by James Quinn
“Impossible,” Nakata scoffed. He knew how brutal and violent the facility's guards could be – for them to be bested by a prisoner, an old woman, was unthinkable.
“I saw it with my own eyes, Captain. She picked him up and threw him against the cell wall before she attacked him. The other guard rushed in and clubbed her. Three hours later, she died from side effects of the compound I'd given her. Her body appeared to feed on itself, from the inside out.”
Nakata glanced down once more at the technical folder lying in front of him. It meant nothing to him… they were details outside of his knowledge. But the idea of a serum that could do that? That interested him. “Why are you bringing this to me now?” he asked.
Reizo clutched his hands together anxiously. “I have gone as far as I can go on my own with this project. I would like official permission and resources to further investigate the possibilities for this particular serum. For that, I need your signature and authorisation.”
Nakata thought for a moment. “Could it be improved? Could the host be kept alive for an extended period, to allow time for further refinement?”
Reizo nodded. “I believe it could, depending on the research we're able to conduct with your permission.”
Nakata's mind was working swiftly, adapting to the concept, considering the possibilities. He had ideas, some uses for what this 'thing' could do. Perhaps there was potential in this project… perhaps… something for the future; a weapon, a means of attack. “Who else knows about this private research of yours?” he asked.
“Only you and I, my research assistant and the two guards who are assigned to me,” Reizo answered.
“Then keep it that way. You may keep your assistant, but all your findings and the details of the project should be passed to me directly. I want no-one else involved. Do you understand?”
“I… I… of course,” said Reizo, and Nakata noticed his hands were shaking when he bowed.
Nakata reached into his desk for a pen and signed his name and military number on the bottom of an authorisation document, before handing it over to Reizo. “Please keep me informed. I wish you the best of luck.” The young chemist, bowed again and left, clutching his official authorisation. Nakata sat back in his chair and reflected upon what he'd just been told. An opportunity perhaps? Something that would allow Nakata to advance within the Kempeitai? He just needed to keep this project contained, especially if it proved successful. The young chemist he would need, but the assistant, well, he would need to be silenced and as for those guards who'd witnessed the effects of the virus –there were many, many battlefronts were soldiers could die in Asia.
* * *
In February 1942, Singapore had fallen to the Japanese Imperial Army. The Japanese advanced rapidly through Malaya to Singapore and took both with minimal casualties, capturing thousands of Allied troops and civilians, routing the country and bringing it to heel. Somewhere within that military might was Major Yoshida Nakata, recently transferred to the Kempeitai East District Branch, the headquarters of which was located in the old YMCA building on Stamford Road. In the months following the invasion, the Kempeitai conducted anti-Japanese purges and the massacre of civilians by the auxiliary police was commonplace. Singapore was a city enveloped in fear.
Despite having risen in rank, Nakata continued to pass vital intelligence to his British spymasters, specifically, his case officer Mr. White. The means of communication was a secret radio set which had been buried in the forests on the outskirts of Singapore in the months before the invasion. Nakata would, on some pretext, take the staff car and go walking out in the hills. In reality, he would unearth the radio set and send coded intelligence reports about troop movements, casualties and the morale among the population. He was careful and only transmitted when he knew that the Kempeitai were overrun with an operation elsewhere. And all that had remained the same, until one fateful day in March of 1942 when the life of Yoshida Nakata, double agent and traitor to his own country, turned on its head and caused him to question his own sanity.
He'd been summoned by his senior officer, Colonel Fujimoto, on a matter of urgency. The Colonel was a fussy man, tall for a Japanese, who liked to involve himself in all kinds of areas he had no seniority in. Nakata thought he was meddlesome and a buffoon. But he was a senior officer, so it was wise to simply nod and agree in most instances. “We have identified a British subject we located hiding in the city, we believe he may be a spy. We're holding him in one of our cells. I am handling the interrogation personally; perhaps you would like to assist me,” the Colonel said, marching up and down at a steady pace in his office
Major Nakata nodded, but his stomach lurched unhappily. A British spy… hiding in the city? No… please don't let it be…
* * *
The cell was dark and hot and the wretch of a man who was manacled face down on a surgical table in front of them was battered and bruised,; only a dirty loin cloth was wrapped around his hips to cover his nakedness. But even with the gloom in the interrogation cell, the dirt and sweat covering the man's face, Nakata instantly recognised his SIS case officer, the man known to him as Alex White. 'White' had been captured less than a week ago while operating undercover in Japanese-occupied Singapore. He'd been informed against by another prisoner, who'd denounced the Englishman as an undercover spy.
Colonel Fujimoto had personally taken charge of the beatings, using an old piece of bamboo. So far, the Colonel informed him, the Englishman had been completely uncooperative. What would Major Nakata suggest as an expedient means to elicit information from the prisoner?
Nakata felt beads of sweat running down the crease of his neck. Could he do this, could he assist in the interrogation, the torture of the man who was his case officer, who had once saved his life and who over the years he had come to think of as a friend?
“Major,” barked the Colonel. “Suggestions?”
“Sleep deprivation?”
The Colonel shook his head. “We have done this… the man has been kept awake for almost three days.”
Alex White groaned as Nakata looked down at him with both pity and remorse for what he knew was to come. In the interrogation section of his basic training phase, the rule had been that after sleep deprivation and physical assault, the next and most effective method of extracting information was by denailing the subject; the removal of both finger and toenails. However, the Japanese soldiers had improved on that barbaric method by introducing sharpened bamboo shoots and driving them up and underneath the subject's nails. Although Nakata had never personally taken part in such an extreme action, he'd heard the reports from Kempeitai officers in the field that it was effective.
“Bamboo treatment,” he heard himself say, but it didn't sound like his voice. He couldn't believe he'd said the words. White moved his head up and looked directly into the eyes of the man who'd suggested the method of his latest pain. He looked into the eyes of his friend, his agent – his torturer, his captor.
“Excellent,” Colonel Fujimoto shouted cheerfully. He gave the order for the guards outside the interrogation cells to bring him some sharpened bamboo nails. “Major, would you care to indulge?”
Nakata looked over at the tall officer and shook his head. “Unfortunately, I have been summoned to witness an execution organised by Colonel Oshiro later today at the Police Station. He is personally going for his unit's execution record. One hundred heads, I understand.”
The Colonel looked disgruntled, but accepted that a prior summons by a senior officer overruled his own interrogation. “I understand, thank you Major. I will let you know how we progress with the subject.”
Nakata nodded and made his way steadily out of the interrogation cell. He'd almost reached his staff vehicle when he heard the first agonizing shrieks of pain from the Englishman. It cut into him like the blade of a Katana.
* * *
Several hours later and feigning important business elsewhere in the city, Nakata dismissed his driver for the evening and drove ou
t to the foothills of the forest where the radio set was stashed. He retrieved it, checked the signal and sent an emergency contact protocol to the SIS radio section. The communiqué told of an SIS officer who had been captured and was currently being interrogated by the Kempeitai, and of an agent in place to try for a rescue attempt. Then he waited, sitting silently in the gloom of the forest. An hour later and the return signal started to come through. The message was short and stark in its clarity:
RESCUE DENIED. ELIMINATE OFFICER BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY WITHIN NEXT 24 HOURS. OUT.
The British, thought Yoshida Nakata, were as ruthless a bunch as his own people. They'd handed down a death sentence on their own officer.
Nakata made his move later that night.
The easiest thing would have been to don his military uniform and order his way in. But that would expose him to his colleagues and officers and… then what? Walk out with a prisoner in tow? Besides, he had no authority to remove a prisoner, Kempeitai or not, and it would require signed documentation from his superior officer before he could get anywhere near the interrogation room. So he resorted to the practices he knew best, stealth and covert entry. Only this time, it would be against the Japanese Imperial Army. Despite having limited resources, he'd donned the dark clothes of the Shinobi, his old clan, smearing his face with dirt and mud and carried the Tanto knife used for silently eliminating sentries and targets in confined spaces. Around his waist he'd wrapped a small grappling hook with a twelve-foot length of rope. These were the only tools he'd need. The Shinobi were expected to be able to improvise at a moment's notice and be resourceful. He'd dressed himself and wore his weapons and laughed at the idea that he'd have to break into a prisoner of war camp to rescue the enemy. The irony was not lost upon him.
The skills he'd learned as a boy came to him as easily as a flick of his hair or a scratch of his nose. He'd moved swiftly in the darkness… approaching the twenty-foot-high perimeter wall where he knew the guards were at their weakest. He used the grappling hook to scale the wall, clambering up like a cockroach on a black curtain and slipped silently over the top. He'd crouched in the darkness, feeling the cool of the night attack his eyes through the hood over his head. From his very brief reconnaissance, he knew that the British prisoners, poor wretches that they were, were kept in a wing on the far side of the compound. To complete his mission, he would have to cross some wide open spaces and negotiate the rest of the outbuildings if he wanted to reach the Englishman. The first few hundred yards were easy, merely staying in the shadows and avoiding any light. But as he got nearer to the interrogation building, the light grew brighter and the regularity of the guards increased. The first guard he'd approached silently from the rear and taken him down with a knuckle blow to the nerve cluster behind the man's ear. The guard dropped like a puppet whose strings were cut and Nakata had been quick to drag his unconscious body out of view and dump it in the space under the nearest hut. With the intensity of the blow, the man would be out for an hour at least.
Creeping along the darkness of the compound wall it had been the guard standing directly outside the detention block who had caused him the most trouble. He'd almost made it to within killing distance when the guard spotted him from the corner of his eye. Nakata jumped at the last moment, Tanto raised and ready to slash open the man's throat, anything to silence him before he could sound the alarm. Nakata had covered the guard's mouth with his left hand and thrust the short knife up and into his throat, ripping sideways to destroy the vocal chords. The only noise emitted was a faint gurgling sound, which was barely noticeable in the quiet compound. A quick thrust with the blade up and under the ribcage and into the heart, and the guard was silenced permanently.
He removed the keys from the guard's belt pouch and let himself into the detention block. After the coolness of the night, the detention building was a hothouse. He moved silently down the darkened corridor, peering through the slides to find the Englishman. He found him in the fifth cell. He knew that he may have to carry the Englishman such was the frailty and weakness of his body. His colleagues in the Kempetai had been thorough in their torture and his body was a shadow of its former self. Death would have been a welcome release if his captors had granted it. Soldiers had it rough in the cells, but suspected spies would have had a special kind of treatment at the hands of their interrogators. Even for a killer as ruthless as Yoshida Nakata the thought made him shudder. He knew that the Kempetai had no level to which they would not sink when it came to torture and the debasement of prisoners who they viewed as beneath them. The wretched rags hung off the SIS agent's skeletal frame, his eyes were gaunt and hollow, but worst of all was the smell of decay and death that permeated his body. It clung to him like the plague.
The man known as Alex White stared up at the hooded figure in black, standing in the doorway of the cell. He must think that death has come for him this night, thought Nakata. Yoshida Nakata took a single, silent step forward into the cell and spoke in English. “Can you walk?”
The eyes of the Englishmen widened with shock, then recognition. He said one word, “Yoshida.” He was saved.
* * *
Two hours after escaping from the Stamford Road building and being smuggled out into the countryside in the trunk of Major Nakata's staff car, the two men sat in the rain and the mud under a makeshift shelter provided by the canopy of the jungle. Between them, they had a canteen of water and a little rice that Nakata had brought with him.
“Did you tell them anything?” asked Nakata, squatting next to the ragged spy.
“No… not much… not everything… no.”
“Did you tell them about me? I have to know. It is important for both our sakes.”
The Englishman shook his head. “No, I swear. I gave up my shipping network, my agents from Tokyo, but not you… not the big agents… not yet. They hadn't had me long enough… but I suppose I would have done it in time.”
Nakata seemed to accept this with good grace. No one could hold out against physical torture indefinitely. It seemed he'd rescued his case officer just in time. He closed his eyes and contemplated his next move. He was bound by an obligation to this man. To snuff out his life, as easy as that would be here in the vastness of the jungle, somehow did not sit right with him. The English spy had, after all, risked his own life to save him all those years ago. “I was ordered to kill you. Kill you inside the camp, if possible, find out what you'd told them and then silence you before you betrayed any more British operations,” said Nakata harshly, eager to spit the venomous words out.
The wretch of an Englishman tensed and then through sheer exhaustion, his body slumped and he seemed ready to accept his suspected fate. Murdered by his own people.
“Get up. I am letting you go free.” Nakata pointed. “You head in that direction. Move quickly, take as little rest as you can manage. Soon you will reach the border, keep out of sight until you are sure. Sooner or later, you'll meet an allied patrol. Make yourself known to them. Here, take this,” said Nakata, handing the Englishman a pistol he'd removed from his knapsack. “Now go,” he hissed. “Tell them that you knocked out a guard, killed another and escaped. It protects me, it protects you. You're weak, but you can make it if you are cautious and cunning.”
Alex White seemed unsure what to do for a moment. He stood in the darkness of the jungle and stared blankly at his agent and friend. “Yoshida, I…”
“Just go. This is no time for speeches. Be safe, my friend.” Nakata had watched as the Englishman ran off, heading deeper into the jungle. His case officer would either survive, or be caught and returned to the camp to resume his torture. If that was the case, then Yoshida Nakata would be a dead man; either way, he was satisfied that the life debt he owed this Englishman had been repaid in full.
* * *
It had been more than a decade before he saw the English spy again. By that time, of course, the world had moved on. The war had ended and old enemies became new trading partners.
From
1945 onwards, Nakata was hunted constantly and only survived due to his training in stealth and infiltration. For weeks he'd lived off the land, staying far away from the allied soldiers tracking down Japanese war criminals on their lists. Eventually, he'd heard of the bombs which destroyed Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The Japanese Imperial Army had been defeated by the Allies. Hirohito had surrendered and this version of his war was over.
In desperation, he'd stalked and killed a young Japanese soldier, buried his body in the reeds, and took his uniform and identity cards. The soldier was a man of no consequence. He was a soldier of almost no ranking and therefore unlikely to be hunted by either the Allies or his own people. But this young soldier did have one important thing in his favour. He was not Yoshida Nakata, traitor and assassin. His name was clean. And so for a period of a year he'd become a POW, surrendering to the American interrogators and answering their questions. He'd survived on his wits, playing the role of the poor dumb soldier whose identity he'd taken. Until eventually, he'd been seated before a British Captain with the responsibility for intelligence and told the young man, with a whisker of hair on his young lip, that he had been, for the best part of a decade, an agent of British Intelligence.
“Well of course, I shall have to verify your story,” said the young Captain, casting a doubtful eye over his dubious prisoner.
Yoshida Nakata, once an enemy agent, had been granted immunity for his war crimes by his protectors within SIS and the British establishment. It hadn't taken long before SIS had scooped up their agent, whom they'd thought long dead. After that, he had been reborn with a new start and a clean record.
The rise of Yoshida Nakata had been meteoric after that. Following the death of his uncle, the clan leader Kenta Nakata, there'd been an internal war within the Nakata clan as to who should take control of this secret society. Battle lines were drawn between some of the older Shinobi, each determined to wait out the opposition and strike when they were at their weakest. With cunning ruthlessness, Yoshida Nakata had driven a wedge between the warring factions inside his clan and personally taken the heads of the two contenders on a bloody and brutal night. Assassin had hunted assassin. The next day, he'd called a conference for the entire clan's soldiers and presented the heads of his rivals as a gift to those who would remain loyal to him. He'd ruled supreme over his clan, gathered his closest allies and brothers to him and taken control with an iron grip.
