“I wasn’t supposed to say anything until our arrival in San Francisco. But because of this message,” he held up the flimsy, “we have to talk now. It came in two hours ago: Priority. I’ve been decrypting the damn thing. So there you have it, you see.” Zenit handed over the radio flimsy.
Dezhnev read:
BURN WHEN READ
TOP SECRET ---- OPERATION KOMET ---- TOP SECRET
EYES ONLY -- EDUARD DEZHNEV, LT, VMF., -- DZHURMA
11 AUGUST, 1942
1. KAPT/3R SERGEI ZENIT APPOINTED YOUR CONTROL.
2. RADIO INTELLIGENCE LAST TWO DAYS INDICATES U.S. NAVY SUFFERED MAJOR DEFEAT IN SOUTH PACIFIC IN SOLOMON ISLANDS. STILL CONFIRMING BUT IT APPEARS THEY LOST ONE POSSIBLY TWO CRUISERS AND ONE DESTROYER IN NIGHT ACTION NEAR SAVO ISLAND. JAPANESE TYPE 93 TORPEDOES APPARENTLY DID THE TRICK. BE ADVISED TO LEAD WITH THIS ONE. MESSAGE ENDS.
LAPTEV FOR BERIA
BURN WHEN READ
Dezhnev was flabbergasted. The thought of following orders from this dreg ran counter to everything he believed in.
Zenit must have read his thoughts for he said, “If not for me Comrade, for the Rodina.”
“Da.” Dezhnev. Wait and see. That was the only thing to do.
“Finished?”
“Yes.” Dezhnev handed it over.
Zenit held the pages over a large ashtray littered with brackish Russian and Egyptian cigarette butts. Drawing a gleaming American Ronson cigarette lighter, he flicked it into life. As the document burned, Dezhnev asked, “What’s this about leaking secrets on Japanese torpedoes? And what is a Type 93, anyway?”
Zenit cocked his head slightly, adopting an officious air. “Let’s begin at the beginning.” He waited, giving Dezhnev an unfocused stare.
Dezhnev almost laughed aloud. “Very well.”
“As you saw from the message, you are assigned to operation KOMET.”
“Yes?”
Zenit checked his notes. “It’s in two phases. The first involves General Douglas MacArthur who is running for President in...” he flipped pages and looked up. “When is it?”
Play along. “...their next presidential election will be in November, 1944.”
“Yes. November, 1944. Now the Japanese think there is an enormous potential to disrupt the American leadership. That’s phase one.”
Thoughts of Lend-Lease and American convoys bringing badly-needed supplies to Murmansk to fight the Nazis swirled through Dezhnev's head. “They’re supposed to be our friends.”
“That’s just the point. They are our friends, you see. But it won't hurt to slow them down a little. Beria is convinced the Japanese will ultimately lose the war in the Pacific, and it looks like they're beginning to realize this, too.” Zenit rolled Beria’s name off his tongue as if he’d been out drinking beer with him just last night. “Especially after the Battle of Midway. His best estimate is that it will become a war of attrition with the Americans out producing the Japanese and defeating them in 1948, perhaps 1949.”
“Midway?”
“In June, the Japanese lost four large attack carriers in one decisive blow near Midway Island. This essentially nullified their ability to remain on the offensive. Now they feel off-balance.”
“I hadn't heard.”
“You were in Bykovo, listening to jazz and sucking up chocolate milk-shavings.”
“Milk shakes.”
“Yes. And with the Birkenfeld fiasco, we owe the Japanese a favor.”
Dezhnev raised his arms and flopped them to his side.
Zenit nodded. “All right. Dieter Birkenfeld and Richard Sorge. Spies, they worked for us. In Tokyo, they posed as newspaper correspondents in the German Embassy for the past five years. They were brilliant, uncanny. They penetrated the highest levels of government and unearthed an enormous amount of top secret data. Then,” Zenit’s voice softened, “they were caught last October. They confessed, you see. Birkenfeld has been executed; we don’t know about Sorge. That’s why we owe the Japanese a favor. And we're trying to do something for them without violating our neutrality.”
“What is it, precisely, that you want me to do, without violating our neutrality?”
“Monitor MacArthur’s campaign. You see, like you, he's an actor, very dramatic. The Japanese figure MacArthur's speeches can undermine confidence in President Roosevelt’s government by blaming him for the disaster at Pearl Harbor. They’re counting world opinion will swing against Roosevelt if MacArthur does run for president. It doesn’t matter if he wins. Enough damage will have been done. But, if MacArthur should win, it will be very disruptive to the American political and military systems since he would have to vacate his post in Australia while kicking Roosevelt and his cronies out of the White House.”
“And if MacArthur doesn't openly blame Roosevelt for Pearl Harbor?”
“Then you are to look for ways to make it appear so. You see, the Japanese need the disruption to buy time.”
Dezhnev leaned forward, his hand on the table, balling into a fist. “I'm not a politician, damnit.”
Zenit shrugged.
“What about the staff there now? Why can't they do this?”
“Apparently Beria thinks you’re more qualified. A combat veteran trained in American nuances.”
Dezhnev spun the cane handle between his palms. “KOMET.”
“Yes, KOMET.” Zenit opened another file. “On to Phase Two. A part of being a Naval Attaché requires that you gain the trust of your American Navy counterparts. At your discretion, you are authorized to release Japanese secret technical data to appropriate American personnel. This will give you credibility with the Americans. Then you, in turn, may be able to learn some of their secrets. Some that we may want to pass on to the Japanese.”
Screw the Americans while screwing the Japanese. What sort of game is Beria playing?
Zenit jabbed the table with his middle finger, something that would have looked comical in America. “Let me be clear on this. You are to go the meetings, attend the parties and listen. You will stay alert. You will stay sober. You will not chase women. You will make friends by dropping the little Japanese eggs where appropriate. And you will gain their confidence.”
“What do I have to give them?”
Zenit ticked on his fingers: “Included in your package is microfiche on such things as Japan's new M2597 light tank, their 240 millimeter howitzer, their current Naval order of battle. And as the cherry on top of the pie,” he pointed again with his middle finger, “there is some rudimentary data on the Type 93 torpedo.”
With his forefinger, Dezhnev stirred the ashes in the tray. “The radio message said the Type 93 had been used in the Solomon Island Battle.”
“Your data says the type 93 is the best torpedo in the world.”
Dezhnev sniffed. “Nonsense.”
“Check for yourself. It's all there.”
“I plan to.”
Zenit looked from the hatch to Dezhnev, then to his folder. “Like you say, this ship stinks. I’ll be glad to get off, too. When we get in San Fran--”
The roar was terrific. The whole deck seemed to lift, and a great light flashed before their eyes. Dezhnev was knocked to his hands and knees. Then he rolled to his back, realizing there had been an explosion.
CHAPTER TWO
11 August, 1942
Thirty Miles West of
San Francisco, California
Smoke enveloped them. Dezhnev felt the rush of deep, humid, hot steam.
There were horrible, gurgling screams mixing with the ship’s whistle sounded six short blasts: the danger signal. It started another series but wheezed into silence.
Coughing and choking, Dezhnev rose and stumbled into the passageway. Lights flickered; smoke gushed; he couldn’t see. Grabbing a battle lantern, he lurched to the engine room hatch, hearing more screams. Just then a wraith crawled up the hatch. Dezhnev helped pull him out onto the main deck. He peered down and looked into the scalded face of Kharbov, the Assistant Engineer. Singed flesh
hung from his scalp. “Anybody else down there?” Dezhnev yelled.
“All done for,” the man gasped. “Scalded.”
“What happened?”
Kharkov’s eyes rolled, then he focused. “Fuel oil. The feed pump shot too much oil in the fire box. Regulator didn’t...” He passed out.
Dezhnev eased the engineer to the deck. Grabbing Zenit’s coat he shouted. “Hurry!”
Zenit stood frozen, his face dead white.
“Hurry, you stupid son-of-a bitch! Do you want to die, too?” He spun Zenit and pushed him stumbling out on the main deck. In the half light, they found four large deck-mounted emergency fire-room valves. Dezhnev leaned over one, perhaps thirty centimeters in diameter.Fuel-oil feed valve.” He tried to rotate it. “Rusty,” he shouted and dropped to his knees for a better purchase. Looking up to a wild-eyed Zenit, he gasped, “Help me.”
Yelling sailors poured on deck, jumbling about. Four started lowering a lifeboat.
Dezhnev again yelled to Zenit, “Come on!”
“...can’t...” Zenit moved to join the men milling near the life boat.
Dezhnev jumped up and grabbed Zenit by the collar, kicked him in the butt and shoved him over to the valve. “Start turning, you dumb bastard, or we all die!”
Somehow, Zenit got the idea the valve was important: that turning the valve might keep the ship from blowing up and sinking, his efforts thus saving him from the inconvenience of boarding a lifeboat and bobbing up and down in the Pacific’s cold waters. He stooped, and began twisting with Dezhnev. With groans and squeaks, the valve turned, the going easier the more they rotated. Two minutes later, it was done.
“That should do it,” wheezed Dezhnev. For confirmation, they saw another assistant engineer stand over the engine-room hatch and say, “Fire’s out.”
Just then Fedotov dashed down the companionway, his eyes bulging.
Zenit looked up and made a show of breathing in quick gasps, “All finished, Captain. The fire is extinguished.”
“Quick thinking,” Fedotov said. “You’ll get a commendation, Sergei.”
Zenit bowed deeply.
Fedotov rolled his eyes at Dezhnev.
Someone yelled from the rail. There was a commotion as the American Coast Guard ship nosed alongside, also running without lights. Figures could be seen outlined on her bridge. A megaphone sounded, “...what’s your problem...”
Fedotov stood on a ladder and shouted in shrill, accented English, “Boiler explosion. No power. Soon, do we drift into your mines?”
The reply floated back to them, “...we can tow...stand by to take a heaving-line...”
“Da. Thank you. God bless America.” Fedotov waved and scampered up the ladder to the bridge.
Zenit looked at the moaning Kharbov, then walked to the rail and stared in the distance. “This is long overdue.”
Dezhnev followed him. “What do you mean?”
“Ironic, don't you think? Our turn to be scalded. Just like those wretches in the Arctic.” Then he focused on Dezhnev. “You call me a dumb son-of-a bitch? You call me a bastard?” Veins bulged on Zenit’s forehead as he thrust a forefinger at the bridge. “There’s your dumb son-of-a bitch. Your bastard!”
Dezhnev yelled over the commotion. “Who are you talking about?”
Men stood all around them. For such a small crew, their noise was incredible. It seemed everyone wanted to crawl in the starboard lifeboat. Zenit waved a hand toward the bridge. “You know why we were late getting underway from Vladivostok in 1939?
Dezhnev shook his head.
“Fedotov, that's your dumb son-of-a bitch. He had all the parts he needed to overhaul his stupid boiler. From America. Everything he needed. But he sold the stuff: Feed pumps and the fuel pumps and whatever else you call it, all on the black market. Then he made the engineers re-machine the old parts with lathes and whatever else. They had to use cardboard and tar and chewing gum for gaskets. It’s a wonder the damn ship hasn’t sunk. He does this all the time.”
Dezhnev glanced at the Coast Guard ship as it eased forward. Someone on her fantail spun a monkey-fist over his head, then released it. It arced though the air perfectly and thunked on the Dzhurma’s fo’c’sle.
On the bridge, Fedotov jammed a megaphone to his lips and screeched at his foredeck crew, “Hurry!”
Needing no urging, the Dzhurma’s men began hauling across the messenger which was connected to the tow line.
Zenit began laughing. “And guess what he did with the money?”
Dezhnev looked at him dumbly.
Leaning back, Zenit laughed again, almost homerically, and once again cast a long, bony finger up to the bridge. “Your stupid son-of-a bitch up there bought barrels of lye to kill the smell in the forward hold. And with what was left over, he bought clothes and boots and blankets for his crew, that’s what he did!”
CHAPTER THREE
19 August, 1942
U. S. Federal Building
San Francisco, California
It was a crisp and cool sunny morning, wind stirring whitecaps on the bay. Wearing dress khakis, Lieutenant Todd Ingram shivered as he walked into the lobby of the Federal Building. An elevator door yawned open and he stepped in quickly, pressing his six-two frame against the rear bulkhead, luxuriating in the relative warmth. He had an angular face with steel-grey eyes; perspiration on his forehead evaporated quickly with the breeze that trailed after. A giddiness ran through him and he still wasn’t sure if the shivering was due to an intolerance to cooler temperatures or to the weight he’d lost. Until last June, he’d been in the tropics for over two years and the doctor said he would still feel light-headed for a while. He’d been at Corregidor, in the Philippines, and had dropped to one hundred thirty pounds. Under siege for five months, the Japanese finally took Corregidor with Ingram escaping the night it fell.
Now he was back to one-sixty-five, ten pounds less than normal. He’d been told to avoid rich foods, but in a hurry this morning at the BOQ, he hadn’t given a thought when the gravel-voiced cook boasted the pancakes were made with cement, the sausages from ground-up bird beaks. Now Ingram believed him, his stomach doing flip-flops. With each agonizing contraction, he was convinced the cook was some reprobate boatswains’ mate just out of the brig.
A seaman apprentice wearing dress whites was seated at the elevator control panel. “Floor?”
The boy hadn’t faced him or called him ‘Sir.’ But Ingram could only think of keeping a lid on the mini-eruptions in his belly. “Umphff.”
“Floor?” The sailor repeated.
“Sorry,” gasped Ingram. It was an effort to speak and all he really wanted to do right now was dash for the nearest bathroom and yield to his misery.
The sailor turned and gave Ingram a foul look. His face burst with pimples and he couldn’t have been more than eighteen. “Floor.” It sounded like an order.
For a moment, Ingram panicked. He couldn’t remember where the damned meeting was scheduled--only that he had been ordered to be at the Federal Building and show up for a meeting at 1130. He reached in his pocket to find out just as someone else--an officer--stepped in and turned, facing forward.
“Good morning, Sir! Floor please, Sir!” The elevator operator squeaked loudly.
“Seven, please.”
The doors closed, cutting off the curses of at least two other officers who attempted to board.
All Ingram could see was the back of the passenger’s neck and from the look of his close-cropped dark hair he looked older, perhaps late forties or early fifties. Tall, thin, he wore a working khaki shirt with tie, but no blouse. He carried a briefcase and his Navy combination cap was tucked under his arm. It was impossible to determine his rank without seeing the devices on his collar, but he must have been fairly senior judging from the elevator operator’s reaction.
With groans and rattles, the elevator began its ascent. The operator gave Ingram another cold stare, his eyebrows raised, still demanding an answer.
Th
e churning in his stomach subsided for a moment and Ingram was able to blurt, “Seven.” Thank God the other passenger had said “seven.”
The elevator jerked to a stop. The lights went out. Somewhere in the labyrinthine system of elevator shafts, a bell clanged as the other elevators stopped. Then another. In the shafts, someone’s voice echoed, “...not again.”
Enough light leaked in to let Ingram know his fellow passenger remained anchored to the center of the compartment.
“Ahhh,” went the operator.
At first Ingram thought he’d lost control; that it was his own voice that had betrayed him.
“Ahhh, God, “ moaned the kid at the control panel.
Ingram was too busy gulping and fighting with his stomach to add anything.
The lights flashed on and the elevator jerked up. Then the power went off once again plunging them into darkness. Ingram slid to the corner, and loosened his tie. Suddenly, it seemed hot and close and he wished he were back in the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Company on San Francisco Bay. Squeezing his eyes shut, he mustered every bit of conscious energy to conquer his digestive tract’s demands. He didn’t have to bother with claustrophobia.
“Ahhh, please.” The sailor jabbed at the emergency button, the bell having the same urgent, shrill ring that Ingram had heard so long ago in Echo, a little railroading town in Northeastern Oregon. He’d gone from the first to the twelfth grade in the same building where class size never exceeded five.
“Jesus...” The kid wheezed and began punching an urgent dit-dit-dit, dah-dah-dah, dit-dit-dit--SOS. Other elevator bells chimed in, their passengers shouting and banging on the compartment walls.
Ingram suppressed a belch, forcing himself to think of the whitecaps and sea gulls he’d seen on the bay this morning. He wondered if easing his belt a notch would help and reached to do it just as the kid blasted his SOS again.
Then the kid began punching out a series of dots and dashes. It was fast but Ingram caught some of it: ...I...H-A-T-E...T-H-I-S...C-H-I-C-K-E-N-S-H-I-T...J-O-B...W-H-Y...C-A-N-T...
A CODE FOR TOMORROW: A Ingram Novel (The Todd Ingram Series Book 2) Page 3