1945 (37 page)

No! Hashimoto slapped at the periscope in fury. She was starting her turn. He wanted to scream. But then he smiled. She was so big that turning quickly was physically impossible. Soon her drift had carried her well within range, and she had presented him with virtually her whole length to shoot at. She had come close enough that, with the periscope telescope at full zoom, he could see dots that were people on her deck.

"Fire tubes one through four," he ordered. His voice was incredibly calm even though he wanted to exult aloud with the ecstasy of success. The Japanese torpedoes were superb and would do their work.

The submarine rocked in the water as four torpedoes, each with almost nine hundred pounds of high explosives, surged outward and underwater at speeds many automobiles couldn't reach on land.

Hashimoto's eyes stayed glued to the scene. As the seconds counted off, he saw an antiaircraft gun on the ship fire tracers toward him. Either the periscope or the torpedo tracks had been sighted, but it was too late for the liner to do anything but continue her inexorable starboard turn.

The first torpedo struck near the bow on the port side and was followed in quick succession by three more as explosions took in nearly the entire length of the giant ship. Her continued forward motion caused the ocean to surge through the gaping holes in the target's hull. The liner was literally driving herself into the sea.

The forward tubes were reloaded with incredible haste. "Fire one and two."

Again the submarine rocked as nearly a ton of death raced toward the stricken target. These torpedoes too exploded on the port side, and with the accumulation of wounds, the ship began to roll sickeningly on her side.

Then Hashimoto knew horror. The ship's decks were black with humanity. Thousands of men were on the target, moving and swirling like people in a crowded Tokyo street, and they were all trying to escape the dying ocean queen at once. The ship continued to roll on her side with astonishing swiftness. It was like watching a child's toy in a pond. Nothing that mighty should die so quickly, but she did.

Minutes later she had turned completely on her side. Scores of men stood helpless on her exposed hull as it bobbed and wallowed in the water. She shook them off her slippery hull like a dog sheds itself of water. Then her bow slid into the water, and her stern, with her propellers still spinning in obedience to her last instructions, followed until there was only gurgling white water where the great liner had been. On board the I-58, they could hear the creaking and groaning sound of the giant metal ship breaking up in its descent to the bottom. Hashimoto thought he could hear the death screams of those trapped belowdecks for her final ride.

A stunned Hashimoto looked on the sea where the ship had been. The handful of lifeboats and rafts were jammed with humanity. The sea was covered with dark dots that each represented the head of a desperate swimmer. The water wasn't frigid, but the men in the water wouldn't last long. He briefly contemplated surfacing and trying to rescue some of them, or even giving them his own rafts, but thought better of it. There were just too many and the danger was too great. There had been more than enough time for the ship to have gotten off a distress call, hadn't there? Help for the dead queen had to be on the way, wasn't it?

But what if there wasn't? The Americans hadn't missed his earlier kill, the
Indianapolis
, for several days after the sinking. What if this was a repeat ofthat incident? This was war and they were the foe. The I-5 8 had hurt the enemy of Japan and hurt him badly. Hashimoto still had a handful of torpedoes left and more targets to seek out before trying to sneak back to Japan.

But the sight of so many men thrown into the ocean sickened Hashimoto. He stopped looking through the periscope and pressed his forehead against the cold metal of the tube.

"Down periscope," he ordered, and gave a course that would take them away from this place of death. He grieved for the men he'd just killed. Hashimoto would continue the war, but he was now sick of the killing. The feeling had been growing in his soul for some time. He would report his success to Tokyo, but would take no joy in it. The joy he had felt at finding such a target had disappeared.

Then Hashimoto knew what he would do. The Americans were looking and listening for Japanese subs. He would radio his report in such a way that they would know exactly where to look for the survivors of the dead queen. Perhaps that way he could live with himself in a future world.

President Harry Truman buried his face in his hands and would have wept if it would have done any good. The other man in the office, Gen. George C. Marshall, bit his lower lip and waited for the tirade he expected and in some way felt he deserved. But it didn't come.

"Why?" Truman asked softly. "Why on earth was the
Queen Elizabeth
sailing alone to Japan? Why weren't there any escorts with her?"

Marshall lowered his head sadly. Admiral Leahy or King ought to have been answering Truman, but Leahy had emotionally collapsed as a result of the sinking, as well as being in disfavor with Truman because of his increasingly pacifist views, while King was trying to coordinate the continuing but increasingly futile search efforts for survivors.

"Both the
Queen Elizabeth
and the
Queen Mary
have been leased to us by Britain's Cunard Line and neither has ever sailed with an escort. They are so fast that most warships simply couldn't keep up with them, and they certainly were able to outrace any submarine. They've made numerous trips across the Atlantic to England and made them without any U-boat attacks, and with even greater numbers of GIs on board. The U-boats were always a much greater menace to shipping than any submarines the Japanese sent out." Marshall didn't add that both he and King thought that virtually all the Jap submarines had been sunk.

"So what happened this time? Did we just run out of luck?"

"It appears that the
Queen Elizabeth
was guilty of nothing more than stumbling on a waiting Jap I-boat." He added that there would be no further solitary sailings. The fully laden
Queen Mary
had been recalled to San Francisco. "After all is said and done, bad luck and a mechanical problem with the ship's sonar may be the answer."

"And, after all is said and done," Truman said, unconsciously mimicking Marshall, "how many young Americans are dead?"

Marshall started to answer, but his voice broke with pent-up emotion. He took a deep breath and tried again. "There were just over fourteen thousand unassigned army replacements on the ship. While rescue efforts are still continuing, we have picked up only a little more than two thousand of them, and a lot of them are in pretty bad shape. Admirals Nimitz and King hold out little hope that we will find more than a few more men alive. Rescue ships have plucked several hundred bodies from the waters and will continue that aspect of the recovery effort."

Truman winced. "And if it wasn't for the broadcast from the Jap sub, we wouldn't have yet missed her, would we?"

The killer of the
Queen Elizabeth
had been identified through his broadcast report as Comdr. Mochitsura Hashimoto and the sub as the I-58. Hashimoto and the I-58 had destroyed the
Indianapolis
only a few months earlier in circumstances that were chillingly similar.

"General, is this Hashimoto a war criminal?" Truman asked. "Can we promise the American public the satisfaction of a hanging in return for this disaster?"

Marshall again wished that a naval officer was present to respond. "The
Queen Elizabeth
was a legitimate target and he was under no compulsion to warn her, or do anything else that might have endangered himself. His actions were similar to what many of our own submariners are doing in their actions against Japanese shipping. In fact, Hashimoto may have saved a lot of lives by broadcasting his triumph in the clear, without any encoding. He gave the precise location of the sinking, which was highly unusual. Since the
Queen Elizabeth's
radio was knocked out within minutes of being hit, that transmission was our only real knowledge of where to begin looking."

Truman had wondered about that as well. "Do you think he did that on purpose to help us get those boys out of the water, or was he trying to show off and rub it in?"

"I don't know. Although rather unlikely, it is just possible that he was trying to save lives by the time he sent his message. If the war ever ends, we might have a chance to ask him."

Truman stood and looked out the window behind his desk. "I'm curious. England had any number of ports where a liner full of soldiers could disembark troops, while we don't yet hold a single good-sized Japanese port. Just where on earth was the
Queen Elizabeth
going to dock and unload all those troops?"

"She was going to reach a point off Japan where she would be surrounded by a horde of destroyers to protect her. LSTs and other smaller craft would swarm around her, and men would disembark directly onto them. As Nimitz's boys had it planned and rehearsed, the
Queen Elizabeth
would be emptied in a few hours and be back on her way to Hawaii or California."

But it hadn't gone as planned and almost twelve thousand American boys had been drowned. So far, they'd managed to keep news of the catastrophe out of the newspapers and off the radio. Just how much longer this could keep up was debatable. A few days was the best guess. With the earlier crises of the war behind them, many reporters and correspondents were openly chafing against what they felt was unnecessary government censorship. Several papers had already announced that they would no longer abide by censorship rules, and the attorney general had told Truman that there really wasn't much the government could do about it. Prosecuting newspapers would be politically disastrous and might not result in a favorable verdict in the courts.

A few days, Truman thought. Just a few days and then the world would know that twelve thousand GIs had died not in battle but in getting there. That it was nearly Christmas would make it even more devastating. The atom bomb had killed thirty thousand Jap soldiers a few days earlier, and a conventional torpedo had just killed twelve thousand Americans in what the Japanese were sure to call justifiable revenge. Where was the justice? What the hell use was it to have superweapons when the enemy's old ones worked so damnably well?

Joe Nomura was about to lose the chess match to the Son of Heaven.

"Check!" he said in an undeniable tone of gloating.

Joe bowed and smiled. "You win, Your Majesty. Would you like another game?"

Hirohito laughed again. "No, beating you four times in a row is enough. You try hard and are improving, but you really aren't a very good player."

"It's been years since I had the opportunity to play, sir." And that was in Hawaii, dammit!

"I know," the emperor said gently. "I did not mean to make fun of you. I enjoy playing chess with you and I enjoy having you to talk with. You are so much less a radical than the good colonel, my jailer." Joe was genuinely surprised. "Oh, I know you are a member of the
kempei
, which means you should be a fanatic like Sakei, but I see in your eyes that you are wearied by the war."

"I think everyone is, Your Majesty." It was a good, safe answer.

"Of course, but there is a great deal of disagreement over what to do about it. You are aware, are you not, that I am here because I agreed to surrender to the Americans?"

"Yes."

"Anami and the others who took over are afraid that the Americans will destroy Japanese culture. I disagree. I feel that surrender is the only way to preserve it, and there are many who agree with me. Tell me, Captain, what do you see in this camp, and when you leave here and walk through the countryside? Do you see a culture being preserved, or do you see dirty and starving people eating roots and dying of cold? And when you listen to military reports, do you hear that the Americans have been driven from Kyushu or that their planes have stopped bombing our few remaining cities?

"No! Captain, I believe that it is men like Anami and his puppet Colonel Sakei who will destroy Japan if they are not stopped. It is they who threaten the continued existence of Japanese culture, and not your emperor."

Joe said nothing. Even though his few sessions with Hirohito had been cordial, one did not argue with one's emperor. Nor did one agree with him too promptly. There was the concern that he was being tested, but for what? Silence was the best course.

"I understand, Captain, that you will neither say nor do anything that will put you in any jeopardy, and I applaud both your tact and your restraint. Yet again your eyes betray you. You wish you could say something, but don't know how or what to say, do you?"

Joe smiled. "Your Majesty is quite wise."

"And perceptive."

Joe did not disagree. Where the hell was this going? he wondered.

"Someday you may have to make some difficult, even agonizing decisions, Captain. You may have to decide where your true loyalty lies. Is it to Anami and Sakei, or is it to Japan and your emperor? My duty lies in ending this war as quickly as possible and by using any means available. I feel that I could have been the instrument of peace. I pray that it is not too late for me."

Hirohito clapped his hands. "Go now. Think about what I have said and what is the evidence of your eyes, your mind, and your heart. I know you will make the decision that is best for Japan."

Almost in shock, Joe stood and bowed. He left the compound hastily and rode his bike out into the countryside. What the hell was Hirohito saying? It sounded as if he wanted Joe's help to spring him from his prison, and the more he thought about Hirohito's words, the more he became convinced that his assumption was correct.

Now what? Jesus. Just when he thought he had a handle on things, someone went and changed the damned rules. He had to get back to camp and contact his handlers. Maybe it was time to break into the new code? He was only to use it as a last resort because, after that, there was no other. Maybe he should try to use the old one without compromising himself. He'd have to talk to Dennis. Dennis was damned clever and would help come up with something.