by Brian Keene
Pingfang District, Manchukuo
(1945)
“You must save your tears.” The boy’s teeth chattered so hard he could barely understand his own words. “Your body requires the fluid to keep your blood flowing.”
They boy wrapped his arms even tighter around his young charge and buried his face in Huang’s hair. He gritted his teeth to keep from biting his bleeding lips, which only served to make him shiver harder. Already he could tell his body was succumbing to the cold. All optimism had faded with the setting of the sun. The darkness summoned a wicked wind that lashed his bare back and thighs with whips of frigid rain that burned like fire. He struggled to keep his eyes open. Patches on his skin turned first blue, then white, and with that transition came a level of pain beyond anything he had ever experienced, like molten fishhooks baited with razor wire latching into his flesh. Each shuddering inhalation hurt his chest and seemed to turn to ice in his lungs. Time jumped back and forth in bursts of blackness that lasted longer and longer with each episode.
He briskly rubbed Huang’s bare skin, shielded the younger boy’s body with his own, and monitored his slowing pulse as best he could. He wished he’d been wrong about the men and the blankets so he and Huang could join the others and hopefully survive the night, but their cries had commenced before the sun even burned off the morning fog and the first rain started to fall. One girl had cast aside her blanket and run screaming through the pen, her body literally black with fleas. After repeatedly attempting to shake out the insects, which found their way back every time, the others had resigned themselves to the fact that the pain from the bites was the price they had to pay for what little warmth the drenched blankets provided. The bites turned to florid welts and the infection swelled to the size of eggs in the lymph nodes of their armpits and groins. Many sloughed off their blankets when their fevers spiked and whimpered pitifully with each wave of vomiting or crippling spasm of diarrhea.
Huang and the boy distanced themselves from them, dug the deepest trench they could with their frozen and bloody fingers, and attempted to fool themselves into believing that they had a prayer of surviving.
“Can you … hear me … Huang?” The child made no reply. His shivering had waned to random twitches. “You have to … have to stay awake.”
“Let me … sleep … tired … so …”
The boy shook Huang hard enough to make his teeth rattle.
“No. You will wake up … wake up this very instant. Do you hear me, Huang? Do you—?”
A great burst of light from the building with the smokestacks and a wall of heated air and smoke rolled over them. The ground trembled with a reverberating thoom. Scorched bricks and flaming debris rained down upon them.
Another explosion. Another still.
Shouting voices.
Apparitions moved through the smoke. Hauling as much gear as they could carry. Running. Abandoning this hell of fire. Destroying every trace that they had ever been here before the Russians, who had just liberated Mengjiang, advanced into Manchukuo.
“Get up, Huang. You must help me.”
The boy exhausted his strength pushing himself to his knees, which felt like they broke when he straightened them, and dragged himself up the fence until his feet were beneath him.
“Free us,” he tried to scream, but his voice made a sound like breaking glass. “Please. Don’t leave us in here …”
VII
Chapel of the Chimes
Oakland, California
(Today)
“You need to understand that we are all a product of our times. Morality is nothing more than the prevailing wind in a tempestuous storm. What I did was no better or worse than anything that had been done to me and my people, and I have spent my entire life trying to make amends. To those I’ve wronged. To all of you whose lives have touched mine. To the world as a whole.”
None of the mourners speak, for there are no words to express the maelstrom of thoughts and doubts colliding in their heads. Here was a man each of them placed on a pedestal, and now he was telling them that the heights to which he had convinced them to aspire were built upon a rickety framework of deception.
“I will not blame you for hating me or the world for demonizing me. As much as I was a product of my times, you are the product of yours, and I know which way the prevailing winds of morality now blow. Before you pass judgment upon me, though, I implore you to look at the world as it was through the eyes of a young man full of fear and hatred and pronounce his verdict not for his actions at the time, but for the actions he has taken since.”
VIII
Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department
of the Kwantung Army
Pingfang District, Manchukuo
(1945)
The others were long dead by the time help arrived in the form of a Russian detachment unprepared for what they found in the remote installation, but by then the boy was on the verge of death. The soldiers had been unable to look at the small corpses partially covered by the wet blankets that flagged on the breeze as they incinerated the soiled remains. The scent of all of that sickness and disease was the last thing the boy remembered before being carried off in the arms of a man in full isolation gear. The man’s words were sluggish and ugly, but the boy had never heard anything so beautiful in his life.
He cried out for Huang in his physically compromised state. One minute the smaller boy’s cold body had been cradled to his, and the next it was gone. He could no more remember what happened than he could communicate his desire to learn the fate of the child from these men.
Everything was a blur. Hours passed. Days. He fell asleep in an olive tent and awakened in the cargo hold of a covered transport vehicle with a dozen people like him crammed inside. Some were missing entire appendages, others eyes and teeth. Some had wicked wounds haphazardly sewn shut where organs had been removed. All of them were emaciated and pale. Most didn’t survive the journey. None of them had seen a boy matching Huang’s description, nor did any of them hold out much hope for the child’s survival.
Only the boy believed, and no amount of stories of mountains of body parts or pits filled with corpses or mass incinerations could sway his conviction.
His parents on the other hand … he’d known from the start there had been no hope for them. He’d recognized their voices in the chorus of the damned and was thankful their suffering had lasted only a single night. In his heart, he believed they had sacrificed their lives in exchange for his—for the mere chance that he might survive—because that was the kind of parents they were. And he would revere them and their sacrifice for the remainder of his days.
He explained as much to the Ukrainian nurse who helped with his rehabilitation in Taiyuan. She spoke just enough Mandarin to patronize him with her sad smile and solicitous words, but she had also been the one to convey the rumors circulating through the ranks of the Red Army. The evil men in charge of the facility where so many had been tortured to death had been rounded up by the Americans. The problem was the rumors also spoke of shady deals brokered by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, Douglas MacArthur, himself. In exchange for the scientific data gleaned from their experimentation, the Japanese doctors would be granted immunity.
The boy hadn’t believed her, of course. No human beings capable of perpetrating such heinous atrocities could ever escape execution, let alone receive any form of immunity from prosecution.
It was the face of the nurse he saw, whose words echoed inside his head, when he witnessed the proof with his own eyes.
IX
Tradewinds Pharmaceuticals Global Headquarters
San Francisco, California
(1984)
“Dr. Himura.” The tone of his receptionist betrayed the fact that something was wrong. “There are gentlemen here to see you.”
The doctor had known this day would come for several years. Nearly everyone involved with his initial deal had either moved on to greener pastures or was buried beneath them. He’d
been content to remain in America for the remainder of his days in exchange for freedom. And then INTERPOL had gone and thrown a wrench in the works. For nearly forty years, the International Criminal Police Organization had refrained from assisting with the capture and prosecution of war criminals thanks to a liberal interpretation of Article 3 of its constitution, which forbade intervention in matters of a quote-unquote political nature. Once they officially joined the Nazi hunt, though, it became open season on all of them.
Dr. Himura reached for the intercom to tell his receptionist to send them in, but his door burst open before his finger found the button. He closed his eyes, straightened his tie, and greeted his fate with an extended hand. The first two men through the door wore matching suits and introduced themselves with little more than a flash of their badges. FBI. The next two men wore suits of a different style, the kind that screamed foreigners. The older of the two wore brown wool and had a cloud of white hair encircling his bald crown; the other wore gray and wasn’t old enough to have been a party to the rebuilding of Europe. His curly dark hair and telltale complexion suggested a personal stake in the prosecution of those responsible for the decimation of his people.
The older man stared at Dr. Himura’s proffered hand with distaste. When he spoke, it was with a British accent.
“Are you Dr. Isamu Himura?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The same Dr. Isamu Himura who served as one of the staff physicians for Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army at the Pingfang complex—also known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army—from 1942 to 1945?”
Dr. Himura didn’t answer. Either response was a lie that would damn him.
“You’ve done quite well for yourself, doctor. Just look at this place. The real estate alone has to be worth millions. And this building?” He whistled appreciatively. “Sure looks like your dear old Uncle Sam set you up nicely.”
“My achievements are my own.”
“And the research for the products you manufacture here? Is that your own, too?”
“I have several teams of devoted—”
“You manufacture blood products, don’t you?”
“That’s a bit of an oversimplification, but yes, we—”
“And you started up right after the end of the war, correct? By 1950 you’d already made your first million without ever having to stand trial for the atrocities you committed—”
“This man is an American citizen and has his rights,” one of the FBI men said.
“And we have a witness,” the dark-haired man in the gray suit said. His eyes locked onto Dr. Himura’s. “Speaking of whom … would you please come in and join us?”
Dr. Himura turned away and faced the window behind his desk. He didn’t want them to see the expression on his face. Instead, he stared out across the choppy blue waters of the bay toward the distant Golden Gate Bridge as he listened to the tentative approach of footsteps from the anteroom. He needed to commit this view to memory. This was the one thing he wanted to take with him.
With great reluctance, Dr. Himura turned to face his accuser.
X
Hong Kong, China
(1946)
While in the hospital, the boy met a man from the Hong Kong Kowloon Brigade, a group of patriots who’d utilized guerilla tactics during the Japanese occupation to rescue prisoners-of-war. He said his men had been helping to smuggle people out of the war-torn zones of China and into countries where they would be able to start their lives over again. He believed that if Huang had survived, the odds were good he would have been helped to reach San Francisco, where there were people willing to take in orphans of the war, especially those who were young enough to be absorbed into existing family units. He’d even gone so far as to arrange for someone to meet with the boy down in Hong Kong. Even then, the boy knew finding Huang was a long shot, but he liked the prospect of securing passage for himself on one of the American freighters.
It was while he was working on a container ship called the Looby Louise that he saw the face of the man who haunted his dreams. His eyes, anyway. He would have recognized the man’s eyes anywhere, even in the briefest of glimpses across a deck crammed with containers.
And then he was gone.
It took the boy two days to find him again on a ship the size of a small town and the majority of the third day to locate the cabin in which the Americans had stashed him.
On the fourth day, when the mainland was a distant memory behind them, he waited until the man—dressed in the uniform of the merchant marine and speaking exclusively English—went above decks to take his midday meal, then broke into the cabin, where he waited in the darkness amid boxes and crates filled with notes and photographs, and detailed anatomic drawings and folders brimming with the tragic ends that befell men and women whose lives had been reduced to numbers.
He stood behind the door with a length of rope stretched tightly between his fists and waited until he heard the clap of footsteps outside the door and the key hit the lock.
Before the doctor could turn, the boy wrapped the rope around his neck, jerked him into the room, and closed the door with his hip.
The doctor died far too quickly and mercifully, but there was no avoiding that outcome. Screams would have drawn too much attention, and besides, the boy was nothing like this monster who had tortured so many. The act of taking this one life—the life of one who so clearly and desperately deserved it—was more than he could bear.
He vomited onto the floor while the dead man stared at him through eyes he would never forget, eyes that would continue to stare into the horrors waiting from him in the abyss until the crabs plucked them from his head and his remains rotted into the silt, not too terribly far from Pearl Harbor.
The boy had been prepared to take responsibility for his actions, but he had understood, even at such a young age, that the boxes and crates were what was important to the Americans, not the scientist responsible for collecting the data. They undoubtedly detested the doctor so much that they could barely stomach being in his presence, let alone look at him for any length of time.
So it was during the remaining eleven days at sea that the boy committed to memory as many of the files as he could and absorbed every word of English he heard. The worst of the files he purged in the boiler. The rest he turned over to the Americans when they docked in San Francisco. He dressed like the doctor. He acted like the doctor. He even talked like the doctor.
The fiends willing to trade their souls for his knowledge knew he was the epitome of evil and never once stared at the face of a physician who might have looked a lot younger than they expected if they had.
So little did they care about his past or what anyone might think of his presence, they set him up with a bank account under the name of Dr. Sam Himura and left him with the credentials of a dead man and new documents with his picture to go along with the life of a man whose intimate knowledge of blood and clotting factors he now possessed.
And he could think of no better way to disrespect the memory of the monster than by using that knowledge for the betterment of society.
XI
Tradewinds Pharmaceuticals Global Headquarters
San Francisco, California
(1984)
Dr. Himura stared into the face of a man maybe five or six years his junior. Even after so many years he would have recognized this man anywhere.
“Mr. Zhou?” the INTERPOL agent with the dark hair said. “Is this the man you remember from the Pingfang complex in 1945?”
Dr. Himura felt a lump rise in his throat. It was all he could do not to cry.
“Mr. Zhou? Is this the same Dr. Isamu Himura who subjected you to routine starvation and left you to freeze to death in the rain rather than accept one of the flea-infested blankets he used to infect the others with the bubonic plague?”
Huang looked him directly in the eyes and they shared a moment of recognition. Dr. Himura wanted nothing more than
to embrace the man for whom he had always held out hope.
“No,” Huang said. “I have never seen this man before in my life.”
“This is Dr. Isamu Himura. The only man by that name who ever worked at Pingfang. The same one who copped a deal with the American military to save his worthless—”
“I think we’re done here,” the FBI agent said.
Huang looked Dr. Himura in the eyes for a moment longer, then, with a nod and the faintest hint of a smile, turned and left the office.
XII
Chapel of the Chimes
Oakland, California
(Today)
“My name is Jun Fang and I murdered Dr. Isamu Himura nearly seventy years ago. I am not ninety-seven years old; I am only eighty-six. I have lied to you all. Worse, I have betrayed your trust. So it is with great dishonor that I pass from this life to the next. I pray you all know how very special each of you are to me and how very sorry I am for deceiving you.”
The recording stops. The screen freezes on the image of the old man, his eyes downcast in shame.
An elderly man separates from the gathering and approaches the table upon which the decedent’s golden book sits. He stands silhouetted against the image as he stares up at it. He wraps his arms around his chest as though to stifle a shiver. When he finally looks away, his eyes seek the old man’s ashes. He kisses his fingertips and presses them to the golden urn. He turns to face the mourners with tears in his eyes and speaks in little more than a whisper.
“I would like to tell you a story about a boy …”
PHANTOM
ON THE
ICE
ERINN L. KEMPER
October 2, 1992, Eutsuk Lake Lodge, British Columbia, Canada