The Ends of the Earth
Read The Ends of the Earth Online
Authors: Robert Goddard
Tags: #Fiction, #Crime, #Mystery & Detective, #General
ABOUT THE BOOK
July 1919. Ex-flying ace James ‘Max’ Maxted’s attempt to uncover the secret behind the death of his father, Sir Henry Maxted, murdered while serving as an adviser with the British delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, has seemingly ended in failure – and his own death.
The trail he had uncovered leads to Japan and a mysterious prisoner held by Sir Henry Maxted’s old enemy, Count Tomura. Unaware of Max’s fate, the team he has recruited to finish the job are already in Japan where their paths cross that of former German spymaster, Fritz Lemmer, now rebuilding his spy network in the service of a new, more sinister cause.
In the days and weeks ahead, the quest Max embarked on in Paris will reach its dizzying end at Tomura’s castle in the mountains of Honshu – and the full truth of what occurred thirty years before will finally be laid bare . . .
Contents
THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
Robert Goddard
THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
SAM TWENTYMAN WAS
a long way from home. He had never imagined he might stray so far from his Walthamstow roots. He was not by nature the straying kind. Yet here he was, sitting on a bollard smoking a cigarette while people of several races and numerous nationalities swarmed around him on Yokohama pier. They would have taken him for some species of idler, if they had paid him any attention at all. But they would have been mistaken.
It was a hot Saturday afternoon in early July, 1919, the sun blazing down from a deep blue sky. Sam was seated on the shady side of the pier, beneath the vast hulk of a moored liner, but even where he was the heat was stifling. Nothing in the way of a cooling sea breeze reached him from the bay. Past him streamed passengers leaving or joining ships. Most of them were Japanese, some clad in kimonos, some in Western clothes. There were Europeans as well, sporting boaters and loose linen suits and dresses. Sam studied them with particular care as they passed. He was looking for one familiar face among the throng. But he did not see it.
Eight weeks had passed since Sam had sailed from Brest with Schools Morahan and Malory Hollander aboard a French liner bound for New York. Those weeks had required little more of Sam than to while away a succession of days at sea and wander the streets of New York, Chicago and San Francisco, gaping at the sights. But they had allowed him ample time to reflect on what had led him to embark on such a journey.
Less than four months ago, his life had seemed to be reverting to a humdrum form of normality, working in the family bakery business, after his years on the Western front as an engineer in the Royal Flying Corps. Then James Maxted, known to all as Max, the finest pilot Sam had encountered in France, had proposed they open a flying school together. Sam had jumped at the chance. But Max had been summoned to Paris to investigate the mystery of his father’s sudden death in a roof-fall while serving as an advisor with the British delegation to the post-war peace conference. Sam had followed, eager to help Max settle the matter quickly.
Since then, the intrigue surrounding Sir Henry Maxted’s murder – for murder Max had proved it was – had several times threatened to claim Sam’s life as well as Max’s. The truth, it had finally become clear, could only be found in Japan, destination of Sir Henry’s old enemy, Count Tomura, following his sudden departure from Paris. Max had engaged former soldier of fortune Schools Morahan to recruit a team of hardened men to travel to Japan and await his arrival, before they went in search of the secret Sir Henry had been killed to protect.
Prior to leaving Paris, Max had emphasized to Morahan that whoever he took to Japan, Sam should not be among them. ‘I want Sam kept out of this,’ Morahan had quoted him as saying. But Sam was not out of it. Thanks to the force of his own argument that his mechanical skills might well be needed, he was very much in the middle of it.
Someone, possibly Jack Farngold, for long a thorn in Tomura’s flesh, was held prisoner in Japan on the Count’s orders. That someone was the key to the secret Max was determined to unlock. Morahan was to hire the sort of men whose expertise would be needed to free Tomura’s prisoner. He had reckoned he could find them in circles he had previously moved in, in New York and Chicago. Once assembled, the team was to travel to Japan and meet Max in Yokohama.
Morahan’s friend, Malory Hollander, had gone with them. She had spent some years in Japan as a young woman and knew a little of the language. She had also, to Sam’s surprise, urged Morahan to accept Sam’s offer of his services.
‘We don’t have a clue what sort of rescue we’ll need to attempt, Schools,’ she had said. ‘A plane is the quickest getaway I can imagine. You’ll have a pilot on hand in Max. I think you should have someone who knows how a plane engine works as well, in case you decide to use one.’
The discussion had taken place in the offices of Morahan’s deceased business partner, Travis Ireton, a few hours after Ireton’s funeral. News of another death – that of Commissioner Kuroda of the Japanese police, an old friend of Sir Henry Maxted, drowned in unexplained circumstances on his way back to Japan – had convinced Sam he could not sit tight in Paris.
‘I don’t know as I’ll be any safer here if it comes down to it,’ he had pointed out. ‘Count Tomura doesn’t seem to be the kind to let people who’ve crossed him live to tell the tale.’
‘And you have crossed him,’ Morahan had admitted. ‘We all have.’
‘So, we’d better all go, hadn’t we?’
They had left Paris the following day.
Morahan’s assembly of his team had been done through a series of meetings at undisclosed locations to which neither Sam nor Malory had been invited. Three men – Lewis Everett, Al Duffy and Howie Monteith – had left New York with them. Another two – Grover Ward and Gazda Djabsu – had been picked up in Chicago.
During the two-day train ride from there to California, Sam had spent much of his time gazing out at the Wild West he had only ever imagined courtesy of his favourite Tom Mix movies. He had even seen what the guard had assured him was a pair of genuine Red Indians lolling by the tracks at a one-horse watering-stop somewhere in southern Wyoming.
His travelling companions had seemed unimpressed by the scenery. They tended to the laconic, as Sam supposed such men should. But the three-week voyage across the Pacific from San Francisco to Yokohama had nevertheless enabled him to form some opinion of their individual characters.
Everett naturally defined himself as Morahan’s deputy. Sam judged he was a few years older than the others and he was certainly the best looking of the bunch: dark-haired and moustachioed, with a ready smile and fluent turn of phrase – a marksman by all accounts. Duffy was a big, muscular redhead possessed of a prodigious capacity for sleep, who oozed reliability. Monteith, a leaner, less imposing man, cracked passable jokes when the mood took him and spent much of his time aboard ship seducing female passengers. Ward was a stern, ruthless-looking fellow, the sort Sam would not have liked to find himself on the wrong side of. He came as something of a pair with Djabsu, a large, usually genial but occasionally morose Serb, who spoke little English but evidently understood what was required of him. Sam had thought his name was spelt as it was pronounced –
Jabzoo
– until he had seen it written down in all its Serbo-Croat glory. ‘Nots worry’ was his all-purpose saying.
Sam trusted Morahan to have chosen these people wisely, probably for reasons that would only become clear in Japan. None of them knew exactly what would be required of them. Sam guessed their principal qualification was an ability to tackle just about anything. They were being paid well. But they would not begrudge earning their money.
The task ahead would only become apparent when Max joined the party. Nothing had been heard from him since his departure from Paris on May 3. Today, Sam needed no reminding, was July 5. The Paris peace conference was a week over, the treaty bringing the war to a formal close signed and sealed. There had been no way for Max to contact them in the interim. His instructions had been that they should simply wait for him in Yokohama, although Sam’s assumption – and Morahan’s too – was that
he
would actually be waiting for
them
. Sam had braced himself for Max’s angry reaction to his presence. He suspected Morahan and Malory had braced themselves too.
But there had been no such reaction, because Max had not been waiting for them. They had been in Yokohama since Wednesday without word or sign of him. ‘We sit tight,’ was Morahan’s response. ‘He’ll be here.’
In truth, sitting tight was all there was to do. They had booked into hotels and waited. ‘We do nothing to attract attention to ourselves,’ was Morahan’s repeated injunction.
As far as Sam could tell, it was an easy injunction to follow. Yokohama was a bustling port city, awash with foreigners. A whole community of expatriate Europeans and Americans dwelt in Western-style villas up on the Bluff, above the harbour. And there were as many Chinese as Japanese on the streets. There was plenty to see even if there was little to do.
Loitering on the pier in the hope of seeing Max disembark from one of the ships that arrived at frequent intervals was an activity Sam knew Morahan considered neither necessary nor wise. ‘Max will have no trouble finding us when he arrives. The last thing he’ll want is a pier-head reception committee.’ Sam had in fact tried to stay away, but his eagerness to have done with the moment when Max caught a horrified first sight of him had proved too powerful. And so, here he was, watching the latest disembarking crowd thin as the ship that had brought them steadily emptied.
Sam’s war had been full of waiting. A forward base was a quiet and pensive place when the squadron was out. At least then, though, he had known there was a term to the waiting. This vigil in Yokohama was open-ended and insidiously unnerving. With each day that passed, the question of why Max had not yet arrived grew more insistent.
Pitching the butt of his cigarette into the oily width of water between the pier and the moored liner, Sam stood up and ambled off towards the Bund. Rickshaws and motor-taxis were heading in all directions from the passenger terminal. The hotel where he was staying with Morahan and Malory, the nostalgically named Eastbourne – the others were staying elsewhere – was not far, but he was in no hurry to return there.
He stopped and sat on one of the benches along the esplanade and squinted out into the bay, where launches and lighters and bigger steamers were criss-crossing the sparkling water. He lit another cigarette, wishing it was a Woodbine rather than whatever this rubbishy Japanese brand was called.
‘You are Sam Twentyman, yes?’
The words were spoken by a man who had sat down on the bench beside him: a lean, round-shouldered fellow dressed in a rumpled cream suit and boater. He had dark, grey-flecked hair and a full moustache. His cheeks were hollow, his gaze wary, his skin sallow. He would have looked like any other European of the clerking classes but for the ghost of a knowing smile at the corners of his mouth.
‘You
are
Sam Twentyman?’ His English was good, but there was a French accent bubbling beneath it.
‘Who wants to know?’
‘My name is Pierre Dombreux.’
‘
What?
’
That was impossible. Pierre Dombreux was the late husband of Sir Henry Maxted’s mistress, Corinne Dombreux. He had died in Petrograd, by all accounts, more than a year ago, a French diplomat turned German and/or Russian spy, killed by his paymasters when he had outlived his usefulness.
‘You heard, I think. I
am
Pierre Dombreux. And
you
are Sam Twentyman. Hoping to see Max get off that ship, were you?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Sam blustered, certain that admitting anything would be folly. ‘But I do know you can’t be Pierre Dombreux. He’s dead.’
‘No, I am not dead. As you can see, I am very much alive. But I must tell you … Max is not.’
RETURNING TO JAPAN
had revived many long-buried memories for Malory Hollander. She had first arrived there in 1893 as an eighteen-year-old assistant to the redoubtable Lutheran missionary Miss Dubb, with whom she had toured the country, armed with translated biblical texts intended to convert Japanese womanhood to the path of righteousness.
Whether she had lost her illusions before her faith or the other way round, Malory could hardly say now. She still burned with shame when she recalled how naïve she had been. The parting of the ways with Miss Dubb in the wilds of Hokkaido remained for Malory the end of a life she could barely imagine having led and the beginning of the one that had finally drawn her back to Japan.
She had taught for two years in Tokyo before leaving the country, as she had supposed, for good. Falling into and out of love during that time with a Japanese man, Shimizu Junzaburo, had shaped the character she now possessed: cautious, precise, self-reliant; or bossy, as Schools would have it.