The Preserve

by Steve Anderson

  OTHER NOVELS BY STEVE ANDERSON

  The Losing Role (Kaspar Brothers #1)

  Liberated: A Novel of Germany, 1945 (Kaspar Brothers #2)

  Lost Kin: A Novel (Kaspar Brothers #3)

  Under False Flags: A Novel

  The Other Oregon: A Thriller

  Rain Down: A Crime Novella

  Copyright © 2019 by Steve Anderson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  First Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or info@skyhorsepublishing.com.

  Skyhorse® and Skyhorse Publishing® are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.

  Visit the author at www.stephenfanderson.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019945270

  Jacket design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt

  Jacket photograph: iStockphoto

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-4209-3

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-4210-9

  Printed in the United States of America.

  CONTENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  26.

  27.

  28.

  29.

  30.

  31.

  32.

  33.

  34.

  35.

  36.

  37.

  38.

  39.

  40.

  41.

  42.

  43.

  44.

  45.

  46.

  47.

  48.

  EPILOGUE

  AFTERWORD

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Before and during World War II, the Imperial Japanese conquered and subjugated Asia without mercy. They also plundered it. It is said that the Japanese military even enlisted yakuza gangsters to help move vast stocks of gold and riches to occupied islands such as the Philippines, where the spoils were stored in secret caverns.

  After the bloody and chaotic Pacific War, US General Douglas MacArthur reigned as Supreme Commander of all Asia from his exalted HQ in Tokyo. “Never before in the history of the United States had such enormous and absolute power been placed in the hands of a single individual,” said William Sebald, the postwar ambassador to Japan.

  MacArthur would also inherit that secret mother lode of plundered fortune.

  This is where our story begins.

  The gambit was now set. The generalissimo and soon other cunning operators would maneuver to exploit the undisclosed spoils for their clandestine special projects, using dogma and deceit, the flag and anti-Communism as their sharply honed instruments.

  And in 1948, with MacArthur at peak strength and popularity, it was also the perfect opportunity for certain powerful interests back home, from America’s castles of industry and finance and inevitably Washington, DC, to co-opt the whole enterprise for a devious plot. If successful, the bold move would block the march of progress and restore their ambitions of greatness, profit, and total authority once and for all.

  To prevail, all they needed was a desperate fall guy.

  1.

  Wendell Lett had tried to catch up on his sleep but only ended up in another nightmare episode. He had been crying and gasping and he might’ve shouted something, his throat raw, his eyeballs stinging. Hopefully no one heard him.

  He sat up on his bed. The breeze from the ceiling fan, its wicker blades driven by a belt, led him to see the bouquet on the dresser, yellow hibiscus. He breathed in its sweet, fresh scent.

  For a troubled war veteran, a room all to one’s self could be the harshest prison. Lett’s combat fatigue hounded him from the war, unrelenting, damning him. But he figured there was hope for him yet. They had offered him a cure, so of course he’d taken the deal. The alternative, an Army stockade, would only accelerate his deadly affliction.

  They had sent him to the US Territory of Hawaii. He was on the Big Island, rugged and volcanic and remote—on the map he’d seen that the other Hawaiian isles could easily fit inside the Big Island, including Oahu. As his eyes adjusted to the dim afternoon light, he saw that the leis and coconuts on the curtains matched the bedspread. The wall calendar promoting Dole Pineapple Juice was open to February 1948. If only he had some of that nectar to wash away the rum on his tongue, stale and slathered on like rubber cement. The bottle on the nightstand read, Tanduay Rhum, Manila, Philippines. It came from the Far East. Or was that now the West from here?

  He’d been here two days. They’d sent him two continents away from rural Belgium, where he was living with his wife, Heloise, and their toddler, Holger Thomas. His sickness was destroying him, his family, and her love for him. He had to do something, anything—so he had.

  They’d given him three days’ leave before he was to hold up his end of the deal. Tomorrow, he was to report to a classified facility south of here code-named The Preserve, where they would hold up their end. They had him on a short leash, sure they did. Yet his billet was pleasant. The vast two-story house had untold bedrooms and multiple bathrooms and a second stairway for the help, surely once a home of the landowning class, but like many residences here it also had a metal roof and mismatched black lava stones for a foundation. It stood inside a grove of scraggly trees right on the ocean, edging the black rocks along the surf. A short stroll north up the main road was the town of Kailua, which locals simply called Kona Town, as it was the hub of the Kona Coast. Kona Town had the fancy Kona Inn with its peaked red roofs and groomed lawns, where all the officers drank and touring big shots stayed. But the pale man in plain clothes who had met Lett at the steamer dock two days ago advised him to stay away from town, which was fine with Lett, especially with the storms that had come and gone and might come again.

  The thought of more stormy weather and a short leash made him reach for that bottle of Filipino rum, but it was empty. He so missed Heloise, her knowing fortitude. He missed his boy with his light bulb of a forehead and smile that came at the oddest times, just when he needed it.

  Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough. Luckily his billet had its own bar, just downstairs. He wasn’t supposed to discuss his posting, let alone his cure, but someone in the know might be willing to chat, maybe a duty officer just off shift. He sat on the edge of the bed and buttoned up the shirt of the summer service uniform they’d issued him, his only possession here apart from toiletries and his classified travel passes. The last rank he wore
up on the line back in 1944 was sergeant. Here they’d issued him no stripes, no insignia at all. Such was the deal. He stood and found his new brown GI shoes he’d kicked off, stepped into them, and made for the door.

  The bar was in a corner of the house, replacing what had likely been a prosperous man’s den. It opened out to the broad rear porch via big folding louvered doors. A sign read, OFF LIMITS. The bar seemed only to serve those staying at the billet, mostly men wearing anything from khaki to civvies to aloha shirts. Lett assumed that all of them had something to do with The Preserve, because none wore insignia or had to show a pass or give a name. He shuffled into the compact main room. It was dead at this hour, no tables occupied. The warbles of a ukulele tune flowed from a radio behind the bar. Japanese war prizes such as rising sun flags and officer swords hung on the walls, and glossy little Asian idols stood next to the bottles of whisky and rye and more of that Filipino rum. The decor was exotic to Lett but not surprising, since the liberated Philippine Islands and defeated Japan were the big ports of call across the vast Pacific. This half of the earth was now ruled by General Douglas MacArthur from his HQ in Tokyo—Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in the Pacific. Every newspaper Lett saw here had MacArthur on the front page daily. That alone was another universe compared to Allied-occupied Europe.

  He made straight for that open porch facing the sea, what they called a lanai here, and plopped down on a low bamboo stool with a little matching table, off on his own, facing those scraggly trees on either side and a couple palms for show, and that jagged black lava rock that lay everywhere, not surprising since the Big Island provided the bedrock for its two massive volcanoes. At first Lett was surprised to discover that there was no beach. The water washed right up onto that black rock that had been there so long a whole species of small black crabs had developed to match. He liked to peer out and spot them but couldn’t find any today. It was this no-good weather. The midday heat had dispersed, replaced by dense layers of more dark clouds pushing in from the sea.

  The barman waddled out, a tubby Polynesian fellow. Lett ordered a double rye on the rocks and waited.

  A crash made him start. It was the ocean. Crashing waves were more than enough to trigger one of his episodes, though it could be anything, anyone. His ghosts roamed everywhere. They infiltrated all, twisting time like an old rope, the stray filaments falling away.

  He eyed the waves out there darkening and rising, the cool breeze chilling his sweat. He needed that drink, now. He started shaking and oscillating inside, starting from low in his gut. So he hunkered down on his stool, pressing his tightening ass onto it, and peered around to make sure no one was onto him. Still the barman hadn’t come. His right leg started hammering up and down like a telegraph key sounding out a desperate plea. He pressed his hand on it, and when that didn’t work, his tight fist.

  Thundering sounds found him from the distance, and the shrieks of sea birds were like screams inside his head.

  The barman set down Lett’s drink on the edge of the table, keeping a wider berth this time. Lett sucked it back in one gulp, shouted for another. The rush of booze helped a moment. He wiped sweat from his eye sockets and glared at the horizon, at the sea rising and falling like mountains breaking apart.

  The thundering screaming in his head became trees exploding from the top down. It was the Ardennes Forest. It was the Battle of the Bulge all over again. He could smell the damp tree sap, the metallic air, the fresh splitting wood, the blood.

  Every electric impulse inside him told him to hit the deck, to press his body to the floor and pull on his helmet, but he didn’t have a head cover. “I’m done for, finished,” he muttered. He needed better cover, a good hole sheltered with logs. This old house was going to come right down on top of him when the artillery shells came whizzing in.

  Where was that second drink? No one came. He kept his trembling hand out for another, held on tight to the table with the other hand. Still no one came.

  The hot metal ripped trees and men to shreds and those human shreds did worse to other men. Lett groaned. “Oh, God, no . . .”

  ***

  Sometime later, a hand was holding Lett’s. He wasn’t sure for how long. The hand was warm. It was soft. It placed his now calm hand back onto his lap.

  His eyes found her.

  A young woman stood before him holding his rye, smiling. She placed it in the dead center of the little table like hitting a bull’s-eye. Something about the precision of that helped bring him back even more.

  “Thanks,” he muttered and sat up, staring at her. She was local, or at least Hawaiian. He’d seen her here before. He added a smile for her.

  “You had the rye, yeah?” she said and sauntered off, her low hips swaying. Lett watched her go. She had dark skin with faint pockmarks on her cheeks, narrow oval eyes, and long black hair swinging loose. At first glance she looked more Polynesian given her browned curves, but her individual features were sharper, as if Japanese. It depended on the angle. She could’ve pulled off a kimono or a grass skirt, but she was wearing a utilitarian dress of mauve, a little pocket on one breast, a bigger pocket on a hip, with a built-in belt.

  A flash of shame shot through him. If Heloise saw him eyeing a girl like this, she would whack him so hard he could only hope he had a head cover. He sipped at his second rye and tried to relax. He exhaled and stretched out his legs and rested a heel on the other stool. The waves still rumbled out there and the sky dimmed the light between the trees, but maybe he was going to ride this out after all.

  The local girl was now sitting at the bar. She gave him a sidelong look. She came back over with a drink.

  “I’ll just nurse this one I have,” Lett said, “but thanks.”

  “Eh? Look here, bub, I’m not the help.”

  “No? Oh, but I . . .” The barman was gone, the bar unmanned. The drink was hers. “My mistake, sorry.”

  Her lips made a sound like a balloon letting out. “Forget it. Happens all the time to us locals.”

  “What happened to our barman? He scared of a little weather?”

  She chuckled. “He scared of you—he won’t come out of the back. He almost called the MPs. But ‘calm down,’ I told him, said that you’re okay. You okay, yeah?”

  “I am. Thank you. Would you like a seat?” Lett lowered his heel from the stool.

  She looked around, then shrugged and sat with him, setting out a pack of Chesterfields and a shiny lighter Lett couldn’t take his eyes off. It was gold and etched with Chinese characters and a snakelike dragon spitting fire. He didn’t even smoke but it made him want to light up.

  “Snazzy lighter,” he said.

  She looked around again, stretching her proportionally thick and yet somehow petite neck. “Mahalo.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “Honolulu.” Her fingertips neared the lighter.

  “Chinatown?”

  “Something like that.”

  “From China, though?” Lett said. “Originally, I mean.”

  “From a friend.” She shook her head and finally lit up a cigarette. “You know what, army guy? Maybe you not so lolo after all.”

  “Lolo?”

  “Crazy man. But possessed, like. That’s what barman says. Me, I think otherwise. Plenty mainland haoles, they don’t notice details like you.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. So, is your friend in Chinatown?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Some haoles, maybe they ask too many questions.”

  “Oh. Okay, fair enough.”

  They sipped. She stared out at the stormy water. She stole another sidelong glance at him.

  He wondered what she saw. When he made his deal to come here, the men in new suits who arranged it had showed him two photos. He hardly recognized himself in either. In one, he was twenty-one with a soft face with curly hair clinging to his forehead despite his somewhat squared head and jaw. He hadn’t yet seen combat. The second photo was recent, and though he was still only twenty-fiv
e, his face was skewed and screwed up as if he’d been holding his breath far too long. It might as well have been taken in a funhouse mirror.

  She said, “You saw plenty bad things in the war, yeah?”

  “Guilty,” he said.

  “I seen you around here,” she said.

  “I’ve seen you, too.”

  She smiled. “Kanani is the name.”

  “I know—I mean, I heard it around here before.” Lett repeated it anyway: “Ka-na-ni.”

  She smiled wider.

  “My name is Wendell,” he told her. “Wendell Lett.”

  “Wendell? Ho, I like that name plenty.” She waved a hand, inexplicably. “Where you from, Wendell Lett?”

  He’d just told her his name, so why not where he came from? He’d be sure not to mention The Preserve. “Ohio, originally. But I was an orphan.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Forget it. All in the past.” He didn’t add that his parents were long dead: his mother a basket case from overwork and dear old dad an alcoholic. He wasn’t sure how much more to tell her about his purpose here, as the pale man who met him at the steamer dock already warned him. Other facts were plenty damning. He had deserted during the war, though he wasn’t ashamed of it. He’d served on the front lines more than honorably, yet they pushed him to the point of cracking. The Preserve would keep him away from the possibility of a life sentence in military jail or worse. He wasn’t sure what duty would come after they cured him, and they weren’t telling. Though it was conceivable they would have him serve as some sort of clandestine instructor—that or they might want to interview him in depth about his experiences. He had kept assuring himself of this.

  “I meant, what base you come from?” she said.

  She was facing him, closer now, and Lett smelled the red plumeria in her hair. A breeze blew in and he could smell her too, clean and fresh like that flower just plucked, dew still on it.

  “I, uh, came from the European Theater,” was all he said.

  A boom rattled the bar, and another.

  Lett started.

  It was those waves again. Then the rain came, lashing like gravel on metal, like tank tracks squealing. The wind hurled the rain around, and foaming surf smashed at the black rocks.