Yamamoto raised his head. ‘Do you realise, Hashimoto, that if this continues we are going to lose this war? That we may already have done so?’
‘With respect, Isoroku,’ Hashimoto protested. ‘That is not possible. Japan has never lost a war.’
‘And do you suppose that confers upon us some kind of immortality?’
‘The gods … ’
‘Do you really believe in such things? Wars are won by the side which commands more men and material; such an advantage can only be offset by greater fighting skill, and greater courage, both of which mean better leadership. No one can argue that the Americans command more men and material. We knew that before we ever attacked Pearl Harbour. We counted on our superiority in the art of war to attain an impregnable position before the American strength could fully be exerted. We had all but achieved that nine months ago. Midway was a disaster, but not an irrepairable one, and it was caused by bad luck. The Solomons have been a disaster, and there was no luck involved there. That has been caused by the ineptness of the army commanders on the ground. The Navy has done everything possible. Some of our actions will be studied by future generations of admirals for their brilliance. There have been mistakes. That impossible affair off the Kommandorsky Islands was a disgrace to our flag. That a Japanese squadron should fail to press home an attack on inferior forces is unacceptable. Hosogaya is going to be cashiered and if he does not commit seppuku he will be forever dishonoured. Yet on the whole we have given as good as we have got. But we have been committed to fighting at ever increasing odds because of the necessity to sustain our soldiers. Why could they not sustain themselves? Are they not Japanese? But they are not the same men as their ancestors. Over there in New Guinea they are being driven from pillar to post. Now we are slowly being expelled from the Solomons. If that happens, even Rabaul will become untenable. This process must be stopped, and reversed.’
‘I am sure it will be, Isoroku,’ Hashimoto said, placatingly. He had never known Isoroku so upset, not even in the after-math of Midway.
‘I am sure it will be too, Hashimoto. Because I am in command. But it is difficult to command victory when one is constantly being stabbed in the back. Hashimoto, the Americans knew the exact composition of that convoy, and its course, and where to find it. They did not guess these things: they were told them. Thus far your efforts to find the enemy agents who are betraying us have proved a failure. One is forced to wonder if this woman you have is making you soft.’
‘I am not soft,’ Hashimoto said angrily. And grinned, almost savagely. ‘You should ask her that, Isoroku. But these spies are almost impossible to find. New Guinea is a huge place. It is the third largest island in the world, if you include Australia. And it is all mountain, jungle, and swamp. A hundred men can walk past one, a dozen times, and never know he is there.’
‘Yet must this one man live. To do that he must eat. And to transmit he must have power.’
‘Well, there is no doubt that these men are being maintained by the local population.’
‘Then stamp out that local population, Hashimoto. It will be a terrible thing. But it must be done, because war itself is terrible. Listen to me. It is obvious to me that this spy, or these spies, are situated on the north coast of the island, because that is the route used by our convoys. I wish your men to remove every human being from within twenty miles of the north coast, except for themselves and their servants, of course.’
‘Remove them?’
‘Yes.’
Hashimoto considered, and then nodded. ‘It will mean a considerable drop in the production of copra.’
‘That is irrelevant, if we do not stop the American advance. I wish you to undertake this matter now, Hashimoto, as a matter of the utmost urgency. If these people are not found and destroyed, I will hold you personally responsible. Remember that.’
Hashimoto bowed his head; he had never known his friend and superior so vehement, either. ‘It will be done, Isoroku. If I have to burn every tree within twenty miles of the coast, it will be done. You have my word.’
‘I was sure of it. Now I must leave you.’
‘So soon?’ Hashimoto asked in alarm, wondering if he truly was in official disfavour. ‘Will you not take tea? Joan has been practising. She is very good now. And she will be good in other ways. Did you not enjoy her on your last visit?’
‘I did. I have seldom enjoyed a woman more. But now I am too angry. I think I would wish to hurt her. I am also too busy. I am flying down to Bougainville to see conditions there for myself; my plane is waiting. I will be more in a mood to enjoy your Joan when I come back. Tell her this. I will return in three days’ time. But Hashimoto, commence your operation in New Guinea immediately. Do not fail me in this.’
‘I have given you my word. Isoroku,’ Hashimoto said. ‘I will take charge of the operation personally.’
*
Dawn was the best part of every day, Joan thought. Presumably this was remarkable, in her circumstances, as it left her with an entire sixteen hours of wakefulness to endure. But then, her circumstances were themselves so remarkable that they defied analysis.
She stretched, cautiously, watching the first fingers of light seeping through the blinds, listening to the crowing of cocks, the whisper of the dawn breeze, the distant discord of the trumpets, the slowly gathering volume of noise which marked the awakening of a huge arsenal — for Rabaul was nothing less.
She glanced to her left, at the sleeping man. She could not move, until he awoke. But when he did awaken, it would be necessary to move very quickly, very smartly, very subserviently. Once that idea would have revolted her. But then, she would have been revolted at the concept of sleeping on the floor, even if also on a mattress, or of belonging to a man of alien race, of having to bow and show utter humility at all times, of submitting to physical chastisement, and of a quality of sexual relations which should itself have been humiliating in its — to her western-oriented mind — almost obscene absence of manners or refinement. But which was no longer either humiliating or revolting. Which she even enjoyed.
A year ago she had wanted to die rather than continue to live as a slave. Now she wanted to live for every day, no matter what it brought. A year ago she had thought of herself as a traitor to her people in her acceptance of her fate. What should she consider herself now?
Because, to her own continued surprise, she enjoyed her life as the servant-cum-mistress of a Japanese admiral. She enjoyed the life of being a Japanese woman. This civilisation, which she had only brushed against before, but had enjoyed even then, was in many ways truly admirable. She loved its concern with total cleanliness, its dainty eating habits, which were dedicated to quality rather than quantity, its worship of beauty; she could even respect its male authoritarianism. That Hashimoto should cane her when he felt like it would have been unthinkable in London or New York, and equally that he should ‘lend’ her to his friends when they asked for her. In Tokyo, and perhaps even more in Rabaul, it seemed natural.
Rabaul indeed had become a home to her, in a way she had never known before, whether in England, in the States, in Hawaii, or in Singapore or Hong Kong, where she had lived with John before the war. It was a fascinating place, only thirty years old, as it had been built by the Germans just before the First World War. Perched on the shore of Blanche Bay in the north eastern part of the large island, and sprawling around the magnificent Simpson Harbour, it was in turn surrounded and dominated by a cluster of volcanoes, The Mother, North Daughter, South Daughter, Vulcan and Matupi. This last had been the one to erupt in 1937, and in fact they were all active volcanoes; the air was often filled with the stench of sulphur as the town itself often shook to subterranean rumblings. This did not appear to worry the Japanese, used as they were to their own earthquake-plagued land, however much the natives stayed in a state of terror. And it added to the appeal of the place for Joan: if she was living, and prospering, and even enjoying herself in hell, it was appropriate to be surrounded by the sme
ll of brimstone.
The island itself, surprisingly large — it was three hundred and seventy miles long and some fifty wide — contained every variety of equatorial scenery, and many flourishing copra and coffee plantations on the coastal plain of the Gazelle Peninsular, from where one could look up at the high central massif. Here, when he had the time, Hashimoto would take her in his command car, seeking wild flowers. That a man of such primeval urges, performing, and apparently enjoying, such a bestial job, could devote hours on end to a search for a new variety of orchid was simply symbolic of the complexity of his people as a whole.
She had even come to admire and respect the Japanese war machine. Its discipline and devotion to duty, its utter faithfulness to the emperor, as a god-like figure who combined in his person all the heroes of the past, was equally close to being sublime. They honestly believed it was their destiny to dominate east Asia, to bestride the world stage in equality with the greatest of nations.
How then did she relate to the bestiality of their conduct in Hong Kong, or Nanking before the war, their enslavement of subject peoples, which included those of their own race, Koreans and Chinese, as well as Caucasians, the horrible concept of waging total war at all? They had been responsible for the most ghastly moments of her life, and they might even now be starving or torturing her husband to death. But perhaps she was too well read, too aware that all peoples had gone through this phase of military expansionism when they had believed only in might, could compare the British sack of Badajoz, only a hundred and thirty odd years in the past, or some of the excesses of conquest in Ireland, Scotland and various parts of the empire. She could not help but be aware that the Japanese code of bushido was one of the most rigid and indeed honourable in all history. They were at least not afraid to practise what they preached. If they treated a defeated enemy, male or female, as a slave, they understood that they could never surrender themselves without everlasting disgrace. That was a wholly admirable concept, in the abstract, or the pages of a history book; only in the reality was it sometimes unacceptable. But it always contained the nobility of the primitive animal, struggling for life.
And failing. Perhaps only their leaders, and perhaps only a few of them, realised the enormity of the gamble they had taken, a relatively small country quite lacking in natural resources of its own, in challenging not only the world, but the world led by the greatest industrial power in history. And only one man, Isoroku Yamamoto, was prepared to recognise that that gamble was failing.
Isoroku Yamamoto, she thought. Perhaps the most remarkable man she had ever known. And she knew him well, now. She knew him to be vain, and arrogant, like most Japanese men, a believer in his personal destiny more than that of his people, and at the same time a consummate lover, a man of inspiring strength. That Hashimoto was not jealous of him was because Hashimoto worshipped the ground on which he walked. And because Hashimoto knew that he could never equal his friend. At anything.
He was awake, now, his eyes flopping open. Instantly Joan was out from beneath the coverlet and kneeling beside the mattress, hands together in front of her face, head bowed.
‘Good morning, sir.’
He grunted, allowed a hand to stroke her shoulder. He could not do more, because they were both defiled by the sweat of sleep. Love making, if he was so inclined, would have to wait until after their bath, and this she now hurried to attend to. The orderlies were already heating the water and pumping it through the wooden slats to fill the bathhouse, which adjoined the main building, with steam and bubbling liquid. They grinned at her as she entered the room; that she appeared naked before these men no longer bothered her, or excited them — the Japanese had no western inhibitions about nudity.
Hashimoto came in, and she soaped him, emptied buckets of cold water over him. He shuddered slightly, his eyes still only half open, waited for his body to be cleansed, and then sank into the deep hip bath through which the near boiling water bubbled with a sigh of relief.
‘Send for Osawa,’ he said.
Because he would today implement Yamamoto’s commands, and flush out the American observer in New Guinea, no matter what it cost. Joan told one of the orderlies to deliver the message, and then bathed herself. When she too was clean she entered the tub, sitting opposite him. Now his eyes were fully open.
‘I think I will go to New Guinea, personally,’ he decided. ‘You will like that.’
‘Yes, sir,’ she agreed dutifully. She did not want to go to New Guinea, where there was fighting, and a great deal of unpleasant jungle. She enjoyed her home in Rabaul too much, however temporary she knew it had to be. But she would go, wherever her master went.
A man entered the bathroom. He was a junior officer, and he was in a state of great tension. This would have been obvious in any event, from his unceremonious entry. But now he actually began to speak before he had completed his bow.
‘Admiral,’ he panted. ‘Admiral.’
‘What is the matter with you?’ Hashimoto asked. ‘Are you insane?’
‘Admiral,’ the lieutenant said again. ‘There is news from Bougainville.’
Hashimoto sat up straight, water draining from his shoulders. His feet kicked Joan’s, but he did not seem to notice. ‘News? What news?’
‘Admiral,’ the unhappy young man said a fourth time. ‘Admiral Yamamoto is dead.’
‘Yamamoto?’ Hashimoto repeated. ‘Dead? How can that be?’
‘His plane was shot down, yesterday, your excellency. American fighters were waiting for it when it approached Bougainville.’
‘Waiting for it?’
‘That is what the message says, your excellency. They came down from the clouds where they had been hiding, and they attacked Admiral Yamamoto’s plane. His escort attempted to fight them off, but was unsuccessful. The admiral’s plane went into the sea.’
‘Then they do not know he is dead.’ Hashimoto stood up.
‘They know, your excellency. They have recovered his body. That is the message.’
Hashimoto stared at him, and then sat down again with a splash. Joan gazed at him, and the young officer gazed at them both, unsure what to do or say next.
‘Yamamoto,’ Hashimoto muttered. ‘Dead! Ambushed by the Americans. They knew he was going to Bougainville.’ He stared at Joan, as if she might have betrayed that secret. Yamamoto dead! She felt as breathless as he. And wondered if, had she been able, she would have sent the message which had caused his death? ‘This is a sad day,’ Hashimoto said. ‘The saddest day of the war, for our people. Yamamoto, dead!’ For several seconds his head was bowed, and he did not move. Then he sat straight again. ‘He must be avenged. His orders must be carried out. Where is Osawa? Find me Osawa. We must leave for New Guinea, immediately.’
*
‘Message from Pearl to all ships,’ announced Commander Phillips. ‘Yesterday morning Lightning fighter planes, operating from Henderson Field in Guadalcanal, intercepted and brought down the aircraft carrying Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto on a tour of inspection above Bougainville. As far as can be ascertained, there were no survivors. Well, glory be. I reckon we can have a drink on that when we get in.’
‘How the hell can they be sure Yamamoto was on the plane?’ inquired Lieutenant Bristow.
‘Because they broke his code, some time ago,’ Phillips told him. ‘Heck, those code boys knew every time he blew his nose. It was just a matter of waiting for him to come close enough to get at. I wonder who’ll be their new chief. You got any ideas, Walt?’
‘I think Koga is the next most senior,’ Walt replied. The three officers stood on the conning tower as USS Sea Lion approached Diamond Head, on the surface. Sea Lion was one of a huge number of new submarines being produced for the United States Navy. Known as ‘fleet boats’ they were officially of the Gato class, after the first of them launched. Very similar to the Tambor class, to which both Tempest and Tecumsah had belonged, they were slightly longer to give additional stability, and somewhat more strongly constructed; quite
comfortable at three hundred feet down, they also had refinements such as an extra watertight bulkhead dividing the engine room into two, so that the ship would be operational even partly flooded. Sea Lion also carried a crew of eighty instead of sixty as in the older boats. As regards armament, however, she was identical.
It had been a long six months on the mainland. Officially Walt had been retraining; actually, he knew, he had been kept under wraps while the business of his court martial was hopefully forgotten. He had worked hard at his studies, but it had seemed an awful waste when there was a war being fought, when Father was out at sea with Florida, when men, his comrades, were dying.
It had not all been work, of course. He had been given a furlough to visit his grandfather on Long Island; Joe McGann was eighty two years old, but still lively and naturally deeply interested in everything that was happening to and in his beloved Navy. He had snorted his contempt for Waite and Jonssen, his satisfaction that the court martial had been as near an acquittal as was humanly possible. He knew nothing, and Walt told him nothing, about his grandson’s tangled emotional problems. Walt also found the time to visit the hospital where Purley Hogan was still, hopefully, convalescing; it was doubtful whether Hogan would ever see service again — the frightful blow on the head he had suffered when Tempest had been rammed had left him subject to paralysing headaches and nervous tension. So he was the lucky one, Walt knew, in that he had survived two disasters unhurt, and that despite all he was a Medal of Honour holder, and had indeed, very rapidly been restored to the rank of lieutenant.
But the emotional problems remained to make his life a torment. He had hoped to be routed back through Pearl, but had been unlucky there. So he had also written to Linda, several times, and at last had received a reply, informing him that Wave Linda Brewster was now Mrs Jordan O’Malley, and was no longer in the service, although she was apparently still living in Honolulu. The blow had been almost physical. He couldn’t blame her, of course, although he wished she hadn’t been so quick on the trigger of her pride. If only he had been able to speak with her and straighten things out. But now that was over. It had to be over.
The Passion and the Glory Page 24
