

  ‘Strewth,’ murmured Sam.

  Malory stared at Max in amazement. ‘And you mean to avenge Matilda’s murder?’

  ‘No.’ Max slowly shook his head. ‘I’ve thought it over. I never knew her. She’s long dead. Her brother’s dead too. As is my father. Better there should be no more deaths. Commissioner Fujisaki’s right. We should all leave Japan as soon as possible.’

  Fujisaki gave Max a small bow. ‘I am personally relieved to hear you say this, Maxted-san. It is wise, I think.’

  ‘We’ll wait until Schools is able to travel with us, then …’

  ‘You’re serious, sir?’ asked Sam. Something in Max’s manner troubled him. Max’s words and mood seemed at odds with each other – the one cool and pragmatic, the other dark and turbulent.

  ‘Of course.’ But the doubt remained. And Max’s expression as he glanced at Sam contained the hint that he wished it to be so, as if there was a truth he needed to conceal from Fujisaki. ‘Never more so.’

  They left the hospital in a taxi together an hour or so later, Malory having assured herself Schools needed nothing more except a peaceful night’s sleep. Fujisaki had added an extra pair of officers to the guard on his room. He was as safe as he could possibly be.

  Once they were under way, Max announced he would travel with them to the house in Shinjuku. He said there were plans they needed to make, though this explanation struck Sam as unconvincing and he suspected Malory felt the same, though neither said so. The making of plans to leave Japan could surely best be addressed the following day, when it might become clear how long Schools would have to remain in hospital.

  As soon as they were in the house, Max dropped the pretence. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘There’s something I want to tell you that I had to keep from Fujisaki.’

  ‘You mean to pursue Tomura, don’t you, Max?’ said Malory.

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘I don’t believe you’re willing to put what you’ve learnt behind you.’

  ‘To be honest, sir,’ said Sam, ‘neither do I.’

  ‘Nor should you,’ Max replied disarmingly. ‘But the situation’s not what Fujisaki thinks. And it’s not what I thought it was when I resolved to make Tomura pay for what he’d done. There’s the little matter of this.’ He pulled a letter out of his pocket. ‘Sent by Jack Farngold to my father in October 1917. I nearly laid hands on it in Marseilles, but le Singe took it before I could read it. He passed it to Viktor Laskaris.’

  ‘Laskaris?’ Sam gaped at Max in astonishment. ‘He’s real?’

  ‘Yes. And he’s here in Tokyo, plotting to punish the Tomuras for killing Soutine. I met him this afternoon. That’s when he gave me the letter.’

  ‘What does it say?’ asked Malory.

  ‘It says why Jack Farngold wanted my father to join him here and what he hoped they could accomplish. It explains why, when my father finally found out what had happened, he made the plans he did. It tells us the truth. And it poses the question: what are we going to do about it?’ Max looked intently at them. ‘For my own part, I know. But you must decide for yourselves.’

  6.X.17

  Sir Henry,

  You and I have never met, although I expect Matilda mentioned me to you. She is always Tiddy to me. I am her older brother, Jack. I need your help. I think you will agree to give it when you have read this. They say you are an honourable man. I call upon you to prove it.

  It was the tea trade that brought Father to Japan. Tiddy and I were both born in Kent, but my earliest memories are of the house on the Bluff in Yokohama where we grew up. I was sent home to England for my education, but I never took to any career that might have led to. Nor to the tea business, much to Father’s disgust.

  The sea is what I have always loved. The open, limitless ocean. A man is judged aboard ship by what he contributes. If he cannot be relied upon, he is no use. Where he went to school, his accent, his connections – they count for nothing.

  Father cut me off when I told him I would make my way in the world as a sailor. Tiddy wrote to me wherever she thought letters would find me. I wrote back whenever I could. I prospered. I worked my way up to captain’s rank with the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company. They were a Jardine’s operation. To Father, Jardine’s were a competitor in the tea business. That drove us further apart. I did not see my family from one year’s end to the next. It took many months for a letter from Tiddy to reach me telling me Mother had died. That was how it was. I was my own man, you would say. And I was content to be so.

  But I was lonely. Maybe lonesome, as the Yanks would say, fits it better. There were my shipmates, my crew. There was the female company I found ashore. But at heart I was solitary. I never knew how solitary until I got a message through Jardine’s that Tiddy was dead.

  This is what I found out later. Father had a partner, Daniel Fentiman, who was in charge of the Kobe side of the business. He took to opium and to embezzling money to pay for it. Father suddenly found himself in a tight spot. His profits had already been hit by legislation in the US banning the import of low-quality tea. And he had lost an uninsured shipment in a storm. Bankruptcy threatened.

  He was saved by a Japanese investor Fentiman found. Or maybe the investor found Fentiman. Baron Tomura Iwazu. That is how he entered Tiddy’s life. Tomura introduced Father to other ways of making money. Then he named the price: Tiddy. It was a piece of commerce between them. Father persuaded her he would be ruined if she did not agree to marry Tomura. It may have been true. And so it was done.

  But Father was ruined anyway. It seems he knew too much about Tomura’s political activities, in particular an organization he belonged to called Genyosha – Dark Ocean. I know you know about this, Sir Henry. You were a Second Secretary at the Legation. You must have heard about Dark Ocean. They tried to assassinate the Foreign Minister, Count Okuma Shigenobu, in Tokyo on October 18, 1889. His would-be assassin, Kurushima Tsuneki, killed himself straight afterwards. But one of Kurushima’s associates, arrested by your friend Kuroda and later released, was a man called Shaku Taisuke. I found him listed in the records of Farngold, Fentiman & Co as a recruiter of seasonal staff, working first in Kobe, then in Yokohama. He joined the company around the time Tomura bailed Father out. He was Tomura’s man.

  I think Father threatened to report this connection between Tomura and the assassination attempt to Kuroda. That is why Tomura decided to kill him. The fire was no accident. I examined all the reports. Father could have escaped. There was ample time. He did not escape because he was already dead. The fire destroyed t
he evidence of his murder. Shaku was one of those who suffered minor injuries. I suspect he killed Father. Why else would he have been there?

  Father died on October 26, 1889, eight days after the Okuma assassination attempt and just three days after Shaku’s release from custody. Shaku Taisuke is dead, by the way. I shall not say how I know that. But you can be sure of it.

  Tiddy must have suspected Tomura was responsible for Father’s death, though she never said so to me when we met in Yokohama, for what turned out to be the last time, a few months later. Did she say it to you? I have spoken to some of the staff at Tomura’s Tokyo house. You can learn much more when you speak their language. It took me a long time to master Japanese and to understand the ways of the Japanese mind. What I am doing they would call gimu. It is something I am required to do as my father’s son and sister’s brother. It has no limit.

  I know when your love affair with Tiddy began, Sir Henry. I also know when it ended. I know of the child born to Tiddy and consigned to you by Tomura in his lordly disdain. And I know the child acknowledged by Tomura as his son was not born to Tiddy.

  You had already left for England when I reached Tokyo a month after Tiddy’s death was reported to me. You had gone, with your wife and orphaned nephew who was to become, in the course of the voyage, your son. It was only much later that I learnt all of that. At first, I did not doubt the explanation that Tiddy had died of complications following childbirth. I travelled to Kyoto to visit her grave and to see the child. But I was turned away from Kawajuki Castle on Tomura’s orders. He wanted me to have nothing to do with his son.

  That was his mistake. He might have carried it off otherwise. I began to ask questions. And the answers did not satisfy me. There was something wrong – something amiss. It took me years of investigations – that is, months of actual investigation, separated by long voyages – before I was convinced of what had happened. And even then, as I know now, I was wrong.

  It was Shaku Taisuke who finally told me, in circumstances where I was sure I could believe him, that Tomura had killed Tiddy – stifled her – shortly after the birth of the child that was not his. That night in Nagasaki, Shaku’s last on this earth, was the night I resolved to make Tomura suffer for what he had done.

  Know thine enemy, it is said. I know mine. I have studied him well. My intention was not to kill him, but to disgrace him. The hero of two wars, the wearer of many medals, the Butcher of Port Arthur, the great man. What he fears above all things is loss of reputation.

  He has good reason to fear it. My investigations have shown his wealth is built on foulness: the working to death of coolies in his Manchurian coal mines; the trafficking of kidnapped Japanese women sold into forced prostitution; the making and selling of drugs to the poor and desperate. Not just opium. Heroin. Cocaine. Morphine. I have seen what they do to people. I have stood in an alley in Keijo and seen an addict knock at a door, wait for a peephole to open, push his arm through with money in hand, be injected with the drug, then walk on. There is an invisible chain that links that man to Count Tomura Iwazu – that man and all others like him.

  Commissioner Kuroda believes Tomura was involved in the assassination attempt against the Tsarevich in May 1891 as well as the earlier attempt against Foreign Minister Okuma and the later successful attempt on the life of Queen Min of Korea. He believes it, but he cannot prove it. I believe it, but I do not need to prove it. I have the measure of Tomura. I know him. Power, not wealth, is what drives him. The control of others, by destitution, addiction, subjugation.

  He would rather torture than kill his victims. He would rather inflict a miserable life on them than a painful death. That is what I have learnt in the years I have studied him.

  So the truth, now that I have it, should not have surprised me as it did. I should have guessed many years ago. The details of the payments I traced through documents I found in the Oriental Development Company’s offices in Weihaiwei should have led me to the answer much sooner than they did. But the time has been lost. I cannot help it. Enough time remains, though. That is all that matters.

  I am no longer young, though I am younger than you. We will need others to help us. To hire them we will need money. I have some but not enough. That is why I have turned to you, Sir Henry. That is why I am sending you this letter.

  We must save the person who has loved us both: your Matilda, my Tiddy. She is not dead, Sir Henry. She did not die of complications following childbirth. Tomura did not kill her. He imprisoned her, in Kawajuki Castle. There she has remained, held captive by him, all these years that number twenty-six. More than a quarter of a century. Nearly half her life. She has been his prisoner all that time.

  The castle is said to be impregnable. Tomura seldom goes there, but he keeps it heavily guarded. Some say he hoards treasure there – gold and diamonds to protect him if his other sources of wealth fail. But I know what is really being guarded.

  There is a secret way in, a tunnel constructed when the castle was built, but long forgotten. Its location is known to a man who once worked for Tomura. Sickened by what he was required to do, he left and became a monk. He has promised to show me where the entrance to the tunnel is. A way in can be a way out. It is our best chance.

  There is a set of apartments within the castle, he told me, cut off from the other rooms, inaccessible unless you know how to reach them. They are protected by a series of traps. No one goes there without Tomura’s knowledge and permission. It is called by those who work at the castle Uchi-gawa – the Inside. It must be where Tiddy is held.

  There is a woman in Keijo who knows how to pass through the traps. It is said she is descended from the man who designed them. It is also said she is no friend of Tomura. I will leave for Keijo tomorrow in the hope of persuading her to tell me how it can be done.

  I hope to find a message from you waiting for me when I return, Sir Henry. Cable me at the Merchant Marine Officers’ Club, Yokohama. It will not be easy for you to travel to Japan in the current international situation. But the war cannot stand in our way. We must rescue her. You will know that, I think. You will feel it. And you will come, I trust.

  We are her only hope, though she cannot know it. She must believe we have abandoned her, or suppose her dead, or are dead ourselves.

  Do not let her die his prisoner, Sir Henry.

  Help me save her.

  J. F.

  IT WAS A warm high summer’s afternoon at Gresscombe Place. Winifred, Lady Maxted, had used the heat as an excuse to retire to her room after luncheon. A reappearance for tea on the lawn would be hard to avoid without arousing suspicion and she was therefore reconciled to it. The return from school of her grandson, Giles, was no incentive, in view of the bullying temperament he seemed to be developing. She could only hope the advanced state of Lydia’s pregnancy would have so exhausted her that she would not question Winifred about the telegram she had received that morning – the second within two days.

  Winifred was still carrying the telegram, folded away in the small pocket of her dress. She could not decide whether to destroy it or conceal it somewhere. She favoured the former, although she did not delude herself that such action would spare her the eventual need to explain to Ashley – and to Lydia – that James was not her natural son.

  James knew already, of course. It was strange to think of him, so distant from her in so many ways, reflecting on his long-delayed discovery of the truth. He might actually have a better opinion of her as a result, now he knew for certain Brigham was not his father. What concerned her most, however, was how he would respond. He would not let Matilda, the mother he had never known, go unavenged. Of that Winifred was quite certain.

  It was not obvious from Hodgson’s telegram that he had done what she had authorized him to do. YOUR SON NOW IN FULL POSSESSION OF FACTS. So the message ran. Perhaps James had uncovered the facts himself and merely gone to Hodgson for confirmation. He was such a determined boy that anything was possible.

  At twenty-eight, he was
hardly a boy any more, of course, though she always thought of him as such. Winifred smiled at the irony that she loved him more dearly than Ashley, the son she had actually borne. They were very different men. And James was the better one by far. It was obvious. It was undeniable.

  She regretted now her failure to assure James of her love. The suspicions harboured by him about her relationship with Brigham had always come between them. What she did not regret – what she never would – was agreeing to raise him as her own. He had been a credit to her in all those ways Ashley and Lydia viewed so disapprovingly. He had been a son to be proud of. And proud of him she was.

  Whatever he did next, he would do it well, even if it led him to his death. She knew that.

  ‘Take care,’ she murmured, laying a finger on his face in the small photograph of him in RFC uniform that stood on her dressing-table. ‘Take care, my son.’

  Appleby was surprised, yet not surprised, to find C waiting for them when he and Veronica Underwood left the cross-Channel steamer at Dover. C knew when they were due to arrive and, as he explained, he wanted to speak to them before they reached headquarters. ‘It’s rather hectic there at present, as I’m sure you can imagine.’

  Appleby could imagine. The naming of Lemmer’s spies was a thunderbolt, unanticipated by all but a few. Many men – and a few women – trusted and relied upon by their governments had been exposed as traitors. They were under arrest now, or soon would be, or on the run, or being sought. They were creatures of the night scurrying in search of a hiding place from the glare of day.