The Pacific

by Peter Watt

  ‘Are you a reinforcement?’ she asked, to distract the soldier from his fear.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he replied, backing away from the body.

  The aircraft was flung sideways then and the soldier toppled onto Ilsa, staining them both with the blood of the dead man. When Ilsa disentangled herself from the soldier, she noticed that there was an eerie orange glow inside the aircraft. She glanced out through a starboard porthole. One of the engines was on fire and trailing a plume of flames.

  ‘God in heaven,’ she groaned. They were surely going to crash into the Solomon Sea.

  *

  Lukas Kelly had returned to Port Moresby just ahead of the tropical storm. His mission to supply Milne Bay had gone off without any trouble and the old boat had performed well in the increasingly stormy waters.

  Cruising into the harbour through the warships and transports, Lukas strained to see whether he recognised anyone standing on the wharf amongst the bustle of sweating workers unloading ships. He could see no sign of Megan and felt a twinge of disappointment. Then he caught sight of a familiar figure – what was his father doing here?

  Lukas found a spot vacated by an old cargo ship and expertly brought the Riverside into the wharf. The Papuan crew leaped nimbly to the wharf to secure the lines, and Lukas cut the engine while Mel Jones stood on the deck, eying the ships in the harbour.

  ‘Hello, Dad,’ Lukas said, smiling up at his father. ‘I’m surprised to see you here. I thought you would be up north with the boys.’

  Jack held out his hand and helped his son onto the wharf. ‘The army says I’m too old to go out with the boys, so I’m attached to our intelligence section here. Going cross-eyed staring at aerial photos and drinking too much grog. How have you been?’

  ‘Good. Nothing much to report, although we just missed a bad storm near Milne Bay,’ Lukas replied, walking with his father through the mass of half-naked bodies unloading the ships. Cranes lifted cargo nets from the ships’ holds to the wharf, where native workers and servicemen worked side by side to sort and load waiting lorries. ‘Have you seen Megan lately?’

  An odd look crossed Jack’s face. ‘She didn’t have a chance to tell you,’ he replied, ‘but yesterday Megan was posted up north with her RAAF nursing detachment. She was only able to give me a quick call to say where she was going and to ask me to pass on the news to you.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Lukas exclaimed. ‘That’ll put her closer to the front.’

  ‘She’ll be okay,’ Jack reassured him. ‘There are very few reports of the Nips being active where she’s going. She’ll be in a rear-echelon area.’

  Lukas shook his head but trusted his father’s assessment. After all, working with intelligence meant he had access to the latest news on the enemy.

  Jack’s face broke into a broad grin. ‘I know Megan is not here to meet you but, by chance, I found some big bastard wandering around HQ yesterday, looking a bit lost. I left him at the pub and he said he thinks it’s his turn to shout.’

  Lukas looked at his father in bemusement. ‘Who in bloody hell could that be?’ he asked.

  ‘Wait and see,’ said Jack mischievously.

  *

  In the crowded bar of the hotel, Lukas found himself face to face with Major Karl Mann. The two men had to blink back the tears as they embraced each other in a great bear hug and then stood back to assess how the war years had changed them both.

  ‘You old bastard, what in hell are you doing here?’ Lukas asked, reaching for a bottle of beer.

  ‘Just passing through,’ Karl said, reaching for his own beer. ‘I bumped into Uncle Jack yesterday at PIB HQ. It seems that someone has had enough sense to keep him away from the fighting.’

  ‘Not my bloody decision,’ Jack growled. ‘Why should younger people have all the fun of dying for King and Country?’

  ‘How long are you going to be with us?’ Lukas asked.

  ‘Not sure,’ Karl replied. ‘I’m supposed to be somewhere north of here but the army changed its mind at the last moment, and so I am here with you two reprobates to catch up on some drinking.’

  As night descended, the rowdy patrons were evicted from the hotel and the three men staggered back to Lukas’s boat, where he kept a small stash of alcohol. The boat was temporarily deserted, so the three men sat down on the deck under a star-filled night and passed the bottle between themselves.

  ‘Got to show you something,’ Lukas said, staggering to his feet and reeling off towards the cabin. Jack and Karl listened hazily as Lukas crashed around in the cabin, returning minutes later, gripping a tiny box. He flopped down awkwardly and passed the box to Karl, who opened it to see the tiny flash of a gemstone catching in the feeble moonlight.

  ‘Giving this to Megan when I see her next,’ Lukas said, reaching for the bottle passed to him by his father. ‘I got it sent up from Sydney from a mate in the business. Reckon she’ll like it?’ The worst-kept secret amongst the tight-knit group of Papuan hands and old timers was Lukas Kelly and Megan’s romance. There was simply a presumption that they were already engaged to be married, and many of Jack’s friends would kid him that he was not far off becoming a grandfather.

  ‘She’ll like the ring – but I don’t know about the bloke giving it to her,’ Karl grinned.

  ‘Yeah, you stupid galoot, what would a square-headed Hun know about romance?’ Lukas slurred. ‘You still seeing that French sheila?’

  Karl ceased smiling and stared across the bay. ‘She met another bloke and married him,’ he answered finally, taking a long swig from the bottle Lukas handed to him. ‘A bloody civil servant. He was a bloke we went to school with.’

  Lukas reached over to put his arm around Karl’s shoulders. ‘Sorry, cobber. Her loss.’

  The men passed the bottle around in silence.

  ‘Are you going back to being a kiap when the war is over?’ Jack asked eventually.

  ‘I think so,’ Karl answered. ‘But I have to survive until then.’

  ‘You going on a dangerous mission, son?’ Jack said with concern.

  ‘Yes. Wish I could tell you what it’s about but I don’t have much of an idea myself,’ Karl answered sadly. ‘All I know is this damned war is going to drag on as long as the Nips are prepared to die to the last man for their bloody emperor. Our kids will end up fighting this war, the rate things are going.’

  The three men eventually fell asleep on the deck and, just before first light, awoke with the worst hangovers any of them could remember having had for a long time.

  Karl staggered to his feet and looked for a supply of cool drinking water. The harbour was already alive with activity and when he glanced up at the wharf, he saw a smartly turned-out young naval lieutenant, dressed in the uniform of an intelligence officer, gazing down at him with some concern.

  ‘Major Mann,’ he called and Karl rubbed his face; he felt as though hundreds of tiny spiders were crawling across his skin.

  ‘I’m Major Mann,’ he answered, and the lieutenant saluted him.

  ‘Captain Featherstone wishes to see you within the hour,’ the young officer said. ‘I have come to pick you up.’

  Jack and Lukas, both looking as bad as Karl felt, wandered along the deck to see what was going on.

  ‘Who’s Featherstone?’ Jack asked.

  ‘A pommy bastard who spends most of his time trying to get me killed,’ Karl answered, brushing down his dishevelled uniform. ‘I was rather hoping I’d left him behind in Cairns.’

  Jack placed his hand on Karl’s shoulder. ‘You keep your bloody head down,’ he said gently.

  ‘Thanks, Uncle Jack,’ Karl responded and looked away so Jack wouldn’t see his eyes filling with tears. He was not so much afraid of dying as of being killed in some lonely place away from anyone who was important to him. If he died on this mission, these two men who were like family to him would never be told the details, never know where or how he spent his final hours. ‘The same to you and this stupid galah you call a son.’

&
nbsp; Grinning, Lukas lashed out playfully with a snap punch to Karl’s arm. Despite his hangover, Karl was quick and dodged the punch, countering with a block. ‘You’re getting old and slow, Lukas,’ he said as they hugged each other emotionally.

  ‘How did this Featherstone bloke know where you were?’ Jack asked as Karl clambered up onto the wharf.

  ‘The bastard knows everything about me,’ Karl answered. ‘I can’t even take a crap without him knowing what I ate the day before. Well, so long, boys, your shout when I get back.’

  He gave a brief wave, then turned his back and was gone.

  SEVEN

  In the chilly clear blue skies over Berlin the trailing white streaks of the American bombers’ contrails could still be seen. Hauptsturmfuhrer Konrad Herff barely looked up as he entered the shrapnel-scarred building that contained his office. He wore the smart uniform of a Sicherheitsdienst officer under a long black leather coat and carried his briefcase in his hand. His eyes were rheumy with lack of sleep from when the English bombers came in the dark of the night to unleash hell over the country’s capital, and by day the Americans visited to do the same.

  Herff was in his mid-thirties, lean and blond in the image desired by his organisation’s leader, Heinrich Himmler. Herff reported directly to his section leader, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, commander of the Sicherheitsdienst, the security service of the Schutzstaffel, the secret state police known as the SS. Since the latest terrible attempt on the Führer’s life, in July 1944, the Abwehr, the military intelligence department, had been put under the control of the SS, as it had proved to be a breeding ground of traitors. Many of them had died slowly, hanging from wire nooses in grim basements, for their treachery.

  As a captain in Department C of the Ausland division of the SD, in charge of monitoring intelligence primarily from the Russian and Japanese fronts, Herff had read the latest report of Allied prisoners taken by their Japanese allies. One name had jumped out at him as he had sat at his desk, poring over the lists – Ilsa Stahl, American war correspondent. Herff knew that name well, as a predecessor of his in the fledgling SS had defected to the Americans and given away valuable information. Herff knew that the traitor Gerhard Stahl’s daughter had become a journalist for the American press and been spouting anti-Nazi propaganda.

  What had made Fräulein Ilsa Stahl more interesting was that her father had known the esteemed Führer in the early days of his rise through the beer halls and streets of Munich. It was known that Hitler had had a deep hatred for the traitor Stahl and would almost certainly be delighted if the man’s daughter, with her vitriolic editorials against the Nazi party, were eliminated.

  Herff smiled to himself. She was a prisoner of the Japanese, who would, most undoubtedly, hand her over to the SS if requested. A film of the woman twisting at the end of the thin wire would definitely please the Führer, who would see that his loyal SS people could still reach halfway around the world to snatch those who had betrayed the Fatherland. No doubt Herff would be mentioned as the man who had identified her and organised for her to face Nazi justice. Herff would simply inform the Japanese that Ilsa Stahl was wanted for questioning and then await their notification of her whereabouts. From there it was simply a matter of ending her life as slowly and painfully as possible.

  *

  The confines stunk of unwashed bodies, fish and diesel, and sweat glistened on Ilsa’s skin like oil. Her hands were tied tightly behind her back and she kept her eyes lowered under the stare of her guard. There was no throbbing from the engine of the Japanese submarine as it glided beneath calm, tropical waters under power from its electric batteries.

  It was two days since the young American pilot had ditched his cargo plane in the eye of the storm. They had drifted wildly off course and come down in the Bismark Sea. The Douglas had hit the water so violently that it had severed the spinal chord of the young soldier who had been so shocked by the loadmaster’s death, and he had died before the others had even been able to get to him. The survivors had struggled from the disabled plane into a life raft. The raft had carried Ilsa, the colonel, the young pilot and his copilot, as well as the remaining soldier. The colonel had taken immediate command because of his superior rank, and the passengers had watched the black horizon as the storm threatened once again to engulf them.

  Ilsa’s body had ached so much from the impact that she almost hadn’t cared whether they survived the storm. She felt she had survived man’s wrath on the battlefields of Europe only to be killed by nature. It seemed too bitterly ironic.

  She had not been alone in her injuries. The young pilot sustained a severe head wound and the colonel had suffered a broken arm.

  A few hours after being thrown about in the ever more furious seas, a submarine had surfaced nearby.

  ‘It’s a bloody Jap sub,’ the colonel groaned, dashing all hope of rescue. ‘Did you get a mayday off before we crashed?’ he asked the pilot, who nodded. ‘I think the Japs might have intercepted your signal.’

  The terrified survivors watched as the armed Japanese sailors emerged on deck. The submarine closed the distance until it came alongside the raft. One of the Japanese, wearing the insignia of an officer, glared down at them.

  ‘What rank?’ he yelled.

  ‘Colonel, United States Army,’ the colonel answered through gritted teeth. ‘There is also a lieutenant of the United States Air Force and a private first class soldier . . . and the lady is a war correspondent.’

  The Japanese officer seemed satisfied at the answer. ‘You, colonel and lady, come aboard.’

  At his order a couple of submariners reached down to hoist Ilsa and the colonel onto the slippery wet deck of the sub. The colonel screamed as his broken arm was wrenched in the boarding, but his pain did not elicit any sympathy from his captors.

  ‘What about the other three in the raft?’ the colonel gasped, doubled over in agony.

  ‘No use,’ the officer said and then a machine gun broke into an ear-splitting roar. The survivors watched in horror as the bullets ripped into the bodies of the three men left behind in the raft.

  That had been two days earlier, although it seemed a lifetime ago now to Ilsa. She did not moralise over the event – she had heard from soldiers returning from the Pacific fronts that no mercy was asked or given on either side.

  The Japanese officer who had ordered the killing had a limited knowledge of English but his radioman, a young sailor with a kind face, was quite fluent and he conducted the questioning on behalf of the officer.

  When Ilsa provided her full name the radioman said, ‘You have German name.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ she asked, surprised, feeling that this man was not in the same brutal mould as the officer supervising the interrogation.

  ‘I once work with German navy on secondment,’ he answered. ‘Are you German citizen?’

  Ilsa was tempted to say she was, but knew her lie would be hopeless, since she wore the uniform of an American correspondent and carried identification.

  ‘No, but I was born in Germany,’ she replied.

  The radioman turned to his superior and said something in Japanese, and the expression on the officer’s face changed. He leaned forward and delivered a vicious back-handed blow to Ilsa’s face, splitting her lip.

  ‘You traitor,’ he screamed and Ilsa could taste her own blood. ‘I kill you, traitor.’ He grabbed her by the hair but the radioman said something and he relaxed his grip. She sensed that whatever the man had said had saved her life – for the moment, anyway.

  Since then, Ilsa had been left in a stinking corner of the sub’s tiny storeroom. She did not know where they were holding the colonel, or whether he was even still alive. The only time she was allowed out of her confinement was to go to the toilet, and she was fed only a small serving of dried fish and rice each day.

  On the third day the kindly Japanese radioman came to her. He even brought her a supplementary meal of soya beans and rice.

  ‘We know who you are, Miss Stah
l,’ he said, untying her hands so she could eat with her fingers. ‘You are daughter of . . . what you say . . . high-ranking intelligence officer. German officer wants you to be taken to him for further questioning. I am sorry.’

  ‘My father is dead and I know nothing of his work in Germany. What about the other man who came aboard with me?’ Ilsa asked, shovelling the salty food into her mouth with her fingers.

  ‘The American officer is being held forward,’ the radioman answered. ‘He has been treated for broken arm.’

  Ilsa finished the meal, thinking how strange it was to be talking to a man who was her enemy but towards whom she could not help but feel warmth. He looked so young, and not unlike the many soldiers she had met in the course of her work covering the Allied armies.

  She was about to ask him more questions when suddenly the tiny room reverberated with a concussive thump. The radioman leaped to his feet, his face ashen with fear. The thump was followed by another and the submarine heeled to port for a moment. The radioman ran out of the storeroom and disappeared. Clearly a depth charger had been dropped nearby, and the lighting flickered for a moment, then went out. It came on a moment later, more dimly now.

  Fortunately Ilsa’s hands were still untied and she was able to brace herself against the violent reverberations caused by deadly drums of high explosives drifting down on the Japanese vessel. She caught herself praying that they would survive and wondered that her instinct to live could outweigh the wish to see her enemy destroyed. The thought of dying in this enemy coffin filled her with dread.

  Ilsa remained in the storeroom, tins clattering down around her, but the sub appeared to be weathering the underwater barrage. Eventually the barrage lifted and she could hear the muted voices of the crew talking to each other in urgent whispers. Ilsa was ignored for a good few hours until eventually the radioman returned.

  ‘We will not be taking you to Singapore,’ he said, gesturing for her to turn around so he could retie her hands. ‘Submarine take bad damage and captain decide to put you off with our army on coast.’