by Onbekend
Beyond the communications room, Yashiro and the aide ascended a flight of stairs to a large reception room with paper walls on all sides and tatami mats arrayed on the floor.
‘Major Endo will be with you shortly,’ said the aide, and disappeared back the way he had come.
Yashiro had expected nothing less. Sometimes referred to in the Western press (no Japanese newspaper would be so bold) as the Asian Howard Hughes, Baron Uchida was almost never seen in public nowadays, and anyone summoned to Uchida Castle to receive his orders usually received them from the baron’s right-hand man, Major Endo. There were several theories behind this: some said even Endo never saw Uchida, but went into a special room near the top of the castle where the baron could address him via an intercom system; others that Uchida had been dead for some years, but Endo had somehow kept this a secret because he enjoyed wielding power in Uchida’s name.
Yashiro knew better than to believe any of these stories. He knew he could trust the major: they had been contemporaries at the Imperial Japanese Army Academy, and as army cadets had both been members of the Sakurakai, the ultra-nationalist Cherry Blossom Society. Frustrated with the corruption of Japanese society by venal, self-serving politicians, the Sakurakai believed passionately that Japan’s troubles had begun when the foreigners had come in the mid-nineteenth century. Once foreign ideas like democracy and individualism had been driven out and the emperor had been restored to supreme, absolute rule, the troubles and difficulties of modern times would all melt away and the good old days, when men lived by the honour of the code of Bushido, would return.
Yashiro had briefly enjoyed celebrity status when he assassinated the editor of one of Tokyo’s more liberal newspapers in the summer of 1932. He had worn his uniform when he marched into the newspaper’s offices, and had surrendered himself to the police immediately afterwards, unashamed of what he had done. The scoundrel had published an editorial in which he said the emperor was not divine, a common blasphemy in those dark times, and as Yashiro had emptied his revolver into his chest he had never doubted that while his action might be against the law, it would have the emperor’s blessing. At his trial, he had been allowed to explain his motives for the deed and had spent three days lecturing the court – and the world at large – about the need to restore the emperor as the absolute ruler of Japan. While the judges had considered sentencing, thousands of Japanese who had followed the trial had written to the authorities, often in blood, appealing for clemency for a young man who, they argued, was guilty of nothing more than an excess of patriotic zeal. Yashiro might have expected to be sent before the firing squad; instead he was sentenced to fifteen years in Shibuya military prison.
Such incidents were common enough in the Japan in the early 1930s – no doubt encouraged by light sentencing – but when army officers of the Imperial Way Faction attempted a coup in February 1936, the emperor decided enough was enough and the ringleaders were sentenced to death. The following year, however, the Japanese government published a document titled Kokutai no Hongi – ‘Fundamentals of Our National Polity’ – in which it was affirmed that the emperor was indeed divine and that he did indeed rule absolutely. The coups and assassinations of the 1930s were brought to an end by the simple expedient of giving in to the ultranationalists’ key demands.
Yashiro had been back on the streets by then, having served less than four years of his sentence, proving the old saying that the difference between treason and patriotism was merely a matter of dates. Nevertheless, he might never have progressed any further in his military career had he not been rescued by the influence of Baron Uchida, a man sympathetic to the aims of the Cherry Blossom Society and the Imperial Way Faction, but careful enough to have avoided any implication in the February 26 Incident.
Uchida had employed Yashiro as the manager of a Japanese-owned rubber plantation in Malaya. The work had been easy enough to learn and undemanding enough to leave Yashiro plenty of time and energy for other activities: reconnoitring the country, annotating maps, monitoring the movements of British troops and photographing any warships that visited the naval base at Seletar. He had been ordered to return to Japan peremptorily the previous autumn. He had feared he was guilty of some transgression, until reporting to Major Endo he had learned that Singapore, Hong Kong and Pearl Harbor had just been bombed. Two days later he had been in the thick of the fighting, acting as a scout for General Yamashita’s army, until a shrapnel wound had required him to be shipped back to Japan. But that had been two months ago. Now he was fully recovered and eager to return to Malaya to serve his emperor.
A panel slid aside and Endo stepped through, immaculate as ever in the peaked cap, Sam Browne belt, boots of undressed leather and olive drab tunic and jodhpurs of an officer of the Kenpeitai, the Japanese organisation that served as military police, secret police and military intelligence, all rolled into one. Standing smartly to attention, Yashiro saluted him, and Endo returned the salute before taking a manila folder from under one arm and opening it to show Yashiro a four-by-six photograph of an elderly Asian wearing a high-collared, lapel-less coat and a black velvet songkok on his head. ‘You know this man?’
Yashiro nodded. ‘That’s Iskandar al-Qayyim ibni al-Marhum Sulaiman al-Jawziyya, one of the wealthiest men in Malaya. Or perhaps I should say, he used to be: most of the rubber plantations and tin mines he owned are now in territory conquered by our army.’
‘Our interest in him goes beyond his economic holdings,’ said Endo. ‘Did you also know he is a direct descendant of the last Sultan of Malacca?’
‘But not as direct as the Sultan of Johore.’
Endo shrugged. ‘That is debatable. At least, so Mr al-Jawziyya’s legal advisers would argue, and frequently do. Apparently it all hinges on the Doctrine of Representation, whether or not you believe Ahmad Shah – the last Sultan of Malacca – married the mother of his only child before the Portuguese killed him in 1513, and whether you choose to apply English law or Sharia law. For our purposes, suffice it to say that with all of Malaya in our hands except for Singapore – and that soon to follow – it will… how shall I put this?… smooth our relations with the Malayan people if we give them a degree of self-governance.’
‘A puppet ruler, you mean.’
‘Just so. The Sultan of Johore is the obvious choice, but he is infamously pro-British and is likely to prove obdurate. A good archer has more than one string for his bow; al-Jawziyya would be that second string.’
‘No doubt. A matter for F-Kikan, surely?’ Headed by the charismatic Major Fujiwara, F-Kikan was another tokumu kikan set up by the Secret Section of the Second Bureau, tasked with liaising with underground organisations in south-east Asia struggling for independence from their British or Dutch rulers, and transmitting intelligence gathered from these organisations back to the army command.
‘Before we embarked on our war against the Westerners, there was a dispute over which tokumu kikan should have the honour of bringing al-Jawziyya to Tokyo to pay homage to the Emperor,’ said Endo. ‘U-Kikan because of his holdings, or F-Kikan because of his political significance. The general staff decided in favour of F-Kikan, and Lieutenant Murakami of that unit was tasked with landing at Sarimbun when our forces began the invasion of Singapore. He and his platoon were supposed to take al-Jawziyya into protective custody yesterday morning and take him to Tengah, from whence he was to be flown to Tokyo.’
‘Something went wrong?’
‘My informants tell me Major Fujiwara lost contact with Lieutenant Murakami shortly after midnight the night before last. There’s been no word from him since. The most likely explanation is that he was killed in the confusion of the landing. This failure will bring great shame on Major Fujiwara… just as it will reflect great honour on Baron Uchida if a member of U-Kikan succeeds were F-Kikan failed. Your mission is to go to Singapore. If Murakami is dead, it will fall to you to arrange for al-Jawziyya to be brought to Tokyo.’
‘And if Lieutenant Murakami is not dead?’
‘Your objective is two-fold: bring al-Jawziyya to Tokyo and make sure the credit for your success goes to U-Kikan. A battlefield is a confused place, Captain Yashiro. A man who is alive today may very well be dead tomorrow, and with so many corpses to be cremated, no one will be interested in confirming whether they were all killed by English bullets or if one of them should accidentally have been killed by a Japanese one. I think you understand me?’
Yashiro bowed. ‘Yes, Endo-sama.’
‘One of our new Kawanishi Type 2 flying boats is waiting at Nagahama to take you to Dao Phu Quoc. There you’ll transfer to an aeroplane that will take you to Tengah Airfield. When you arrive, report to Colonel Tsuji: he will advise you of the best course of action and see to it you are provided with sufficient personnel to complete your mission. The usual parameters apply: you have considerable latitude in how you carry out this mission. You have the baron’s full authority to act in his name; I advise you do nothing to bring dishonour upon him.’
Four
Tuesday 1230 – Wednesday 0400
‘Christ, it’s hot,’ grumbled Boyd.
‘I know it’s hot,’ said Quinn. ‘I’m out in it too, I don’t need you telling me how hot it is.’
Overhead, the sun was a dull, blood-red disc struggling to cast any light through the pall of smoke hanging over the island from horizon to horizon. Even though it was not long past noon, the atmosphere was thick and murky, closer to the dinginess of dusk.
The smoke might have dimmed the sun’s radiance, but it did nothing to mitigate its heat. Lying in the shade of a thorny palm, Quinn squinted over the sights of the Bren gun to where the boots of a dead Japanese soldier jutted out of a patch of dried lalang grass in the clearing in front of them. The rank, earthy smell of the mangrove swamps drifted in through the trees. The rumble of artillery sounded in the distance, but nothing was happening in the immediate vicinity. Nothing had happened all morning; in fact, nearly twenty-four hours had passed since Quinn had even heard so much as a distant burst of small-arms fire, and he was starting to wonder if the battle had moved on and left what remained of his company behind.
Sweat ran down from his forehead into his eyes, making them sting. He wiped his brow with his sleeve.
Lying beside him, Boyd took his canteen of water from his webbing and held it in both hands, looking at it pointedly.
‘Put it back,’ said Quinn.
‘But I’m thirsty.’
‘And you’re likely to get a lot thirstier before you get a chance to refill it. At least try to wait until after dark. A sip at dusk is worth a pint at noon.’
‘You think we’ll still be alive at dusk?’
‘How the hell should I know? I’m not a bloody fortune teller.’
Something shifted in the undergrowth behind them. Quinn snatched up Boyd’s rifle and rolled on his back, aiming the rifle past the toecaps of his boots, but it was only Shapiro come to relieve him. Someone else would come to relieve Boyd in an hour’s time; that way, each man did a two-hour shift, but one of them was always fresh.
Shapiro grinned. ‘Getting a bit jumpy, aren’tcha, mate?’
Quinn indicated Boyd. ‘Lying here listening to this prawn chuntering on would drive anyone round the twist.’
Shapiro dropped to his knees and crawled under the thorny palm. ‘Seen anything?’
‘Yeah. A lot of grass, some ants, and a centipede as long as your arm. No Japs, though.’
‘Maybe they’ve pulled back across the strait?’ Boyd suggested hopefully.
‘More likely they’ve got bored of waiting for us to surrender and decided they’ve got more important things to do,’ said Shapiro. ‘Like conquering Singapore. The skipper’s got through to brigade: the word is there was a second Japanese landing at Kranji last night. Our blokes are falling back to Bukit Timah.’
‘Bukit Timah? That’s about eight miles from here,’ said Quinn.
Shapiro nodded. ‘With three divisions of Japs between here and there. And with Woodlands in their hands now, they hold both ends of the Causeway. It’s only a matter of time before they repair it and start bringing their armour over.’
‘What do we do now? The skipper’s not talking about chucking in the towel, is he?’
‘Is he hell! But it’s clear we’re doing no one any good stuck out here. Skipper says all we can do now is what we did at Parit Sulong: break up into small parties of three or four and make our own way back to brigade.’
Quinn handed Boyd his rifle back, then shuffled out from under the tree, looked around to make sure there were no Japanese watching, then stood up. He walked back along the trail, past the smouldering wreck of a Bren-gun carrier, to the village where the captain had set up company headquarters in a Malay house raised on stilts, with walls of plaited bamboo and a roof thatched with atap. A handful of men ate bully beef out of tins or sipped tea from enamelled mugs in the shade of a cluster of betel-nut trees. Most of them were as filthy with dried mud as Quinn, some stripped to their vests, some naked from the waist up but for a slouch hat or a Brodie helmet. There was no sign of Hubbard.
‘Pascoe, Griffin, Quinn and Kelly!’ called the sergeant. He had one arm in a sling, a gauze pad taped to his shoulder dark with dried blood. Pascoe, Griffin and Kelly immediately rose to their feet and headed off down the trail leading to Choa Chu Kang.
‘Mother gone yet?’ asked Quinn.
The sergeant shook his head. ‘He’s manning one of the pickets on the southern perimeter.’
‘He’s my cobber, Sarge. I’d rather go with him.’
‘Fine, but you stay here another hour and someone else goes in your place.’
Quinn grinned. ‘Suits me. That just means all the blokes that go before me will have sprung any ambushes the Japs have set between here and Choa Chu Kang.’
‘Your funeral. Spud!’
Another of the men squatting beneath the betel nut trees rose to his feet. ‘Sarge?’
‘You’re with Pascoe, Griffin and Lowe. Come on, look lively, lad!’
Murphy doubled out of the clearing with the grin of a man who had just realised he had won a lottery.
‘You want to wait for Hubbard, you can relieve Nobby,’ ordered the sergeant.
Quinn nodded and made his way through the trees to where Hubbard and Clarke occupied a slit trench a couple of hundred yards away. ‘You’re relieved, Nobby.’
‘You sure about that?’ asked Clarke. ‘I only got here a few minutes ago.’
‘I’m sure. I told the sergeant I’d wait for my cobber.’ Quinn indicated Hubbard. ‘Go on, bugger off, before I change my mind.’
‘Thanks, Bluey!’ Clarke clambered out of the trench and hurried off in the direction Quinn had come from. Quinn took up position beside Hubbard and checked the bolt action of his rifle.
‘You told the sergeant you’d wait here for another hour?’ asked Hubbard.
‘What can I say, Mother? You’re my cobber.’
‘I’m touched.’ Hubbard inserted the tip of his little finger into one ear, screwed it around, and then inspected his fingernail. ‘’Course, if you really wanted to do me a favour, you’d’ve relieved me and stayed behind with Nobby to buy time for me to get away.’
‘Kiss my arse!’ Quinn retorted good-naturedly.
They waited the next fifty-five minutes in companionable silence. They did not expect to see any Japanese and they were not surprised. Under any other circumstances, it would have been a very pleasant way to spend an hour, and Quinn briefly toyed with the fantasy of sitting out the whole war in the foxhole. After he guessed about an hour had gone by, he sneaked a peak at his wristwatch: it was a quarter to two. He played a game with himself, trying to see how long he could go without looking again. He held out for thirteen minutes.
‘What time you got?’ Hubbard asked him.
‘Two minutes to two.’
‘Close enough?’
‘I reckon so.’
The two of them climbed out of their foxhole and
sauntered back to company headquarters. Except company headquarters was no longer there, and there was nothing to show it had ever been there but some trampled grass, caterpillar tracks in the dried mud where the Bren-gun carriers had passed, little mounds of dirt with ash mixed in where tommy cookers had been emptied, some cigarette butts and a few empty tins. Quinn had expected nothing less, but it was still disquieting to actually see it. They hitched their rifles on their shoulders and set off along the jungle trail.
They moved as swiftly as caution allowed, following the northern bank of the Sungei Berih. The tangled foliage growing on its bank precluded their crossing far more than the depth of the stream, until they came to a place where it had been thin enough for someone who had gone before them to hack his way through with a parang. Quinn was marching ten yards ahead of Hubbard – if they were going to walk into an ambush, there was no sense in both of them getting killed – and he motioned his friend to stay back. Unslinging his rifle, he levelled it casually, his body very still in the shadow cast by the trunk of a tall tree growing on the riverbank. His head turned this way and that as he studied the undergrowth on the other side, looking for something that should not have been there, something indicating the presence of any Japanese waiting in ambush. If he had been a Japanese, he could not have wished for a better place to ambush stray Diggers than this. He satisfied himself he could see nothing, but he was all too well aware if there were Japanese waiting on the other side who knew how to camouflage themselves, the first he would know about it would be when a bullet smashed through his skull. At the end of the day, it would always come down to a leap of faith. He took a deep breath and stepped out from behind the tree, picking his way down the riverbank, braced to throw himself backwards if a fusillade of shots came his way.