Somewhere West of Fiji

by Darrell Egbert

  How do I know all this, am I assuming things again without proof? No, because I have the proof. And what is it you might well ask–because he told me so. And Tash would later confirm it because his admiral had told him.

  I all but accused Aokie of it when I told him he was Kempeitai, and that Tash was not an admiral. He asked me why I was so sure he was lying to me. I told him I saw one of the submarine officers slap Tash, something he would never have done if Tash were an admiral. He smiled at me for the longest time before he agreed with me. Then he tied the tiller down and sat down and proceeded to tell me every detail of the plan to destroy San Francisco and more, much more.

  What does it obviously mean? Does he intend to push me overboard along with Tash? Of course he does. What else can he do? But why is he waiting? He doesn’t need me to help him sail the raft. We are about a half of the way to Fiji and nothing of importance has happened. Then too, Aokie designed it to be sailed by one man. I can’t help wonder if he didn’t have this all planned-out months ago, I mean doing away with both of us. But why tell me about San Francisco, and by doing so admitting who he was. I don’t think he planned on telling me this, not until I caught him lying to me. I think his plan was to go right on trying to convince our people he was a friend of the United States.

  “Let me ask you if you know what the name “Golden Lilly” means? Before I could answer he pressed on. “Of course you don’t and neither does any of your people. But there are Philippine citizens who know, because they have seen it. I mean the gold hoards that are referred to in Kempeitai circles by that name. And who else knows? Your friend Tashima probably knows because his admiral knew.

  ********

  “Early in the incursion into China, the Kempeitai, under the direction of the Emperor’s brother was ordered to take charge of the treasures the army looted. Later on, General Tomoyuki Yamashita was taken into the prince’s confidence and told of the plan. And still later, he became the director.

  “So quickly did this vast treasure accumulate that a plan had to be devised to keep it in tact and away from you Americans. Later, when it become evident to only the dullest that the War was lost it became imperative to find a hiding place. We at first took it to the Philippines, intending to take it later to Japan. But we were never able to make it; your submarines were roaming at will throughout the China seas and almost with impunity in the Sea of Japan. Still later we could not take any more chances of shipping it by sea, not even to the Philippines. Instead we chose to transfer it there by submarine. Actually, it necessitated several stripped down submarines and numerous trips.

  “Once there it was secreted into a labyrinth of caves known only to a few trusted members of the Philippine underground, the leadership of the Kempeitai and a cabal of ranking admirals and generals.

  Just before MacArthur returned to Mindanao, Yamashita threw a celebration party. Members of the royal family attended along with many Japanese who had been signed on to help secret the treasure. Subsequently, the prince and his entourage, including Yamashita, blew the tunnels closed with dynamite emplaced there by the Philippine underground.

  “Right now, there is a massive treasure hunt about to begin. Rumors are rampant as to where this now named “Yamashita Gold” is located. To squelch these rumors, we, in the Kempeitai, have circulated counter-rumors to the affect that no such gold exists. The truth is, I for one know. I have been told to write the story about which banks in Asia were looted. And to stand-by to tell the American authorities where it is. Of course we will demand a ‘Quid pro quo.’ We will make it a separate project to demand assurance the Emperor will be spared the coming fate of the others. We will trade this knowledge for his parole. If you Americans are not amenable, we will pass the word it exists and we will hint where it is buried and the scurry for its whereabouts will be like nothing you can imagine. We will put out just enough plausible information to make this worldwide gold rush become a reality. If still no assurance by your authorities, we will see that it is eventually found. So vast is it that it will affect the world gold market, and overnight it will make your dollar virtually worthless. World economies will tumble and your president will be blamed. What do you think of that my aviation friend?” He never gave me time to answer; in fact I don’t think he wanted an answer. So what did he want? I think he has some sort of plan to have me take his story that he’s reduced to writing to the American authorities. And not just any authority but people high enough in the government to save Hirohito.

  “Do you know what a Doomsday Machine is. Let me tell you anyway so that we might understand each other. First off, you have to understand what the Apocalypse is.” He hurried on, after telling me what I already knew that it was synonymous with the Book of Revelations contained in the Bible. It was the coming disaster or the end of times, as we know it. It was literally the end of the world, ushering in the second coming of the Lord. Anyway, to show me how smart and educated he was, he expanded on this simple explanation.

  “This special machine is somewhat fictional, what I mean by that is nobody as far as I know has yet to build one. But if they did it would destroy the earth. It may not do it outright but it would be built to do it at some time in the future. And if you had one, and your enemy knew it, you could threaten him with blackmail. You would have no problem getting him to do whatever you wanted.

  “The trouble with these things they would destroy you as well as your enemy–unless you had a way of saving yourself while he perished.

  “Well we have one of them, and we have one that is selective. It will destroy you but not me. How do you like them apples? And it is fool proof. And once we crank it up and start it going nobody will be able to stop it–nobody.”

  He sat thinking and staring at me, savoring the astonished look he saw on my face–the cruelty of the typical Imperial Japanese, the kind I had read so much about–watching me sweat as I contemplated the diabolical scheme they had been working on as a fall back position if they lost the War.

  “No it’s not what you think. We don’t want to destroy you unless we have to. But if we have to, we will.”

  “What exactly are you after? What do you want? How do I fit into your scheme of things? What are you setting me up for or are you just making conversation to make me ill at ease?”

  “Nothing of the kind. In fact, I need you. You are a cog in our machine. Without you or somebody like you it won’t work.

  “You see, we have to spread the word of what we intend to do. That’s an integral part of the plan. And of course you and your people will never know if we have such a plan. You will see it is practical, though, and easy to implement and it will be a total disaster for you and all the others who are our enemies. And make no mistake, we will destroy you unless you give us what we want.”

  “And what do you want? Do you want us to surrender? What?”

  “No nothing like that. What we want is simple and straightforward. We know your country’s surrender is out of the question. What we do want is a truce, an armistice that will allow us to keep our armed forces. We want you to forget the contents of the Tanaka Memorial. But above all, we want you to go along with a scenario we have worked out.

  “We know how the masses of your people feel towards our Emperor. And because we worship him as a God, you want him hung alongside the ringleaders and planners of Pearl Harbor. And you want to hang hundreds of our people who are undeniably war criminals. In fact, we want amnesty for everybody connected to any atrocity and to Pearl Harbor. But if we don’t succeed in acquiring everything, we have a fall back position. We are prepared to sacrifice those in high places. Everybody, actually, except our Emperor. And unless you can prevail on your president Roosevelt and General MacArthur to look the other way where he is concerned, we will not give another inch. If they call us on this, we will annihilate all of you in the most horrible way you can imagine.

  “We want General MacArthur to talk to your president. We want your president to agree to let him go. More than that
we want this story given to your press: MacArthur feels that he can’t adequately govern the post War Japan without the Emperor’s help and guidance. And, furthermore, our Emperor was innocent of any wrongdoing. He neither signed the Tanaka Memorial or did he agree the attack on Pearl Harbor was necessary to gain our ends.

  “It shouldn’t be too difficult to convince your people that he was just a bystander. That is if we can collect all the copies of the Memorial and the authorization for building our super-submarines. They were built without the knowledge of the Emperor. And he had no knowledge of another of the Doomsday projects that will bring about Armageddon. That is what MacArthur and your president has to convince your people of. It is not such an impossible task if you can first convince your press.”

  His attitude made me even angrier than I was. What monumental gall this man has. But then he was never free in the true sense of the word. And although he lived with us for several years, he still didn’t know what made Americans tick. He saw us the same way he saw his own people. That is, he saw us as being just as gullible as they were. He didn’t understand what a problem it was going to be to change the minds of the majority of our free people. And obviously his plan was not to convince us of anything. It was going to be the general’s and the president’s job to do that if in fact it could be done. This Doomsday disaster was going to be for the ears of MacArthur and the president’s only. Of course, Mr. Hoover of the FBI would have to hear about it, but not the press or any of the general population. It was designed to put pressure on these men to save the Emperor, to convince the American and British people that the Emperor was innocent. Aokie thought that if they turned Tojo, and Yamashita and a few dozen lesser lights over to the gallows master that it would be enough. The way he saw it, there was no other way once they heard about how this Doomsday thing was going to operate. And I’ll give them one thing; they are ruthless and evil and of the devils spawn. No question about it. And Aokie was one of them.

  Chapter 15

  The tiller was still lashed down with the top of the mast pointing toward the constellation chosen by Aokie. When the sun came up and we switched over from the star, the compass heading showed us still on course for Fiji.

  Neither of us was sleepy. He was most anxious to tell me more about their master plan to stop our planned Invasion and the plan to save Hirohito, and I was eager to hear about it. As it turned out, he did need me. He had no intentions of pushing me overboard. That took a considerable weight from off my shoulders, and in, someway, he believed it would better our relationship. It was never going to get back to the way it once was, but he didn’t give a hoot about that. All he wanted was my cooperation.

  “I told you about the I-400 project to drop killing virus’ and bacteria on your cities. But there is more, much more. Actually, these super subs were designed as tactical weapons–weapons of revenge but not originally part of this Doomsday thing. That came later, when Premier Tojo saw the advantage of such weapons as part of a blackmail scheme. He desperately wants to coerce your people into sparing the life of our Emperor. Of course he is interested in his own life, too. But to do it, we need another threat. We need one that will kill millions of your people even after you try them both and find them guilty. That’s where I come in, along with dozens of members of my organization, dedicated to preserving the life of our Emperor.

  “This is how we plan to do it. But the plan is so horrendous that just the telling of it to your president should be all it takes. And that my friend is where you come in.” He went quiet for a few minutes while he stared at me some more. I could see the hatred in his eyes. He wanted to shoot me in the worst way but he needed me. Why he did, he had already hinted about. He wanted me to tell Army Intelligence when I was debriefed at Fiji. His story would be given to the FBI and would find its way to our president in record time. He continued to tell me the rest of it in detail:

  “You know there are fleas, maybe as many fleas in San Francisco as any place in the world. It has always been that way. If you don’t believe me, all you have to do is buy a theatre ticket and stay for the main feature. You will be scratching at your legs when you come out. And mice, we have our share of them in Berkeley as well as in San Francisco.

  “Now if you know anything about world history, you know the plague or the Black Death, as it was sometimes called, wiped out a third of the worlds population in the fourteenth century. And the fleas carried the disease and rats carried the fleas.

  “We intend causing the same thing to happen, starting in San Francisco.”

  Curious now, I asked him: “How do you intend to protect yourself? It looks to me as though you’re going to ‘hoist yourselves on your own petard.’”

  “We have serum. We intend to inoculate all our citizens against it….” I interrupted him to volunteer that the army had inoculated me and I had been told by those in the know that it didn’t always work. It made you awful sick, sometimes, but it wouldn’t always protect you if you were ever exposed.

  “We know it, but our serum is not the same as yours. We took yours and improved on it. Even if a few of us do get the disease it doesn’t matter all that much.”

  I could see his point, and further, I could see that we probably didn’t have enough serum to inoculate the entire rest of the world. We had manufactured a lot, but we had used it about as fast as we made it. We would be caught short, and we would probably lose more people than they did in the middle ages. But the plague wouldn’t be our only problem, as he was quick to point out.

  “There is something else my friend that is even worse. You know it by the name of Anthrax. It not only kills humans but kills livestock as well. And something else, now hold on to your hat–this something else is Rabies. That’s right, the deadly Rabies virus. Have you ever seen an animal with Rabies? Not very pretty, I assure you. And the anti-toxin for that is a whole other matter. First it is in short supply, and second it is almost as bad as the disease itself.”

  He smiled as he told me, watching me squirm as I tried to picture in my mind thousands of people suffering with one of nature’s worst afflictions. I figured he was exaggerating but it didn’t matter, I got the point.

  “Bats if you didn’t know, are notorious for carrying Rabies. And when they get it they go crazy like everything else that gets it,” he said.

  “Now here comes the darling part, and it’s also the doomsday part. We catch a few bats, give them the toxin and then turn them loose. They fly back to where we found them. In due course there are hundreds of thousands of them attacking and infecting each other and other animals. These other animals, including domestic pets are doing the same thing to humans, while we walk away and go on to the next area. It spreads like wildfire, only you can’t see it or do much about it if you could. And it will spring up in other countries just as fast as we can make it happen. What do you think of that?” He didn’t wait for me to answer.

  “Now remember what I’m telling you, because you are going to be called on to repeat exactly what I’m saying. And maybe even to your President Roosevelt himself.” Then he proceeded to tell me how they had tested these viruses and bacteria on several poor Chinese cities. He said some 20,000 died horrible disfiguring deaths. And many more would have had we been able to use our submarine airplanes. The few among them who had been given the anti-toxins got sick but survived.

  Check and mate. He had me, in fact he had us all by the short hair and there was nothing we would be able do about it. He had won. One of the great myths of this War was about to be foisted upon the world: the Japanese Emperor had been by-passed by his generals and nobody had told him anything.

  And any tribunal for war crimes must exclude him. And if we don’t do exactly what the Kempeitai dictates, the non-Japanese world will end in chaos.

  That night on watch, I went back over it, everything he told me. It was about the hundredth time, and each time it came out the same way: If he weren’t around, how would General MacArthur and Mr. Hoover and the President, how
were they going to know about this doomsday plan. What was the sense in implementing it if they didn’t know? Where was the blackmail? How could the Americans protect the Emperor if the Americans didn’t know about it? That’s what he must of meant when he told me I was a major cog in this machine of his. He had it planned from the first day I saw him–I was going to be the one that told them.

  I wasted no more time. When I saw him relieving himself an hour later, I didn’t hesitate. I pushed him overboard.

  Chapter 16

  The magnetic compass in an airplane is not gimbaled the way it is aboard ship. The airplane must be flown steady and straight or you will get the wrong reading. Aokie never told me about this. I guess he wanted us to get lost at sea if anything happened to him. But I know about it and, furthermore, I know how to navigate.

  When the dawn was just presenting and I was about to lose our constellation, I waited until the raft was steady–it was neither climbing a wave nor descending one. There is a split second when it is level enough to get a fairly accurate compass reading. I then checked our heading against the plotted course of Aokie. I adjusted the tiller and the sail and secured them both, and then went about fixing something to eat. Later on in the day, I checked his briefcase where I knew he kept the chart.