by Peter Watt
‘What does that mean?’ she asked.
‘I do not know,’ the sailor replied, not looking her in the eye. ‘I pray you safe.’
Ilsa shuddered. It sounded as though where she was being sent was even worse than the steel coffin she was in now.
Two more days passed and then the sub’s brutal commander came for her. She was hoisted to her feet and dragged to the hatchway opening onto the deck. It was then that she saw the American colonel for the first time since their captivity, and noticed with horror that he had been severely beaten about the face and body. He was stripped to his pants and his pale chest was covered in livid bruises and burn marks.
Ilsa was forced up to the deck first and, despite her fear, she revelled in the sudden exposure to the fresh air of a tropical night. The sailors escorting her poked at her with rifles to climb aboard a native canoe and, even under the dim moonlight, she could see that it was manned by four soldiers wearing the uniform of Japanese Special Landing Forces. She had been schooled in recognising Japanese uniforms and insignia before leaving the USA and from what she knew of these men, they were as good as her own country’s marines.
The colonel was lowered into the canoe and the Japanese marines pushed away from the hull of the sub. When Ilsa twisted around to look at the colonel, she saw that his head was slumped and he was almost unconscious. She could also see that the sub was already making its way back to the open sea. By now she could smell the fetid scent of rotting vegetation wafting from the shoreline. She felt a rush of terror for what lay ahead. Thoughts of escape did not enter her mind, as she did not know where on earth she was. Were they rowing to an island or to the mainland? Where in the hell of the Pacific were they?
The boat beached on a strip of sand lapped by tiny waves and Ilsa was forced to step into the shallows. Warmish water lapped around her knees as she waded ashore, to be confronted by two shadowy figures.
‘You are Miss Ilsa Stahl?’ one of the figures asked in fluent English.
‘I am,’ she replied as the American colonel was forced to his knees beside her.
‘And you are Colonel Ira Hazelton?’
The colonel grunted and Ilsa realised that until now she had not known his name.
‘I am Petty Officer First Class Fuji Komine and I will interpret on behalf of Lieutenant Yoshi of the Imperial Navy. Do not think of escape – you will be caught and severely punished. However, if you are obedient, you will be well looked after while you are a prisoner of the Emperor.’
Ilsa looked to the officer standing beside Fuji and, even in the dark, she sensed that this might not be so. She and the American colonel were marched off the beach into the jungle, along a winding track to a village. There, she was forced into a cage made from bamboo; Hazelton into another a few feet away, whilst a guard with a bayonet-tipped rifle stood by on watch. Ilsa wanted to cry in her despair but would not allow herself the luxury. It was obvious that her stepfather had been a man of importance to Hitler’s regime. Ilsa had only been a very young girl when her family defected from Germany and the machinations of Nazi politics were beyond her. Her stepfather deliberately shielded her from his world of intelligence intrigue but after his death she was able to put some of the pieces together. When she asked a friend in the FBI why he was important to the Americans, she had been quickly informed that the information was classified – even from her. All that Ilsa could glean was that her stepfather had been in a position close to the German leader and knew much about the infrastructure of the Third Reich; she had a new life as an American citizen and had put all that behind her in her pursuit of her journalistic career. Ilsa expected that the Japanese would eventually hand her over to the Gestapo for interrogation. She was aware of what interrogation meant in the hands of the dreaded German security police and knew that the best she could hope for was a quick death before they got their hands on her. She considered suicide but a tiny flame of hope still flickered. She was alive at least, and in far better condition than the colonel in the cage next to her.
So far she had not seen any of the local villagers from the surrounding huts and wondered if they were still alive, but when the morning dawned she woke from a fitful sleep to look up into the face of a cluster of curious wide-eyed children watching her. The youngest of them stood naked with thumbs in mouths, just staring, and Ilsa guessed that they had never seen a white woman before. She felt suddenly self-conscious, as she knew she must look terrible in her torn and frayed trousers and shirt. She had not bathed since leaving the last American air base and was losing track of time – had it been a week, a month?
The Japanese man who had identified himself as the interpreter appeared and spoke to the guard, who opened the cage. Fuji had a bowl containing a gruel of rice and fatty pork pieces. It stank, but Ilsa took it gratefully.
‘You may come out and stretch your legs, Miss Stahl,’ he said. ‘No doubt you will wish to avail yourself of some privacy.’
Ilsa nodded her head, biting into the cold, greasy pork pieces. Like the radioman on the enemy submarine, this man seemed sympathetic to her condition. She had always been told that the Japanese were devils incapable of humane treatment of prisoners; but, in her short time incarcerated, two of them had proven otherwise.
When she glanced over, she could see that a guard was furnishing the colonel with a similar meal. He was propped against the back of his makeshift prison, eating with feeble motions, and did not look at her.
The Japanese interpreter – Fuji, that was his name, Ilsa remembered now – sat on a log, pistol on his hip, watching her eat in silence. When she had finished, she wiped her fingers on her trousers and he took her to a bush latrine; when she had finished, he returned her to the cage and left her without a word.
Later in the day, two armed guards dragged the colonel from his cage and into a building at the end of the open space in the centre of the village, now alive with people, pigs and mangy dogs. None of the villagers dared come close, although they stared at her from a distance. However, it was not only the villagers who watched her.
From the edges of the jungle, a patrol of PIB soldiers lay in the scrub, watching the village. They had noted the captives and duly scrawled down the sighting. There were only three soldiers in the patrol, so they were not in any position to attempt an attack on the enemy, and they moved on at nightfall.
Ilsa huddled with her knees under her chin and tried to blot out the screams coming from the far end of the village. She knew that the enemy were torturing the American officer and wondered if she would be next.
Ilsa broke down then and sobbed quietly – lest her guard hear her despair.
*
Captain Clark Nixon bridled at waiting for a new bomber and replacement crew. While waiting he had been assigned to the operations room at the Moresby airfield, used mostly by the RAAF but also as a transit base for American crews. At least his temporary posting put him in a position to see the bigger picture of air operations in the region.
Armed with a mug of coffee and a cigarette, Clark slumped into a deckchair in the operations hut and began to skim through the daily situational reports of air ops. His mug froze an inch from his mouth when he saw a name on a search and rescue report for a downed transport Douglas: Ilsa Stahl, war correspondent.
Clark felt sick. The report referred to a search carried out a week earlier. She had mentioned that she was attempting to catch a flight to Port Moresby to meet him.
‘Captain Nixon, you all right?’ the clerk asked, entering the office with a mug of coffee and observing his superior officer’s ashen expression and trembling hands. Clark did not respond. ‘You got a touch of fever?’ the clerk persisted.
‘No, Corporal,’ Clark finally answered, dragging his eyes from the terrible words that had burned their message into his brain – Missing In Action. ‘I’m okay.’
A jumble of thoughts filled his head. MIA – not confirmed dead. There was hope in that, wasn’t there? After all, he had been listed MIA and was now safe. H
e tried to order his thoughts, to think through this logically. Where had the aircraft last been sighted? The coordinates of the search area took in a large region, and Clark stood up and walked over to a large map on the wall, tracing the latitudes and longitudes he had lifted from the report. He knew this was a region still considered hostile and he hoped that they had made it to an island or even to the mainland. But he felt his hopes crash when he recalled that the search mission had not spotted any rafts in the now calm seas.
He returned to his chair and buried his face in his hands. His tears were silent but his broad shoulders heaved with his weeping, and the corporal, seeing the captain’s distress, quietly backed from the room and left him to his grief.
EIGHT
Stunned, Jack Kelly sat at his desk, scattered with reports and aerial photos.
The overhead fan turned slowly, barely moving the air in the tiny room, as Captain Clark Nixon waited for the Australian to respond.
‘Ilsa,’ Jack said finally. The American pilot had explained how Ilsa had told him in her letters that Jack was her father and that she hoped to meet him again soon. Jack had hardly been able to take in what Nixon was telling him. ‘And her flight went down off the northern coast?’
‘I only found out this morning myself,’ Clark said. ‘I felt you had a right to know.’
Jack shook his head, still reeling from the news. How ironic that he had unknowingly saved his daughter’s boyfriend from the Japanese, and now she herself was missing.
‘Bloody hell!’ Jack suddenly said, leaping to his feet and reaching for a clipboard of field reports. ‘There was a report from one of our PIB recon patrols yesterday of a European woman and unidentified male taken prisoner by the Japs up on the northern coast. They reported that the woman they’d seen was relatively well nourished – what are the chances of that if she’d been a prisoner for long?’
‘Where did the patrol position the prisoners?’ Clark asked, walking over to a large-scale map of New Guinea and the surrounding islands.
Jack scanned the typed report and read off the coordinates. Clark traced the latitude and longitude with his finger, to settle on a spot on the coast. He shook his head.
‘It is a long way from where her plane was reported missing,’ he said in a dejected tone. ‘Maybe there’s some other European woman the Japs have as a captive. The bastards could have taken her from some POW camp for their own amusement. Why didn’t your boys attempt a rescue?’
‘They didn’t have the numbers, so they fell back and made the report. Our boys will put together a fighting patrol and go in some time soon.’
‘If the woman is Ilsa, isn’t there anything more we can do?’ Clark asked, sounding desperate. ‘That part of the coast is under Aussie control.’
‘Regardless of who the woman is, our boys will attempt a rescue,’ Jack answered calmly. ‘But your MacArthur has a policy of detouring past small detachments of Japs. So we’ll have to make do with the meagre forces we have, and it could take a while to muster enough men to go after the Nips.’
‘If you were certain it was Ilsa,’ Clark said quietly, ‘would you pull out every stop to rescue her?’
‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘I’m her father. But I’ll do the very best I can, whoever this woman is.’
The two men looked at each other. ‘You know,’ Clark said, ‘you could be my father-in-law. A goddamned Aussie.’
Jack smiled at the thought. ‘Don’t worry, Yank,’ he said, mustering all his bravado, ‘I don’t believe Ilsa is dead – she has Kelly blood, and it takes more than the Japanese navy and army to kill a Kelly. If she’s out there I will personally get her back for the wedding.’
The American officer thrust out his hand. ‘Thanks . . . Jack,’ he said, dropping all military formality of rank. ‘You give me hope – because I have seen you in action.’
Jack gripped the American’s hand. ‘I have friends in sig-int,’ he said. ‘Maybe they have something we can work from.’
Clark frowned. ‘Those signal intelligence people are a secretive lot, but if anyone can get information out of them, Jack Kelly can. Now,’ he said, replacing his cap, ‘I have to return to base. I am due for a new crate tomorrow and new crew. It is back to the war for me but I will make sure I am in regular contact in case anything develops. Keep me posted.’
‘I promise I will,’ Jack said, returning to his desk to find his little black book of names and military positions. ‘I promise you that we’ll get her back.’ Despite all logical arguments about the odds of his estranged daughter still being alive, Jack dismissed any doubts, with the paternal and unshakeable logic that no harm could come to his daughter. He, after all, was her father and the powers above gave him the right to live in confident hope that he would find her.
When Captain Clark Nixon had left the office, Jack sat staring at the wall. He slid open a drawer and pulled out a cherished photograph. It had been taken by Ilsa’s photographer the one time they had met. Ilsa looked so much like her mother that it could have been Jack and Erika in the photo; even so, there was a stiff formality in the poses of both father and daughter that indicated they were virtual strangers.
Jack remembered how wild and unpredictable Erika had been. The young and beautiful sister of his best friend, Paul Mann, she had been obsessed with a former German army corporal she had met in his early days of street oratory – Adolf Hitler. He had dined with the Mann family and his passion to restore Germany’s greatness had inflamed Erika’s own vision of her country’s future. Erika had deserted Jack when she was pregnant by him with Ilsa.
Jack stared at the photograph for some time, then put it back in the drawer and walked out of the office.
*
‘Bloody hell, Jack,’ the signals corps sergeant moaned. ‘You know I can’t tell you what we decode.’
Jack had found an old gold-prospecting colleague who had been enlisted into the signals corp. Since his posting to the Port Moresby HQ, Jack had swapped stories and beers with the signals corps sergeant in their mess and had never once pried into his old friend’s work – until now. The two men were drinking beer in the mess, an old building set up not far from where they both worked. It was virtually empty, which was what Jack wanted.
‘What if you suspected that your daughter was being held a prisoner by the Japs up north?’ Jack asked, sipping his beer. ‘Wouldn’t you tell someone who might be in a position to do something?’
‘Okay, Jack, I get your point,’ the signals sergeant sighed. ‘We did happen to decode some transmissions from a Jap post up north, but I doubt that any Yank woman called Ilsa Stahl could be related to you.’
At the mention of his daughter’s name, Jack almost dropped his glass. He reached out and gripped his friend’s arm. ‘You’re sure the name you had was Ilsa Stahl?’ he asked, startling the other man.
‘I’m sure,’ the sergeant answered, staring at Jack with some surprise at the intensity in his friend’s eyes. ‘I was on duty when the sig was decoded. It seems the Japs want her to be transported to Singapore. That’s all we know – except that earlier we intercepted a message from a Jap sub saying it was bringing her and a Yank colonel to the post for safekeeping until the woman was picked up. She must be of some importance for the Japs because they’re sending a sub to fetch her, and we hope to provide a RAAF welcoming party when the sub arrives.’
Jack swallowed the rest of his beer and slammed some coins on the bar to pay for the next round of drinks. ‘Thanks, cobber, I owe you one,’ he said. ‘Matter of fact, I’ll make sure you get a case of the best Scotch I can find, if what you tell me pans out.’
Jack hurried back to his office. There was a lot of work to be done, and most of it would not be strictly in compliance with the regulations of the Australian Army and Navy. Jack was acutely aware that he would have to rely on the loyalty of a lot of people if he were going to ask them to risk their careers and, in some cases, even their lives to help him rescue his daughter.
Jack rubbed
his face and sighed. He would need transport, a force of soldiers and a plan to extract Ilsa and the other prisoner without them all being executed in the process. Jack doubted that he would receive official help in his mission; the Allied forces had already moved north of New Guinea in the quest to conquer the Japanese and this operation would be considered little more than a waste of resources. No, if he were to make an attempt, it would have to be with the help of friends, and one or two sympathetic officers in the PIB.
Jack stood up and walked to a safe that held the names and locations of the coastwatchers. It was an extremely sensitive system of files, due to the covert nature of the courageous men serving behind enemy lines and reporting on their movements at sea.
He dialled the combination he had committed to memory and removed a file covering the region where Ilsa had been sighted. He found a name of a coastwatcher working fifty miles from the location the PIB patrol had given. The coastwatcher should be able to provide a safe landing place for an amphibious assault, Jack mused. As for a craft to take a force in for a landing, he knew who would provide that. Lukas had already left Moresby for a supply run to the northern coast and, with any luck, could be contacted when the Riverside broadcast a sitrep.
Now all he needed was a force of tough, experienced soldiers to assist him. Corporal Gari and his section came immediately to mind. The last he had heard was the PIB NCO was still in the north and that his recommendation for the Distinguished Conduct Medal had been approved.
With the help of the coastwatcher, Lukas and Corporal Gari, Jack was sure he could pull off a rescue. All he needed now was to get permission to go north and join them.
Jack knocked on the door of Major Bill Travers’s office, gave his smartest salute and walked in without waiting for permission.
‘Sit down, Jack, and tell me what you want,’ the major said wearily, placing his fountain pen on the desk.
‘What makes you think I want anything, Bill?’ Jack frowned.