A Bridge Of Magpies (25 page)

His underslanding of English improved remarkably under the gun's tuition. He let his hand fall away. It was like an animated puppet's movement, however; not a muscle in the rest of his body seemed to take part in the action. Nor did his head. I might not have been there at all with a magazine full of instant death. His marionette-like stare remained on Kaptein Denny. All he did was to make a curious sucking noise, a short intake of breath. A strange reverse hiss, full of sinister menace.

`Tell 'em–quick –any games from anyone and you're a dead man.'

He
didn't pass on my message because Kaptein Denny did 168

so. The men were all round us, crouched in the fog. I was alert for the slightest sound or movement. Jutta and Kaptein Denny were with me now.

'Over the side!'

I threw an arm round Miki's throat and half-backed, halfdragged him to the rail, helped hlm along with the barrel of the automatic too.

We made the rail.

'Into the dinghy! See to him, Kaptein Denny. I'll hold 'em off.'Denny took over and I mounted the rail, swinging the submachine-gun in a slow arc from side to side.

`Struan I ' called Jutta from the boat. Her voice was hoarse and unnatural-sounding.

I paused a moment to see if the crew would attempt a lastminute rush. They didn't. I dropped over the rail and into the dinghy. Kaptein Denny already had the oars. Balanced over them he held his gun on Mild; and Jutta was making her shaky and largely ineffective contribution with Miki's own pistol.

'Beat it!'

At my words Denny gave a powerful tug at the oars and stroked clear. There was a shot from
Sang A.
I cradled the sub-machine-gun in my hands and knelt in the stern; and '

walked' my fire
up Sang
A's side and along her
rail
and upperworks-grimacing
as
the recoil tore at my slashed chest. There were yells, oaths, screams and a couple more isolated shots.

We vanished into the murk,

169

Four's a crowd in a small boat, and so is an armament of two pistols, a knife and a sub-machine-gun-all trained on one man in the stern. Captain Mild sat there to one side-where I'd pushed him while I cased
Sang A
with my fire. There was about him still that frightening immobility which he'd displayed on
Sang A's
deck. He reminded me of a puff-adder which had been trodden on, It rears up and then remains deadly still; when it strikes it is like lightning and at short range. It first hisses like a deflating tyre. Miki had already hissed.

We had to get clear of
Sang A -
quick.

J
moved to help Kaptein Denny with the rowing. '

No,' he said. 'Watch him.'

So I stood behind him at the oars, bracing myself by splaying my feet on either side of the bottom-boards. I held the sub-machine-gun on Miki. Jutta was in the bow behind me.We'd only gone a little farther when she gave a low cry. '

Struan! You're dripping blood!'

I
was. It was coming from the gash in my chest. I'd not noticed.

Jn a moment she was alongside me, steadying herself on my arm and dabbing at the wound with a handkerchief. '

Oh God! Struan, Struan!'

'It's not much.'

'Bandages! We must have some bandages for id'

Kantein Denny rested on the oars.

'Here!'

He leant forward as he
sat,
took Miki's shirt by the collar and ripped it bodily down the front. He might have been tearing it off a statue -except for the shock-wave of hate which his action sparked.

Denny passed the torn material over his shoulder to Jutta, who started work on me.

'Keep moving!'
I
told Denny.

'We're far enough, for the moment-' he replied. 'We've got 170

some things to sort out first'

'I'll say!'

We couldn't make out
Sang A
any longer, and the sounds coming from her were muted.

Kaptein Denny snapped a few words at Mild, who still didn't move. He raised his pistol.

'No!' cried Jutta. 'No!'

should: it's what he deserves. Instead he can take his chance, and swim.'

Kaptein Denny gestured again. Miki remained where he was.

Then he uttered the only thing he'd said all along. It was a harsh-venomous little explosion of sound.

'Tenchu!

'Punishment of the gods!' echoed Kaptein Denny. 'Here it is-
Tenchu

He struck Mild in the face with his fist. Mild topped over backwards into the water. When he came up, I didn't know whether to be glad or sorry he was still alive.

`Struan! Here! Pull!' Kaptein Denny was back at the oars. I took station alongside him. My last sight of Mild in the fog was of two malicious eyes burning just above water level-like the illustrations you see of vanished prehistoric monsters' heads swimming in search of prey.

The dinghy sped through the water. The slop of sea in the bottom of the boat made the hot barrel of the sub-machinegun I'd discarded sizzle. It threw off a kind of pinky foam-steaming off the blood on Kaptein Denny's knife. My blood wasn't contributing, now that Jutta had bandaged the wound. The navigation was a bitch. If I'd been alone I'd have fouled the spider's-web of cables and chains which enveloped
Sang A.
But Kaptein Denny seemed to know at every stage what he was doing. He made his changes of course by pulling less or more strongly on his oar, like a rider guiding his horse by his knees. The cables and smaller marker buoys were virtually undetectable until the boat was upon them: we evaded them aJl, however, and eventually broke clear of the network when one of the big buoys with its yellow number hove up on the port hand. At this point Denny made a radical alteration of course: I knew it was to the north-west because up lo them I'd been facing the east wind squarely and now il was to one
side,

171

The heat lay on the water like a fever and our eyes were full of driving, blowing sand; rowing was as cooling as doing press-ups in a sauna. It was a good thing, though, because it flushed out of our pores the throat-tightening fear-stench of men who have been in the presence of death.

What it didn't flush out, however, were a thousand questions I had for Kaptein Denny. And a thousand suspicions which were mutiplying as fast
as
one-cell cultures in a testtube.

`Tenchu'
Jutta uttered the word mechanically, like someone who, on waking, recalls a puzzling fragment of a bad dream.

Kaptain Denny anticipated the questions which I was intending to throw at him any moment. It didn't escape me that during our rowing he'd hooked the sub-machine-gun towards himself with a toe, so that it now lay within easy reach under his thwart. His pistol was in his belt-too -a Taisho, Japanese Imperial Navy model.

He said, 'Punishment of the gods. I was the instrument.'

'Instrument!' Jutta leaned forward so that her face was close to our oars. 'Now I've heard everything! You loved that fight back there! Oh, it was pleasant - as a meat tenderizing demonstration!'

'You've got. a lot to account for,' I added.

He replied, not at all breathlessly, because he was breathing easily and economically as he rowed.

'You listen to me, both of you. The
Sang A
crowd aren't paper tigers. They're a
kamikaze
suicide squad attached to the United Red Army-the
Rengo Sekigun.
Hijacking and terrorism. The same bunch who were responsible for the Lod airport massacre and a dozen other atrocities - remember?'

'There's nothing to terrorize at Possession . .

I began,

but he cut me short.

'There is. There was. Let's begin with what was. Emmermann is in fact Swakop, the Nazi spy who was landed from
U-160-
then disappeared. I heard nothing about him and thought he must have died-or gone back to Germany after the war.'

'Tsushima the spy!' exclaimed Jutta incredulously. 'A Japanese!'

'Fortunately for me the Oriental and Malay faces are very similar: I've pretended to be a
gamat
all these years. 172

Kenryo and the others are not Koreans. They're Japanese, like me. So are the others in
Sang A.
They didn't know I understood them that first day we went aboard.'

'A brace of ageing spies, you and Emmermann alias Swakop!' went on Jutta. 'I don't know where Miki fits in but I'd guess he is part of the same set-up. Revenge for some dead-and-gone hatreds whlch you've kept festering all these years since the war–thirty years! And you try to pass it off as punishment of the gods . .

'This isn't an affair of the
past
but of the present .. .' he began. I knew that must be so since the C-in-C had got wind of it.

'You've turned the whole situation arse over tip,' J interrupted. 'Start at the beginning, for Pete's sake!'

'I repeat: I am Japanese, the man who got left behind on the mainland by
U-160.
Tsushima was only a code-name, like Swakop. My real name's Denzo. It's close enough to resemble Denny–the
gamat
who never was. Nor was I a spy. I'll come to that part of it in a moment. Let's stick to
U-160.
After she'd attacked the liner and been herself attacked by
Gousblom,
my cover was in serious danger of being blown. So I acted the part of the fisherman hero and rescued the liner's
passengers.
In the resulting confusion and admiration no one questioned my
bona fides.
But I had to silence the one man who knew who I really was. He was the head of the pro-Nazi cell in South West Africa. I returned to Luderitz and did so.'

Jutta said in a whisper, 'Hasler. The husband of the woman who adopted me.'

'I cut his throat,'

'Oh, God!'

'J had to.'

'Had to I Vengeance of the gods again, I suppose! How many others have you killed?' she asked.

I had to risk his closing up completely when I fired my question: 'For what?
Why?

He replied deliberately-weighing his words. 'Because
U-160
carried something more valuable than any treasure. It's what the
kamikazes are after-
of count.'

'I thought, almost from that first day we met, that there was more to you than fishing,' I accused.

'You nearly caught me out at Jutta's mother's grave. Those 173

were Japanese Shinto-rites for the departed.'

'What did
U-160
carry?'
My voice was harsh with tension. He gulped
a
great breath of the sandy wind
as
if he were trying to free a vice round his chest. His steady measured rowing said it wasn't for his muscles.

Ì'll tell you. I'll have to explain it. Japan established herself as one of the great naval powers of the 20th century by annihilating the Russian fleet at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905. You could call Tsushima Japan's Trafalgar. We also have our Nelson-Admiral Togo. My code name was associated with the victory:
Tsushima.

'I thought AdmiraJ Yamamoto was your naval hero.'

'Yes. Admiral Yamomoto. Japan's sea darling will always be Yamamoto although the glory rests with Togo. In its way Yamamoto's contribution during the Second World War was no less than Togo's nearly forty years earlier. He masterminded our other great naval victory of the century, Pearl Harbour.

There was no sound but the baying of the wind.

'Tsushima and Pearl Harbour; Togo and Yamamoto. Yet what if I were to tell you that those victories were not theirs but the brain-child of someone else?'

The way he spoke made me wonder whether we had to do with a homicidal maniac. His talk about glory would fit into the pattern of megalomania, of illusions of grandeur. I calculated how far it
was
to the sub-machine-gun. It would be an even-steven bet who'd reach it first if a shoot-out blew up.He went on, 'The basic winning strategy at Pearl Harbour and Tsushima didn't originate with either of the two victors, although of course they were responsible for carrying out the detail. No. It originated in a secret Japanese book of naval strategy-not a super-manual-as you'd be inclined to think, of battle moves and countermoves; but a kind of semimystical collection of symbols. An oracle, if you like to call it that. This book has been consulted and acted upon by all our great naval heroes for centuries ...'

Now I knew he was crazy. 'Come off it!' I interrupted: '

Who won the bloody Pacific war anyway? Where was your mystic book after the Yanks thrashed Yamamoto at Midway? Where? .

in the Possession channel, in
U-160?

174

That put the skids under me. Jutta's face went all tight, like an instant face-lift. As expressionless, too.

'We lost because we lost the Book of Tsu. That's what it'

s called–the name's a shortened form of Tsushima.
U-160
has it aboard.'

I missed the slgnificance of his use of the present tense because suddenly I felt cold all through. I wasn't dealing with a madman–something else. Worse-if he wasn't on your side.

He went on. 'Mild is trying to sell the sea-heart of Japan to a shower of thugs.'

'You're talking
as
if we knew who Mild was!'
I
exclaimed.

'Captain Mild
was
Admiral Yamamoto's personal staff officer and confidante. He probably knew our great admiral –

and his secrets–better than anyone living. He was also one of a small group of Imperial Navy officers who were sworn to secrecy by the Emperor himself and ordered to arrange for
U-160 to
collect the Book of Tsu at the Bridge of Magpies.'

'Collect?' I echoed. 'Then she wasn't carrying it when she sailed for the Cape?'

'Collect,' he repeated. 'From me. Ashore. J had it. The Book of Tsu was in my safekeeping. Then
U-160
went off without me,
as
you know from the tape-recording, taking with her the officer who'd come in her to escort me home. A few minutes before, I'd handed over the Book of Tsu to him and he had waded out to the U-boat's dinghy with it. Then the
City of Baroda
burst in on the scene and in the panic I was left behind. Left!' His voice was edged with bitterness. 'The whole plan wrecked! Mild, as I said, was one of the planning team and afterwards he went back into the front line as the Americans drove closer and closer to Japan. He went on fighting, even after the surrender. He was one of those wartime hold-outs who show up from time to time on remote Pacific islands. Jn his case it was Lubang in the Philippines. He
was
eventually flushed out of the jungle a couple of years back, after nearly thirty years of no-surrender. He was something of a hero when he returned to Japan. But he found it wasn't the place he'd fought for. In his disenchanted stale he was easy meat for the
kamikaze
movement. So he teamed up with them.