Black Wind

by F. Paul Wilson

  Matsuo barely heard him.

  Could it be her? Could she be alive?

  After a while he calmed himself with the assurance that Frank Slater could not possibly be married to Meiko—his Meiko. Still, as he opened the file, he felt his entire body break out in a cold sweat.

  He saw the top photo... the face of a Japanese woman. Even through the black-and-white graininess he could see the perfect skin and lips, the almond eyes that spoke to his soul. Matsuo held his breath as he flipped through the other photos. They all confirmed the first.

  Meiko.

  "She's alive!" he cried, leaping up and throwing the folder of photos into the air. "She's alive!"

  He was laughing and crying simultaneously as he hugged the astonished Shigeo who must have thought that his superior had gone completely mad.

  Meiko was alive. On Oahu. Married to Frank Slater.

  He didn't care if she was married to Franklin D. Roosevelt—she was alive. And he didn't care if he had to lie, cheat, falsify reports, or steal a cruiser, one way or another Matsuo would find a way to get to Hawaii and bring her back.

  DECEMBER 2

  TOKYO

  Hiroki sat in the high-ceilinged conference room in the Navy Building and listened to the foreign minister with growing irritation.

  "I have come to learn that we are planning to commence hostilities against America and Britain this weekend," Minister Togo was saying, "but I have not been told where or exactly when."

  Shigenori Togo was being difficult, as usual. It seemed to be his nature. In 1939, as ambassador to Berlin, he had opposed an alliance with Germany and it had been necessary to pull him from that post and send him to Moscow. The pompous little man might be foreign minister, but he had no right to dictate policy to the Supreme Command. He strutted around the meeting room shaking his index finger in the air like a teacher trying to impress some point upon his students. He was especially bold because Premier Tojo was absent.

  "We must beg secrecy on that," Army Chief of Staff Sugiyama replied.

  "You may beg secrecy on the where, but I must know the when in order to prepare a formal declaration of war."

  Nagano, Navy Chief of Staff, said, "But we are planning a surprise attack."

  "Without a formal declaration?" His tone and expression were frankly shocked. "That is contrary to procedures in The Hague Conventions!"

  "We need the element of surprise to guarantee our southern objectives."

  "At the cost of our national honor?"

  He is beginning to sound like Matsuo and Yamamoto, Hiroki thought, but held his tongue for now.

  "It is too late," Admiral Nagano said. "The plans are already set in motion."

  "Then change the plans. I demand a formal notice of termination of negotiations and declaration of war. And I am quite sure the Emperor will feel the same way should I ask him."

  This had gone far enough. Hiroki knew it was time for him to speak.

  "May I have the honor of offering a comment?"

  Foreign Minister Togo nodded. "Of course, Okumo-san. I am most anxious to hear the thoughts of the Empire's first Minister of Military and Economic Coordination."

  Hiroki made a tiny bow. His was a new post with a mandate to see to it that the precious resources in the soon-to-be-conquered territories were put to full use in an efficient, organized manner. It was a sinecure at the moment. His real work would begin with the war.

  "The foreign minister is quite correct," he said. "Japan must act in accordance with The Hague Conventions. A formal declaration will be sent to Washington before a single shot is fired."

  He noted the shocked faces of the members of the High Command with no little amusement.

  "And will you assure me,” Togo said, obviously suspicious, “that there will be an adequate interval between the declaration and the attack?"

  "We will adhere to the very letter of The Hague Conventions."

  Foreign Minister Togo bowed. "Excellent! Excellent!"

  He bowed again and left the room—which erupted with confused and angry murmurs as soon as the doors were closed.

  "Be calm," Hiroki said.

  "I cannot be calm," Nagano cried. "If we follow The Hague Conventions, we must call off the Hawaii raid. We will lose too many aircraft if they are waiting for us."

  "Have any of you read The Hague Conventions?"

  They all hesitated, then shook their heads.

  "Then allow me to inform you: The Conventions prescribe no minimum time interval. We shall give Washington half an hour's notice. The letter of the law will be satisfied but they will not have time to mobilize a defense."

  The members of the High Command smiled and laughed as they clustered around and clapped him on the back. Sake was poured and Hiroki offered the toast that had become his trademark:

  "To the day we have tea in Washington!"

  HONOLULU

  Tuesday started off bad and got steadily worse.

  I was already walking on pins and needles—had been since Thanksgiving when the Navy Department issued a war warning, saying negotiations had broken off and that "an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days."

  The trouble was, nobody seemed to think that Pearl would be the object of the "aggressive move." Everyone seemed convinced that Japan would strike south, at the Philippines. Or maybe at Wake. But definitely not at Hawaii. The following day, Admiral Halsey took his flagship, the carrier Enterprise, to Wake to beef up defenses there.

  CINCPAC's response to the war warning? A Stage One alert. Which meant that security around the base would be tightened against possible enemy sabotage. No more.

  I had spent a very bad weekend watching the harbor fill up with more and more ships as Battleship Row off Ford Island thickened with heavies. We had eighty-odd ships in port—eight big battleships plus the carrier Lexington among them. A tempting target. So when Monday morning came, I was relieved that Pearl was still in one piece, but I was exhausted and frazzled, too.

  Here it was Tuesday and I still hadn't quite recovered from the weekend. I didn't need bad news, but I began getting it almost immediately.

  Pete Jeffries, an ensign from the radio monitoring section, started things on their downhill course by sticking his head into my office.

  "Guess what the Japanese Fleet did yesterday?" His tone was anything but ominous; perturbed, mostly.

  "What now?"

  "They changed all their call signs again."

  "Again? They did that just a month ago."

  "Well, I guess they liked it so much they wanted to do it again." He sighed. "Now we've got to start from scratch figuring out who's talking to who out there."

  "Good luck," I said, and smiled as he waved good-bye.

  But the smile disappeared as soon as he was gone. It was unheard-of for a navy to change the radio call signals of its warships twice in the space of one month. It required a massive amount of red tape and paperwork, and usually caused a day or two of confusion in the warships' own communications. Not something a fleet did without sufficient cause and careful consideration. To change the call signals on November 1, and then again on December 1 had to mean something. But what?

  I worked through lunch translating deciphered lower-level messages from Japan into English. Garbage—nothing but garbage. Here I was, working on worthless conversations that shouldn't even have been ciphered, while the really important stuff—the Purple communiqués—were sailing right past us on the airwaves, to be deciphered and translated in Washington, and then trickled down to us here on Oahu when the Washington office saw fit. For eight months now I had been trying to get a Purple magic machine but it was like butting my head against a stone wall. The Washington office kept telling me it was assessing the situation to see if Fourteenth ONI had sufficient need of Purple magic; every time I called to see what progress had been made, I got the old bureaucratic standby: "We're working on it."

  Harry Thornton was no help. His attitude seemed to be that if God had intend
ed for us to have a Purple magic machine, we'd have one. And why fret? The Washington office would let us know if anything important came through. Besides, not having Purple magic meant that much less for Fourteenth ONI to do.

  Things got worse after lunch when I went to take my turn monitoring our wiretap into the Japanese consulate. I was to relieve Jeff Kaluta, but I found him disassembling all our equipment.

  "What's going on? Something wrong with the tap?"

  He gave me a disgusted look. "Yeah. We don't have one anymore."

  "Oh, hell. How did they catch on?"

  "They didn't." He stepped behind me and closed the door to the room. "It was canceled on our end."

  As I stood there in mute shock, he told me the whole story.

  A linesman from the Mutual Telephone Company had discreetly reported to ONI and to the FBI that he had come across both our wiretaps into the Japanese consulate on Nuuanu Avenue. He hadn't mentioned anything to the Japanese consulate and he wanted to know what we wanted him to do about them. Bob Shivers over at the FBI office in the Federal Building told him not to touch the FBI line and forget about what he had found.

  "But what happened to ours?"

  "That asshole Thornton canceled it!"

  Before I knew exactly where I was going, I was out the door, down to the street, into my car, and headed for Pearl. I took the short route and ignored the scenery. I was in a door-kicking, wall-pounding rage, and I hadn't cooled much by the time I got to Harry's office. But I managed to tuck it out of sight when I walked through the door.

  "Yes, Frank?" he said from behind his cluttered desk. "What's on your mind?"

  "If I may speak plainly: Why the hell did you cancel our wiretap into the Japanese consulate?"

  Thornton's eyebrows rose in surprise. "I should think the reasoning would be obvious. Japanese-American relations are at the rupture point. That linesman is going to talk; word about the tap is going to spread. With all the agents the Japs have on Oahu, how long do you think it'll be before they know they're tapped? That might be all they need to set them off."

  My jaw ached. "Sir, if Japanese-American relations are as bad as you say, doesn't that make an inside line on what they're doing more important than ever? Especially since we don't have Purple magic?"

  "I never approved of that tap, but since it was operating when I arrived, I let it stand. Public knowledge of a wiretap makes us look sneaky. I think we should be above that sort of thing."

  "A war warning has been issued. Don't you think—?"

  "If the Japs hit anywhere, it won't be here—it'll be to their south. That's the area they want. They won't even come this way—even Wake is too far east for them. Remember: They're after oil and raw materials. There's nothing out here they want."

  I went to the window and pointed out to the harbor. "There'll be ninety-six ships sitting out there this weekend—including heavy battleships and a carrier—"

  "No carrier," Thornton said. "The Lexington weighs anchor for Midway on Thursday."

  "Great!" I could hear my voice rising but I couldn't help it. "Just great! We get a war warning and we send the Big E and the Lex—our extra sources of battle-ready aircraft—off into the Western Pacific!"

  "We have aircraft."

  "Sure, but we don't have the recon planes to give us fair warning."

  "Have you forgotten the fifty-four brand-new PBY-5's we just got?"

  "No. I haven't forgotten them. But they're so new they're still on shakedown flights and we don't have any spare parts. We need recon."

  "Halsey's conducting recon all the way to Wake, and Newton will be doing the same when he takes the Lex to Midway. We'll have plenty of recon."

  "Not to the north where we need it most. You heard Zach—they'll hit us from the north on a weekend."

  Thornton laughed. "You and Zacharias. You've both been reading too many Yellow Peril novels. Too many pulp magazines."

  His laughter only infuriated me. He had seen me reading a copy of Operator #5 a few months ago and wasn't going to let me forget it.

  "We aren't in a novel—this is real life."

  "And real life is going to remain peaceful here on Oahu."

  I wanted to scream. Isn't anybody listening? But I said nothing. It was no use. Nothing to do but salute and leave. Thornton was a hopeless case, but he was no worse than anybody else. Everyone seemed to have their heads in the sand. If only someone like Zach were in charge—then we'd be ready!

  But he wasn't.

  And we weren't.

  And I felt sick about it. But the worst was yet to come.

  When I got back to the Honolulu office, I found Pete Jeffries pacing the floor outside the radio room. His expression was grim.

  "Still haven't figured out those new call signals yet?"

  He glared at me. "You think you're funny?" The malevolence in his voice stopped me cold.

  "What's wrong, Pete?"

  "You mean you haven't heard?"

  "Heard what?"

  "We've lost Japanese Carrier Divisions One and Two."

  I felt sharp spicules of ice form in my stomach. "What do you mean, ‘lost'?"

  "Lost—as in ‘can't find.' They're gone. It's as if the sea swallowed them up. Divisions Three and Four are in the Marshalls and off Formosa. But One and Two… shit! We haven't heard a peep out of them in days."

  "You mean they could be sitting up north of Kauai right now and you wouldn't know?"

  Jeffries looked at me. "With their absolute radio silence and our shitty reconnaissance—yeah. They could be rounding Diamond Head right now and I wouldn't know it." He laughed. "But don't worry. I'm ninety-five percent sure they're heading into the China Sea to do some dirty work there."

  Don't worry. That was a laugh.

  I called it a day after that. I didn't want to hear any more. I had an awful feeling those two "lost" carrier divisions were slipping around to our north and setting up for a strike on Pearl. But I seemed to be the only one in the entire Hawaiian archipelago who was worried about it.

  And no one would listen to me.

  DECEMBER 3

  I made sure to drive by the Japanese consulate on my way to DIO on Wednesday morning. Since we no longer had the phone tap, my little perch in the trees had suddenly graduated from a charade to a vital source of intelligence. What I saw made me glad I'd come.

  Smoke was rising from the consulate’s backyard. A group of so-called assistant consuls were standing around a rusty garbage can patiently throwing papers into a roaring fire.

  I hurried downtown to my office and put in a call to Bob Shivers at the FBI offices. He confirmed my worst fears.

  "Yeah," he said. "They were discussing it on the phone most of last night. They got the word from Tokyo to burn all codebooks except one copy each of type 0 and type L. How'd you know?"

  "Because I just took a look in their backyard. They're following orders."

  "Look on the bright side," he said. "It means they'll be using PA-K2 from now on. That's easier to decipher than the J-series. But if you've got an ulcer and you really want to flare it up, check the message Kita got from the foreign ministry yesterday."

  "What's it say?"

  "Do your own translation. I don't want to influence you."

  I hurried to the pile of deciphered messages awaiting translation and flipped through until I found one headed, "Japanese Foreign Ministry to Chief Consul Kita." I started translating. The message was a direct, undisguised espionage request. The most chilling section:

  In view of the present situation, the presence in port of warships, airplane carriers, and cruisers is of utmost importance. Hereafter, to the utmost of your ability, let me know day by day. Wire me in each case whether or not there are any obstruction balloons above Pearl Harbor or if there are any indications that they will be sent up. Also advise me whether the warships are provided with torpedo nets.

  In port…I had never seen the Japanese interested in which ships were in port. They had always been more inter
ested in which ships we had cruising around. Why the sudden interest in what ships were anchored in Pearl? Why the interest in the presence of barrage balloons and torpedo nets?

  Unless ...

  I put in a call to Thornton. He was in a meeting. I sent over a copy of the message with a note stating that Kita and his staff were burning their codebooks and shouldn't we let CINCPAC know? Then I waited for his reply.

  It took him until late afternoon to get back to me. His reaction? "I see no great significance in this information."

  No great significance? Japan was burning her codebooks and destroying her own Purple machines all over the world. That, to my mind, was the action of a country readying to go to war with the world. But if that wasn't enough, her Honolulu consulate was sending out daily reports on the numbers of ships in port at Pearl. In port.

  I hurried back to the house and looked for Meiko. I needed to put this crazy, miserable, rotten day behind me. And the only way I knew to do that was to sit on that frayed old couch in our tiny living room and hold her in my arms. Somehow, with her beside me, the world made some sort of sense. Not a whole hell of a lot, but more than it did without her.

  But she wasn't home. Her bike was gone, which meant she was over at Ala Moana walking the beach again.

  It was a fitting capper on the day.

  * * *

  Meiko walked her usual route. Sometimes she thought that if it weren't for the tides, she would have worn a trench in the sand by now. She walked the low-tide waterline, looking for sea glass. She had hundreds of pieces at home but was always looking for more. Brown and white and green were easy to find, but blue was rare, and red even rarer. The water was gentle here. Farther out, waves crashed on the coral reefs.

  Walking west, she glanced up and saw a man ahead of her, silhouetted against the lowering sun. He looked so odd standing in the water fully dressed in a straw fedora, a shirt, and long pants with the water lapping at the cuffs. He appeared to be waiting for someone. He was staring at her.

  She ignored him and refocused her concentration on the waterline. Men frequently approached her as she walked the sand, but she had become adept at making it clear she wanted no company. Frank, at least, understood her need to be alone at times and did not press to accompany her.