Blood Red Sun

by Mertz, Stephen

  “Corbin’s dead,” Mischkie told him. “We just heard about it on the way over.”

  “They went looking for him,” Hanklin said. “Corbin hung himself with his belt off a shower fixture. He was croaked when they found him.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The crane is the symbol for the Emperor of Japan, much as the Crown is synonymous with the reigning monarch of England.

  Keiko listened attentively to the high-pitched, distant-sounding voice of the Sacred Crane, the Voice of the Emperor, emanating from the radio in the library.

  The royal Rescript was phrased in the strange, archaic, imperial language.

  “To our good and loyal subjects:

  “After pondering deeply the general trends of the world and the actual conditions obtaining in our empire today, we have decided to effect a settlement of the present situation by resorting to an extraordinary measure.

  “We have ordered our government to communicate to the governments of the United States, Great Britain, China, and the Soviet Union, that our empire accepts the provisions of their Joint Declaration.”

  She listened, standing several paces behind her uncle. He knelt, his hands closed before him, his face contorted. Tears coursed down his face.

  Across the width and breadth of the country, she knew millions would be similarly weeping with this ultimate shame and humiliation of the unthinkable.

  She eased away and let herself out of the library.

  The baron remained kneeling before the now silent radio.

  His frame shook with soundless weeping. She fought down an impulse to rush over to him, to touch and comfort him. This she could not do. She knew he would not allow it.

  Particular phrases of the voice from the radio echoed in her mind.

  “The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage. Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is indeed incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization … This is the reason why we have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the Joint Declaration of the Powers. Beware most strictly any outbursts of emotion which may create confusion, lead ye astray and cause ye to lose the confidence of the world. It is according to the dictates of time and fate that we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable.”

  She left the library and closed the door, latching it behind her without a sound. Within her a gnawing ache of something left undone would not go away.

  Marquis Kido accompanied His Majesty on the Emperor’s evening stroll. As the Emperor’s chief advisor, he often did so.

  Kido was thinking that Fukiage Garden was as sedate and peaceful as ever. It was impossible to tell that less than twelve hours ago the palace had been in rebel hands, that young soldiers with fixed bayonets and determined scowls had run amok. Blood had been spilt here, and yet now the crickets chirped and peace reigned. Or so it seemed to Marquis Kido, who did not presume to guess how His Majesty might feel.

  The Emperor was by nature a man of few words, a light sleeper who neither drank nor smoked, Kido had learned during his tenure. Conversation between them was generally sparse and functional at times like this, but His Majesty did generally comment on some aspect of the garden’s beauty.

  His Majesty would have much on his mind, on his conscience, this night, Kido told himself.

  He thought again of trying to bolster His Majesty’s mood by adding his own personal endorsement of the path His Majesty had chosen for the country. Kido told himself this would be presumptuous, and so kept his thoughts private.

  His Majesty had been deceived from the beginning. It had been a crucial mistake to allow a fanatical militarist to become Minister of War. The war had been started without the Emperor’s knowledge or permission, fueled by his generals’ wrongheaded belief that the true mission of their country was to spread and glorify the imperial way to the ends of the four seas. Now, the Emperor had spoken and the war ceased. Where one week ago the Japanese people had dedicated themselves to repulsing the barbarian, with bamboo spears if need be, now this same people would ease their emperor’s heart by following the ways of peace.

  After some time, the Emperor said reflectively, “You are aware of the situation at Atsugi, Marquis Kido?”

  Kido nodded. “Regrettable, Your Majesty.”

  “I am told that after the broadcast of the Rescript this noon, men who could not accept the idea of a surrender tried to get their planes in the air, swearing they would refuse to accept surrender. Reinforcements were needed to quell a riot there.”

  “It is the same at Oita and at many other bases, Your Majesty. Men blind drunk, shouting, cursing wildly. Soldiers walking about as if in a stupor. Most regrettable.”

  “And yet understandable,” said the Emperor with what Kido took to be infinite sadness. “From the beginning they were told that the war was not a contest between armaments but a pitting of their faith in spirit against the superiority of the enemy’s resources. Our spirit was insufficient. It was matched in battle by the spirit of the American people.”

  “We must look to the future, Your Highness. There is bound to be unrest, but your subjects will obey your wishes.

  They will defend the good name of Japan. They will do so by obeying their Emperor.

  “We must command the respect of the world, even in our shame.”

  “And so we shall, Majesty. We are a nation that saw the respect other great nations earned through military might. We embarked on a course to equal them. We have learned that aggression is not the road to honor.”

  “We have gained so little,” said the Emperor. “We have suffered so much. The old ways must be discarded. There must be international cooperation. There must be peace.”

  “Your subjects will not disappoint you, Majesty. Your subjects want peace as much as you do.”

  “Most of them. It is the small faction of militarists that concerns me most.”

  “Dissention will be subdued, Your Highness.”

  “I hope so, Marquis Kido. I truly do.”

  The narrow, low-ceilinged passage echoed with whispering footfalls. Baron Tamura and his late brother had learned of the network of secret passages that honeycombed the castle from their father on his death bed. The widely spaced, low-wattage lighting barely illuminated the passageway. The Baron’s elongated shadow wavered upon the walls and curved ceiling.

  He reached a heavy iron door and slid back the bolt, easing the door open. Shafts of daylight poured in, accentuating the gloom of the passageway. He stepped into a thicket of small trees. They had been allowed to grow heavily here, effectively concealing the entrance to the secret passage.

  It was exceedingly warm and bright. Tall trees towered above, then thinned away to where thick vegetation covered a hillside.

  He stood for a moment, watching, listening. He saw nothing, heard nothing but the lazy drone of the cicadas. He stepped into the clearing and stood there, waiting.

  They appeared from the tree line on the far side of the clearing facing the hillside. They had been waiting for him, watching. They did not wear camouflage. It was as if they had been invisible until they chose to be seen. Their approach was wholly without sound.

  Three of them, men of indeterminate age, grimy of face, one of them limping with the aid of a staff, another walking stoop shouldered, each carrying a worn pack, dressed in the tattered civilian clothing of peasants. They wore the look of vacant despair of the war refugee or the demobilized soldier.

  The countryside was rife with such people since the broadcast of the royal Rescript.

  As they drew closer, the man in the middle stepped forward to separate himself from the others as leader or spokesman. Baron Tamura saw upon closer inspection that
they appeared, beneath facial grime and weariness, to be no older than in their early twenties. They stood before him and bowed deeply. He returned the bow with a bare inclination of his head.

  The man who had stepped forward said, in the local dialect, “I am Ota Nakajima. We are the humble emissaries of our jonin, Seiko Yamashita, who wishes you a long life for all you have bestowed upon the Shikotan clan.”

  “When did you arrive in this area?”

  “Last evening, Baron-san.”

  “You have been bivouacked out here all night and all of this day? I have men patrolling the outside of these walls every hour.”

  “Our jonin instructed us to arrive early. A precaution.”

  “Were you followed?”

  “Two men. They have been watching us since the railroad station in Tateyama. They have kept their distance. They spent the night believing they had us under surveillance, not aware that we were at times close enough to touch them without their knowledge. Local police. They think we are refugees who will resort to thievery. They will catch us in the act and thus win your favor and appointment with your private force. These are their own words. They will be somewhere behind us now in the trees, observing us.”

  Baron Tamura scanned the tree line over Nakajima’s shoulder. He saw nothing.

  “They cannot hear us,” he said, “but they will have seen. They must not divulge what they have seen.”

  Nakajima bowed from the waist. “Hai, Baron-san. Saito!”

  The man at his right spun around with a coordinated speed and smoothness of movement that belied his unkempt, weary appearance. Something glinted in the sun, flung over handed by Saito too rapidly for the eye to follow, though the Baron knew it would more than likely be a shuriken, the ancient, multi-pointed throwing weapon.

  A human cried out, a sharp, agonized bleat, and a collapsing body fell into view from behind the trunk of a tree.

  There came a flurry of unseen movement as someone in the trees made haste to escape.

  “Mikassa!” Nakajima snapped.

  The man at his other side spun and hurled an object which rendered the same result: a choked-off scream. The noise of someone running through the underbrush abruptly ceased.

  Saito and Mikassa trotted across the clearing to retrieve whatever they had thrown. They returned to take their place behind Nakajima.

  Another bow from Nakajima.

  “We await your further instructions, Baron-san.”

  “My men will dispose of the bodies. You will come with me. It is good you are here. There is much to be done.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The orderly showed Ballard into MacArthur’s office the next morning at 0800 hours sharp.

  Ballard felt like hell, and a bleary-eyed glance in the mirror propped on the latrine wall before leaving the tent he shared with Hanklin and Mischkie had showed him that he looked no better than he felt.

  Krueger was not present this morning. Eichelberger sat in the same chair he’d sat in two days before.

  MacArthur stood in the center of his office exactly as Ballard had left him the last time. Ballard wondered if the general had been pacing nonstop since then.

  “You look as if you’ve had a rough time of it, Sergeant. I thought I told those men of yours to tell you to get some sleep.”

  Ballard assumed parade rest, as he had last time.

  “That wasn’t real easy, sir. There was a lot of celebrating going on.”

  “There is much to celebrate.”

  “I had a rough night the night before. And I’d spent some time cooling my heels in the brig. Guess I didn’t much feel like celebrating.”

  MacArthur started in on the pacing, talking around the pipe stem clenched between his teeth.

  “You left me no choice in that, Sergeant. I understand what happened was Corbin’s fault but when word got out about what happened, if I hadn’t taken some sort of disciplinary measure, why, the men would get the idea that it was perfectly all right to punch an officer in the snoot. The good Lord knows an officer’s life is thankless enough as it is.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “With that unpleasantness out of the way, I should like to take this opportunity, Sergeant, to commend you on the fine work you and your men did in bringing General Goro down out of the hills. As you know, the general was induced to radio his troops to cancel the offensive and since word of the surrender has been confirmed, he has also instructed his command to lay down their arms and surrender. Early word from the field is that they are complying with this order as well. Having General Goro in our hands has saved countless thousands of lives, Sergeant Ballard, and you and those who went with you after Goro are to thank for that.”

  Ballard could only think of those who had not made it back, of a young woman who should have been flirting with the school boys and studying her homework and going to parties with friends, not dying in the jungle, her life pulped brutally from her by enemy fire.

  He replied with another “Yes, sir,” wondering why he’d been sent for.

  MacArthur went on. “With the cease-fire and end to hostilities, a whole new task looms ahead for us, and I am not referring to the occupation of Japan, but to the mechanics of the surrender itself.”

  Ballard could think of nothing to say to that.

  Eichelberger said, “The Nips have requested a two week delay to quell internal unrest.” He added, as if for MacArthur’s benefit, “Two whole weeks for them to burn records, cache arms and money. They’ll demobilize before we even get there.”

  This was said as if continuing a disagreement.

  “All for the best,” MacArthur countered. “Those two weeks will also give them time in which to compose their collective face. We must hold back and allow this to happen. It will only be to our advantage.”

  “I wish I could be as trusting of those devils as you are,” Eichelberger said.

  “Nevertheless, General Chamberlain will be landing an airborne division at Atsugi and armored units at Yokohama on or about the twenty-ninth. I intend to formally accept the Japanese surrender on Bull Halsey’s flagship, the Missouri, in Tokyo Bay, on September second. Reservations have been made at the New Grand Hotel in Yokohama for the thirtieth of August. We will be checked in by two o’clock that afternoon.

  “That is two weeks from today, Sergeant. Two whole weeks. You might think this would give us enough time for careful planning. Well, it does and it doesn’t. The next two weeks—the next two years, for that matter—are going to be an obstacle course in every way imaginable; the surrender, transition, occupation. There are a multitude of details that need attending to at this preliminary juncture, none more important than our security once we arrive inside Japan.”

  “And is that where I come in, sir?”

  “That is precisely where you come in. My dogface grunts have done one hell of a job fighting their way across the Pacific, island by island, to get us this far. But, Ballard, if you ask any one of those boys out there, they’ll tell you themselves that they’re just ordinary fellows caught up in extraordinary events, doing the best they can.

  “Well, Sergeant,” the general moved to the black leather swivel chair behind his desk and dropped into it, “I have need of a man, of a few men, who are not ordinary fellows. I am talking about you and your two friends, Mischkie and Hanklin.”

  “You said the fighting’s over, sir. That’s about all those men and I know how to do.”

  “Yes, and you’re the best there is, they tell me. After seeing what you can do, I’m inclined to agree. And don’t worry, Sergeant, if you survive this one, I suspect your country will always have need of those few like yourself who share your extraordinary capabilities.”

  “Tell you the truth, sir, that’s not a real comforting thought.”

  “The last time you were here, I told you that I was cognizant of your pre-war personal history.”

  Ballard said nothing.

  “You were a police detective in Chicago. You were about to close
in on a mob boss. He had a bomb planted in your car, which resulted in the death of your wife. You went after the men responsible and killed them one by one. They always died with a weapon in their hand, but you broke so many departmental regulations, the District Attorney had no choice but to bring charges against you. There were two attempts on your life while you were awaiting trial. Pearl Harbor happened the day before your trial began and an honest judge offered you a deal. The charges were dropped and you enlisted. And from that day to this you have consistently beaten the odds on missions that should have been impossible from step one. You’re a man who wouldn’t mind dying.”

  “I loved my wife. As for signing up, I would’ve done that anyway.”

  “You possess extraordinary capabilities as a soldier, you have the instincts of a good cop, and you have a code of honor that is your own. Yes, you’ll do.” He looked at Eichelberger. “What do you think, Bob?”

  “Your safety is my responsibility, General,” Eichelberger replied. “I think the security I plan to provide you with after we land in Japan on the 30th will be more than adequate.”

  “I’m sure it will, but it will be manned by ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances, no matter how many of them we throw in. Bob, I want Sergeant Ballard and his men in on security planning. I want them with us when we touch down and all the way into Yokohama.”

  He looked back at Ballard. “General Eichelberger’s people will run security but you won’t be attached to them. The civil affairs units will deal with the civilians. What I want, Sergeant, is to know there are men close to me who can deal with the extraordinary, should someone in Japan choose to test our mettle after we arrive.

  “And I want Mischkie and Hanklin there with you. You fellows work well together. Extremely well. I wouldn’t want to break up a set. You’ll be contacted by General Eichelberger’s people and you can work out the details with them.

  “I doubt if we’ll be seeing one another until we take off from Manila on the 30th but from that point on, you will be my special contingency squad, Sergeant. I’ll be counting on you. That will be all. See you in Japan.”