Section 8

by Bob Mayer

  Five hundred feet.

  Tai was having a hard time keeping them stable and oriented. Their bodies were beginning to tumble, but Vaughn knew there was nothing to be done about that as he took the length of nylon strap and pressed it against the snap link on the front of Tai’s combat vest, trying to press it through the gate. Tai realized what he was doing and grabbed his hand with both of hers. The nylon popped through the snap link.

  Vaughn’s other hand grabbed his reserve handle. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the ocean surface. Close, way too close. He pulled the rip-cord grip on the reserve and the chute spewed out. Vaughn was jerked upright, then cried out in pain as the lowering line ripped out of its casing, burning down the inside of his right thigh, and then abruptly stopped at its full length, and he was jerked again as Tai came to a halt at the end of it.

  She hit the water barely two seconds later, then Vaughn splashed down hard next to her.

  CHAPTER 12

  Jolo Island

  Abayon was staring out to sea, looking at the moon reflecting off the water. He felt bone-tired. Telling the story to Fatima had exhausted him, and there was more to tell. He sighed as he heard the door behind him open and then shut. Fatima walked up to him with a bottle. He took several deep drafts before putting it down.

  “Where was I?” he asked, although he knew quite well where he’d left off.

  “The Americans who parachuted into Japan,” Fatima said.

  “Ah, yes. One of the Americans was killed right there on the drop zone. Beheaded by a Kempetai officer. The officer turned to behead Martin, forced him to his knees, but another officer stopped him, saying there was a need for living Americans. Martin and the other survivor were taken into custody, thrown in the back of a truck, surrounded by guards, and driven to a Kempetai base. There, to Martin’s surprise, his partner was greeted as if he’d been expected—by a well-dressed Japanese man, obviously someone with great power, given the way even the Kempetai officers were treating him.”

  “Who was this other American?” Fatima asked.

  “David Lansale was his name. Here’s the interesting thing, and what made Martin wonder what was going on: Lansale turned to Martin and said he was sorry, then left in the company of the mysterious Japanese man. Martin was then taken away, eventually transported to Manchuria and 731. He never saw or heard of Lansale again. He knew he’d been betrayed, but he had no clue why.”

  “And you do?”

  “I do now, to an extent.” Abayon fell silent, and Fatima patiently waited. “I was in that field, tied to the stake for five days,” he finally said. “Martin died quickly. On the second day. I heard the others crying out. That was bad. But the worst was the smell. Whatever they used on us made us vomit and unable to control our bowels.”

  Abayon stayed quiet for a few seconds, recalling that horrible field of death. “I was the last one alive. I could sense it on the morning of the fifth day. They had taken about half of the prisoners away to do with them as they had done to my wife. Others, who died on the stake, they left to rot. They were timing the deaths. In the middle of the fifth day, the soldiers came once more. They wore their protective suits. Gas masks. Many, I could tell, were not happy with their task. It was just as easy for them to be infected.

  “A few went up and down the rows of stakes, confirming that all were dead. I knew this was my only chance. I slumped forward against the ropes holding me. I had vomit all over my chest and down my legs. Excrement and urine soiling my pants. I held my breath so the soldier coming along my line would not see my chest move. They didn’t want to touch the bodies to check pulses. They were confirming death just by looking for breathing.

  “The soldier was in a rush. He looked at me for no more than ten seconds, then moved on the next one. He made it to the end of the line, then joined his comrades. They drove away in their truck. Several hours later, just before nightfall, a truck came back. This one contained the prisoners whose job it was to clear the field. Take in the harvest, so to speak.

  “The Japanese used Korean laborers for this. The Japanese did not care if the Koreans became infected. Once more I pretended to be dead. I nearly was, so it was not difficult. I was very sick. I was running a fever. I was dehydrated. Almost delirious. A man cut me loose from the stake and dragged me to the cart behind the truck, which was full of bodies. He threw me in. I weighed perhaps eighty pounds after months of captivity and because of whatever they had infected me with.

  “They threw bodies on top of me. Meruta. Logs. And that is how we were tossed in that cart. I lay there, buried among the dead. I almost wished I was.”

  Again Abayon fell silent.

  “How did you survive?” Fatima asked.

  “Hate,” he said. “And love.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Even though my wife was dead, I still loved her,” Abayon said. “That kept me going. And because I loved, I hated those who had killed her. That gave me strength. All I thought of while I was in that cart was revenge. They drove to a ditch and dumped us in. I lay there until they were long gone, then clawed my way out. Through all the bodies. I crawled all night. Just to put distance between myself and that place of death.”

  He turned from the ocean and stared at his goddaughter. “After that, you can well imagine that I wanted to know everything there was about Unit 731. And about that American.”

  “I don’t understand the connection,” Fatima said.

  “Neither did I at the time,” he replied. “When I escaped from 731, the war was winding down. The Japanese in the camp released all their plague-infected animals. Over thirty thousand people died in the Harbin area in the next couple of years because of that.

  “But here is where it gets interesting and lines begin to cross,” Abayon continued. “The good Dr. Ishii was captured by the Americans. And did they put him on trial for the war criminal that he was?” Abayon did not wait for an answer. “Of course not. He—and the information he had—was too valuable. In exchange for immunity from prosecution, he gave the Americans the results of the so-called field tests—the tests my wife and I and hundreds of thousands of others had been part of. Valuable data on biological warfare that the Americans wanted.

  “Thirty members of 731—none of the important ones—were put on trial as part of a big show. They were brought before the Allied War Crimes Tribunal in Yokohama on the eleventh of March, 1948. Charges ranged from vivisection to murder to wrongful removal of body parts.” Abayon shook his head.

  “Wrongful removal of body parts—can you believe there was ever a need for such a charge?

  ‘Twenty-three were found guilty. Five were sentenced to death. None of those were ever executed, though. By 1958 every single one of those convicted was free. The Russians weren’t so nice. Those members of 731 they captured, they executed. I suppose it was because the Americans got Ishii and all the good data.

  “There is even a shrine in Japan dedicated to the members of Unit 731. Can you believe that? No collective sense of guilt for what they did. It is only in the last few years that the Japanese even acknowledged what they did in Nanking.

  “But back to Lansale. He was supposedly an operative of the OSS—Office of Strategic Service. But that was just his cover. It took me many years to find out who Lansale met with and why. He was an envoy from a secret organization sent to negotiate with the Japanese. Even though the two countries were at war, there were those on both sides who were looking past the war and to the future.”

  “What was this secret organization?” Fatima asked.

  “Why do you use the past tense?” Abayon asked, but did not wait for a reply. “I’ve only heard rumors of it. And all refer to it simply as the Organization.”

  Fatima frowned. “How can something not have a name?”

  Abayon shrugged. “Surround yourself with enough layers of protection and cut outs and you can do anything. This group is very secretive. Which makes me wonder if they are really part of any government,
because governments—especially democracies—are sieves when it comes to keeping secrets. But let me continue my story.

  “Lansale was taken from the Kempetai headquarters to a meeting with Hirohito’s brother, Prince Chichibu, to coordinate the Golden Lily project. Also present at the meeting was Admiral Yamamoto, who carried out the Pearl Harbor attack. You see, the Organization knew what the Japanese were doing, the systematic looting of all the lands they conquered.”

  “How did they know this?” Fatima asked.

  “That is a good question,” Abayon said. “And I don’t know the answer although I suspect they were doing it at the order of the Organization. I talked to a senior Japanese officer who was Yamamoto’s adjutant. He was on trial in the Philippines for war crimes. He’d been sentenced to death, and perhaps that made his lips a little looser. He told me that at this meeting a verbal agreement was made: the Americans would allow the Japanese to continue the Golden Lily. But none of it was to be shipped back to Japan. It was to be hidden in the Philippines.”

  “Why?”

  “As every Filipino is taught in school, Douglas MacArthur had vowed to return to the islands. Essentially, the Americans were allowing the Japanese to do their dirty work for them.”

  “But why would the Japanese agree to this?”

  “Because Lansale pointed out something that most smart Japanese knew, even back in those dark early days of World War Two when they seemed unstoppable: that the end of the war, with Japan losing, was inevitable. Yamamoto was particularly aware of this, having spent considerable time in the United States prior to the start of the war. Even though he planned the Pearl Harbor attack, up to the last moment, he had argued vehemently against implementing it.

  “Do you think the amazing recovery Japan made after the war was a coincidence? Plain good luck? From this meeting forward, elements in both the United States and Japan were already planning the economic recovery of the defeated nation.”

  “But...” Fatima drew the word out. “I still don’t see why the Japanese would agree to this. What did they get in return—beyond this plan for economic recovery?”

  “The emperor was assured that he—and his family—would not be tried for war crimes. Not only that, but that he would be allowed to keep his position after the end of the war. Think about it: why was the leader of a nation that had blatantiy and so dishonestiy ordered a surprise attack on the United States not only pardoned, but allowed to remain in power? It would be like the Americans letting Saddam Hussein rule Iraq after they invaded and conquered it.

  “Of course, there were some other angles to the whole deal,” Abayon continued. “Chichibu had to give Lansale assurances that the Japanese would not try to develop atomic weapons. So in a way, the cover story for the OSS mission was true, just not in the way the other two unfortunate souls who accompanied Lansale anticipated.”

  “So Chichibu and Yamamoto sold out their own country,” Fatima said.

  “Is that the way you see it?” Abayon asked, staring at her hard.

  She’d seen that look before, and turned over what she had just learned in her mind, examining the various angles as Abayon had taught her. “They knew they could not win the war so they looked to the future and the higher good.”

  “That is what they believed.”

  “Do you agree with what they did?” Fatima asked.

  Abayon smiled grimly. She had thrown the gauntlet back at him. “It was an interesting moral dilemma: betraying your own country in the present to serve its future prosperity. Most would not agree with betrayal.”

  “And you?” she pressed.

  “No. I do not agree with betrayal. I think they admitted defeat before they were defeated. But...”

  “But what?”

  “Who is to say whose allegiance Chichibu’s lay with? Let’s assume this secret Organization is something more than just an American group? What if it is international? And Chichibu had a higher allegiance?”

  “But Yamamoto—” Fatima protested. “He was a soldier. A man, supposedly of great honor. He—”

  “Ah,” Abayon said, cutting her off, “there is more to this. Remember, the Americans killed Yamamoto. The story written in history books is that they broke the Japanese code and knew where he would be flying. So they sent long-range fighters to shoot him down over Bougainville on the eighteenth of April in 1943. But what if the Americans were meant to get that message? It was a mightily convenient intelligence coup otherwise.”

  “Plots within plots,” Fatima said. “So if Chichibu was part of this Organization, then Yamamoto might not have been, and they arranged for him to be killed.”

  “Yes.”

  Fatima mulled this over. “So you believe there is this Organization that crosses—indeed supersedes— national interests and manipulates events?”

  “Yes.”

  “To what end?”

  “To further their own end,” Abayon said simply. “I don’t know exactly what that is, but from what I’ve gathered it seems to be the accumulation of wealth for the very few who are members of this group. And the controlling of economies, governments, the military— people, essentially—to maintain their status quo. To rule the world from the shadows.”

  “The auction. And my father’s mission—which he told me nothing of, of course. Those are designed to draw this group out.”

  Once more she made it a statement, not a question. “Yes. Remember, the Organization wants what we have in these tunnels. They’ve wanted it for many years.”

  “That is why you’ve never used any of it before,” Fatima said.

  Abayon nodded. “Not only do they want it, but I think they put it here, if the meeting between Lansale and Chichibu is true. Golden Lily was designed from the very beginning by the Organization. They used the cover of the war to gather more riches.”

  Fatima mulled that over. “But...”

  “Go ahead,” Abayon prompted.

  “Why now?”

  “Two reasons. One is that I will not be here much longer.”

  “You look fine—” Fatima began to protest, but Abayon held up a hand, silencing her.

  “You have been very observant and wise up until now. Please do not change. I have less than a year to live. So, perhaps it is selfish of me, but I want to find out who I’ve been shadow-boxing with all these years. Who the Organization really is.”

  “And the second reason?”

  “It’s time,” Abayon said simply. “Since nine-eleven the gloves have come off. We are entering an age of a new type of conflict, and this group is probably quite aware of that. The Americans came after us the other night and many people died. We can sit and let them come to us or we can go after them. I prefer action over reaction.”

  Fatima nodded. “All right. What happened to this Lansale?”

  “He made his way back to the United States via diplomatic channels. He then became a career spook, as near as I have been able to find out. Strangely, though, he was photographed in Dallas on the twenty-second of November, 1963, but he always claimed he was never there.”

  “What is so important about that?”

  “Something very significant happened that day.”

  “What?”

  “President Kennedy was assassinated.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Jolo Island

  Vaughn lay on his back staring up at the stars, savoring the cool night breeze blowing across his soaked clothes and the feel of sand beneath him. They were on the shore of a small, deserted cove on the north side of Jolo Island. As soon as they made landfall, they conducted a quick box reconnaissance of the immediate area, and both were confident they were on an isolated part of the island.

  “That was fucked,” Tai said.

  Vaughn turned his head and looked at her in the moonlight. She was lying next to him, still breathing hard from the long swim to shore. In her hand she had the GPS, which she’d just pulled out of a waterproof bag in her rucksack.

  “We’re alive,” Vaughn
noted.

  Tai looked up from the GPS screen at the sky. “It’ll be dawn soon. We’re over ten kilometers from where we’re supposed to be.” She pointed. “Hono Mountain is there.”

  Vaughn could see a large dark mass in the moonlight towering up into the sky.

  “We’re way behind schedule,” Tai added.

  “Is that what bothers you?” Vaughn asked.

  “Hell, no,” she said angrily. “Three malfunctions in a row. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.”

  They’d hit the water hard, then had to scramble out from underneath the reserve canopy that draped over them. Unspoken between them was the fact that they hadn’t worn life vests. They’d been so confident they could make the flight to the island, it was never brought up. For Vaughn, that mistake brought echoes of the designator battery. What saved them was that they followed standing operating procedure and waterproofed the contents of their rucksacks before the jump, which served as flotation devices in the pinch. They’d cut away from the reserve, Vaughn got rid of the harness, and then they tied themselves together using a short length of rope, put their elbows on their floating rucks, and started swimming toward the silhouette of Jolo island. It took them an hour to make it.

  Tai had explained all the failures to him. Vaughn had to agree with her succinct assessment of what happened to her, but he wanted to wait and let her lay out the obvious.

  “Someone was trying to kill me,” she finally said.

  “You think?”

  That earned him a slight smile that momentarily wiped away the tension and anger on Tai’s face.

  Vaughn checked his watch. “We’re overdue on the initial entry report.” He sat up, grabbed his rucksack, and began to open it to get to the satellite radio inside.

  Tai put out a hand and stopped him.

  “What?” Vaughn asked.

  “Someone was trying to kill me,” she repeated.

  “I know, and—” Vaughn stopped and slowly nodded. “I see.” He let go of the ruck. “Why? And who?”