The Gate

CHAPTER 7

The body hit the water with a splash and the chains wrapped around it took it instantly out of sight. Lake walked from the pier back to the van and sat down in the passenger seat. They were parked on the shoreline, just east of the south part of the Golden Gate, near the point where Lake had come ashore the previous week after spoiling the gassing plot. It was a calm place, the only sounds that of foghorns off to the west and the gentle lap of water on the shore. The Coast Guard Station was farther up the shore, well lit, but otherwise looking very quiet.

Lake took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it, ignoring Araki’s look of distaste. Lake inhaled deeply, then let out a cloud of smoke. “Okay, so we’re here together,” he said, “but I still don’t know whether you are who you say you are and even if you are who you say you are, whether I ought to be sitting here with you.”

“I understand your concerns.” Araki said. “I have similar concerns. I do not know if you are truly an agent of your government and, if you are, whether I should also be sitting here with you.”

“I don’t give a fuck about your concerns,” Lake said without raising his voice. “I’ve got the home-court advantage here, which means you play by my rules.” He reached inside his windbreaker and pulled out his satellite phone. “I’m going to bounce this to my higher-up and see what he has to say about you.”

“I do not think that is a good idea.”

“Why?” Lake was punching in the numbers to the Ranch.

“Because this situation might be harmful to your country and mine, and if we keep it between us, no extra harm is done. I believe we can handle this ourselves. If you call your supervisor, then this is out of our hands.”

Lake pushed the off button and folded the phone shut. He thought of Feliks looking at him at this very spot, giving him grief for killing all three men at the bridge. If he told Feliks that there was an agent of CPI here in San Francisco, Lake knew that the long hand of the Ranch would clamp down on all operations. The Japanese material that had been found in the van on the bridge, combined with Araki’s presence, would send red flags flying. It would also slow things down. Lake knew that the freighter wasn’t leaving in the next twelve hours, but it could leave as early as this evening. The Ranch was efficient, but it wasn’t that efficient. They could lose this whole operation. The bottom line for Lake, though, was that he would lose his operational control. Already he’d had Feliks here once and Randkin here on another occasion. If they wanted to run the show, then they should be the ones getting shot at, Lake reasoned.

“All right,” Lake said. “We’ll work this together for now.”

“What about the papers?” Araki asked. “What do they concern?”

Lake looked at the top piece of paper in the glow of the overhead light. It was a Xeroxed page covered with Japanese writing. He handed it to Araki. “Make yourself useful.”

Araki scanned the page. “It is dated 1945. From the heading it appears to be a document of the Imperial Navy, detailing supply operations in the China Sea.”

“That’s something to kill over?” Lake wondered out loud.

Araki was thumbing through the rest of the few pages the Koreans had abandoned in their haste. “They are all Japanese naval documents, dated 1945. Some are about operations; some about logistics; some concern personnel assignments. There are several orders detailing ships to conduct certain missions. There is no readily apparent pattern.”

“Why would these be at UCBerkeley?” Lake asked.

“Most likely there is a historical archive in the building,” Araki said. “At the end of the war, you Americans took whatever wasn’t destroyed that could be of intelligence value.”

“Why would the Koreans be interested in such documents?” Lake asked.

Araki was silent for a few moments as he read, then he glanced up. “I do not know. Obviously they are interested in something concerning the Japanese Navy in the last year of World War II.”

Lake felt stupid asking obvious questions, but he was at a loss with this development. “Why is Nishin following the Koreans? What does the Black Ocean Society have to do with this?”

Araki explained the role the societies had in Japanese culture and the strong influence they had exerted in politics, particularly during the war. “It is something difficult for Americans to understand,” he added. “For example, in 1943, the head of the Black Dragon Society made a radio broadcast directly to your President Roosevelt and to Churchill also, threatening the most dire of consequences if the Allies did not unconditionally surrender.

“It is little spoken of or understood in the West, but much of the problem the Allies had trying to negotiate with my country near the end of the war stemmed from the fact that the secret societies and the military exerted such strong influence. Even though there were many in the government who wished to negotiate a surrender, they were unable to counter the weight of the societies until finally the Emperor himself had to make a radio announcement after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which before that time was unheard of.

“That is why,” Araki continued, “my unit was formed a few years back when it appeared that secret societies were again rearing their head. The extremists who were behind the Tokyo gas attacks were much more radical than the traditional societies, but the fear of a repeat of events that happened prior to and during the Second World War was so great that those high in the government did not want to take a chance.”

“That’s all nice and well,” Lake said, “but it brings us no closer to explaining what is so important about these papers to both the North Koreans and the Black Ocean Society.”

“As you said,” Araki pointed out, “you must go and ask someone at the university about the papers. Maybe you can find out then.” “You drop me off where I tell you, then you stake out the trawler,” Lake ordered. “I’ll get over to the university as soon as people are awake there.”

Nishin was as frustrated as Lake, but for a very different reason. For the third time the American arms dealer had interfered. The North Koreans had whatever they had come for and were safely back on their ship. From his perch, Nishin could see guards walking the deck of the trawler, Ingrams hidden under their coats.

He knew the Genoysha would not be pleased. He had failed. Nishin very seriously contemplated boarding the ship on his own and recovering the box, but his duty passion was tempered by the bitter training he had experienced. The odds were that he would be killed and then the mission would most certainly be a failure. The ship was not yet at sea; there was hope yet.

Nishin knew he needed help and there was only one place he could get it. With great reluctance he climbed down off the crane.

The campus looked very different in the light of day. Lake felt old as he walked among the crowds of students strolling to and from class. He had exchanged his bloodstained clothes of the previous evening for a fresh pair of jeans, a bulky white sweater with a turtleneck, and a faded sports jacket over the sweater. The Hush Puppy rode comfortably under his arm inside the jacket.

He also felt the irritable presence of the satellite phone in his coat’s inside pocket. He hadn’t called Feliks with the results of the previous evening, which he knew would not go over well. The report of the two dead unidentified Korean men had been on the third page of the San Francisco paper this morning and Lake knew it was a short matter of time before someone at the Ranch connected the bodies, the MAC-lOs found near them, and the stolen Bronco II.

On another front, Lake believed Araki was an agent of the CPI, but even if Araki wasn’t, Lake felt confident he could deal with the man. He also believed that Araki had not told him the full story, but that was to be expected. Lake hadn’t told Araki everything he knew either. The thing that bothered Lake about this situation was that what he did know was greatly overwhelmed by what he didn’t know.

North Koreans; Japanese secret societies; a Japanese special government agent; the Patriots’ lurking presence in the San Francisco underworld — all these things troubled Lake. Beyond the fact he didn’t know what most of those people were up to, he didn’t know why they were doing what they were doing in most cases. Motive was the most critical factor in trying to outthink one’s enemy, and here he didn’t know that either. He hoped he could gain some answers here.

Just inside the west entrance a large board showed the campus layout, with a large “you-are-here” arrow orienting Lake. He retraced the route they had taken last night in his head and found the building he was looking for: Wellman Hall. It housed the history department, which fit with the type of documents the Koreans had stolen. Before he went there, though, Lake made a detour to the library and spent a half-hour doing some reading. Then Lake walked to Wellman Hall and went in the large double doors in the center. A glass case held a listing of all the offices in the building and Lake studied it.

There were only names, no areas of study listed, so Lake headed for the main office of the history department. Opening the door, he was greeted by a student behind the desk. “Can I help you?” “Do you have someone here who is working on material dealing with the Japanese Imperial Navy in World War II?”

The student frowned. “I really don’t know. Dr. Harmon might be able to help you. She’s the Twentieth-Century Pacific Areas Study specialist.”

“And where might I find Dr. Harmon?” Lake asked.

“Room one forty-two.”

“Thank you.” Lake exited the office and walked down the corridor. Room 142 came up on his right and he lightly rapped on the opaque glass that made up most of the top half of the door. There was no answer, so he tried the handle. It turned and he cautiously stepped in. He was in a small foyer, about six feet long. A door was to either side of him, one half-open, the other locked. He could hear someone talking to his right, behind the half-open door. Lake peered around the corner as he tapped on the doorframe.

Lake paused. A woman was seated behind a massive wood desk which was covered with mounds of paper. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties, with long thick black hair cascading over her shoulders and bright green eyes that fixed him in the doorway as she talked on the phone. Lake prided himself on telling a person’s ethnic background at a glance, but he wasn’t sure with Harmon. He thought she might have some Asian blood based on her facial features, but her skin was dark, as if she had Mediterranean ancestors in her past. Whatever the combination was, it was unique and intriguing. Beyond her looks, Lake picked up a definite sense of purpose and competence, which he found a little surprising. He was used to that feeling when around others in the covert community — men and women who had something extra, beyond the norm, knew they had it and didn’t have to tell anyone.

“I’ll get back to you,” she said, her voice low and firm. She put the phone down and stood. She was tall, perhaps two inches shorter than Lake, and slender. She wore a gray pants suit and no jewelry. “May I help you?”

“Are you Dr. Harmon?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Lake,” he said, extending his hand. She took it with a firm grip, then let go.

“Is that a first name or a last name?” she asked, sitting back down.

“It’s just a name,” Lake replied, a bit off-guard.

Harmon laughed, the sound coming from deep in her throat, and Lake slid a couple of inches off his emotional center of gravity. “What can I do for you, Mr. Lake?” She pointed at a chair facing the desk and Lake gratefully sank into the leather.

“I’m interested in information concerning the Imperial Japanese Navy during the last year of World War II.”

“For what reason?” Harmon asked, steepling her fingers.

“I’m writing a book,” Lake said, “about fleet operations that year.”

“For what purpose?” Harmon asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Why are you writing a book about the operations of the Japanese fleet in 1945?” Dr. Harmon amplified. “By that time in the war, most of the Japanese fleet had been destroyed. That which wasn’t destroyed was hiding in port, trying to avoid the onslaught of the American carrier forces.”

“To be more specific,” Lake said, “I’m interested in one ship in particular. The Yamamoto went down in April 1945.” Lake was using the information he had in the forefront of his brain from the side trip to the library. “It was the greatest battleship of the war, larger than either the Germans’ Graf Spcc or the Bismarck, yet little has ever been written about it.”

“Little has been written about the Yamamoto,” Harmon said, “because it didn’t do too much damage and its end was rather un glorious As you well know,” she added.

“Yes, but I’m still interested in the topic,” Lake said.

“Well, we do have quite a bit of material from the Imperial Naval archives,” Harmon said. “It was gathered by U.S. Naval intelligence at the end of the war and brought back to the Naval Air Station at Alameda. It sat there unopened for decades until I went over and started looking through it about eight years ago. I forwarded some of it to the National Archives. Some of it I brought here when they shut the air base down four years ago and were going to just destroy it. I took as much as I had room for.” She reached behind her and pulled a thick three-ring binder off a bookcase.

While she looked in it, Lake checked out the rest of the office. There were the usual diplomas on the wall behind her. He noted that several of the official papers were written in Japanese. There was a picture of Harmon standing alone with Mount Fuji in the hazy distance behind her. Another of a much younger Harmon with a man who appeared to be her own age at the time and an older woman taken in a park. The old woman was seated on a bench, Harmon and the other man behind her, a hand on each shoulder. The man was outfitted in a military dress uniform. A Marine. Lake noted that.

“I’m not sure if I have anything specifically related to the destruction of the Yamamoto,” she added as she flipped open the binder. “But on the other hand, I haven’t been able to go through one-tenth of what I recovered from Alameda This binder has the index for what I have gone through and filed.”

“Well,” Lake said, backtracking on his flimsy cover story, “the material I’m looking for doesn’t necessarily have to all deal with the Yamamoto. I’m also interested in any Japanese naval operations near what is now North Korea.”

Harmon paused in her reading. She closed the binder and rested her hands on top of it. “I don’t think you’re writing a book. I’ve written a couple of books myself and been published. One thing I know is that an author has to have a very clear idea of the theme of his work, especially when writing a historical work. I think you’re just fishing for some specific information which may or may not have anything to do with writing a book. If you would be more honest with me, perhaps I could help you better.”

If I was more honest, Lake thought, you might not help me at all. UCBerkeley was not exactly the place of choice for a government agent to go looking for information. However, he didn’t feel that he should so easily place Dr. Harmon into an antigovernment position. After all, there was the picture of her with the Marine.

“Where do you keep your material?” Lake asked.

Harmon looked at him, her eyes boring into his for several long seconds. “You haven’t answered my question. This university pays my salary to teach and do research. It does not pay me to answer questions for any person who happens to walk into my office. Do you have any identification that you can show me, Mr. “It’s-just-a-name’ Lake? What do you do for a living?”

Lake slumped in the leather seat, feeling the back of his head touch the headrest. He’d been doing undercover work for a long time now and he’d assumed many different personas. He didn’t have the time to be very creative here, nor was he back stopped by the Ranch on any cover he might come up with that would make Harmon cooperate. He looked once more at the picture over her shoulder where she was with the Marine and decided to gamble. An old hand at the Ranch, teaching him covert operations, had told him that when in doubt, the truth always worked the best. Especially if the truth couldn’t be verified by the person you told it to. Then all they had was a story.

Lake steepled his fingers. “Okay. Here’s the situation. I’m actually an agent working for the government under deep cover. Last week I stopped some terrorists trying to release a biological agent to infect the city of San Francisco. Last night I followed some foreign agents to this campus and they broke into this building. They left carrying a box with some materials in it. The man carrying the box was killed — not by me, but by someone associated with the Black Ocean Society from Japan, which you might have heard of — and he dropped the box. The other men, North Koreans, escaped with the box, but I was able to retrieve a few documents they left behind.” Lake reached under his sweater and pulled out a few pages which he handed across the desk to Dr. Harmon.

Harmon didn’t look at the documents. She stared at Lake. “I’m supposed to believe that?”

“If you don’t believe that,” Lake replied, “then believe my story about writing a book. I can assure you one of them is true.”

“How come there weren’t a whole bunch of police here this morning? How come I haven’t heard of this man being killed?”

“Because they all used silencers and I took the body away,” Lake said. “Did you read in the paper or hear on the news about two men being killed on the Bay Bridge last night?”

Harmon nodded.

“Those two were Koreans. They tried stopping me from following them here.”

“You killed them?”

“One of them,” Lake answered. “The other was killed by this fellow from the Black Ocean.”

“This is unbelievable,” Harmon said, shaking her head. “I’ve seen more plausible stories than this on TV.”

Lake sat still, letting her make up her own mind.

“You don’t seem like you have the greatest sense of humor,” Harmon finally said. “I don’t know you well enough to know about your imagination.” She glanced at the documents. “These look like they’re from the records I’ve got here.” She tapped long fingernails on the paper. “What government agency?”

“I can’t tell you that,” Lake said. “But I can tell you it’s not the CIA, FBI, or associated with the military.”

“And why should I help you?” Harmon asked. She held a hand up. “And please don’t give me any patriotic speeches. I saw you looking at the picture. That’s my younger brother. He’s stationed in Okinawa and it was one of the saddest days in my life when he joined the Marine Corps, but he seems to like it and his life. But it’s not mine. So I ask you again: Why should I help you?”

“Because it’s interesting,”.” Lake said. “There’s a puzzle here and it involves material you have. I need to solve this puzzle and I think you would find it intriguing to help me solve it. It might be fun.”

“Fun?” A half-grin crossed Harmon’s face. “That’s the last reason I thought you’d give me.” The grin disappeared. “But if people have died, as you say, wouldn’t it also be dangerous?”

“They got what they wanted here,” Lake said. “There’s no danger to you.”

Part of the grin came back. “Okay, I’ll play along for a little bit, Mister Secret Agent Man. I’ve got nothing to lose and this will make a good story to tell at a party. What do you need to know?”

“Have you ever heard of the Black Ocean Society?” Lake asked.

“Yes, I’ve heard of the Black Ocean Society. Anyone who has made any in-depth study of Japanese history in this century has heard of it.” She put the documents down. “Now, why do you expect me to believe your story?”

Lake shrugged. “I don’t have expectations of other people because I don’t control them. I only have expectations of myself. I’ve told you the truth; what you choose to do with it is up to you.”

“Why would North Koreans break in here? What were they looking for?”

“I was hoping you could help me with that,” Lake said. “That’s what I’m here for. Perhaps if we went to where you keep these documents, we can find out what they took.”

Harmon stood. “Follow me.”

They didn’t have far to go. Lake was right behind her as she pointed at the other side of the small foyer. “This door doesn’t appear to have been broken open,” she commented.

“Excuse me,” Lake said. He pulled an ATM card out of his wallet and pushed it in between the door and the frame. Sliding it down he pushed the latch back and the door swung open.

“Point taken,” Harmon said.

She flipped a light switch and a set of metal stairs going down appeared. Her low-heeled shoes clattered on the metal as she went down. At the bottom, there was another door, this one with no lock. She pushed it open and turned on another switch. It lit fluorescent lights on a low ceiling.

Rows of metal racks rose from the pitted concrete floor to the ceiling. Cardboard boxes filled the shelves.

“We’re in the basement,” Harmon said. “This used to be the coal room. When they modernized the building about fifty years ago, this room was abandoned. I opened it up five years ago for storage. I’m sure I’m violating some fire code, but I have to make do with what is available.”

Lake looked around, “How would someone know this room existed? That records of the Japanese fleet would be kept here?”

“I’ve published quite a few articles on the subject,” Harmon said, “which was why I thought you were a legitimate researcher at first. Anyone who does any sort of checking would find out that I have access to all this. In the academic world we don’t hide our sources. By the way,” she added, “I would like to know which government agency you represent?”

“A multi jurisdictional task force,” Lake answered. He looked down. He could see boot prints in the concrete, coal, and plaster dust on the floor. “The North Koreans made those last night.”

Harmon looked at the marks. “Which jurisdiction of the multi do you come from?” she pressed.

“You are insistent, aren’t you?” Lake replied.

“Please don’t answer my question with a question,” Harmon said. “When a student does that, I give them so much grief they never do it again. It’s the sign of a mind that refuses to make a commitment to an answer, be it right or wrong.”

Lake was following the footsteps in the dust. The Koreans had gone down every aisle. He was looking for an empty space on the shelves. Some of the boxes were labeled on the end with dates. He was passing 1943 at the present moment. “I am the multi,” he said. “I’m so multi, I don’t exist.”

“If you’re so super-secret,” Harmon said, “why did you tell me that you were an agent?”

“Because it doesn’t matter,” Lake replied. “You have a name”—he smiled—“just a name, and you know my face. That and fifty cents gets you a cup of coffee.”

“You told me what happened and what is going on with the Koreans,” Harmon said. “You also told me that you killed someone last night. Isn’t that supposed to be secret, too?”

Lake paused where several booted feet had paused. He had just walked past several dozen feet of 1944. “Hell, Dr. Harmon, I don’t know what’s going on, so I have no problem telling you. You figure it out or you tell someone who can figure it out, more power to you. Of course by then it will all be too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“I don’t know,” Lake said, “but I suspect my North Korean friends will be setting sail for home this evening. If I don’t find out why they were here before then, there’s not much I can do about it.” He pointed. “Was this the way you left it?”

A dozen boxes had their tops ripped off, loose papers were scattered on shelves.

“No.”

“What’s missing?” Lake asked.

Harmon had carried her binder with her and she opened it, checking it against the shelves. “Most of the boxes I only labeled by date. I didn’t have a chance to cross reference the majority by message and document type.” She was counting to herself and Lake remained silent. “Forty-five dash sixteen is missing,” she finally said.

“Which is?”

“A box containing Imperial Navy documents from August and September 1945.”

That fit with the papers Lake had recovered from the lawn the previous evening.

“So,” Harmon said, “why do the North Koreans want documents concerning the Japanese Imperial Navy from August and September 1945?”

“You tell me,” Lake said.

“I don’t know what was specifically in the box,” she said, leading him toward the door. “Therefore I can’t extrapolate based on data I don’t have.”

“In other words, you don’t have a clue,” Lake said.

“Do you?” she shot back as she locked the door.

“Not yet. Why do you have all these documents?” Lake asked.

“I have a Ph.D. in history and I teach here,” Harmon said as they reentered her office. She sat back down behind her desk and Lake reclaimed the leather chair. “My area of specialty is Pacific Studies, mid-twentieth century. The biggest event of that time period was World War II. Every academic has to find their niche. Some pick their niche then go around accumulating source material. I had the general area and when I found out there was a treasure trove of source material about the Japanese navy during World War II so close at Alameda, it didn’t take a sledgehammer for me to see what area I should specialize in.”

“Since all we know is a rough time period,” Lake said, “why don’t we focus on that?” “August 1945 was the end of the war,” Doctor Harmon said. She closed her eyes and ticked off each item as she said it. “The key events of that month in the Pacific were the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; on the eighth of August the Soviet Union declared war on Japan; numerous conventional air strikes were conducted against Japanese mainland targets, primarily the cities of Tokokawa, Yawata,Hikari, Nagoya and Toyama with the last air raid coming on the fourteenth of August; the U.S. and British fleets conducted air strikes from carriers in the vicinity of Tokyo; on the fourteenth of August the Emperor made a broadcast to the people telling them that they must ‘bear the unbearable’; the fifteenth of August is what we call VJ Day; by the eighteenth of August the Russians over ran most of Manchuria; and on the twenty-seventh of that month the Allied Reel anchored in Tokyo Bay in preparation for the surrender which was signed on the second of September.”

She opened her eyes. “As far as the Japanese fleet goes, there wasn’t much happening that month.”

Lake leaned back in the chair, feeling the comfort of the soft leather. He knew Feliks would have a cow if he found out Lake was talking to a civilian like this. But he found talking was helping to clear the fog all the events of the past week had put over everything. “Let’s try to connect the dots. This is 1997. You’ve got the North Koreans, the Black Ocean Society, and the Japanese government all looking for some document concerning Imperial Fleet operations in August or September 1945. A document that is so important that several people have already been killed trying to recover it.”

He was watching Harmon’s face and he noticed something he’d noticed before when he’d mentioned the Black Ocean Society: a flicker of recognition. Lake waited while the doctor picked up a letter opener in the shape of a samurai sword and lightly ran the edge of her thumb along the blade.

“There is something,” she said. “Or perhaps I should say there may be something.”

“Yes?”

“When you mentioned the Black Ocean Society and North Korea, something I’d read about once clicked. It’s kind of outrageous, but your story right now is kind of outrageous so …” Her voice trailed off.

“Tell me,” Lake prompted.

Harmon stood. “I’ll have to show you what I’m talking about.”

“Where are we going?” Lake asked.

“The library.”

They walked in silence across the campus, each lost in their own thoughts. Lake felt a buzz in his pocket as they neared the library. “Excuse me,” he said to Harmon as he pulled his phone out. He hoped it wasn’t Feliks calling for an explanation of the last several days. It wasn’t. He recognized Araki’s voice: “Nishin has left his surveillance post.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m staying with the ship,” Araki said. “I believe Nishin must return here.”

“Any sign the ship is leaving?”

“They’ve filed with the harbormaster to depart between 2000 and 2200 this evening.”

“All right. I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Lake said. He pushed the off button. “Something up?” Harmon asked as they continued their walk and entered the library.

“No.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. They went down a flight of stairs to a room with several computer desks set up before stacks of magazines and newspapers.

“We’ve got everything over a year old on CD ROM Harmon explained as she sat down in front of one of the computers. Lake pulled a chair up next to hers. “We have almost every major city newspaper in here. I’m doing a search for a newspaper article I read once. I think it was dated 1954 or 1955.”

“Which newspaper?” Lake asked “I don’t remember.”

“Then how—” Lake began, but Harmon shushed him, her fingers typing two words into the database search: HUNGNAM. It produced one hit in reply.

“Wait here,” Harmon said. She was only gone a minute before she returned with a CD inside a plastic case. She pushed it in and hit the enter key. A faded picture of a newspaper page appeared on the screen. “The Oakland Tribune, dated 14 May 1955,” Harmon said. “Read it.”

Lake got to the end of the article, then looked up. “You’ve got to be joking with me. How come no one’s ever heard of this?”

“Ah, now who’s the one with the outrageous story?” Harmon asked. “Except I didn’t make this up,” she added, pointing at the computer screen. “I do agree that this story seems too outrageous given the last fifty years of reconstructive historical perspective, but it’s not so far Out if you simply look at the facts.”

Harmon leaned close and spoke in a low voice. “I’ve thought about this ever since I read the article. I found it when I was doing some research on the Black Ocean Society. Although not as publicly notorious as some of the other societies during the war, the Black Ocean covertly wielded tremendous technological and industrial power. The valley that Hungnam is at the mouth of was indeed, as Major Harlan notes in the article, one of the manufacturing linchpins of the Japanese Empire and very few people know about that. It was developed in the thirties by a member of the Black Ocean Society. I was cross-referencing on Hungnam when I found this article.

“At first, I didn’t really believe it, but I did allow myself to consider it as a possibility and the more I think about it now — given what you’ve told me is presently going on the more I believe it might be true. consider the facts. The way history is perceived now, every major power except Japan tried to develop atomic weapons during World War II. The German attempt is well documented along with the Allied commando assault into Norway to destroy their source of heavy water.

“The British and French deferred to the Americans because we were the ones with the industrial and scientific capability to get the job done and they were too busy fighting the war to work on the project. But even so they were spying on our efforts so they could develop their own programs as soon as they were capable.

“The Russians weren’t scientifically capable because of the war but they had a strong espionage interest in the Manhattan Project. Yet we all believe the Japanese didn’t even consider making a bomb. That’s a bunch of bull,” she added without much rancor. “Anyone with even the most basic understanding of history would know that they would have most certainly been interested in such a weapon’s potential and they would also have had no hesitation about using it.

“People always like to think that one side or the other is better in a war. What they forget is that people are basically the same everywhere. Generals are the same. Armies are the same. And scientists are the same. There is no moral high ground in war.”

Lake remained silent, watching her. From her initial reaction in the office, her mood had certainly changed.

“Let me explain where I’m coming from,” she said. “You asked me what my area of expertise was and I wasn’t specific. I’m currently writing a book on Unit 731. Have you ever heard of it?” She didn’t wait for an answer, even though Lake indicated negatively.

“After conquering Manchuria in the thirties the Japanese set-up Unit 731 at Pingfang ostensibly to operate a water purification plant for Japanese troops occupying China. But that was a cover for the real purpose of the unit, which was to test biological warfare weapons.”

That clicked something in Lake’s head as he remembered the red glass jar in the van on the Golden Gate, with Japanese characters written on it. Were the ghosts of World War II weapons programs rising again to threaten the new world order across the Pacific?

“The ultimate aim was to build a bomb that could win the war; to a certain extent the article refers to an atomic bomb. But a biological bomb was much more within the means of what the Japanese could actually accomplish quickly. They developed at least a half-dozen variants of porcelain bombs to carry various plagues. Of course, to develop and then make sure their various plagues worked, they had to test them on the intended victims: human beings.”

Lake remained still, allowing Harmon to talk under the quiet hum of the library activity. “To find the most lethal variant of each disease, the scientists of Unit 731 had to deliberately infect prisoners, then dissect them while alive, without anesthesia, to withdraw the culture to begin their new batch. Thousands of people were killed in such a manner.” Harmon shook her head. “So you can see why I do not find the idea of the Japanese military and secret societies working on an atomic bomb so farfetched.

“Of course,” she added with a grim smile, “the Allies were also working on biological and chemical weapons. Particularly after the losses they took seizing the first islands from the Japanese. In the hopes of reducing their own casualties, the Allies tested blistering agents on Australian soldiers who volunteered.”

Lake wanted to keep things on track. He knew academics had a tendency to go off on their own specialized tangents, although he might have to get back to her on the Unit 731 thing. “But the article says there were reports the Japanese actually detonated a bomb in Hungnam. I find it very difficult to believe that such a thing could be kept secret for the past fifty years.”

“Consider the situation,” Harmon said, swiveling in her seat to look directly at him. “The project is said to have been conducted at Hungnam, which is on the Korean peninsula. During the war, that area of the world received very little scrutiny from Allied forces. Hungnam faced the Sea of Japan, which until the very end of the war was totally controlled by the Japanese. It was also out of range of Allied bombers until the last year. Even then, despite the fact that there were tremendous amounts of industry in that valley, it was never attacked by Allied bombers because intelligence failed to designate it as a target. The Japanese managed to keep the entire place shrouded in secrecy.

“When the war ended, it was the Russians, not the Western Allies, who took over North Korea. In fact, while the Russians formally declared war on the ninth of August, it’s widely known that Russian forces, particularly paratroop forces, were already seizing key Japanese installations several weeks prior to that date in an attempt to capture both buildings and material intact.

“Any evidence of a Japanese atomic program in Hung nam would have fallen under Russian jurisdiction.” She pointed at the computer screen. “I found out from a New York Times article that the Russians actually shot down an American B-29 flying in the area of Hungnam near the end of August 1945. They apologized and said there had been a misunderstanding, but the Russians seem to have an extensive history of shooting down planes flying in areas they don’t want them in. My question would be, if there wasn’t an atomic program in Hungnam then what else could be there of such importance?”

Harmon was excited. “If the Russians did find something in Hungnam of the Japanese atomic bomb program, this could help explain how the Soviets managed to develop men-own bomb so quickly after the end of the war. Everyone claims the Russians were able to detonate their own bomb because they stole much of their needed intelligence from the U.S.” but that’s always been very controversial. What if they used the Japanese scientists and information they recovered from Hungnam?

“I know for certain that the Japanese scientists from Unit 731 that the Russians captured were imprisoned at the end of the war. They were tortured by the Russians, who wanted to find out what they had learned from their experiments. Many of these men died in captivity and the survivors were released almost a decade after the official ending of the war. Who’s to say that the atomic scientists weren’t also captured and tortured to reveal their work?”

She tapped the screen. “The article also says that American troops during the Korean war did find the remains of some sort of secret installation but they weren’t able to investigate. And of all the places on the face of the Earth that you would want to hide the remains of a secret base, North Korea is the number one choice. It has the most closed society on the planet. No one goes in there. No one comes out. We can’t even keep track of the North Korean nuclear program now, never mind find out if the Japanese might have had one there over fifty years ago.”

“How come you never checked all the documents you have,” Lake asked, “to see if you could verify this story?”

“Because I had no connection between the Imperial Navy and the story,” Harmon replied. “I still don’t. You’re the one who mentioned the Black Ocean Society and that was the connection to this story, not the Navy. This newspaper article was the only source material and, technically speaking, the way we historians look at information, it’s secondary source material, not primary.”

“Wait a second,” Lake said. “What’s the connection between the Black Ocean Society and Hungnam?”

“The industrialist who first developed Hungnam was one of the key members of the Black Ocean Society,” Harmon replied. “If the Japanese military did something in Hungnam, you can be damn sure the Black Ocean was involved also. But I would say it was most likely the other way around: the Black Ocean was involved in the program and the military was brought in to join it.”

“What about the report this Major Harlan filed?” “If it still exists, it would require a hell of a lot of work to find and would really add very little in the way of proof to the article itself,” Harmon said. “I didn’t pursue this because it sounded farfetched and because there was no avenue to pursue. No proof.”

“There must have been something in the box the North Koreans took,” Lake said.

Harmon conceded that point. “They must have known what to look for. But what they found might not be proof. Perhaps they were looking for some other information to point them to proof.” She removed the CD-ROM disc from the computer and returned it.

Lake thought about it. He didn’t know exactly how the revelation that the Japanese had had an atomic bomb program during World War II would affect the current world order, but he had no doubt that it would not be good. That was motive enough for all that had happened the last several days. He wondered if Araki knew anything about this.

Harmon came back and indicated for them to leave. Lake followed her out of the library deep in thought. By the time they had returned to Wellman Hall, he had gone full circle and come back to the start line, wiser but still in the same place. “I have to get that box to find out what’s going on,” was his conclusion.

Dr. Harmon agreed. “At least then we’ll know what’s important and maybe that will tell us why it’s important.”

“I’d prefer if you wouldn’t inform anyone about my visit here,” Lake said.

“I won’t,” Harmon said. “Besides, as you told me, what can I tell them?”

“Thanks.”

“Will you be back?” Harmon asked. “You promised me that you would fill me in on what’s going on. That’s my price for helping you.”

Lake, paused and looked her in the eyes, feeling out the edges to the question. “Yeah, I’ll be back. I’ll let you know how it turns out.”

“Thanks. And be careful,” she added as he swung the door shut.

“For a box of old papers?” Okomo was not impressed. They were seated on top of the Japan Center, inside the cocoon of the Yakuza’s protective black glass.

Prior to coming here, Nishin had called back to Japan from a pay phone using the card and special number Nakanga had given him. His boss’s instructions had been simple: Stop the North Koreans. Use any means necessary.

The only means Nishin had at his disposal, or hoped he had at his disposal, were under the control of Okomo, and the old man had listened to his story of the North Koreans with little patience. “You do not know what is in the box? It could be nothing.”

“The North Koreans consider it something worth dying over, Oyabun,” Nishih said, keeping his voice flat.

Okomo spit out a laugh. “The life of a Korean is worth nothing to me.” The Oyabun was using a gold toothpick, working on his teeth. He spit something to the side. “I don’t like you,” he added. “I don’t like your organization. Why should I help?”

“The friendship of the Black Ocean Society can be a very valuable thing, Oyabun,” Nishin said. He had to grit his teeth to keep from adding his next immediate thought: And the enmity of the Society was a very dangerous thing. He felt the point of the ice scraper on the skin above a ridge of stomach muscle.

“Besides,” Okomo said, “the docks are not mine. At least not on that side of the bay where their trawler is anchored. It would be bad for business for me to interfere where my arm is not supposed to reach.”

“We can take the ship after it departs the harbor,” Nishin said. “At sea, outside the twelve-mile limit. Surely your arm can reach that far. And there will be no trouble from the law, American or otherwise, in international waters, Oyabun.”

Okomo stood. “Wait here.” Nishin watched the old man walk to a door at the rear of the room. The doors slid open and he was gone. He was back in less than a minute.

“It might be possible,” Okomo said. “But it would require a ship and men. Very expensive.”

“We will pay you two million in American dollars for your assistance, Oyabun.”

Okomo looked at Nishin impassively. Nishin felt like he was in a fish market, trying to bargain with an old lady over some moldering carcass. “Three million.”

“Four million with a bonus of one hundred thousand dollars to the family of any man killed or seriously injured,” Okomo finally said.

Nishin inclined his head, indicating acceptance of the terms.

When Nakanga informed him that the Koreans had gone to the University of California at Berkeley, Kuzumi had felt a cold chill run down his spine. He ordered Nakanga to have Nishin stop the Koreans at all cost. As Nakanga left the room, the blue phone on his desk rang. Kuzumi picked it up. The voice on the other end was mechanical, the result of being scrambled and digitized to prevent interception and decryption.

“The box contains Japanese naval records from August 1945.”

Kuzumi relaxed slightly.

“I am not sure exactly what records,” the voice continued.

“It will be taken care of,” Kuzumi said. ‘~“What about the Americans?”

“The lid is still on.”

“All right. We must ensure it stays on.” He turned the phone off.

Kuzumi flicked a switch which ensured he would not be disturbed, then he closed his eyes and thought.

So strange that the Koreans should go to UCBerkeley where he had worked so many years ago. He was relieved that they were only after documents from the war. He knew that records of his presence there in 1939 might exist, but there was no way the Koreans could connect that with him now. He was supposed to have died in 1945. The only person who knew he was still alive and the Genoysha of the Black Ocean was Nakanga.

When he had been returned from the Russian camp, Genoysha Taiyo had assigned Nakanga to care for him and look after him, cutting Kuzumi off from all other outside contact. Then he had been given a new identity and brought back into the fold, working in the super-secret inner circle of the Society. To all it had long ago been reported that he had died at Hiroshima in 1945.

Kuzumi’s left eyebrow twitched, the only sign that that thought had evoked a strong emotion in him. Because he felt he ought to have died at Hiroshima. His son had.

When Genoysha Taiyo had confronted him about Nira’s pregnancy and subsequent childbirth, Kuzumi had been shocked, yet secretly elated that he now had a son.

He knew he would have been killed over the issue if it wasn’t for the fact that the Society needed his atomic expertise so badly. Leaving a child in a foreign country, one that Japan would soon be at war with, was not the most secure action an agent could have done. The possibility for blackmail, or at least attempted blackmail, was high. Also, the illegitimate child threatened Nira’s position working at the university. But because Nira continued to work for the Black Ocean and they did not doubt Kuzumi’s loyalty, initially Genoysha Taiyo’ had not considered the boy to be a problem. But then war came in December 1941, and Nira was in enemy territory with their son.

His Sensei explained it to him. Since the situation was unacceptable and Kuzumi was too valuable for action to be taken on him, another course of action must be implemented. Kuzumi had felt fear then. He knew what the Society was capable of and he feared that they were going to kill his son.

But the Genoysha had an idea, his Sensei explained. “We will bring your son here. He will become part of the Society.”

Kuzumi felt tremendous relief at hearing those words. He soon found out that the Black Ocean was in contact with an extensive spy network run by the Spanish called “TO,” Japanese for door. The Spanish relayed information through their embassy in Washington to Madrid, where it was forwarded to Tokyo. This was the way Nira was able to update them on the status of Lawrence’s work on the electronic process for U-235 separation, the part of the Manhattan Project that was being conducted under his direction. It was also how the Genzai Bakudan project was finding out other essential information that helped keep the project moving.

The TO network could also move people. In April 1942 they picked up Kuzumi’s and Nira’s son, James, and took him south, across the border into Mexico. They loaded him onto a Mexican fishing boat which rendezvoused with a Japanese submarine in the South Pacific.

Kuzumi had met his son at dockside upon his arrival. He promptly renamed his son Sakae after his own father and also because the American name would have brought him untold grief among the other children at the Society Home place school. Kuzumi spent every available moment with him, although with the pressures of the project there wasn’t much of that. He was able to send an occasional encrypted letter back to Nira through the TO network, telling her how Sakae was growing. Unfortunately, he was not allowed to send her any pictures. His major desire became to finish work on Genzai Bakudan in order to help bring about a quick end to the war.

But the project progressed slowly. On the thirty-first of May 1942, in San Francisco, Nira watched the American battleships Colorado and Maryland pass beneath the Golden Gate Bridge under a full head of steam heading west, not knowing that they were already too late to join the American fleet which was massing off of Midway in response to having broken the Japanese secret code and anticipating their assault on that island. Kuzumi was in Japan, still working on theoretical problems with designing an atomic weapon. He and the other scientists were wrestling with how to separate out U-235 from the uranium deposits they had and what the critical mass would be that they would need.

It was work that took years rather than months. And the Battle of Midway had changed the complexion of the war. The Americans were now on the offensive. The year 1943 saw the tide decisively swing toward the United States and the Imperial forces were on the defensive in every area of the Empire. But those defeats, ironically, also gave impetus to progress in Genzai Bakudan. As the armed forces, particularly the Navy, were defeated in conventional combat they directed more resources to the Genzai Bakudan project as a way to regain their superiority over the Americans. There was also the sobering realization that the war was going to last much longer than anyone on the Imperial Staff had expected. Therefore a long-term project such as the atomic bomb was more feasible now.

By late 1943 the Genzai Bakudan project had gathered enough uranium for the needed experiments, no small feat by itself. It had required sending agents out throughout the Empire and commandeering ships and submarines to bring the material back.

Kuzumi remembered those difficult days: convincing men in uniform to bring back small quantities of an ore most had never heard of, while at the same time tackling the numerous other problems the project faced.

As the pile of uranium grew, they then faced the problem of separating out the U-235. Nira reported from San Francisco that Professor Lawrence was separating out about a quarter of an ounce of U-235 each day using a cyclotron. The problem for Kuzumi was that there was only one cyclotron in Japan and to convert it to producing U-235 would have meant they couldn’t use it for the other experiments they needed to conduct for the project. He turned the search elsewhere.

Kuzumi almost had to laugh now at how little they knew back then. They settled on a method called thermal diffusion, which had been perfected in Germany, which meant they had easier access to some of the information on it.

Slowly but surely, though, they overcame each obstacle. Kuzumi turned from his desk and opened his file cabinet and pulled out his wooden box of memories. Digging through he found an old photo that had stayed in Japan when he went to Korea. It showed a group of men in white coats standing in front of blackboard. The best and the brightest from all the universities in Japan, and Kuzumi, young as he was, had been in charge.

By the beginning of 1945 they were past theory and into trial and error with the different components that would make up a bomb. But the sands in the hour glass were running even quicker. The first American heavy bomber attack on Japan had occurred on the fifteenth of June 1944. In February of ‘45 the Americans captured Iwo Jima and were just over three hours from Tokyo by air. Death and destruction from above became a daily diet for the Japanese.

The loss of power hamstrung the program. B-29s destroyed the power grid feeding the Rikken, and Kuzumi was forced to face the reality that they could not finish the bomb in Japan. He went to Genoysha Taiyo and explained the situation. Taiyo made the decision. The entire project was moved to Hungnam, across the Sea of Japan, where there was plenty of power flowing from the reservoir at Chosin.

Kuzumi gritted his teeth as he remembered packing the labs and equipment for the move. It cost them almost two months in time. In the end the delay probably cost them the war. The worst for Kuzumi was that he had to leave Sakae. The Black Ocean Society was preparing for the eventual U.S. invasion by dispersing its assets and personnel. The Homeplace school was shut down.

Kuzumi gripped the arms of his chair. At the time it had seemed the logical thing to do: Send Sakae to stay with his own parents. So he had said good-bye to his son and departed for Hungnam. Little would he have guessed that he would not return to Japan for over eight years ‘and never see his son again.

In prison the Russians had told him little of what had gone on in the outside world. He had been told that Japan had surrendered. That the war was finally over. And to torment the scientists, Kuzumi in particular, they told him of what the Americans had done to end the war. Of the atomic bombs that had been dropped and their targets.

For eight years Kuzumi did not know whether his son had lived or died in the atomic attack. He also did not know what had become of Nira. When he was flown back to Sapporo by the Black Ocean after being released by the Russians, Nakanga took him directly in his wheelchair to this very room to meet Genoysha Taiyo.

Taiyo had stood upon Kuzumi’s entering the room, a very great sign of respect, especially as Kuzumi could not stand himself. Kuzumi remembered the words as if they were being spoken now, drawn back out of the walls that had absorbed them so many years ago. “I have been told of your concerns in reference to your son and your wife. I regret to inform you that your son perished in the atomic attack on Hiroshima. There was no sign of him or your parents after the attack. Your family house was completely destroyed.”

Kuzumi had prepared himself for this. His face had betrayed nothing, although he felt the knife of truth cut the thread of hope he had held onto for so many years. Hope that had kept him alive in the dark hole of his cell and through the torture sessions.

“Your wife is also dead. As best we have been able to determine, she committed suicide after learning of the attack on Hiroshima and your son’s death.”

The second blow had landed on a dead heart. “Did she know of my imprisonment?” Kuzumi had asked. “We informed her in the last message that we know she received that your plane had gone down and you were missing and presumed dead. In the same message we replied to her request about your son, confirming that he was lost.”

Poor Nira. Even now Kuzumi could well imagine her grief receiving two pieces of news in one message. Grief that she would have had to have borne alone among a country full of enemies. Grief that she could tell no one about.

“How did she die?” he had asked. “We have a report that she jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge. The body was washed out to sea.”

All gone. All he had left was the Black Ocean. And now it was threatened. He looked at the wooden box that held all his memories. What had the Koreans found in their cardboard box? What memories were they delving into?